Crime Zero (aka the Crime Code) (1999)

by Cordy, Michael

  "Can I speak to her?"

  "Pam, I'd let her sleep for now. I'm staying over at her place tonight. I'll tell her you called. She'll appreciate it, I know."

  "So what happened exactly?"

  Naylor told her the bare bones, including what she herself had seen in Axelman's gruesome exhibition chamber. "It's sick, Pam, but don't worry about it. Focus on the announcement tomorrow. It's exactly this kind of crime that Project Conscience's designed to end."

  "OK, but give my love to Ali for me."

  "Of course I will. Good luck tomorrow. I'll see you there."

  Feeling tired, Naylor checked her watch. It was after nine, and today had been a full day. Tomorrow was important too. She looked forward to a glass of Jack Daniel's and a bath before hitting the sack. But first she had one more call to make. She put the desk phone to her ear and punched in the numbers.

  "Jackson," said a deep, nasal voice. She could hear from the background noise that he was in a bar. Involuntarily she licked her lips.

  "How is everything?" "Fine, Director Naylor." "Did you give her the injection?" "Yes, and everything's been arranged. We delivered her a

  few hours ago. Dr. Peters handled it. No one else was involved. And the doc confirmed that he knows exactly what to do."

  Madeline nodded into the phone. Dr. Peters had too much at stake to be unreliable. If she revealed just a portion of the abuse she knew he had been involved in, he would spend the next decade or so in jail, and when he got out, the only medicine he'd be allowed to practice would be opening a pack of Tylenol.

  "Anything else?" asked Jackson. "No, that's fine for now. Good night." With that Naylor replaced the phone and stood away from

  the desk. As she left the office and made her way out of the building, she thought again of the horrors she had seen that afternoon.

  The timing was advantageous, though. Crime Zero was approaching the critical stage, and seeing Libby and the other dead girls would have hardened Alice Prince's resolve to see it through to the end. After all, Axelman might be gone, but there were countless others like him still walking the earth.

  Chapter 18.

  The Marina District, San Francisco, Later That Night

  Pulling up outside his grandfather's house, Decker was grateful that neither Barzini nor any of Matty Rheiman's other friends appeared to be visiting. Emotionally drained, Decker was desperate to talk to his grandfather alone.

  Inside the house Matty gave him a delighted hug. "Luke, what a surprise. I didn't know you were still in town."

  "It's been quite a day, Gramps. And there are a couple of things I need to talk to you about."

  Within seconds of hearing his voice Matty sat him down in the living room. "Luke, what's up?"

  Feeling like a child, Decker let everything flow from him. He unburdened himself of all the fears and doubts he had felt over the last few days: Axelman's letter describing how he had raped his mother and murdered his father; the results of the DNA test; his discovery of Axelman's grisly collection of preserved corpses.

  When he finished, Decker took a deep breath and asked his grandfather to tell him everything he knew. The old man sat silently for a while, just gently patting Decker's arm, before speaking of his daughter's ordeal.

  "It was an awful night. Your mother was having a drink with friends downtown. Richard was away on Navy business, but he had agreed to meet up with her for a meal in town on his return. The police say her assailant must have been watching her all night because her friends had only just left her where Rachel and Richard had agreed to meet when she was attacked."

  Decker's stomach churned. His mother had been a pretty, petite woman. She must have looked vulnerable and childlike to Axelman.

  "According to the police, she was attacked from behind and knocked unconscious. He dragged her into an alley. Then Richard arrived, and when he couldn't find your mother on the corner where they'd agreed to meet, he must have started calling her name. From what the police think the killer ran out of the alleyway and called your father over, saying that a woman had been attacked and needed help. Richard probably ran to your mother then. While he bent over her and tried to revive her, the killer stabbed him five times in the back. Then he ran off."

  "Did he rape my mother before my father--before her husband . . . began calling her?" Correcting himself brought bile rushing to his throat.

  "Yes," said Matty in a soft voice. "And the man was never found."

  Decker groaned and shook his head. If the crime had happened a decade later, the police could have used DNA fingerprinting to help catch Axelman. "What happened then?"

  "Your mother was beside herself with grief. They had been married less than a year, and Rachel had even converted to the Catholic faith for Richard. He was her world. When she discovered she was pregnant, she wouldn't have an abortion. Not only was it against her faith, but she felt sure the child would be Richard's. She was convinced that something good had come out of something bad."

  "She never suspected that I might have been the rapist's child?" Decker asked.

  Matty shrugged, and the ancient face that expressed so much suffering creased in compassion. "She may have, but she never talked about it to me. Anyway, what difference did it make? You were her child, and no parent could have loved a son more." Matty placed his right hand on Luke's face and with feather-light fingers described the contours of his features. "I don't know what this Axelman looked like, but I can tell you that you resemble Richard so closely I can feel his face in front of me now. He was a good man, and although you never met him, his memory and your mother taught you who you are. Whatever science says, he was your real father as far as all that's important is concerned. And don't forget you've got your mother's genes too. They were good people, Luke, and you're a good man."

  Decker held his head in his hands, his temples throbbing with exhaustion, desperately wanting to believe Matty's words of reassurance.

  "Anyway," said his grandfather, patting him on the shoulder, "I regard you as my son as much as my grandson. I helped bring you up. And I couldn't be more proud of you."

  Friday, October 31, 1:51 P.M.

  It wasn't until the next day that Decker's mind began to focus on other anomalies relating to the Axelman case. He had been so obsessed with the paternity claim that he had pushed everything else to the back of his mind. But now the questions came forward, demanding attention. And Decker encouraged the distraction they offered.

  Why had the cold, remorseless Axelman not only revealed where his victims' bodies were buried but also castrated himself? Why had his physical appearance changed so radically, so quickly?

  Something had to have happened to him. He wouldn't have done or accepted these things naturally. They were totally against his personality. And why was Director Naylor so interested--over and above her friendship with Dr. Alice Prince?

  It was these questions that Decker mulled over as he sat in front of the TV with a bottle of Michelob. Rhoda was fussing about the house, and Matty sat quietly with Decker in the corner of the drawing room reading a braille book.

  Clicking the remote to escape the blanket coverage of Karl Axelman and his victims, Luke felt almost grateful to see the faces of Governor Pamela Weiss and President Bob Burbank smile out from the screen. They stood behind a lectern bearing the presidential crest at the foot of the Watts Towers in South Central Los Angeles, the crime capital of the West Coast. A crowd gathered around them, along with a battery of media. Decker even recognized the rake-thin curly-haired figure of Hank Butcher in the press pack. The TV commentator promised a "groundbreaking announcement in the war against crime."

  Bob Burbank without hesitation introduced Pamela Weiss as the next President of the United States. He praised her record as governor of California, particularly when it came to cracking crime.

  Decker took a sip of cold beer and listened numbly to the rhetoric as Pamela Weiss began her announcement.

  "Last night we all learned of the true horror of the
notorious Karl Axelman's crimes. What you might not know is that the recently executed killer's last victim was the daughter of Dr. Alice Prince, a close personal friend of mine." Decker groaned and almost switched channels immediately, but he was curious. At the same time Matty looked up, his fingers pausing on the Braille page he was scanning.

  "Sadly Karl Axelman is hardly unique. Although he has been executed, there are many other Axelmans at large. Violent crime in this country is an epidemic. Murders are up over ten percent nationally, rape by even more. Armed robberies and assaults are increasing so rapidly our overstretched police forces have to prioritize which crimes they deal with first, if at all.

  "Aside from the incalculable human costs of violent crime the financial cost runs into billions. A drop of just one percentage point in violent crime would free up almost one and a quarter billion dollars a year to invest in health care and other more necessary areas.

  "But this isn't a political point. Crime is a social cancer that has riddled society throughout history. For all the rhetoric and well-meaning schemes that have been attempted, no society has yet found a real solution to stopping the few malignant individuals who corrupt the rest of the social body. And unfortunately for Dr. Prince and the other victims of Axelman's crimes we can't undo what he did. Or indeed the victims of the countless other crimes. But I believe we can--we must--ensure that these crimes don't happen again. That is what we have been trying to do here in California."

  Decker stared at the TV openmouthed. Pamela Weiss was going to claim credit for the California crime figures. To do that, she would have to explain something that had baffled police chiefs, sociologists, and media pundits for the last three years.

  "Eight years ago with the backing of a visionary President, senior-level support from the FBI, and the involvement of Dr. Alice Prince we engaged on a bold project." The camera panned from Weiss and President Burbank to the right of the small podium, where Luke could see Director Naylor standing motionless and unsmiling. "A project designed not to fight crime but to treat it, to reawaken the good in all of us. We called this initiative Project Conscience. And it's Project Conscience that is behind California's improved crime figures."

  As she said this, Pamela Weiss's confident face filled the screen. Luke was sitting forward in his seat now, his full attention on the TV. In the corner Matty was listening no less intently, his book forgotten.

  "All men possess genes that make them more or less predisposed to commit violent crime. And over the last eight years we have proved that fact beyond any doubt. Through modifying the genes of some sixteen thousand convicted violent male offenders in California we have been able to improve their behavior, achieving the reduced crime figures that have dominated the domestic headlines over the last few years."

  Pamela Weiss stopped and gestured with her hand, taking in the surrounding area. "Just look at the regenerated area around Watts Towers where the President and I are now standing. Once a symbol of all that was bad about our inner cities, it now represents a soaring example of improvement and hope through Project Conscience. And let me reassure you that the gene therapy that yielded these results has been rigorously checked and approved by the FDA as completely safe."

  Decker sat stunned on the couch, as the camera panned around the regenerated shopfronts and houses of Watts. This had to be the project Kathy was working on, the one based on her original thesis back at Harvard and the one she had the meeting about with Naylor yesterday.

  "I understand that many of you will have concerns about this bold decision to test a radical therapy outside normal channels. But hard crime requires hard choices. Of course there were risks, but the risks of doing nothing were far greater. Crime has become so entrenched that we believed drastic action was required--not political rhetoric or posturing but hard, decisive deeds.

  "This project wasn't undertaken lightly. Rigorous research involving the best available minds was conducted over a period spanning almost a decade. This research was conducted on the most intractable violent criminals who have already forfeited their right to live in normal society. The results show that far from being inhumane, punishing their old life, we have given them a new one.

  "I believe in free will. It is my firm conviction that genes only predispose us to behave in a certain way by virtue of our hormones and the chemicals in our brains; ultimately we consciously decide what we do. We must still all take full responsibility for our actions. But this therapy stacks the odds in favor of a subject's being better able to cope with inappropriate aggressive responses. It reawakens his conscience, allowing him to decide to walk away from a senseless fight, avoid initiating a brutal attack, or curb his base urge to rape a defenseless woman.

  "Let me share a vision with you, a vision for America: With this therapy violent men will be freed to channel their energies into more productive areas that benefit society, rather than undermine it. Imagine such a society where all convicted criminals are given this treatment, where the majority of offenders can rediscover their better selves. Creating a more productive, tolerant, kinder world. Imagine it. A kinder, stronger America. Your America."

  Weiss raised her right hand and pointed directly at the camera. "I tell you now, if I am elected President on Tuesday, I will make this dream into a reality."

  Decker watched as Pamela Weiss paused for a moment, staring at the camera with just the right look of concern and warmth. She was doing this thing and making it plausible, even commendable. The beer suddenly tasted sour in his mouth.

  "Don't they ever learn?" shouted Matty suddenly.

  Luke whipped around at the sound of his angry voice. He had never seen his mild grandfather so enraged before. His face was red, the veins standing out on his temple. "What's wrong, Gramps?"

  "What's wrong? You've just heard what that woman's been saying and you ask me what's wrong? They are judging people by their genes and trying to change them."

  Decker found it hard to match Matty's anger. "They're only going to give the drug to convicted criminals."

  "But that's just the start. First they give this drug to change the genes of criminals. Then they decide to give it to those young people who perhaps have genes they don't like, before they have done anything wrong. Because they might do something wrong. Soon they will separate those with good genes from those with bad, ignoring the fact that people choose to do evil. I remember when the Nazis first began to separate us. They made us wear the Star of David on our jackets so that they could tell who we were. Not humans. Not people like them. But Jews. Luke, we are more than our genes. You are more than your genes. Hasn't anybody learned anything?"

  "But this is different, Gramps."

  "Is it? What if they decide that you have the genes of Karl Axelman in you and are therefore a potential criminal who should be 'treated'?"

  Decker couldn't answer that. He put the beer down on the table beside him.

  "Yes, my fellow Americans, with the support of President Burbank I have taken risks and challenged conventional procedures. But I firmly believe that what America needs now more than ever is a leader. Someone who will serve the people, not by slavishly following changing opinions but by taking tough decisions and leading them to a better, more peaceful tomorrow. If you share this vision, then vote for me on Tuesday so that together we can reawaken the conscience of America."

  Even before Weiss finished uttering the last syllable of her speech, the crowd on TV erupted in applause. Decker turned to watch his grandfather shaking his head in disbelief. At that moment the door opened and Rhoda walked into the room. "Luke," she said handing him a brown envelope, "this came in the mail for you."

  "Thanks."

  Tearing open the buff envelope, he found a computer disc and a scribbled note inside. To his surprise it was from Kathy Kerr:

  Luke, we've got to talk.

  The samples in one of the bags you gave me match the DNA profile of a killer on the FBI database, Karl Axelman. Except there are some subtle, lethal differences,
which might be connected to my work on a project called Conscience.

  What's going on, Luke? You must suspect something; otherwise you wouldn't have asked me to analyze the samples instead of using the FBI labs. I've enclosed a computer disc for safekeeping. It includes a copy of Karl Axelman's original genome and his modified one taken from the samples in your evidence bag. But don't worry, I should be seeing you before you receive this. I guess this is just a precaution.

  We really need to talk. This is scary.

  Kathy

  Decker frowned as he read the note, unsure what to make of it. He picked up the disc and placed it on the coffee table. She said she would be here before the disc. But she wasn't. She also said that Axelman's genes had been changed.

  Could that explain his physical appearance, the hair loss, and the acne? Could it explain his sudden remorse and radically different personality? Did it also explain why Director Naylor had been so interested in what Decker might or might not have found out from Axelman?

  He looked up again at the TV to the closing shots of the Watts rally. Pamela Weiss stood triumphant, arms raised. FBI Director Naylor stood close to her, staring out across the crowds, a look of cool satisfaction on her face. Had Axelman been one of the criminals tested in the unauthorized Conscience trials and had something gone wrong? Something that had been covered up?