“Where are we headed?” I asked.
“Len and Caeran’s. It’s not far.”
Turned out to be less than a mile, south and east of my place, closer to Nob Hill in an area that was gradually improving. Old houses, many being remodeled or expanded. Mature trees shading the street and nicely landscaped front yards. Beautiful, big back yards.
Len and Caeran’s place was a single-story house, stuccoed in white with yellow trim. The front yard was xeriscaped and yet completely lush, with drought-tolerant plants framing a winding flagstone path to the front door. We walked up this, and butterflies rose from nearby bushes to dance around us before settling again. A windchime somewhere nearby sang in the breeze.
Len came to the door and welcomed us with smiles. Her hair—kind of mousy brown—was longer than I remembered, and she wore loose, light, cotton clothes and looked generally more feminine than when we’d first met. In the past I’d mostly seen her at the library where she worked with Amanda, but she’d switched to pre-med in the spring semester.
The event that had drawn us all together was the attack on Amanda in the summer. Since then, even though we hadn’t spend much time together, we’d shared a silent connection. I wanted to understand that better; I had never heard what became of Amanda’s attacker, though I assumed she’d been apprehended. The “campus killer” murders had stopped after that—until now.
“Hey, Steve!” Len opened the door wide. “Good to see you. Come on in.”
The living room had a couch, coffee table, a couple of comfy chairs, and lots of plants. The back of the room formed a small dining area with a beautiful wooden table—looked handmade. Crystals in the window at the back of the room glinted rainbows now and then, though a pergola outside kept the afternoon light from blasting full in through the window.
No sign of Lomen. Dammit.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Len said. “Want something to drink? Fuzzy water?”
Fuzzy, not fizzy? OK.
“Sure,” I said.
I sat on one end of the couch. Amanda and Len went into the kitchen and came back with three glasses of sparkling water over ice. Len handed me one, then settled in one of the chairs while Amanda joined me on the couch.
“Caeran will be out in a minute. I understand you had an exciting morning.”
“Yeah.” I sipped, not really wanting to talk about it.
“Did you see anyone in the area?”
“Not until the cops showed up.”
Len nodded, then let it drop. “I’m glad you’re willing to join our project. Right now I’m the only one on the research team, which makes us pretty lame.”
“Adding me won’t improve that by much.”
“Sure it will. You’re a genius, Steve. Don’t deny it. And you’ve got courage.”
I wondered why courage was needed for a research project, but let it pass. “I don’t have the training for DNA analysis. I was looking at it online, and it takes a bachelor’s and a master’s, with a whole lot of forensics.”
“You wouldn’t need the forensics,” Len said.
“May I ask a possibly-dumb question? Why don’t you just have a lab do whatever analysis you need?”
She sipped her water. “We want to protect the privacy of the subjects.”
“Any reputable lab will guarantee that.”
“Not good enough. This is non-negotiable. We have to do it ourselves.”
I frowned. “It could take years for you and me to develop the skills we’d need. Seems really inefficient.”
“That’s OK. This is a long-term project.”
I leaned back, watching her, waiting for the pitch about getting in on the ground floor of a really big thing. From what I’d heard so far, making money wasn’t the objective. In fact, keeping it quiet seemed to be worth spending a lot more money, and time, than necessary. I wondered if whatever they were doing was somehow illegal.
Caeran came in from the back of the house. He had his hair down over his shoulders, and looked so much like Lomen that my pulse quickened. They could so easily be brothers. I didn’t quite have the nerve to ask if they were. My impression of Caeran based on the few times we’d met was that he was more serious than Lomen, but today he smiled as he sat in the other chair.
“Thank you for coming, Steve. Amanda tells us you’re interested in joining our research team.”
I wanted to say I was interested in hearing more about it, but I’d kind of already agreed, so I just nodded.
“We’re just getting started, so right now we don’t have anything for you to work on. Until we do, we can pay you a retainer for each semester you take six hours or more of courses that will help build your skills for the project.”
“Wow. That’s generous.”
“In return, we ask that you sign a confidentiality agreement.”
Amanda produced a single page and a pen and laid them in front of me on the coffee table. I read through the agreement, which specified a retainer of a thousand dollars per semester. Just for taking classes I was probably already taking.
It also specified that I not discuss the project with anyone outside of Ebonwatch, LLC. At all, ever.
“Ebonwatch is your company?”
Caeran nodded, and gestured to the girls. “It’s us, Lomen, several of my cousins, and Len’s mentor, Miguel de Madera.”
“He’s a curandero,” Amanda added.
Folk medicine? Interesting. Not willing to trust a mainstream lab, but willing to accept input from an alternative practitioner who could be legit, or could be as bonkers as the UFO crowd.
“Can you tell me a bit more about your objectives?” I asked.
Caeran leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, fingers laced loosely. He met my gaze. “We want to find a cure for an obscure disease. It affects only a small population with a specific genetic profile, or so we believe. That’s one of the points we want to confirm.”
“And what attracted you to this problem?”
He took a deep breath. “Some of my kin are afflicted with the disease.”
I blinked. “So it’s personal.”
“You could say that.”
“Do
you
have it?”
“No. That is, I haven’t manifested it. I was exposed to it last year.”
Len leaned over and touched his arm. They traded a glance and he gave her a reassuring smile.
“I think, after the time that’s passed, I’m unlikely to develop the—disease. But a cousin of mine is less fortunate.”
“Lomen?” I was instantly sorry I’d opened my mouth. I took a swig of my water.
“No,” Caeran said. “Lomen is probably safe.”
“Probably?”
Len spoke up. “We’re not exactly sure how the disease is transmitted. We suspect it takes an exchange of bodily fluids.”
I looked from her to Caeran. “So you could be in danger, too.”
“No.” She gave Caeran a long look, then turned back to me. “I can’t get it. Neither can you, so that’s not an issue.”
“How do you know?”
“We’re not in the genetic group that’s vulnerable,” she said. “You know how sickle cell anemia mostly affects African Americans?”
“Not exclusively, though.”
“True. In this case we’re pretty certain it’s exclusive.”
“Why?”
“Because the disease has never manifested in a—person outside our genetic group,” Caeran said.
I looked from him to Len. There was something they weren’t telling me.
“Never?”
“Never,” Caeran said.
“In how long?”
“Many centuries. Millennia.”
“It’s been around that long? Why doesn’t it have a name?”
Len cleared her throat. “It doesn’t have a scientific name. It’s known as the curse.”
I had to laugh. “OK. Maybe a scientific name is in order. ’Cause, you know, otherwise it sounds kind of like the
Twilight Zone
.”
“You’re right,” Caeran said. “Maybe you and Len can decide on a name.”
Len nodded. “We’ll talk about it. Do you have other questions, Steve?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly. “I gather you have a backer.”
“Several of us have pledged resources to the project,” Caeran said.
“Forgive me, but it sounds like it could get expensive. Are your resources going to cover the cost?”
“We expect they will.”
“It’s all in the business plan,” Amanda said. She gave Caeran an inquiring look. He nodded.
“I can show you that, if you’re interested,” she added, pulling out a tablet.
I watched her stroke the screen. Amanda the organizer. Not interested in science, but she was good with planning and decent with numbers, as far as I knew. I’d pointed her toward economics, but she’d be good in any branch of business. Looked like she was handling the administration for Ebonwatch.
“Yeah, I’d like to see it. You said it was a long-term project, Len. How long?”
“Our plan covers thirty years,” Len said. “We hope that’s a high estimate, but it could possibly take longer to find the cure.”
“And you’ve got the budget for thirty years?”
“Uh-huh,” said Amanda. She handed me the tablet.
I glanced at the numbers. They looked realistic based on what little I knew. The bottom line, thirty-year budget, including establishing and equipping a private laboratory, was over two hundred million dollars.
I swallowed.
I’d known Caeran was well off. He’d bought Len a Lexus, after all. But this budget went beyond well off into ridiculously wealthy. Even if there were several—what, five, ten?—people in on it, that meant an average of at least twenty million per investor.
I handed back the tablet. “You’re really serious about this.”
“Yes,” Caeran said.
I looked at Len. “Thirty years is a long time.”
“It’s going to be my life’s work,” she said. “Well, unless we’re successful a lot faster than we expect. Then I could go on to something else. But we’re not asking you to make that commitment, Steve. We do realize you’ve got your own life to live. Since we’re asking you to steer your college plans in a direction that will help us, we’re willing to compensate you for that.”
“What if I decide I want out after a couple of years?”
“Then you’re free to go,” Caeran said. “That’s one of the reasons we’re asking you to sign the confidentiality agreement.”
I leaned back against the couch. “Worried about competitors?”
“No. Just concerned about our privacy.”
I looked at the agreement. If I signed it, and something went sideways with the project, I wouldn’t be able to ask for help.
“Everything we’re doing with this project is legal and legitimate,” Caeran said.
I looked up at him sharply. Had my thoughts been that obvious?
He gazed back at me patiently, and again I thought of Lomen. What was his role in all this, I wondered? Why wasn’t he at this meeting?
“You know, I’d like to think about it some more if you don’t mind,” I said.
“Sure,” Len said. “It’s a big decision. There’s no rush.”
She stood and collected our empty glasses, then looked at me with a smile. “Want to see the back yard?”
Caeran headed down the hall while Amanda and I followed Len into the kitchen. She opened the back door and we stepped onto a patio shaded by the pergola, which looked fairly new. It was built of wood and the posts were carved in knotwork patterns. Vines had been planted by each post, and were being trained to climb them. Pots of flowers sat along the edge of the patio. Eventually the pergola would be a shady bower.
The yard itself was lush, with a thick lawn, bushes around the sides, and shade trees, mostly cottonwoods. A tall fence provided privacy, and a vegetable garden against it on one side looked well-tended. Here and there, rose bushes were covered in flowers.
The sound of water trickling made me look around until I spotted a small fountain mounted on the wall of the house. I wandered over to it, musing as I watched the water splash into the basin.
Amanda joined me. “Nice, eh? I come over here a lot to hang out in the garden. Len and Caeran are really nice about having visitors.”
I nodded, and turned to walk out to the lawn. Amanda followed and stood beside me. The sun had set, and while it was still warm, the temperature had already dropped to a more comfortable level. A few wispy clouds picked up sunset colors, gold and peach and ruddy red.
“So what are they not telling me?” I said.
She didn’t answer immediately. That told me a lot right there.
She squatted down and ran a hand through the grass, picked up a yellow leaf and twirled it. “You know how you mentioned the
Twilight Zone
?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a factor.”
I sat on the grass so I could see her face. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning there’s some stuff you’ll find hard to believe. I’m not the one who should explain.”
“Who, then?”
“Caeran or one of his kin. And once they tell you, they will feel obligated to protect you, just so you know.”
“Protect me from what?”
Amanda blinked a couple of times, staring at the grass. “Remember when you came in the bathroom and saved my butt?”
“Yeah.”
“And Lomen was there too, and took off after—the attacker?”
I nodded.
“Well, he was protecting me.”
I took a minute to digest this. “So you mean Caeran and his family—“
“The clan.”
“—OK, the clan—would protect me from the campus killer?”
“Well, yeah.”
“But what does the campus killer have to do with finding a cure for this disease?”
Amanda bit her lip. “I think I should let someone else explain.”
I watched her, trying to make sense of the clues she’d dropped. One of them didn’t work.
“The woman who attacked you wasn’t the campus killer,” I said.
“Yeah, she was.”
“But the first victims were raped.”
Amanda took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “There’s been more than one campus killer.”
“Oh?”
“The one you saw was the second. Looks like now there’s a third. The clan thinks so—they think the body you found was killed by a new one.”
Three murderers with the same hairstyle? What was it, a cult?
“How do you know it’s not the same one who attacked you?”
“Because she’s dead.”
I took a careful breath. “And how do you know that?”
“I was there.”
This had not been on the news. I tried to remember everything I’d heard about the campus killer. The sightings of a white-haired guy last fall, and the white-haired woman who had attacked Amanda. Victims both male and female. I hadn’t heard whether the males had been raped.