Cain's Blood (4 page)

Three men in light hazard suits and masks, employees of DSTI,
scuttled about the room still, gathering more evidence, snapping more
pictures. By this time tomorrow, it would look as if absolutely nothing
had ever happened in the room. But it wasn’t tomorrow yet. It had been
no more than twenty hours since the boys’ escape.

Castillo followed the two scientists within and slowed to study the
first body they came to. It was splayed across the room’s foosball table.
The sheet someone had covered it with was soaked through, and he
could perfectly make out the shape and facial outlines of the person it
covered. A modern Shroud of Turin, still dripping blood over the little
plastic soccer players onto the field beneath.

“Who is this?” he asked.
“Dylan.”
Castillo waited.
“Dylan Meinzer. Produced from the DNA of Dylan klebold, Columbine.”

“right.” Castillo forced himself to simply accept this information
as nothing more than standard intel. Now was not the time to really
think about what it was they’d been telling him. The cloning strangeness. he focused instead on facts, his mind pulling up what it could. he
remembered that klebold and his buddy—couldn’t recall the name—
shot up their school a good twenty years ago, murdering a dozen fellow
students, and then offed themselves in the school library. This, if he
believed what they’d been telling him, was that same boy’s clone. One of
them, at least. “And you’ve confirmed that’s the other kid?”

The other body had been bound and positioned with telephone line
and network cables to the railing that led to the second floor. Castillo
eyed the dark shape half hidden beneath the sheet, embossed in blood
and standing with its arms still held outstretched like some halloween
prankster. “One of the erics.” Dr. erdman flipped through a few pages
of his clipboard. “eric Palmer, eric
Six
. Blood and PCr tests match up.”

“have they found the skin yet?” Castillo asked. Another black-andwhite question. Black-and-white questions were safe. Manageable.
Just
stick with those, and get out of this place as fast as you can.
It had been more
than a year since he’d seen even a drop of blood. here, there were several pools.

“No,” Dr. erdman replied. he sounded embarrassed.

Castillo looked down again at “Dylan” and furled back the sheet.
The body beneath had been flayed, completely and immaculately. The
skin cut away at every turn so that the boy, except for a few grisly potholed gouges out of his arm and between his toes, looked like something out of a Michelangelo sketchbook. The debrief he’d been given
upon first arrival had suggested the other one looked exactly the same.
“Why did they hate these two so much?” he asked.

Sudden, bright interest flared in erdman’s eyes. “Is it that obvious?”

“Sure. This kid was alive when they skinned him.” Castillo looked
into the corpse’s lidless dark eyes. “I . . . I’ve seen this before.”
More interest, less scientific this time. “Where was that?”
Castillo ignored the question and replaced the sheet. “you can tell
by the hands.” he approached the second body. “The arms out like this.
Instantaneous rigor mortis. Like a drowning victim’s last spasm. These
two drowned choking on their own blood.”
“The others never . . .” The geneticist followed Castillo deeper into
the room. “frankly, the others never took to these boys. It was a mistake
to have those two here.” his voice grew more vague, perceptibly clinical in its detachment. This was merely summarizing data, preparing an
imminent report. “Naturally, ‘spree killers’ were never the same as the
others.”
“Naturally.” Castillo hid the accompanying damning grin. “So, how
do you know it’s not eric Three or four?” he made sure to make it
sound more like a genuine question than a challenge. The anticipated
pissing contest seemed worse than usual with this lot. A bunch of
khakied Betas with delusions of Alphaness, the kind of men he’d struggled with most of his life. As one ex-lover—a PhD candidate in someor-other bullshitty subject whom he’d met while taking courses at the
university of Maryland—had put it wryly during her breakup speech:
“The hardguy schtick was fun until I realized it wasn’t just a schtick.”
While he’d been off fighting in two wars, competence had somehow
become an offense back home. he could try and talk as softly and “nice”
as he wanted, but it didn’t matter. People too often still saw their own
weaknesses in the skills and confidence he’d fostered in the military, and
that was always a dangerous thing. It’d never been an issue in the field.
“Doctor?” he prompted.
erdman, to his credit, hadn’t taken offense. “There are ways. If
there’s one thing we know around here, it’s DNA. Besides, the other
erics all terminated during gestation. you’ve heard of Dolly the Sheep,
I imagine. Near three hundred copies of that animal died during pregnancy before the one we all know was actually born. Most all clones still
terminate prior to birth.”
Castillo looked at the doctor.
Terminate,
he mused.
These pricks
speak just like we did in the army.
But this wasn’t a damn sheep erdman
was talking about. It was a room
overflowing
with dead kids.
Black and
white. Stay with the black and white.
It was too much to take in the rest of
the room at once, all the bodies. Instead, he focused only on what was
directly in front of him: Bloody metallic pellets the size of a small flat
pill. “The transmitters,” he blurted. “Tell me about those.”
A dozen had been left on the pool table in the obvious shape of
a smiley face, the gaps between the pellets drawn in with blood. The
half-stripped body of the school’s psychotherapist remained sprawled
facedown beside. She, too, now covered with a bloody sheet.
“each subject is implanted at birth for their own safety.”
Castillo leaned closer for a better look. “Of course. To keep track of
them.”
“It appears they each cut them out. We assume they carved up eric
and Dylan looking for them. To discover where they were implanted.”
“Maybe,” Castillo said. “These guys seem to have found and cut out
their own transmitters easily enough. I think, perhaps, this knife work
on these two was mostly for, what,
fun
? either way, question for you:
how’d these kids even know to look for them? Did they know they’d
been implanted?”
erdman shrugged. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t think so.”
Castillo took in more of the room in more small, controlled segments, deliberately cataloguing the other evidence of recent history
sprinkled throughout. The security guard brained against the steps.
The torn and bloody nurses’ uniforms. Crimson scrawling of curse
words and giant cartoon dicks on the walls. half a dozen small bodies
swaddled in sheets; those students not invited, for whatever reason, to
come along on the group field trip.
According to erdman, the institute had started summer session
the week before, most of the students having returned home for two
months. Castillo tried not to think about what might have happened
had all fifty boys still been in residence.
The glossy arterial spray splattered in streaks across the huge flatscreen and Xbox. he swallowed.
More coral.
Dissecting what had happened here, the who and the how and the when, would take time. The
digital images from the security cameras had been deleted during the
night. Nothing remained to provide his logical next step.
What in God’s
name happened here?
his vision narrowed to a pinpoint. he felt it go, felt
the scramble to regain control.
Blackandwhite Blackandwhite
. he turned
to erdman. “Where’s Jacobson’s office?”
“right through here.”
he followed erdman toward the far left corner, kept his eyes locked
on the doctor’s back. They’d stopped at a door, where erdman waved
his hand across a security sensor on the wall. The sensor flushed blue,
showing a spectral replication of the hand and the blood vessels within.
“Vascular recognition.” erdman turned as the door bolts clicked open.
“Matches the unique vein pattern and heart rate in your palm to stored
scans. As unique as fingerprinting, but more difficult to fake because it
requires flowing blood.”
Castillo nodded, allowing himself the distraction of the technology. “No more fear of Play-Doh or cadaver fingers fooling the system.
Would it have picked up and refused an accelerated heart rate?”
“yes.” erdman seemed curious.
Control flowed back for Castillo, like it had never been lost. A relief to be talking about simple security, gearhead stuff. “So, then, who
opened it last night? Who had access?”
“The security log shows Dr. Jacobson opened this door at 10:13
p.m.”
Castillo and erdman left the obvious unspoken for now.
Why Jacobson? And, if a hostage, why hadn’t his heart rate been up?
“Only one security
guard?” Castillo asked instead. “I would think that when working for
the Department of Defense —”
“Massey has only the one. The labs, the DSTI building, are far
more secure.”
“Why’s that?”
“here you are . . .” erdman pretended not to hear the question and
motioned toward an already-open doorway. “Dr. Jacobson’s office.”
The room proved spacious and expensive. It had also been totally
destroyed. The chairs and dark sequoia coffee tables splintered into
pieces. The cabinets emptied. Built-in shelves split and bare, the books
in lopsided piles on the floor. Someone had clearly tried to start a fire
with some of the paperwork. Mirrors and framed pictures had been demolished into shards of glass, and several computers and monitors were
smashed, so that the whole room glittered beneath the harsh, unnatural lighting recessed above. The large desk was covered in blood that
pooled along the edges of the missing doctor’s laptop.
“This the teacher’s blood?” Castillo asked. “The one from the stairwell.”
“Mrs. Gallagher,” erdman confirmed. “right. She would have been
sixty next month.”
Castillo looked around, pointed to the swaddled cloth in the sink of
the understated wet bar tucked into the corner of the office. “And that’s
the . . .”
“yes.”
Castillo nodded, made to examine the room casually, while his mind
absorbed the information. Mrs. Gallagher’s entrails and uterus not ten
feet away.
This is worse than Towraghondi,
he thought suddenly.
God, I
didn’t think that was even possible.
To clear his mind, he tried focusing
on the only two things in the room not completely destroyed. The fish
tank, which, though tinged slightly pink with blood, was still intact with
a dozen saltwater beauties still swimming about.
And the framed needlepoint behind the desk. Old english lettering:

And our LORD set a mark upon Cain,
And he dwelt in the land of Nod,
on the east of Eden.

“he nicknamed it the ‘Cain gene’ early,” erdman said behind him.
“Cain XP11. for Cain and Abel.”
“Got that part. first killer ever. Cute. What’s the ‘XP11’?”
“A coding gene which influences the protein transcription and enzymatic activity of DArPP-32, dopamine, and cAMP-regulated phosphoprotein.”
“Don’t be a dick,” Castillo said.
So much for playing quiet and nice.
The doctor held up his hand in apology. “Dopamine influences
anger. In short, MAOA, or monoamine oxidase A, helps govern dopamine levels and is a keystone for high biological plausibility in antisocial spectrum disorders and psychopathy. each chromosome of human
DNA carries a million different strands with specific instructions on
what that person’s genetic makeup will be. One particular location,
a strand labeled XP11, controls the MAOA gene. When there’s an
anomaly on that strand, it characteristically indicates abnormal dopamine levels, potentially influencing a genetic predisposition to abnormal
violence. Does that help?”
“Better, thank you. And these clones are created so that your team
can better study and . . . develop this specific gene.” Castillo met erdman eye to eye. “To ultimately, I assume, harness violence.”
The geneticist weighed his options, clearly deciding how much
more Castillo was allowed to know. “yes,” he said. “And to cure it,
too. We’re not here only to construct weapons, Mr. Castillo. In the
last ten years, this pioneering research has tendered more than fifty
patents to medicate depression, bipolar disorder, Parkinson’s disease,
and PTSD.”
Castillo glanced at erdman to see if the PTSD reference was deliberate.
A slam? How much do they know about me?
The geneticist’s expression revealed no intended insult.
“Parkinson’s?” he followed that path instead.
“remedial manipulation of dopamine levels will eventually cure
the disease. We’re in clinical trials now on several innovative products
toward that selfsame purpose.”
“And you test on these kids?”
“No, no,” erdman shook his head. “Not at all. you’re not . . . If we
want to test a new protein or antibody, or whatever, we have mice and
monkeys and human volunteers for that. The boys are where we
harvest
the new proteins and antibodies. Perhaps it’s easier to think of these
boys as living drug factories, flesh-and-blood bioreactors. A single pint
of their blood contains thirty grams of genetically enhanced human
protein and is worth millions.”
Castillo’s face must have revealed his revulsion at the idea.
erdman sighed. “A traditional protein-development factory would
cost four hundred million and take five years to build. Subjects in the
Cain project cost one hundred million each and take a single year. each
boy is projected to produce six hundred million in profit in his lifetime
merely by donating a little blood a few times each year. I know what
you’re thinking. It was not the boys’ choice. The ethical implications
are, admittedly, complicated.”
“Complicated. Or inhumane.”
“A question we should debate later, perhaps. Today, there are lives
at risk, yes?”
“fair enough.” Castillo willed his voice to stay even. “Why’d you
even tell me? The clones, I mean. you guys might have just told me six
violent kids were missing.”
“Colonel Stanforth said you’d figure it out eventually anyway.”
Castillo nodded. It was a nice compliment from a trusted mentor,
but:
Could I ever have really imagined this?
“Why killers? Shouldn’t we be
cloning little einsteins. kobes? I don’t know, eddie Van halens?”
“Who’d pay?” erdman replied. “fifty years from now, the consumer
market might sustain such programs. But, at this stage, start-up costs
are in the hundreds of billions. Not many industries can undertake that.
Oil. Telecommunications, maybe. But, who’d we clone for
them
? The
military’s driven human technology for ten thousand years. And, if some
good comes from that, the medicines for instance, all the better.”
“Ok. Then, so why
well-known
serial killers? Wouldn’t it have been
far easier, safer, to grab your run-of-the-mill psychopath? The prisons
must be filled with them.”
“Tens of thousands. A million, maybe. But Jacobson, who directs the
program, always wanted the
most
violent. Not just gangbangers or family annihilators. he wanted consummate psychopaths. Serial killers. And
most of those men, the ones society eventually catches, become famous.”
“And no girls here. Safe to assume males are more prone to violence.”
“Safe?” erdman’s smile was genuine, a scientist discussing his favorite subject. “Genetically and statistically undeniable. It’s not even close.
The chromosomal allele for this mutation travels only on the X gene.
Think of this allele as the genetic antidote, a code in the DNA that can
‘fix’ the violent abnormality. however, this particular remedy travels
only on the X chromosome. remember enough high-school biology?
females are born from XX chromosomes. So they’ve got a likely chance
to have a cure for any aggressive mutation in the womb.”
“And men are Xy.”
“Very good, you remember. So, men have only a fifty-fifty shot of
carrying the natural cure to an overly aggressive XP11 strand. We’re
hereditarily predisposed to retaining the affliction.”
“half the world is hereditarily predisposed to violence?”
“We make up ninety-five percent of the prison system. Ninety-nine
percent of rapes. And ninety-nine percent of death row.” The smile
turned wry. “Guess you can say it’s in our blood.”
“Guess you can.” Castillo nodded. “What was in the fish tank?”
erdman blinked. “Sorry?”
“Speaking of blood, you can tell there’s some floating in the fish
tank. Someone may have only dipped their hands in, but looks like the
rocks were disturbed also. A child could tell something was tossed in
there. So, what was it?”
erdman pretended to check his notes, clearly already knowing
what’d been found. “It was a key,” he said. “We don’t know to what yet.
Nothing here or his other office across the compound at DSTI. We’re
still looking into it.”
Castillo thought about requesting the key to see what erdman
would do but figured it wasn’t worth adding to the evident animosity;
locks had stopped being an issue more than a decade ago. he asked,
“Was Jacobson’s lab office also destroyed?”
“No. Nor is there any record that he even went there last night.”
Castillo didn’t respond. he leaned on the edge of an upturned desk
and reached down to retrieve one of the splintered picture frames. The
photo inside showed two men shaking hands. The first man was a former vice president. The other, a tall, lean, gray-haired man who looked
like someone you might bump into on a private golf course.
Except
smarter,
Castillo decided.
Much smarter.
Someone who truly understood
the world’s secret levers and cogs. “This Jacobson?”
erdman nodded.
Castillo scanned the room. “The boys and he were in some kind of
group meeting, yes?”
“first and third Thursday of every month for this group. Our psychiatric head, Angela Corwin, and Dr. Jacobson always run the session
together. ran.” Down the hall, Dr. Corwin had been found nude and
murdered in her own office. “Though I didn’t think he’d make this
one.”
“Who?” Castillo had lost track of the present. “Who wouldn’t make
it, Doctor?”
“Jacobson. Been out for weeks,” erdman said. “Pneumonia or . . .
Just said he wasn’t feeling well. Was working from home. Came in only
yesterday. Last night.”
“Why would a geneticist take any part in such talks?”
“Dr. Jacobson’s core discipline is behavioral neuroscience. his
achievements in genetics evolved from that.”
“And who assigns particular students to specific group meetings?”
“Varies. Case counselors. Occasionally, Jacobson himself.”
“right.” Castillo squinted at erdman, finally voiced the obvious.
“So Jacobson let them out. This was all intentional, premeditated even.
you guys good with that? explains the trouble-free escape, the transmitters, the missing security recordings. Why
these
six kids. The key. his
own disappearance.” Castillo could tell from the scientist’s expression
that DSTI had already considered this possibility, and maybe right from
the very start. They just hadn’t wanted to concede it out loud yet.
“But why?” erdman asked. “Why would a man do something like
that?”
“Was he disgruntled?”
“how could he be? DSTI was practically his company. he could do
just about anything he wanted.”
“ ‘Just
about.’
What
couldn’t
he do? Was he working with a competitor? Influencing the stock market? Did he have money issues? Or
maybe he did it for the same reason you guys do a lot of things around
here.” he waved his hand, encompassing the acres of laboratories and
observation rooms surrounding them. “To see what would happen.”
The geneticist looked directly at him, brought the clipboard to his
chest. Cleared his throat. Castillo got the distinct impression that something of what he’d said had struck a little too close to home.
Interesting
.
“So,” erdman said. “What now?”
What now?
Castillo thought again of just leaving all this blood and moving on.
Going home. rather,
making
a home somewhere. A new life.
That had
been the damn plan, hadn’t it?
But the words came to him then, an ancient mantra he’d commandeered and employed for more than a year now:
“I will endure it, having
in my breast a heart that endures affliction. For ere this I have suffered much
and toiled much amid the waves and in war; let this also be added unto that.”
Can I reappropriate the line for this task also?
he’d been in the army for fifteen years and served with Delta force
most of those. he’d learned the art of finding people there.
Hunting
them.
“Now I’ll do my job,” Castillo said.