Apex Predator (33 page)

“If you take all the social and religious judgment out of it, you see that what Tyrone found was simply one of the next steps in the evolutionary process. What I am now researching may be the step after that or perhaps another species different from both
Homo sapiens
and
Homo predaer
. Tyrone’s, Dr. Leonard’s, work has culminated in the definition of the new species. He has been doing it much longer than I have and he understood what he was looking for and likely to find early on. He didn’t decide to define his new species until he had enough empirical data to back up his claim.

“I haven’t been doing my research nearly as long as he has, because it was not until recently that I realized what it was we’re finding. You’re not the only one to be skeptical, Mr. Loomis; believe it or not, scientists are some of the biggest skeptics when it comes to revolutionary findings. We’re constantly trying to figure out how to fit our findings into what has previously been established as the norm. It isn’t until we come upon something over and over that simply will not fit into those norms that we begin to posit that we may be onto something that has simply not been found before. I am confident I am not far behind, now that I know what it is I am looking for and what is potentially out there.

“Look, I have a hard time talking about this because, yes, I am a scientist, but I am a human being first, a father and a husband, and to be honest with you, thinking about Dr. Leonard’s work and the species he found in anything other than a scientific light scares the crap out of me.

“I’ve seen what these beings are capable of doing, what they are basically
designed
to do, and I can tell you, Steven, I can call you Steven can’t I, that we are in no way prepared to deal with this. Before Tyrone and some of the others’ work, science insisted on trying to fit them into the human model, just like I did. We came up with new and improved definitions and mental conditions to try to explain away what is clearly not human behavior.

“Have you ever taken a good look at what defines a psychopath? It is defined in a number of different journals, but it’s pretty similar wherever you look. What people don’t see, however, is that those definitions are always changing. They’re always changing because they have to encompass more and more behaviors that were perhaps not included before.”

Steven said, “You’re right, every time I found a scale or a test was being used I noticed that whoever was doing the testing or using the scale seemed to retrofit their subject into the scale or definition.”

Scoma exclaimed, “Exactly! So you’ve noticed what I’m talking about. Well, that comes about because of what I said before; scientists are the biggest skeptics when it comes to new science. Some scientists are simply unable to fathom that the idea of what has been established as a norm could be incomplete or, God forbid, wrong! So, they take whatever the behavior or action and try to shoehorn it into what has been established as the norm.

“That’s why Tyrone’s work is so important and remarkable. He was willing to take the leap, to say ‘This just doesn’t fit what we’ve decided defines a psychopath’ rather than to stretch existing norms or definitions even further.

“I’ve gone and rambled again, I’m sorry, I do that when I get excited…and when I’m nervous, and talking about this makes me both.”

Steven had what he needed. Out of everything that Scoma had shared with him, it had been the change in his demeanor, in the way he talked and his tone that had caused the biggest impact on Steven. The man wasn’t lying, he sounded both scared and nervous when he talked about the new species. Remembering what he’d seen at that warehouse, Steven could not blame the man, not one bit. The other thing that had had a big impact was what Scoma had said about humans not being ready or prepared to deal with these new beings. It was precisely what Steven had speculated about when Tracy had gone missing and what he’d decided once she had been found. He had killed Riche for that very reason, because he knew that the system as it existed was in no way equipped to deal with him. Even back then, Steven had realized that perhaps this hell, the hell his and the other families had gone through, could serve to bring attention to the new science, to the existence of these things.

He asked Scoma one last question, “I understand how your work and Dr. Leonard’s intersects much better now. What brought you two together in the first place? I mean, from what I’ve read your work together didn’t begin until five or six years ago.”

Scoma was quiet on his end of the line. Steven waited and wondered if he had hit on a sensitive topic. Steven was about to just end the call when Scoma finally answered, “Uh…well…uh, we wrote a paper together about seven years ago. It was a paper on how prey will employ grouping or pack behavior to defend against predators. Schools of fish, flocks of birds, a herd of water buffalo, that kind of thing. I had been doing some computer modeling on that behavior and he reached out to me. He was at that time in the process of writing a paper on his potential new species and how
Homo sapiens
still held an advantage because of what we came to term the group defense.

“He’d been positing that since humans are inherently social creatures, whatever advantage the new species held would be evened out. We ended up postponing publishing the paper until 2009.”

Steven looked at the phone in his hand with a puzzled expression. Scoma’s answer was slow and hesitant; completely different than every other answer he’d given Steven until now. His voice lost all the vibrancy it had held before. The man sounded almost apologetic.

Steven decided to end the call, “Professor, you have been very kind with your time. I appreciate all the information.”

After a brief pause, Scoma was back to his excited and fast-talking demeanor, “Don’t mention it, I don’t really get to talk about my work with, you know, regular people. What I mean to say is that I don’t really get a chance to talk about my work with people that are not scientists, that’s what I meant to say. Anyway, if you have any other questions or if I can be of any more assistance, just shoot me a call or an email, and hey…say hi to Tyrone for me.”

With that Steven concluded the call, “Will do. Thanks again.”

After his conversation with Scoma, Steven hung up the phone, made a pot of coffee and poured himself a cup, enhanced by a small shot of brandy. He sat down in the living room, where he had spread out all of the files with the research he had done, the files on Riche and his own notes on everything. He looked out the window, something he did when considering a particularly difficult decision. He also thought about Scoma’s strange behavior. He had mentioned a paper he wrote with Leonard years before. Steven thought he had seen the paper, the only one with both of them as authors, but he had read so much written by so many that he just could not remember it. Something was just beyond his reach, like a memory too faint to remember well, but which still had enough to cause uneasiness, like peering over the side of a 1,000-foot building. He’d felt that faint sense of vertigo many times over the years during SEAL ops and it had never let him down. But what the hell could it be about a paper? He figured maybe Scoma had his own issues with what Leonard was working on, issues he wasn’t comfortable sharing with Steven. Maybe they’d had a falling out while writing it. Whatever it was, he decided to put it aside and concentrate on what was in front of him.

His objective was clear, but the path to get there still avoided him. He now knew that no matter how much he tried to bring attention to the science, the world would for the most part ignore it. Even if he invested his own money to hire the best PR firm, Leonard’s findings would eventually be forgotten, if they were even noticed in the first place. No, simply shouting from the rooftops would never do the trick. What he needed was to make it impossible for the world to ignore the science, impossible to pretend it wasn’t there. He needed to make it a part of water cooler conversations, fodder for every talk show and news magazine; he needed to shine the brightest light there was on it, popular culture. Once it became that, a part of pop culture, there would be no turning back.

He also had to make sure that it wasn’t looked upon as a stunt, as a desperate attempt at getting attention. He needed the weight of the law to validate its existence, or at least to validate it as a reasoned possibility.

Steven had been considering all of this along with the other objective that he’d been circling around, taking responsibility for what he had done. From the beginning he had known that at some point, when the time was right, he’d have to own up to what he had done. He had avoided it in order to think, in order to take his time and come up with a plan to follow.

Now, as he sipped his coffee and kept trying to marry his two objectives, the answer appeared simply and without fanfare. He was struck by its obviousness and by its logic. He had been overthinking all of it, not surprising given what he’d been through. As he finished his coffee, Steven thought about how he would begin to execute his plan, now prepared to go with what was the most simple and logical next step.

Steven Loomis began to figure out a way to turn himself in and to tell the world the absolute truth, the reason that he had decided to kill Donald Riche. Once he turned himself in, there would be no question as to who or how it had been done. No, the question that the world would have is
why
it had been done. That would be the most difficult obstacle to overcome, because the world would, without doubt, think the answer to that question was obvious. He’d done it out of revenge, out of overwhelming grief and rage, and trying to convince anyone that it had been because of anything other than that would be an uphill battle. It was something he knew he would not be able to do alone.

As smart and experienced as he was, he knew that to do what he intended to do he would need someone to advocate not only for him, but for his ultimate objective as well. Now he needed to review the law, because the opponent he was about to face used statutes and legal precedents as a weapon. Such was the knowledge required when you planned to take on the United States legal system and to redefine what the world knew as human. Now that he knew what his path would be, he needed to have one last conversation. He picked up the files, took his cup to the sink, picked up his coat and called a car to take him to GIC headquarters and the General’s office.

After calling in all the favors and pressing every one of his sources, Felix Garcia had hit a dead end when it came to law enforcement’s interest in Steven Loomis. He’d found out that Loomis was in a meeting at the time of the shooting and that GIC had provided a time-stamped video of the meeting to investigators. The police had not been able to interview the other people that had been at the meeting, but the video was enough proof that Loomis had been at the meeting to send them looking in a different direction.

Garcia was stumped. He really had a feeling that it had to be Loomis who had shot Riche at the courthouse. Now he was going to have to run down some of the other leads he had about another shooter. He had developed a list of possibles, people that had been even remotely connected to the victims or to the investigation and who had some military training. He had run them down, but he knew he wasn’t going to find anything.

He had witnessed as the media circus following Riche’s arrest had turned into a media frenzy after the shooting. Newspapers, television, radio, Internet, every single form of media was following the case with reports from their ‘man on the scene’ every single day. The coverage made the white Bronco chase and OJ Simpson’s arrest and trial seem like a blurb on the five o’clock news.

If he was to be honest, he was actually a bit intimidated. As a reporter assigned the police precinct beat, he was used to competition and to the constant pressure of finding something that nobody else had. That’s the kind of information that won Pulitzers and got the attention of the networks. That’s what got you a seat at the big boys’ table.

With more than five hundred journalists from all over the world, getting something that nobody else had was going to be next to impossible. Still, he wasn’t completely discouraged. He might not have a team of researchers, producers and investigators to hunt down leads for him, but he had something nobody else had, experience on the streets, New York streets. He had sources everywhere, from prostitutes to drug pushers to highly placed police administrators and they all trusted him and, he hoped, liked him. He’d never burned a source and he’d always told the story straight, without the cheesy, yellow, sensationalistic spin that most rags resorted to nowadays.

He wasn’t looking for ‘Likes’ on his Facebook page or hashtags about his stories on Twitter. He was a serious journalist and he was willing to wait for something worth writing. He had a feeling that no matter what happened, he was going to have more than enough to write about before everything was said and done.

Felix Garcia was not the only one deeply concerned with the Riche case and the courthouse shooting. There was another individual perhaps even more interested than Garcia. He had been following the Riche case with the utmost interest and attention even before Riche had been caught. He wasn’t part of the media or an investigator. He was something else entirely.

He had been immediately interested when he had come across reports of the missing girls and became even more focused when Riche and what he was suspected of doing had been broadcast. He was particularly interested in the reports about the warehouse and what had been found there. He had scoured the Internet for any detail that may not have been reported by the media, joining in online chats about the case and visiting any blog or website that purported to have ‘exclusive’ details about the case, particularly about the warehouse. He had also tapped many of his sources for more information and he had been following every single Twitter feed related to the case and every single newscast that promised new information.

He had been disappointed when Riche was shot at the courthouse, because that meant there would be no trial, no testimony from the man himself about what he’d been accused of doing. That, more than everything else, was what had disappointed him the most, not hearing about the details, the planning and execution of what Riche had done. He wanted to hear the man’s voice, analyze his demeanor and his intellect. Of course there was no guarantee that Riche would have spoken if there had been a trial, but if he had been right, if his analysis of Riche had been correct, he was sure the man would have talked, indeed he would have been most eager to explain exactly what he had done and why, and that was the part the disappointed him the most. He would never get to hear that now.