Project Cain (27 page)

Eventually the car door opened. A man climbed out.

A teenager.

Jacobson? Castillo murmured my name, calling me closer. Away from the darkness.

Below, I got a perfect look at the driver.

I recognized the kid completely. One of the original six from Massey.

It was Henry.

•  •  •

Castillo told me to get the car. I totally froze. The car, he said again.

He handed me the keys. His voice hadn’t changed at all. If anything, he sounded even calmer than usual. I would have preferred if he were cursing and yelling at me. THIS Castillo was somehow scarier. This was the same Castillo who’d calmly beaten the shit out of four guys. He told me where he’d last parked the car. I didn’t know if I could even make it out of the room, I was so far out of it. That memory, the screaming gulls, the blood, it all . . .

I blathered some kind of response, not sure if he really wanted me to—

Castillo stopped me.

He said: Albaum’s family was killed in minutes.

He said: I’m not letting that happen here.

He said:
We’re
not.

He said: Go!

We’re not.

I liked that. Needed, really. I
needed
that.

I’d never run so fast in my life.

•  •  •

I was gasping for air by the time I reached the car. Felt like acid was pumping through my whole body and I could hardly even get the key in the door. Took, like, a hundred times.

Finally I got inside. Sat down. Got my hands on the wheel. SHIT!
Finally remembered I’d never driven before. My temps and lessons planned for the summer had been swept aside by a more “distracted” father. (By a man losing his mind . . . )

I tried to chill. Told myself driving wasn’t anything. Put the key in the ignition. Car started right up. So far, so good. Fumbled with the gear shift, found DRIVE. Foot on gas. The car pulled forward and everything. Coasted about two miles an hour down the street and eventually somehow made the necessary turn to the corner of Ashbridge and OldeGate. Totally ran onto someone’s lawn as I stomped on the brake and the car shuddered to a stop.

I couldn’t see anything down the street. The Sizemore house, Henry’s blue car, and half the block lost beneath a low dip in the road. Thought about getting out of the car to see. Did Castillo want me to just wait in the car or what? My eyes darted about the car’s various mirrors, a hundred angles showing more of nothing.

Looked down to study the gearshift, finally found PARK.

By the time I looked up, a car was passing. A dark blue car.

And Henry was driving.

I froze. I’d met Henry a dozen times at DSTI. But in less than a month, he already looked like a different kid. Older.
Darker
. Maybe it wasn’t even him (wishful thinking). Because if Henry turned right then and saw me . . .

But the car totally passed. Kept going.

I’d already collapsed against the steering wheel.

The car door flew open. I cursed, scared.

It was Castillo yelling at me to get out of the way. So I scooted over, and Castillo hopped in and tossed the car into reverse and pulled a quick K-turn that would have made stuntmen applaud. Castillo told
me Henry had just knocked at the door, talked to the Sizemore dad for a minute, and then taken off again.

Castillo thought he was just casing the place and would probably come back later with the other guys.

To free Gary Sizemore. And to kill again.

•  •  •

We followed Henry’s car. Just like in the movies. Always a couple of cars back.

I could easily imagine Castillo doing the same in some car over in the Middle East. Slowly weaving through some crowded Baghdad street. Guy looked like he was having fun. His specific prey right in front of him now for the first time in years, I figured.

He called his Department of Defense boss and told him he was pursuing Henry in Hitchcock, Indiana.

For the first time it really hit me that
I’d
done this. I’m the one who’d figured out the town and the family that had a clone. I’M the one who’d captured Henry and probably the others. And I’d figured out more of the clues too. Working with Castillo, I really could fix this whole thing. Get everything back to normal.

Or whatever the new normal was going to be. But something NOT this.

At the VERY least we’d found one of the original six.

A murderer. A guy who’d killed teachers and classmates.

At the VERY least, we’d found Henry.

•  •  •

About Henry.

He was seventeen. His adopted name was Henry Roberts.

His Clone Name was Henry/61. One of SEVENTY Henrys made
in DSTI’s laboratories. Sixty alone had died in various Ukrainian girls’ wombs. (Quite normal for clones. The miscarriages, I mean.)

His Parent Gene (his original DNA) was that of Henry Lee Lucas.

Henry Lee Lucas murdered about a hundred people.

Lucas’s first victim was his own mother. He was twenty-four. He’d used a knife.

Of course, when Lucas was a boy, she beat him and his brother so badly, they often went into comas that lasted days. One beating, Henry Lee lost an eye. She would have sex with men in front of her children. She’d dress her son up in girl’s clothing and encourage the men to touch him. One day, the teachers at school gave him a teddy bear, and when he got home, his mother beat him for “accepting charity.” (And I’m not saying it’s right that he killed her. Only, I suppose, that it maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise for either of them.)

After his mom, Henry drifted along between the southern highways and towns from Florida to Texas. Killing and killing until he was caught in 1983. Lucas was supposed to be executed, but the governor of Texas at the time (that’d be one George W. Bush), changed his
death penalty sentence to life in jail. Lucas was the only Texas inmate on death row ever to get this pardon. All the rest were executed.

Why? Because my father made a phone call. That’s why.

See, when George W. Bush was the governor of Texas,
his
father was president and an ex-director of the CIA. Word trickled up, and then down again, that a little company outside Philadelphia doing work for the Department of Defense wanted Henry Lee Lucas to stick around a little longer. Done.

The next batch of Henrys showed up just two years later.

I always thought Henry, Henry Roberts, was a dick. He’d do stupid things like fart on you or run his thumb between your ass cheeks as you walked past. He’d call you over to look at something on the Internet, and it’d always be something gross and sexual. I hated when he was at Massey. I hated being around him.

But I didn’t know everything about him then. I do now.

Or enough.

I know that Henry Roberts was “adopted” out to a woman DSTI found somehow.

I know she was paid to beat him. Paid to dress him up as a girl.

I know she was paid to have sex in front of him with men. And sometimes the men would do stuff to Henry, too.

I know that somewhere in the tristate area,
another
“Henry” was adopted out to
another
family who never did a thing to him. They were paid to raise him as tenderly as possible. To dote on him. Spoil him. With love. (Guess money CAN buy you love after all).

DSTI, my father, did this to determine if there’d be a difference in the end.

Nature/Nurture.

Did the NATURE of our genetic makeup determine who individuals eventually became? OR was it the NURTURE of our environment and upbringing? Or, likely, if it was some combination of the two, was one the more dominant influence?

One of the world’s oldest and deepest questions still being sorted out, it seemed.

Would BOTH Henrys end up with knives in the their hands in the end?

Would the violence inside grow if nurtured properly?

This is what the Department of Defense was doing with its money.

•  •  •

I didn’t want to know any of this.

I didn’t want to know anything about what was really going on.

I didn’t want to know how the world really worked.

I wanted to be clueless like everybody else.

•  •  •

We followed him for maybe half an hour. Castillo hadn’t made a single sound, and I followed his lead. Henry did a Burger King drive-through and then finally turned into something called the Paddy Creek Park. Castillo drove past and doubled back after a few minutes.

Henry had parked and already vanished. The rest of the parking lot was empty. The summer sun had dipped behind the heavy trees that surrounded the park.

Castillo parked far away from Henry’s car and got out. Told me to stay put.

He handed me his cell with a number already punched in. Told me to call it if he wasn’t back in ten minutes. To tell them Paddy Creek.

I assumed “them” was the Department of Defense. Or DSTI.
Technically different players in all of this, but still on the same team as far as I was concerned.

Castillo said: You don’t have to be here when they arrive.

It occurred to me finally that Castillo could be coming up on four, five, six ruthless killers. Bred for their violence. Already killed before. Sure, I’d seen Castillo handle those dirtballs at the motel, but this . . . this was something else entirely.

I wished I could help him. Get out of the car and go into that park with him. But there was nothing I could do now. I’d done enough. Or, if not enough, maybe I’d done all I really could.

I just said: Be careful.

Castillo nodded and started off into the park.

He’d been gone about a minute. Alone, phone.

I figured it was a good time to call my dad.

•  •  •

Hello? Is there—

Dad? Dad!

It’s Jeff. Yeah, I . . . I’m in Hitchcock.

Yeah. Yeah. I figured out
The Birds
and—

Yes, I saw him.

I figured out some of the other clues too. I—

Oh. I figured you wanted me to—

OK. Then OK. Fine. Henry is here too.

Yes. I don’t know.

Where are YOU?

Fine. I guess it doesn’t matter anyway.

Hey, I want . . . I need to ask you a question.

Why me?

Why ME? Why Dahmer? You could have chosen any of them.

It matters to me.

OK.

Well, that’s not what—

No. I haven’t.

No. I won’t.

You’re wrong.

Why can’t I? How much worse?

But, Dad—

Yeah. Bye.

I
’d gotten out of the car and made off in the same general direction that Castillo’d gone. Couldn’t stay in that car one minute longer by myself. I followed along the upper road, with the park down below. I passed Henry’s blue car and wandered deeper into the park. There were picnic tables and then some restrooms and a playground to my right. And trails vanishing deeper into the woods. To my left, a gravel drive down to a wide open space of some kind. The thought of going into the woods didn’t appeal, so I went left. Good choice.

The path overlooked a small outdoor amphitheater. The seats were long descending rows of grass marked off with sunken wood planks. Below, a concrete stage four feet off the ground, covered with a simple wood roof. Perfect for a small concert or something.

Tonight’s show was something altogether different.

There was Henry right up on the stage. Something at his feet.

A body.

Wrapped in an old blue tarp.

Castillo was at the far right side of the stage. He was talking to Henry. The specific words lost in the distance between them and me. Talking, yes, but Castillo also had his gun out.

I crept behind a tree and watched.

Watched them talk more. Watched Henry pull out a knife.

Watched Henry crouch down to grab hold of the body.

A woman, I saw clearly now.

Castillo getting closer.

Henry shouting. Lifting the knife.

Castillo shooting. Henry folding over sideways like he had no bones.

Castillo rushing to Henry’s body. Trying to stop the bleeding. Trying CPR. Cursing.

Henry dying anyway.