Mark of the Beast (20 page)

“Don't we always?” Chintzy asked.

“Yeah, yeah, just remember, Ed will be an honoree,” the chief said.

After the chief left … “Hey, you, where is the law against gays?” Stubbs asked, not wanting to let go.

“I am glad you asked,” Schumann said. “That will be the law of 1822.”

“What are you, a preacher or a detective?” Henry asked.

“Fellows, read the Book of Laws—Leviticus, that is—so you know how to act,” Schumann advised.

“So now you are the only one who knows how to act, just because you read this Leviticus book?” asked Officer Henry, looking at Schumann with disgust.

“Stop hating, Officer Henry, just spread the love,” Schumann said, letting Officer Henry know that he, too, was street smart.

 

PART

IX

 

1

T
HE
S
ENATE HEARING STARTED
without any significant snag. The room was packed with reporters. Dickerson wondered why they crammed all these people into such a small chamber.

Of the sixteen senators scheduled to attend, only one was in his chair at 10:00
A.M.
when the hearing was supposed to have started. By 10:20
A.M.
, however, all the senators were seated. The chairman, Senator Seymour Adams (a Democrat from Georgia) called the meeting to order.

Senator Adams was the chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Domestic Affairs. He started by thanking Drs. Abramhoff and Dickerson for attending, and then went on to say how the Senate and the nation had been spellbound by the HLA findings.

He cautioned the Senate members to restrict their questions and follow-up comments to the scientific findings at hand, so that an appropriate bill could be proposed from this discussion, if need be.

“In conclusion,” cautioned Senator Adams, “this is an issue that crosses party lines, because American lives may be at stake here. I will entertain questions from the panel after the doctors have read their prepared statements.”

After the brief statements, in which both doctors essentially just introduced themselves, Senator Adams opened the floor for discussion. “Senator Burton, please.”

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Could either one of you explain to the panel what an HLA is and how it came to be related to criminals?” asked Senator Burton from Indiana.

Abramhoff responded by giving his usual standard answer of what an HLA was, how they were related to diseases, and how this relationship was extrapolated further into human behaviors.

“How specific were the data that linked an HLA to criminals?” the senator persisted.

Abramhoff responded by explaining how he started looking at the link between HLA and predestined behaviors.

Dickerson's discovery, on the other hand, was by accident, involving a criminal in San Diego who was so bizarre she thought that he had a genetic abnormality, only to discover that he was HLA B66 positive.

“We found a marker on the HLA B loci that has not been identified elsewhere, and further tests bore it out,” Dickerson said.

“Speaking of the testing,” Senator Christine Samples of Maine asked, “what specific tests are we talking about? How do you administer these tests, and how accurate are they?”

“The testing is done through a drawn blood sample,” Dickerson said. “After centrifugation or spinning, to separate the plasma from the blood, we analyze the white blood cells. We locate the HLA band and identify the locus. The process is standard worldwide, and it is through the same process of identification that HLA has been linked to multiple diseases, such as diabetes and multiple sclerosis. As for the accuracy, Dr. Abramhoff and I have run case-controlled studies and age-matched analysis using standard statistics. These were used to make our final analysis. The specificity and sensitivity of our testing are about ninety-two percent. That is superior accuracy.”

“I understand that you have concluded your National Institutes of Health-funded studies,” said Senator Reuben of Washington State. “Can you share with us your conclusions, or better yet, your final analyses?”

“We have pooled our studies together,” Abramhoff said. “We analyzed exactly 10,977 convicted hard-core criminals in the San Diego and Los Angeles counties of California, and the Joliet, Kankakee, and East St. Louis counties of Illinois. Of these criminals, especially the mass murderers and those we classified as psychopathic killers, there was almost a ninety-two percent concordance between hard-core crime and HLA B66. Even among inmates who committed murders in the act of a criminal intent, such as stealing, carjacking, or bank robberies, there is still almost a seventy percent positive HLA B66 finding. There is no doubt that HLA B66 may predetermine the heinous criminality of certain individuals.”

A brief reflective moment permeated the room. Some of the senators began chatting among themselves. The chairman immediately requested order.

“I have a question, Mr. Chairman,” Senator Ridge of Texas requested.

“Yes, Senator.”

“What are the unknowns here? Specifically … what I am trying to say is, what exactly don't we know about HLA B66?” the senator asked.

“If your question is what else we do not know about these people…,” Abramhoff said.

“Yes, it is, in a sense,” Senator Ridge replied. “I am looking for that unknown variable.”

“The only thing we do not know at this point is the trigger mechanism,” Abramhoff said. “By trigger mechanism, I mean that these individuals have this HLA assigned or expressed in them at birth. It is not inherited. Expressions can be dormant for a while, but what the actual reaction is that turns on the switch for it, to unleash behaviors that have been assigned to it, is what we do not know at the moment.”

“In other words,” Senator Adams asked, “you are telling us that you can pick anybody from the street, test him or her for HLA B66, and if he or she tests positive, that person has already been marked or assigned, and when the switch is turned on, whenever that is, there goes the heinous behavior.”

“Precisely, Senator,” Dr. Dickerson added. “And since we do not know where the switch is, or who turns it on, or when it is going to be turned on, we may have millions of loose cannons running around our streets.”

“Mister Chairman,” Senator Hewlett of Tennessee shouted, requesting attention. “I understand that we are supposed to keep our discussions purely scientific, but I cannot help but ask Dr. Dickerson to comment on her overt interpretation of the HLA B66 finding and its relationship to the number 666 in the Bible.”

Muffled discussions were heard among the senators whether to allow Dr. Dickerson to answer or not. Finally, by a majority vote, she was allowed to make one comment only.

“I did a lot of research concerning the number 666 in the Book of Revelation. I also studied ancient languages and alphabetic writings, with some assistance from a professor in the Middle East, and found that the alphabet letter B in lowercase resembles, in fact matches, the figure or number six in an old Aramaic language. To make a long story short, I, personally—and Dr. Abramhoff does not agree with me on this—believe that the number in the Book of Revelation is located at the HLA B66 that we are discussing. The question we need to ask ourselves, if there is any doubt, is why this HLA B66 is only found in individuals with devilish intentions?”

“What do you think, Dr. Abramhoff?” asked Senator Hewlett.

“As Dr. Dickerson has said, this is a very personal belief which I do not share at this moment. Without more tests and follow-ups, it will be difficult to make any other conclusion, except the fact that HLA B66 predetermines certain behaviors.”

“Thank you all, ladies and gentlemen, for attending the Senate subcommittee hearing on HLA B66. Because of time constraints, we have to conclude this hearing. The Senate members will go into executive session for further discussions. Again, thank you one and all,” Senator Adams concluded.

 

2

T
HE MORNING AFTER THE
hearing,
The Washington Post,
quoting an unnamed source, reported that at the executive session that followed the Senate hearing, there was a heated debate about the religious implications of HLA B66 and its bearing on the number 666. In the end, it was finally recommended to authorize a national testing of incarcerated criminals. The tests were to be limited for now, only to individuals who committed murder, mayhem, and psychotic and heinous crimes.

A selection committee from the Senate, in collaboration with the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, selected several prominent regional research institutions for the initial testing.

The nerve centers, however, would remain with Dr. Abramhoff in Chicago and Dr. Dickerson in San Diego. Their mandate was to test selected inmates in the United States who fit the strict criteria set by the United States Senate.

Drs. Abramhoff and Dickerson were to report back to the Senate at the conclusion of the testing, and based on the result, the Congress of the United States would reconvene and vote on subsequent actions.

The Canadian government, according to The Associated Press, requested and obtained permission to add the University of Toronto in Toronto, Ontario, and McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, as additional test centers to collaborate with the United States government on this venture.

Detective Edward Jim Pellagrini of the New York City Police Department, who gained national fame when he solved the Central Park serial killer case, was lobbied heavily by the governor of New York to be the federal watchdog in case of interstate turf battles.

“What do you think of Pellagrini?” Dickerson asked Abramhoff

“From what I read, I think he is a bizarre individual,” Abramhoff responded.

“He is going to need a West Coast assistant, and I will personally nominate Detective Pinkett for the job.”

“That's your detective from San Diego, right?”

“That's my girl,” Dickerson agreed with glee.

“This is all looking even better.”

 

3

B
APTIST
G
ENERAL
H
OSPITAL, AT
the corner of Broadway and Interstate 30 in Merrillville, Indiana, boasted a newly renovated and vastly decorated doctors' lounge with a new high-definition plasma television. Every day at noon, a freshly catered lunch attracted a vast majority of the surgeons and a good number of the primary care doctors and specialists to the lounge. Frequently the doctors would take this opportunity to discuss various issues and express their opinions.

On the television, a cable news network was discussing the centers chosen for the HLA testing and was interviewing administrative personnel at the various centers.

“Hi, Nsi, how did the case go this morning?” asked Dr. Mahatma Gupta, the cardiologist who performed the angiography on Mrs. Elaine Worjorhowski.

“Excellent, the bypass went well, although it took a little longer than I expected. The mammary artery was a little difficult to harvest.”

“She pulled through, yes?”

“Oh, yeah, she is in the recovery room, and her vitals are great.”

As if on cue, both men turned to watch the program on television.

“What do you make of that nonsense?” asked Dr. Gupta. “I think that's a whole bunch of hogwash.”

“You don't think those doctors are up to something?”

“They are up to something, all right. It's called lining their pockets with money.”

“I guess you don't believe in the HLA theory either.”

“How can these doctors make us believe that an HLA test, which is experimental at best, can predict who is a criminal?”

“But won't the testing bear them out?”

“I bet you my bottom dollar they cooked and forged some of those numbers just to get federal dollars.”

“I don't know,” Dr. Obum Linton, a gynecologist, said. “These are two independent, highly respected physicians and researchers. I would not dismiss them casually.”

“You know, and I know, that statistics can be manipulated to obtain the results we want by carefully eliminating the ones we don't want,” Nsi explained.

“But they were able to convince the Senate of the United States to fund a hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar national testing program,” noted Dr. Nathaniel Weitzman, the endocrinologist, who hardly ever expressed an opinion.

By now, the entire staff in the doctors' lounge had voiced one opinion or another about the discussion. Dr. Nsi knew, deep in his heart, that some of these doctors were just jealous of his success, and he also knew that some were blaming him for the disappearance of Nurse Fisher, even though her body had not been found.

Many doctors knew of the liaison between Dr. Nsi and Ms. Fisher, and also between him and the two previous nurses at Munster who died mysterious deaths. He logically surmised that some of his colleagues had indirectly voiced the opinion that he was involved in their tragedies.

Another prominent cardio-thoracic surgeon, Dr. Emeka Nwazobia, from Nigeria, had quietly confided to friends that Dr. Nsi was not telling all he knew.

“I tell you what; I'll challenge them to do a testing of all Americans, and I'll be the first to volunteer,” said Nsi, as all eyes turned to him.

“They do want to test all Americans,” Dr. Weitzman hinted.

“I know, but they should just do it, to prove how bogus the test is,” said Nsi.

“I can't stand that man,” Nwazobia whispered to Linton as Nsi continued to converse with Dr. Weitzman.

“Who are you talking about?” Linton asked.

“Dr. Eat … you know what; or D.E.S., for short,” Nwazobia again whispered.

“Why do you insist on calling him that name? That's terrible,” asked Dr. Linton, with an almost-identical whisper.

“Because that's exactly what his full name translates to in the Ibo language of Nigeria.”