Shadows Fall (30 page)

“Brandon Meyers is the most obvious with his double blood type. Then we have Dallas Wade. The hermaphroditism is something that could have come from a genetic mutation like chimerism, but I also found something interesting in her medical records.”

“What?” Charlie asked. I could hear the impatience crackling in his voice. I was sure he barely resisted the urge to hurry Karen along.

“She’d been rejected a couple of times by UNOS. They cited that her body was an ‘inhospitable environment’ for a donor organ, which would likely result in a rejection. Extensive testing was done, and the findings showed that tissue from her liver—the one that was failing—was not a genetic match with tissues from other parts of her body. So Ms. Wade was, in fact, a documented human
chimaera
.”

“I’m sorry if you’ve already answered this before… this is all kind of overwhelming. What are the other things that can be signs of chimerism?” I asked.

“Well any genetic defect warrants further inspection, but anything with duality—the two blood types, two genetic sequences. Then there are the more cosmetic mutations like mosaicism—that’s two different skin tones—and heterochromia iridum. Even albinism can be caused by chimerism. That’s why I suspect Talika Ross was a chimera as well. Though a lot of her skin was mutilated, it was clear that she had some unusual hypopigmentation.”

Again something sparked in my brain, pulling me to glance over at Talika who hovered in the corner of the room. “Tell me what heterochromia is again,” I mumbled without taking my eyes off the beautiful African girl’s face.

“It’s when a person has two different color eyes. It can show up in two different ways. Either one iris is a different color than the other, or there are patches of a different eye color within the main color of the iris. Actually…”

I heard her shuffle closer, but I still didn’t look at her. I stared at Talika, and my ears started buzzing.

“Actually, like yours, Titus. The way you have one little patch of brown on each iris, even though your eye color is technically blue—that’s heterochromia.”

I nodded. I knew what my eyes looked like, so I wasn’t interested in that little tidbit. I was interested in Talika Ross’ eyes, more specifically, the blue one. “Hers were like that,” I said, picking up the conversation as if we’d never stopped talking about Talika specifically.

“What? Who?” Charlie asked.

“Talika. The missing eye, it was blue. Just about the same shade as mine.”

“Are you sure?” Karen asked.

I was starting to shiver because rapid-fire images had begun to bombard my brain again. “Yes, I… um… I think I need to stop—for now.”

Charlie was immediately by my side, gripping my upper arm and helping me into a chair, just as my legs decided to rebel. Panting, I took off my chain, leaned over, and put my head between my legs, while Charlie rubbed comforting circles across my back.

“Sorry,” I said between labored breaths. “Sometimes it just gets a little overwhelming.”

“You did great. No need to apologize. We’ve got a lot more things to look into now.”

“Exactly,” Karen agreed, placating, but it wasn’t unappreciated. “I mean, we can be fairly certain that the chimerism, or at least genetic mutations, are the common thread among the victims. That’s huge.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “Now if we can just find out how he’s finding them and how he subdues them so they don’t struggle, we’ll be golden.” He clapped his hands together excitedly. “We’re closing in, I can feel it.”

My head came up, and I narrowed my eyes at Charlie. “Wait… you—you don’t know how they’re taken? I thought you knew. I can tell you that.”

“Oh come
on
,” David hissed from his corner. “Just like that, you just know?”

“Hush, David,” Karen said. “Titus, have you seen it?”

“Yeah. I mean, at first I wasn’t sure what they…well, I wasn’t sure what I was seeing. But he injects them with something. With Brandon and…um, Jade, it was in the neck, but I’m not sure about the others. Whatever it is, it paralyzes them. They can’t move a muscle, but all of their senses are intact. They can see him, feel everything he does to them, but they can’t do anything about it. It’s horrifying,” I said with a shudder. I didn’t want to think about it anymore, or remember how it felt when I’d dreamed it was me.

“A paralytic,” Karen said.

“But you said nothing showed up on the tox screen,” Charlie argued.

“Nothing that the generic panel tests for showed up. Or it could be a substance that dissipates quickly so that there’s no sign of it in the blood stream, and therefore it wouldn’t show on the test. If we can come up with some compounds that behave the way Titus explained, we may be able to rerun it through the mass spectrometer and test against those specifically.”

“Great, so at least we have a plan of attack now,” Charlie said, still rubbing my back. “We’ll brainstorm about what drugs could have been used and in the meantime, we’ll check with Riot about the binary idea. Hopefully one or the other will lead us to the last piece of the puzzle—how our killer finds the victims.”

Though I’d shoved my head back between my legs because of a sudden wave of dizziness, I nodded weakly. The
mule
were coming closer; a few more feet and they’d be touching me. I became more nauseated with each inch they gained, and my shivering turned to violent tremors. Even without the necklace, I was afraid that if they made contact, I’d have another seizure. I really had to talk to Hester about the physical reaction I had to them.

“Ch-Charlie,” I pleaded.

I didn’t need to say anything else. His voice was gentle as he reassured me. “I know. We’re done.” He turned his head to address Karen and David. “Thanks for your help. I’m going to get Titus home so he can sleep off his fatigue. This… takes a lot out of him. Call me if you find out anything else.”

“Sure thing, detective,” Karen said, already sitting down at her computer and moving on to whatever mundane task a medical examiner did between autopsies.

Charlie helped me to my feet, and I couldn’t help but sigh in relief as he pulled me into his side, covertly giving me the support I needed to walk steadily. “Bye, Dr. Johanssen,” I managed.

“Karen, please,” she answered with an absent smile. “Bye, Titus.”

I nodded. “Good-bye, David.”

David looked me over one more time, obviously still skeptical about the whole psychic thing. I still didn’t blame him. “Later,” he muttered and turned his back.

Whatever
. I couldn’t be bothered with the prejudices of one lowly lab-tech, I had bigger things to worry about… like making it to Charlie’s car without passing the fuck out.

Chapter Twenty-two

“You want me to what, now?”

Charlie, Riot, and I were crowded together in front of the rickety desk that held my computer. We’d just explained our binary theory to Riot, minus the part about the ghosts and the pseudo-psychic crap. He sat on the edge of my bed giving me a dubious look.

“We need you to help us transliterate binary into actual language. That can be done, right?” Charlie and I had painstakingly typed out the sequence of ones and zeros from each victim, based on the autopsy photos of the wounds. I’d brought them up on the screen so that Riot could see them, but wouldn’t have to know exactly what they were from. I should’ve known it wouldn’t be that easy.

He blinked, glancing back and for between us. “This is for an investigation, huh? Like, murder… is it the guy you found, Titus?”

I floundered, not knowing what I could say to him that wouldn’t give up the ghost—so to speak. As usual, Charlie came to my rescue.

“It
is
for an investigation, but since it’s active, I’m afraid there isn’t a whole lot I can tell you.”

“Why do I feel like I’m not getting the whole story?” Riot had directed his question to me.

“Because you’re not,” Charlie insisted, in a tone that brooked no further discussion. “Can you do what we’re asking or not?”

Riot looked at me, and we held each other’s gazes for a few seconds. I couldn’t help but feel like he was trying to silently communicate some kind of message. Either he wasn’t being expressive enough, or I was just too thick to figure it out. Eventually he broke eye contact and nodded.

“I know of a couple of websites that have two-way binary code translator engines,” he said, quickly typing in a web address—www.spy-fi.net. “You just copy the code and paste it in this text box here, and then click the decode button. If there’s a literal translation to English, it will show up in this box on the right. It’s not rocket science.”

He glanced at Charlie and me. “I’m assuming you’d prefer that I make myself scarce while you two do your ‘classified’ shit, right?”

Charlie winced and looked apologetic, but he nodded. “Yeah, if you don’t mind.”

Sighing, Riot stood up and headed for the door.

“Thanks, man,” I called after him.

He stopped at the door and turned his head toward me. “No problem. Holler if you have any problems. I expect to get a full report as soon as you’re allowed to talk about… whatever this is.”

“Deal,” I said with a smile, and watched him disappear through the door.

“Well, I guess we should start at the beginning,” Charlie said. “Let’s do Talika Ross first.”

I selected the block of numbers that we’d typed from Talika’s crime scene photo. Then I brought up the website and entered the code into the box labeled ‘binary,’ and clicked the appropriate button.

The townhouse’s wi-fi was running slow, so Charlie and I held a collective breath as we waited for the page to refresh. After a few tense moments, it did, and we both gasped. There was a single word in the decoded text box:
Aberration.

“Mother fucker,” Charlie breathed.

I flinched at the sound in the complete stillness of my room. “Maybe…” I stopped, swallowed hard, tried again. “Maybe… it doesn’t mean what we think it means?” It came out as a question because I knew I was grasping at straws—and Charlie knew it too.

“Just do the next one,” he said, his voice sounding strained.

I copied the numbers beneath Jade Huneycutt’s name.
God, she’s just a child
. My hands felt leaden as I repeated the process and clicked ‘decode.’ The word that came up turned my blood to ice.
Plague
.

“This doesn’t leave much doubt that he’s killing them because of their genetic imperfections,” I said to Charlie.

“No, it doesn’t. It still begs the question of
why
he feels compelled to kill them because of that. And there’s still that final piece of the puzzle—how he’s finding them.”

I shook my head, at a loss. He was the detective after all. It was with grim determination that I subsequently entered the remaining number sequences, and got equally horrifying results. Mara Lewis—whom I still thought of as Violet Eyes—was marked with the word
anathema
. Dallas Wade was called
abomination
.

Lastly, I completed Brandon Meyers’ code. I’d begun to think of him almost like a friend. He was always with me, since that horrific moment when I found his body. I was terrified to see what had been carved into that perfect skin.

“
Monster
,” I whispered, choking back a sob. I backed away from the computer, just crab-walked right across the bed until I could curl up into a shivering ball on my pillows. “This is just…” I couldn’t finish. I didn’t have the words to express how I felt about truly knowing there was such evil in the world.

Heavy arms wrapped around me and pulled me tight into a hard chest.
Charlie
.

“You okay?” he asked quietly.

I nodded against his chin, which was resting lightly on the top of my head. “Yeah, I… it’s just hard, seeing this side of human nature. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Sometimes I don’t know either. Except I know it’s important to try to stand up to the evil, protect the good. Damn, that makes me sound like I think I’m Batman or something.”

I laughed, and he kissed the top of my head.

“That’s not it. I just feel like maybe I’m the one who stands up and stands between the everyday regular folks and these psychopaths. I guess that’s how I do it.”

After that we didn’t say anything. We just lay there wrapped up in each other. At first the silence was peaceful, but then my ever-neurotic mind started grinding and sputtering to life. Those five words… I turned them over and over in my head, because something was teasing at the edges of my consciousness. Where had I heard words like that before?

I said them over and over again in my mind, hoping to ignite the spark of memory.
Abomination. Monster. Plague. Aberration. Anathema.
Finally it came to me, like being struck by lightning. I’d seen words like that on the signs and posters when one of the local churches vehemently protested the Pride parade last year. They’d even spread a giant vinyl sign across their roof, because god forbid their bigotry not be seen from space.

“Maybe it’s a religious thing.”

“Huh?” Charlie grunted. I got the feeling he might have drifted off to sleep in the silence. He shook his head and sat up against the pillows. “The victims? We’ve already checked out the church angle. Only a couple of them attended regularly and they weren’t the same congregations.”