Dues of Mortality

by Jason Austin

  “But you’re so smart, Andrew,” she had said.

  “The force needs smart people too, ma.”

  The truth was that any job requiring the wearing of a firearm was a straight-up no-no for his mother unless Roberts wanted her shiny new heart condition on his conscience. He reminded her that most cops never even had occasion to fire their guns in public, but when it came to her son, the actual math bore little weight against her definition of safety. Roberts prayed yesterday’s news about Perry Jones and the two uniforms hadn’t reached the nursing home yet—unlikely, considering the residents’ days were chock-full with endless hours of life-affirming webisode viewing. Roberts wondered if he’d make it to any of the funerals. Maybe not Bowen’s or Percy’s. Roberts didn’t know them that well, and when the young ones went down, it left veterans like Roberts waxing almost guilty for outliving them. Jonesy’s, on the other hand, he had to. Jones’s daughter and his ex—neither of which Roberts had seen in years—might even be expecting word on the case, some update or reassurance that the right people were working on it, and that the rumor mill, that was already starting to spin, wouldn’t get out of control. The press hounds had, by no means, finished their song and dance with CPD in regards to the corruption scandal. The department had had over fifty off-duty cops taking bribes, brutalizing suspects, providing security for H-ball shipments and even murdering rival dealers. Some cases were even still pending and unheard testimony still bore the possibility of breaking a few rungs higher up the ladder. Jonesy was a hero in Robert's eyes and Roberts worried that Jonsey's memory could get tossed into the meat grinder if it meant keeping a shiner badge out of general population. Damn, Jonesy, you sure picked a hell of a time!

  When Roberts first heard about Jones and the others, all he wanted to do was roll over and hit the alarm clock. It has to be a bad dream, he’d thought. Bad dreams never make sense and what had happened at that motel was as far removed from sense as it got. His first suspicion was that Jonesy had been set up somehow. A revenge hit. But the other particulars, especially the murders of Percy and Bowen made that unlikely...or, at least, phenomenally sloppy. No sense at all. Three dead cops and they only had two reliable witnesses: the motel manager who saw Glenda and an unidentified man scram past his office, and a crater-faced kid with a rotten attitude from the doughnut shop. There was a possible third, but Robert’s wasn’t yet sure what to make of his account, which seemed shakier than a belly dancer's navel. He was a thirty-nine-year-old motel patron who'd heard more than he’d seen. He’d taken one look at Percy's dead body then locked himself in his room, where he’d hunkered in the bathtub. The entire fiasco had gone down on the second story of the motel and at sixty pounds overweight, a header out the window was an absolute last resort. The witness had said that he thought he heard all three shots and that he might have glimpsed someone matching the vagrant’s description outside the room, but he'd retreated too quickly to have gotten a good look at the guy. And it didn't help that MAG guns made a coagulated pop, buzz, whir sound that while distinct from traditional gunpowder firearms, were often mistaken for a whole host of different noises. From there, all that was left was a list of a half dozen other patrons signed in to the motel at the time. They were a wash. Most had bolted from their first floor suites at the first sign of trouble and none had a room closer to the scene.

  “Just tell me what you heard,” Roberts had requested from the tourist.

  “I'm not sure if I even heard it right, sir,” he'd answered. People always came with the “sirs” when they felt the weight of a badge, even when they weren’t the person of interest.

  “Just tell me anyway.”

  The witness looked thoughtful, like he was genuinely putting the words together as he recalled them. “It sounded like...a male voice said... ‘You just killed two of your own men’.”

  Roberts choked. That's why his witness was so hesitant. CPD's police scandals were national news. He'd probably been acutely aware of them and didn’t know who to trust.

  “Or it could have been 'You just killed two of them'? I can't be sure.”

  He couldn't be sure? Terrific! Seeing as all the males in the scenario were either dead or missing, they'd probably never be sure. Roberts pulled on his chin. Bullshit! I am sure! In fact, that was the one song in the juke that Roberts absolutely refused to play. Jonesy wasn’t dirty! He didn’t look down on the job the way dirty cops did, resenting the hours, the risk, the shitty pay, and getting passed over. Jonesy dreaded retirement; he didn’t welcome it. And Bowen? The full grown boy scout without the neckerchief? His virtue was in full swing. That starry-eyed kid couldn’t even find “disgruntled” in the dictionary. Officer Lou Percy was the only one Roberts couldn’t really speak for. Percy had a record of going through partners with some frequency. That hinted toward an inability to mesh with his colleagues. However, those same colleagues unilaterally praised Percy as a righteous cop...just not one they would want to invite to a poker game. No, there were no bent badges in this, Roberts thought. This was something else.

  Jonesy had done everything right. He had put Glenda in a near vacant motel, on the other side of town, where human traffic was predictable and any mouth-breathers would likely stand out like a snowman in a soccer-field. And although he was a complete jerk about it, the doughnut kid offered them a good description of a man in a dirty blue flight jacket, looking like he lived in a landfill. That was the same guy Glenda Jameson described as her overly-modest rescuer and that the bank cameras revealed passing by two hours before her attack. The kid testified that Bowen had bought the vagrant a pastry at Amy Joy Donuts, where he was working the counter, just minutes before the murders. Damned if that couldn’t bounce around a few million distorted ways in the press. A cop buying a doughnut for the guy who may have killed him just minutes later? The late-night comedians never had it so easy. The coroner’s report wasn’t back yet, but it looked like Percy and Bowen were both killed with Jones’s gun, but not necessarily by Jones. That would suggest that the vagrant—who the kid said looked too weak to scratch his own ass—somehow took out three cops and kidnapped Glenda Jameson all by himself. Roberts had trouble believing such a guy hadn't raised a single red flag with Bowen. For Pete's sake, the kid saw fit to buy him lunch, not throw him to the ground and cuff him. Besides, if it was the same guy that saved her in the alley, why would he kidnap her now? The motel manager said the couple whizzed by the office and Glenda appeared to be going along willingly. Were they fleeing together? If so, were they running from danger of being killed or danger of being caught? It all defied rationality. Each latter event seemed to contradict the explanation of the former, leaving a broad circle of confusion. And be he hero or villain, this vagrant was a frigging ghost. No name, no face—the brim of his baseball cap had negated all the cameras—and getting a decent set of fingerprints from a motel room was like trying to find the shortest blade of grass in Forest Lawn. Roberts would, of course, make a trip through the local soup kitchens and shelters to try and pick up a scent, but homeless people were the worst in terms of witnesses. They almost never talked to police, and if they did, they were often insane or high as a kite or both. Just who was this guy? Roberts kept asking himself. Where did he fit into this? What was he doing in that neighborhood, just blocks from the same motel as Glenda Jameson? Coincidence? Fate? To a cop, coincidence was usually nothing more than an excuse to go home early, and fate was what happened when you weren’t paying attention. Roberts shook his head, wondering just how long this would go on before he would catch a break.

  Thank God for Capt. Horace Penfield, he thought.

  Anyone else would have had Roberts washing his car for a month to buy twenty four hours of press silence on this. Forty-eight would have been better, but even without the potential for leaks that was pushing it. A manhunt for a triple cop killer wasn't exactly something you put on the back burner. Nonetheless, Roberts had to have some breathing room to fill in the blanks with regard to Kelmer, Block, the vagrant and t
hat all-too-convenient robbery. There was an invisible hand behind this, he surmised; possibly a well-manicured one. If he was going to rap its knuckles, it was good to know Penfield had his back...for now. Roberts sighed heavily. Please let this woman have something useful.

  The six-foot-four security guard felt like a hairy albatross around Roberts’s neck as they strode to the research labs. One of the little, chrome, antiseptic hoverbots brushed Robert's ankle as they advanced. From the outside, Roberts had taken in the site of the BioCore everyday as if it were a monument in a foreign country. Now that he was inside, he saw that it was a foreign country. The place seemed like something out of an old James Bond movie—vast rooms of state-of-the-art equipment on virtually every floor, and people sputtering around like worker drone bees dressed in everything, from dust repellent lab-coats to high-grade Hazmat suits. In some areas there were nothing but huge laboratories with the occasional supply closet and carefully marked culture appliances running between. Everything was clean, organized, and operated on a precision scale. A week working in a place like this and Robert's would slit his wrists with a broken beaker. He scratched the back of his head, curious.

  The network of labs was an impressive collage of the best medical and biotechnological advancements in the world. Millions of square feet of tile, glass and mortar formed both a financial and physical lynchpin between the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospital’s Health System and Case Western Reserve University, ultimately to form the world's most proficient example of biomedical unity. It was Cleveland's golden goose. The list of people your average Clevelander could name that had never worked there was getting shorter by the day. Yet, there was one thing that those in Robert's circle just couldn't understand: Competing corporations from all over the country, or at least some branch of them, were effectively under one roof. Wouldn’t there be a major temptation to crack the other guy’s vault? Researchers were chosen from a wide variety of universities and biological studies departments. How could anyone be sure they weren’t being spied on? It must have made for one fascist-looking policy on office romances. Though, from what Roberts had heard from people like Camille Cosgrove, Jerome Wallace was definitely the type who might take to trading a little security for absolute control. Wallace’s initial financial backing of BioCore was Cleveland’s big bang that kicked it past Boston and San Francisco as biotech meccas. Since then Wallace had continued to devour land at an exorbitant rate while simultaneously sneezing on everyone else’s dinner plates. The steel industry, for example—a genuine staple in the archives of Cleveland’s history—had taken a real body blow since BioCore went up. SiPlus high-performance would be gone before the year was out. Damn shame, Roberts thought. His hometown would never be the same.

  After an extended march, Roberts and his escort walked into the largest microbiology lab on the floor. Roberts's eyes were virtually assaulted by the blinding luminescence and the place absolutely reeked of sterility. It was overflowing with microscopes, holographic computers and a whole host of machines Roberts had never seen before. And, of course, people who looked more mechanical than any of it. Roberts suddenly felt learning-disabled. He knew squat about what they were doing, short of what he had seen on the Health Channel. How could the cure for cancer not be in this place?

  The guard branched out an ape-like arm, grabbing a gray coverall from a nearby rack and stuffed it in Roberts’s face.

  “Put it on,” the guard said, his voice sounding like a busted pipe organ. “Gloves are in the pocket.”

  Roberts donned the coverall and slipped on the cellophane gloves from the single pocket.

  The guard reached for his own cover-all, but stopped midway and redirected his hand to his earpiece.

  Roberts started to ask a question.

  “She’s over there,” the guard said, nudging his chin forward. “The little Spanish lady with the glasses.”

  Roberts gave a nod and then sauntered over to his subject while the guard remained by the entrance, as Roberts guessed he had just been instructed. Not that Roberts would have been inclined to conduct the interview with the big ape standing over him. He got the feeling that cooperation from the guard’s boss was being offered at a premium. He also imagined the walls of this place had big enough ears that those in charge may find benefit in selling visitors a false sense of security.

  Roberts had talked to only two other researchers at BioCore this morning. Both told him virtually identical accounts of Kelmer’s actions the day before he disappeared: he seemed fine, and no different than usual. Whatever that was. Kelmer was the last kind of guy any cop in his right mind would want to investigate. The man was a social shut-in, an island unto himself. He'd never dated inside the office—or for that matter outside it—and rarely socialized openly with his colleagues. The man couldn't find the nearest water-cooler with a GPS. He had never casually given anyone his phone number nor invited them to his home. It was as though Richard Kelmer had become one with the ether whenever he left the building. The only real shot Roberts had at discovering anything about him was in a Dr. Carmen Ruiz, a fifty two-year-old biochemist who worked with Kelmer longest under the Millenitech banner at BioCore. She’d had a good three years side-by-side with Kelmer, and Roberts figured even the most deserted islands got the occasional flyover.

  “Dr. Ruiz?” Roberts inquired.

  The doctor was so totally engrossed in her work that she shot from her seat like a bottle rocket when he addressed her.

  “I’m sorry, doctor. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She jabbed her middle finger under her glasses, rubbing an eye and looking at Roberts as if he smelled. “Can I help you?”

  “I'm Detective Andrew Roberts of the Cleveland Police Department. I’d like to talk to you about a colleague of yours, Dr. Richard Kelmer.”

  “I haven’t seen him. He was supposed to be here helping me run these damn tests on these damn tissue samples.”

  “Yes, well, apparently no one has seen him for nearly three days. I was hoping that someone he worked with might be able to give me some idea of where he’s gone.”

  “Oh, damn it! I knew it! I knew he was going to quit and leave me to do every goddamn thing by myself.”

  Roberts laughed under his tongue. He'd never heard such bitter irritation expressed so...charmingly. It was downright cute. She was downright cute. Caramel brown eyes glimmered with irreverence behind the elliptical frames of her glasses and her petite hourglass frame had just the perfect hint of thickness.

  “How do you know he was going to quit?” Roberts asked.

  “He told me he was going to quit.”

  “He did? When?”

  “He mentioned it a couple of times last week, but I never believed he’d walk away from the work. Damn it! Now I’m going to have to wait for another researcher to qualify, and I’ll have to reorient that person. I can’t do all this by myself. Damn it!”

  Roberts started to speak.

  “Wait a minute,” Ruiz said. “Why are the police looking for him? God almighty, he didn’t shoot up a McDonald’s or something, did he? I can’t say I’m surprised. They keep telling us to watch out for the quiet ones.”

  Roberts raised a hand at the little woman. “He’s not been accused of anything. I just really need to find him. I’ve already talked to two other colleagues of his here at BioCore. They told me you worked closest with him. Is that right?”

  “We were paired up on a number of projects here because of our mutual credentials. I’m not sure I could say how well I knew him. He kept so much to himself in the way of personal stuff and it’s not like we ever had drinks after work or anything.”

  “You said he told you he was going to quit. Certainly, he felt comfortable enough to confide that information to you.”

  “Yes, but he was sort of ranting. When I asked him if he was serious, he just looked at me funny and told me to never mind.”

  “What do you suppose made him tell you he wanted to quit?”

  “Well,
honestly, I don’t think he was ever very comfortable here. I guess it just took this long to get to him. Mr. Wallace had to practically pry him away from his professorship at Case Western. He was pretty popular on campus; he loved teaching, loved the kids.”

  “If that was the case, did he say why he came to work for Millenitech?”

  “Money. He was offered funding for some work of his own—funding he couldn't get from the university. In exchange, he had to agree to adopt Millenitech's charter and prioritize its research.”

  “And he was okay with that?”

  “Actually, I think he felt kind of cheated when he was forced to sideline so much of his own work. I don't think he realized just how much Mr. Wallace would demand from him. There were a couple of times Wallace even chewed him out in front of other staff because he was neglecting vital Millenitech projects that he'd been specifically assigned.”

  “Which projects?”

  “Our main focus is on anti-aging and perfecting the replication of limbs and extremities, complete tissue regeneration. The same stuff he left me here to wrangle on my own. Millenitech has a primary focus on those two areas. It draws a lot of investors.”

  “I thought you were already doing the regeneration stuff.”

  “No. We can successfully clone most human organs...kidneys, livers, lungs, hearts and even filter out defects and replace them for a person without fear of rejection. Skin grafts are a snap. Limbs, however, have a more complex and layered structure than the single cell makeup of most organs. Codifying the factors that are directly responsible for the growth of even a toe is considerably more difficult. We’d get a lot further a lot faster if our methods weren’t so restricted by law. The government’s done a damn good job of convincing the public we’d be cloning whole people just so we could lop off an arm or a leg and ditch the rest.”

  “That sounds like admirable work.”