Barely a Crime

by Robert Ovies

  They drove in silence again, the only break being when Crawl laughed suddenly and said, “We’ll tell him we’ll shoot the tapes if he doesn’t pay up.”

  Kieran laughed with him. “If he goes to the police, he’s fried. He’ll have to admit he stole the DNA.”

  “Have to. Get himself arrested. International case. Ruin his reputation.”

  “Put him in jail where the Italian government and the Vatican will see to it that he stays put forever.”

  “No, this guy won’t go to the police. And count on it, it’ll be easier than what we just did.”

  Kieran thought about it, and he kept thinking about it as they drove on in silence.

  They were just thirty kilometers from Milan, driving alongside the foothills that were quickly growing into the Alps not far to the north, with the sky beginning to warm behind them in the east, slowly getting ready for sunrise.

  Kieran said suddenly, quietly, “I hope he can’t do it, though.”

  “He thinks he can do it,” Crawl said, “so he’ll pay.”

  Five minutes later, Kieran said it again, still quietly, “I hope he can’t do it.”

  The sign told them that Milan was fifteen kilometers ahead when Kieran suddenly announced, “He’s not going to wait for us, Crawl!”

  He slowed the car and said again, “He won’t wait for us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not going to wait for us to get our act together—for Michael to scout his place and get all his details, and for us to get over there and get all set up, with all the watching and scouting and planning and everything we’d have to do. He’s going to put on his gloves and get the pregnancy going before we even get there! What could be more for sure? He’ll get the DNA ready as soon as he gets back, which will only take him a day or so, for all we know, and we’re not going to have any chance in the world to get those tapes before it happens.”

  Crawl was just staring at him. He blinked a few times, staring and thinking.

  “He came over here for four or five days is all,” Kieran said, “and now it’s a total fast track. He’s not going to wait for a couple of bad-boy Irish nobodies to come and figure out where the hell the damned tapes are! ‘Time is important to me.’ Remember he said that? Why did he say that? He said it because he’s on a schedule. By the time we can run up and put a gun in his face, he’ll say to us, ‘Hey, good luck, cowboys. I’ve already got the baby growing and doing just fine!’ ”

  “Shut up,” Crawl said sharply. “Give me time to think.”

  Kieran did. Then he said quietly, “Thinking won’t change this, but have at it.” He sped up without saying anything more.

  They had just a few kilometers to go. Milan and the hotels and the tours were straight ahead. But Crawl was suddenly grinning again.

  “Maybe,” he said, “maybe it just got even better.”

  “Better how?”

  Crawl said, “There’s no doubt it’s Marie, right?”

  “Ninety-nine and nine-tenths of a percent chance.”

  “It’s Marie,” Crawl said. “He even got the name right, did you notice? I was just thinkin’ about that. I wonder if he even worked that out on purpose, to get her name right, thinking about it even sixteen years ago. ‘Marie’ is just another way to say ‘Mary’. What could be more perfect?”

  He stared at Kieran, waiting for the light to go on.

  It did. Quickly.

  Kieran slowed the Fiat again. He said, “Don’t go where I think you might be going, Crawl. Whatever happened to no risk?” Then he said it again, this time even louder. “Don’t go there!”

  Crawl said, in his best “I’m calm, so you be calm, too” voice, “Just answer this one question before you go nuts on me, okay? If he’d pay six million to get back a few rolls of tape, how much quicker will he come through with six million to get back Mother Mary and her boy-child, Jesus Christ, who she’d already be carrying, alive and growing?”

  Kieran took the first right turn, eased to the edge of the road, slowed to a stop, turned off the engine and said, “You’re talking heavy, serious, go-away-for-the-rest-of-your-life stuff now, you know that.”

  Crawl’s tongue ran slowly across his lower lip. “Yeah,” he said,“ ‘serious’ would be a good word for it.”

  “And how would we even find out for absolute sure if she’s really the one? How can we be positively sure?”

  “Go through it again. Nobel Prize—”

  “I know all that. He’s smart, he works with DNA, he’s got some blood he thinks is Jesus. How do we know it’s her?”

  “He’s a microbiologist, he lied to us about the cancer, he paid a fortune to get a sample of the right DNA, he takes the risk of dying in prison, he does nothing at all without thinking through every detail, his house is in a wilderness, and in that house he’s got a sixteen-year-old virgin named Mary. And he’s probably crazy. That’s how we know.”

  Kieran’s voice rose another notch. “How do you know she’s a virgin?”

  “I don’t give a damn if she’s a virgin, how’s that? He’s got a sixteen-year-old named Mary, and she’s as healthy as you are. And he’s got a lab. And he’s going to do what he knows how to do, right there in the wilderness, in his own house. He’s going to clone the damned DNA, Kieran! And you know it! And he’s not going to do it with press coverage! He’s going to use her to do it when nobody’s looking, and if we take her for a while, we have it covered both ways. If he hasn’t got the DNA in her yet, he still needs her back. If he does have it in her, all the better. At that point, he’ll do anything he has to do to get her back. And she’s better than the tape in other ways, too. We know where she is! We don’t have to hunt for some secret safe in his house, damn it! We know when she leaves the house. We know where she travels, how and when she gets to school and back again. We know she’s out in an area where we can get her, and get her easy, and no one’s going to see us. And it’s for six million U.S. dollars now, Kieran! Wake the hell up!”

  Kieran exploded. “He could be planning on doing the whole thing in a glass jar, for all you know! You’re talking about kidnapping, Crawl! Kidnapping a live person! In the U.S.! Kidnapping! On guesswork!”

  “I know that’s why he took the sample,” Crawl said, “and I know it’s for her. And you do, too.”

  “They might have a death penalty over there for all you know, kidnapping a sixteen-year-old in America.”

  “For six million dollars, I’ll take that chance. Because it’s a good chance. It’s a perfect chance. And I know it’s a lock because I know he’ll pay that. Easy. So what if it’s six million. He’ll never miss it!”

  “But it’s serious, hunt-us-down stuff!”

  “It’s fifteen minutes to take her. Half a day, maybe, to keep her away from the house and get the money. Fifteen minutes to take her back. It’s no weapons. It’s no one hurt. It’s not that much risk, as isolated as they are, and him being a criminal himself now. And it’s six thousand, thousand dollars! Certain! He’ll pay it!”

  Kieran stared at him, stone-faced.

  “But you know, you don’t have to be in on it,” Crawl said with a shrug, calming down again. “We don’t need you. Michael and me will do fine. Why do we need you? But I swear, I’m going to make Michael so rich he’ll be smiling for the next fifty years.”

  Kieran rubbed his face with both hands. He inhaled as deeply as he could and exhaled slowly. He stared at the morning skyline of a city he had never seen before. He said, “I didn’t say I was out.”

  “Brenna would be smiling at you for it, too,” Crawl said. “Wouldn’t she? And your mom in the new house you talk about getting for her? With the new fence around it? But, like I say, we really don’t need you. You can walk and it’s okay, you know that. It really is.”

  “It’s just. . .” Kieran rubbed his face again, hard. “It’s just, we’re so far past ‘barely a crime’ here, we can’t even see it in the rearview mirror. And you shouldn’t just flip it off with
, ‘I know all this for sure.’ That’s all I’m saying.”

  They were silent. A full minute passed.

  Kieran said, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t be with you. It’s just gotta be thought out.” More silence.

  He said, “I just want to make sure we’re as certain as we can get, that’s all. Before we do something like kidnapping somebody. You agree with that, right?”

  Crawl scratched his cheek. He nodded. A moment later, he practically whispered, “Nobody gets hurt. We treat the girl like a jewel. We take Brenna, if you want. She can take care of the girl. She’d be good for us that way. We’ll take Brenna.”

  Kieran inhaled and exhaled slowly. He said, “Creating Jesus, for God’s sake.”

  Crawl said it again, “You can bring Brenna along.”

  “People decide they want to be God, bad things happen.”

  “Brenna can take care of the girl. And take care of you, right?”

  “Try to play God, it’s like setting off a bomb. It’s like a blast area. A shock wave goes out.”

  “Cleary talked about running out of time. I wonder if he’s crazy enough to try for Christmas.”

  “They call the blast area the ‘kill zone’. Everybody in it gets fried, doesn’t matter who they are.”

  “Do you think his ‘time is important to me’ is about actually trying for Christmas Day?”

  Kieran blinked. He looked at Crawl and said, “What?”

  “I said, wouldn’t that be perfect for Dr. Crazy? Mary’s boy-child, Jesus Christ, born on Christmas Day?”

  11

  The doctor was seated near the window of his library, facing Bruce Lake. This time there was very little light. Just a glimmer from the moon, nothing more. This time it was four o’clock in the morning.

  He had not yet slept, and he would not sleep. His sister, Leah, would not sleep either. Not on this night.

  He was sitting upright. His eyes were open. His arms were as straight as stakes. They reached to his knees, where his hands rested in motionless fists. His breathing was long and deep and regular.

  He knew that he had done everything that could possibly be done to see Marie safely through the triumph of the day. He knew that the ovum had been properly removed and prepared. He knew that the DNA he had retrieved from the microscopic bone shards extracted from the shroud had been successfully introduced into the ovum’s nucleus without destroying the priceless spindle proteins that enable the cells of a new organism to divide and thrive. He knew that this single achievement had overcome the last great obstacle to the cloning of a fully developed human being. And he knew that he had successfully implanted the embryonic clone into the womb of his niece, Marie.

  He felt spent.

  He stared in silence at the soft glow of the lake and the silhouetted beauty of the trees in the subdued light of the partial moon. He inhaled deeply. He thought of Marie. She would be giving birth to more than the child already growing within her; she would be the mother of a whole new age of purposeful human cloning. He thought also about his own role, and he let himself smile, although just slightly, as he wondered which of his two accomplishments would be recognized as his greatest achievement and his most enduring legacy: his cloning breakthrough or his conjuring of the second coming of the most perfect human being who ever lived. Marie heard the alarm but couldn’t locate it. It sounded as though it were coming from behind the curtain in the auditorium, where so many people had gathered, pressed closely together, to see something Marie hadn’t been told about. When she tried to squeeze past them and to climb the stairs of the stage, her legs wouldn’t move. She wondered why, but she didn’t feel afraid. A fat man next to her laughed and said something in a language that sounded Native American. She thought he was telling her how to shut off the alarm, and that led her to realize, even there, in that place where she could still see the blue curtain of the Immaculate Conception High School auditorium, that she must be dreaming, and that it was her bedside clock that she was hearing.

  She worked to wake herself up and succeeded. But she didn’t quite wake up all the way. She turned to look at the clock that was still making noise and saw that it was blurred. Her bedside table was blurred too, and the windows across the room.

  She pushed herself up on one elbow and reached to shut off the alarm. Then she pulled down her covers.

  A twinge of fear came over her. Was she still dreaming, or did her legs really not want to move as they should when she tried to swing them out of the bed?

  She realized that she was sweating and heard herself moan, and she tried even harder to focus. She was aware that her heart was beating faster than normal. She forced herself to a sitting position and stared again at the clock. It said 6:00 A.M. The right time for it to go off. The right time for her to wake up.

  She was in her own bed and knew she should be moving now, but her legs seemed to belong to somebody else. She struggled to slide her legs over the side of the bed, and did so, but very slowly. When she was sure her feet were on the floor she leaned forward and forced herself to stand. There was feeling there, but what was wrong with her legs? Were they just asleep? How could both her legs be asleep at the same time?

  As she stood up, becoming more and more concerned, she felt dizzy, then nauseous.

  Inhaling quickly with deep breaths, she pressed one foot in front of the other, making sure she could feel the throw rug and hard wood floor until she entered the door of the bathroom attached to her bedroom. Once inside the bathroom, she sank to her knees and vomited in the toilet. Once. Twice. A third time, the last time with nothing but air and noise and saliva.

  Shaking and wet with sweat, suddenly very afraid she wouldn’t be able to get up again, she grabbed the side of the toilet bowl and called out to her aunt. It was a weak call. She began to cry, but forced herself to stop. Then she called even louder and more desperately, this time to her aunt and her uncle, too.

  No one came.

  She cried out as loudly as she could, this time in as close as she could get to a scream, “Help me!”

  The scream made the room move, and she buckled over suddenly to retch again into the toilet.

  Voices sounded behind her. She felt herself being held by her upper arms and steadied. Her aunt was on her knees beside her, offering quiet assurances that she was okay, that her uncle was coming right in, that he would know what to do, that she was going to be fine and shouldn’t be afraid.

  But she was afraid. Something was really wrong.

  She felt a hand press to her forehead, heard her uncle say, “My goodness, she’s got a fever starting,” then, “Are you going to be sick again, Marie? Or do you want us to help you get to your bed?”

  She breathed deeply and thought about it, finally shaking her head no, still determined not to let herself cry. Then she tried to stand.

  Her uncle and aunt helped her, but she felt incredibly shaky.

  She said one word: a whispered, “Sorry.”

  Even that sounded distant to her.

  “Don’t be silly,” she heard her aunt say. “You have a flu or something, that’s all it is.”

  Her uncle was talking, too. “You’ll be all right,” he said again and again.

  They were leaving the bathroom. She no longer felt as if she were going to vomit, at least not right away, but nothing else was really in focus, and she felt so weak.

  They helped her past her dresser, where she saw her mother and father watching her from their photo framed in silver.

  Her aunt said to her uncle, “Can you give her anything that will help?”

  “I’m sure I can,” her uncle said. “Get my case from the office, please. And get a half glass of milk.”

  Leah left the room.

  Her uncle helped her until she was sitting on the edge of the bed, then he swung her legs up and eased her back onto her pillow. He sat down next to her, tall and serene. “Tell me exactly what you’re feeling,” he said quietly. “Do you feel any pain at all?” He probed her abdomen gently
with the practiced fingertips of a physician.

  Marie shook her head. “I don’t hurt at all,” she said weakly. “I just felt so dizzy and sick. And my legs felt almost numb. But I think they feel a little better now.”

  “It came on strongly, didn’t it?” her uncle said. “And I’m afraid it’s probably not done with you yet.” He looked carefully at her eyes and felt her throat in several places.

  He was, Marie thought, like a different man when he was acting as a doctor. He was certainly gentler and more attentive.

  She closed her eyes and tried to relax. At least the room wasn’t moving any more. And she didn’t feel as nauseous as she did before, just a little queasy and incredibly weak.

  She felt the doctor move at her side, then heard him whisper so close to her ear that his very nearness, as well as his words, startled her. “I love you, Marie,” he said, “more than anything in this world.”

  She opened her eyes. Her lips parted, but before she could speak her uncle rose to a sitting position, and all she could do was meet his gaze.

  His eyes looked so soft they actually seemed moist.

  What was it that was making her feel afraid?

  “You’ll be all right,” her uncle said once more, now in his normal voice. “But you may be in for a few uncomfortable days.”

  “How can you be sure it’s just the flu?” she asked weakly.

  “Oh, I’m sure, dear,” he said.

  Her aunt Leah entered with a black attache case in her left hand and a half-filled glass of milk in her right.

  The doctor said, still looking at Marie, “If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have said so.”

  He opened his case and withdrew an ear-reading thermometer. “I’m afraid you may be home from school for a few days,” he said, taking her temperature. “This could be the latest Asian strain.” Withdrawing the thermometer, he said, “Not quite as high as I thought, but still, a hundred and one has meaning.”