Forbidden Birth

by William Rubin

  §

  We were going to catch the bastard! Months of dead ends, mutilated mothers, and dead babies were about to draw to a close.

  “Kev, here I am,” I said as I pulled up a few feet from Kennedy. He looked far away, lost, dazed.

  “Everything all right?” I said as I searched his eyes with my own.

  Kennedy snapped back to the here and now. “I’m fine. Let’s go,” he said in just above a whisper.

  We slipped in the front door and went up a short flight of stairs to the clinic’s waiting room, then poised ourselves on each side of the door that led to the clinic’s exam rooms and lab. I looked over at Kev, “Moment of truth. Nail him now with the evidence in hand, or we’re screwed.”

  On three I kicked the door in and we stormed through, guns drawn and ready for action. We ran past the exam rooms, heading towards the lab area. I saw motion ten feet ahead and I dove and rolled for cover as the first of three shots ripped through the air. Two more shots followed, whizzing past me as I scrambled behind a large couch. I turned as I heard a large thud a few feet behind me.

  Kennedy was down, blood pouring out of him. He was just three feet away but out in the open, an easy target for Durand to pick off.

  I returned fire at Durand, who ducked behind a lab counter. Kennedy yelled, “Shit, shit, shit,” as I fired again at Durand before lunging forward and dragging Kennedy towards me. A shot grazed my right arm as I got Kennedy behind the couch.

  “Don’t worry about me. Go after him,” Kennedy said to me as blood drenched the front and back of his shirt.

  I hesitated, staring a long moment at Kennedy and the pool of blood gathering around him. I heard Durand’s footsteps trailing off as he moved through the rest of the lab. Then there was silence.

  “He’s out the window, Chris.” Kennedy said with effort, his breathing rapid and shallow. “You’re gonna lose him if you don’t take off now.”

  I looked Kennedy squarely in the eyes for a moment, then bolted across the lab and out the window, landing on my feet in the street next to the building. “Officer down! Officer down, The Fertility Clinic, 289 East 34th street,” I yelled into my radio as I ran after Durand.

  He was heading east, towards the river, a good thirty feet ahead of me.

  §

  Durand ran without effort, thirty feet ahead of me. His silhouette lapsed in and out of the darkness created by the sparse overhead streetlights. He stretched his lead, Thirty-five feet…forty feet. He was too fast for me. Despite pumping my arms and legs as hard as I could, I was losing him. He made a quick left onto 1st avenue and then a right onto 35th, surging ahead towards the FDR. Durand came to a stop at the five-foot tall concrete barriers separating 35th street from the FDR Drive. He looked right and then left, uncertain which way to go. I pumped my arms harder, my heart slamming against my chest. I was gaining on him. Just needed a few seconds more. The lead was only ten feet…eight…six…. I dove at him just as he leaped over the barricades and headed right into the busy traffic speeding by.

  I cursed as I crashed into the hard concrete, hands and arms shielding my head from the brunt of the impact. Dazed, I shot back up. No time for the pain. I had to grab him while I had the chance.

  Car tires screeched. Motorists yelled, “Asshole,” “Schmuck” at Durand as he ran across the FDR towards the fast lane. A car was bearing down on him. He wasn’t going to make it. Durand made a short, quick stop, followed by the beginnings of a lunge. It allowed him to miss most, but not all, of the impact. His body spun around twice, three times in the air, like an Olympic Skater executing a spastic triple lutz.

  I was onto the highway, in the middle lane as Durand’s feet slammed into the barrier separating north and southbound traffic. His body lunged forward. He narrowly avoided decapitation at the hands of a black Ford Explorer. Instead, he careened off the SUV’s side while it sped forward. Remarkably, he landed on his hands and feet. He was still conscious. Durand feebly dodged a Chevy Cavalier as I vaulted the barrier and headed towards him.

  Traffic was screeching to a halt all around us. Durand moved with renewed energy as he sensed me almost on top of him.

  I grabbed at empty air as he disappeared over the next barrier and beyond my reach. I followed, trying to get oriented to the dimly lit surroundings. Durand extended his lead back up to twenty feet as I staggered forward before my footing improved. We were at the ferry terminal. A lone car sat just ahead of Durand in the fringes between light and dark, a mere ten feet from the East River.

  I screamed at Durand to stop as I pulled out my semiautomatic 9 mm and took aim. I fired just as he was bolting past the car. The passenger’s door flew open, slamming into Durand’s knees. He jerked forward through the open window and slammed forward into the ground.

  A fire tore through my chest as I pumped both legs and arms still harder, faster. I was closing fast on him.

  Durand scrambled to his feet as a passenger emerged from the car.

  Michelle!

  Durand was on her in an instant, one arm holding her fixed in place, a large stiletto pressed up against her throat.

  “Drop the gun, Detective,” he said in an eerily calm, though somewhat out of breath, voice. “I believe I have something of yours.”

  §

  I slammed on the brakes and stared at Durand and Michelle in disbelief.

  “Drop the gun, Detective,” he repeated. “That’s it. Now kick it towards me like a good little boy.”

  I stared at him, then at Michelle, a look of angry resignation and agony plastered across my face.

  “Do it now, I said.”

  I kicked the gun towards him. Dirt and rocks piled up around it as it slid towards Durand’s feet. As he crouched down to receive the gun, Michelle delivered a blow to his upper thigh. He screamed as they both scrambled for the gun. Again, I ran forward. I was almost on him...just a lunge away from contact.

  Sensing defeat, Durand changed tactics. He stopped grabbing for the gun. In one fluid motion he grabbed Michelle, sliced through her jugular vein, then pulled back from her and pushed her away from me with his foot. He turned and ran towards the river.

  An instant later, I was on the gun and ripped off a shot as Durand dove into the river. He flinched as he twisted off balance in mid-air before disappearing from view. Scrambling to Michelle, I cradled her in my arms and held pressure on her jugular, praying the flow of dark venous blood would stop.

  Tears streamed down my reddened face as I hunched over Michelle’s motionless body. “Please, please stop. It’s her birthday. You can’t take her from me. Not now, not like this. God, not like this.…”

  Chapter 77

  I stood by stunned and helpless, in shock, as the paramedics worked on Michelle. Durand had inflicted an incredible amount of damage with his stiletto. The wound tore the skin off her neck, leaving severed and raw muscle and punctured vessels in its wake. One paramedic re-approximated the wound edges and placed a large pressure dressing over the jagged exposed wound to stop its bleeding. The other paramedic started an IV and ran a bag of Ringer’s Lactate through a wide-open IV into Michelle’s right forearm. Within two minutes we had Michelle in the ambulance and were speeding, lights and sirens blaring, to the closest Level 1 trauma center, Bellevue Hospital. July 4th, Michelle's birthday, was receding into the early morning hours as Michelle's life force drained away.

  The first paramedic tore open EKG leads and plastered them on Michelle. Her pulse was thready and irregular at 110 beats per minute, her heart’s frantic attempt to spread much needed oxygen throughout her ravaged body. He slapped a face mask on Michelle and ran fifteen liters of pure oxygen per minute into her, hoping it would help her hang on for dear life until we reached the hospital.

  It didn’t look good.

  Michelle had lost about two liters of blood in the few minutes before the medics arrived. She was in shock, oblivious that she was in a fight for her life. I stared through glassy, glazed eyes, praying she would hang on for just a f
ew more minutes. We blew through the light early morning traffic, and a steady rain that had just begun. We were through the doors at Bellevue’s ER in just under three minutes.

  My heart slammed against my ribcage as I ran ahead screaming, my badge thrust in front of me, clearing the way straight to the OR. We took the elevator to the third floor and jammed the stretcher through the elevator’s doors. We exited the elevator, running down the hall to where a police trauma surgeon, Doctor James Parker, was busy scrubbing for the case. Like Olympic relay runners, we ran in full stride as we handed Michelle off to a nurse and anesthesiologist at the OR entrance. My momentum carried me forward, slamming me into the doors as they swung closed in front of me, taking Michelle from me—perhaps for the last time.

  Chapter 78

  July 5th, 1:11 p.m.

  I stood stone-faced over Michelle’s ICU bed, looking down at the myriad tubes and wires that ran from her body. Rage and sorrow kicked and screamed inside of me. Swollen, red eyes and deep furrowed lines in my face gave testimony to how poorly I was holding up. I reached out and held Michelle’s comatose hand in my own, staring at her beautiful, serene face, a face strangely at peace with her surroundings.

  Word had trickled through with each visitor from the police department. Kennedy was pulling through all right, after surgery to remove a bullet from his lungs and the repair of his thoracic aorta.

  The scuba crews had combed a one-mile area of the East River surrounding the ferry terminal. CSU officers had been just as thorough at the terminal and The Fertility Institute. Both came up empty. There was no sign of dear Doctor Durand anywhere. He had disappeared…without a trace.

  Closing my eyes, I lowered my head and strained to hold back the anger and the tears. I leaned in and kissed Michelle on her lips, cuddling her face in my hands as hot tears streamed down my face.

  No matter what happened to Michelle, this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

  The crazed killer had injured my partner and best friend. As tragic as that was, it was a risk Kennedy and I accepted every day. It was business. But when Durand slit Michelle’s throat, he made his first, and his last, big mistake. He crossed the uncrossable line. He violated that last and really only safe haven every cop holds dear.

  Eleven months earlier, thugs had attacked and killed my mother, ripping apart the fabric of my life. Those faceless assailants pulled me out of the comfort, grace, and sanctity of a career in medicine and drew me out onto the streets and into the visceral and unforgiving world of the homicide detective.

  Durand’s attack on Michelle pulled me in even further, deeper. It taunted me to forsake my better judgment and give into my animalistic desire to charge headlong into his world of darkness and deceit in pursuit of him. Doing so would assure I caught him, but at what price?

  Would I emerge the same good and decent man Jacqueline and Michelle Ravello loved dearly or some twisted, perverse version of myself they would shudder at and recoil from?

  I had worked so hard all my life to corral my intensity, to keep in check the darkness that flowed through me. Dad had warned me on my thirteenth birthday where that darkness would take me—if I let it. He told me the story of his sadistic brother, Vincent Anthony Ravello. A decorated NYPD detective himself, he had taken it too far one day, brutalizing a criminal he considered guilty of murder to get a confession out of him. The man died later that day, just after the real killer was apprehended and confessed. I shuddered thinking about it and the choice that lay before me.

  I moved over to the window, staring out at the East River, towards where Durand had made his escape. We’d put so much time and effort in on this case, had risked so much, and what did we have to show for it? Nothing, except a comatose wife and a best friend who nearly died from a gunshot wound. Every lead on the case thus far had been a dead end. Even our daring raids on The Fertility Institute and Durand's home computer raised more questions than they answered. Stippler had carefully combed through the files from Durand's computers. There were references to Durand working on human cloning and performing experiments on aging but no actual data on the alleged experiments.

  In the midst of my grief, I searched for answers. The cloning and aging research Durand alluded to would require a monstrous lab, filled with cutting-edge technology we couldn't even begin to imagine. There would need to be a core group of scientists and lab technicians that Durand trusted implicitly. And there would need to be a secluded location and a team of highly trained security personnel guarding such a lab. The Fertility Institute, with its skeleton staff, paucity of guards, and midtown location was not what we were looking for. Clearly, the answers would be found elsewhere. Where, though?

  Amid all the uncertainty one thing was crystal clear to me. Durand had made it personal, and for that reason I would hunt him to the ends of the earth, to my last breath, if it came to that. But in honor of my mother and Michelle, I would exercise the proper restraint. I would arrest him. I would turn him over to the authorities to receive his just punishment—unless, of course, I tore through him like a pack of rabid, starved wolves first. Only time would tell which way it would go down.

  Chapter 79

  Three months later

  Sunday, October 4th, 7:17 p.m.

  The bullet whizzed past my head, ricocheting off the warehouse wall behind me. Ducking behind a large container I yelled, “STOP, Police!” This was not going as planned. In the aftermath of Michelle and Kennedy’s shootings and Durand’s disappearance, Commissioner Kelly promised me a safe, straightforward, low-key case. Translation: he shut down the investigation without a word of explanation and strong-armed me to move on. Must be nice to be Commissioner and do whatever the fuck you want to officers who have risked their lives, hell their family’s lives, for the greater good.

  “The hours will be more regular. You’ll have the opportunity, Chris, to watch over the home front more during this crazy time in your life. It will be good for you, Michelle, and your kids.”

  Yeah, right. I sprung out from behind the barricade, pumping my arms and legs as hard as I could, willing my body to cut into the large lead our darkly clad suspect had on me. It seemed futile. Despite my best efforts he was slipping away, blending into the night. In full stride I grabbed the clip-on mike off of my shoulder and between huffs and grunts called in the cavalry. “Suspect last seen fleeing on foot east on Hamilton Avenue near Summit Street. Any units in the area to intercept?” Silence filled the airwaves as my shoes slapped against the ground. I squinted off into the distance, unable to make out where the criminal ended and the cloak of nightfall began. I pushed it even harder for thirty, forty more feet before pulling up, cursing.

  “Shit! He’s gone.”

  This damp October evening was ending the way so many recent nights had for me—with the fresh taste of abject failure on my lips, and the inescapable feeling that a dangerous criminal had again slipped free of my grasp.

  Chapter 80

  A thin smile crept along The Giver’s face as he sat in his office in his new lab and stared at the computer printouts. Crow’s feet radiated from his outer lids as his pale blue eyes, cold and hard, crackled with energy and interest. The results confirmed it; Durand’s work was hurtling forward at breakneck speed. Playing off of and against Ravello brought out the best in him. Sure there had been that little run-in in Midtown, but that was his fault, not Ravello’s. He had become sloppy, overconfident, an occupational hazard when you are a sociopathic mad scientist with an IQ of 173. The smile spread clear across Durand’s face.

  The Giver saw the big picture clearly, how Ravello was an integral part of achieving his plans. Theirs was an epic tale, one with far reaching consequences for everyone who called earth their home. Durand savored the days and weeks to come, what they would mean for his work, for mankind—for Ravello.

  Durand rose and quickly exited his office. It was his custom to check on the lab several times daily. He strode down the hall, past several offices of his underlings, and entered his s
ecurity code onto the keypad outside the door of his lab. The Giver passed through the sliding glass doors as they parted before him.

  The first area was where harvested cells were turned into multicellular clones. Centrifuges, micropipettes, flasks, test tubes, and a slew of chemical compounds highlighted Area One. As spectacular and impressive as Area One was, it paled in comparison to what was being accomplished in the rest of the facility.

  Durand had no interest at the moment in Area One. He wanted to be where the action was. He moved deeper into the lab.

  Areas Two through Four were a production line—for human beings!

  In Area Two, the multicellular clones were bombarded with serums that caused their maturation into fetuses, babies, and ultimately toddlers. A vast array of incubators, the initial ones immersed in a compound that mimicked amniotic fluid, guided the clones through the process. In the latter stages of Area Two, feeding occurred entirely via IV tubing that supplied all the necessary nutrients for the developing clones. Goosebumps fought for space on Durand’s arms, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention as he worked his way through Area Two.

  Area Three was where the most explosive growth took place. As such, it was the most testing intensive area in the facility. EEG machines, stress test equipment, including vials of radioactive tracer substances, and electromyography devices abounded. Here a clone’s heart rate, lung capacity, cardiovascular output, brain wave, and muscle function were constantly analyzed and adjusted for peak performance. Clones were grown into their mid-twenties in Area Three.