MOSAICS: A Thriller (29 page)

Satish clicked his tongue, rocked on his heels for a bit, then resumed pacing. “Viktor said many scientists use the code for graphing.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “This is the kind of graph the guy was staring at when he shut his laptop and ran.”

Satish turned to me abruptly.
“What was the guy’s name on the board?”

“G-cat.”

Diane’s eyes sparkled.
“G, C, A, and T—the four DNA nucleotides. The guy’s a DNA freak.”

My girl was on fire.
“You’re a genius, D.! And four-colored tiles,” I added.

“That was the first set. The second set only had three.”

“But four colors,” I insisted. It was clear. Suddenly, it all made perfect sense. The tiles, the coins, the guy’s ashen, almost sick face, as he stared at me for a split of a second and then ran.

“The guy is obsessed with DNA,” I said.

Satish pointed at the phone in Diane’s hands. “The graph. It’s got the same colors—green, red, orange and aquamarine.”

Diane drew in a sharp intake of air. “Oh my God, it’s the code! See? The color ticks in the graph represent nucleotides.
Green for A, red for T, orange for C, and aquamarine for T.”

Satish
looked at me. “There’s your code. Cracked.”

I tried to smile but I wasn’t very convincing. “I found g-cat and let him run.”

*  *  *

The moon was a pale smile across a starless sky.
The foothills rolled to our left, speckled by the occasional twinkle of a house or the looming silhouette of an antenna farm. To our right, downtown stood quietly and impassively.

You’re out there, you son of a bitch.

I’ll find you. I swear I’ll find you
.

“Track.”

“Hmm.”

“Do you get it, now?”

“No.”

Diane clenched the wheel of her VW and sighed. A vehicle passed us on the right lane.

I felt small, weak, and mortal.
Very
mortal.

“What is it you don’t get?”

I brushed a finger along my stitches. The nylon threads poked out of my skin like whiskers. 

“I don’t get any of it,” I said. “We established the
hairs came from the killer. They fluoresce, and that’s how you figured the Byzantine Strangler has this weird condition—what’s it called again?”

“Morgellon’s disease.”

“Right.” I rapped the window with my knuckles. “And these hairs have DNA.”

“
Mitochondrial
DNA, Track. A very special kind of DNA.”

“
Fine. They’ve got
some
DNA. And you compared it with the DNA from the kiddos.”

“That’s right.” Diane was going fifteen miles ov
er the speed limit. She barreled up on the slow poke ahead of us and waited until she was five feet away from him before swerving into the left lane to pass him. I wanted to ask how much her insurance premium was, but there were more pressing matters.

“We found the hairs on the victims, yet
you tell me the DNA nails them to the babies. The DNA from the hairs
and
the babies is a match, is that what you’re saying? Are the babies the ones with the disease, then? And how the hell did hairs from the babies end up on the victims? Hell, babies don’t even have hairs!”

The head concussion must’ve made me very stupid.

She whipped the VW back to the middle lane. “You keep missing the fact that it’s
mitochondrial
DNA, not the regular DNA from the nucleus. I told you before, mtDNA is not unique to one individual. Get it? Related individuals can have identical mitochondrial DNA.”

“Well, if it’s not unique, it’s not informative.”

She jerked her head sideways and yelled at me. “Track. Shut up and listen, okay?”

I shut up. My head wasn’t throbbing anymore, but it was hard to listen. My thoughts were running around like chased rats.

“Mitochondrial DNA is inherited from the mother’s side. It doesn’t undergo recombination like chromosomes do. That’s why in most cases a child has the identical mtDNA as her mother, unless a mutation happens, which is rare. So, you’re right, it can’t nail a person, but it can tell you how closely related two individuals are. On the mother’s side, at least.”

I pondered. The rats in my head partied. I scrunched my forehead—stitches pulling and all—and pondered harder.

“The DNA from the hairs found on Amy and Laura was identical to that of the kiddos?”

“All but one, which had one mutation.”

“The babies all share the same mother.”

She nodded her head up and down. “Yes.”

“As does the Byzantine Strangler.”

“Or, he’s a she—the mother.”

“G-cat is a guy.”

“And you have no proof this g
-cat guy is the Byzantine Strangler
or
the guy you chased tonight.”

“Don’t piss me off, Diane. I didn’t whack my Charger for nothing.”

“Don’t spill your ego, macho man. You’re not always right.”

That killed the conversation for a while. We got off the Two on Mountain and wound up the hills of Chevy Chase. It was two a.m. Darkness enveloped us like silence, the VW’s headlights carving small cones of light on the pavement. The stale smells of hospital clung to my skin like leeches. I rolled down the window and inhaled. The air was scented with fir needles, sage, and night flowers, and it was warm, as warm as a lover’s unmade bed.
Clusters of homes peeked here and there through the blanket of the hills.

I thought of Charlie Callahan’s body, strangled and mauled behind an apartment dumpster. I thought of Amy Liu, who wanted to know something about Charlie, something that likely killed her. I thought of Fred Lyons, who lost a lover and a wife, and whose involvement in either murder was still very much suspicious to me. I thought of Henkins, a lifetime spent measuring herself up to the boys, only to give up at the end, when she stumbled upon something bigger than her career—somebody else’s career. I thought of David, Charlie’s friend-slash-more-than-a-friend, of one-night stands turned into Russian roulettes, a life gamble much like car racing or shooting vodka up your veins.

I thought of a mother killing her babies and burying them one by one, naked and lonely.

Give a life, take a life.

And then I thought of the Byzantine Strangler and tried to give him a face, any one of these shady figures, all of them, or none of them at all.

Diane yawned. She pulled into my driveway, killed the engine, and then yawned some more, rubbing her eyes with the tip of her fingers. I kissed her on the head and got out of the car.

There was a high-strung olfactory note in the air, like a guitar playing a familiar melody with one of the cords out of tune. 

Somebody’s been here
.

My muscles stiffened. Soreness clumped my back and legs, soon washed away by a new wave of adrenaline. Diane mumbled something. She slammed the car door shut and clicked the locks. I walked up the driveway, then around the garage. The gate to the walkway was unlatched. Past its metallic tang, the latch smelled rotten and sweet and diseased. It smelled of my guy.

I kicked the gate and yanked the Glock out of its holster.

Diane ran after me.
She found me standing by the picnic table at the back, Glock in hand, and cold sweat weeping down my jaw. Something glistened on my table under the pale light of the moon.

At the back of the property, the eucalyptus trees whispered their minty scent and washed the foul smells away.

He’s gone
.

Dian
e’s side brushed against mine. She gasped and brought a hand to her mouth.

He’
d left them on the picnic table. Two rows, three tiles each. Aquamarine, red, green the first row. Orange, red, aquamarine the second.

She
rummaged in her purse, got her phone out, and opened the browser to the DNA tool. She moved her index finger quickly, her thoughts in line with mine. “T, A, G for the top row,” she said. “C, A, and T for the bottom.”

“Tag cat,” I said.

Tag cat
.

“He’s after me, D.”

She frowned. “You? Why?”

“Because he’s obsessed with DNA, that’s why.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

____________

The screams. He couldn’t stand
the screams. And then the blood, afterwards. Lots and lots of blood.

“Go dig, Hector. Go.”

“Why?”

“Because your mama said so, that’s why!”

She’d hand him the bloodied bag and tell him to bury it. One, two, he forgot how many.

Too temptin
g not to look inside. He did once, and never forgot.

Never understood.

The bags kept coming.

One, two, he forgot how many.

He found the perfect spot. Over the years, bushes grew around it, and trees, and wildflowers. Sometimes a coyote would come too. And he killed the coyote. By then, killing had become easy.

But the screams. Those never were easy.

It became worst when he understood.

“Why, Ma? Can’t you make him stop?”

“Stop? No, baby, why? Your mama would be so lonely without him.”

“Then tell him, Ma. Tell him.”

“He’s too young. He wouldn’t understand.”

So Ed would still come over for dinner and
stay for the night and everything would be fine until Ma would start puking again and growing and Ed wouldn’t show up for a while until the time came and the screams and the blood and Hector would hike up the hill and dump another bag.

One, two, he forgot how many.

*  *  *

His hands bleed, his feet hurt. He peels off the nitrile gloves. His palms are veined with blood. He rushes to the bathroom to wash it off. His hands, his feet, his face.

“Hector! You’re late. Again! I haven’t had the Roxanol, or my dinner, or—”

Everywhere. Gy
psy moths everywhere. It’s an infestation. They crawl out of the walls just like they crawl out of his skin, nostrils, ears.

“—my bag needs to be changed, and my tubes disinfected, and—”

He lets hot water run until it scalds his skin.

Scalding is good. It will kill the bugs.

He lost the car. The computer is safe, though. He couldn’t afford losing the computer.

How did the cop find him?

Maybe it was all a coincidence. The cop couldn’t possibly know.

The cop couldn’t possibly know about him, but Hector Medina knows everything about the cop—his name, his face, his address, his phone number. His genes. The wonderful epigenetic switches taking place in his body. It’s not perfect. The cop’s going to die. That’s okay. All he needs is a few samples of his tissues and then he can work on fixing the problem.

He needs time.

Medina closes the faucet.

“Hector! Are you listening to me?”

More time.

He comes out of the bathroom and cranks up the AC. Chilled air blows down from the vents in the ceiling.

“Hector! I don’t like it this chilly. Come change my bag, it stinks!”

He walks into the kitchen, grabs a fresh pair of gloves from the pantry, the formula jars, the medications, the measuring cups.

A g
ypsy moth crawls on the tiles above the stove.

He stares at it.

They’re everywhere.

“Hector!”

His heart starts pounding. He’s killed cats, coyotes, humans, and never in his life he’d smashed a gypsy moth. Yet gypsy moths ruined his life more than anything else.

“Hector! Are you listening?”

More than anything else.

He takes the measuring cup and smashes the bug with the flat sid
e. It leaves a splatter of white powder and black hairs on the kitchen tiles.

“Hector! What do you think you’re doing? My bag. You need to change my bag. And I’m past due my dose of Roxanol. It’s hurting all over, can’t you see? Get that thing off my face, Hector. You think I’m scared of you? You pussy cat. You think this thing is gonna kill me, don’t you? I’m not dying, Hector. I’m not dying. Despite all the crap those big doctors colleagues of yours tell you. What did they tell you? Weeks? Months, at most? Bullshit. I’m not dying. I refuse to die. There’s nothing you can do about it. So now put that stupid toy away and change my—”

The g
ypsy moth.

He stares at the feathery wings, all crumpled up, and the cloud of white, sparkly powder spilled over the kitchen tiles.

And he likes what he sees.

Today, for the first time in his life, he smashed a g
ypsy moth.