The Last Hope

by C. C. Jameson

  “Ow!” she yelped. “Stop it!”

  His eyes locked onto hers. Kate had never been on the receiving end of such an angry look; even her violent ex-husband had never mustered that much hatred into one stare.

  And then, the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth echoed loudly in the room.

  He seemed confused, then looked down at his hand, and immediately released the pressure of his grasp. He brought his hand up in the air like he was waving a white flag of surrender.

  “Sorry, Kate! Did I hurt you?” Robbie asked.

  Kate brought her wrist up and massaged it with her other hand.

  “I’ll be okay,” she said with a forced smile.

  I’m sure I’ll have a nasty bruise, though.

  She had no doubt his angry alter ego would have broken it without hesitation.

  “What happened just now?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. You were suddenly sitting in front of me. I don’t remember getting here.”

  “What do you remember? What happened since you last saw me?”

  “You left the room. Then I was escorted to a jail cell, then...”

  “Then?” she pressed.

  “Nothing. I’m here again, talking to you.” His shoulders drooped.

  With her sore wrist resting on her lap, she reached out with her other hand and patted his hands.

  “There, there. That’s all right. We don’t need to worry about the stuff in between right now.”

  He lifted his head, a faint smile on his lips.

  Kate started her interrogation again, gently. “Yesterday you were telling me about JJ and Mr. C. How about you tell me more about them?”

  Robbie took a deep breath and then said, “JJ is beautiful and smart. She gets her way with Mr. C and Mr. S.”

  “Who’s Mr. S?” Kate asked.

  “Her husband.”

  “Are there other people that run the Colony?”

  “There are supervisors, but JJ, Mr. C, and Mr. S are the only ones in charge. Every supervisor answers to one of them. The rest of the people are all pupils like I was.”

  Kate didn’t understand the reference. “Pupils?”

  Robbie nodded. “That’s how JJ referred to us. Mr. C used a meaner word. He doesn’t like us like JJ does.”

  “How about Mr. S?”

  “We didn’t see him much. He’s a very smart man. He taught a few classes, and he was called whenever one of us got sick.”

  Kate took note. “He’s a doctor?”

  “I guess.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “From what I see on TV, doctors save lives.”

  “And?”

  “When pupils got sick enough to see Mr. S, we never saw them again,” Robbie said.

  If Kate weren’t conducting the interview herself and seeing the innocence and honesty in Robbie’s eyes, she’d have a hard time believing everything he was saying. She pressed on, genuinely curious to learn everything she could about the strange people and things that happened at the Colony. “What do you mean?”

  His voice became solemn. “I think they died.”

  “Do you think Mr. S killed them?”

  Robbie lifted his shoulders. “I don’t know. Some of us got really, really sick, real fast. Maybe Mr. S couldn’t help them.”

  “Could you describe these three people to a sketch artist?” Kate asked before seeing hesitation in his eyes.

  I have to sweeten the deal.

  “The artist could make a copy of JJ’s drawing for you to keep. Would you like that?”

  Robbie beamed with joy. “That would be awesome!”

  Bingo.

  “Okay, hang tight, and I’ll be right back. Do you want something to drink or eat?”

  “Tea and biscuits would be good.”

  “Sure.” Kate left and went into the observation room.

  “How British of him to ask for tea and biscuits. How’s your wrist, dear?” Dr. Dobbins asked as Kate entered the room.

  She glanced down at her wrist that had darkened already. “Just a bruise, nothing broken.”

  “It’s interesting. He definitely has a split personality disorder, and Robbie is the latent one. I reckon that he rarely comes out. Robert is the dominant one. If this man has killed before, Robert would have done it, not Robbie. I don’t know if Robbie would know about Robert’s murders.”

  Agent Lack got off the phone. “Our sketch artist will be down here in a few minutes. Murphy, you’ll go back in there with him. Start off with Juliet.”

  “How about the tea and biscuits?” Kate asked.

  “I’ll go get him his snack,” Lewin said. “I need to stretch my legs.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  July 31, 2015

  Kate Murphy

  Roxbury Police Station, Boston

  The sketch artist and Kate entered the interrogation room, and Robbie gradually began to describe JJ:

  “Her blonde hair is long and really wavy on warm sunny days… She has small eyes and a narrow and pointy nose. Her lips are big, sometimes red hot, sometimes light pink. Her skin is soft, and she smells of jasmine,” he said wistfully.

  “Is she tall?” Kate asked.

  “She often wears high heels, and with them, she’s really tall, taller than you.”

  “I’m five-foot-eight,” Kate told the artist. “Much taller than me?”

  He spaced his fingers by about four inches. “Maybe this much taller?”

  Kate nodded and made note of it. “How about her figure? Would you say Juliet and I have a similar body shape?”

  “No. You’re much too... sporty,” he said.

  Kate smiled. “You mean she has nice curves?”

  “I guess.”

  “Large breasts?”

  He blushed. “Yes.”

  “Is she skinny, average weight, or chubby?”

  “Pretty thin, other than her boobies.”

  Kate chuckled, realizing it was almost as if she was speaking with a pubescent boy instead of a grown man. “Does she speak with an accent, or does she sound like you and me?”

  “Like us,” Robbie said. “But the men speak funny.”

  Kate cocked her head. “Funny how? Can you tell what accents they have?”

  Robbie seemed frustrated momentarily. “I don’t know. They often used words I didn’t understand.”

  “That’s okay.”

  The sketch artist continued his work for a few more minutes. After some fixes based on Robbie’s feedback, they had a decent portrait of Juliet.

  “I will get a copy of this?” Robbie asked, his eyes bursting with hope.

  Kate nodded. “Yes, I’ll make sure you get a copy, but first we also need you to describe Mr. C and Mr. S the same way.”

  Ninety minutes later, they had all three portraits done.

  Mr. C looked like a walking military stereotype. Scar on his right cheek, brown hair, crew cut, tall, and muscular.

  Mr. S seemed a bit older, balding, gray hair, closely set eyes, crooked nose, and a small potbelly. But the feature that made Kate smile was his gunslinger mustache. He had long sideburns that turned into a beard along a few inches of his jaw, combined with a horseshoe ’stache. That left him with three big gaps in an otherwise full beard.

  The sketch artist left and promised to bring back a copy of Juliet’s drawing.

  “That was very helpful. Thank you, Robbie,” Kate said. “Would you like more tea?”

  “No, thank you, but I’m hungry.”

  “Let me see what I can do. I’ll be back.”

  Kate once again returned to the observation room.

  “We’re running the sketches against our databases to see if we can find a match,” Lewin said.

  “Can we get him something to eat?” Kate asked.

  “We’ll order pizza for all of us in about an hour,” Lack said. “He can have a few slices then. Get him to describe that place he called the Colony. He might remember some landmarks we could pinpoint on our end.”
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  “Sure. I’ll quickly run and get snacks first. I’ll be right back,” she said.

  Kate stopped by the lunchroom, grabbed a couple of Pepsis and two bags of Doritos from the vending machines, then she went back to Robbie.

  Beethoven’s Fifth was still playing on repeat. She sat down and handed him one of the bags of chips. “We’ll get pizza for lunch in a little bit, but here’s something to tide us over.”

  “Thanks,” Robbie said as he tore into the snack.

  “So, what can you tell me about the Colony? Is it close to here?”

  Robbie looked up as if trying to locate a loose piece of memory floating in his brain. “I’m not sure.”

  “Would you take a plane to get there?” Kate pressed.

  “No, I’ve never been on a plane.”

  She scrunched her face up. “Are you sure?”

  “Well... I don’t recall ever being on a plane,” he said. “But I guess that doesn’t mean I haven’t been.”

  “Fair enough. How about trains?”

  He nodded profusely. “Oh, we could hear trains in the distance at the Colony.”

  “How far out?”

  “Really, really far, but some nights, we’d hear their whistles.”

  “That’s good,” Kate said, feeling like she was getting somewhere. “Would you say the trains came by a lot?”

  “Hard to tell. We spent a few hours outside when we had to tend the gardens or slaughter animals. The rest of the time, we were underground, learning and improving our skills.”

  Kate sat forward. She really wanted to learn more about their activities, but she had to follow Lack’s orders and focus on locating the Colony. “Do you think you could recognize a satellite picture of the place?”

  “I don’t know. There isn’t much to see from above.”

  “What could we see?”

  “Large fields, a garden behind the main house, another building with the entrance to our training facility, a fenced-off area, but you wouldn’t see that from above. It would look like any farm from the sky.”

  “What about the terrain around it?” she asked. “Are there mountains, hills, rivers, lakes?”

  Robbie thought for a moment. “A few hills, but nothing like the mountains out west. There’s a river a few miles down. Juliet took me fishing there once. It also runs through the perimeter for the final exam.”

  Final exam?

  Kate made a note to return to that topic later on.

  “Is it a big river? Would you be able to cross it without a boat?”

  “Not too big, but there are some deeper parts, where the trout hang out.”

  “Trout? Do you remember other types of fish? Bass? Catfish?”

  “No, just trout, I think.”

  Maybe it was close to one of the popular trout fishing areas in the Northeast. “That’s good. Did you catch any?”

  “No, they weren’t hungry that day. That’s what Juliet said.”

  Kate smiled at his reply. How nice of Juliet to explain it to him that way.

  She certainly didn’t sound like an evil person, but that wasn’t what Kate needed to focus on right now. She returned to her line of questioning. “Is the Colony close to the ocean?”

  “No, no ocean.”

  “How about the weather?” Kate asked. “Did you go outside during the winter?”

  “Yes, sometimes, for training exercises.”

  “Was it cold?”

  Robbie’s head bobbed. “Of course, and there was lots of snow.”

  Kate was hoping his answers would narrow down the search zone, but it felt like she was questioning a child. “Did you get a lot of snow storms?” she continued.

  “A few each year.”

  “How about tornados, hurricanes, that type of stuff?”

  Robbie tilted his head. “No, some windy days, but nothing too bad.”

  “And during the fall, what colors were the trees in the hills?”

  Robbie smiled, and his eyes widened. “All sorts. They’re beautiful in the fall: red, orange, and yellow. Real pretty out there.”

  Kate had exhausted the list of weather questions that had come to mind, so she moved on to some of her notes that could help pinpoint the Colony’s location. “What kind of animals lived in the Colony?”

  This seemed to excite Robbie. “Chickens, pigs, cows... a few goats. We had lots of fresh eggs and milk, and we made our own butter. These were our duties. I much preferred gardening or making butter over slaughtering the cows and pigs.”

  The door to the interrogation room opened, and Lack came in, accompanied by a redheaded woman holding a pizza box topped with three soda cans.

  “Hey, Robbie,” Agent Lack started. “I’m Cameron, and this is Stephany,” he said, pointing to the woman next to him. “We thought we’d all eat together while you keep telling your story to Kate here.”

  Lack removed the cans from the top of the pizza box, which Stephany then slid onto the table before opening and letting out a delicious aroma of pepperoni and cheese.

  Robbie reached for a slice, folded it in half, and swallowed a third of it in one bite.

  “Man, you’re hungry,” Stephany said. “They tell me this is the best pizza in town. What d’you think?”

  Robbie kept quiet, seemingly enthralled by eating.

  “Kate,” Agent Lack said. “Come with me.”

  Robbie glanced up at Kate like a child looking at his mother about to abandon him on the side of a highway.

  “Don’t go!” he yelled.

  “I’ll be right back, Robbie. You’ll be in good hands with Stephany,” Kate assured him.

  Kate followed Lack out of the room. “I’d like to let Agent Turner—Stephany—bond with the suspect and get you off the case.”

  A pang resonated in Kate’s chest. She was the one who had discovered the first clones. She’d worked her butt off on the case and had barely slept during the past week. She was the only one who had managed to bond with Robbie. But Kate’s rational side understood Lack’s point of view. It made sense to keep things internal. The bureau had taken over the case, plus Kate wasn’t even a detective, after all.

  “That’s totally fine,” she said, lying through her teeth.

  Kate’s heart was heavy. She didn’t know if the sadness originated from losing her case to the Bureau or if it was because she’d started to bond with Robbie and wouldn’t be able to see him again.

  “Hang around, though,” Lack said. “We’re not sure if things are going to work out with Agent Turner. He’s obviously comfortable with you, so we may need you back.”

  Kate nodded and smiled. “Of course, sir. I just had the one slice, so could I leave and grab a bit more to eat, then? I could be back in an hour.”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  Lack returned to the observation room, and Kate stayed in the hallway. Feeling a little distraught, she reached for her phone, turned it back on, and then called Luke.

  He picked up after the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Luko. How are things?”

  “Good, quite interesting, actually.”

  “I’m off for lunch, care to join me?” she asked.

  “Um, sure. Give me five minutes to wrap up what I’m working on, and then I’ll meet you at the Pleasant Pheasant?”

  “Sounds great, I’ll get us a table.”

  Kate popped her head into the observation room to see if Fuller was in there, but he wasn’t. She didn’t know if she was supposed to report her whereabouts to him, as well, or just Lack. However, since the FBI had taken over the case, she was probably fine leaving.

  “I’m off to lunch. I’ll be back later,” she said to the entire room.

  Dr. Dobbins nodded, and the rest ignored her, too busy staring at the new agent’s attempt at bonding with Robbie.

  “Do you prefer to be called Robbie or Robert?” Kate overheard from the speaker in the observation room as she headed out. The door was about to close when the doctor’s nasa
l voice echoed out in the hallway. “Officer Murphy!”

  She stopped and turned. Dr. Dobbins was holding the door ajar, his head in the opening.

  “Yes?” Kate said.

  “Keep your mobile on, won’t you? It’s not looking too promising with Agent Turner.”

  “Sure thing, Doctor. Want anything from the pub?”

  He scratched his chin. “If they have fish and chips, that’d be bloody marvelous.”

  “It’s Boston. I’m sure they do. I’ll bring some back for you.”

  She headed out of the building while wondering why she had offered to bring him back lunch. Maybe because he was the only one who’d been giving her positive feedback on her interviewing skills? Then again, perhaps her skills had nothing to do with her successfully eliciting useful information from the clone; she’d just lucked out because of her hair color.

  Whatever.

  She was on her way to meet Luko for lunch. What else could she ask for?

  Well. Kenny was still in jail, but at least they were making real progress toward coming up with a plausible explanation of why his DNA had been at the crime scene.

  Chapter Thirty

  July 31, 2015

  Kate Murphy

  Pleasant Pheasant Pub, Boston

  Kate found a small table near the back of the restaurant and ordered a coffee and two glasses of water. She left her phone on the table, just in case Agent Lack or Dr. Dobbins called.

  She was browsing the menu when Luko sat down.

  “Hey there!” he said, smiling. He took off his beige jacket and laid it next to him on the booth, then placed his briefcase on the table.

  “Good to see you,” she said. “You must have been hot in that jacket.”

  “It’s supposed to rain and cool off later today,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t like to be unprepared.”

  “Sure, I get that,” she said, although she had almost broken a sweat in her short-sleeved white cotton blouse just walking here because it was so hot and muggy outside. “What’s up with the briefcase?”

  “Oh, that’s what I’m excited about. I’ll show you, but first I’m starving.”

  They flagged the waitress over and ordered burgers. Kate added an order of fish and chips to go before handing back her menu to the waitress.