Cain's Blood (10 page)

“Good name,” Castillo said
. It isn’t really. They used it too soon. Should
have saved it for Jacobson and Erdman.
If making a kid stutter was monstrous, what to call the study that prescribed beatings and molestation?
“What happened to the kids?”
“The study ended directly before World War II and the results were
buried for fear of comparisons to the Nazis. The lead researcher went
on to become one of the nation’s most prominent speech pathologists.
Two of the subjects later committed suicide.”
Castillo shook his head. Tried to ignore the footnote and press on.
“What else on these six guys? What to look for?”
“Al seeks approval more than the others. he displays an inability
to take criticism, and he needs more recognition. he’ll need, want, an
audience and the support of the others. Ted’s probably the most aggressive. A classic predator. Will probably go where the girls are. Teen
nightclubs, I guess. Think a
Jersey Shore
scene . . .
Friday Night Lights
.
The mall? Wherever teen boys meet girls nowadays. Start there. Let’s
see. The other two . . .” She struggled, looking for their names and files.
“henry and  .  .  .” he caught himself. Didn’t want to the say the
name.
“Jeff,” she said for him. “Wow, let’s get to him in a second. henry
is more like David. Probably carries anxiety in social situations, odd
behavior, unconventional beliefs. But he also shows an elaborate and
exclusively internal fantasy world. I can see him lost in movie theaters,
playing video games, that kind of thing. Now Jeff.”
“What about him?”
“Probably the most dangerous in the group. Languid schizoid.
Depressive. But there’s rage hidden in these observations and numbers.
Comments indicate he’s likely homosexual. Maybe narrows down your
hunting ground some. Physiologically, there’s an imbalance in his blood
tests that’s . . . I don’t know. Like I said, some of these MAOA numbers
don’t even make sense. They’re off-the-spectrum high, so they can’t be
right. But I can tell you the guy should be locked away. Now. I could
have another doctor look at these profiles, maybe—”
“No. No one else. Best to treat as highly classified.”
“Loud and clear.” No mockery in the tone. Castillo wasn’t the only
quick study.
“There could be at least five of ’em together,” he said. “Ten maybe.
Could they get along? how long? Will they follow a pattern?”
“Sounds like a bad joke. five psycho killers and a priest walk into a
bar . . .”
“funny. how long? Could, would, these guys go on a killing frenzy
together?”
“Most serial killers work alone, but not all. There are plenty of
known cases of pairs. The current Smiley face killer in the Midwest
could be a group of people. your guys, however, are textbook psychopaths, with massive egos, god-sized narcissism, and a grandiose sense of
self.”
“Another thing, as you pointed out, they’re teenagers.” Castillo
thought of Jeffrey Jacobson waiting below. “how relevant?”
kristin sighed in thought. “They’ll need the pack more, probably.
Most serial killers commit their first murder in their late twenties, finally acting out on one of the specific elaborate violent fantasies they
concocted as a child. They’re the same most all of us have as children,
but where the rest of us grow out of such fantasies because we’ve developed socially and are afraid of how society will respond, these guys
don’t. even more than most psychopaths, these teen versions especially
don’t give a damn what other people think. how much did you give
a shit about consequences at seventeen? So their social development,
organically prone to limitations from their psychopathy, will suffer even
more thanks to their age. freud said a child would destroy the whole
world if he had the power.”
“Noted.”
“from these records, I’d say most of these patients are in an advanced stage of sociopathic behavior. Destroying the world is probably
high on their to-do list, along with withdrawing from reality and entering a fantasy world. Adult psychopaths pick one, maybe two, fantasies to
develop, to plan, to perfect over the years. Making a fantasy real takes
preparation, precision, and time. even Mr. Psychopath understands
such limitations when he’s twenty-eight. But if you’re a kid, like the
guys you need to find, the very moment they think of a fantasy, boom,
they think they can make it come true. They’re after instant gratification for their childish, godlike appetites.”
“And think they can get away with it.”
“Best part of any fantasy, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Castillo said. “Thanks. really. If I come across any
more—”
“I’ll be here,” she said, then added, “you sound like hell.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“honestly, Shawn. you don’t sound good.”
Castillo tensed. Was she offering to help him with the profiles as
an old friend with history or as his therapist? “Just been a tough couple
days,” he explained, hoping to prove he had no need for the latter. “hey,
kris, I—”
“Try and get some sleep,” she said, her voice too cold, too clinical
again. Another pause. “But if you need anything else . . .”
“Talk later. Thanks.”
he stood for a minute on the second floor of the motel, his hands
on the rusting blue banister. Memories swirling in his head of her, of the
two of them, in another reality and time. his breathing grew harder, his
hands clenching the railing.
Castillo swapped his thoughts back to the now. Away from her.
The Jacobson kid, the clone, hadn’t panned out. hadn’t provided a
solid lead yet. Couldn’t decipher his father’s notes. Castillo didn’t blame
him, but he thought maybe it was already time to cut the boy loose. Jeff
Jacobson was probably slowing him down anyway.
Is that really the reason you want to get rid of him?
he’d given the kid plenty of chances to escape, almost hoping he
would so the decision would be out of his hands. One phone call, and
DSTI would come and collect him. Some small token of success he
could offer up to Stanforth and the other science jerkoffs.
Whatever the reason,
Best get rid of him now,
Castillo thought again,
moving back toward the steps.
Back toward Mr. Psychopath.

r. Patrick Mohlenbrock cupped the fetus in his left hand,
holding it up to the light for a better look. Its tiny head
dangled awkwardly off the end of his forefinger as fluids
from the incubator dripped down the geneticist’s wrist.
One of its small hands had reflexively latched onto the tip of Mohlenbrock’s plump gloved thumb.

Six weeks, the chart read. So much had already started, but the option of speeding up gestation to adulthood or continuing to retard development for another couple of years was no longer his to make. DSTI

was cleaning house. Or, at least, temporarily sweeping certain programs
under the carpet. It would be easy enough to start again after the attention was off them.

Mohlenbrock didn’t mind. he’d never cared much for Project Cain
anyway. That had always been Jacobson’s hard-on. Mohlenbrock’s lay
elsewhere. Therapeutic cloning had already become the trillion-dollar
industry everyone expected it to be. While Nasdaq was a slowly sinking roller coaster, the biotechnology indexes continued to garner record gains every year. It was time. IVf, transgenic foods, commercial
eugenics, pharmaceuticals. Americans were already paying five hundred
bucks a year to store the DNA of their pets and loved ones. The dotcom orgy would prove pennies compared to what was coming, and he
was sure as hell not going to miss it.

We must never approach the temple of science with the soul of a money
changer.
he could still hear Jacobson’s reproof.
Fuck Jacobson.
Jacobson
was the fuckwad who’d gotten them into this jam anyway. his fascination with the XP11 gene, his fanatical deals for more funding with the
powers that be.
And where the hell is he now?
Dead? Maybe murdered by
the special children he’d bred, or, as it was rumored, running around
the country on some unknown crusade to free clones DSTI hadn’t even
known about.
Fanfuckingtastic
.

And, in a few hours—unless erdman could talk Stanforth out of
it—even worse than that. Much worse.
Mohlenbrock almost hoped Jacobson wasn’t dead yet. Because he
knew well what would soon be sent to look for him. Adequate paybacks, on balance, when DSTI and everyone associated with it would
lose everything if things didn’t get cleaned up quietly. A lot of people,
people like him, would probably go to jail, too. They’d already chemically lobotomized half a dozen kids. A frat-house cocktail of various
antipsychotics, neuroleptics, and antianxiety inhibitors that included an
intentional overdose of Thorazine. While they hadn’t removed any part
of their brains, they hadn’t really needed to. The twenty-first-century’s
liquid lobotomies worked as well.
“This the last of it?”
The geneticist turned to the voice. “yeah,” he said. “Of these.”
Dr. erdman nodded from the doorway and surveyed the room.
forty cylindrical incubators, which ran from the floor to the ceiling,
were lined in five long rows. Almost half had already been removed, and
only their wide bases remained. Three more DSTI workers had begun
dismantling those, too. A fourth employee hosed down one of the
emptied cylinders. Its surface reflected a light blue glow across the lab’s
floor. There were two large steel bins on wheels lined with black plastic
in the center of the room.
The rest of the pods were still occupied. The clones inside ranged
from five weeks gestation to four years, each floating serenely in the
piss-colored liquid inside. In another room were two more that had
been physically matured to twenty years in less than sixteen months. A
different project altogether, really. Stanforth wanted to keep those, for
now.
“So,” Mohlenbrock asked fairly cheerfully, considering the late hour
and the day they’d had. “Any word yet on the whereabouts of our little
monsters? how’s your boy Stanforth going to—”
“focus on what’s here,” erdman said. “They have the situation well
covered on the outside. Admit it, you’ll be glad when Jacobson’s gone.”
“Jacobson was always a threat,” Mohlenbrock agreed.
“Then what’s the issue?”
“you really think they, we, can control that . . . Control it?”
erdman shook his head disapprovingly at the word choice, but
Mohlenbrock didn’t care. DSTI could come up with all the cutesy
names they wanted to. Didn’t change the truth. Pakistan and Afghanistan and all those other “stans” was one thing. This was the united
States they were talking about. It was abject lunacy. erdman, however,
wasn’t looking for an argument. “That’s the least of my worries,” he
said.
“Oh?”
“Just get this cleaned up.” erdman stepped from the room. “Stanforth should be here in an hour.”
Mohlenbrock watched him go, then looked back down at the experiment growing cold in his hand.
Its eyes were closed, thank God.
It was
just six weeks old, yet already seven inches long and almost nine ounces.
Already a hundred billion neurons firing away. It had vocal cords, the
genitals of a man. A thyroid gland already pumped male hormones into
its premature brain: Testosterone artificially laced with genetic rage and
cruelty.
“Stanforth should be here in an hour.” And we want him to see we’ve all
been good little soldiers, don’t we?
It gasped suddenly. Barely a tiny sucking sound, then another. New
lungs fighting for their first taste of air. he felt the tiny shape shift
against his wet palm.
What thoughts are even now forming in its primal brain? What terrible
thoughts?

Mohlenbrock had forgotten already if it was another clone of
Bundy or DeSalvo.
he reminded himself that it no longer mattered.
he reached for one of the steel bins.

An hour later, in another room down the same hall, three men argued
about what to do next. The Soldier, Stanforth, was winning the argument. The Scientist held firm. The Suit, DSTI’s CeO, mostly kept
quiet.

“We’ve used them successfully before,” Stanforth said.
“With consequences,” reminded Dr. erdman.
“There are consequences in everything, gentlemen. Surely things

have advanced in a year.”
“for better or worse?”
Stanforth shrugged. “It’s
your
project. enlighten me.”
“Well,” the company CeO managed, shooting a glance to erdman.

Stanforth openly snickered at the man’s feebleness. he also turned
to erdman, whom he was actually starting to like. The guy wasn’t another pussy brainbox or goof like Jacobson had been. he seemed to
have a broader worldview, which was important at the moment.

“No shit.” The colonel fingered the tank’s acrylic panel. “That’s why
we made them.”
“Don’t you  .  .  . ,” the CeO, rolich, began, hesitated, then began
again. “Don’t you trust your man—Castillo, is it?—to do the job? you’re
the one who told us to be patient. To let him do his job.”
Stanforth turned sharply. “his job, you dumb cunt, was to find
six boys.
Not
twenty. Sure, he’ll probably uncover a couple before it’s
over—guy knows how to do
his
fucking job—but Jacobson’s notes suggest there are clones spread all over God’s country. Clones you didn’t
warn me about. Clones, I notice, you don’t deny are missing. And that
bullshit is on you two. Not us. you knew Jacobson was bat-shit crazy,
and you didn’t make him vanish. Worse, you looked the other way when
he fucking raised one himself. And if you didn’t know, well, I suppose
that’s even fucking worse. We were prepared to wipe up your shit once
or twice. Not twenty fucking times.”
“Does Castillo really think he’ll find the others?” erdman asked.
“he called an hour ago. he’s working on it. I trust him. More than I
can say about you two fucks. So we’re clear, if I find out you’ve ever lied
to me again, we’ll kill both of you.”
“Can we get more men?” erdman asked, sidestepping the warning.
“you’re already using half a dozen of my best. Most are on cleanup,
which is the most critical charge at the moment. And anyone better who
I’d trust is deployed abroad and dug deep. Besides, any more men, and
this thing could blow wide open. Small teams keep things quiet. And we
know
this
soldier will keep his mouth shut.”
“Can it keep its jaws shut?” erdman asked.
“Indulge me, gentlemen.” The colonel looked at erdman. “But we
may start with only the one. I’ll assume it’s almost ready to go.” he left
the room quickly, cutting off any possible protestation.
“yes, sir,” Dr. erdman called after him.
Behind him, the body in the tank shifted.

Dozens of shots. Tailored fluids and DNA, sophisticated antiangiogenesis enzymes and chemo-preventive agents. Therapeutic exercise, joint mobilization, dry needling, cryotherapy, iontophoresis. Maps.
Photos. Blood samples to taste and smell.