Cain's Blood: A Novel Read online

  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 figures shuffling into the hall and out the front door. Boys. He wondered if there 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.

  SECRET ROOM

  JUNE 03, FRIDAY—HADDONFIELD, NJ

  Jacobson’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 New Mexico. 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.

  Goddamn 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 stowed 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, Castillo 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.

  Nature/Nurture.

  At least two years’ worth of behavioral studies connected to carefully designed environments, according to the videos’ time stamps, have been recorded and evaluated as part of ongoing research. Hours and hours of tiny Pogos. Half being tortured in the name of
science . . . or national defense.

  Hours and hours of weeks and years.

  Castillo watched as much as he could.

  • • •

  He clicked on another flash drive’s .wmv file.

  A coffin is lifted awkwardly from the ground by three men. In the digital video, it is night—the best time for grave robbing. It is raining. The men are dirty and soaked from digging all night, fresh mounds of dirt completely surrounding the grave. One of the men Castillo knows as Dr. Gregory Jacobson. Filmed in night vision, the rainwater runs dark as blood from the mounds into the gaping black hole beneath. When they lift the coffin, its rotted bottom splits open from the weight of the lead lining inside, and the casket’s contents spill free. Jacobson waves the other men off and the coffin is laid back down. Tilted strangely, half in the grave and half out. They open it from the top and the camera zooms in as the casket is pried open. Rain falls on the man inside for the first time in what could be hundreds of years, the figure wrapped in a decaying burial shroud. The video shows Jacobson’s fingers pulling the cloth open, tearing it free. The shroud splits easily. Beneath, the corpse’s chest. Ribs. Neck bones. Jacobson rips the shroud open further to reveal the skull. Teeth. Clumps of hair. Strips of wrinkled, rotted skin along the skewed jawbone. The rain falls on everything. Jacobson runs his fingers along the crown of its glistening skull. He looks up at the camera. The rain splashes down on his face. He is laughing. And, though it could be the rain, it also looks as if he is crying.

  In the last video, a boy is drawing. The same blond boy, maybe ten, is playing piano. He looks twelve and is playing Guitar Hero on his PlayStation. He is surrounded by balloons and blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. The camera is not hidden now. It’s handheld. A home movie.