He got off at Tarrytown and went straight up 9 to Julia’s house.
His superior at the Creighton Institute, Julia Vecca, M.D., M.S., Ph.D., was single, ascetic, politically connected, and intensely, relentlessly devoted to her job as medical director. Aaron had been there a couple of years longer but was not so driven—he had a life outside the institute, after all—and not the least bit connected. Hence her position as director. Which was fine with Aaron. He wouldn’t have minded the extra money—something Julia didn’t seem to care about—but didn’t want the administrative headaches. He shared Julia’s commitment to the project, but not her zeal.
He pulled into the parking lot of her condo complex and parked next to a grime-caked Jetta—Julia’s car. Always easy to find. Just look for the dirtiest car on the lot and that would be Julia’s. She didn’t believe in washing cars. They’d only get dirty again.
He sat waiting and watching, afraid to leave the locked womb of his Infiniti. No sign of Bolton but that meant nothing. He could be hiding anywhere.
Aaron stared across the small expanse of pavement and lawn to Julia’s front door. So near, and yet…
He called her again. When she answered he said, “I’m outside.”
“Really? I didn’t hear you knock.”
“I didn’t. Open the door and wait for me.”
“I don’t—”
“Just do it.” He added, “Please.”
After all, she was his boss.
He saw a rectangle of light appear, silhouetting a vaguely female figure. With his heart pounding he leaped from the car and dashed toward it. Julia backed away, her expression alarmed, as he charged in and slammed the door behind him.
“Aaron, what the hell is going on?”
Julia almost never cursed.
He noticed that she’d let her hair down, an act that made many women more attractive. Julia, however, proved an exception. Her barely shoulder-length mouse-brown hair—just long enough to tie back with an elastic band—was stringy and in need of a good shampooing. Her makeup-free face was pale and shiny as her wide dark eyes regarded him through thick glasses. She’d traded her usual blouse and slacks for a baggy gray NYU sweatsuit that softened the sharp angles of her thin frame.
Aaron locked the door, then turned to her.
“Bolton kidnapped me.”
Her eyes widened further, growing huge through her lenses. “Are you crazy?”
“No. He’s the crazy one, remember?”
He peeked through one of the door’s sidelights, looking for movement outside. God, he was still shaking inside.
“But why would he—?”
He whirled toward her. “Exactly what I want to know. If some detective hadn’t seen it and set me free—”
She stiffened. “Detective? Are the police—?”
“No, this one’s private. I never got around to asking who hired him, but I assume it was the same woman who hired Gerhard.”
“Why would she hire two detectives?”
Aaron steadied his jangling nerves as best he could and watched her closely, gauging her reaction.
“Because the first one is dead. Murdered.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “What?”
Aaron knew Julia was no actress—a strictly what-you-see-is-what-you-get type—and her shock seemed genuine.
He nodded. “The new detective found Gerhard’s body. He’d been put through some bizarre sort of water torture before he drowned.”
Julia dropped onto a couch and began picking her nose as she stared at a wall—a blank wall, just like all the others in her townhouse.
Aaron had asked her once why she didn’t hang a picture or two; she’d seemed genuinely puzzled by the concept: Why? Once I’ve seen a picture or a painting, I’ve seen it. Why would I want to look at it again?
She made a good salary but Aaron had no idea what she did with it. Certainly didn’t spend it on furniture. Most of hers was mismatched and secondhand. She was the least materialistic person he’d ever met. All that mattered to Julia Vecca was her work.
And now her work had murdered a man.
She extracted her finger from her nose, stared at the tip, then wiped it on her sweatsuit pants.
Aaron kept close watch on her face as he said, “How did Bolton know about Gerhard?”
She didn’t blink, didn’t shift her gaze from the wall as she said, “I told him.”
Aaron had suspected that, but it was a jolt to hear it put so matter-of-factly.
Now came his turn to drop into a chair.
Private investigator Michael Gerhard had shown up at Julia’s office one day and rocked them with a question neither of them had expected to hear: Why was a murderous psychopath like Jeremy Bolton out on the street?
The detective had been hired by the mother of some young thing Bolton was diddling. He’d snagged a glass with Bolton’s fingerprints from some restaurant, run it through various databases, and come up with a hit in ViCAP.
Julia had explained that it was all legal, a government-funded-and-sanctioned pilot program, and how secrecy was crucial to its success. The new identity they’d created for Bolton must not be compromised.
Gerhard had said his client had a right to know what sort of man her daughter was dating. He’d been hired to find something on the man and he had. He was going to tell his client.
Julia offered him twice what the client was paying, and to put him on permanent retainer with the institute if he’d keep what he’d learned to himself. Gerhard had taken the money and kept his mouth shut. But he hadn’t stopped snooping.
“Why…why on earth would you tell Bolton?”
“I thought he should know. Dating a teenager is risky behavior. I couldn’t tell him not to, but I thought if he knew the mother was looking into his past he might decide to break it off.”
Aaron guessed that was only part of the truth.
“You were testing him, weren’t you.”
Finally she looked at him. “Yes…yes, I suppose I was. Provocation would test the therapy.”
“You sicced him on Gerhard.”
“I did no such thing!”
“He’s a mad dog! You pointed to Gerhard and said, ‘That man’s a threat.’ What did you expect him to do?”
“I expected him to alter his behavior to avoid the threat, not kill it!”
“Well, kill it he did, and now we’ve got to reel him in.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. We simply need to increase his dosage.”
“It’s time you faced the hard cold fact that two-eight-seven isn’t working. It’s not suppressing the gene set.”
“And you’re glad of that, aren’t you. You’ve been against this trial from the start—”
“Is that why you sicced him on me?”
She leaped to her feet. “Don’t talk like a fool! I’d never do such a thing. It had to be Gerhard. He sniffed out your negativity the first day we met with him. That was why he kept pestering you for more information. He knew we’d given him only part of the story and he sensed you were the weak link. He must have told Jeremy while…” Her voice drifted off.
“While he was being tortured. Proud of yourself, Julia?”
She didn’t seem to hear. She began to pace her living room.
Aaron rose and stepped to her front window. He peeked out and froze as he caught a flash of movement by the bushes. He held his breath and watched. No. Nothing. Just the wind blowing the branches about.
“It’s not his fault,” Julia was saying. “It’s ours. We simply haven’t suppressed the trigger gene enough. We’ll have to up his dose.” She stopped and glanced at him. “What do you think—jump it fifty percent?”
“No. Jump him and drag him into a cell and throw away the key, that’s what I think.”
She stared at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you.”
“Damn right.”
“How can you say that after all the years we’ve worked on this?”
“You get f
orced into your car trunk at knife point by a madman, then come back and we’ll discuss how I can say that.”
She held up her hand in a peace gesture. “Point taken. I’ll talk to him. When I explain that he’s got it all wrong, he’ll be sorry. He’ll apologize. And then we’ll put this behind us.”
“Easy for you to say. And no apology is going to mean anything. Bolton’s an expert at saying whatever anyone wants to hear. Besides, I don’t want an apology, I want him locked up.”
Her expression turned fierce. “That’s not going to happen and you know it! The agency has too much invested in this. Not just money—they’ve got plans. You know that. And you know they’re not going to change them just because you’ve developed cold feet.”
“I damn near developed cold everything! I won’t be able to sleep or eat or even think knowing he’s out there looking for me.”
She stared at him a moment, then turned and left the room. She returned with her cell phone.
“I’ll call him right now and get this settled.”
“No, don’t.”
Aaron didn’t know why he said it. It made no sense, but he quailed at the thought of any sort of contact with that madman.
“We’re going to get past this,” she said, punching buttons, “put it behind us, and move on. I’m not about to let a little setback derail this project.”
“Little setback? A man is dead!”
She ignored him as she listened to her phone. After a slew of rapid heartbeats she spoke.
“Hello, Jeremy. You know who this is. I’ve been speaking with my colleague and he’s told me some very disturbing things…yes, well, you were misinformed. Terribly misinformed. Where are you?…Is that so? Well, then, let’s settle this right now.”
She lowered her phone and stepped to the door.
Aaron stood paralyzed with shock.
“What—what are you doing?”
“He’s right outside.”
8
Julia heard Aaron’s cry of alarm but ignored him and opened the door.
Jeremy Bolton stood outside. His usually neatly combed hair was wind tossed and his normally handsome features were distorted by a scowl. He looked distressed. Julia knew Jeremy could be difficult when distressed.
But God help her, he was attractive. She’d never had much of a sex drive, and was glad for that—sexual entanglements were notoriously distracting. But Jeremy Bolton had an air about him. She’d always pooh-poohed the idea of animal magnetism, but this man had something going on. Maybe he secreted a pheromone. Whatever it was, she’d met only a few men in her life who could affect her this way…make her almost…impulsive. Make her want to feel those bearded cheeks rubbing against her nipples—
Stop.
Impulses be damned. Giving in would be counterproductive in the extreme. She could not jeopardize her neutrality, her scientific objectivity.
“Come in, Jeremy.”
He paused for a second, then stepped inside. His scowl hardened when he spotted Aaron.
“I think you owe Doctor Levy an apology,” she said quickly.
She noticed Aaron had retreated to a spot behind one of the chairs. His face had turned a cadaverous shade of white.
Jeremy continued to stare at Aaron. “How’d you get out of my trunk?”
Aaron only shook his head. He seemed too frightened to speak.
Julia said, “The apology, Jeremy. We’re waiting.”
His gaze remained locked on Aaron. “He wants to cancel the trial, lock me up again.”
“He wants nothing of the sort.”
“I was told—”
“You were misinformed. And for your information, the surest way to get the trial canceled is for Doctor Levy to disappear. That would be the end for you. You’ll never see daylight again.”
Without a word, he shot her a look, then went back to staring at Levy.
Julie pressed on. “And don’t think for a minute you could elude capture. Your clinical trial is under the aegis of a government agency that has vast resources and a long reach—one that can be just as ruthless as you. They will track you down, and when they find you they will not be kind. Look at me, Jeremy.”
After a few seconds he turned his smoldering blue gaze on her.
“Listen carefully to what I say. This experiment is very important to a number of highly placed people in this country’s intelligence and defense communities. If you disrupt it they will be very angry. They will take out that anger on you in ways not sanctioned by the Geneva Conventions.”
She hoped he didn’t think she was overstating the case. She wasn’t.
“I want to tell you right now, right to your face, that Doctor Levy is one hundred percent behind this trial. He is one of the developers of D-two-eight-seven. He has a vested interest in its success. He wants you to succeed. Can I make it any clearer than that?”
She sensed an easing of some of Jeremy’s coiled tension. She pushed further.
“Have I ever lied to you, Jeremy?”
After a pause, he shook his head. “No. Least not that I know of.”
“Well, I haven’t. And since that’s the case, I believe you owe Doctor Levy an apology.”
He looked at Aaron again, then shrugged. “Sorry, Doc.”
Aaron looked stunned. His mouth worked a few times before he managed to speak.
“Sorry? That’s it? You were going to kill me!”
Jeremy grinned through his beard. “Nah. Just takin you for a little ride. I got some bogus info on you, that’s all. I heard if anyone was gonna rat me out it was you. If Doc Vecca says that’s wrong, well then, I guess it’s wrong. My bad. No hard feelings, ’kay?”
As Aaron stood there, stone faced, Julia prompted him.
“Aaron, we need to put this behind us and move on.”
Finally he raised his hands in a gesture of defeat, acceptance, and capitulation. “All right, all right.”
Julia clapped once. “Wonderful! Now I want to see the two of you shake hands.”
“I don’t see why that’s necessary. If we—”
“Come on, come on. It’s what men do, isn’t it. A sign of peace, right? I want peace between you.”
Jeremy too looked reluctant, but finally he stepped forward and thrust out his hand.
“Sorry for the misunderstandin, doc.”
Aaron hesitated briefly, then grasped it and shook. But before he released Bolton’s hand he raised it for a closer look.
“What’s that? A tattoo?”
Jeremy pulled his hand free and held it up. “Yep. Got ’er done a couple weeks ago.”
Julia stared at the odd little stick figure in the web between his thumb and index finger. It had a diamond-shaped head and—
“It looks like it has four arms.”
Jeremy grinned. “It does. That’s the Kicker Man.”
“Why the extra arms?”
The smile faltered. “Don’t rightly know. Never thought to ask. It is what it is, I guess.”
Tattoos. Julia had never understood them. Permanent drawings on your skin…what for? But then, she didn’t understand jewelry either. Who could be bothered?
“Well, whatever. Now that we’re all friends again we can get back to business and refocus on the project as—”
“Aren’t we forgetting something?” Aaron said. “Like a body tied facedown in a tub in Brooklyn?”
Jeremy put on a sheepish look. “I think I sorta kinda got carried away.”
Julia stared at him. “Why did you do it, Jeremy?”
“You told me he was tryin to split me and Dawn. I know it was her mother’s idea, so one of them had to be stopped. I couldn’t take out her momma without gettin Dawn all messed up, so he had to go.”
Julia had known deadly violence might result from telling Jeremy about Gerhard and what he knew. But she couldn’t resist. Call it an experiment within an experiment. Jeremy seemed to be doing well on the D-287 therapy, but without something to provoke him, how would they know if it
was having any real effect? Gerhard had provided an opportunity to inject an external stimulus. She’d hoped Jeremy would find a rational course—thus confirming the success of the therapy—but if he resorted to violence, that too would provide them with valuable data. She was glad he’d chosen Gerhard as the target for his rage. The man had known too much.
Jeremy gave another shrug. “Don’t see how I had a choice.”
“Of course you had a choice!” Aaron cried. “You could have stopped seeing the girl!”
Jeremy’s eyes narrowed as his forehead darkened. “That ain’t in the cards, doc. Nobody comes between me and Dawn.”
“Oh, come on! There must be dozens, hundreds of women—”
“No! Only Dawn. She’s my one and only.”
“Your one and only what?” Aaron said.
Julia raised a hand. “We’re getting sidetracked here. What’s done is done. What I don’t understand is why you did something so reckless.”
“I wanted the answers to certain questions.”
“You didn’t have to kill him.”
“Did too. Told you: He was gonna come between me and Dawn, and I wanted to know what he’d found out and what he’d told her momma.”
“And then you compounded it by leaving the body where it could be found. Why?”
Aaron said, “You wanted to show off your elaborate torture handiwork, didn’t you.”
Jeremy said nothing at first, but his expression told Julia that Aaron had hit this particular nail square on the head. Then Jeremy took a step toward him.
“Where’d you hear about—?”
“Stop this right now!” Julia said, jumping in before things escalated out of control. “It was a foolish thing to do but we’ll have it taken care of.”
Jeremy turned toward her. “‘We’?”
“Our people. The ones you want to stay on the right side of. They’re experts in crime-scene cleanup.” She’d call them as soon as Jeremy left. “Meanwhile, you will report to my office tomorrow for a booster dose.”
Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that gonna do to me?”
“Nothing you’ll notice.”
“Better not. I been feelin pretty good lately and I want to stay that way. Don’t want nothin comin between me and Dawn. That’s my numero-uno priority.”
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