Damned if I knew what it was.
2:45 PM, Monday
Earl Whitaker is the kind of guy PIs want to bear children for. Lives up on a little spur road by Mount Hamilton. He can afford it—he’s got fingers in pies the NSA doesn’t know exist yet.
Danville might be Danville, but Silicon Valley is Mecca. This guy found Mohammed’s mountain and set up shop there so he could monopolize Allah’s attention. House like a Sultan’s palace on land measured in the kilodollars per square foot, spitting distance from the observatory.
Best data miner in the business. He helped me out once on this case already. Now he was gonna save my bacon, or I was gonna wind up frying on the business end of another hi-powered Taser.
Calling ahead got me through his front gate without the customary body cavity search by his goons. Time was we were on opposite sides of a black-hat-enabled robbery at Ask—the FBI really liked Earl for the caper’s villain. I didn’t. I won. Got a couple special agents pissed off at me, but Earl loves me.
I’d say he was a gentleman about it, but Earl wouldn’t know a gentleman if he wound up paired with one at a French tickler party. If you didn’t speak geek, the man didn’t know where your buttons were.
He liked it that way. Said it was a “Social firewall to keep the assholes in their pen.”
I dropped him the case data and headshots of the kids while I went over the job.
Yeah, I had ten thousand for his time.
No, I wouldn’t take more than a few hours.
That was good, according to him—if he couldn’t find something in that amount of time on a specific question, it probably wasn’t there for the finding. Pretty confident for a man dressed like Elton John had grown up in The Matrix.
I told him I had a group of four-minus-one girls who looked like they’d walked off an alien space ship, who acted like they’d grown up in another world, and the men who exploited them. Or who they exploited. Or both.
I gave him Sternwood’s explanation and why I didn’t buy word one anymore. And told him about Gravity, whoever the hell he was. Satan’s stepchild, maybe.
And Phil. By his wife’s account a loving if distant father, but I trusted her about as far as I could crap out a Chrysler. By Rawles’s lights, a perfectly normal guy until he met Gravity—then he started screwing his daughter and her friends.
And Rawles, hanging on to a lost throne. The perpetual dependable boyfriend. The rich-kid screw-up drug dealer with more money than sense.
“Hah!” Earl said from the other side of his teak-edged glass-top desk, “Poor little Clarkie Kent gets his ass in a sling when the girls aren’t sugar and spice. Where do all the little cults come from?”
“Hell, if this was a religious cult, it would make sense. Ditto, maybe, for a street gang or a prostitution ring. You can spot those. Nah this…this is something else.”
“Mother Mary too contrary for them? Hmm…” He scanned the notes as he spoke, “Feels like some kind of psyop.”
“How do you mean?”
“Misdirection city from the opening bell. Think on it, buddy. Nya’s nineteen and Gina’s eighteen? Those two could double-team Tweedle Dee and toke off the caterpillar’s hookah and no DA in the world would give two shits.
“Your client freaked out that her little angel with the trophy collection stayed out all night? Freaked enough to hire a private dick at a grand a day? Take a picture, Clarke, because this is what it looks like when I catch someone yanking your prick.”
“Bah. Nervous mothers are part of the business…”
“Nervous mommies of darling twelve-year-olds, maybe—might want proof that precious poopsie’s on drugs so they can tattle to the shrink. Might want to find out if their husband’s molesting the kids. Notice the cadence? We’re talking kids.”
“And these girls aren’t?”
“Girls? The one you’re chasing’s been flashing her high-beams at anything with balls for seven years. No, not girls. Women. Two of them legal, two of them nearly.
“Soccer moms with church friends to impress threaten the insurance when grown hellspawn stay out till the asscrack of dawn. They hide the car keys. Maybe, if they’re pissed like the Pope, maybe they’ll threaten to charge rent. Maybe. We are talking Danville.
“Straight up, Clarkie, it’s social engineering. They’re fucking with nextgen software to keep it getting outta the lab—gives ‘em something to do. Keep ‘em needy, then pretend they don’t know about the sneaking around and the drugs and the bad condom habits, ‘cept they do. But you wanna know the one thing they don’t do?”
“They don’t hire a shamus to turn creation upside down.” I said.
“Damn straight.” Earl pulled the four headshots up on the screen. “Your noodle’s fucked up because you still see fifteen-year-old street kids when you look at these four. And this one,” He opened Rawles’ pic, “You think is their…pimp? Sultan of the harem and just now losing the popularity contest? That scrawny kid?”
“He’s got ‘em hooked on drugs.”
“In that neighborhood? The toddlers get nose candy with their pixie sticks.”
“He’s got money.”
“Show me one of ‘em that’s hurting for cabbage.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. He had me there. Rawles didn’t have any power over those girls I could see. He was more like their hanger-on than vice versa.
I kept at the lip-munching until he announced he was done catching up.
“So, what can I do you for, Clarkie boy?”
I crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair. “Rawles said they met Gravity in Paris, and he ‘spoke the girls language.’ Said Phil could do the same trick. He’s not the shiniest car on the lot, but every time I think of those four gir…women I have the same reaction. You say they’re not related. I say they came out of the same litter, and that litter isn’t quite…I don’t know, normal?
“I want to know what’s tying these four,” I pointed at Nya, Gina, Stephanie, and Bridget each in turn, “together. What’s their deal? And while we’re at it, what the hell do any of them have to do with Sternwood?”
“Call it a mission, Jim.” He looked through the notes and the concordance he’d generated, took another glance at the photos, and said, “You look like hell. Go crash out in the living room. This’ll take a while.”
I needed the sleep. If I knew then how much, I might have taken a couple hours more.
My hair was blowing around the goose-egg I got last night. Light touches on a fresh wound will wake you up reaching for your gun really quick.
My gun. Oh, hell.
I hadn’t reported my gun stolen. If they used it to shoot another one of the girls…shit.
Who had jumped me from behind anyway?
I sat on the couch rubbing my head for a few minutes, but I couldn’t remember anything from last night but the Taser and the blackness.
But I’d been looking at the two men driving away with the two girls—I knew it couldn’t have been either of them. Rawles was spoken for—couldn’t have been him, either.
Mrs. Thales? If it was her, then this was a setup from the beginning and I’d been chasing my tail to amuse parties unknown. It was about someone trying to get me—and there were a lot easier ways to frame me or get me killed.
Only other thing that made sense was if it was Nya or Gina—but that would imply they were in on it.
Which assumed there was an “it” to be in on.
Hold on to your brain, Lantham. It’s still not functioning right. Not a good time to be solving a case.
The French windows on either end of the large oval living room were opened to the outside, making a path for a strong wind to stumble through the house like it hadn’t made up its mind about which way to blow.
It wasn’t the only thing about the afternoon that blew, but at least it was looking better than the morning.
I’d tossed my phone onto the glass’n’brass coffee table before I dropped off. Turned to silent—the
last thing I wanted was the sound of electronic bells stabbing me through the temples.
Five missed calls. Three texts. No voicemail—no surprise, there was no voicemail set up on the phone.
First text. Not the one I wanted to wake up to. It read: “You bastard.”
Rachael. She’d found the body. When?
Time stamp on the message was two PM. Two hours ago.
Hell.
Second message: “Jergens, Homicide wants 2 ask questions about corpse. Said you were in Redding since last night. Fuck you.”
Damn. One call to Oakland PD. I wasn’t looking forward to.
Third message: “Little birdie flew away home. Thought you’d want to know. -Kim”
A lesser man might have been annoyed to have a dent in his head and all his luck running against him. Not me. No sir. Never gonna happen. I know better than to piss and whine about life not being fair.
“Goddammit!” My feet aren’t quite as mature. Too much time walking a beat. One of them kicked the couch halfway across the marble floor.
“Don’t kill my house, Clarke!” Earl, from the other room. Must’ve had a camera watching me.
I waved surrender, walked to the front door, and dialed Oakland PD
“Detective Jurgens, please.”
“The Detective isn’t available at the moment.”
“Tell him Clarke Lantham called. I’m out of town but am heading back as soon as I’m done, so I’ll be in first thing tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Mister Lantham, is there a number where he can reach you?”
“Not really. Sorry. Please give him the message.” I hung up.
Tomorrow was gonna be a barrel full of kittens.
And I still forgot to report the gun stolen. Shit.
I’d call in to Stockton PD once I had my head screwed on straight enough to lie well, tell them it was stolen out there. Nice and far away from the girl in my office.
At least the noggin wasn’t hurting except when something brushed against it—now I just needed something to wake me up.
Back through the obscenely round living room, through the double doors, to the office. Earl was still at his desk in the large-enough-to-house-four-families-of-migrant-workers office, flipping back and forth between pictures, graphs, and charts on two thirty-five inch screens.
Yeah, Earl didn’t have to worry much about retirement.
I sat down across the return from him. He didn’t acknowledge me until the chair squeaked.
“Good time with the sleep fairy?”
I nodded.
“Have some coffee.” He nodded at a carafe on a sideboard—yeah, his office had a sideboard. “Your noodle gonna stay in your skull?”
“Yeah, it’s a lot better.” I poured myself a mug and raised it to him. “Thanks.”
“Look here.” He turned around, grabbed my chin, and squinted at me hard, then shifted his focus from one side of my face to the other. “Yeah, better. Your pupils weren’t dancing the same tune earlier. Treat that brain good, you only got one.”
“Bullshit. I keep a spare on safe deposit at Wells Fargo.”
“You keep playing hide-the-pickle with people like this and you might need it.”
“Oh? What’d you find?”
Earl grinned a bit like the fake-looking shark from Jaws. “I think you’re gonna want fresh diapers.” He swiveled the leftmost monitor on its Lazy Susan mount so it was facing me, and brought up a chart.
“So, we’ve got Nya and Stephanie and Gina and Bridget. Different ages, but all within a couple years of each other. Different families, but all from the same social class, all living in the same area. Three of them lived there all their lives. Care to guess which one didn’t?”
“Stephanie. You told me this on Saturday.”
“There’s a rhythm to these things, roll with it.” He stretched out roll like he was an R&B singer. “You’re gonna love it. These four have a few other things in common.”
“Thrill me.”
“They all had abortions before they were twelve.”
The Doc had been wrong about the infertility, then. “Disgusting, but okay. This ain’t exactly tickling my testicles.”
“Wait for it.”
“Oh?”
“You said Phil the pill needed some working over before he did the nasty bop with his snookums?”
“That’s what Rawles said.”
“So let’s assume that the other Pops in the group are stand-up guys, and they weren’t molesting their girls.”
“Okay.”
“So we got four women bloomed way before May, and they learned out how to use it early. Precocious as puppies with their choice of legs.”
“Okay.” I winced and tried to ignore the montage of deviant images now running through my badly-abused brain. “What else? Aside from that thing with their faces.”
“Ah, I was wondering if you were going to bring that up. We’ll get to that in a minute. More important:” He clicked on the next step in his chart reveal, “The three that were born here all had the same fertility specialist.”
“IVF?”
“Better than that. Second gen, super-duper extra special designer IVF for couples that want to control exactly what comes out the business end of the pregnancy.”
“That’s not possible, is it?”
“It might be. Say if you went to someone really clever who was doing a clinical trial of some new technique. Someone who…”
“…someone who was nominated for a Nobel. Sternwood?”
“Sternwood.”
“What about Stephanie?”
“In ‘96 Sternwood vamoosed on his family and went to England to do a second study with a new sample group.”
“His daughter died in ‘95.”
“Yeah—grieving wife and eight year old boy left behind. Can you think of a better time to reinvent your career?”
“Ugh.”
“Yeah, prick-o-la. So Steph’s mother was attending Cambridge at the time—the limey one—and she couldn’t have gotten pregnant if she pulled a train for the whole obstetrics ward.”
I whistled. “So all four of them?”
“Sternwood babies. Off the same study. And you ain’t even seen my pantyhose yet.”
“Oh?”
“Sternwood’s had the press crawling up his ass for years, right? They even put in a briefing room next to his prostate. So the shit finally starts raining from the stars when two hundred of his guinea pigs join a class-action suit against him for ‘wrongful birth.’ Didn’t get their money’s worth for the free medical care when their kids all came out looking like Cookie Monster.
“So he had this problem. Even his pet grad student had a kid with problems when the pee hits the parade…”
“Research assistants aren’t allowed to be subjects, are they?”
“Nope. One of a bunch of irregularities that kept Sternwood out of all the fancy journals for a while. But Mr. and Mrs. Teacher’s pet were the only ones who didn’t sue over…” Earl read from his screen, “‘Obvious physical birth defects, precocious sexual curiosity, delayed onset verbal abilities, low-level autism spectrum disorder, and below average IQ.’ Two of those four you’ve been nosing around have been in therapy for treatment of low-latent inhibition disorder…”
“So they sued.”
“Yeah. And Sternwood’s backers settled out of court.”
“So that’s how they all know each other…”
“No, this happened when they were three, four, and five years old.”
“Did they find out what went wrong?”
“Gag order. Nothing leaked out of court. But nothing went wrong, either.”
“The kids were all deformed…”
“No. The parents thought the kids were deformed. ‘Antony’s Syndrome.’ That one grad student co-authored the definitive paper on it with the Doc. Still works for Sternwood’s company, too. Business manager. Guy by the name of Phil Thales.”
“Holy shit.”
“Strap on your SCUBA gear. This shit gets deep.”
I leaned forward and studied the next bit of the chart he uncovered. “‘Species revivification.’ I’ve heard Sternwood talking about that at Stanford.”
“His big hobby horse. Brought his career back zombie style. Really big in the bioethics community. He figures if humanity drives a species to extinction…”
“Yeah, I heard the pitch…most of the pitch,” I’d slept through part of it—wanted to get tapes for next time I had insomnia, “Bringing back the dodo and stuff.”
“To start with. He’s been fooling around with some real Jurassic Park shit.”
“Like what?”
“Like this.”
A Guardian article from a few years back popped up on the screen. The headline read “We can save the Neanderthal and the Mammoth, says world’s most respected embryologist.” The article outlined his argument for bringing back species that had been gone for tens of thousands of years.
“Blessed are the geeks, for they shall inherit the earth.” I meant it to be a joke, but it didn’t really sound funny when it came out. Earl was right—real Jurassic Park shit.
“You got it, Clarkie.”
“This guy’s a nut.”
“He is, huh? Take a look at this picture on the second page.” He enlarged the inset.
Staring back at me was a young boy—or maybe a masculine girl—with a sloping forehead, pinched nose, sharply downturned mouth that cut just a touch farther to his jawline than normal.
He could have been Nya’s kid brother.
Or Stephanie’s.
Or Gina’s or Bridget’s.
The caption read “Sculptor’s reconstruction of Gibraltar Boy, a juvenile skeleton of Homo Neanderthalensis found in 1928. More recent finds contain intact genetic material, allowing scientists to sequence the Neanderthal genome for the first time.”
Earl flashed the headshots of Nya and her friends down the side of the screen, just to make the point.
“You’ve got to be shitting me. Neanderthals?”
“Neanderthals. One step away from human—highly aggressive, highly social, canny apex predators,” it sounded like he was reading from his screen again, “Known to have lived alongside and traded with humans. Larger brains. Postulated greater spacial and visual acuity, lesser language abilities.”
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