Clowns and Cowboys (A Miranda and Parker Mystery Book 3) (24 page)

Layla’s smile faded to sorrow again. “They were twelve when they took them away.”

Now it was Miranda’s turn to stare down at her feet. What in the world were these people talking about? Genius children with birth defects? Some kind of wacky baby farm? She had to be asleep in the rental car. She had to be dreaming.

Dashia rose and went over to her husband. His cheeks were wet. These were his memories, too.

She brushed his tears away and stroked his face. “We almost lost Yuri. He used to have such big knots on his head. They said he was disfigured but he was always beautiful to me.”

“As you are to me, my Dashia. Though you are so little.”

“But after you begged them,” Layla said, “they agreed to try the surgery and it worked. They said he was ready for the Great Experiment.”

“Great Experiment?” Miranda put a hand to her stomach. She was starting to feel queasy.

Layla nodded. “They were ready to let us go out into the world. They wanted to see how we would do. They said they were going to send us to a circus. They wanted Dashia and Yuri to go first.”

“Everything was ready. Except for his scars.” Dashia ran her hand tenderly over her husband’s head.

Miranda shook herself. “Wait a minute. Are you saying your husband didn’t get his scars from being shot out of a cannon?”

Dashia turned to her. “When they sent us to Under the Big Top, they made up the story about Yuri’s accident. They told us we could never tell anyone the truth. Not about his scars. Not about where we came from. Not about anything.”

Miranda looked at Parker again. He was a little pale.

No, she thought. These people were professional circus performers. They could make you believe in whole worlds that didn’t really exist. This had to be some kind of illusion. A magic trick.

She got to her feet, moved over to Layla. “Okay. This is a nice story, but what has it got to do with Tupper Magnuson?”

Layla bit her lip. “Tupper knew all about it. All about me. I didn’t want to tell him, but—”

“But what?”

Layla’s cheeks turned pink then she looked up at Miranda with her big watery dark eyes. “Tupper and I were so much in love. We were going to get married. He wanted to make love to me. And one night…I shouldn’t have gone so far with him. I couldn’t help it.”

“What did you do?” She was pretty sure she didn’t want to hear this.

“I let him touch me. And he found…my secret place. And then he knew. I had to tell him. They told us not to tell anyone but I told him. And he was so angry. He said he was going to go to the police, to the media, to anyone who would listen. I told him no, he couldn’t. That’s what we were fighting about.”

Miranda suddenly remembered the books in Tupper’s trailer. Cloning. Genetics. Biotechnology. Her lungs constricted in sudden horror.

Layla was telling the truth.

Tears spilled from the young woman’s eyes and ran down her cheeks like raindrops. “It’s all my fault. If only I hadn’t been so weak. If only I hadn’t said anything. If only he hadn’t seen my secret place.”

Secret place? Miranda was pretty sure she didn’t mean what young girls usually thought of as their secret place.

By now her head was splitting. Despite her revulsion, she had to know. “Layla, what are you talking about?”

Layla looked up at her, eyes wide. “Do you want me to show you? Show you my secret place?”

“I…well…not really.”

“I am not embarrassed. Not if it will help you prove who killed Tupper and Harvey.” She got to her feet, put her arms around her waist and lifted her halter top above her waist.

She turned around and there it was.

Two short claw-like fingers about three inches long each grew out of the young woman’s back near the spine, just under her ribcage. As she closed and opened them, retracting them into her flesh then extending them again, Miranda could see they were strong as a vice grip.

Secret place and secret weapon. Biata Ito was right. That was how Layla did her act. How she hung onto her silk strands without falling.

Miranda didn’t gross out easily, but as she stared at the moving claw fingers, she’d never felt so sick in her life.

Hand over her mouth, she ran for the door. “I need some air.”

Miranda had just finished depositing her stomach contents behind the hotel’s nicely manicured bushes when she felt Parker’s steady hand on her back.

He held out a handkerchief to her.

She took it and wiped her face. “Talk about embarrassing.” She tried to laugh but it wasn’t working.

“I feel like joining you,” he said darkly.

Her brain was still spinning from the things she’d just heard.

“Did you hear the same thing I did in there? All three of them were generated in some lab? A nurse was fertilized with them and carried them to term? Gave them her name? Cared for them?”

“That’s what I heard.”

“Can they really be telling the truth, Parker?”

He stared off into the distance. “There have been experiments with test tube babies for decades. Cloning and genetic research has been ongoing for years. But I’ve never heard of anything like this. The ethical implications are enormous.”

They were enormous all right. “And some of those kids were ‘taken away’?” She made quote marks in the air with her fingers. “Even the ones who could do calculus at eight? This place, whatever it is, gets rid of little kids with birth defects like…cleft palates and…bumps?”

“Tumors of some sort. Perhaps elephantitis.”

“Experiments that had gone wrong? That lab is run by monsters.” An icy shudder went through her as if it had swept down from the North Pole. She wanted to stick her head in the bushes again. She felt her eyes sting with tears. “There couldn’t have been just nine of them. What happened to the others?”

Parker stood in silence, the frame of his body rock hard. She knew he wanted to do something. Anything. She did, too. But they didn’t even know where this so-called lab was.

Suddenly she gasped in air as the answer snapped in place in her head. She stared at him, almost unable to speak.

And then they spoke at the same time. “GenaPulse.”

She snatched her cell out of her pocket and began to search. “C’mon, c’mon.”

The connection speed here sucked, but she had a feeling she wouldn’t find anything. Not a website or listing of any kind. A place like that didn’t make itself known.

She looked up and saw Parker had his own phone out.

She peered over his shoulder and watched him swipe through the photos he’d taken in Tenbrook’s office. When he got to the accounting records and the line item for the company in question, there was an address. Tenbrook might be the only outsider who had it.

“They’re north of Dallas. Plano.”

“Okay.” She stared down at his screen. And sucked in another breath as a new wave of revelation hit her. “Was that what the big donation was for? To take on three…experiments and keep your mouth shut?”

“So it appears.”

She stared off across the parking lot at the highway beyond and rubbed her arms, though the air was warm. What kind of a man had Sam been working for?

She turned back to Parker. “We need to tell Underwood. She has to shut that place down.”

Parker considered it a moment. “The police would need a search warrant for the lab itself. I’m not sure we’ve got enough for one.”

He was right. The cops wouldn’t buy what they’d just heard in that hotel room. They needed proof. And a warrant would take time. Too much time. “So what do we do now?”

Before Parker could reply, the door to one-twenty-four opened and Yuri stepped out onto the lighted walkway.

There was fear in the big man’s eyes as he lumbered toward them. “Mr. Parker, Ms. Steele. We’ve woken our boys.”

“Your kids?” Miranda hadn’t seen them.

He nodded. “They were asleep in the adjoining room. Dashia is getting them ready. We’ve decided we can’t stay here. If you found us, whoever killed Tupper and Harvey will find us, too.”

They couldn’t just run away. Not now. Miranda folded her arms and glared at the cannonball. “What happened to the others, Yuri?”

“What?”

“There had to be more than nine of you.”

He winced, stared down at the sidewalk and finally took a long, deep breath. “Dashia, Layla don’t know. I never told them. They may have figured it out. I don’t know. But yes, there were others. Many others.”

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen them.”

“At the lab?”

“In another part of it. A part we weren’t allowed in. Before the surgery to remove my growths, I thought they would take me away like Silvio and Manuel. I tried to escape. I found a lower floor. A tunnel, a long hall. And several large rooms where others were being kept. There were so many of them. Oh, they were in worse condition than we were. Then two workers came down the hall and I hid in a closet to avoid being seen. But the workers stopped outside the closet door and began to talk. I was so afraid they were going to find me. I stood there, shaking while I listened to their conversation.” He rubbed his eyes with his big hands as if trying to wipe out the memory.

“What did you hear, Yuri?” Parker asked gently. He had more of a stomach for this than she did at the moment.

“One of the workers said what a shame it was that so many of the batches had failed. That is what she called us. Batches.” His shoulders jerked as he fought his own emotions.

Parker laid a hand on his arm. “Go on.”

“The other worker sounded more experienced. She explained that when an experiment fails, it is no longer cost effective to keep the subject alive. And so the subject must be recycled.”

Her breath growing shallow, Miranda eyed the bushes again. “Recycled?”

“The experienced worker began to describe the process. I didn’t want to hear any more but I couldn’t move.” He put his hands to his face, his chest heaving with distress.

“What did she say?”

Yuri caught his breath. “She said that the subject is put under anesthesia and the cells, the organs, and useful body parts are harvested for the next experiment. The good parts are kept, the defective ones discarded.”

Like taking out the trash. “Then what?”

“Then they put the subject to sleep.”

There was a catch in Miranda’s throat. “Permanently?”

He nodded. “The experienced worker was certain the process caused minimal pain and distress.”

Parker’s face was hard as flint. “Involuntary euthanasia is murder, Yuri.”

Miranda’s heart beat kicked up as something else struck her. “And I bet when they put those kids to sleep, they use cyanide.”

Parker nodded as Yuri’s eyes went wide with understanding.

She had another thought. “That information would be enough for Underwood to get a warrant.”

“If we can prove it.”

“They keep documents,” Yuri said. “Records.”

“What sort of records?”

“Everything is documented by hand and on computer. I saw that, too. They are stored in a special room.”

The hotel room door opened again and Sam came running out. He grabbed Yuri by the arm. “Yuri, you can’t be on the run for the rest of your lives. You have to let the detectives help you. I’ve talked to Layla and she agrees with me.” He turned to Miranda. “You can do something, can’t you?”

Miranda looked at Parker.

She could see the wheels in his head turning. “If we could get inside GenaPulse unnoticed and get copies of those records, it would give us solid evidence.”

And Underwood could easily get a warrant. Except for the B&E part, but Underwood wouldn’t be responsible for that. She and Parker weren’t connected with the police.

“We’ve got to stop them, Parker.”

“They’re called GenaPulse?” Yuri said. “We did not know that. We do not even know where the lab is located.”

“We do,” Miranda told him. “And we’re going there.”

Suddenly it was as if the fearless human cannonball came back to life. “I will help you. I get can you inside. I can show you where the records are stored.” He looked back at the hotel room. “But my family…”

Sam thought a moment. “My brother’s got a ranch in Atoka. It’s just a couple hours southeast of here. They’d be safe there. I’ll take them. Dashia, the kids, and Layla.”

“You’re sure your brother won’t mind?” Miranda asked.

“He’s a good guy. Got a family of his own. They’d like the company. And I’ll chip in with expenses. I won’t tell him anything…about all this.”

Slowly Yuri nodded. He turned back to Parker. “When do we leave?”

“As soon as possible.”

After Yuri told the others the plan and said a tearful goodbye to his family, they watched Sam and his new charges take off in the pickup. Then he, Miranda and Parker piled into the rental and raced back down the interstate with the human cannonball in the backseat.

When they got close to a cell tower Miranda dialed Underwood and woke the police detective up. She explained, vaguely, what they were doing and what their suspicions were about the mysterious research company hidden in plain sight in Plano. She added she was convinced the lab was the source of the cyanide that had killed Tupper Magnuson and Harvey Hackett, whose COD Underwood confirmed.

Miranda could tell Underwood didn’t believe her.

She listened to the woman hem and haw about going through proper legal channels, having to wake up a judge, too little evidence for the DA, yada yada—all while Parker was ironically breaking every speed limit on the highway.

But being a good cop, Underwood had to follow the lead and agreed to work on getting a warrant.

Wouldn’t be much help on their current venture, Miranda thought as she hung up. The legal process would take too damn long.

As she relayed the information to Parker, she stared at the asphalt rushing toward her in the headlights.

Right now, they were pretty much on their own.

She glanced over at him. His face was hard and set. He was thinking of those kids.

Turning her head she saw Yuri staring out the side window. His thoughts must be burdened with all sorts of painful memories.