Chimera

Chapter 27

St. Louis was gray and miserable with an icy rain that wouldn’t relent. It didn’t bother me; it was better than the snow of Boston. I didn’t even mind the monotonous swish of the windshield wipers, although the nauseating country music station Michael had become so fascinated with was beginning to wear on my nerves. As I had predicted, he’d recuperated from the accident completely by that next morning and was just as anxious as I was to hit the road. To that end, we’d taken the car sheltered in the attached garage. It was an older sedan, but with not too many miles on it—an only-to-church-on-Sunday car.

The car ran and that’s all I cared about. I left eight hundred dollars for it on the kitchen table under a cow-shaped creamer. Head down, the porcelain bovine grazed placidly on the field of greenbacks. I’d given a self-conscious shrug at Michael’s curious look and said nothing. He’d seen me steal a few cars now, but this one belonged to an old lady who wasn’t exactly living in the lap of luxury. She needed transportation for herself and the dander-ridden fur balls.

Unfortunately, Michael found his own fur ball before we left. There we were . . . one big happy family again—Stinky, Sneezy, and Country Joe. I looked over as Michael gazed dreamily out of the window, his lips shaping the words of a song we’d already heard three times in the last two hours. “Why country, kid?” I asked with a nearly physical pain. “Seriously, why?”

“You mean you don’t like it?” He unwrapped a candy bar and inhaled the scent of chocolate as if it were a fine wine. “It’s great. Every song is a story and in every story the singer has worse luck than we do. How can you not appreciate that?”

There was something to be said for that, but I’d suffered enough twanging in the past few hours to last me for the rest of my life. “I don’t know. Maybe my bleeding ears are the problem.” I switched the station and then sneezed. “Goddamnit.” We’d left the cats behind, but they hadn’t left us. The upholstery was covered liberally in a layer of white, gray, and yellow hair, and I hadn’t stopped sneezing since Boston.

A froth of tissue was automatically passed my way. “We should’ve bought another box.” Michael returned to his candy bar. “Or five, although I’m not sure it would help. The mucous river cannot be dammed. See the villagers flee in fear.”

I kept one steady hand on the wheel and blew my nose. “Smart-ass.”

“Smart as they come,” he confirmed with haughty cheer around a mouthful of nougat and chocolate.

My comeback was buried in my next sneeze and Michael used the opportunity to ask a question. “Do you think this man will know anything about Jericho? Anything that can help us?”

It had been his idea to begin with, but we all needed some reassurance once in a while. “I don’t know. I’m hoping. From what you said, this Bellucci has a real hard-on for sticking it to Jericho and his theories.” At his mystified expression, I clarified. “He hates him.” I wadded up the tissue and dropped it in the cup holder. “The funny thing is that friends may come and go, but people tend to keep track of their enemies. It’s screwed up, but there it is.”

The rain continued to beat in a lulling rhythm on the roof of the car as Michael contemplated my rough and ready wisdom. Apparently it called for the fortification of another candy bar. I let him get halfway through it before saying, “I have a question of my own.”

Michael shrugged lightly in permission, but there was a hint of uneasiness in the gesture. He knew I was bound to continue in the same vein and Jericho was far and away not his favorite topic. I couldn’t blame him. The thought of being strapped to the table in that bastardized excuse for a medical room was horrifying enough. But picturing Jericho bending over me with gleaming teeth rivaled by the glitter of the metal instruments in his hand stitched my bowels with a needle and thread of ice. Worse than that, though, would be not knowing when or where your moments in the basement would come.

Michael had said it hadn’t hurt that much, that he’d been sedated for the majority of it. Did that matter? Hell, no. It might be that loss of control made the experience more unbearable. You couldn’t prepare and you couldn’t resist. It would be like falling, falling, and never having a chance to grab on to anything. Michael had forgotten a lot of things in his life. It didn’t surprise me he’d as soon forget this as well. I only wished our situation could have allowed him that luxury.

“You said Jericho was grooming you and the other kids to be assassins,” I started. “That he was going to sell you.”

His nod was hesitant and wary, a far cry from the indifferent reaction he’d shown the last time this topic had come up. Trust; it was all about trust. Unconsciously or not, he was now letting me see flashes of what churned inside him.

“How’d that happen? How did they go about it?” There had to be some way to obtain more obvious evidence that the government was turning a blind eye to Jericho’s setup. Saul had thought it obvious, but I still wanted to be sure. “Did people come in and”—Jesus Christ. I gritted my teeth to finish the disturbing question—“pick you out?” Like a stray dog at the shelter or a ripe melon at the grocery.

They did.

But from what Michael said, the children never saw the “shoppers.” The ones near graduation were shepherded into a room with mirrored walls to be looked over by invisible eyes and then sent back to class. The next day one of the students would be gone. It wouldn’t be based all on appearances, I was sure. Blending in to a certain population might be necessary, but obedience and temperament would be considered as well. And that last one would be the reason Michael had only heard about the inside of those rooms, not seen them. Michael may have been obedient on the surface, but his temperament wasn’t that of a killer. As he’d said before, it was a toss-up as to whether he would’ve seen graduation.

The only thing I was accomplishing was to stir up bad memories for Michael, and I gave up on the subject for the moment. Proof might not exist in either direction. If it didn’t, we would probably spend the rest of our lives on the run. Jericho we could evade, with luck, but the government was a different matter. Then again, Elvis had been doing it for more than thirty years.

We stopped at a gas station to check the phone book for Dr. Marcos Bellucci’s address and buy a street guide. He lived in a fairly ritzy area, not quite up to Uncle Lev’s standards, but nice enough. There were quiet streets and trees that would cast wide pools of shade in the summer. Now they bowed morosely under the drizzle. Michael shared their opinion of the weather. As I parked the car on the street, he made a face at the rain spattering against his window. “We should’ve bought an umbrella when we stopped for the map.”

He was such a cat with his distaste of the cold and wet. “Manly men like us don’t use umbrellas,” I instructed, switching off the car.

“We don’t?”

“Nope.”

“Why not?” he asked curiously.

“I don’t know, kid. It’s an unwritten law. Kind of like the one that says we don’t wear shirts with Einstein on them,” I drawled.

I could see he was contemplating throwing the rest of his candy bar at my head, but at the last moment he decided it was too precious to waste on the likes of me. Folding the wrapper carefully around it, he stored it in the glove compartment. “Next store we come to, I’m getting an umbrella,” he said firmly.

“Afraid to get wet, Misha? Think you’ll melt?” I teased.

“That’s not what I want to use it for,” he shot back.

Either he wanted to hit me over the head or insert it in places rain gear simply wasn’t meant to go. Both choices caused mental images that had me wincing. Pocketing the keys, I climbed out of the car and was instantly soaked. The houses on this street were all close to the curb. The majority of them were prewar and two and a half stories high with elaborate lacy moldings and stained glass. They were nearly as pristine as they must have been when they were new. With a definite pride of ownership, the neighborhood was the type that would abound with professors, artists, overgrown houseplants, and a thousand flavors of tea.

Resting a hand on the wrought-iron railing, I walked up the stairs that led to the sidewalk. “Get a move on, kiddo.”

With coat pulled over his head and a scowl darker than the lowered sky, Michael followed. When we both stood on the porch, I rang the bell. I could hear the faint ripple of musical notes through the front door. I heard a murmur at my shoulder. “What are we going to tell him?”

I glanced over to see an annoyingly dry brother, his hair and face untouched by the rain. But was he manly like me? I didn’t think so. “We? I thought the resident genius would come up with a good story.”

He barely had time to flash me a vexed look when the door opened to reveal a wiry man in a charcoal gray sweater and black pants. Equally black eyes took measure of us from behind rimless glasses. “Can I help you?”

I held out my hand and gave my best professional smile. From the blanching of his skin, apparently it was a shade too much of my old profession. I tried to tone it down, from wolflike to that of a friendly German shepherd. “Dr. Bellucci? I’m Peter Melina, freelance journalist. I was wondering if I could have a few minutes of your time.”

He shook my hand cautiously. “Ah . . . perhaps you should’ve called first. What’s this about?”

“An article I’m writing regarding the ethics of genetic manipulation,” I responded smoothly. “Specifically the ethics of a certain Dr. John Jericho Hooker.”

At that, his caution disappeared and a crusading light blossomed as red patches high on his knife-sharp cheekbones. “That bastard. He’s done as much to sully the name of the field as Mengele.” Pulling off his glasses, he used them to wave us in. “Come in.” After looking me up and down, he added, “I’ll get you a towel.”

I closed the door behind us and waited obediently on the small hooked rug as Bellucci disappeared down a hall. Beside me Michael was entangled in the vines of an amorous potted plant. Pushing them aside with exasperation, he whispered to me, “If you’re a journalist, then who am I?”

“An eager-to-learn high school intern,” I replied absently as I looked the place over, taking in the polished wood, high ceilings, painted ceramic tile, and the lush quiet that came from an empty house or really thick walls.

“Clever,” he said. “You’re a good liar.”

“And I didn’t even have to take a class.” Lying well wasn’t a talent most boasted of, but there were times it did come in handy. The fact that Michael probably had in all actuality suffered through such a class only made me want to put Jericho in the ground all the more.

Bellucci returned with a thick towel and handed it to me. Thanking him, I dried my face and scrubbed at my hair to blot up the water. “We can talk in the study,” he offered, and led the way, sliding paneled doors open to reveal what looked more like a sunroom than a study. The walls were only a framework to support the many windows. In fair weather the room would be awash with bright sun. It was nice. I could picture lying on the large leather couch and taking a nap in that bright spill of light.

Instead I sat on it and took a small notebook from my pocket to rest on my knee. I’d bought it with the map at the gas station, having already formed a vague idea of the story I was going to feed the scientist.

“Dr. Bellucci, this is Daniel,” I said in introduction as Michael settled on the arm of a nearby chair. “He’s an intern. Actually, he’s my sister’s kid, but he is on his high school paper. I had my arm twisted to let him tag along.” I gave a sheepish shrug of my shoulders. “Family. What can you do?”

“Helping your nephew is admirable,” he said, but it was obvious neither his heart nor brain was behind the statement. The entirety of his attention was on Jericho. He was Bellucci’s bête noire, as a distant junior high school English teacher of mine would’ve pompously labeled him. Our good friend Fisher Thieving Lee would no doubt have called him the stick in his craw. Whatever you wanted to call him, from the moment I mentioned the name Jericho, he was all Bellucci could think about.

“What brought you to me?” He carded his fingers through wiry salt-and-pepper hair with an energy that seemed less nerves and more the fire of a man with a cause. “Outside certain academic circles you don’t hear Hooker’s name much anymore. He’s been a forgotten man since he dropped out of the public eye.” Setting his mouth grimly, he amended, “Forgotten except by me.”

I leaned back, sprawling with casual comfort in my best imitation of a seasoned journalist. “I read a whole stack of books. Well, skimmed them—most were thicker than the phone book. Some had articles that quoted your opinion on your former colleague. He was quite the bad boy of genetics, according to you. It seemed like a good look back, what with all the cloning brouhaha being pretty much over now and the stem-cell matter being the new target.” Michael had donned his glasses again, but I could see the humor in his eyes. I would bet he thought he would never see a pretentious word like brouhaha pass my lips—junior high detention had been proctored by our librarian. As for taking credit for his research, I was sure I’d pay for that later on.

“Colleague.” Bellucci tasted the word and found it bitter from the twist of his lips. “Try friend. The son of a bitch was my friend.”

“And what changed that?” I opened the notebook and fixed him with an expectant and sympathetic gaze. From the feel of the contortion that sent my face into, as with my smile, I should’ve practiced the expression in a mirror first.

“Two words. Human experimentation.” He enunciated the last so clearly, I could hear the pause between each syllable.

“He experimented on people?” I didn’t have to fake outrage. It wasn’t precisely news, but my fury hadn’t faded since day one of discovering what that maniac was up to at the Institute.

“It wasn’t quite as simple as that,” Bellucci denied, beating a tattoo with his fingers on the arm of the chair he’d chosen. “He started on himself. You’re familiar with his rare genetic makeup? That he’s a chimera?” At my nod, he continued. “He wanted to prove something that simply wasn’t true. And when he couldn’t, he decided to make it true.” Sighing, he got to his feet and paced across a rug brilliant with a jungle print. Candy-colored birds and cheetahs peeked from emerald green foliage. “But he couldn’t. Chimeras are nothing more than people with a little extra DNA. He wouldn’t accept that, though, and that’s when he started with the pregnant girls.”

Apparently Jericho had held back more than the true nature of the experiment to Bellucci. He also hadn’t revealed his healing abilities. “Pregnant?”

He nodded with a grimace. “He figured if he could accomplish the manipulation he had in mind in utero, it would be merely a series of extrapolations to achieving the same in those already fully formed.”

“And what exactly were the accomplishments he hoped to make?” I doodled something on the pad, nonsense basically, to give the impression I was actually taking notes.

“Faster, smarter, stronger.” There was a pained crease between his eyebrows. I wondered what would happen to that deepened line if he knew the “improvements” Jericho had actually ended up making instead. “Nonsense, all of it.” He sat back down and tapped a toe restlessly on the floor. “They were volunteers. He did pay them money. They knew more or less what he was doing to the fetuses, what little they could understand, but the women were poor . . . desperate. Many of them were drug users, which didn’t precisely lend any kind of credence to the experiment results, human trial violations aside.”

“Then what the hell was he thinking?” I asked for appearance’s sake. I knew precisely what he’d been thinking, and science had been only half of it. “No one would touch him or his work after he was found out. He had to know that.”

“You would think.” Shaking his head, he repeated with a soft incredulity unfaded by time. “You would think.” He stood and walked to the expanse of windows to stare blindly at the rain. “John was the most determined person I’d ever met . . . will ever meet. He truly didn’t believe there was anything in the world he couldn’t do if only he wanted it badly enough. Maybe he thought he was too smart to be found out. Maybe he thought the ends justified the means. Maybe he was completely out of his mind.” His shoulders hitched in a dismissive motion. “Could be all three. We’ll never know.”

“But he did get caught, right? If he hadn’t, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking about it. How did that come about? Who was the first to discover he’d strayed from the path of the scientific straight and narrow, so to speak?” I had a suspicion on that score that was easily confirmed by the iron-rigid set of his spine.

“Why, his closest colleague of course.” His voice was deceptively calm. “His friend. The one he nearly turned into an unwitting collaborator. We helped each other out, you realize, on various projects. One would lead and the other would come in later to help with the paperwork and publishing end of it. We’d done that for years. By the time I waltzed obliviously into that last experimental trial, John was too far gone to save. So far . . .” Sighing heavily, he turned away from the outside world. “He wasn’t even ashamed. There wasn’t the slightest iota of guilt in him over what he’d done. I tried to reason with him, but it was futile. He simply couldn’t see where the line was anymore. Couldn’t even understand why there was a line. I had no choice but to turn him in.”

“And then?” I prompted quietly.

“And then nothing.” He took his seat again, loosely clasping his hands in his lap. “By the time administration managed to get off their collective wrinkled asses to confront him, it was too late. He had disappeared and all evidence of the project had disappeared along with him.”

“The women?”

“The same. They were invisible people to begin with, living on the outskirts of society. Many of them lived in missions or with other lost souls. Not one of them ever showed up at the lab again. I’d copied a few names before I blew the whistle. I used that to try to find some of the women, but I never did. They had vanished just as thoroughly as John.” The nervous energy was draining away now, leaving a bitter emptiness in its place.

“Did any of them have their babies before the project was blown open?” I shifted and leaned forward. This would’ve been nearly fifteen years ago. Had the first genetically altered chimeras been produced then?

He shook his head. “No. The farthest along was a woman at eight months. I never saw the results of John’s work.”

Until now, I thought, as Michael continued to follow our conversation with a blank face. What Jericho had learned to do to children before they took their first breath, he’d adapted to those already born natural chimeras . . . not yet genetically manipulated by a monster.

“What do you think happened to those children?”

“After they were born?” The intertwined fingers tightened on one another. “At best, nothing. At worst, congenital defects that would make thalidomide seem like party punch. Genetics, as a science, wasn’t yet advanced enough then that we could do even half of what John was attempting. It still isn’t. He thought he was a god. I’d never noticed that before. He was my friend and arrogant as hell, yes, yet I never noticed that he thought himself a god.” He paused and cleared a suddenly tight throat. “But I imagine those poor damn children proved him less a god and more a fiend. If they grew up capable of coherent thought or purposeful movement, I’d be surprised.”

I didn’t argue the label of monster; after all, I’d thought it many times myself. But Bellucci was less accurate with the rest of his assessment. Jericho hadn’t crippled his subjects, not physically or intellectually. There were other damages, to be sure, but for all that he was a monster, he was a monster who knew his business.

I closed my notebook. “No one has seen him since, have they?”

“No. He disappeared so very well that I have to wonder if he didn’t have some sort of help. That and the fact the majority of what happened was kept out of the papers.” The wide mouth thinned to a knife-edged gash. “And I was bound by a nondisclosure agreement. The university would’ve ruined me if I’d spoken up.” There was a broken-glass glitter behind his eyes. “Odd. I’ve kept quiet all these years; yet I still feel ruined. It hardly seems fair, does it? I wrote my articles, of course, refuting everything John ever theorized, but it wasn’t enough. It won’t ever be enough.”

“So why open up now?”

The question seemed to amuse him, but it was a bleak and dark humor. Lifting a hand, he tapped the base of his skull. “Brain tumor,” he said matter-of-factly. “Supratentorial glioma. I have six months . . . if I’m very, very lucky. There is little anyone could do to my life now that this rampaging package of cells hasn’t already done, nondisclosure agreements be damned.”

It made sense. He was stepping away from the game and wanted to clear his debts before he went. It was human nature. It was only too bad it wasn’t our nature to settle things before it was on the verge of being too late. “Two last questions, Dr. Bellucci, if I may.” Placing the mock notes into my jacket pocket, I asked, “Do you think if Hooker hadn’t been found out that he would’ve been able to do what he’d planned in the beginning? Do you think he could have gone on to substantially change the genes of a person after they were born?”

“Genetic replacement is a reality for us now.” He continued to unconsciously rub the juncture of his neck and skull. “Unfortunately, the amazing medical miracles we were so sure it would bring about have been accompanied by problems nearly as adverse as what we were trying to cure. As for John . . . normally, I would say his chances were low. What he was aiming for was worlds beyond what the scientific community is doing now. Still”—he dropped his hand and used it to make a throwaway gesture—“this is John we’re speaking of and that alone makes it almost conceivable. I’m not saying he would’ve accomplished any of his goals, mind you; they were far too improbable, not to mention insane. But I do believe if he’d continued on with the resources we had, he would’ve advanced genetic replacement considerably—in theory if nothing else.”

Insane and brilliant was a mix that hadn’t done the world any good throughout history. “Did Hooker have any government connections, contracts? He vanished, as you said, so thoroughly. I have to wonder if he had professional help.”

Once again he was out of the chair. This time it was to pull the drapes, squinting as if even the dull gray light hurt his eyes. “I wondered that myself, but truthfully I don’t have the slightest idea. Although it would be hard to imagine John voluntarily taking up with an organization with far more rules and regulations than academic research ever dreamed of.” He pressed a knuckle against his temple and gave a pained grimace.

The interview apparently over, I followed his lead and stood. “I appreciate your time. We can show ourselves out if you want.”

“No, no. I’m fine.” He moved over and shook my hand. “And I appreciate it far more. The chance to get this off my chest means quite a bit to me.”

We were nearly at the door when I remembered one more question I’d wanted to ask him. “Did Hooker have any family to speak of? Children maybe? A son?”

Michael had commented on how closely his John had resembled his namesake, Jericho, and I’d wondered if he had performed his twisted magic on his own blood. Had he tried to create an even darker version of himself?

“Son? No. John was an only child and had no other family after his parents died. He didn’t marry and had no children that I knew of. Not before he disappeared anyway. Why?”

“Just curious,” I answered somewhat truthfully. In the foyer a wet figure almost collided with us as it came through the front door wrestling with an umbrella and an armful of yapping dog.

“Gina.” Bellucci leaned in to take the white bundle of wet-dog smell away from what turned out to be a short, squat woman in a raincoat. “Let me help you.”

“Thank you, sir.” Stripping off her coat, she revealed no-nonsense black polyester pants paired with a plain white blouse. She was either a housekeeper or a nurse, although Bellucci didn’t seem to be in need of the latter yet. “Priscilla quite took her time with business. I’ll have to towel the little beast off.” After carefully wrapping both her umbrella and tightly folded coat in plastic bags she obtained from the top shelf of the closet, she reclaimed the still-barking dog and whisked it off. Not a single drop of water hit the floor during the process.

“Good help is hard to find,” Bellucci said ruefully. “But anal-retentive help is priceless.” He shook my hand again and let us out onto the porch. “Let me know when the article comes out, would you?”

I nodded. “Of course. As soon as I finish it and send it off, I’ll let you know.”

Eyes distant, he said quietly, “Hurry.” Then he closed the door, leaving us to the rain.

Protected from the weather by the overhang, Michael and I stood in silence until he finally said, “That was a lot of big words on your part. Are you okay?”

“My head hurts, but I’ll try to struggle on,” I replied dryly. Actually I was struggling, but it was in an effort to keep afloat above a wave of pessimism. What we had learned had given us something of a background on Jericho, but it hadn’t given us anything useful to our situation. The issue of government ties was still a mystery and Jericho had no family he might keep in contact with, which left us with no way to trace him. And while we did know now how it all began, we didn’t know the answer to the more important question.

How it would all end.