Cain's Blood (9 page)

Before that, it had only been a suspicion,
prompted by that inimitable nervous tickle in her
stomach that hinted that she might now be in a

threatening situation, that something bad could happen. Could. But not
fear. Not yet. Not nearly enough to make you grab your two children
and run screaming for the car. That’d be too embarrassing.

The two cars pulled in beside each other on the gravel parking lot.
Both filled with kids, teenagers. Mostly all boys.
Why come to a playground?
A girl among them. Older. Dirty hair hung over her eyes. Moving strangely.

Ashley turned back to find her daughter still winding through the
top of the park’s small wooden castle. She absently handed little Michael
another pretzel stick and looked back toward where two other mothers
had been having a picnic lunch with their own children. Was overly relieved when she saw they were still there, chatting away.

“Pox,” Michael burbled beside her. “Pox.” Pox, Tik, Mop. The everevolving official language of young Michael Steins, fifteen months.
Made-up words she collected in a small diary to share with him someday.

“Pox,” she smiled. “Pretzels.”
Michael giggled.
Two of the boys had already taken seats at the swings and were

using their feet to twist themselves up in the chains. Another pair was
wrestling atop the seesaw.
Fine,
Ashley thought. Only trying to recapture some half-remembered joy of childhood. first weeks of summer
vacation. Very holden Caulfield. They’ll be bored in five minutes. The
girl was probably just high.

Ashley fumbled for her cellphone, half remembered she’d left it
in the car. She started packing their things. “honey,” she called out
to Cassie. “honey?” Wanting to get her attention without using her
name. Why, she wondered, was that suddenly so important? her
daughter moving away from her deeper into the castle. Ashley stood
and trailed after her. Clapped her hands. “honey, come on now. Time
to go.”

her daughter turned. “Whyyyyy?” she whined from the top parapet, her dark pigtails hanging over a yellow dress.
“Come down, honey. hurry up.”
The four-year-old scrunched her face in displeasure.
Closer, several of them looked older than teenagers. young men.
“Come on.” Ashley waved her down. Can’t get up there quick
enough. “We’ll get ice creams on the way home.”
“Mikey, too!”
Don’t say his name, baby. Don’t say his damned name.
“yes, yes. Let’s go now, honey.”
A horrible sound. Van doors shutting.
Ashley spun around. The other table suddenly empty. The other
mothers VANISheD. The other children already somehow collected,
small bags of books, toys, McCalls and Pringles already packed. Their
SuV somehow at this very moment backing slowly out of the long
gravel parking lot. Leaving her alone.
With
them
.
She turned back to her daughter and almost collapsed to the ground
as the whole park seemed to tilt. She was gone. her daughter. Where

God, this is really happening.
Ashley approached the castle like a half-formed ghost.
She’s gone. She’s really gone. What have these monsters done to my—
“Shit!”
her daughter appeared with a squeal at the bottom of the green

tube, sliding to the end until her feet dangled above the mulched
ground.
“Cassie . . . God damn it!”
“What, Mommy?” She climbed off the slide.
“Nothing.” Ashley fought the urge to collapse again. “I’m sorry,
baby. Come on, let’s go.” yanking her back toward the picnic table.
She saw the clown then. Standing perfectly still by the cars. A demonic scarecrow.
Watching her. And her children.
My children.
A red suit with white frills and buttons and a matching red hat.
huge blue triangular eyes like a jack-o’-lantern. Its mouth bloodred and
covering the entire bottom half of the face. In the shape of an enormous
smile.
Now, she knew.
Scooping up the rest of their things and slinging the bag over her
shoulder. Dragging little Michael in one arm, pulling her daughter with
the other.
“Pox,” Michael said. “Pox!”
“In the car, baby. hush now.”
She looked up at the swing set, clearly saw the girl there for the first
time. A woman. her “boyfriend” slowly and mechanically pushing her
swing from behind. The woman’s face masked behind grimy hair, head
drooped to the side. What Ashley had thought was a shirt was not. The
woman was nude from the waist up. What she’d figured was a shirt’s
pattern was dried blood.
“What’s wrong, Mommy?”
Ashley staggered forward to her car. Michael started crying.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?”
“Shut up,” she hissed, wrenching her daughter closer. “Please, baby,
just . . .”
One of the boys laughed.
She’d reached the car.
“Pox,” Michael yelped again. “Pox!”
“Pox,” Ashley replied in a half laugh that shuddered through her
whole body. “Pretzels. That’s right, baby.”
She had the door half open when they finally stopped her.
The first boy squatted down to playfully wave a finger at her daughter. The girl’s eyes were wide, her grip on Ashley’s hand like a vise.
Another boy reached out and touched Ashley’s mouth.
“Please . . . ,” she stammered over his probing fingers.
Around the back of the car, a third shape moving toward them.
A horrible thing made of white and blue and red. One she’d somehow been waiting for.
“Pox.” The clown smiled at them in a bloody grin that now filled
the whole world. “Pox?”
Michael giggled.

STI was founded by Dr. William Asbury and incorporated
in 1977. Its chief executive officer was Dr. Thomas rolich, M.D., Ph.D. Its director of research was Dr. Gregory
Jacobson, recipient of the Zonta Science Award and The
Genetics Society of America’s prestigious Novitski Prize for “exhibiting

an extraordinary level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity in genetic
scholarship and application.” Castillo lifted this from DSTI’s corporate
website.

The rest came from Brody. Pete Brody had worked on half a dozen

missions with Castillo as the chief analyst from the DI, the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, and was now working in the private sector,
something to do with Wall Street. his choice, but he’d still seemed
genuinely interested when Castillo had called earlier. “I’ll see what I can
find,” he’d said.

Ten hours later, and Castillo had info DSTI had not quite included
on its website. “They were acquired as a subsidiary by BioStar in 1990
to obtain several of DSTI’s cloning patents,” Pete reported. “BioStar is
a subsidiary of Goodwin Bio-Med, formed by the Nerney Institute in
’87. Nerney’s a sister company of Terngo engineering, who designs and
builds vehicles and industrial machinery for the u.S. Defense Department.”

The boy, Jeffrey, still lay asleep in a bed across the room. At least he
looked asleep. Castillo wasn’t sure. The kid had dozed off a couple times
in the car, but for no more than a couple minutes. Probably needed to
sleep for a
week
. It had been a long day crisscrossing Pennsylvania to
search the local malls, convenience stores, and high schools. They’d
even checked out several local paintball fields. Shown pictures of the six
escapees and Dr. Jacobson to fifty-plus kids. Questioned various store
managers. Nothing.

he’d gotten maybe an hour of sleep himself.
Maybe
. he wasn’t sure.
Like that, his chronic insomnia had reverted from being a disorder
worth fighting back to an occupational advantage.

he’d pulled into the motel around 1900. Dyed and cut the Jacobson
kid’s hair. Wasn’t sure if DSTI or anyone else would be looking for him,
but the kid’s father had convinced him he was dead meat—a “liability,”
the kid had quoted—if he was caught. Maybe the boy took some comfort in the fact that Castillo hadn’t killed him yet. Castillo doubted it.
Since erdman hadn’t been particularly forthcoming with the knowledge
of Jeff Jacobson’s
existence,
Castillo felt no real compunction to share
with erdman what, or
who,
he’d found. for now, he’d get what he could
out of the kid and turn him back over to DSTI when the idea wasn’t so
repugnant.

If he could get anything at all, that is. The malls and paintball fields
had been a bust, and the kid’d looked catatonic throughout, in fullblown, understandable shock. After the haircut and dye job, Castillo
had had him look at some more of his father’s journals, see if anything
made any sense, and that hadn’t gone much better than the first time.
The boy barely read them, had mostly looked like he’d wanted to throw
up.
Who could blame him?
Castillo felt the same way and had never even
met Gregory Jacobson. While this lunatic was this fucking kid’s father
and the guy—

“Intimately.” Castillo had lived within their version of reality for ten
years. everything from lodging and meals to laundry, Internet access
and gym equipment. They were halliburton’s little brother, but with
a forty-thousand-person staff, including foreign mercenaries, not by
much.

“Annual revenue of one hundred billion dollars,” Brody said, “including an additional ten billion a year from the u.S. Department of
Defense.”

“That’s a lot of money to trickle down.”
“‘Tis. DSTI is also partially and directly funded by Johns hopkins
university, which receives another two billion annually for federally
funded research and development. Mostly, again, from the DOD.”
“Incredible.”
“remember, Castillo, it’s simply a giant global shell game meant to
hide one thing from all of us: The money.”
“And the monsters,” Castillo said. “Anything else?”
“There’ve been some deaths.”
“Go on.”
“There was a plane crash ten years ago. Three DSTI geneticists
and a marketing VP. Twin-engine Beechcraft king Air over kentucky
heading to a conference in Nashville. The NTSB concluded likely cause
was the flight crew’s failure to maintain adequate airspeed, which led to
an aerodynamic stall. None of the other typical causes of a small-plane
accident—engine failure, icing, pilot error—appeared to have been
involved. The company plane was not required to have a cockpit voice
recorder.”
“Convenient.”
“And a couple of suicides.”
Castillo nodded against the phone, focusing his thoughts. A “couple” didn’t sound too bad, not when each year more vets killed themselves than died in actual combat. “how many?” he said.
“Three. Over the last twelve years. Above average for a company
that size, statistically.”
“Suspicious otherwise?”
“Aren’t they always?”
“No.” Castilllo had heard enough. “That it?”
“Most recent suicide was a Dr. Chatterjee, Sanjay Chatterjee. hung
himself two years ago. family started a fuss, wouldn’t believe he’d do
such a thing, but then they vanished back into India. Need more?”
“Might later. Is that cool?”
“‘Tis. you want the names of the other dead employees?”
“email ’em to me. Thanks, Pete.” Castillo ended the call.
he watched Jeff again. The teen looked remarkably peaceful. Castillo couldn’t remember ever being that young.
he checked his phone for the time. kristin had sent a text message
midday that she would call him back directly before ten. An hour from
now.
No response yet from Ox. Probably never would be. It’d been a
long shot anyway.
Ox was another war pal he’d first met in the field almost fifteen
years ago. If erdman and Stanforth didn’t know who or what SharDhara was, Ox was an
hombre
who just might. he was a notorious enthusiast and purveyor of government cover-ups and conspiracies and
one of those individuals who always knew a guy who knew another guy
who knew . . . and so on. Always good for the latest bit of military gossip, even as paranoid as some of his musing often got. The real trouble
with Ox was getting hold of him. When he’d retired, he’d more or less
vanished with a bunch of other survivalist whackballs into the hills of
Tennessee, or West Virginia, or someplace. Castillo hadn’t seen him in
years, and they’d only spoken on the phone once since his own return
to the States. he did still have specific directions on how to contact
the man using a special nym server with an untraceable email address,
PGP key pairs, and some anonymous remailer based in Norway.
Insane
.
his email to Ox had probably gone straight to Santa’s workshop in the
North Pole. As he’d hit Send in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, only
one thing had been for sure: If he did somehow actually get hold of the
guy, only he and Ox would ever know it. Anything less, and the man
would never contact him back. Part of his charm, Castillo supposed.
he checked the fBI feed again for any new crimes, made some
unproductive notes, and then rummaged back through the images of
Jacobson’s journals for another hour before his phone rang as promised.
he rushed for the door.
“hey,” Castillo said, stepping outside quietly. It was surprisingly
warm, the day’s heat still lurking on the night’s breeze. he surveyed the
mostly vacant lot. his perusal widened to the traffic on the bordering
streets, no direction seeming any more promising than another beneath
the reddened moon. “Thanks for getting back so—”
“I’ve looked at the files you sent,” she said. Paused.
“Thanks, I  .  .  .” Too many thoughts folded in on him again, and
nothing he could say to her. he cast his eyes back to the ground. “What
can you tell me?”
There was another pause. enough that he knew she was still deciding if she should lecture him, hang up, or just give him the info he’d
asked for and continue on with her life. “how much of the situation
can
you share?” she asked, choosing Option Three. “Any?”
“Just know I gotta find these guys.”
“Ok, look: All six are classic loners, with documented sociopathic
tendencies ranging from just-above common all the way to full-blown
psychopathic monster. Three are lacking almost every benchmark of
ordinary human social development. And some of these numbers, to be
honest, don’t even make sense to me. how well do you understand the
terms?”
“
Sociopath
?
Psycho
? Assumed they were the same thing.”
“They’re similar but different disorders, especially in the way they
manifest. Which could help you know what to look for. even though
they’re always lumped together, you should probably understand the
two beyond some vague
Webster’s
definition before you go much further.”
“It’s why I called you.” he’d found the outside stairs leading to the
motel’s second and top floor. he took them unhurriedly, stretching his
legs, relishing the feeling of warm air against his skin. yet somehow still
cramped, chilled. Nervous.
“All right. About one half of one percent of Americans could be diagnosed as sociopaths or psychopaths. So says the National Institute of
Mental health.”
“Two million psycho killers?”
She laughed softly, the sound tender and familiar. “Not at all. There
are degrees to everything. Ninety-eight percent of that two million are
only sociopaths, and most sociopaths are little more than flaming assholes.”
“Skip the technical jargon, please.”
“Guys with no regard for the feelings and rights of others. Care
only about Number One, steal for the hell of it, moody guys who screw
over coworkers, start bar fights out of boredom, won’t talk to their
kids . . . that kind of thing. True psychopaths are much, much rarer. The
difference is important, and also horrible.”
“Go on.”
“first how they’re the same. They both manipulate to get what
they desire with no true sense of right or wrong. See people as targets,
opportunities, and believe the cliché that the end always justifies the
means. And so lie with almost every breath. And steal. And sometimes
even rape or kill. Both are unable to empathize with their victims’ pain,
and even hold
contempt
for their victims’ distress. Oblivious to the devastation they cause, lacking remorse, shame. Both usually surface by age
fifteen; often cruel to animals, have an inflated sense of self, no awareness of personal boundaries. feel entitled, spoiled. Shallow emotions,
incapacity for love. Need stimulation and enjoy living on the edge, and
believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, and warranted in every wish.
Both carry a deep rage.”
“Copy. how different?”
“Sociopaths have a life history of behavioral and academic difficulties. They’re less organized; they struggle in school and work. They’ll
often appear nervous and easily agitated. They act spontaneously in inappropriate ways without thinking through the consequences. So, they
typically live on the fringes of society, without solid or consistent economic support. They have problems making friends, keeping jobs, tend
to move around a lot. Since they disregard most rules and social mores,
their crimes are typically spontaneous because they don’t give one damn
and
don’t care if you know it. The prisons are filled with these guys.
Most of us would not be comfortable with a sociopath in the room. you
would totally know he was there.”
“But not so Mr. Psychopath.”
“you got it. Mr. Psychopath, as you say, is extremely organized,
secretive, and manipulative. While he also has no regard for society’s
rules, he
understands
them. he’s studied them for years like it’s a job,
and he can mimic the right behaviors to make himself
appear
normal,
even charismatic and charming. he’s often well educated, can maintain
a family and steady work. he’s learned The Game, and he’s playing it
to win using our own rules against us. you would be comfortable with
a psychopath in the room because you would never know he was even
there.”
“Would
you
? I mean, could you spot one in a room?”
“Doubt it. I might. here’s a tip they taught us at Columbia. Watch
the hands. When normal people are struggling for a word, maybe the
name of an obscure actor or, like, a foreign phrase from some language
they half know, we often make those little circles with our hands or fingers, right? It’s natural. It helps stimulate the segment of the brain that
finds and makes sense of unfamiliar words. for serial killers, however,
almost
every
word and phrase is an unfamiliar bunch of lines. All of the
crap normal people say to get through the day: ‘yes, I’ll be at work on
time tomorrow,’ ‘yes, it IS a gorgeous day,’ ‘yes, I love you, too’ . . . they
might as well be speaking Greek. As they’re
always
struggling for the
‘right’ words, they often employ their hands to help, and a killer’s wrists
and fingers can get spinning like little windmills to get through the next
twenty seconds’ interaction normally. If you see that, think of it as the
start of a witch’s spell.”
“And get the hell out. Interesting.” he’d noticed that Jeff’s shrugs
and grunts were his go-to mode of communication, rather than actual
sentences. he’d written it off to being fifteen and terrified, but . . . “exactly what I was looking for. Anything else you can tell me about this
language thing?”
“Sure, Ok. In one test, people were given a huge list of words randomly selected from three categories. Made up words like
frizzdirt
and
champstal
and more common words like
pencil
and
canoe.
And then words
like
mother,
and
peaceful,
and
lonely.
Words that have deeper and complicated meanings. A pencil is just a pencil, but
mother
and
lonely
have six
billion nuanced meanings that could keep you up talking all night if you
were talking with the right person.”
“yes,” he agreed, maybe a little too quickly, not caring if she read
too much into it.
“Ok, so in the test, they flash these words up at the testee, and
when he recognizes it’s a real word or not, he hits a certain button, and
it records how fast he identified it. for normal people, the third category was always the fastest, by about thirty percent across the board.
They’d see
grandpa,
or
country,
or
love
and know instantly:
That’s
a word,
Bam, button pressed. Next. But for the tested serial killers, the psychopaths, not so much. for these guys, there was no difference between the
time to recognize
pencil
and the time to recognize
mother.
None. It took
the exact same amount of time. The doctors’ conclusion was simple and
unanimous: The two categories clearly meant about the same to the serial killers. They were nothing special, merely more words in the world.
Mother
and
love
were as meaningless to a serial killer as
pencil
or
canoe
were to normal people.”
“I wonder if the doctors got it wrong.”
“how do you mean?”
Castillo thought a second. “Maybe the exact opposite was true.
Maybe the times were exactly the same because to a killer trivial words
like
pencil
and
canoe
actually have
more
meaning than they do to the rest
of us. Maybe for him, every damn word counts.”
“Maybe. I see higher-than-average IQ and WAIS-IV intelligene
scores here. Most of the files you sent, however, are tracking MAOA
levels and testosterone. More interest in their balls than their brains,
and these guys all seem to be males,
cubed
. A lot of potential violence
here.”
“What do you know about the ‘XP11’ gene?”
“Not familiar. What’s that?”
“Some kind of coding gene thing that affects dopamine levels.”
“Ok, right. yes, the ‘anger gene.’ I have read about it. Something
to do with the MAOA gene. Makes perfect sense.” A short, tense pause.
Then words again, too casual. “What in God’s name are you working
on, Shawn?”
“I’ll be done soon. What can you tell me about the individual boys?”
“fine. Subject David, is it? yes . . .”
David. The one Jeff thought was “chill.” “yes.”
“Start here because I can tell you he’s probably the least of your
worries based on these annotations. has some sociopath tendencies,
but he’s more midlevel antisocial personality than anything. Nomadic.
Schizoid, avoidant features. Nothing a program of risperidone couldn’t
take care of.”
“An antipsychotic? Didn’t think you liked the drugs, Doc.”
“Don’t usually. But sometimes it makes sense.”
“Would he travel with a pack? Work in a group?”
“Probably not by choice. These notes are fractional, but I’m still
surmising an almost complete lack of interest in social relationships, a
tendency toward a solitary lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness.
he’s not into the group scene. Of course, he’s also a teenager and so
quite drawn, and susceptible, to peer influence.”
“Anything else?”
“Just more numbers otherwise. Biochemical analysis. Drugs, I assume. Not sure what, but they’re obviously testing something on several
of these guys.”
“Would that surprise you? Preclinical testing on kids? Psychological
experiments. That kind of thing.”
“Sadly, not at all. Seventy percent of foster kids are on some kind
of state-sanctioned behavioral medication, with a lot of it still officially
in test mode. There’s some evidence we’ve tested AIDS meds on these
foster kids also. But that’s the meds. The experiments are far worse.”
You have no idea.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“The university of Iowa once got hold of twenty orphans for a
study on emotional reinforcement. half stuttered, and half spoke perfectly normally. The stutterers were praised for their speaking skills and
the normal-speaking kids were mocked and scolded for their ‘terrible
speech.’ This went on for months. While the stutterers showed no significant change in facilities, the normal-speaking kids now all stuttered.
every one of them. The experiment got the nickname ‘The Monster
Study.’ ”