Cain's Blood (3 page)

his boy was every boy.
The standard model. The kind you’d purchase at
Walmart if they had a “Boy Aisle.” T-shirt, long gym
shorts. Straight bangs falling over a rounded face. Big
brown eyes. The fixed, playful grin of a pirate. Twelve years old, legs too
long, deep summer tan, fidgeting in his chair. earbuds draped around
his neck for later.
he’d raped his first victim with a metal bar wrenched from the bed
frame, then carefully positioned the body and bar as lewdly as possible
for her family to find. Another woman, he’d bitten off both nipples before strangling her with a pair of stockings that’d been pulled so tightly
around her neck, they’d cut down to the bone.
he’d done these things. This boy.
Theodore.
Done more, actually, according to his summary file.
Or his DNA had.
Despite his best efforts, Castillo had not yet established any
well-defined distinction between the two. he wasn’t so sure the two
scientists standing behind him had either.
The two men looked nothing like Castillo’s idea of scientists. No
lab coats, or pens, or beakers. These guys wore khakis and matching
light purple dress shirts with the DSTI logo, matching holsters with
Tasers at their hips.
Castillo assumed he did not look exactly like what they’d expected
either. he wore jeans and a faded gray T-shirt. Probably needed a haircut. he’d left his guns in the car.
They stood together in Observation room #4 of The Massey
Institute, a small residential treatment facility in radnor, Pennsylvania. According to the institute’s website, Massey was an “Adolescent
treatment center where teen boys can develop healthy behaviors,
improve their self-esteem and learn to positively express their emotions.” Mental health, anger management, eating disorders, drug and
alcohol rehab, etc. Treatments included a combination of group and
individual therapy, experiential therapy, and cutting-edge medication.
fifty-student maximum with an 8 to 1 teacher/student ratio and a staff
of one hundred additional health professionals caring for the students.
All boys.
Massey was owned and operated by the Dynamic Solutions Technology Institute, which had its own facility on the other side of the
wooded property. According to
its
website, DSTI was a private biotechnology company with two hundred employees that “specialized
in the development of therapeutic, pharmaceutical, and cell-based
therapies.”
One of the room’s walls was a one-way mirror allowing them to secretly watch the boys next door.
“Phase One, where Applications maintains the bulk of its research,
is restricted therapeutic cloning,” Dr. erdman, the division head, the
one with square silver glasses and short white hair, continued. “What
most people might call ‘stem-cell’ research. Induced pluripotent stem
cells, primarily. Nerve, skin, and bone cells. Just microscopic building
blocks.” his voice remained distant and flat, and Castillo wondered
if the geneticist might still be in shock. Based on what he’d been told
about last night—the murders committed by kids like these—it would
have been understandable. “These subjects were part of Phase Three.”
Castillo looked back to the mirror. Breathed deeply, thinking. Sitting beside the first kid was another boy the lab had tagged as Jerry.
Jerry was far beyond a “microscopic building block.”
his file read that he was fifteen years old. read that his former self
enjoyed intercourse with dead girls and fastening their corpses to copper wires for electrical shock experiments, which he meticulously documented and photographed. kept breasts as souvenir paperweights. The
file also noted that his former self, the “Original,” had been executed
more than ten years ago.
The Original . . .
Another teenager, named Dean, watched eSPN from the couch.
Twenty-seven bodies had been uncovered on “his” property way back in
1973. After authorities found the torture room.
Castillo said, “I assumed we were at least ten, maybe twenty years
from . . . from this.”
“Most people do.” Dr. erdman pulled off his glasses to wipe them
with the bottom of his shirt. “for those in Washington who know better, the biotech lobby has become rather substantial in the last fifteen
years. We’re already a multitrillion-dollar industry, and this work is a
natural extension of that research.”
The last kid, labeled Andrei: The original form of his DNA had
committed fifty-three murders in the ukraine, according to his sheet.
The russian press had called him “The rostov ripper.”
Hell of a name,
Castillo thought. This guy’s preferred method was to first cut away his
female victims’ eyes and then casually eat their uteri after his victims
couldn’t “see him” anymore.
Fifty-three
murders. Castillo had served
fifteen years, mostly in the field, and still he struggled with that number.
The boy was apparently a recent addition to the group. he’d recently
turned ten years old.
“Where do you get the DNA?” Castillo asked.
The second doctor, Mohlenbrock, a stout man built like a Tolkien
dwarf, actually chuckled. “Where don’t you?” he bragged. “Archived
evidence. Autopsy samples. We had John Wayne Gacy’s brain here on
loan for months and grabbed millions of good cells from that. We can
use anything from hair on old brushes to flaked-off skin cells on clothes
bought from family members. hell, half these guys are still alive, and
they just sign the stuff right over.”
Castillo studied the first boy again.
_TheODOre/7
the file and photo read.
A
clone
. The genetic carbon copy of another human being.
eyes. Skin. Brain. Bones. Blood.
every damn cell. Copy, paste.
And not just any human being but one developed in a lab across this
very property toward the scientific aim of isolating, understanding, and
harnessing violent human behavior— this boy was the genetic offspring
of an infamous serial killer. A killer whose name even Castillo recognized, although he couldn’t remember if it was the good-looking guy
out west or the chubby one who dressed like a clown.
Ted Bundy.
This kid’s DNA had history. This DNA had celebrity status. This
DNA had killed.
Considering the boy’s face, Castillo decided Bundy was probably
the good-looking guy. Considering the file, he was definitely a monster.
Castillo looked for something in the kid’s eyes, anything, that revealed
the kind of person who’d slowly and rhythmically beat a woman to
death with a piece of plywood while masturbating with his free hand.
he saw nothing but a normal twelve-year-old boy and the partial ghost
of his own reflection in the tinted glass.
“how do you keep them here?” he asked.
“Massey is a regarded, and rather exclusive, residential treatment
facility. Many of the students were born the customary way and enrolled
genuinely at considerable costs to their parents. The cloned boys, however  .  .  . Their adoptive parents, consociates of DSTI, naturally, have
enrolled their sons here.”
Castillo rescanned the file.

“What’s SCNT, Doctor?
“Somatic cell nuclear transfer. IMP is embryo implant. fh is the
female host. Look  .  .  .” The doctor shuffled his feet behind Castillo.
“Perhaps this was a mistake. We thought it might be easier for you to
understand the rest if —”

“No,” Castillo stopped him. “This is helpful, thank you.” he turned
from the one-way mirror and re-sorted the papers in his folder. “And
the six boys who escaped . . .” he reread the parent gene names, having
only half-recognized two of them.

he stopped, frowned. “I thought the kid in there was Ted Bundy.”
The doctor looked uneasy. “Theodore
Seven
.”
Castillo allowed himself an extra moment to process the implication before speaking. “exactly how many ‘Theodores’ are there, Doctor?”

“With respect, we’re focused on finding the six boys who’ve escaped.” Dr. erdman reset his glasses. “We were assured you are quite
qualified for this sort of thing.”

Castillo stared back, holding up the briefing they’d pulled together
for him. Now, perhaps, there was something in his look that exposed his
own particular skill set. Because erdman literally took a step backward.
“The six,” said Castillo. “you’ll want to cover their homes. They’ll likely
make contact.”

“We have men watching each home already,” Dr. erdman replied
quickly, plainly relieved Castillo had spoken first.
“Good.” Castillo nodded. “I’ll need the complete files for each boy
who escaped. everything you have. Grades? known friends? Coaches?
Jobs? hobbies? Whatever you know about these kids. The trail will
grow cold in a hurry.”
“Absolutely.” The scientist shot a quick look to Mohlenbrock.
“Being gathered for you even as we speak. Psychiatric and medical reports, the—”
“And the three hostages,” Castillo interrupted. “Personnel files
on Dr. Jacobson and the two nurses. Santos and . . .”—he checked his
notes—“kelso. Any email and phone records you have.”
erdman frowned. “Is that really necessary? They’re hostages. Or
already dead. Surely every minute we wait–-”
“Measure twice, cut once, Doctor.”
“What’s that?”
“Measure twice, cut once. Something my dad often said.”
“Was he also a CIA assassin?”
Castillo looked up and smiled.
Jesus, these assholes are cocky,
he
thought.
With the accountability in this massive fuckup, you’d think they’d
want to keep their mouths shut and heads down until the Big Boys get everything back in FDA-approved order. CIA? The guy doesn’t even understand
who it is we’re working for.
“No,” he said. “he drove trucks for uPS. And,
I’m troubled with your assumptions regarding my role.”
The issue had troubled him ever since he’d first been called. he’d
commanded half a dozen Joint Special Operations Command arrest/
capture missions over the last seven years, but his real specialty had
always been leading JSOC
kill
/capture teams. enemy bomb makers,
financiers, high-level leaders. While Colonel Stanforth had confirmed
that this assignment was the former type of mission, Castillo also knew
well that missions had a funny way of shifting directives midstride.
“Let’s make this perfectly clear,” he said evenly. “I’m here to help
locate these six kids. If I can find them, I will apprehend. That’s it. Only
reason I was brought in. If I suspect for one minute that these kids, or
anyone else for that matter, have been targeted for elimination to suppress what happened here, I will personally drag your asses to jail. understood?”
“fully,” erdman replied.
Castillo didn’t give him a chance to extend further apologies, explanations, or, maybe, out-and-out lies. “regardless, the point is, I can run
outta here right now to track down six teenaged boys in a world that’s
got some fifty-seven million square miles to hide in. Or, I can do a little
homework and maybe start narrowing the game’s boundaries down
a bit. Why are Dr. Jacobson and the two nurses not among the dead,
I wonder? Maybe they were kept alive to help provide cars, money.
Maybe they’re still alive because they’re also part of this. Were any
of them disgruntled? Selling trade secrets to a competitor or another
country? had any of them maybe gotten in a romantic situation with
one of these six students? Anything you give me could answer these
questions and help.” Castillo’s thoughts had drifted again to uzbekistan
and the hills of northern Pakistan, other places he’d had to hunt down
men. he shook it off. “you’re a man of science,” he said, pointing the
folder at erdman. “Which course of action do you think affords our
highest probability for success?”
“fair enough,” erdman nodded. “I meant no disrespect.”
“And none taken. May I examine the victims now?”
Another nod, brief and perfunctory. “follow me.”
Castillo cast a final look into the other room. “unbelievable,” he
murmured. “how did it ever get to this?”
erdman smiled for the first time since they’d met. “It started with
peas,” he said.

The room’s walls were painted a striking light blue
color that immediately reminded Castillo of the Aral
Sea, the fresh dark splatters of blood even more conspicuous than they would have normally been. he tried to pretend they