He returned to the librarian’s desk.
“I appreciate all your help,” he said. The library was almost empty. She seemed to welcome his interruption.
“This may seem like a strange question,” he said, “but hypothetically speaking, say I wanted to avoid contact with the outside world, but still wanted to be able to get supplies regularly. Say my starting point was here on Galiano – where would I go?”
“There’s a ton of islands out there,” she said. “Some of them aren’t even big enough to build a house on. There’s one right next door, just off Montague Harbour, called Parker Island. You can charter a boat. There’s no real community there, but there’s a few vacation homes. Is that the kind of place you’re talking about?”
The boat Frank chartered to Parker Island was for foot passengers only, but he convinced the operator to allow his moped on board.
Earlier, he’d shown Carson’s picture around to several of the dock workers on Galiano, and finally found one who recognized him. The man hadn’t been sure of Carson’s exact address, but said he lived on the northwest tip of the island, an area with few houses. The librarian helped Frank pinpoint the most likely house. It was little more than a shack, but had been bought in February 1999 by a Mr. David Fox.
Carson’s home was a long way from anywhere else on the island. There were no taxis, and few roads, on Parker. Frank wobbled along the gravel track on the moped, but within a few miles he ran out of road. He hid the moped in some trees and hiked the final stretch.
A house hidden away on an island that’s hidden away, he thought.
As he came within sight of the cabin, a gunshot blasted a chip from a tree next to his head. He rushed behind another large tree for cover. He poked his head out and stole a look at the cabin. The morning sun glinted off the thin shaft of a rifle barrel protruding from a gap at the bottom of one of the windows.
There were several seconds of tense silence.
“What do you want?” a voice finally echoed from the window.
“I just want to talk to you,” Frank yelled back. “I’m a friend of Ricky Augustus.”
After a moment of hesitation the voice called, “You alone?”
“Yeah,” Frank answered.
There was another minute or so of silence. Finally the voice yelled nervously, “Come forward. I’ve got my gun on you. Put your hands up and don’t do anything stupid.”
Frank walked forward with his hands raised. He stopped a couple of meters away from the front door, which he noticed was made from heavy-gauge steel. Behind it, he heard a shuffling sound and the scrape of metal against metal. A small panel opened at chest height, and the rifle barrel poked out of it. Another panel opened a little higher and Frank could make out the silhouette of a face behind it.
The rifle was pointed at Frank’s head.
“Now who are you and what do you want?” said a low, rasping voice.
“My name is Langer, Frank Langer. I’m investigating the disappearance of several children.”
The face in the shadows flinched. “So you’re a cop?”
“Sort of,” Frank said. For once it didn’t seem appropriate to lie about his current status. “I was a cop,” he said. “I had a breakdown. I’m out on stress leave.”
To Frank’s surprise, the man started laughing. He laughed so hard he even lowered the gun for a few seconds. The laugh quickly degenerated into a fit of coughing.
“Sorry,” the voice said after fifteen seconds of hacking. “That’s just too rich – seems appropriate somehow.”
The voice turned serious. “Let’s see some ID.”
Frank lowered his right hand and reached for his only ID, the replacement credit card he’d gotten from the bank.
“Do it slow,” said the man behind the door.
Frank nodded. He took a step closer, and held the card up to the opening. The rifle barrel was almost touching his chest.
A few seconds later the rifle was pulled back inside. Several heavy bolts were released and the door swung open.
The Richard Carson that stood in front of him was barely recognizable from the picture he’d studied in the photocopied newspaper article. The pudgy middle-aged scientist from the photograph had been replaced by a gaunt and skeletal wraith who stooped like he was carrying a heavy burden. What little was left of his hair had turned white, and his skin had the pale, mottled texture of someone late in the process of dying.
Carson stared into Frank’s eyes, like he was trying to decide something. “How do you know about Ricky?” he finally said.
“I was staking out a mansion in Point Grey,” Frank said. “I thought it had some connection with a string of child abductions. A guy tried to kill me. He had a photograph on him with a couple of names on the back. I figured it was some kind of hit list. One of the names was Ricky’s.”
Carson picked up his gun again and eyed Frank suspiciously. “One of them came after you? So how come you’re not dead?”
Frank shrugged. “We fought and I got away.”
“You got away? Bullshit. You’re either some kind of genius or one lucky son of a bitch.”
Frank shrugged.
Carson’s eyes widened. “Nobody followed you here?”
“I was a cop for fifteen years,” Frank said. “I know when I’m being tailed.”
Carson seemed to relax a little. “Ricky’s still alive?” he said.
Frank nodded.
Carson tensed. “Am I on the list?”
“No, just Ricky and a reporter named Lawrence Retigo.”
“Never heard of him,” Carson said. “How did you find me?”
“The ferry ticket stub in your shirt pocket when you went to visit Ricky. He remembered what it said.”
Carson laughed again, and even more quickly lapsed into a coughing fit.
He finally recovered. “No matter how many times I deal with these people I never seem to appreciate what I’m up against. Let’s go for a walk.”
He slung the rifle over his shoulder and locked the door, then gestured to a thin path leading to the right.
“You go first,” he said.
They followed the trail to a bluff overlooking Active Pass, with a stunning view of the dark blue ocean below. They sat down on a rocky ledge. Carson wheezed for several minutes, exhausted by the exertion. The air was filled with the scent of salt spray and pine needles. Far in the distance a giant blue and white ferry steamed through the pass.
Carson sat with his rifle on his knees and both hands resting on it, gazing thoughtfully out to sea.
Frank picked up a small twig and twirled it between his fingers. “You faked your own death,” he said. “The others were murdered, but you beat them to the punch. You killed yourself off before they had the chance.”
Frank flicked the twig out over the edge of the bluff and watched it float to the rocks below.
“Have you ever watched a really talented actor up close?” Carson asked, his voice rasping and thin.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Frank said.
“When I was going to university I worked part-time at the PNE – you know, the fairgrounds.”
Frank nodded.
“They had a guy there, a professional actor, playing one of the early explorers in British Columbia. Simon Fraser, I think it was. He sat in front of a tent with a canoe beside him and went through a canned spiel about the life of an explorer.
“I found it fascinating. Not so much the story but the acting. I used to hang out and watch whenever I had nothing else to do, even after I’d seen it a dozen times. I was blown away by the transformation. I believed he was Simon Fraser. You watch actors, even good ones, in the movies or on TV and you really don’t get what it is they’re doing, the magic in it.
“But sitting a couple of meters away, looking into their eyes and listening to their voices – that’s when you truly appreciate the actor’s art.”
For a second Frank thought his host might be losing it, drifting into some obscu
re youthful memory.
Carson raised his head and looked over at him. “I think that’s why I was one of the few people who ever saw through them. Even people who’d worked with them for years had no idea.”
“Them?”
Carson’s hands tightened on his rifle. “The crowd at Kaffir.”
Frank stared at him.
“There’s still a lot you don’t know, isn’t there,” Carson said. “I’m talking about the researchers on the Olmerol project. You must be aware that there’s a connection between Ricky and Kaffir.”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “I figured out that much. I’m still not totally clear on the details.”
“I first met Carla De Leon, the VP of Research, more than thirty years ago,” Carson said, “at Blake Pharmaceuticals – that was the precursor to Kaffir. She was a young researcher just out of university. She was enthusiastic and ambitious, like a lot of the new grads, but right from the start there was something different about her.
“For one thing, she was stunningly beautiful – smooth, tanned skin, long, flowing chestnut hair, and intense, burning, almost feline eyes that drilled into you like laser beams. Let’s face it, biochemistry doesn’t attract a lot of beautiful women, so of course she stood out like a peacock in a roomful of turkeys.
“Most of the time she went to a lot of trouble to play down her looks: dressed in the plainest, least flattering clothes, and tied her hair back in bun like a schoolmarm.
“But if she wanted something – a promotion or assignment to a particular area of research, she’d pull out all the stops and her beauty would blast out like a high-powered searchlight, aimed at whoever she thought she could influence.
“It’s strange, but even men that I thought were immune to such things seemed to give in to her. She hit like a tidal wave, sweeping aside everything in her path – until she got what she wanted.
“Then, as suddenly as it appeared, her charm was sheathed, like a weapon that had served its purpose, hidden under the banal hairstyle and frumpy clothes until it was needed again.”
Carson shifted his position. He placed the rifle on the ground beside him, on the side away from Frank.
“She had an intensity and drive I’d never seen before,” he continued, “in a new grad or anyone else. She expressed an interest in working on the Olmerol research and of course, got her way.
“When I first met her, she was a talented actor – brilliant at adapting her persona to whatever she was after. I think I was the only one who saw through her. As she matured she got vastly better. If I’d met her later in her life I would never have guessed.
“I didn’t think that much of it at the time. I was heavily involved with the Olmerol project, so we spent a lot of time together. Still I never really got to know her. In all the years we spent in the same lab we never talked about anything other than work.”
Carson rested for a few seconds, out of breath. He finally recovered.
“Even on the job she wasn’t always straight with me. I’d worked with the police forensic team when I first left university. I knew something about sociopathic behaviour, and I was convinced that Carla had all the classic signs of a pure psychopath – pathological lying, manipulation, lack of empathy.
“But she was devoted to her work – she lived and breathed Olmerol. In less than two years she was head of research for the project; she became my boss. When Blake merged with the Anderson Group to form Kaffir, she was promoted to VP of Research.”
Carson paused and hunched forward in a coughing fit for almost a minute. Finally he regained control.
“And that’s when people started disappearing,” Frank guessed.
Carson smiled. “I called it ‘the change’. I couldn’t prove that the resignations and disappearances were part of any deliberate plan, but a voice in my head told me otherwise. As one of the senior scientists, I was still pretty critical to the project, so they hadn’t come after me.
“All the replacements were women. I called them ‘Carla Clones’,” he smiled, “though not to their faces, of course. Carla limited their exposure to the rest of the employees. Since I was still deeply involved in the project, I saw more of them than most.
“They all had the intensity and manipulative nature I’d first seen in Carla. Like her, they were adept at presenting a ‘normal’ face to the rest of us. If I hadn’t seen the characteristics years earlier in Carla I wouldn’t have noticed.
“Then an incident got me thinking Carla and her clones were more than just eccentric scientists.”
Carson picked up a pebble and tossed it out to sea. Without looking at Frank, he continued.
“A young doctoral student showed up at Kaffir. He was doing a study on Olmerol. The clones usually made a point of accommodating outsiders, but not this time. Roadblocks were placed in the student’s path. They contrived to keep research data from him, and I know at least one case where they faked the data he was given.
“Most students would have been intimidated and given up, but this one showed remarkable tenacity. He managed to bypass Carla’s crew and got hold of a stack of ‘un-filtered’ study data. My guess is that he hooked up with one of the few remaining ‘non-clone’ members of the team, who might have had some suspicions about the drug.
“By this time I’d developed some suspicions of my own about Carla De Leon and the people that worked for her. I was already thinking about a way out for myself, and I was beginning to suspect there were issues with Olmerol that were being suppressed.
“I had a bad feeling about what would happen to the student, but for a long time I left him alone. ‘Look out for number one’ had become my motto. Finally I couldn’t sit back and watch anymore. I cornered him in a storeroom off one of the basement hallways and warned him about the danger. He didn’t believe me.
“We talked about his findings. What he told me knocked me off the packing crate I was sitting on. He’d cross-referenced the prescription of Olmerol to a set of what were thought to be random deformities in newborn infants. He concluded that in about one in a thousand cases Olmerol produced deformities as severe, in their own way, as those caused by Thalidomide, which was first released at around the same time.
“Somehow Carla and her people got wind of what the student’s conclusions were going to be. For a few days there was a hush over the whole research wing.”
Carson fished a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one up. He offered one to Frank. Recalling the dreadful coughing fits of his host, Frank declined.
Carson continued. “When I saw the news on TV a few days later the hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. Before he was able to release his findings, the student was involved in an ‘accident’. His car plunged over an embankment into the river.
“The news report said there was no hint of foul play. The student’s work and the impending study were never mentioned. It took up no more than ten seconds of air-time – just ahead of the hockey scores.
“A week later the study was released – right on schedule. When I read the results my heart skipped a beat – it found no significant side effects in mothers using Olmerol. In fact it said the drug was remarkably benign. That was when I realized how dangerous the Savants really were, and I figured maybe I better step up my plans to get out of there.”
“Savants?”
“That’s what I call them. “I think the Olmerol deformity produces a condition similar to what’s been found with autistic savants – only without the autistic part.”
Frank’s eyes widened. “You’re saying that Carla De Leon…”
“Has the deformity, yes,” Carson stared at him. “Her and all the other clones.”
Frank sat for a few seconds with his mouth open. Finally he said, “So the victims of the deformity have taken over production of the drug that produces it?”
“There’s no way for an outsider to know for sure,” Carson said, “but that’s my guess.” The old man smiled. “But I don’t think the Savants consider the
mselves victims.”
Frank stared down at the ocean below, trying to absorb Carson’s revelations. It was too incredible.
Carson picked up his rifle and struggled to his feet. Frank reached out to help him. Carson jumped back, grabbed at the gun, and pointed it at Frank.
“It’s okay,” Frank said, holding up his hands.
“Sorry,” Carson said. “I’m a little jumpy. Let’s go back.”
“So you’ve never told this to anybody else?” Frank said as they walked.
“Nope. You’re the first – and probably the last.”
“Why me? Why now?”
“A few reasons. To start with, you’re the first one that’s ever asked me. If I’d gone to the cops, I wouldn’t have had any proof and they wouldn’t have believed me. Carla would have gotten wind of it and I’d be a dead man. I’m pretty sure you believe what I’m telling you.
“Second, I need to get it off my chest. It is of some concern to the human race – or it should be, anyway. Third – I’m dying. Lung cancer. They tell me I’ll be dead in a few months. If Carla and her gang manage to do away with me before that, well…”
Richard Carson
Carson was going a bit stir-crazy out in the boondocks with no company for God knows how long. The old man seemed desperate for somebody to talk to, so when he invited Frank for dinner and to stay the night, he agreed.
“I haven’t got much in the way of lab facilities, as you can see,” Carson laughed and gestured around his cabin as they shared some of his homemade stew and bread. Frank had asked about the medical basis for the Olmerol deformities.
“I’m no neuro-scientist,” Carson continued. “I’ve got theories based on what I’ve learned from general research and observation…”
“And those theories are?”
Carson got up and dug around on a shelf in the living room, and returned with a plastic model of the human brain, which he set down on the kitchen table.
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