Cain's Blood (8 page)

astillo drove north up route 70 through a long channel of
dark pine and strip malls. There was no particular reason
for heading this way. It was chiefly somewhere away from
Jacobson’s, away from DSTI. Somewhere where they could
talk. Where he could maybe figure out where he really
should
be driving.

he’d not wasted five more minutes at the house, sneaking the boy

out a side window away from the pitiful surveillance team and through a
backyard to his own waiting car. It had already been a long day for both
of them, and it wasn’t going to get better for a while. Jacobson and the
six clones had a twenty-hour lead, which would have been an eternity if
they had been men trained to avoid capture. Castillo’s salvation was that
they weren’t. regardless of their origins, they were basically a bunch of
runaway teens. Jacobson could be another story. he appeared insane,
perhaps, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t prepared properly to vanish
into thin air. According to his diaries, he’d been messing with the whole
Tumblety-corpse-thing for a year. But a Jack-the-ripper wannabe was
the least of Castillo’s concerns.

Jacobson’s son, his adopted son, his clone of the world’s most infamous serial killer, shrank in the passenger seat while Castillo stared
straight at the road ahead, thinking. every so often, he could hear the
kid sniff back tears.

“I need you to remember everything, anything, your dad told you,”
Castillo said, not looking over. “Anything could help.” The boy kept
silent, and Castillo tried again: “The last time you spoke, what exactly
did he tell you?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
“you don’t know.”
“I told you, I don’t remember.”
“Ok, Jeff, he comes up to your room and . . . what? Were you asleep

or . . . ?”
“No. I was reading. Whatever.” he turned away from Castillo and
instead stared out the window.
Castillo had hated using the boy’s name. even though this was Jeffrey
Jacobson,
he couldn’t shake off the
Dahmer
reality any more, apparently, than the kid himself could. No matter how difficult the name was
to say or think, he also knew it was the easiest way to keep a subject’s
attention.
“he said he needs to talk to me,” the boy continued. “Then he
says, ‘I’m not your real father.’ Gave me some folder with information
about . . . he says, ‘you’re actually the clone of this famous murderer
guy.’ ”
“he’d never told you any of this before?”
“No.”
“Got it, so then what?”
“Then he said they’d kill me and then he left, and then, so yeah. . . .
That’s it.” The boy used the back of his hand to wipe away fresh tears.
“Bet you think I’m a total pussy, huh?”
“Because you’re crying?” Castillo really looked at the boy for the
first time in twenty minutes and tried to see him just as that: A boy. It
was, he realized immediately, a distasteful thought. Because he knew
exactly what Jeff really was and because of the kind of life awaiting the
kid even in the best circumstances. “Anyone who’d think that just proves
nothing bad’s ever really happened to ’em.” he had enough damned
dead kids on his conscience to deal with. “What’d you do?” he asked,
chasing away the thought.
“What?”
“After your dad left, what did you do?”
“Nothing.”
“Must have done something.”
“Walked the neighborhood, I guess.”
“Anywhere special?”
“No.” Jeff shook his head. “Just around. It was dark when I got back,
I could tell people were in the house, so I hid.”
“your dad drives a white Avalon, yes?”
“yeah.”
“you drive yet?”
“No. Supposed to get my temps and stuff this summer.”
“What about that folder your dad gave you?”
“Wasn’t there when I got back. Nothing was.”
“yeah. you’re doing great, kid. Just hang in there.” Castillo tapped
at his smartphone. “This is a list of the students who were killed during
the breakout,” he said as he handed the phone over. It was nine names.
Nine dead kids. “you know any of these guys?”
“I don’t know,” the boy said. “how many henrys are there?”
“Too many,” Castillo agreed. “Last names only, then.”
“him.” The boy extended his hand and finger to the name.
“Careful, touch screen.”
Jeff read out four names. “They were  .  .  . I don’t know,” he said.
“They were nice kids.”
“That seems to be the consensus.” Castillo took the phone back to
pull up the list of the six who’d escaped. Like the nine dead, their
adopted
names.

“know these guys?” Castillo asked, giving the phone over again.
“They . . . They’re, ah, clones, too?”
“yes. know ’em?”
“henry and Al. And David. But David . . .”
“David what?”
“he’d never . . . I can’t believe he’d do this.”
“What makes you say that?”
“he was chill, that’s all. kinda funny. friendly. I don’t know.”
“Maybe he
isn’t
part of this,” Castillo said, making a mental note

on David. “Maybe he and some of the others are caught up in it as hostages, or . . .”
“I don’t know.”
“And henry and Al?”
The boy visibly shuddered.
“That bad?”
Jeff nodded. “It was the way they looked at you. how they looked at
everyone
. Like you were a mouse and they were cats kinda thing. Always
with this smile. Like they could do whatever they wanted to you. I don’t
know. Sounds retarded, I know.”
“Not at all. And it helps me figure out who the leaders in this group
may be. you know where these guys like to hang out?”
“I don’t know. On Xbox? Movies, maybe. um, henry was into
paintball.”
“Anything else? David? Ted?”
“No.”
“That’s Ok. It’s a good start. We’ve already got eyes on the six
homes of these guys. you and I will head back and hit some local malls,
theaters, and wherever the hell folk play paintball. A lot of these guys
lived near DSTI. figure king of Prussia Mall. Wawa. your average person tends to hide in places they already know.”
“These aren’t ‘average’ people.”
“They’re civilians.” Castillo took the phone back, searched, and
handed it over again. “And that’s average enough for me. Look at this
for me.”
The screen showed a bunch of dates and numbers that didn’t make
any sense.
And this:

One drawing on each page surrounded by the seemingly random
numbers and letters.
Dates?
Castillo wondered again.
“Are these . . .”
“Those are from your dad’s journal,” Castillo explained. he could
tell the information startled the boy some, and he pressed ahead. Blackand-white questions worked for everyone. “Who is M. Carty?”
Jeff shrugged.
“Do you know any Cartys or McCartys or . . . ?”
“No.”
“Think.”
“No.”
“What’s this bird?”
“Dunno.”
“Al is Albert, yes?”
Shrug.
“has to be.”
“I guess.”
“Albert fish or Albert DeSalvo?”
“Who is that?”
“famous guys named Al.”
“famous for killing people.”
It wasn’t a question, and Castillo nodded. “What do you think that
is?” he nodded down at the phone. “This squiggle. A music note? Did
your dad play any musical instruments?”
“Not that I know. And that’s not like any note I’ve ever seen. Is it a
nose?”
“you play?”
“I guess.”
“you guess?” Castillo spotted a doughnut chain ahead. Somewhere
to pull over, make some calls, turn back toward Philadelphia. “What do
you play?”
“Bass.”
“Cool.” Castillo squinted up at the rearview mirror. It was time
to get hold of Pete Brody, for sure. Call Colonel Stanforth again. Ox,
maybe. he needed so much more info.
Where to start?
It was a long shot
at best that the malls would turn up anything. “Maybe it’s some kinda
DNA thing? Like a scientific notation of some kind.”
Shrug again. “Maybe.”
he half watched Jeff exploring the phone, looking at some of the
other pics from the journals.
Hi, I’m Jeffrey Dahmer.
“how’s this?” said Castillo. “your father adopted out one of the
Albert clones to a family named Baum. Al Baum . . . how’s that sound?”
“Sure,” the boy said absently, lost in his father’s scribbles.
Castillo had earlier logged into a lower-level NSA database. “There
are twenty thousand Baum families in the united States.”
“Is that a lot?”
“Too many for us.” he slowed to pull into the Dunkin’ Donuts.
“What are you doing?”
“relax. Gotta turn around anyway. And I’ve got some people to get
ahold of. folk who could help point us in the right direction. Maybe
grab you some food.”
“Not hungry.”
“Not a problem.” Castillo deliberately parked the car in the one
spot where the sun’s position likely blinded the store’s lone outdoor
security camera, if it even worked at all. he felt the need to hide Jeff—
would have to disguise the kid when they had a breath.
“I need five minutes,” he said. “After, we’ll hit some of the spots you
know about. Then probably set up camp somewhere in town to grab
some sleep and start digging into the data. Sound good? Good. In the
meantime, you stay right damn here. I’ll be over there. But listen . . .
hey, Jacobson, listen.” The boy turned again at the sound of his name.
An easier name for Castillo to utter. “If you try and take off, or whatever, I’ll catch you easily and drive you straight back to DSTI? Got it?”
The boy nodded.
“DSTI claims that you don’t even exist to just about everyone. Are
you sure you got it? Any time today you go and call the cops on me, ask
someone for help, make a scene or anything . . . you need to know that
every path leads you straight back to DSTI. And I’m gonna keep this
next fact as simple and honest as I can, Ok?”
“Ok,” the boy said, curious.
“No one’s told me to find you,” Castillo said. “I’m only supposed to
find six boys and your dad. That’s it. No one is paying me to find
you
. In
my book, you’re on my team now.”
“What if—”
“If,” Castillo stopped the question, “they decide you’re a ‘liability’
and want me to capture you specifically? I promise to give you some
money and a week’s head start. fair?”
The boy looked away.
Castillo reached out awkwardly to tap his shoulder. “hey,” he said.
“I don’t really understand what’s going on yet. And I know you’re not
too far behind me. But I know if the goal is getting you, you
and
your
father, out of this safely, right now I’m your best bet.”
Jeff turned and considered Castillo’s face. It was amazing the way
kids didn’t even try to hide it. he was sizing Castillo up.
Castillo thought,
If it was me, I’d take off.
he had no clue if the boy
would really be waiting in the car when he got back. “Don’t move an
inch. I’ll be right back.”
“here . . .” Jeff handed back the phone.
“Nope. Got another for that. Sure you don’t want anything?”
The boy shook his head.
“Then keep looking through those pics. Let me know if anything
jumps out at you. Places. Names you might recognize. Something
about where your dad might be. We need to find these guys fast.” It was
mostly a lie. Castillo knew the way the world really worked. “fast” was
relative. Only thing that mattered was if the operation was completed
successfully. Not how long it took.
“from this? It’s just pages of weird cartoons and scribbled numbers.” Jeff stared in wonder. Or horror.
Christ.
It was the first time Castillo had successfully visualized the
boy as someone’s actual son, as an actual teenager who should have been
playing Call of Duty or getting laid. Probably scared out of his mind.
everything he’d ever known as truth was, as of hours ago, now completely wrong. To top it off, his father was clearly a flaming madman.
Castillo suddenly wanted to convince the kid everything was gonna be
all right, only he couldn’t think of a thing that wasn’t a complete lie. Instead, he tried the truth. “your dad sure ain’t making this easy.”
The boy kept his eyes glued to the phone. “No shit,” he replied
quietly.
Castillo almost smiled as he closed and locked the door.

t was early morning, and Saturday, yet the courtyard was still more
than half full with people grabbing ten minutes of fresh air and
buying some fancy coffee or a meal before returning to whatever
work it was they did on the inside. Stanforth watched from a wood
bench on the northwest side. To pass the time, he played an old favorite

game: Trying to imagine what each of them was currently working on.
Which project? Whose department?
Looking for some clue within the fact
that they’d picked up breakfast or dinner. Maybe something in the way
they carried themselves, or a loose comment as they passed by. Not an
easy game when most were civilians and some were from other countries. It was simple for all of them to get lost in the swirl.
Message of the
hour, it seemed.

he, himself, wore khakis and a white polo shirt. Sunglasses resting
on the end of his sharp nose against the sun in his face, a half-eaten hot
dog and a Sprite in his hands. Almost like any other graying D.C. vacationer who’d somehow wandered away from one of the tour groups.
Almost.
But there weren’t any tours on Saturdays. And when the pretty
dark-haired secretary in the sensible skirt had smiled back at him not
five minutes ago, she’d seen right through his civilian attire in half a
second. She’d seen West Point, and the medals, and the retired chairman of the American-Afghan Security Affairs Committee, and the
senior military adviser. She’d recognized the power and pedigree as
clearly as if he’d been holding a sign. They almost always did. The ones
worth a damn.

Trapped within these five walls, it was a helluva good game. framing the trees and warm sun and chirping birds was the most powerful
building on earth. for fifty years, they’d called the park in the dead
center of the Pentagon “Ground Zero” because everyone knew the
russians had twenty nukes aimed right at it. Today it was the russians
and
the Chinese and probably the North koreans, too. hell, when they
didn’t have nukes, the fuckers dropped your own planes on you. Otherwise, it was a terrific park to buy a proper hot dog and enjoy another
morning.

he spotted his appointment, executive Deputy Burandt, across the
yard, moving toward him. even from a hundred yards away, Burandt
looked worried.
Asshole.
Stanforth stared straight at the man and finished the hot dog.
The golden age of weapons development and this fucking
guy is worried about something that would never even reach page three in any
newspaper.

half of all federal research dollars went to the military—as much as
research in medicine, energy, the environment, transportation, manufacturing, and agriculture
combined
. More than thirty thousand private
companies supported r&D.

In short, a lot of people were paid to imagine and produce new
weapons for uncle Sam. A quick fifty billion dollars, to get imaginative,
but that was merely a start. Most real r&D was done under the “black
budgets” of the four military branches, adding up to another five
hundred
billion to toy with. These special budgets were so highly classified
that not even the president knew how the money was being spent. hell,
it was four fucking years before anyone told Truman they’d built a hydrogen bomb. And, oh, how that unhindered money did roll. When the
cold war ended with no enemy in sight, the Department of Defense still
somehow managed to double its budget. And after 9/11, forget about
it. With the daily-touted threat of global terrorism and two brand-new
wars, the budget kept growing with more than half of it falling safely
within these mysterious parameters.
Five hundred billion dollars.
unaudited. unwatched. unstoppable.

In ’94, an air force research lab in Ohio admitted to secretly working on bombs filled with synthetic pheromones and aphrodisiacs to
make enemy troops “turn gay.” They’d be too busy sucking cock to
actually fight back. Put the whole Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell into a bit more
perspective. The same lab also worked on methods to create giant
swarms of bees. The navy spent twenty million dollars teaching bats
to carry explosives. for fifty years, the men in this very building had
supported and encouraged the scientific study of everything from invisibility and time travel to ghosts, mind control, talking dolphins, and
telekinesis.

Trying to figure out how each could be used as a weapon.
There were bound to be some fuckups along the way. Like this one.
Another bump in the road. And, if after five years as executive deputy
to the commanding general, this mealymouthed Caltech fuck didn’t get
that . . .
“Good morning, sir,” Stanforth said.
executive Deputy Burandt sat beside him. “Where are we?”
Stanforth took a sip of his soda. Birds stirred and chittered in the
trees behind their bench. “DSTI is locked down tight,” he said. “Not a
problem.”
“All military assets are secure?”
The word
SharDhara
sprang immediately to mind. Castillo had
asked about it, and Stanforth had lied right back.
Nope, doesn’t mean a
thing.
how could it? Most of the civilian players directly involved had
been eliminated. how Dr. Jacobson had learned about the field test,
he’d have to figure out later. erdman maintained all toxins were secure.
Now there were more pressing matters. “Doesn’t seem to be about
those,” he lied again. “This seems to be about the boys only.”
“Make damn sure. how bad is it?”
Stanforth had decided to remain quiet about Jacobson’s secretly
adopted clones. Those could all be gotten rid of neatly under separate
cover. Besides, there was no way his solution to that new problem would
be approved, anyway.
Easier to ask forgiveness than acquire permission.
Best
to stick with the original situation. “Thirteen dead,” he said. “Nine kids.
Maybe three hostages.”
“Wonderful.”
“It’s messy, but it’ll clean up quietly and hastily. Most of the dead
officially never even existed. It helps. After our chat here, I’ve got other
appointments to array a few resources nearby, and then I’m heading
straight back to New Jersey to oversee any remaining tidying onsite.”
“And the . . . the ‘boys’?”
Stanforth nodded. “A couple of scared teenagers. It’s probable that
one of the chief geneticists, Dr. Gregory Jacobson, is helping them. Appears he’s been planning this for years and may have a few resources of
his own already set aside. But, he’s also off his rocker. We’ll find them.”
“Then what?”
“you really want to know?”
“No.”
Stanforth leaned back.
“What do you need?” the executive deputy asked.
“keep the fBI off my ass. If they arrest one of our targets or a
teenaged John Doe, freeze it. These kids probably shot their kill wad
already. If not, help keep it off
Nancy Grace
. If anyone starts asking why
DNA from a guy who’s been dead for twenty years is showing up, ditto.”
“Jesus h. Christ, Stanforth. fucking clones?”
Stanforth smiled. “you really want to know?”
Burandt executive deputy squinted into the sun. Shook his head. “I
want this entire undertaking, this damned company, shut down. Today.
eradicated. Permanently.”
“No,” replied Stanforth. “you don’t.”
The executive deputy turned, glaring. “Look, you son of—”
“Most r&D dollars go right down the fucking drain. you know it, I
know it. Ninety percent of this shit never leads to anything. We’ve funneled DSTI maybe fifty million over the last decade. Pocket change.”
he counted off with his free fingers. “In return, you’ve got the 5hIAA
toxin, IrAX11, biodrones . . .”
Easier to ask forgiveness . . .
“IrAX11was terminated.”
Stanforth shrugged. Jacobson, it seemed, had somehow gotten a
lot of intel about SharDhara. results. recommendations. Chatterjee,
undoubtedly, must have gotten to him before they’d safeguarded against
such leaks.
Before the fine Dr. Chatterjee went bye-bye.
“Doesn’t change the
fact that it worked,” he said. “Let’s not toss out too many babies with the
bathwater.”
“fine. But get this cleaned up. how long?”
Stanforth set his cup down on the ground. “Don’t know.”
“unacceptable. We’re giving you forty-eight hours.”
“And then?” Stanforth provoked.
There was, as expected, no answer.
He
was the answer.
“Bin Laden took thirteen fuckin’ years,” Stanforth said. “And half
this goddamned building was looking for him. This is the real world,
partner. If the assholes at CNN and fox don’t understand that, I’m
quite certain you do.”
Burandt snorted his accord.
“I’ve got my best man working on it,” Stanforth assured him. Those
few he knew as good or better than Castillo were engaged halfway
across the world or still with the DOD. Castillo was perfect. Close,
self-employed, and desperate. easy to discard, if necessary, when it was
all over. “And if he doesn’t get the job done, the kids will be dead in a
couple months anyway.”
“Why so confident?”
“how much you know about Dolly?”
“The sheep?”
“her lab name—her real name—was 6LL3. Died at six years old.
Most sheep live to twelve. But there were giant black tumors growing
inside 6LL3’s chest. And her legs already had arthritis. She couldn’t
stop coughing blood. So they put her down. In the biopsy, they found
surprisingly shortened telomeres, the parts of the cell connected to age,
and figured these midget telomeres were passed on from the ‘parent,’
who was six years old when the DNA was taken. Genetically, Dolly was
already six years old the day she was born. Weird, huh?”
“So what? These boys are already in their fifties . . . or?”
“Let’s just say they’re closer to death than we are. Special prescriptions are given by DSTI to suppress the deterioration, the tumors.”
“This . . . this Jacobson character probably covered that.”
“Appears none of the medication was taken. he either forgot about
it in all the excitement, which I doubt, or he wants them to die as much
as we do.”
“Why would he want that? And, I don’t want anyone to—”
“Sure you do,” Stanforth stopped him. “If you don’t want to know,
then don’t know. But don’t dare drop platitudes from the sidelines. At
the very least, these damned kids deserve your honesty. you want them
as dead and gone as I do. As to Jacobson, who knows. Maybe he figures
it’ll end soon enough anyway. A couple of months, worst case. But we’ll
find them before that.”
“fine.” Burandt stood, patted a wrinkle from his shirt. “‘Worst case.’
how much damage can they do in the meantime?”
Stanforth looked up from his sunglasses. “There’ve been more than
sixteen thousand murders in the u.S. in the past twelve months. Almost
a hundred thousand rapes.”
The executive deputy nodded.
Stanforth shrugged. “What’s another fifty?”