Authors: Geoffrey Girard
Cain's Blood (18 page)
he rest of Ohio and eastern Indiana passed in a blur of
fields, one-church towns, and Dairy Queens. Castillo
drove like the devil was chasing them, but it was the other
way around. It was newly morning. An hour or so down
this same highway, there’d been a holdup a few days before. Couple of
teens, a boy and a girl, tortured and killed behind the store. And on the
wire this morning: the two missing Ohio women was now an apartment complex with three or four murdered. One of them purportedly
chopped up. Another woman. emily-something, Collins, still missing,
and
the main suspect. And
two
hours down the road, if Jeff was right,
there was a teenaged clone of a famous serial killer living in hitchcock,
Indiana. It was, Castillo mused, quite the stretch of highway. Offering
answers or only more questions.
kristin called as they passed through somewhere called Loogootee,
her number flashing on the cell’s screen like a living thing. Castillo eyed
Jeff in the seat next to him. The kid seemed preoccupied, lost to the
monotony. “hey,” Castillo answered. “you find something new?”
“Nope,” kristin replied. “It’s . . . It’s been a couple days. I wanted to
see how you were doing.”
“everything’s fine.”
“Wasn’t asking about ‘everything.’ I was asking about you.”
“Are we on the clock now? This going in my little folder?”
“I’m asking as a friend.”
“Well, that’s very kind of you.”
“And it’s an enormous folder, by the way. The biggest Staples had.”
“Naturally.”
“Asshole.”
“yes.”
“how much longer, Castillo?”
“Don’t know.”
“What can I do?”
“Probably done too much already.”
“Probably. What else?”
“I don’t know. Maybe check in every few days and ask how I’m
doing.”
She laughed, but it was a sad sound, full of regret and rumination.
he needed to change gears quick, to talk about something, anything, without the thoughts of what might have been. “Tell me,” he
said, his reflections shifting back to the day’s latest discoveries. “Would
a girl run with these guys? By choice, I mean? I’ve got two, maybe three
women at least who may be involved in this. Not sure if they’re victims
or . . .”
“Superfreaks? Sure. Why?”
“I don’t know. Some info this morning I got. Been wondering
some if these women are victims or maybe even accomplices somehow.
Would help if I knew even that much.”
“It’s hard to tell. The dirty truth is most women have
some
level of
hybristophilia. It’s a common psychological condition of arousal and/
or attraction to individuals who commit crimes. Sometimes it’s called
‘Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome’ for Bonnie Parker. Again, it comes in a
thousand flavors and degrees, from SkGs, which is our abbreviation for
serial killer groupies, to full-blown accomplices.”
“Groupies?”
“It’s a fact. As many lonely women sign up for Writeaprisoner.com
as Match.com. These men are both the little boy you want to mommy
and the bad boy you want to . . . well, you know. And, as a bonus, you
know exactly where your man is on a friday night. Locked safely behind bars. you’ve heard of Ted Bundy?”
Castillo could not help himself and snorted back his laugh. “yes”
was all he said.
“Bundy confessed to killing, what, thirty women, and he received
hundreds
of letters each and every month from girls across the country.
Visited by dozens of them. Married one within a year. henry Lee Lucas,
another one of these guys, had only one eye and killed two hundred
people. he also had hundreds of female admirers and also got married in prison. Gacy was overweight and gay, and even he got fan mail
from girls every day and married a woman while in prison. The Night
Stalker, richard ramirez . . .”
richard ramirez. rick howell. The boy murdered in Vincent,
Ohio, two days ago. Apparently played varsity volleyball and caddied
and . . . “I know that name also,” Castillo replied.
“he raped and murdered twenty women, and there were lines of
suitors outside the courthouse every day to see him.
Lines
. During the
trial, one woman sent him a cupcake on Valentine’s Day with the message ‘I love you.’ Want the punch line?”
“Do you have to ask?”
“That woman was on the jury.”
“Jesus,” Castillo breathed. he imagined the two girls still hanging
with those motel assholes back in Pennsylvania. “That’s fucked up.”
“Maybe not. They’ve done several studies on orangutans and gorillas, and the most violent males in the group always get the most ass. It’s
a biological fact.”
“you implying we’re no better than monkeys?”
“I didn’t run the tests, so no. But everybody knows girls always secretly like the bad boys best.”
“And serial killers are as bad as it gets.”
“I guess.”
“hybristophilia . . . incredible.”
“Still a quick study, I see.”
“have to be. Or people die.”
“yeah.” A long pause again. “Anything else?”
“Not that I can think of now.”
“you know my number. Take care of yourself also, Castillo.”
“Later.” he hung up and laid the phone on the dashboard.
“Who was that?” Jeff asked.
“Don’t worry about it.” Castillo glanced at him. “What’s that you’re
working on?”
Jeff tucked the list away. “Don’t worry about it.”
Castillo shook his head. “fair enough.”
After a moment, Jeff spoke again. “A list of states I’ve seen so far.
License plates. The last car was Indiana, but it looked weird, so . . .”
“So, how many you got?”
Jeff pretended not to hear, and Castillo drove in absolute silence for
another couple miles.
“Thirty-two,” Jeff said. “Who is she?”
“She who?”
“Girl on the phone.”
“A friend who knows a thing or two about how the mind works.”
“What’d she tell you?”
Castillo nodded. “Thirty-two? Not bad for these back roads.”
“I started in Jersey. What’d she say?”
She said once you were the worst of them all. And that the evil inside you
was almost off the charts.
Castillo raised his brows, staring at the road ahead. “She said the
world’s a curious place.”
“Oh.” Jeff nodded, then asked, “What was your nightmare about?”
Castillo’s hands reflexively tightened on the wheel. “What the fuck
are you talking about?”
“you screamed the other night. Back in the motel when we were
sleeping.”
Ah, shit.
“Did I?” he half remembered doing so, but . . . “I don’t . . .
nothing.” half remembering was enough. he grimaced.
You REALLY
want to know, kid?
he could tell that Jeff wanted to say something more. “What? What
is it?”
“I have them too sometimes,” the boy said.
“What? Nightmares? Good for you. you, me, and everyone else.”
“yeah, Ok. Mine are kinda different, I think . . .”
Something cold twisted in Castillo’s abdomen. Something primal.
No, no, no
. “Ok. I don’t really want to—”
“Mine happen in the daylight sometimes. Or, like, well, maybe stuff
right before I fall asleep.”
Despite himself, Castillo looked over. “What kinda stuff? you tell
me ‘I see dead people,’ I’m gonna kick your ass right out of the fucking
car.”
“Nothing. I don’t know. Nothing.” Jeff’s voice trailed off, his last
thoughts held private after consideration. fine by Castillo. The last
thing he wanted to know about was the images rolling around in this
creepy kid’s head.
I dreamed about YOU, Jeff. Is that what you want to hear?
The cold knot in Castillo’s gut tightened, still stronger than the
guilt that came on its heels.
“how’d you get that?” Jeff asked.
Castillo glanced over again. The boy was pointing at the scar that
ran the length of Castillo’s arm. “fishing,” he replied. “Dude, take a nap
or something.”
“you want me to drive awhile?”
Castillo watched the road, half smiled. “No, thank you.”
“So . . . ,” Jeff asked again. “how’d you get it?”
“War.” Castillo fixed his sleeve to hide the scar better.
“how?”
“Someone cut me.”
“What about the others?”
he meant the other scars. They’d roomed together long enough
now. Jeff had certainly seen them. “yeah. Those too.”
“Did you get the guy who did it to you?”
Castillo adjusted the rearview mirror a fraction.
“Did you?”
“No. yeah. I don’t know. But I think so, yes. I got rescued. Don’t
remember much.”
“What’s it like?”
Being tortured? Being meat?
“What?” Castillo prompted.
“War?”
“War’s hell.”
“That’s just a cliché.”
“Well, it’s a good one.”
“What’s it really like?”
“you going to war?” Castillo asked.
“No.”
“Then what you askin’ for?”
Jeff retreated to his window.
“Loud,” Castillo answered. “It’s mostly loud.”
“Did you . . . did you kill anyone?”
“Original fuckin’ question.”
“Did you?”
“Shut up.”
Jeff shifted in his seat, looked out the window at the car they’d
passed. “What do you suppose they’re doing with ed right now?”
“Who? The Albaum kid? No clue. Told you before: he’s not my
job anymore.” Castillo reached for the radio. Behind a chain-link
fence, several children waved at them as they passed. “he’s DSTI’s
job now.”
“Perfect,” Jeff nodded, waved back at the kids. “Then I’m sure he’s
doing great.”
Castillo didn’t reply, turned up the radio.
They drove another twenty miles without speaking.
Castillo imagined the nightmares the kid might have been having.
Could only guess at what was in the boy’s mind and hope he was guessing wrong. he tried fast to think of other things.
his own nightmares had changed. In the past, they were always
about the boy, Shaya, or The Cave. Being back in the cave. But now this
new one, two, maybe three times. In the past week. And it didn’t help
that the cause was always sitting a foot away. That the cause slept across
the room from him each and every night.
he thought again of simply pulling over on the side of the highway
and cutting the kid loose. Or making the call and turning Jeff Jacobson
over to DSTI. Surely that would end the dreams. Would end the issue
of having to lie to Stanforth every time they spoke. Of having to lie to
kristin.
But he couldn’t. Not today. Not yet. Jeff actually had some good
info, some good ideas. They were less than twenty miles away from a
home that could have a clone in it, who was likely a target. If this lead
panned out, he had no doubt the Jacobson kid could figure out some
more of his fucked-up father’s doodles. figure out where more of these
kids were.
More importantly, Jeff Jacobson was his good-as-gold insurance
policy. If anyone ever got too squirrelly, from Stanforth to erdman, if
he ever felt a screw job coming, he had the boy. Leverage. An actual
clone of Jeffrey Dahmer, paid for, in part, by the united States military.
WikiLeaks or rachel Maddow would sure have some fun with that.
The mission had already gone too dirty for things not to get worst-case
soon.
How soon?
Would he have enough time to dig back out?
he glanced over at the boy. Jacobson stared straight ahead, eyes half
closed to the midday sun. his hand hung partway out the window, making tiny waves in the wind outside.
In the new dream, Jeffrey stood over Castillo’s bed, his face continually morphing between the kid riding shotgun and the other man Castillo knew only from the file photos. The first Jeffrey Dahmer. The man
who’d murdered, raped, and partially eaten at least seventeen men. The
killer who’d infamously admitted, “I bite.” That face blending with the
boy’s. Both faces were always slick with dark, dripping blood.
In the new dream, Castillo could never move. Could not look away
as the inhumanly oversized teeth eventually widened, stretched even
longer, and then sank deep into his flesh. he could only scream and
pray it was solely a dream again. That he would wake. That the monster
sleeping in the same motel room each night, hardly ten feet away, had
not finally revealed its true self.
I bite.
“Got Alabama?” Castillo asked and nodded to the car they were
passing.
“Thirty-three!” the monster beamed.
eff waited in the car while Castillo went to check on the clone.
The Sizemore family lived on 7422 Oldegate Lane, but
Castillo had parked the car a couple blocks away.
hitchcock, Indiana, looked like anywhere else to Jeff. The
same houses and fences and trees and dogs and families as any other
town. All like, except maybe for one. According to his fake father’s
notes, maybe one family in hitchcock had a son who’d been cooked up
in a lab. Maybe one family in hitchcock was raising the clone of Gary
ridgway, the “Green Valley killer,” who’d murdered almost a hundred
women in the Northeast during the ’80s and ’90s. Maybe one family’d
been paid to molest the kid. Or to encourage him to drink. Maybe one
family’d been paid to leave him alone. Or maybe one family had not
clue one where this kid had really come from. Or maybe the two birds
in his father’s lunatic notes had nothing to do with Alfred hitchcock at
all. Probably Jacobson hadn’t wanted his freak son to ever help solve
ANyThING.
It’d been almost a whole week. Jeff could hardly wrap his head
around it. It was clear there wasn’t another person on earth who
wondered where he’d gotten to. Not a single person.
His
name wasn’t in
the papers. No one was searching for
him
. his own dad didn’t even care
where he was.
What kind of life is this?
And to Castillo he was another
dirty piece of the grand damn experiment. Another clone freak. Something to hunt and capture. Something to turn over to DSTI when it was
time. No different than any of the other kids from the facility.
No different at all.
In the name of science. for the betterment of man. etcetera.
etcetera. To understand what caused aggression, violence, evil. Isolate
it. Cure it. Control it. Then to one day unleash it again.
The Cain Gene.
Is it really just a matter of the chromosomes and enzymes floating around
our blood?
If so, Jeff wasn’t stupid. he’d read enough Warhammer books and
watched enough Syfy Channel and Jason Bourne movies to get the big
picture.
“Imagine Greater.”
ha! Well, he could easily imagine biological
weapons that would infect the enemy with a murderous rage. Or provisional injections to boost aggression and strength in battle-fatigued
troops. No wonder the Department of Defense was running the show.
And where, exactly, does Castillo come in
? That was still a mystery to Jeff.
The guy clearly worked for DSTI and the government. But he also kept
a clone of Jeffrey Dahmer hidden in his motel room. At first, he’d figured
Castillo’d brought him along only to fill in some of the info gaps. But he
had most of that now and was still dragging Jeff along. Sure, there were
a couple more notes to figure out, but there was something else. As far as
Jeff knew, Castillo hadn’t told anyone about him yet.
Why?
Castillo appeared around the corner, walked casually toward the car.
Jeff sat up as Castillo got in and started the car to pull away. “Sorry,”
Jeff said.
“for what?” Castillo frowned. “you just found another clone.”
someone?”
“They won’t.” Castillo carried in a recently purchased foldout chair
and a bag of groceries. There’d been two empty houses to choose from.
One was directly across the street from the Sizemore house. The other
was down the street on an adjacent cul-de-sac. fOr SALe! reDuCeD
PrICe! Castillo set the food down. “I love this housing market,” he said,
setting the chair by the window. “Sometimes we’d have to commandeer
a house for a base.” he peered out the window onto the neighborhood
below. “I was half prepared to do that here, too,” he added.
he’d waited until two in the morning and broken into the home
on the cul-de-sac. empty, furniture removed, the last owners long since
moved on. And, as Castillo surmised, its top right bedroom window
looked out perfectly over Oldegate Lane.
Jeff a thick paperback.
“What’s this?”
“you said you were a reader.”
Jeff turned the novel over. Something by some guy named follett.
“Sorry,” Castillo said, positioning his chair. “unless you wanted romance, that’s all they had. Closest thing to a fantasy book I saw.”
Castillo watched him, looked like he wanted to say something, then
turned to look out the window. “So, here we are,” he said.
Jeff walked over behind the chair. “What now?” he asked.
“Now? ever seen a lion hunting a zebra on the Discovery Channel?”
“Sure,” Jeff said.
“Now we’re lions,” Castillo said and settled back in his chair.
It had been two days of
nothing to do
. They never, ever left the house.
Just sat and watched another house. Castillo never talked. Jeff slept on
the floor in the upstairs room behind Castillo and his chair. They ate
peanut butter sandwiches and cold hot dogs together in silence. Jeff tried
reading the book Castillo’d bought him. It was actually pretty good,
because it had stuff about the hundred years War and witches and the
plague. But it was also, like, a thousand pages, and it made him sleepy. he
spent time mostly wandering through the empty house. Tried imagining
what the family who’d lived here was like. What furniture had been in
each of the now-empty rooms? Were they a normal family with a mom
and dad and kids? Or one like his? he explored each room, running his
fingers across bare walls where once there’d been hanging pictures and
knickknacks, their phantom outlines bound in muted stains. What had
the pictures shown? he wondered. his own room back in Jersey had been
turned into a space as empty and ghostlike. he took watch a couple hours
each day so Castillo could get some sleep. Staring out at a window at a
house where nothing ever really happened was easy. Once they’d seen the
mom drive out to do some food shopping. Big thrill, right? Once he’d
seen the boy, little Gary Sizemore, play basketball in the driveway for a
bit. Another freak his father had made.
Castillo said that according to the u.S. Department of health and
human Services, 45 percent of adoptions in the united States occurred
through private arrangements. That was about seventy thousand babies
a year trading hands that no one really knew anything about.
Kids like me.
how easily it might have been
him
Castillo was now
watching. Adopted out to some unsuspecting family. Maybe even a family that was paid to abuse him. Jeffrey
Sizemore.
And how easily the Gary
kid could have ended up as Gary Jacobson. All these little clone babies.
It was nothing more than a dozen cosmic coin flips.
Jeff watched Castillo awhile, frozen half asleep at his post by the
window. Guy was never really asleep. “Wanna know how Dolly got her
name?” Jeff asked him across the darkened room.
Castillo shook his head.
“Do you even know who Dolly is?”
“Nope.”
“Liar.”
“yup.” Castillo sighed. half smiled. “Ok, how’d Dolly get her name?”
“The scientists made her from a cell that’d been taken from another
sheep’s mammary.
Mammary
’s a fancy word for ‘breasts,’ and there was
this country singer named Dolly Parton who was basically famous for
having really big breasts. So the scientists called the sheep Dolly.”
“So,” Castillo said as he turned, “the most significant experiment of
the last hundred years, the scientific advancement which brought man
closer to God than any other before or since . . . was a tit joke.”
“yeah,” Jeff said. his back was against an empty wall, his legs out
straight. “They’re never gonna come, you know.”
“Never’s a long time,” said Castillo. “It’ll probably be less than that.
Patience.”
“Waste of time.”
“Not if we’re right. If
you’re
right. All I know is there’s a thirteenyear-old kid named Sizemore a hundred yards away. kid who doesn’t
look a damn thing like his parents. These guys went to Delaware, and
Ohio, and Indiana. They’ve got the exact same list we do.”
“My dad’s list? yeah. you know anything about Mendel?” Jeff asked.
“Didn’t he have really big tits?”
Jeff laughed. “Nooooo.”
“Sure he did. The pea guy, right?”
“After peas, he worked on some plant called hawkweed.”
“you and your dad ever talk about the Phillies?”
“Not even once. So, this famous biologist in Germany read Mendel’s paper on peas and wrote to him, said he’s gotta give this hawkweed
stuff a try. The guy was, like, the only real biologist who ever wrote to
Mendel. Said he’d experimented with hawkweed before and even sent
Mendel some seeds to help get him started.”
“I’ve heard about the peas.”
“‘Cause hawkweed didn’t work. has a very weird, um, ‘reproductive
pattern.’ random like. even makes clones of itself sometimes, instead of
true offspring, to keep things interesting. Mendel’s notes and ideas on
heredity suddenly made no sense. he wrote a paper and admitted to the
whole world he couldn’t repeat his pea experiments with the new plant.
he admitted he could be wrong about everything.”
“rough.”
“My dad said this German guy set Mendel up. Guy wanted him to
fail. Wanted him to understand you can’t predict shit.”
Castillo shrugged, leaned back in the single chair he’d set up at the
window. “They’ll come.” he turned to Jeff and winked. “Maybe.”
Jeff smiled, tapped his head against the wall. “I knew it.”
“Give me a break, kid.”
Jeff made a cracking noise with his mouth.
“hey,” Castillo said. “you done good, man. Getting us this far. This
close, I mean. really.”
“hawkweed,” Jeff said.
Castillo turned back to the window. “Maybe.”
•
•
•
Castillo rested in his chair with his eyes closed, his own book opened
and resting on his chest. he couldn’t sleep. Two, four hours he’d been
trying. But nothing, as he’d struggled before. years ago. he’d been
fighting insomnia all week. Maybe since DSTI. each night, another
hour less than the night before. hell, he couldn’t remember the last
time he really had slept. Time had gotten funny. Always did when he
was on a mission.
he’d tried counting slowly to relax, like they’d first told him when
he’d returned to the States. But he’d gotten up to a hundred four different times with no dice. Then, he’d continued to the deep breathing
exercises and meditations he’d learned from kristin. Imagining his feet
in the ground, rooted in the soil, growing out, drawing on the healing
power of the earth, releasing his “negative energies.” What kind of soil?
the pacifying voice on the meditation CD had asked. And he’d always
thought:
Sand
.
So he tried reading again instead, but the words his eyes settled upon
were all dark words, the passages filled with more doubts than solace:
The gods bestowed courage on me, and power
to break through ranks, sowing evils for mine
enemies. Such a one I was in war. But farming
was not agreeable to me, nor house-keeping, which
nurtures noble children. Rather, battle-equipped
ships were always loved by me, and wars, and wellpolished javelins, and arrows, mournful things,
which are objects of shuddering to others. But to
me these things were dear, these things heaven
placed in my mind; for different men are delighted
with different employments.
he was left staring at the flat white ceiling, searching a mental file
of a career, a whole life, devoted to an idea. And for that same life, he
couldn’t articulate what that idea was anymore. fifteen years. “
Nor did
my noble mind ever set death before mine eyes; but having leaped on far the
foremost with my spear, I slew whoever of hostile men gave way to me. . . .”
Am I any different? Any different than Jacobson? Than Henry.
“
But to me these mournful things were dear . . .”
he breathed deeper, his whole body and spirit pleading for sleep.
Sleep. To sleep. “
What dreams may come must give us pause . . .”
There
was no “may” about it. What dream
would
come? The Cave? The Boy?
Or the latest one, the one with Jeff? (
I bite.)
each nightmare no more,
no less terrible than the last.
Which one would tonight’s restful death bring?
As if to answer, he heard Jeff step into the doorway behind.
“yeah?” he leaned back to see him.
“Castillo?”
“yeah, what?”
“Sorry” came his soft voice from the hall’s darkness.
“No prob. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I . . .” Jeff poked his head into the room. “Got tired of
sleeping.” Slowly, carefully. “how much longer are we staying here?”
“Don’t know.”
Jeff nodded, considering. he’d leaned back against the doorframe,
still half in the hall.
“Why don’t you go read your book or something?” Castillo said.
“Already read it twice.”
Castillo scratched his head to awaken. “Well, read it again, I guess.”
“Ox seemed pretty cool.”
“yeah,” Castillo agreed, curious as to where this was leading. “Can
be.”
“Why’s he called Ox?”
“Beats the hell out of me. Why don’t you—”
“Where’d you meet?”
Castillo leaned forward. “Afghanistan. Ten years ago.”
Jeff thought about that. “What’s the ghost thing he said?”
“ ‘Ghost
thing’?”
Jeff stepped further into the room. “um,
talking
to ghosts.”
Castillo searched the ceiling for an answer. “Something someone
taught some of us.”
“kristin?”
“how do you—”
“Ox asked about her.”
“Oh. yeah. her.”
“Is she the girl on the phone?”
“No,” he lied. There was no reason to involve her any more than
she had to be. “She’s, she was a doctor. Psychiatrist. Worked mostly with
soldiers. Most of the guys . . . you can come back home with a lot of bad
memories. It’s her job to help get rid of them.”
“Were you one of those guys?”
“I was. Am.”
“What do you mean?”
“Guys come home angry a lot. Always looking for a fight that never
comes. Sucks. Guess I don’t drink nearly enough, so it got to me pretty
good. you come home with regrets, people you let down. Talking to
them is the best thing, but sometimes . . . Well, sometimes you can’t talk
to them. One way or another, a lot of ’em aren’t around anymore. So,
she had this exercise where we’d try to face these regrets, these ‘ghosts.’
Instead of letting them haunt you, you kinda meet ’em head-on. Talk it
through. I don’t know.”