The Frankenstein Factory (12 page)

“What are you thinking?” Vera asked, coming out the front door to stand at his side.

“Just how quickly the night falls around here, and how quickly the future sneaks up on us. Things move so fast these days. Men like MacKenzie went to the moon, and came back home to be forgotten. Now they talk of Venus colonies, and searails to span the oceans, and bringing people back from the dead.”

“Some say life moves too fast. They say the end of the world is near.”

“Men have always said that. It didn’t end in the year 2000, like everyone expected.”

“Does that mean we have another thousand years?”

“What would we do with it?”

They strolled along the path to the beach, under a rising moon that cast its glow of silver before them. “I don’t know,” Vera admitted, staring out at the sea.

“I don’t even know why in hell people get themselves frozen when they die. Isn’t one lifetime enough for them?”

“It’s not enough for most people. They all want to know what’s going to happen after they’re gone. Just natural curiosity, I guess.”

“In China and India the governments are encouraging suicide among the elderly. They say some Latin American countries may soon do it too.”

“And in America and Russia the governments prepare to ship the surplus people to Venus. Is there any difference?”

“Not much,” Earl admitted. “But I think the Venus colony is still a good many years away. There are a great many environmental problems to overcome first. For one thing, the entire colony would have to live under a giant dome—or else wear spacesuits at all times.”

“They say the Russians and the Chinese are working on plans for a joint colony.”

“If so, it’ll be the first thing they ever worked on together.”

They were following the beach along its gentle curve, coming around to the back side of the horseshoe. Vera turned her eyes toward the sky and he saw in her moonlit face the age-old wonderment. “To think there could be so many stars in the sky!”

“At least you can see them out here. Back in New York nobody’s seen a star in my lifetime. The lights are too bright and the haze is too thick, even with the ozone spray.”

“That’s a shame.”

“It is,” he agreed. “My father told me once that when he was a boy there was some sort of Buck Rogers fan club he belonged to. One of the things he had to do to qualify for a merit badge was to go into his backyard, look through an opening in a piece of cardboard, and count the number of stars he saw in the sky. The number was sent in to national headquarters, where they could check to make certain no alien spaceships were entering our solar system disguised as stars. He told me he counted a hundred nineteen stars, and they sent him a badge.”

“Remember when people used to see flying saucers? Do you think they were all out in their backyards counting stars?”

“I think they—” He paused, staring through the night at something bobbing in the water straight ahead. “Can you see what that is, Vera?”

“A boat of some sort?”

“A boat means someone else is on the island!”

They hurried forward, not quite knowing what to expect. When they were about twenty feet from the craft, as it bobbed offshore in the surf, Vera said, “It looks like the speedboat Whalen used for his escape!”

“It does indeed. Keep back, behind me.”

Earl slipped off his shoes and socks and waded out the few feet to where the boat rested. He gripped the edges of it to steady the rocking, then peered inside.

“What is it?” Vera asked from the shore.

Earl didn’t answer immediately. He was staring into the bottom of the boat, where the moonlight revealed the crumpled form of Phil Whalen. His head had been nearly severed from his body.

“I
T’S WHALEN,” EARL SAID
over his shoulder. “Run up to the house and get the others.” There was a bloody ax in the bottom of the boat, and he carefully lifted it out.

“Is he dead?”

“Dead as he’ll ever be. I wonder where this ax came from.”

“There’s a tool shed around in back of the house. We searched it the first time, when we were looking for Emily.”

He waded ashore and picked up his shoes and socks. “I’d better go up to the house with you. It may not be safe alone.”

He left the bloody ax in the kitchen and they went into the living room, where the others were. He kept forgetting how few “the others” were—only Armstrong and Hobbes and Tony remained now. Armstrong was pulling the veriprinted newsmagazine from the slot beneath the television screen while the other two bent to read it.

“What now?” Hobbes asked, seeing Earl’s face.

“Whalen’s back, around on the rear beach. Someone tried to hack his head off and then left him in the bottom of the boat.”

Armstrong let the newsmagazine flutter from his fingers, and Tony Cooper gasped. “My God!”

“Let’s get down there! This guy is serious, whoever he is!” He started for the door, the others trailing behind.

“I guess after five killings you could say he’s serious,” Earl agreed. “From now on I think we’d better all stay together.”

They returned to the beach and pulled the boat in to shore. Tony had brought along one of the freezing bags made of cotton and aluminized fabric, and they carefully slid the body into it. “We’ll carry it back and put it in a tube like the others,” Hobbes decided. “When the authorities finally get here they’ll have a picnic.”

“Who’s going to put the last body in its tube?” Vera wondered.

“That’s easy,” Armstrong said. “The murderer.”

Back at the house they settled down in the living room while Earl began to talk. “It’s time we got down to business, and that means finding out where each of us was in the time since Whalen left this island.”

Armstrong was first. “After we ate I was checking my patient downstairs.”

“He’s still there?”

“Certainly!”

“Strapped to the table?”

“No. The straps did no good before, so I didn’t bother with them. I’d stake my life he’s not responsible for all this business.”

Earl turned to Lawrence Hobbes. “What about you?”

“I was here in the living room.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. I took some of the dinner plates out to the kitchen. That’s all.”

“And you, Tony?”

“Upstairs, in my room. I was looking for Vera, actually. I didn’t see her go off with you.”

“Then Vera and I are the only ones who have what might be called alibis.”

“I was alone before our walk,” Vera admitted. “Long enough to kill him and get back up here.”

“Join the crowd,” Tony said. “Suspects all!”

“A dwindling number of suspects,” Dr. Armstrong observed.

Hobbes was perplexed. “But why should Whalen come back here in the first place? He was safely away.”

“Maybe for the film and files,” Armstrong suggested. “If they were so valuable to him, he wouldn’t want to abandon them.”

“In that case, how did the killer know he was coming back? How did the killer know where and when the boat would land?”

“He must have come upon him by chance,” Tony suggested.

But Earl shook his head. “I don’t buy coincidences. We’ve had five killings on this island since Sunday night, and nobody’s seen a thing. I can’t believe a murderer is walking around this place unseen, killing anyone he happens to come upon.”

Lawrence Hobbes sat down. “There’s one possibility we haven’t considered. One might call it the occult explanation. If you accept the possibility of undead spirits, or life after death, isn’t it possible that the spirits—or soul—of that man downstairs has been drawn back to this place by what we’ve done.”

“And the spirit’s going around hacking and strangling people?” Armstrong snorted. “Incredible!”

“I only said it was a possibility.”

“It’s not even that! If Frank down there is killing them he’s doing it with his own flesh-and-blood hands.”

“Have we examined those hands?” Earl asked. “And his feet? It’s hardly possible that he could be doing all this killing without leaving traces.”

They exchanged glances, as if the idea hadn’t occurred to them before. Then Hobbes and Armstrong headed for the basement. “We’d all better go,” Earl suggested.

Entering the operating amphitheater for one more visit, Earl found himself beginning to react to the oppressive atmosphere of the place. He was beginning to wish that he’d never have to see it again, never have to walk down those steps to the bright semicircle of healing apparatus. Though he’d posed as a medical photographer and records specialist, he couldn’t imagine anyone making his living that way. Even with the crash course he’d taken back East, the sight of blood and bone and brains had been almost more than he could stomach.

“What’s this?” Hobbes asked, crouching down next to the operating table to feel the floor. “It’s sand!”

Armstrong knelt to confirm it. “Sand, all right.”

“God!” Tony said. “He was at the beach!”

“Wait a minute!” Hobbes was having none of it. “Any one of us could have tracked this sand in here. Armstrong—you’re down here every hour or so to examine him. Were you at the beach today?”

“You know I was there this noon. We all were!”

Hobbes nodded. “There you are! The sand means nothing!”

But Tony was examining the patient’s fingernails. “Is this nothing too?”

“What?”

“Looks like traces of skin and blood to me. Have a look.”

Earl picked up a magnifying cap from the instrument table and slipped it over his forehead. He snapped on the viewing light and bent close for a look. “I think you’re right. Vera, could you run some lab tests on these fingernail scrapings?”

She’d remained seated in the front row of the amphitheater, quite near the place where Emily Watson had sat that first night. It was as if she didn’t want to come any closer to the thing on the table. “Sure,” she agreed. “That would be simple enough. If there’s blood I can even tell you if it’s the same type as Whalen’s.”

“That would be a big help.”

But Lawrence Hobbes wasn’t so sure. “What happens if it is the same?”

“That’s easy,” Tony said. “Then we destroy this thing we’ve created.”

Hobbes’s laboratory was a well-stocked room as large as those Earl remembered from his high school chemistry classes. It was in the basement, beyond the operating room, and it seemed odd that Earl hadn’t seen it before. Vera went at once to one of the half-dozen black-topped counters (each with its own running water and sink, and started mixing chemicals from a selection on the shelf before her. She might have been a housewife whipping up a late-night snack for her husband, or a cosmetologist checking the latest brand of face powder.

“This won’t take long,” she assured him. The others were in the operating room, awaiting the verdict. “Some of this new equipment has cut in half the time needed for lab tests.”

“Good.”

“Do you have the sample of Whalen’s blood?”

“Right here.” He handed over the bloodied shirt the man had been wearing.

Seeing her like this, in what must be her natural setting,. Earl was aware of a new person in Vera. She was no longer the harlot of the bedroom or the quietly efficient nurse of the operating room. Instead there emerged a firm, determined woman who went about her task with a knowledge and skill that were aggressively right.

“Well equipped,” she muttered approvingly, switching on an electronic spectrograph. “This lab alone must have cost him a fortune.”

“I guess Miss Watson was really generous.”

“I guess.”

“You still think Hobbes is behind the killings? You think he’d kill a goose that laid golden eggs like this?”

“I don’t know what to think anymore.” The slide carrying her chemically treated samples went into the slot in the spectrograph. “This is an advanced design,” she told him as she worked. “We had one like it in Boston. We can produce a spectrum, study it, compare it, and then photograph it.”

“For blood samples?”

“No, I’m working on the bits of skin first. There—see that!” Earl stared blankly at the dancing colors as she brought them into focus. “They’re skin particles, probably from Whalen!”

“You’re sure?”

“The blood should confirm it.”

She ran through the standard blood tests while he watched and waited. “You’re quite efficient at this sort of thing,” he remarked at one point.

“I should be—I’ve been doing it long enough!”

“Is this the sort of work you were doing with Freddy?”

“More or less.” She pressed a red button on the lab table’s built-in computer terminal. The familiar chattering of the automatic printout began. “The blood samples match,” she said simply. “As do the skin scrapings. Of course that doesn’t prove positive identification in the case of the blood. It only means that Whalen was type B and the blood under Frank’s fingernails is type B.”

“How common is type B?”

“About twenty percent of people have it. Other types are more common, but I wouldn’t call this rare.”

“That’s good enough for me, especially along with the skin scrapings. Let’s go tell them.”

They found Hobbes and Tony and Armstrong seated in the amphitheater, talking softly among themselves. “Well?” Hobbes asked, rising quickly to his feet. “What’s the verdict?”

“The scrapings and blood traces match.”

Tony Cooper nodded, as if he’d known it all along. “Then Frank killed them. Frank killed them all.”

“No!”
Lawrence Hobbes cried out.

Cooper ran forward. “Don’t you see—we’ve got to destroy him!”

Hobbes grabbed him and they struggled, overturning a portable lamp that landed on its side and splashed the wall with their tussling shadows. Earl sprang between them, pulling them apart. “Come on, you two! Where’s this getting us?”

“I’m going to hook up the electrodes and fry him!” Tony insisted. “I didn’t sign on to create a monster! I didn’t come here to work in a Frankenstein factory!”

“Tony!” Vera shouted. “Stop it!”

Freddy’s phrase about the Frankenstein factory somehow seemed shrilly terrifying coming from Tony’s lips. Freddy, with his vulgar jokes, had not been one to take seriously; Tony, speaking the same words, sent a shiver of terror through them all.