The Last Hope

by C. C. Jameson

  “Hey! What’s that?” He reached for her hand and turned it around. “What happened to your wrist?”

  Kate looked down. The bruise had gotten much darker. “Oh... Long story, but I’m okay. So? You’ve kept your hair the way I suggested,” she said, extending her unbruised arm to mess his hair up some more.

  “Oh yeah... that. You were right. Women smile at me a lot more now. It’s strange.”

  Kate giggled. Poor Luko. He had no idea how handsome he was underneath his geeky layer.

  “So, you owe me Saturday afternoon and evening, right?” Luke said.

  “Of course, wherever you need me to go, I’ll be there. I’m planning to go visit my uncle in the morning then I’m all yours. A bet’s a bet.”

  He blushed a bit.

  “But anyway, here’s what I wanted to show you,” he said. He grabbed his briefcase, and placed it upright on his lap, between his body and the table, to open the combination lock.

  She watched him spin the tiny dials and stop them on 1-2-3 and 3-2-1.

  “Really?” she asked with a giggle. “That’s your secret combination?”

  He rolled his eyes at her. “The important thing is that I remember it, right? The only reason why I keep it locked is so it won’t pop open while I’m holding it. That’s happened before.”

  Kate smiled as she imagined Luke fumbling, running around to catch pieces of paper flying in the wind.

  “Don’t laugh.” He brought his case flat on the table, opened it, and took the contents out: pictures of a bunch of red lines with yellow ends.

  “What is that?”

  “I’ve been testing and re-testing the blood samples, comparing the two, and I finally found a difference.”

  “Is that blood? That’s not what I remember from high school. Shouldn’t it be a bunch of red puffy globules and stuff?”

  He shook his head. “Using the blood samples, I ran some tests on the chromosomes.”

  “That’s what those are?” she asked, her eyes on the images scattered on the table.

  “Hold on.” He flipped through his pile of pictures and found one that had large X shapes on it. “These are chromosomes. See the bits at the end? They’re telomeres. I’ve added fluorescence to show them more clearly.”

  “Those are telomeres?” she asked, pointing.

  Luke nodded.

  “What do they do?”

  “They’re extra bits at the end of our chromatids. They mostly serve to protect our biological information and prevent it from deteriorating or fusing with nearby chromosomes.”

  Kate didn’t understand where he was going with his detailed information. “So...?”

  “Here’s the thing,” he started. “Telomeres can also serve to indicate a person’s biological age. The older you get, the shorter these get. But not everyone’s telomeres shorten at the same speed. That part is still being studied. Lifestyle and other factors may be at play. So, in a nutshell, a sixty-year-old man with long telomeres would normally be expected to live a longer and healthier life than someone with much shorter telomeres.”

  She shrugged. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

  “Well, that’s the difference between the cloned DNA and the original DNA. The cloned DNA has really, I mean, really short telomeres. It’s as if the clones were much, much older than the originals. Like they’ve lived the original’s entire life and then some.”

  Kate stared at the images in front of her. She let the consequences of his discovery settle in her mind, her hopes for freeing her uncle quickly escalating to the summit.

  “Could you check a blood sample taken at a crime scene and compare its telomere length against the length of someone else’s sample and present both versions to court?” she asked. “Kenny’s telomeres should be much longer than those on the blood sample retrieved at the murder scene, right?”

  Kate’s heartbeat sped up.

  Had Luke found the evidence she needed to reverse Kenny’s guilty verdict?

  “Well...” Luke’s expression turned somber, and he reached for Kate’s hand. “Sorry, Katie, but no. Unfortunately, telomere testing is not definitive. While I’m confident that the samples are different, our current legal system isn’t ready for that. First, we’d have to prove the whole cloning thing in court.” Luke let out a long sigh. “But, by the time the FBI’s done with their investigation, we should have plenty to go on, and if Kenny’s telomeres don’t match the crime scene sample, who knows?”

  The waitress arrived with their order, and Kate allowed herself to hope for a second.

  Maybe...

  “Could you test Kenny’s sample again, just so we know?”

  Luke shook his head. “I don’t have it anymore.”

  Kate’s phone started vibrating.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “Hi, it’s Agent Lack. We need you back here ASAP.”

  “I’ll be there in fifteen.” She hung up and got to her feet. “Sorry, I gotta go.” She waved the waitress over, got her food wrapped up to go, along with the fish and chips, and then left cash on the table.

  Luko wolfed down his burger before the waitress came back with her doggy bags. “I’ll go back with you. I need to show this discovery to the FBI biologist.”

  They walked back together. Kate held her purse in one hand, and two doggy bags in the other. She was starving, and it would take her a few minutes to walk to the station. Hopefully, that was enough time to gulp down her burger on the go. “Do you mind holding my stuff?”

  Luke looked at her with horror. “Your purse? No way! But I’ll hold the other doggy bag.”

  She shook her head. “What is it with men and holding women’s bags?” She squeezed her purse between her arm and her body, like she imagined the French carried their baguettes, and then peered into the first doggy bag.

  “Fish.” She closed it again and handed it over to Luke.

  She opened the other bag, grabbed the burger out of it, and then handed the bag to Luke. “Do you mind?”

  “No problem. As long as it’s not a purse.”

  Keeping her handbag clutched under her left arm, she managed to flatten and squeeze the burger enough to take her first bite while walking.

  “Ah, fuck!” A drop of ketchup had landed on her white shirt.

  Luke snickered. She turned to sneer at him, annoyed that he took fun in her bad luck, and realized he was busy digging into her bag.

  “Hey,” she yelped. “Those are my fries!”

  “I’m carrying lots, see. I have to lighten the load.” Kate sent an infuriated look his way. “Okay, I’ll stop. Hey,” he said, nodding at a park bench. “Just sit for a minute, and eat your burger.”

  Kate agreed, realizing that it was probably the best way to avoid getting yet another stain on her shirt, and it would just take a minute. They sat. Luke left her fries and the other doggy bag next to her then walked toward a food vendor.

  He’s still hungry?

  She swallowed the rest of her burger before Luke returned with a water bottle and a few paper napkins. Kate was now eating her fries, gulping them down a handful at a time.

  He unscrewed the bottle cap and took a big sip of water. “Ah... Refreshing. Now, let’s see what we can do about that stain.”

  He tilted the bottle a little to moisten a napkin and handed it over to Kate. “Probably best if you did it considering where the stain is,” he said, pointing toward her left breast.

  Kate tried to rub it out, but the napkin turned to mush and fell apart in seconds.

  “Hold on, I’ll pour a little water, then you can use those to absorb it,” he said, handing over the rest of the napkins he’d brought back with him.

  Kate was taken aback by the frigid water and let out a yelp, which surprised Luke and made him spill more than he was supposed to. At least that was what she assumed.

  “Shit! That’s cold.”

  “I know. Refreshing, isn’t it?” he teased.

  Kate had used up all of the napkins
, and her shirt was now dripping wet.

  “Hold on. I’ll get more.”

  When he returned, he had a dozen napkins in each hand. He proceeded to pat her shirt dry.

  “Hey, do you mind?” she said, feeling awkward for the spectacle they were putting on. A few people strolling through the area had stopped in their tracks and begun to stare at them. Men wore big grins, and some women also smiled, while others seemed to share Kate’s embarrassment.

  “Sorry,” Luke said, taking his hands away from her shirt, now aware of the commotion he had caused.

  Kate could feel her cheeks warm, but she kept patting her breast with the napkins to dry it. The bulk of the stain was now gone, but the shirt was still wet enough to show her lacy red bra underneath it.

  Luke took off his jacket and placed it on her shoulders. Suddenly, the geeky style didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

  “Thanks, let’s go. I’m really running late now.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  July 31, 2015

  Kate Murphy

  Roxbury Police Station, Boston

  Kate returned to the observation room and handed Dr. Dobbins his lunch.

  “Ta, love,” he said, presenting her with a twenty-dollar bill.

  “I’ve got it,” she said, pushing his money away.

  “No, no, I insist. I had a craving for it, and you went through the trouble. It’s still warm! Dear lord, take my money. I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Kate shook her head and grabbed his cash. Probably impossible to win an argument with a psychiatrist. And there was no such thing as extra money in her world.

  Lack tugged her by the elbow.

  “Murphy, he’s not responding to Agent Turner, so we’re gonna stick with you, but we’re gonna do it our way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Haven’t I been doing it their way all along?

  “Follow me,” Lack said, but then he turned around. “What’s up with the ugly-ass jacket?”

  “Long story. Any chance I could quickly go and change shirts?”

  Lack looked her up. “You got something here, in this building?”

  “Yes, I just have to go to my locker.”

  “Okay then. Be quick. Meet me in conference room two.”

  Kate hurried downstairs, changed into a fitted long-sleeve T-shirt, and headed back to meet Lack. Five minutes later, they were back on track.

  “So, this is where we stand now,” he said, pointing at the wall.

  Kate was looking at a US map. Several states had been blacked out, but most of the northeastern states were unmarked. “We’ve eliminated quite a few, but we’ll need specific information to narrow down our search, and I don’t know the exact questions we need to ask just yet, but I’ve got people working on it. We’ve got biologists, geologists, you name it,” Lack said.

  He walked to the next wall, where Juliet’s, Mr. C’s, and Mr. S’s sketches were displayed. “We’ve got profilers and agents digging through all sorts of data, trying to narrow down their search and find a match for each of these.”

  As they were heading out, Kate noticed two pictures posted by the door on another section of the wall: the driver’s license of the real Robert Robertson and the mug shot of the clone. They looked like identical twins. Some information was listed under each picture: vital stats, DOB, etc. A copy of their fingerprints was also included. She approached the wall to look at the thumbprints. They were definitely different.

  Just like Kenny’s case: different fingerprints.

  “Don’t worry too much about the timeline. We’ll bulk this up later. We’ve got agents interviewing the real Robertson to figure out when and where his DNA could have gotten harvested, but right now you need to get as much information out of the clone as possible,” Lack instructed her.

  He exited the room, and Kate followed him back to the observation area. On their way there, he continued briefing her:

  “We’ll need to feed you precise questions as our specialists come up with them. Dr. Dobbins can also help you phrase your questions better if you face resistance from Robbie.” He stopped in his tracks and dug a hand into his jacket pocket. “Here’s an earpiece,” he said, handing it over to Kate. “Go ahead, put it in.”

  Kate was amazed at the size of the object. No wires or anything. It looked like a tiny and mostly transparent earplug except that it was made of a more robust material.

  “Let’s test this out,” he said entering the observation room. Kate followed him and watched him head to the far corner. He took a small piece of black plastic, no bigger than a USB stick, brought it to his lips then pressed a button on it.

  “Can you hear me?”

  Kate stepped back and brought her right hand to her ear, surprised by the sound.

  “Too loud?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  Lack turned toward another agent, sitting in the corner, who adjusted something on a laptop.

  “How’s this now?”

  Kate nodded. “Good.”

  “Perfect,” he said, stepping toward her. He moved a strand of hair she had tucked behind her ear, so it now covered the earpiece. “Best to leave it hidden.”

  “I should just relay your questions then?”

  “Yes, and come up with your own if you don’t hear anything from us. We’re going to lower Beethoven’s volume a bit. Can’t stand this fucking song anymore,” he said. “But anyway, go back in. Bond again. Ask questions like you were doing. However, when I talk to you, you need to ask that question ASAP. You’ll end up getting unrelated questions, but do your best to make them sound conversational. Connect them somehow.”

  “All right, I’m going back,” Kate said, returning to the interrogation room.

  Robbie made eye contact with her as soon as she entered the room.

  “Hi, Robbie.” She smiled.

  “Where did you go?” he asked, pouting.

  “I’m sorry, Robbie. I got called out.”

  It seemed as if he might cry. “You promised you were going to be right back.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not like Juliet. I don’t know if I can trust you.” His arms were once again crossed on his chest, his stare locked on the table in front of him.

  “You can, Robbie,” she said before she walked behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder. “I’m here to help you.”

  “But you keep going away.”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry,” she squeezed his shoulder a bit, then walked back to the opposite side of the table and sat down. She got a hold of her notepad and pen.

  “How about this,” she said before writing down her phone number. She handed it to him and explained, “If you ever need to talk to me, and I’m not here, ask someone to get ahold of me, okay? You’ll be able to talk to me anytime you want.”

  Robbie took the piece of paper and placed it in his pants pocket. He examined Kate some more, a hint of insecurity showing in his eyes. “Why did you change shirts?”

  “Oh... that?” she said, looking down at her new top. “I’m clumsy. I spilled ketchup on my other shirt, so I changed.”

  “Why didn’t you eat with me? You said we were going to have pizza together, and then you left me alone with the other woman. I don’t like her.”

  “I’m so sorry, Robbie. I promise I’ll stay here with you all afternoon.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good recovery, Murphy,” Lack said into her ear, causing her to jump just a bit. “Now, get him to tell you more about the Colony.”

  Kate adjusted in her chair and then asked, “So, why don’t you tell me more about you and what you did while you were growing up at the Colony?”

  “I already told you,” Robbie said. “I was training, gardening, and slaughtering.”

  “But what about when you were younger? Do you remember riding a bike?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “Playing board games like Monopoly?”

  “N
o, but I played with Legos.”

  “Tell me about that.”

  Robbie readjusted in his chair, his body seemingly more relaxed now. “Most of the time, we played with Legos during training. We were given a drawing of a building, and then we had to build it with our blocks. We had to make them fast, and be pretty accurate.”

  “What do you mean accurate? With colors?”

  “No, colors weren’t important, but we needed to get the walls, windows, and doors right. After the pictures, we advanced to watching a short movie showing the building, and then we’d have to build it from memory.”

  “Wow. That sounds like fun. Did you enjoy that?”

  “It was okay, but that’s not what I wanted to do with the blocks.”

  “What did you want to do?”

  “When Juliet played with me, she let me do my own thing. I could build anything I imagined. I made garages where I parked the toy cars she had bought for me. I made the tallest towers I could build with all of the blocks, and she would play with me.”

  “What would she do?” Kate asked.

  “I would make up stories, and she’d go along with me.”

  Lack’s voice sounded in her ear. “Ask him about cars. Maybe we can trace their vehicles.”

  “When you played garage Lego, did you pretend to have a real car sometimes? You know, make the noise and everything?”

  “Yes, that was fun. I would switch gears, like race cars.”

  “Where did you learn about switching gears?”

  “On TV and during training.”

  “What about real life?” Kate asked. “Did you drive a car at the Colony or were you taken places in a vehicle?”

  “We never went anywhere. But I did drive a truck. It had two steering wheels: one for the instructor and one for me. We drove it around dirt roads on the farm.”

  “Do you remember what color it was?”

  Robbie nodded. “Blue with a white stripe.”

  “Do you know the make? Was it Ford, Chevrolet?”

  “It was a Ford F-150.”

  Kate smiled, imagining what it would be like. “Really? You learned to drive in an F-150 with two steering wheels in it?”