by Brian Parker
After that, Sadie and I returned here, to my apartment—which is how I ended up on the couch.
“Coffee,” I groaned to Andi and stumbled through the bedroom into the bathroom to do my business. A ruffled lump under the covers on my bed and a splash of red hair on the pillow told me the clone was still asleep.
When I was finished, I went to the kitchen to wait for the deep, dark goodness in a mug.
“I’m relieved to see that you’re feeling better, Zach. You did not appear well last night when you returned.”
“Thanks, Andi. I’ve had better days. I still need to shower and then go meet Brubaker, but I don’t know what to do with the clone.”
“I have the ability to restrict access to everything in the apartment except the kitchen cabinets and your closet. All the other doors are equipped with a magnetic lock that I control. She could stay here without any worries of something important being stolen.”
I laughed. God, that hurts, I thought, holding my ribs where I’d been kicked by the last clone. “I’m not worried about Sadie stealing something from this place.”
“Is she going to stay here?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to ask her.”
“Understood. You have six messages and seven missed calls. I felt it best to let you sleep.”
“Six messages? Oh shit.”
Last night was Tuesday. I was supposed to take Teagan to dinner on her self-imposed date. I’d forgotten about it and now I was in deep shit.
“Call Teagan Thibodaux,” I said, not bothering to listen to the messages she’d left.
“What do you want, Zach?” she asked after answering on the fourth ring. She’d chosen to accept voice only.
“Teagan, I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry? Are you kidding me? I went out and spent a lot of money on a new haircut and got my nails done,” she exclaimed. Then, in a softer voice she said, “I don’t know why I let myself get excited about you.”
“I got stabbed yesterday. I couldn’t—”
“Oh my God, Zach! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. The paramedic patched me up quick and with the rapid-heal bandage, scar tissue should form in the next day or so.”
Teagan sent a video call request and I accepted it. Her face filled the screen. Even the day after, I could tell that she’d gotten her hair straightened as it hung down to her shoulders.
“Where did you get stabbed?”
“Over in Milneburg.”
“Huh? No, I mean you. Where did you get stabbed?”
“In the arm.” I held it up for her to see the bandage. “I’m sorry about last night. I wanted to go out with you.”
“No you didn’t,” she replied. “I forced you into agreeing to take me out and regardless of why you didn’t show up, I know that you didn’t really want to go out with me.”
“Teagan, I did—I mean I do want to go out with you.” Is that true? I asked myself.
“You’ve been one of my better friends for years and I don’t want to lose that,” I told her. “We should be able to go out as friends, have fun and spend time together socially. You’re beautiful; I’d be crazy not to want to go out with you.”
She smiled. “You don’t need to try to make me feel better. I’m a big girl, Zach. I can handle being told that you’re not interested.”
“That’s not it at all, Teagan. You know that my only hang-up has been our difference in age.”
“The difference in our age? We’re only eleven years apart. I’ll be twenty-four in a few months—but what does that matter? We get along great. I can deal with your occasional grumpiness and you know how to make me laugh without trying too hard.” She frowned before continuing. “I’m going to graduate in a few months and once I start teaching, I won’t be working at the Pharaoh anymore. I want to see how we’d do together.”
“And if we’re horrible together, what then?” I asked. “You heard how my last break-up went. Women always think they can change me, but it’s not going to happen.”
“I don’t want to change you. I like you just the way you are—even if you did stand me up for some lame excuse like getting stabbed.”
Goddammit, she’s right, I told myself. She was almost out of college and planned on going to work in the New Orleans school system instead of somewhere nice like Baton Rouge, and it was because she wanted to stay near me. That wasn’t fair to her; I’d put off her affections and hidden my own for her for far too long.
“Saturday night.”
“What?” she asked.
“Saturday night. Let me make it up to you on Saturday. I’ll take you to dinner and we’ll go out.”
“Zach, isn’t Saturday your busiest day at work?”
“Yeah, so what? I feel terrible about last night.” I paused and then smiled. “It’s not like the bodies are going to go anywhere if I’m a few minutes late.”
“You know that Saturday is also Valentine’s Day, right?”
“No, I didn’t know that.”
“So you still want to take me to dinner, even though it’s Valentine’s Day?”
“Yeah. I’m okay with that. Let’s go.”
“Alright, it’s a date,” she replied. “It’s going to be hard to get reservations anywhere last minute like this.”
“You let me worry about that. I’ll probably see you at the Pharaoh, but if I don’t, Saturday at six. Okay?”
“See you then, Zach.”
She hung up and the soft scrape of bare feet on hardwood caused me to turn in time to see Sadie duck around the corner.
“Good morning,” I called after her.
“Hmm? Oh, good morning, Zach,” she responded, stepping out of the room and stretching as if she’d just woken up instead of spying on me a moment ago.
“You sleep alright?”
“Mmm hmm. Your bed is comfortable.”
“Good, I’m glad you were able to get some sleep. Do you drink coffee? I can brew you a cup.”
“No, I never took it up… I mean, the woman whom I’m cloned after never took it up.”
“It’s okay. Those memories are yours. They’re as real as if it was your physical body experiencing them.”
“I guess so. I’m just so frustrated because I have no idea who I’m supposed to be. I don’t even know if she has children.”
“That’s probably a memory that would transfer over,” I said in an effort to ease her upset mind, even though I had no idea if that was true. “If you remembered working someplace, but don’t remember children—or giving birth—then it’s unlikely that you have any.”
“Do you think the interview is going to turn up any clues about who she is?”
“I hope so. There’s no guarantees, but Chris has a large local following. He’s our best bet at finding out who you are.”
She dipped her chin without replying.
“We’ll figure it out,” I assured her. “I’ve got to go to work this morning and meet with my boss. You can stay here if you’d like, or I can take you to a park or wherever you’d like to go, and pick you up afterward.”
“Are you sure I can stay here? I don’t want to go out in public like…” She touched her face.
“Yes, of course you can stay here.” My eyes wandered over her bruised skin before saying, “You’re already healing. Looks like old Doc Wellington patched you up good. Before too long, it will just be a horrible memory and you’ll be able to move forward with your life.”
“I can’t wait,” she replied with a hint of sarcasm.
“Uh oh. I think I heard a bit of your real personality peeking through. Better be careful or you may even laugh one of these days.”
She chuckled lightly. “Thank you for helping me out, Zach. I know you didn’t have to, clones being property and all.”
“Nonsense, Sadie. You’re not somebody’s property. You’re a human being.”
I waited for a response, but she stared at her hands. “Okay. I’ve got to get ready. Andi can assist you with som
e juice or food. If we don’t have what you want, she can have anything delivered, just make sure she clears the delivery person before you open the door.”
“Thank you. I don’t know how I’ll be able to repay you.”
“No worries. That’s the benefit of being single, I’ve got plenty of money for an extra meal or two.”
I went to the shower to try and massage away some of the bruises that the clones inflicted, berating myself the whole time instead of relaxing. I shouldn’t have said that I had money. The woman was destitute and wearing borrowed clothing. God, she must think I’m such an asshole.
Join the club, lady. Join the damn club.
“How do you always seem to find a way to get into trouble, Forrest?”
“Chief, this wasn’t my fault,” I appealed. “I went to speak to Chris Young for another interview and those clones jumped me.”
“Any idea if they were there for you or for the reporter?”
“There wasn’t a lot of time for talking. I’ll interview them and get some answers.”
“No you won’t,” he grunted, chewing harder on his cigar stub.
“What do you mean? I made the arrest, I’ll interrogate.”
“Mayor Cantrell ordered them destroyed.”
“What?” I asked, horrified.
“The clones were euthanized this morning,” Brubaker replied. “I don’t like it, but the governor’s office granted the mayor the power to do whatever he needed to do to confront the clone threat, up to and including mobilizing the Louisiana National Guard.”
The floor seemed to drop out from underneath me. “Chief, those were human clones. Regardless of how you want to spin it, they were people. The mayor ordered a murder and we followed suit.”
“Goddammit, Forrest! I know. I don’t agree with it. I spoke to the Milneburg Precinct chief about an hour before you got here. Doctors from Sabatier Island injected both of the clones in custody with a lethal dose of potassium chloride. Then they dumped the bodies in the garbage.”
“Why the fuck would they kill them? They could have given us information about who ordered them to try and get to Chris. Or maybe they were trying to get to me, I don’t know. That is such—”
I stopped. Why would Governor Talubee allow the clones to be euthanized before they could give a statement? Based on the order to police to eliminate the clone “threat,” I knew no one had any love for clones, but even then, why would they order their deaths before information could be gleaned from them?
In my mind, there was only one answer: The two of them were part of the torture tourism ring. It was the only explanation that made sense.
For that matter, why is Chief Brubaker dead set on keeping me off the clone case?
Shit, I was beginning to get paranoid. The governor had simply granted the mayor of his largest city the power to enforce the law as he saw fit. Governor Talubee—and Chief Brubaker—were more than likely clean.
“Chief, why has the mayor declared a war on clones?”
“I’d hardly call it a war.”
“It seems like a war when we forego any attempt to follow due process and begin exterminating prisoners.”
The chief stood up and walked around his desk. I watched as he shut the door to his office and followed him as he came back to his seat. He turned on an old radio with a tap on his computer’s display. Soft sounds of oldies that my dad listened to filled the small space.
“I don’t disagree with you, Forrest,” Chief Brubaker said, leaning forward. “Something doesn’t add up. Lord knows this city already has a hard enough time with public relations. If word of this got out—this shoot first, don’t ask any questions mistake—then the department would be done for. If that happens, there’ll be anarchy in the streets.”
“Where are all of these clones coming from all of a sudden?” I asked, even though I had a good idea of the answer.
“Nobody knows. Your buddy Thomas Ladeaux is scheduled to speak with a special prosecutor appointed by the state later today. One of his subsidiary companies grows clones, maybe he’s got some info.”
“He’s not my buddy,” I reminded my boss. “I know his company Biologiqué International is in the clone business, but I thought they were in the early stages of development, still experimenting with prototypes, not full-on production.”
“That’s the official story coming out of the company. Word on the street says that isn’t the case, which is what the prosecutor is going to try to get to the bottom of.”
I knew in my heart that Voodoo was dirty, but I’d believed him when he looked me in the eyes and said there’d been a mix-up when the company sold those thirty-eight clones by mistake. If he was lying, then he was the best liar I’d ever met.
“How bad is the surge of clones, Chief?”
The older man shrugged. “There’s no telling. The feds are scrambling to develop some type of clone detector. Nobody has much faith that it will work though, since they are genetically the exact same as us. I mean, what do we test for?”
Brubaker glanced at the thick wooden door to his office and turned the volume up on the music. “A clone tried to infiltrate the mayor’s staff last week. The only way they knew to check into it was because the staffer’s wife noticed that a large scar on his backside was missing and he couldn’t explain it. She talked to a few people and hired a private dick that was able to pull security tapes showing her husband going into a club in Easytown a few weeks ago and then banging a hooker in the alley.
“We got lucky with the camera angle and saw a couple of thugs hit him over the head while he was fucking the hooker. They connected a bunch of leads from some type device in a briefcase to his head while the hooker took strands of hair and scraped some skin cells into a bag. The whole thing took less than a minute, then they left him there.”
The chief sighed and continued, “That’s why I changed my directive mid-stream about investigating the clones, Forrest. The feds are all over this, they want to find a scapegoat, so the more distance we can put between ourselves and the investigation, the better.”
I felt relieved. The fact that I’d suspected Brubaker was involved was ludicrous. He and I had known each other for a long time; he was a straight arrow. He gave his officers a certain amount of leeway and I didn’t want to screw up the good thing we had going.
I decided to come clean about the conversation Voodoo and I had about the torture tourism and the mission I’d undertaken to help find the missing clones.
“Chief, there’s a reason I was at that warehouse Monday night. It’s probably why those clones showed up at the reporter’s house yesterday.”
He leaned back and took the cigar out of his mouth, tossing it carelessly onto the surface of his desk. “Spill it.”
FOURTEEN: WEDNESDAY
“I don’t know what the hell to think of this one, Detective.”
“What do you mean, Drake?”
“I could tell you, but you wouldn’t believe me, sir. It’s best if you get down here and have a look for yourself.”
I glanced at the Jeep’s readout. It was only an hour after sundown. Was it going to be a crazy night?
“Alright,” I sighed. “Send me the coordinates and I’ll be there as soon as I can. I just left the precinct headquarters about ten minutes ago, so it shouldn’t be too long.”
A set of coordinates flashed on the readout and the Jeep’s nav system asked if I wanted to go there. I tapped the “YES” key and felt the car’s speed ease up as it prepared to turn around to head back to Easytown.
“Andi, are you there?” I asked aloud.
“Of course, Zach.”
“How’s Sadie doing?”
“She’s a much better conversationalist than you are.”
“Thanks. Can you put her on the phone?”
“You’re being broadcast across the apartment now. She’s currently in the living room, laying on the couch.”
“Uh… Hey, Sadie. It’s Zach. Are you there?”
“Oh! Hi, Zach. You startled me. I wasn’t expecting you to call.”
“I was on my way home, but got called in to a murder investigation. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine. You’re busy, I get it.”
“Are you doing alright?”
“As best as can be expected, I guess,” she replied. “Your friend Jasmine called to talk to me today, so we spent about thirty or forty minutes talking. It was therapeutic.”
I shook my head at her use of the word. The advancements made in the cloning industry were amazing. Twenty years ago, the first adult human clones produced were like infants mentally and had to be taught how to do everything from going to the restroom, eating with utensils and how to speak. It was unsettling. Now, it was plug and play. They could insert anyone’s memories into any clone body and it seemed like they were a normal person.
That’s probably how the latest version of torture tourism came into being. Torturing, maiming and killing something that only knows how to scream probably became boring quickly. Now, the clones could beg for mercy and offer everything they could to end the suffering. It was sick—like the people who engaged in that lifestyle.
“I’m glad you were able to talk to her,” I replied. “I meant to have you spend some time with her yesterday, but I think talking to Chris will be better in the long run.”
“We’re going to talk tomorrow morning also and work on a plan to find me a place to stay.”
“You’re welcome to stay with me for a bit.”
“Thank you, Zach. I appreciate it, but it’s not a long-term solution. If I’m going to move past this and become a functioning member of society again—I mean, like the person I was copied from is—I need to have my own place and earn my own money.”
“I can respect that. The offer still stands though.”
“Is it okay if I stay tonight? I’ll go out looking for something tomorrow. Andi told me about your date with Teagan on Valentine’s Day, so I don’t want to screw things up for you if you bring her back here.”
“What? Teagan’s just a kid—” Besides, I don’t know what I want with her, I finished my statement internally. “Yes, of course you can stay tonight.”
