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DOVER BEACH

The Last P.I Series

Book One

Excerpt from

Dover Beach

The Last P.I. Series

Book 1

by

Richard Bowker

DOVER BEACH

Awards & Accolades

AWARDS

Philip K. Dick Award for best paperback original of the year, Finalist

REVIEWS

"A wry, ingratiating story"

~Publisher's Weekly

"
Dover Beach
is a hard science fiction, medium-boiled detective story that succeeds in both fields... The mystery kept me guessing right up to the end; the science fiction, with its detailed portrayal of the remnants of the U.S., is equally good. The plot works well, and somehow all the pieces fit together. I highly recommend
Dover Beach
.

~Aboriginal Science Fiction

Humanist science fiction of a high order... The hero is bookish, the title obviously literary. Fortunately, the warmth, humor and unquenchable humanity of Sands and friends keep
Dover Beach
from becoming pretentious or heavily symbolic. So read this book, then tell your friends. Richard Bowker has earned his place in the limelight.

~Locus

We've had future private eye novels before, but there's something special about this one.

~Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

Between what matters and what seems to matter, how should the world we know judge wisely?

—E. C. Bentley

It was one of those gray December days that freeze the soul as well as the body. The stack of unread books grew smaller; the fire in the wood stove was dying; I was thinking (not for the first time) that I was in the wrong line of work. Then I looked out my window and noticed the stranger standing in the slush below.

I quickly looked away. Didn't want to scare him off. I imagined him staring at the sign in the window and wondering whether to come up; it wasn't a very good sign, after all. I put the book down and waited. I heard the downstairs door creak open, then slam shut. I heard slow footsteps on the stairs; it was dark out there. The footsteps stopped outside my frosted-glass door. There was a pause, then a loud rapping.

I took out my .38 caliber Smith and Wesson automatic and aimed it at the door. You can't be too careful nowadays. "It's open," I called out pleasantly.

The stranger stepped inside. He stared at the gun. I stared at him.

Tough to make out very much in the semidarkness, except that he was well dressed—absurdly well dressed. "Mr. Sands?" he inquired nervously. The accent was Southern; he managed to make two syllables out of my name.

"That's right."

"The private investigator?"

"That's right."

"I may have a case for you."

I motioned to a seat across the desk from me, and I put the gun away. The man sat down. I lit the oil lamp on my desk, and we took a good look at each other.

Straight black hair, eyes the color of my stove. Sloping jaw, good skin—tanned. He was about my age, but I had a feeling the similarity ended there. The hands he was rubbing together were well manicured; the overcoat he wore looked new.

"Now, what can I do for you, Mister..."

"Winfield.
Doctor
Charles Winfield."

"Ah."

Having taken stock of me, his dark eyes darted away and took in my well-appointed office. They glanced meaningfully for a moment at the wood stove, but I didn't feel like taking the hint. He kept rubbing his hands. "I saw your ad in the
Globe,"
he said finally.

"Ah."

"Why don't you have a telephone? This would have been much easier over the phone."

"Phones don't work very well around here," I said.

"Oh." He was silent again. He looked as though he wanted to pace, but there wasn't room. "It's an absurd profession—private investigator," he said after a moment. "I can't imagine there's any demand for your services."

"You're here," I pointed out.

"I don't really know why," he said.

"That makes two of us."

He glanced at me, then quickly looked away. "Someone tried to kill me yesterday," he said.

"Ah."

"But that's only part of it—that's not really even why..."

"If you're willing to start from the beginning," I said, "I'm willing to listen."

He nodded. "I'm twenty-two, Mr. Sands."

My turn to nod. My age. The magic age.

"I was raised in Florida. I never knew my father, and my mother never said much about him. I naturally assumed—" He waved his hand.

"Naturally."

He took a breath, then plunged ahead. "It was only when my mother was dying that she explained anything, but it didn't really make much sense to me at the time. She said she had been living up here in Cambridge—she was a graduate student, I guess. She underwent some kind of experimental procedure at MIT that involved making her pregnant. But then, apparently, she left for Florida. Tensions were high, I suppose, and she wanted to go home. I don't know. She never went back to MIT."

"Not much of MIT to come back to," I remarked.

"Yes, I noticed." He paused. "I never tried to make any sense out of what my mother told me until I was in medical school—until a classmate showed me this." Dr. Winfield reached into an inner pocket and removed a sheet of paper. He carefully unfolded it and passed it to me.

It was an article from an old magazine. More than twenty-two years old. The title of the article was: "Controversial New Cloning Technique Defended." It consisted mainly of an interview with one Robert Cornwall, professor of genetics and cell biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There was a photograph of Professor Cornwall.

He looked remarkably like Dr. Winfield.

"Do you know what a clone is, Mr. Sands?"

"No," I lied.

"It is a genetically identical copy of a living organism. Many plants generate clones as a normal form of reproduction. Biologists used to know how to clone other species in the laboratory. They did it for bacteria and frogs and such. Techniques for cloning mammals were just being developed back then."

"You think you're a clone, Dr. Winfield?"

"Look at the photograph."

I looked some more. "Uh-huh," I said noncommittally.

He reached out and took the article back. "One can't go through life not knowing who—or what—one is. Don't you agree?"

"Yes," I lied.

"I had no way of finding out while I was in medical school down in Fort Lauderdale. I had to wait until I was a doctor, until I had some freedom and some money."

"They let doctors out down there?"

Winfield shrugged. "Of course. They know we'll come back. It's letting people
in
that they won't do."

"So you came to Boston to track down Professor Cornwall and uncover the secret of your past?"

"That's right."

"And you want some professional help?"

He nodded.

I pressed my hands together and leaned back in my chair. "Well, it's my professional opinion that you'd be wasting your money, Dr. Winfield. He's not here. He's dead, and everything that constituted his life has been scattered to the winds. That's the way it is."

"Then why," Winfield asked, "is someone trying to kill me?"

I rocked a little in my chair. "Oh," I said. "Right. Tell me more."

"I arrived here two days ago and immediately went to the Registry. Cornwall is not in their records as being confirmed alive or dead. There was also no record of his prior existence here—he wasn't in the old phone books they had, for example."

"None of which means very much."

"Of course not. So yesterday I went and took a look at MIT. Scattered to the winds, as you say. So what would a professional private investigator do next?"