by Jon McGoran
New Year’s was easier. It always felt kind of arbitrary—how do you decide the beginning and end of a circle?—but I appreciated the idea of a new beginning.
The sun disappeared behind a low, fast-moving mass of gray clouds that brought with it a squall of snow, suddenly transforming everything I could see. I looked around to make sure I was alone, then I caught a snowflake on my tongue, like my dad had taught me to do.
The squall continued as I walked the next three blocks, even as the sun broke through a few times, which only made the display more dazzling. As I turned the corner and saw the Lev station up ahead and a couple of cars dropping people off, the snow abruptly stopped. The entire time it had been falling, I hadn’t seen a single soul. I couldn’t help smiling at the thought that it had been just for me.
CHAPTER 9
When I got off the Lev train in Silver Garden just a few minutes later, the new snow was already turning to gray slush. As I walked from the station, I recognized parts of the neighborhood from the one time I had been to Doc’s house before. His entire block sat in the shadow of an old factory converted to apartments. I found his house without too much trouble, a tiny brick bungalow with an equally tiny porch that somehow managed to wrap around the side.
I kicked the slush off my boots and knocked on the door.
Rex opened it almost immediately. “Hey,” he said, with a gratifying grin. “Come on in.”
“Hey,” I said, squeezing passed him.
I was shocked to see Doc himself sitting at a small dining room table with a woman I didn’t recognize—presumably the lawyer.
“Doc!” I said. “You’re out!”
He gave me a slight, weary smile and tipped his head. “Thanks to Ms. DeWitt over here.” His face was bruised and he had a cut on his lip and another one over his eye.
“What happened to your face? Did the police do that to you?”
He shook his head. “Some of the more vehement chimera-haters in the prison population.”
“Are you okay?”
He nodded. “Again, thanks to Ms. DeWitt.”
She shook her head and waved away the compliment. “I just got him bail. But it was a fight. The prosecutor went on and on saying some shadowy network of chimeras could be poised to whisk him away at any moment. That’s why the bail was so high. They’re going to fight us on everything, so we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
She looked about forty, with dark skin, hair styled into a short bob, and a no-nonsense intensity about her. She also seemed exhausted.
“Well, I’m just glad to be out of there,” Doc said. He seemed kind of stunned, and I wondered how scary it had been, in jail. I knew it wasn’t his first time, but this was for murder.
Rex put a hand on his shoulder.
“Ms. DeWitt has been working with Earth for Everyone on getting the Genetic Heritage Act thrown out,” Doc said. “She took time away from that to do this.”
“It’s still blocked, right?” I asked.
“The injunction is still standing,” she said, “but there’s a lot of political pressure on the judge to reverse it. We’re trying to get the whole thing thrown out.” She laughed bitterly. “Never thought I’d have to argue points that were so self-evident in a court of law….But back to the matter at hand. Mr. Guzman here—”
“Doctor Guzman,” Rex said, correcting her.
Doc held up a hand and DeWitt gave Rex a stern look. “No,” she said sharply. “Mister Guzman was decertified eleven years ago.”
“Well, yeah, but—”
“He is not Doctor Guzman, and presenting himself as such goes to the heart of the government’s case against him—practicing without a license. Each time you call him Doc or refer to him as a doctor strengthens their case. Call him Hector, call him Guzman, call him Mad Dog, I don’t care. But do not call him Doc. Is that understood?”
Rex and I turned to Doc, and he nodded. “Don’t call me Hector,” he said. “I hate that name. Guzman is fine.”
DeWitt picked up a few folders and rearranged them, pulling one to the top and opening it. “Okay, we should get started. You kids can come and sit right here.” She motioned us toward two empty chairs.
“Did you contact that OmniCare place?” I asked. “To find out what happened to Cornelius there?”
DeWitt paused for a second, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, like she was summoning patience. My mom did the same thing when she was being patronizing, usually right before she explained to me why whatever I had just told her—but that she hadn’t really listened to—was ridiculous.
“Yes, we did,” she said. “The police contacted them last night and I followed up this morning. We sent them a scan of the bracelet and a photo of Cornelius.” She put printouts of both on the table. “They said they have no record of him being there, no history of any patient named Cornelius, and no such ID number in their system. A dead end. Now then, shall we get started?” She took out what looked like a pen, but when she clicked it, a line of light appeared running along the length of it and I realized it was a virtual keyboard. When she laid it down, a rectangular display appeared in the air above it and a pretty convincing keyboard appeared on the surface of the table. It was top of the line. Her fingers hovered above it. “First, your names. Jimi Corcoran, is that the name on your birth certificate?”
“No, it’s Dymphna Corcoran,” I said. Then I spelled it out, because that’s what you do when your name is Dymphna Corcoran.
DeWitt raised an eyebrow, but she got points for typing it in without asking me what it meant or anything. She turned to Rex. “And Rex, what is your full name?”
He shrugged. “Just Rex.”
She nodded slowly. “Is that the name on your birth certificate?”
Rex glanced at me, then looked at DeWitt and said, “No. It’s Leo Byron.”
“Okay, technically, we should be doing this separately, but I simply don’t have the time. I want you both to tell me exactly what happened the night Cornelius died.”
I went first, starting with Doc arriving at the coffee shop. I didn’t mention his breakthrough with the cord-blood thing. When I got to the part about what happened at his clinic, I paused and looked over at him. He nodded and I continued, telling it exactly as it went down.
When I was finished, Rex recounted pretty much the same story. He added that he had arranged to meet Doc a half hour earlier, but that Doc had been late, because Kurtz had been harassing him.
When he was done, DeWitt sat back with a sigh. “Well, clearly Mr. Guzman did perform medical procedures on the deceased. It’s going to be a very tough case to defend.”
A silence settled over us, part thoughtful, part defeated.
“I could lie,” I said, and everybody looked at me.
“I beg your pardon?” DeWitt said, sounding as if she hadn’t heard me, but looking as if she had, and really didn’t like what I’d said.
“I could lie,” I repeated. “I could say Doc—I mean Guzman—didn’t do the things he shouldn’t have done, according to the case. Rex—Leo, I mean—we both could.”
DeWitt sat back and rubbed her eyes, careful not to smudge her makeup. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, no, no. Apart from the fact that perjury is illegal and as an officer of the court I could never condone it, lying is hard. And don’t take this the wrong way, because it’s a compliment, really, but frankly I don’t think either of you would know how to do it. As hard as it is for one person to lie, it’s almost impossible for two people to lie about the same thing and get away with it.” She laughed, wearily. “That’s the basis of probably three-quarters of the successful criminal convictions out there: figuring out the inconsistencies in two sets of lies. Besides, whether or not Mr. Guzman’s actions contributed to Cornelius’s death is almost irrelevant unless we can point to another cause.”
“Which gets us back to figuring out what happened at that OmniCare hospital,” I said, looking at Rex and Doc. “Doesn’t anyone else think it’s strange
that this guy shows up wearing a bracelet from OmniCare, dying from some unknown cause, and they deny he’s ever been there?”
No one replied.
“So what did they tell you, that Cornelius was wearing a fake hospital bracelet?” I went on. “That’s ridiculous.”
“Maybe he switched the bracelet with someone else?” Rex said, thinking aloud.
“No,” I snapped, a little too harshly. “This bracelet is the one they checked, this number, and they said it wasn’t in the system.” I turned to DeWitt. “Right?”
She put her hands flat on the table, and said, “Look, I don’t know why someone would have a fake bracelet. Maybe to get drugs or something, though I’ll grant you it does seem far-fetched. Regardless, for the moment, we’re at an impasse. The law takes patient privacy very seriously, making it next to impossible to subpoena medical records for someone whose legal birth name we don’t even know. If they say they don’t have a record of him, we pretty much have to accept it. We can’t subpoena all of their records to see if one of their patients matches Cornelius’s description. The hospital would be breaking the law if they granted such a request.”
“Well, someone should at least go out there in person,” I said. I knew DeWitt was doing Doc a favor by helping, and she was probably right, but her negative attitude was getting on my nerves.
“No,” she said flatly. “We can’t just go out there making demands. That’s what subpoenas and the legal process are for. The last thing we want is to interfere with the investigation, or risk accusations of obstruction of justice getting thrown into the mix.”
“But—”
DeWitt cut me off with an upraised hand. Rex reached under the table and squeezed my knee. I couldn’t tell if he was being supportive or telling me to shut up.
Doc shook his head. “You don’t want to get Charlesford and his lawyers involved in this anyway,” he said. “He’s a brilliant doctor, but he’s a tough businessman, brutally tough. I’ve seen what happens to those that go up against him, and well, I wouldn’t trade places with them. Not even now.”
“There is one other strategy I want to discuss,” DeWitt said.
Doc looked up at her, tense, like he was bracing himself for something he knew was coming.
“As we well know, even though parts of the Genetic Heritage Act have been blocked by an injunction, the law itself is still nominally on the books.” She paused to give Doc a meaningful look. Then she looked at Rex for the briefest instant before lowering her eyes, as if she were almost embarrassed. “One strategy that might be successful is if we argue that no crime was committed since, according to GHA, Cornelius was not a person.”
I gasped.
“No,” said Doc, shaking his head in disgust. “No, that’s preposterous. It’s reprehensible.”
DeWitt leaned forward, softening her voice. “I know…I know. But it could be our only—”
“No.” Doc cut her off again. “That would go against everything I stand for. Howard Wells and H4H, they’d love it if someone like me helped set a precedent that supported all the worst things they’re trying to accomplish.”
Rex looked pained. “Yeah, but Doc—”
“No, dammit.” Doc got up and walked into the tiny kitchen, then turned and came back into the dining room. “Look, I appreciate your help, all of you, but I’m too tired to think straight. Can we continue this later?”
DeWitt stared up at him as if she were calculating something—somehow assessing him, or maybe mentally rearranging her schedule. After a moment, she said, “Sure.” She picked up her pen and the keyboard and display disappeared, then she scooped her papers and folders into a pile. “That’s probably a good idea.”
After a quick thank you, goodbye, talk to you tomorrow, Doc deposited the three of us on his porch, closing the door gently but firmly behind us.
It happened so abruptly that for a moment we just stood there together.
Rex peered back in through the glass around the door. “Poor guy’s exhausted.”
“Listen to me, you two,” DeWitt said, her tone making us stand up straight. “This is a serious charge. A murder charge.”
“I know,” I shot back. “And that hospital has something to do with it.”
Her eyes burned. “I do not have the time to go chasing after bogus leads like that. This is not the only case I have, but I am doing everything I can that makes sense and is lawful to get Mr. Guzman off. Frankly, I’m surprised I was able to get bail for him, even as high as it was.”
“Who put up Doc’s bail?” Rex asked suddenly.
“Do not call him Doc,” she snapped, then she took a deep breath and continued, calmly. “I couldn’t say even if I knew. But I’m glad they did. With what happened after one day, it looks like prison would be a very inhospitable place for Mr. Guzman, which is why we need to do everything we can not to screw things up on a technicality. This is a delicate case, and if we’re going to win it, we need everything to break our way. The tiniest error could turn things against us. That means you two need to do as you’re told. Do you understand?”
Neither Rex nor I said a word. She was probably a good person, and she was definitely working for a good cause—two of them, really: Doc and E4E. But she sure knew how to piss me off. Rex, too, judging from the way he was breathing.
I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t trust myself not to say something I shouldn’t. So instead we just stood there, staring at her.
She rolled her eyes and shook her head, probably thinking something about sullen, pain-in-the-ass teenagers. I decided to play into it, cocking my hip and my chin in opposite directions. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, DeWitt let out an exasperated sigh and stormed off, slipping a little bit on the ice as she approached her car. It was a nice one. She might have been fighting the good fight, but she was doing okay for herself, too.
She opened the door and paused, looking over at us. “Don’t screw this up.”
Then she got in and sped off with a spray of slush.
CHAPTER 10
Rex looked down at me. “You’re pretty good at that, the hip thing. And the death glare.”
I gave him the same treatment. “Yeah, that’s what my mom tells me.”
He glanced back through Doc’s window. I put my hand on his back and gently turned him away from it. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”
He nodded. “You know she’s only trying to help, right?”
“Yeah, I know,” I said as we both started walking. “And it’s great that she’s willing to take this on even while she’s doing all this other stuff….”
“But?”
“But she’s doing all this other stuff. She’s obviously swamped with the GHA case, along with whatever other cases she has that are paying for that car. How much time is she going to have for Doc? How much digging is she going to do?”
He nodded, hearing me if not yet agreeing with me.
“Do you know how Doc—how Guzman lost his license?” I asked. “I know it was for treating chimeras, but do you know the details?”
“Yeah, he told me about it once. He was a medical doctor, but he did research, too. This was years ago, around the end of the flu epidemic. Chimeras were still new and there weren’t many around. And even though the epidemic started before splicing became a thing, a lot of people blamed them—us—for the flu. Even back then, scientists were saying it was BS, but you know how it is.”
“People wanted to blame someone,” I said.
“Exactly. And it kind of made sense, right? That chimeras could provide a way for a virus to jump from some other species to humans.”
“But they proved that never happened, right? Like you just said, the epidemic started before there even were chimeras.”
He nodded and raised a finger. “Fun fact: did you know there are no documented cases of chimeras getting the flu during the epidemic?”
“Really?”
“That’s what Doc said. He said there weren’t enough o
f them around for anybody to do a study, but it turned out later that there were no recorded cases of that flu in chimeras. Anyway, when a few chimeras did get sick, no one would treat them. But Doc did.”
“Wait, I thought they couldn’t get flu.”
“They couldn’t. It wasn’t flu. It was bad splices, things going wrong with the viral medium, the stuff that delivers the splice. And it was killing them.”
“What did Doc do?”
“He talked to some of his colleagues, and found out there was a theoretical procedure that could reverse a splice. He figured out how to do it.”
“So Doc invented fixing?”
“He says he just…improved it. And he doesn’t actually like that term. He calls it reversal. Anyway, he saved people’s lives, but it cost him his medical license.”
“Wow. Poor Doc.”
Rex nodded. “He says he’s happier now—well, not right now, I imagine, but you know what I mean. I don’t know if I believe it or not.”
“He does a lot of good.”
“Yeah, he does. Still, I can’t help wondering how much more good he could have done if they hadn’t taken his license.”
A light, freezing rain began to fall, making a ticking sound against the frozen ground.
“Do you want to go to the coffee shop?” he asked.
“No.” I stopped walking and waited until Rex did the same. “I want to see your place. Where you’re staying.”
“What?”
“I want to see where you’re staying. You said it’s near here, right? I want to see it.”
“It’s kind of a dump, Jimi. I mean, I’m grateful Jerry’s letting me stay there, but—”
“Then that’s what I want to see. I don’t care what it looks like. I just want to see it.”
He opened his mouth to protest again, but I didn’t let him.
“Look, you’ve got all these secrets and you say that’s how it has to be, and I’m trying to be okay with that. But everything can’t be a secret, right? So let’s not keep any more secrets than we already have to, okay?”
