Cain's Blood: A Novel Read online

  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 new 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.

  BD: June 10, 2002

  SCNT: January 1, 2000

  IMP: January 10, 2001

  FH: N300

  “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.

  Albert Fish. Jeffrey Dahmer. Henry Lee Lucas. Dennis Rader. Ted Bundy. David Berkowitz.

  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 anothe
r 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?”

  “Understood,” Erdman said. “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 LAND OF NOD

  JUNE 03, FRIDAY—RADNOR, PA

  Most of the bodies were in the rec room.

  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 were coral.

  Three men in light hazard suits and masks, employees of DSTI, scuttled about the room still, gathering more evidence, snapping more pictures. By this time tomorrow, it would look as if absolutely nothing had ever happened in the room. But it wasn’t tomorrow yet. It had been no more than twenty hours since the boys’ escape.

  Castillo followed the two scientists within and slowed to study the first body they came to. It was splayed across the room’s foosball table. The sheet someone had covered it with was soaked through, and he could perfectly make out the shape and facial outlines of the person it covered. A modern Shroud of Turin, still dripping blood over the little plastic soccer players onto the field beneath.

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “Dylan.”

  Castillo waited.

  “Dylan Meinzer. Produced from the DNA of Dylan Klebold, Columbine.”

  “Right.” Castillo forced himself to simply accept this information as nothing more than standard intel. Now was not the time to really think about what it was they’d been telling him. The cloning strangeness. He focused instead on facts, his mind pulling up what it could. He remembered that Klebold and his buddy—couldn’t recall the name—shot up their school a good twenty years ago, murdering a dozen fellow students, and then offed themselves in the school library. This, if he believed what they’d been telling him, was that same boy’s clone. One of them, at least. “And you’ve confirmed that’s the other kid?”

  The other body had been bound and positioned with telephone line and network cables to the railing that led to the second floor. Castillo eyed the dark shape half hidden beneath the sheet, embossed in blood and standing with its arms still held outstretched like some Halloween prankster. “One of the Erics.” Dr. Erdman flipped through a few pages of his clipboard. “Eric Palmer, Eric Six. Blood and PCR tests match up.”

  “Have they found the skin yet?” Castillo asked. Another black-and-white question. Black-and-white questions were safe. Manageable. Just stick with those, and get out of this place as fast as you can. It had been more than a year since he’d seen even a drop of blood. Here, there were several pools.

  “No,” Dr. Erdman replied. He sounded embarrassed.

  Castillo looked down again at “Dylan” and furled back the sheet. The body beneath had been flayed, completely and immaculately. The skin cut away at every turn so that the boy, except for a few grisly potholed gouges out of his arm and between his toes, looked like something out of a Michelangelo sketchbook. The debrief he’d been given upon first arrival had suggested the other one looked exactly the same. “Why did they hate these two so much?” he asked.

  Sudden, bright interest flared in Erdman’s eyes. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Sure. This kid was alive when they skinned him.” Castillo looked into the corpse’s lidless dark eyes. “I . . . I’ve seen this before.”

  More interest, less scientific this time. “Where was that?”

  Castillo ignored the question and replaced the sheet. “You can tell by the hands.” He approached the second body. “The arms out like this. Instantaneous rigor mortis. Like a drowning victim’s last spasm. These two drowned choking on their own blood.”

  “The others never . . .” The geneticist followed Castillo deeper into the room. “Frankly, the others never took to these boys. It was a mistake to have those two here.” His voice grew more vague, perceptibly clinical in its detachment. This was merely summarizing data, preparing an imminent report. “Naturally, ‘spree killers’ were never the same as the others.”

  “Naturally.” Castillo hid the accompanying damning grin. “So, how do you know it’s not Eric Three or Four?” He made sure to make it sound more like a genuine question than a challenge. The anticipated pissing contest seemed worse than usual with this lot. A bunch of khakied Betas with delusions of Alphaness, the kind of men he’d struggled with most of his life. As one ex-lover—a Ph.D. candidate in some-or-other bullshitty subject whom he’d met while taking courses at the University of Maryland—had put it wryly during her breakup speech: “The hardguy schtick was fun until I realized it wasn’t just a schtick.” While he’d been off fighting in two wars, competence had somehow become an offense back home. He could try and talk as softly and “nice” as he wanted, but it didn’t matter. People too often still saw their own weaknesses in the skills and confidence he’d fostered in the military, and that was always a dangerous thing. It’d never been an issue in the field. “Doctor?” he prompted.

  Erdman, to his credit, hadn’t taken offense. “There are ways. If there’s one thing we know around here, it’s DNA. Besides, the other Erics all terminated during gestation. You’ve heard of Dolly the Sheep, I imagine. Near three hundred copies of that animal died during pregnancy before the one we all know was actually born. Most all clones still terminate prior to birth.”

  Castillo looked at the doctor. Terminate, he mused. These pricks speak just like we did in the Army. But this wasn’t a damn sheep Erdman was talking about. It was a room overflowing with dead kids. Black and white. Stay with the black and white. It was too much to take in the rest of the room at once, all the bodies. Instead, he focused only on what was directly in front of him: bloody metallic pellets the size of a small flat pill. “The transmitters,” he blurted. “Tell me about those.”

  A dozen had been left on the pool table in the obvious shape of a smiley face, the gaps between the pellets drawn in with blood. The half-stripped body of the school’s psychotherapist remained sprawled facedown beside. She, too, now covered with a bloody sheet.

  “Each subject is implanted at birth for their own safety.”

  Castillo leaned closer for a better look. “Of course. To keep track of them.”

  “It appears they each cut them out. We assume they carved up Eric and Dylan looking for them. To discover where they were implanted.”

  “Maybe,” Castillo said. “These guys seem to have found and cut out their own transmitters easily enough. I think, perhaps, this knife work on these two was mostly for, what, fun? Either way, question for you: How’d these kids even know to look for them? Did they know they’d been implanted?”

  Erdman shrugged. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t think so.”

  Castillo took in more of the room in more small, controlled segments, deliberately cataloguing the other evidence of recent history sprinkled throughout. The security guard brained against the steps. The torn and bloody nurses’ uniforms. Crimson scrawling of curse words and giant cartoon dicks on the walls. Half a dozen small bodies swaddled in sheets; those students not invited, for whatever reason, to come along on the group field trip.

  According to Erdman, the institute had started summer session the week before, most of the students having returned home for two months. Castillo tried not to think about what
might have happened had all fifty boys still been in residence.

  The glossy arterial spray splattered in streaks across the huge flat-screen and Xbox. He swallowed. More coral. Dissecting what had happened here, the who and the how and the when, would take time. The digital images from the security cameras had been deleted during the night. Nothing remained to provide his logical next step. What in God’s name happened here? His vision narrowed to a pinpoint. He felt it go, felt the scramble to regain control. Blackandwhite Blackandwhite. He turned to Erdman. “Where’s Jacobson’s office?”

  “Right through here.”

  He followed Erdman toward the far left corner, kept his eyes locked on the doctor’s back. They’d stopped at a door, where Erdman waved his hand across a security sensor on the wall. The sensor flushed blue, showing a spectral replication of the hand and the blood vessels within. “Vascular recognition.” Erdman turned as the door bolts clicked open. “Matches the unique vein pattern and heart rate in your palm to stored scans. As unique as fingerprinting, but more difficult to fake because it requires flowing blood.”

  Castillo nodded, allowing himself the distraction of the technology. “No more fear of Play-Doh or cadaver fingers fooling the system. Would it have picked up and refused an accelerated heart rate?”

  “Yes.” Erdman seemed curious.

  Control flowed back for Castillo, like it had never been lost. A relief to be talking about simple security, gearhead stuff. “So, then, who opened it last night? Who had access?”

  “The security log shows Dr. Jacobson opened this door at 10:13 p.m.”

  Castillo and Erdman left the obvious unspoken for now. Why Jacobson? And, if a hostage, why hadn’t his heart rate been up? “Only one security guard?” Castillo asked instead. “I would think that when working for the Department of Defense—”

  “Massey has only the one. The labs, the DSTI building, are far more secure.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Here you are . . .” Erdman pretended not to hear the question and motioned toward an already-open doorway. “Dr. Jacobson’s office.”