Cain's Blood (5 page)

lbert could not sleep again.
his head filled with too many thoughts. each idea,
memory, and image leading to another as he stared up at
the shadow-lined ceiling.

Final exam in Spanish. No clue, gonna fail. Gym first bell. Why bother get

ting dressed? Never understand a word the asshole teacher says anyway ’cause
the fucking guy’s from Honduras or somewhere. Don’t ever go nowhere. Never
even been on a plane. So fucking lame. Retarded. Bullshit class anyway. Wetbacks should just go home. Learn English like everybody else. Adrienne Haller
and her fanastico tits. Two rows back. About always see her big giant nipples.
Love to watch her. Her mouth. Love to watch her mouth. “¿De dónde venéis?”
the mouth says. “¿De dónde venéis?” Wanna see that new movie, the one with
that one guy. Sometimes, she runs the pen along her lip. You know what she’s
really thinking about. Probably has stinky breath. Ashtray-breath like my bitch
mother. Haller’s a big freezer, probably. Cock tease. Heard Mike Gaffney was
looking for me after school. Wants to kick my ass or some shit. Another total
cockwad. Need a fucking car. Go somewhere. New York. Or Vegas. Or Honduras. Anywhere. Take Mrs. Nolan somewhere and check out her nips awhile.

he’d already jacked off three times. Trying to relax. To get tired.
he just wanted to sleep. No more thoughts. he had to keep busy or
they came back again. every night. Sick of youPorn and redTube and
the shitty pictures in his shoplifted
Hustler
magazines. The one girl
had dark hair on her arms.
Like an animal.
ripped those pages out and
flushed ’em down the toilet with his jizz all over them.
Sick. Freak. Me.

Mrs. Nolan.
right across the street. No more than a hundred feet
away. he turned onto his side and looked out the window toward her.
her bedroom.
She probably jacks off sometimes too. She’s, like, forty but even
old people do that stuff. MILFs do, for sure. Lies in bed and jams away with
a giant purple thingee. Probably her own fingers too. Probably sick of that gay
husband. Chris. Faggot. Bet she’d love—

Noise from the living room. Something breaking. his drunk
mother stumbling over the end table again. No doubt pouring herself
a last round of Jack and Diet Coke before bed. If he was lucky, she’d go
straight to sleep. Some nights she’d come in and start laying into him.
retarded shit about his grades or friends or keeping his music too loud
or other stupid shit. Like she was starting shit to start shit
. Drunk bitch.

he would talk to Jacobson. he always had pills or something to
make the worst thoughts go away. for a while.
Mrs. Nolan walks around in her black thong underwear. Seen it. Just
last week. When she bent over to pick up the newspaper. Sure like to get my
hands on dat ass. Stupid virgin. I should have done that fat bitch with Kevin
when she was all fucked up, passed out. Whatnot. I could kill Mike Gaffney.
Just shoot him in the fucking head with the gun in Mom’s closet. Or Mr.
Faggot Nolan. Whatever. Or me. BAM! No masa Española. She thinks I’m
a loser anyway. Freak. Who’d fucking care anyway? She would. Mrs. Nolan.
he reached into his shorts. fourth time would ache a little, but it was
worth it. Imagined her beneath him with her arms over her head, tied to
something maybe. A bedpost, he guessed. Those rail things. Something.
Keeps saying NO but that’s because she doesn’t want to take the blame when
they get caught. Squirming beneath him. Can’t make out her face. Adrienne.
Mrs. Nolan. Mommy.
Shit!
Someone standing outside his room. heard the creak. If his mom
caught him again . . . he remembered that ordeal well enough. She’d
vanished for a while and then come back to tease him about it for hours.
Would not drop it. Like it was her fucking job or something. he quickly
pulled his hand away. “What?” he snapped at the dark. Tried to sound
tough with his heart thumping halfway out his chest. Wiped off the spit
from his hand on the sheet.
The door opened a crack, and a shadow stepped into the den television’s ghostly light. he thought it might be russ, his mom’s latest boyfriend.
No.
This guy was too tall. Some new guy who’d come by to fuck
the bitch. Another asshole who’d probably end up laying into him some
day for looking at ’im wrong.
“What?” he asked, sitting up. “What the fuck—”
The shadow man now stepped fully into his room.
But it didn’t make sense. Not at all.
Why is he here?
“Dr. Jacobson?”
“hello, Albert. I’m sorry if I alarmed you.”
Just like that. As if Albert had somehow willed the man into the
bedroom with his earlier thoughts. Like some kinda genie lamp. The
boy stood from his bed. “I don’t–”
“Nothing to fear, son,” the man said, his face still half lost in the
room’s shadows. “Not anymore. Sit. everything’s going to be fine now.”
Several darker shapes in the living room behind the doctor, but Albert couldn’t make them out. “Where’s . . . where’s my mom?”
“first we need to talk,” the doctor said.
“Why? Why are you here?” Albert found he’d sat back down as
told, but he’d pulled the blanket close to his chest as some childish
protection. “We’re not supposed to, ummm, meet again for, like, two
weeks.” he squinted as the doctor loomed. “What’s that?”
“This, Albert, is a folder with all the information we have about who
you are.” Dr. Jacobson had taken a seat at the end of Albert’s bed. Casually crossed one leg. “Who you
really
are.”
“What do . . . you mean, like, those tests and stuff?”
“We’re done with all that. This concerns where you come from.”
he’d placed the thick folder on the bed. “your ‘family tree,’ you might
say. Go ahead. have a look.”
“This about my dad?”
“It’s about you,” the doctor corrected. “Only you.”
The boy reached out carefully and took the folder.

The black-and-white photo so very familiar. As if he’d seen it before, when he knew that he had not.
Dr. Jacobson smiled beside him, and then spoke briefly to Albert
about things like cloning and DNA and “Self.” Before Albert could even
imagine a response or question, Jacobson nodded back to the folder as
if it alone now held all remaining truths. So Albert examined it again.
There were photocopied newspaper headlines. “Boston Strangler
escapes from State Mental Ward” and “Boston Strangler Murdered at
Walpole Prison.” There were labeled pictures of old ladies: Anna Slesers
(55), Mary Mullen (85), Nina Nichols (68), helen Blake (65), Ida Irga
(75). And also faded shots of their dead bodies. Then, the younger ones.
Sophie Clark (20), Patricia Bissette (23), Beverly Samans, (23), Joann
Graff (23), Mary Sullivan (19). Albert thought,
The Sullivan girl has gay
hair but is still kind of hot. Blonde. Pretty eyes. Looks a little like Mrs. Nolan.
he kept reading. About his adoption. And DeSalvo. Didn’t understand it all. The DNA stuff. But yet it still somehow explained everything. his “mother.” his thoughts. his whole damn stupid life. how
much time passed he did not know. An hour? Ten minutes? he ignored
the strange noises from the other room, ignored Dr. Jacobson, who sat
quietly watching him throughout. finally, he looked back up.
“Albert DeSalvo.” he tried the name on his lips. Not McCarty, his
adoptive name. The loser name all those assholes at school knew. But
DeSalvo. his real name. “The ‘Boston Strangler,’” he whispered into
the darkness.
My real name
. The words like magic. he’d never felt . . .
better
?
“you . . . you made me?” Albert said.
“No,” Jacobson replied from the shadows. “Like one of the first
gods, you made yourself.”
Albert looked at the doctor and noticed for the first time that there
was blood on the man’s pants. It did not change his single overwhelming emotion:
PEACE.
“Thanks,” Albert said.
Dr. Jacobson patted the boy’s knee and stood. “every person should
know who they truly are,” he said. he proceeded to the bedroom door,
and Albert trailed slowly after.
Albert had no idea where his mother was, his fake mother, but there
were several other figures shuffling into the hall and out the front door.
Boys. he wondered if they were others.
Others like me?
The doctor retreated behind them.
“What should I do now?” Albert called after them.
Dr. Jacobson did not pause or answer. he didn’t need to.
As the two cars backed away, Albert understood that his front door
had been left wide open. Into the night. Where Mrs. Nolan was probably still wide awake, too.
And waiting for him.

acobson’s house sat alone atop a short wooded hill in a pricier section of haddonfield, New Jersey. Old ivy, new construction. The
country club no more than a mile away. earlier, in the dark and
from a distance, Castillo had carefully walked its perimeter. even

from afar, he could plainly tell someone else had already broken into the
house before he’d arrived. A splintered back window, the board used to
pry it open still laying beneath. Castillo picked the lock of the back door.

The inside of the small estate remained dark, and Castillo took
his time inspecting it. A typical house. Sparse. Couple of empty guest
rooms. he’d been told the geneticist was not married. he found emptied file cabinets, not a laptop in sight. Didn’t seem like it was the six
missing kids or Jacobson who’d done it. The place wasn’t trashed, only
picked over. DSTI, or someone else working for the Department of
Defense, or maybe—still not out of the question yet—a foreign player,
trying to sweep this mess under the carpet.

Probably DSTI, Castillo decided. he’d spotted a car at the end of
the street. One guy, maybe two, watched the house. If they’d been professionals, like he was, he’d never have spotted them. And the break-in
was amateur. he assumed they’d gone with the busted window to feign
a routine burglary, and it would have been easy enough to grab a couple
TVs, or Jacobson’s gold cuff links to bolster that charade. But they
hadn’t. he smiled at the half-assed attempt at a plausible cover-up, not
surprised that they’d visited the house. Always trickier, however, to get
the job done right while being misled by the very people you’d been
brought in to help. An occupational hazard he was all too familiar with.

Walking the house’s dark, silent halls, he found himself truly alone
for the first time since Colonel Stanforth had called, since he’d genuinely understood what the mission was about. It was not a good feeling.
Being alone meant too much time to think about what he’d seen, to
question the ethical and legal implications of what was being done to
those boys in the name of defense and profits. he wasn’t naïve, by any
means. he understood the way the world worked—had certainly been
involved in covert activities that had been ethically and legally debatable. But this . . .

he trailed his hand along the wood-paneled wall, studied the corner
into the next room. found what he was looking for.
Got you!
he traced
his finger down the left frame of the concealed door and found the
small keyhole.
And just behind that door?

Castillo again felt the overriding urge to just get out, drive straight
to the airport and back to Albuquerque.
Fuck it.
he’d found other ways
to make money, after all. Other ways to get through another day without
the army. But then Stanforth had called. And despite all he’d worked on,
the sessions and meditations, the “life-after-war” he’d prepared for, it’d
felt damn good to get that call.
OK, so I should have said no.
The moment
Stanforth had mentioned the kids, he should have hung up. Smashed the
phone into a hundred pieces. But he hadn’t. One call and he’d instantly
felt part of things again, the real deal, not just running routine security
for some regional insurance company,
pretending
to be a soldier. Not the
guy forced into retirement at thirty-five with an honorable “medical”
discharge. Not the guy everyone was talking about behind his back.

Damaged goods. Fucking NUT JOB.
But
THIS,
he thought, leaving the mysterious hidden door and
whatever-lay-behind-it as he stepped into the next room,
THIS is who I
am. What I do.

he’d enlisted at eighteen. And from the half million soldiers in
the u.S. Army, he’d become one of only two thousand selected to join
the elite rangers. They’d taught him counterterrorism, counterintelligence, desert warfare operations, and demolitions. from those two
thousand rangers, forty had been selected to join Delta force. There,
he’d captured men named al-Jazari, Binalshibh, and Sheikh Mohammed
in places like yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Pakistan. he had twenty-three
confirmed kills. he’d earned a degree in international economic history.
Awarded three Purple hearts, four Bronze Stars for valor, two Silver,
and a Distinguished Service Cross.

God damn it.
Was this a guy who should be sweeping corporate
office buildings for competitors’ bugs or riding shotgun in oil fat cat
limousines as needless security? In answer, his mind kicked up an image
of the dog-eared paperback stuck in his gear, and one of a hundred underlined quotes:
Look you now, how ready mortals are to blame the gods. It
is from us, they say, that evils come, but they even of themselves, through their
own blind folly have sorrows beyond that which is ordained.

Then, naturally, he thought of her. And, not for the first time today,
he thought of calling.
In the dark house, alone, Castillo called his boss instead.
Anything waited behind that damn door. Best to check in before he
discovered any more than he was supposed to.
Colonel Stanforth had also officially gone civilian. he was a “Mr.
”
Stanforth now, just like Castillo, but he still worked for the DOD and
its Special Activities Division as a “consultant.” Nothing, of course, anyone could ever really confirm for the newspapers, or Congress, or in a
court of law.
“Our new friends aren’t playing nice, sir,” Castillo told him. The
“sir” had come out as easily as a breath. To not say it would have been as
absurd as if his own mother was no longer to be called “Mom.”
“
Old
friends,” Stanforth corrected on the other end, a clear reminder to Castillo that the Defense Department’s relationship with
DSTI was protracted and still valued. “how’s it lookin’, kiddo?”
“fine, sir. On site at Jacobson’s home. A lot has already been removed,
however.” Castillo peered out the window toward the surveillance crew.
“Our friends, old or new, didn’t advise they were coming out here.”
“They’re panicked. Not surprising, though. This isn’t exactly routine for them. for any of us.”
“yes, sir.”
“I’ll get you a complete inventory of everything they took,” Stanforth
said. “And I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen twice.” The first sign of irritation skiffed his words. Despite his “not-surprising” patter, Stanforth
plainly felt screwed with. That wasn’t good for the eggheads at DSTI.
“Copy. request more men on this. Need a full team.”
“No can do. We’ve already got men checking out the various home
locations,” Stanforth said. “That’ll save you some footwork. If they find
anything, I’ll pass it on. The rest, the tough part, needs to be fast and
quiet, kiddo. That’s you. fox News goes apeshit when some drunk teenager gets lost in Aruba. What do you think they’d do with this?”
And if something goes wrong . . . tough shit, “kiddo.” You’re gone and this
never happened.
Castillo considered the inherent threat in every special
ops mission: even in formal missions, if he’d gotten caught or failed in
a way that would have brought unwanted attention back home, Command could and would have denied all knowledge of his actions. And
this wasn’t even special ops anymore. uncle Sam’d run him out more
than a year ago. This was freelance. Moonlighting. Gun-for-hire. In the
end, they could erase Castillo as likely—and easily—as they’d write him
the check for his “consulting fees.”
But, Castillo reigned in his paranoia some:
Is it really fair to doubt
Stanforth?
It was Colonel Stanforth, and Stanforth alone, who’d come back for
him in Iran. Gotten him out of that “jam” when most others would have
scrubbed the whole thing with a tidy M.I.A. and simply left him to suffer more torture and to eventually, if blessed, die. It was Stanforth who’d
called him back twenty-four hours ago. And it was Stanforth trusting him
now. Castillo knew he owed the man a hell of a lot more faith than what
he was giving him. Only problem was that Stanforth also knew it.
“There was a key,” Castillo said. “Jacobson left it at DSTI as some
kind of clue. Guy
wants
to get caught. Wants us to find something.”
“They know what it goes to yet?”
“A hidden storeroom,” Castillo said. “I’m standing outside it now.”
Stanforth laughed. “That’s why I called you.”
“What will they do with these kids once I find them? With Jacobson?”
“Just find them,” Stanforth replied. “DSTI has the kind of specialists and facilities to treat such minds. They’ll be provided for.”
“Not eliminated.”
“you have my word.”
Castillo knew he should let it drop.
Just follow your orders . . .
yet he
found himself speaking again: “Then what?” he pressed. “They vanish
forever? Spend the rest of their lives locked and medicated in some institution?”
What in God’s name are you doing?
There was silence on the other end for too long. enough to let Castillo know he’d overstepped. he was forced to wait while Stanforth decided whether or not to discharge him again on the spot. “What would
the courts do with them?” the colonel finally said. “They’ve murdered a
dozen people. Look, Castillo, are you up to this job or not?”
Am I?
“yes, sir. Sorry.”
“unnecessary. I knew this would be a tough first assignment back.
especially with the kids. But you’re the best I got for this, and that’s a
goddamned fact. I wouldn’t have called you otherwise.”
Castillo quickly processed his options, wrestling with each of Stanforth’s words. “first assignment back” meant there’d be others.
Best we
got.
If he could only shut his fucking mouth and do his job like he’d
done for nearly twenty years, it really was a path back. Stanforth had all
the necessary connections and clout to get him into one of the big private military companies. Like a lot of the other guys who’d come home,
Castillo could become a private contractor. Mercenary. There were a
hundred PMCs to choose from. Put all his talents to use again.
But then there was the “especially with the kids” comment. Proof
that Stanforth knew about the dreams, about Towraghondi. About the
boy. Of course, they’d have reports, records.
How much did she tell them?
Let it go . . .
“Permission to access the room?” Castillo asked.
“Granted. And, Captain . . .” Not “kiddo” or his squad nickname,
Catillo noticed, but something much more official. And, since the rank
was no longer accurate, something much more personal. “I’m augmenting your clearance on this one. Whole new ballpark.”
“understood.”
“I hope so. ’Cause it gets ugly in a hurry.”
“how ugly?”
“hell’s still uglier.”
“yes, sir.”
“But there ain’t no going back. Not ever.”
That I know,
Castillo thought. “Copy.”
“keep me informed, Castillo. keep smart.”
“Will do.” Castillo ended the call. Put the phone away and withdrew
the snapgun again to pick open the hidden door. It didn’t take long.
Then he put the electric pick away and, for the first time in months,
drew his pistol.
The small room proved empty of life, and Castillo promptly put his
pistol away. The space, as he’d imagined, was the size of a walk-in closet.
Perhaps a panic room originally. It held two file cabinets overstuffed
with printouts and CDs and flash drives and vials of blood. Dozens of
notebooks, in various shapes and sizes, filled with handwritten notes.
Jacobson’s notes.
The room also had a small plastic container with a rotted corpse
inside.
The container was plugged into the wall and proved cold to his
touch. Sleeping Beauty was wrapped in plastic and only half the size of
the box, in two halves laid side by side. It was also very old. Decomposing but still somewhat preserved, like something dragged out of a pyramid, so it was of no pressing concern to Castillo.
Instead, he spent the next nine hours skimming through the files
and Jacobson’s private diaries, watching the lopsided stacks of videos
and CDs. Making copies. Taking digital images of everything with his
smartphone.
By morning he had more questions than answers.
But he knew this: If hell was uglier, it probably wasn’t by much.

In one of the recordings, a young boy is being beaten. The digital camera is on the ceiling of the bedroom, probably in a light fixture. The
video shows this process going on for months. The man, or “father,”
even looks directly at the camera occasionally. Castillo shudders each
time. The guy knows it’s there.

In the next footage, a young boy is only screamed at by his father,
but never touched once. The boy is called a “retard” and an “asshole”
and a “faggot.” And the boy is crying. The video shows this going on for
months. By appearance, the two boys in the two recordings are the exact
same boy. The rooms are different, however, as are the fathers. Adoptive
fathers, Castillo assumes. “Consociates” of DSTI, using Dr. erdman’s
word. The boys, in a data stamp on the bottom of the video frames, are
named Dennis/6 and Dennis/10. They are clones. Castillo’s job is to
hunt down Dennis/6, the boy being physically abused.
Dennis Ten is not
my concern,
he says to himself a dozen times.

In the next recording, another boy, John/3, is encouraged to help
kill a cat with a hammer. John/5 is encouraged to play with Legos. According to the attached notes, both of these boys were crafted from the
DNA of John Wayne Gacy. Suddenly one dead cat doesn’t seem so bad.
Castillo found an accompanying folder on “John,” who killed and raped
thirty boys and young men in just six years back in the 1970s. Police
found twenty of the bodies in his crawl space. There were a dozen pictures for Castillo to look at. The original mug shots and pics of Gacy as
“Pogo,” the infamous clown character he often dressed as for community parties and events. Color printouts of the paintings Gacy did while
in prison: mostly birds and clowns and skulls. Jacobson’s notes reported
Pogo/Gacy was executed by the state of Illinois via lethal injection in
1994. But wait! Castillo’s eyes slid back to the flickering videos. here
were two more. Clones built by DSTI. POGO LIVeS! And now clone
Pogo is only ten years old. And
this
one clone Pogo kills a cat on film.
But this
other
Pogo clone builds elaborate castles out of Legos.