Bloodline (31 page)

Jack could hear the overture right now. Part of the sound track of his youth. A shiver of melancholy tingled through him. Mom… he could almost hear her voice from down a long hallway… humming along.

Christy said, "Anyway, it seemed as good a name as any, so I became Christy Pickering and my daughter became Dawn Pickering." She sighed. "And I'm so glad I kept her. She's been a constant source of joy… until now."

Jack didn't have the heart to tell her that what he suspected was much worse than she thought: That Christy and her daughter were part of some incestuous breeding experiment wherein Dawn had been impregnated by a man who was a full uncle, not just a half.

Nor could he tell her that he had the answer to the question of how Bolton knew about her tattoo: He'd seen every inch of her when he and his brother imprisoned her.

"So that's my tale of woe," Christy said.

And some tale it was. She'd been through a nightmare ordeal—kidnapped, imprisoned, and raped multiple times. And yet she'd bounced back. Changed her name, changed her life, become a loving mother and successful day trader.

"You should be proud of the way you handled it. You could have let it define your life, started identifying yourself as a victim. But you didn't. You beat it."

She shrugged. "You think so? I was just doing what felt I had to do to survive. My mother was furious with me for screwing up my life by keeping the baby. I suppose I could have told her about the rape, but I didn't think she'd believe me at that point, and if she did she'd really want me to give Dawn away. She was driving me crazy so I decided to leave. Me and my baby—we were going to make it. But I spent years in terror that it would happen again. I never walked when I eould drive, even when it was a block away. And when I was on the street I walked way inside with my shoulder practically brushing the buildings, eyeing every van whether parked or driving along the street."

"Do you still?"

"I've relaxed a little, but not completely. I keep a gun hidden in my bedroom and I know how to use it."

"Good for you."

Jack wished he could get Gia interested in learning how to shoot. He couldn't be around her twenty-four/seven, and a pistol, even a small one, was a mighty equalizer. But she had something akin to a phobia about them.

"I still dream about them, though—those weeks. I still look at Dawn now and then and wonder about the unknown half of her gene pool and what diseases are hiding there. Cancer? Heart? Diabetes? Insanity?" She looked at him. "Do you think any of that will show up in the genetic testing you're doing?"

Jack fumbled for a quick reply. "I—I doubt it. I only asked for relationship testing. I don't even know if those other tests exist."

"Well, if they don't, someday they will. And maybe we can track down her father."

Jack didn't dare look at her. "And if you found him… what then? Start another search for a hit man?"

"I don't know. Would my life have been different if he hadn't done what he did? Absolutely. Would it be better? I don't know… I just don't know." She shook herself. "But enough about the past, what about the present? What are we going to do about that man?"

"Before we go there, I just want to make sure we've taken killing him off the table. Have we?"

She loosed a long sigh. "Yeah, sure. I went a little crazy, I guess. I feel so trapped. I'm boxed in by this big lie he's told about me and I can't see any way out. It's almost like being chained up in that cellar again. Killing him seemed like the easiest way out."

Jack needed to drive the no-killing concept home.

"Not easy at all. After what's been going on between you and him, you'd be a prime suspect. Even with an alibi. And if they catch the hit man he'll give you up in a heartbeat. And then where will Dawn be? Single and pregnant with no one to turn to. Sound familiar?"

She nodded. "Yeah. Too. So if we're going to let him live, what do we do about him?"

Jack didn't have a plan. This new wrinkle had muddied the water. He needed time.

"Let's wait and see what the DNA analysis shows. Maybe Dawn will change her tune when she sees how closely related they are. Maybe pushing information about the increased chance of birth defects from mating with a relative will put her off."

"I don't know… she's completely taken with this guy."

"In the meantime I'll sift through my notes and see if I can come up with a backup plan."

She was staring at him.

He stared back. "What?"

"You really seem to care." She smiled. "You have no stake in the outcome here, but it really seems to matter to you."

Lady, if you only knew.

Jack sat at the table in his front room and arranged his notes before him, trying to construct a timeline.

Jonah Stevens first fathered Hank. Then less than a year later, Jeremy. And a year after that, Christy—or Moonglow.

Eighteen years later Moonglow is kidnapped by the boys and Hank repeatedly rapes her until she becomes pregnant.

Moonglow tries to get an abortion but the boys kill off the two abortionists she visits. Jeremy is caught, locked away for life, and winds up at Creighton.

Hank, meanwhile, gets tagged for interstate GTA and also winds up at Creighton.

Coincidence? Not according to Levy. They both tested positive for oDNA, so they became instant candidates for Creighton. But the timing…

Did Hank arrange to have himself arrested on a federal beef so he could visit his brother?

No, that didn't square. He didn't know about the oDNA project at Creighton so he couldn't know he'd be sent there.

Jack checked his notes for the date of Bolton's arrival in Creighton, then opened his copy of
Kick
to the section covering Hank Thompson's wild, criminal youth.

When he saw the date of his capture, he checked back to the timeline for Jeremy's arrest and saw that Hank had been locked up in Creighton when Jeremy was nabbed… locked up for six months.

Jack's mouth went dry.

He rechecked the dates of the weeks Moonglow Garber had gone missing. When he found those, his stomach took a dive.

"Oh, shit."

Dawn sat alone at the kitchen table and sipped a Diet Pepsi. Nothing else would stay down during her first couple of hours after rising.

Were you supposed to get morning sick this early in a pregnancy? Did it mean something might be wrong with the baby?

She didn't know. But then, she didn't know a thing about being pregnant. All she knew was that she hated feeling this way. How long would it last? Not the whole nine months—please!

And school. She'd missed yesterday and could so not bring herself to go today. Not that graduating would make much difference once they finished their video game idea and got it sold, but she'd worked hard for four years and totally wanted that diploma to show for it.

She bit back a sob. She felt so
alone!
God, she wished she had someone to talk to about this. Couldn't mention it to any of her friends—it'd be totally all over school in like two seconds. Under normal circumstances Mom would have been the obvious choice, but these circumstances were nothing like normal.

She shook her head. Still couldn't believe it. Coming on to Jerry. Her mother had gone crazy. That was the only possible explanation.

Well, crazy or not, she was so never speaking to that woman again.

Which left her with no one to talk to about being pregnant—at least no one who'd been there. Oh, she could talk to Jerry about it all day, but he didn't seem to care about what she was going through. All he wanted to talk about was the baby and how
he
was going to rule the world.

Sometimes she thought Jerry was as crazy as Mom.

And where was he, anyway? He'd said he had an important meeting in the city with some people from Electronic Arts—or "EA" as he called it—but left her home because the time wasn't right yet to bring her into the picture, what-ever that meant. Was that really where he was? Normally she'd take him totally at his word, but she'd noticed that somehow every Tuesday he'd disappear for about four hours or so. He always had a plausible reason, but it occurred to her that his meetings always seemed to be timed for late morning to early afternoon.

Coincidence or…?

Or what?

Did he go to AA meetings? No, he wasn't an alcoholic. He drank only beer and never got sloshed. NA? Nah, he didn't even do weed.

A real uncomfortable thought snuck up on her: What if he was visiting a parole officer or something like that? Yeah, that was what Mom would say. Totally. But no way…

Come to think of it, what made her so sure he
wasn't
an ex-con? What did she really know about him? She'd asked him about his family but he'd totally killed the subject by saying no brothers, no sisters, folks dead, 'nuff said. Like he'd come out of nowhere.

She realized the same could be said of her. She'd never seen even a photo of her father, and now, in a way, she no longer had a mother.

All she had was herself.

And a baby.

Oh, God, a baby. I don't want to have a baby.

She couldn't go through with it. She had to do something about it… something to stop it.

But she couldn't let Jerry know. God, he'd have a fit. She'd have to do it on the sly and tell Jerry she'd miscarried.

Without giving herself time to think, she rose to her feet. A wave of nausea rolled through her stomach as she headed for Jerry's computer. Yeah, she had to do something about this. She'd look up the nearest abortion place. Had to be a zillion of them around.

"Doctor Vecca?"

Julia looked up to see her assistant standing in the doorway.

"What is it, Toni?"

"Mister Bethlehem is here. He wants to see you. Says it's important."

Jeremy? Why on Earth—?

Oh, yes. It was Tuesday—time for his weekly injection of D-287. The clerical staff—and most of the medical staff, for that matter—knew him by his new identity. The personnel in the max security section who knew Jeremy Bolton thought he'd been transferred and they'd have no contact with an outpatient like Jerry Bethlehem.

But even so, Julia preferred that he spend as little time as possible at Creighton.

"Send him in."

A moment later Jeremy strode through the door and slammed it closed behind him. He looked frazzled. That made Julia a bit uncomfortable. A frazzled Jeremy Bolton could be a dangerous Jeremy Bolton, even with his trigger gene suppressed.

"Get Levy in here," he said. "We need a powwow."

"Something wrong?"

"Yeah. Lots."

Julia didn't like the sound of that.

"Care to share?"

"Damn fuck right I care to share. Soon as Levy's here I'll be sharin like crazy."

Normally the idea of allowing an inmate, even one as special as Jeremy, to give orders was unthinkable, but she decided to make an exception in this case. She wanted to find out what was upsetting him and then send him on his way as soon as possible.

Julia buzzed Toni. "Call Doctor Levy and tell him I need him for a conference with Mister Bethlehem."

Jeremy stepped to her window and stood staring out at the grounds.

"Coffee?" she said.

He shook his head. "Just Levy."

Rather than twiddle her thumbs while they waited, she turned to her computer and called up the Jerry Bethlehem file. Yes, he'd been receiving his injections as scheduled, and he'd been testing negative for drugs—any THC or opiates in his urine and the clinical trial would be cancelled. Couldn't allow drugs to muddy the water.

Jeremy was being a good boy.

Aaron came in a few moments later. He looked almost as spooked as that night last week when Jeremy had tried to kidnap him.

Get over it, she thought. Jeremy's dangerous but not
that
dangerous.

"Good morning, Aaron," she said, indicating one of the chairs on the far side of her desk. "Jeremy has something to say to us."

Aaron seated himself gingerly, as if he feared the cushion might be wired with electricity.

"What's up?"

Jeremy had ignored his arrival. He turned now and fixed each of them in turn with his ice-blue stare.

"That detective is still fuckin with me. I thought you told me you were gonna get him off my ass."

Damn that man. Just a few minutes with that Robertson character had been enough to convince her he was trouble. When she'd run his license plate and found it defunct, she'd been sure. First Gerhard, now another one. Couldn't these idiots simply take the money and mind their business?

"Fucking with you how?"

"First he tells my girl's mother that I killed Gerhard, and now he's doin DNA testing on me."

Shock shot her to her feet. She slammed her hand on her desk.

"What?"

She glanced at Aaron who looked as alarmed as she.

"You heard me," Jeremy said.

She dropped back into her chair as an icy tremor shuddered along the walls of her heart. It couldn't be for oDNA—no one knew about it and Creighton had the only means to screen for it. Still…

"What—" She swallowed around a dry tongue. "What sort of DNA testing?"

Jeremy suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Just looking into my family tree, that sort of thing."

"What did he find?" Aaron said.

"Nothin. Nothin
to
find. Thing I want to know is, where's he gettin this information?" That cold look again, shifting from Julia to Aaron. "You got a leak here?"

Julia forced a laugh. "Here? You must be joking!"

"This ain't no jokin matter, lady. Because I got to thinkin about how you two've been awful damn interested in my DNA and my family tree ever since I got here, and now along comes this detective, right out of the blue, and all of a sudden he's got the same kinda interest. Kinda makes you wonder, don't it?"

Aaron cleared his throat. "We paid him
not
to do any further investigation on you." He turned his watery gaze on Julia. "Didn't we, doctor."

Didn't we, doctor
… always so formal.

"We damn well did. Paid him handsomely. Looks like he's been taking us for a ride. I think—"

"I don't give a damn about your money. He's lookin into my DNA and I want to know why."

Aaron cleared his throat again. He seemed to do that only when Jeremy was around.

"Well, one reason might be because he tried to find something incriminating through your fingerprints and couldn't. Doctor Vecca had the foresight to have them erased from ViCAP, so he came up blank."

Jeremy looked at her. "Pretty smart, doc."

Julia allowed a small smile. "I thought so."

"With fingerprints a dead end," Aaron continued, "maybe he's going the DNA route."

Jeremy turned his gaze on him. "What's my DNA going to tell him?"

"Well, if he has a contact in one of the police departments, he could have it checked against the DNA database of sex offenders."

"Well, he ain't gonna find me there."

Only because you've been locked up the whole time it was being compiled, Julia thought. If you'd been out there…

"Of course not," Aaron said. "We know that, and you know that, and now he knows that. But it was a good thought on his part. Imagine the leverage he would have had on you if he found a match to someone with a sex offense conviction. Or better yet, a match to an unsolved crime."

Jeremy glared at him. " 'Better yet'?"

Aaron shrank half an inch deeper into his chair. "I meant for him."

Julia wondered about that. Aaron had seemed to be warming to the subject of Jeremy taking a fall for a sex offense.

Julia said, "What does he say he found in your DNA?"

Again that cagey look. "Just a bunch of personal junk that don't mean nothin."

Julia kept her tone as level and soothing as possible. "Then why are you so upset?"

"Because I want to know where he's getting this information. And where's he getting my DN-fuckin-A?"

Aaron said, "Many commercial labs do DNA analysis. And as for obtaining a sample, all this detective would need was some of your hair or blood or saliva."

Jeremy shook his head. "I ain't had a haircut or cut myself recently and I never developed the spittin habit." His mouth twisted. "When you're inside and you spit, you're spittin where you live."

Julia had noted a thickening of his redneck accent during the course of the conversation. Over the years she'd noted that it usually occurred when he was upset. She'd come to see it as an unconscious affectation to put people off guard, make them underestimate him.

She said, "He could get saliva from an envelope or a fork or a spoon."

Jeremy looked at the floor and shook his head. "Shit. That means someone's been followin me and I ain't had a clue." When he looked up again his expression was fierce. "Where can I find this sonuvabitch?"

Julia glanced at Aaron and found him looking at her.

"We don't know," she said.

Fury blazed in Jeremy's eyes as he took a step toward her.

"Bullshit!"

It was all Julia could do not to flinch. But she held his burning gaze as she blurted a reply.

"It's true. He calls himself John Robertson, says he's a licensed private eye, but the man who holds the license is dead."

"You ain't gonna tell me he's a ghost, are you?"

"No, just someone who's very good at hiding his tracks." She thought about that. "I guess in a way he
is
a ghost."

Jeremy's expression became frustrated. "Well, what about this agency you're always threatening me with? Can't you sic them on this guy?"

"There's nothing I'd like better, but we've got nothing to go on. He wears gloves, so we have no fingerprints. The plates on his car are not registered to anyone. The only thing I might be able to give them is his physical description, but that's no help. He looks like a million other men his age."

"And what age is that?"

"Yours, I'd say. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes. No distinguishing features. Very average looking, wouldn't you agree, Aaron?" She looked to him for support and found him staring at her with a shocked expression. "What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing."

What was eating him?

"What about his face?" Jeremy said. "Big nose, little nose? Fat lips, thin lips? Scar?
Anything
?"

Julia shook her head. "Nothing. An eminently forgettable face."

"Fuck! And you have no idea where I can find him?"

Julia looked at him. Jeremy had unsettled her. Time for a little payback.

"Somewhere in your general vicinity, I imagine. Not now, not here, but sometime during the course of the rest of the day I would suspect he'll be watching you."

The flash of uncertainty in Jeremy's eyes was gratifying, but didn't last nearly long enough.

"Well, now that I know he's watchin, I'll catch him at it. And when I do…"

Julia pointed at him. "Don't do anything foolish. If you think you've spotted him, keep your distance. Call me instead. Anytime day or night—call me and I'll have him taken care of."

"I can handle this myself."

"I'm sure you can, but you mustn't. You were able to get off easy with that barroom fight. But if you assault this man, you'll be locked up again and we'll have to cancel the clinical trial. And then where will you be? Be sensible, Jeremy. If you spot him, you make the call, and that's all. Understand?"

He nodded. "Oh, yeah. I understand."

Julia wondered if he did. Only time would tell.

Without another word he walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

Julia turned to Aaron and found him staring at her again with that shocked look. One of her mother's favorite expressions came back to her.

"Close your mouth, Aaron. You're catching flies."

"I don't believe you did that."

"Did what?"

"Gave him Robertson's description. You might as well have served him up as a sacrificial lamb."

Julia shook her head. What an old woman.

"Think of it as a provocative stimulus. How can we know whether or not the suppresser therapy is working if we don't challenge it?"

"You did the same with Gerhard, and now you're condemning Robertson to the same fate."

"Not necessarily. If the higher dose of suppresser therapy is working, Jeremy will call in and we'll handle Robertson."

"And if it's not working, Robertson could wind up dead."

Julia had had just about enough of this.

"And if he does, so what?" She remembered his crack about her underwear. The bastard. "He's been playing us for fools, Aaron. He's not supposed to be anywhere near Jeremy, so if he's caught snooping around, it's on his head, not ours. Besides, I see it as a win-win situation."

"Not for Robertson."

"No, for us. If Jeremy removes Robertson, not only will we have him off our backs, but we'll also have an indication that we need to up the dose of two-eighty-seven."

"But what if he's clumsy about it and gets caught?"

"We'll clean things up before he gets caught—just like last time."

"Last time we were lucky."

"We
must
provoke him, Aaron. And think about it: If he calls in instead of attacking, not only will we know the suppresser is working, we'll have an idea of the proper milligram-per-kilogram dose. I don't see a downside."

"Unless you're Robertson."

"Why do you care about that lying swindler?"

"He's a fellow human being. Isn't what we're doing here supposed to make the world a safer place for our fellow human beings?"

Julia sighed. "Yes, I suppose it is."

But not that particular human being.