“I’ll look at it today.”
“Thanks. I, ah . . . Talk soon.”
He shut the phone and put it away. Drew his 9mm pistol in its place.
He’d replay the call in his mind many times again later. He’d think of her. Later.
Now it was time to find the clone.
PLANS SHARED
JUNE 04, SATURDAY—SALISBURY, MD
Jacobson watched the fading moon from the back porch of a small ranch house in the outskirts of Salisbury, Maryland, as a bruise-colored dawn emerged underneath. The only other light was from a single hallway fixture deep inside. Leaning back in a wooden rocker, legs outstretched, the backpack at his feet, a slender, assuaged smile rested across his face. His boys had grouped around him in a lopsided semicircle, quietly smoking cigarettes and drinking the beer they’d found in the fridge. Nurse Santos lay freshly entombed within the tomato and pepper garden not twenty feet away. The whole of creation seemed still, waiting.
“During the Middle Ages,” the geneticist said, “people believed Cain lived on the moon.”
“That’s gay,” one of the boys laughed. Dennis. Jacobson eyed the boy, analyzed him.
“Why’d they think that?” another voice asked.
Jacobson gently turned to Ted, the boy who sat closest. Beautiful Theodore. The same angelic face that had once charmed, raped, and murdered thirty women. “Do you know what happened to Cain after he killed his brother?” he asked the teen.
“He lived in the land of, ah, Nod,” Ted replied. His voice was deep, about to leave childhood behind forever. “Like the poster thing in your office.”
Jacobson nodded. “Good. And then what?”
The boy thought, shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Anyone?” Jacobson knew the other boys were half listening at best. Distracted. Excited. “Nod means ‘wander’ in Aramaic, the language of the Bible, and most faiths believe Cain ‘wandered’ the earth. Cursed. Unable to die.”
“Like a vampire,” Jeff said. Aptly, his words sounded deep and hoary, as if spoken by something that had newly wrestled itself free from its tomb. Still, Jacobson could hear the clear echo of his own adopted son in the older voice. Three years separated them, but it might as well have been a thousand. In the end, it would bear out that only one true Jeffrey Dahmer traveled through time untouched, unfettered. In the end, his progeny, all of them, would spill blood as effortlessly and jubilantly as the original.
“Funny you should say that.” He pointed at the boy as elusive memories of talking to his own Jeff half arose in his mind. Where is he now? Already discarded by DSTI? Or, perhaps, even now finding his true self as these unchained souls are doing. “Hebrew Apocrypha suggests Cain eventually met Lilith, Adam’s first wife. That she taught the world’s first killer to drink blood for power. That they had many children together. Demons and monsters, if you believe in such things. Other ancient texts claim Cain was the bastard son of Satan and Eve.”
“That’s gay, too,” Dennis giggled. And several of the other boys laughed.
Jacobson smiled with them. It’s their time, too. “In either case,” he concluded, “he is said to have lived forever as a nomad, finally begging people to end his boundless suffering. No one did. Eventually, or so they believed, he fled to the moon itself.” He looked up again, and some of the boys looked with him.
“Yeah.” Ted stared. “It kinda makes sense. Some nights, you know, when there’s that weird feel in the air. Like something bad is going to happen . . .”
“Like tonight!” Henry hooted.
“Like tonight,” Ted agreed, but his voice revealed he recognized that tonight’s revelries were over.
Jacobson leaned forward. “And today,” he assured the boy. “And the next day, too.”
Now all the boys were listening.
“Today, we will part,” said Jacobson, and the boys shot each other quick looks. Many had been waiting for this, already grown tired of doing everything Jacobson told them, and he knew that. He wondered how far some would make it. “You are all free in every possible way. I ask only two more things of you.”
“Fuck that,” Henry laughed.
“Shut up.” Ted glared at the other boy, and Henry just shrugged. Ted turned back to Jacobson. “What?”
“Two lists,” answered Jacobson, reaching into his shirt pocket and handing one paper directly to Ted and the other to Dennis. On each, scribbled words. “Names and addresses of others. Others like you. Like Albert. Like John here.”
John was the boy they’d found hours ago. When Jacobson had explained what he was, the boy had gone into the next room and beaten his own little brother to death with a baseball bat from the garage. All this while the other boys had been having fun with John’s adoptive parents, now both nude and still and bloody in the family’s dining room. After all that, there’d been no question about what to do with John. He was a keeper. And now, a new day emerging, he was inside, putting on the makeup, getting ready to drift with them in perpetuity.
“I have folders with specific information for each in the car.”
“You want us to free them, too,” Ted confirmed.
“Oh, yes.”
“Why can’t you do it?” Henry asked.
Jacobson’s eyes flashed in the darkness, something in them the boys had only seen once before. When it had all started back at Massey. When the “quiet old man” had pulled Mrs. Gallagher into his office. “I have other responsibilities now.” His voice too had become another voice altogether. Terrible, like some provoked god. “You’ll indulge me, yes?”
“Sure, yeah. Just asking.” The boy’s words shook some with his reply.
“Not a prob, Dr. Jacobson,” Ted said carefully. “What else?”
Jacobson reached down into the backpack and brought something out for them all to see. They each crowded for a closer look.
“What is it?” Ted stood, and Jacobson handed him the canister.
It looked just like a Pepsi can.
INTRODUCTIONS
JUNE 04, SATURDAY—HADDONFIELD, NJ
“I won’t hurt you,” Castillo said into the empty room.
Not really empty. Not by a long shot. He had far too many years of coming into rooms where people were hiding to think that. But he’d passed this room far too quickly when he’d first walked the house. He was supposed to be alone. But the tan room. He remembered passing through an empty tan room.
“He requested his room be painted tan. He asked again about his mother today.”
“Perhaps I should never have brought him here.”
The closet. The smallest movement, and he turned with the sound.
“Come out,” he urged. “You can come out now.”
The slatted door folded open. Castillo aimed.
The boy seated inside beside a wicker hamper was maybe fifteen. Sandy blond hair. Glasses. Lanky. Familiar. The boy from the home videos. But also somewhat familiar from the clone photos he’d received at DSTI. Castillo just couldn’t remember which boy it was. There hadn’t been enough time yet to really study and memorize their faces properly. And Jacobson’s notes didn’t reveal which one he was either.
Not one of the original six breakouts. This kid was something different altogether.
Jacobson’s adopted son.
“It’s OK,” Castillo told him. “I won’t hurt you. You alone?”
The kid nodded. No weapons that Castillo could see.
“Where’s your dad?” He lowered his pistol. One down, fifteen or so to go. More than you can handle. Six might—maybe, hopefully—have been doable.
The boy shrugged.
“Come on out of there.” Castillo waved him forward and eyed the rest of the room. “What you doing in there, man?”
Another shrug.
“Hiding from me, I guess,” Castillo said. “Out now. Easy. Everything’s cool.”
“You’re with them.”
“Who? Come on out.”
“DSTI.” He crawled free clumsily, bo
rderline comically, but eventually stood up. Kid was thin, but already as tall as Castillo. “Right?”
“Stay right there. You live here, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m gonna check you for weapons, OK? Take it easy.” Castillo patted the boy down. “Who else lives here?”
“My dad. I don’t have any—”
“You’re doing fine. Sit down right here,” Castillo said as he pointed to the bed. “When was the last time you saw him?”
The kid didn’t reply.
“Relax, I just need you to answer a couple questions is all.”
“He said they’d kill me.”
“Who would? DSTI? Your dad say why?”
No answer.
“Did he say why they’d want to kill you?”
“A ‘liability.’ He said I’m a liability.”
Castillo sighed. “Hey, listen. I’m not going to kill you. Or your dad or anyone else. I’m just here to help get everything back to normal. You understand? ’Cause your dad’s in some real trouble. I’m trying to help him.” Castillo set a chair opposite the boy. “You’re safe.”
The boy shook his head.
“I asked, ‘When’s the last time you saw him?’ ”
“Last night.”
Castillo sat. “Great. OK, so then what happened?”
“Happened? Nothing. He . . . nothing. We talked.”
“About?”
The kid shook his head again. “Just talked. Then . . . he left.”
“Tell you where he was going?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Ever been to DSTI?”
“Me? Yeah, lots of times.”
“Why? When?”
“I don’t know. My . . . my dad took me.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. He worked there, so . . . sometimes stuff with the other guys.”
“What kind of stuff ?”
“Just stuff. At Massey.”
“You go to school there?”
“No. Home schooled. Tutors. And I don’t think any of the guys ever really thought of it as that. As a school, I mean.”
“So, what? A treatment center? What were you being treated for?”
“I don’t know. I thought . . . I was, like, in a bad car accident years ago and, so, like, rehabilitation and stuff. Memory issues. Speech specialist. I don’t know. My dad wanted me to go sometimes, so I went.”
“What kind of things would you guys do there?”
“Like group talks. Or, um, I don’t know. Like, mostly group games, I guess. IQ tests and—”
“Stuff, got it. Anyone else at Massey or DSTI know you live here?”
“Sure. Just about everyone. You gonna arrest my— Are you gonna arrest Dr. Jacobson?”
Castillo shrugged now. “I’m not a cop, man. But I need to find him. And soon. Him and some of the other guys.”
“Something happen?”
“Why would you say that?”
“You said my dad was in trouble. And guys with guns keep coming to my house.”
Castillo nodded, the kid clearly referring to DSTI’s earlier visit. “Fair enough. Yeah. Something happened. Some people got killed.”
“Who? Did . . .”
“Not your dad. Some students, a couple of other employees.”
“Did he . . . ?”
“ ‘Did he?’ What? You think your dad might have done something?”
“Don’t know.”
“Me either. Some of the other students might be involved, though. And now they’re missing. You know these guys? Albert? Henry? David?”
Castillo waited while the boy looked away, mouth moving slightly in silent thought. “Some. I guess.”
“You guess. What about Jeff or Dennis?”
“No.”
“What’s that?”
“No. I never met a Jeff.”
“OK, OK. Look. I’m gonna have to find these guys. And your dad. Do you have any idea where any of them might be?”
The kid shook his head.
“Know where the other guys live?”
“No.”
“What about your dad?”
“He lives here.”
“No, I mean does he have somewhere else to go? Parents? A brother? Girlfriend?”
The kid shook his head each time.
“He travel much? You guys ever travel together?”
“I guess.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know.”
“Where?”
“Like, Washington. Ohio. New York. Um, the beach and stuff.”
“Which beach?”
“I don’t know. Hatteras. Florida Keys. Stone Harbor.”
“Nice.” Castillo pulled out his digital camera. “D.C., huh?”
A nod yes.
Castillo filed through the pics he’d taken. Pics of Jacobson’s journal entries.
“What about, well, St. Louis or Baltimore. You two ever been there?”
“No. My . . . He went there sometimes. Conventions and stuff.”
“Yeah? How often?”
“I don’t know. Couple times a year, I guess. He brought me back a Ray Rice jersey.”
“Cool.”
“I guess. They took it. Took everything.”
Castillo surveyed the kid’s room. Emptied bookshelves and drawers. Lines where posters had freshly hung. Where a fish tank or something had once rested on the chest of drawers. Now no proof he’d ever existed. Wholly emptied by DSTI. Castillo would not think about what they would have done with the boy had they found him.
“He said they’d kill me.”
Castillo put his phone away. “I think you could maybe help me,” he said.
The kid started to get up. “I don’t get how—”
“Stay right there, man.” Castillo waited while the boy sat back into place. “The thing is, I think you’ve been telling me the truth. That makes you a very rare bird today. I’m bettin’ you could maybe even help me figure some things out. These guys are quite like you. Where you’ve been, they’ll go. People always stay in their own environments.”
“Those guys have nothing to do with me.”
“Sure.”
“So . . . You’re not gonna turn me over to DSTI?”
“DSTI?” Castillo shook his head. “Nah. They didn’t even tell me you existed.”
The kid looked as if he’d just been told he was dead. “Oh,” he managed.
“And I think you can help me.”
“You really think so?”
“Maybe.”
“How’d you find the room?” the boy asked. “The hidden one, I mean. . . . The other guys didn’t.”
Castillo nodded. “Got an idea of the house’s layout from the outside. You kinda look at it and imagine room sizes and where walls and rooms should be. Something to always do before entering an unfamiliar structure. When I got inside, something didn’t add up.”
The boy thought about that for a moment. “I could maybe . . . help, I guess. Maybe help you look for them.”
“Maybe, pal, maybe. You know what most of ’em look like. Kinds of places they talk about going? Even places your dad has been.”
“I guess. And you want to help them? Not just . . .”
“I do,” Castillo said. And it felt good when he said it. It felt like the truth. “I want to help them all get out of this OK. Your dad, too.”
“Sure. That’s, um, cool.”
“Yeah, I guess it is. You really sure you wanna help?”
Am I really sure I want your help?
The boy looked around his emptied room. “I’m sure.”
“Well, best get started then. This house is gonna get swarmed again in about thirty minutes. I’d tell you to grab some clothes but looks like they wiped you out pretty good. Probably for the best. Anything you want to take?”
“They already took everything,” the boy replied. “We can go now.”
/>
Castillo stood and held out his hand. “Shawn Castillo.”
The boy half stood also, frowned, and shook back.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Jeffrey Dahmer.”
YOUR BEST BET
JUNE 04, SATURDAY—MARLTON, NJ
Castillo drove north up Route 70 through a long channel of dark pine and strip malls. There was no particular reason for heading this way. It was chiefly somewhere away from Jacobson’s, away from DSTI. Somewhere where they could talk. Where he could maybe figure out where he really should be driving.
He’d not wasted five more minutes at the house, sneaking the boy out a side window away from the pitiful surveillance team and through a backyard to his own waiting car. It had already been a long day for both of them, and it wasn’t going to get better for a while. Jacobson and the six clones had a twenty-hour lead, which would have been an eternity if they had been men trained to avoid capture. Castillo’s salvation was that they weren’t. Regardless of their origins, they were basically a bunch of runaway teens. Jacobson could be another story. He appeared insane, perhaps, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t prepared properly to vanish into thin air. According to his diaries, he’d been messing with the whole Tumblety-corpse-thing for a year. But a Jack-the-Ripper wannabe was the least of Castillo’s concerns.
Hi, I’m Jeffrey Dahmer.
Jacobson’s son, his adopted son, his clone of the world’s most infamous serial killer, shrank in the passenger seat while Castillo stared straight at the road ahead, thinking. Every so often, he could hear the kid sniff back tears.
“I need you to remember everything, anything, your dad told you,” Castillo said, not looking over. “Anything could help.” The boy kept silent, and Castillo tried again: “The last time you spoke, what exactly did he tell you?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
“You don’t know.”
“I told you, I don’t remember.”
“OK, Jeff, he comes up to your room and . . . what? Were you asleep or . . . ?”
“No. I was reading. Whatever.” He turned away from Castillo and instead stared out the window.
Castillo had hated using the boy’s name. Even though this was Jeffrey Jacobson, he couldn’t shake off the Dahmer reality any more, apparently, than the kid himself could. No matter how difficult the name was to say or think, he also knew it was the easiest way to keep a subject’s attention.
Cain's Blood: A Novel Page 6
