The Day Before (17 page)

 

CHAPTER 18

Our very existence is threatened by these dissidents. They would have you believe we are at war. We are not the warmongers, we are the guardians. We are the ones defending our world from the annihilation of free agency.

~ Press brief from Colonel Aina's I1–2073

Wednesday June 19, 2069

Alabama District 3

Commonwealth of North America

S
am pushed away from her desk, rubbing her neck and wishing for an insane gunman to drop through the ceiling and take her hostage. Anything to distract her from checking insurance claims against the district records. There was a tap on the wall.

She jerked her head up. “Agent MacKenzie? Are you all right? You look . . . deflated.” There were corpses in the morgue who looked better. His pale skin was flaccid, but his eyes weren't bloodshot.
Mother Mary have mercy,
she thought,
he looked bad high.

Who knew sober could be worse?

“Where have you been? Did you go to the hospital?” His truck was missing when she returned from work on Thursday, and Marrins had kept her buried with busywork for the past week. Hunting down her erstwhile roommate hadn't been a priority. “You should have called if they were going to admit you.”

“Can . . . Can we talk?” he asked in a hushed voice. His hands trembled.

“What about?”

“The . . . Jane. Jane Doe.”

Sam nodded. “Sure. I'm going to lunch. We can talk there. Let me close my files up real quick.”

Marrins's door opened, and Charlie the Plastic Skull bounced off the wall in front of a startled MacKenzie. “Give that to the coroner on your way down!” Marrins shouted.

Rolling her eyes, she closed the computer down. “A real winning personality,” she told MacKenzie, faking a smile. “He's been throwing it at ­people all week. If you accidentally lost it in the Dumpster on the way to Harley, I'd consider it a national ser­vice.”

MacKenzie didn't crack a smile.

She dropped Charlie on the secretary's desk as they walked past. “This is for the coroner, courtesy of Agent Marrins.” She ignored the dirty look Theresa gave her and kept walking. “Mac, seriously, are you all right? You look like you haven't slept in a week.”

He shook his head. “I haven't.”

“Were you at the hospital?”

“No. Office.”

She gave him a stern look. Whatever the reasons, he looked ready to collapse. “How about we walk over to the café?” He nodded and plodded after her, a reluctant puppy on a leash. “Talk, MacKenzie. What were you working on?”

“The autopsies. Mordicai Robbins and the . . . the Jane Does.”

They stepped out into the swamp of June in Alabama. “Weather control, is that too much to ask for?” she muttered. “Lower the humidity here about 20 percent, that's all I'm asking.” Her suit jacket, so perfect for staying warm in the air-­conditioned office, was suddenly three times too thick for comfort. She took it off, catching MacKenzie's stare as she did. “What?”

He shook his head, turning to look at the hibiscus blooming along the sidewalk. “Sorry.”

“Focus. Tell me about the autopsies.”

“Harley took my computer Thursday morning.” Mac sounded angry. “All the work I'd done on Melody Doe and Mordicai Robbins was erased. Both bodies were cremated.”

She whistled softly. “That was fast.”

“Too fast, but I had a backup copy on my data pad. I'm not sure if Harley knew that or not when he ordered the hard drive wiped.”

Sam took a deep breath. At least the outside smelled better than her overchilled office. “I don't think he would have erased the data if he didn't—­it's too valuable to lose.” When Mac didn't respond, she switched topics. “Did you hear about the arrest yesterday? Altin wasn't happy, I heard all about it because Marrins was dodging his calls again. Someone said they saw the guy's car out by the labs the night of the break-­in. It's not much to go on, but I guess it's a start.”

“They let the kid go an hour ago.” Mac sighed and sat.

Sam waved to a waitress as she took her usual seat on the patio outside the Peach Blossom Café. The self-­serve screen popped up in the center of the table, and Sam entered her order from memory. “How'd you find that out?

“Harley told me. We got into a fight. I told him the evidence didn't back up the arrest. The kid's nineteen, works a night shift at the cinema, and was at work when the lab was broken into. Same alibi for the time of death. The only reason they took him in was that Officer Holt has tried to arrest him twice for breaking the noise ordinance in her neighborhood—­he likes to turn the radio up when he drives home—­but the charges never stuck.”

Sam rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I think Altin is the only competent person on the force.” A flower petal drifted across the menu screen, and she flicked it away. “I hate to ask, but do I have an alibi?”

Mac nodded. “About the time someone shot Mordicai Robbins's throat out, Detective Altin was at your house getting a signature to exhume Melody Doe.”

“That's nice.” She relaxed a little. “Do you know what you want?” MacKenzie shook his head, so she doubled the order: two thick turkey sandwiches with fruit salads on the side. Mac sat with his hands clasped, leaning on his knees and avoiding her gaze. Sam leaned back. “So. I guess you didn't want to see me about the Melody Doe case. What did you want to talk about?”

He looked across the street at the small grove of trees that were optimistically dubbed the city park. “This is a mess.”

“The city? The case? The state of the nation? I need more to go on if we're going to have a conversation.” A waitress brought out two glasses of pink lemonade. Sam sipped hers, and waited for Mac to come around to the conversation.

Mac sighed. “Melody Doe is an exact DNA match for Melody Chimes. No clone marker. Everything matches the latest DNA record of Melody Chimes.”

“Which was when?”

“Wannervan Security did a full DNA scan when she signed on in October of last year.”

“But in October 2068, Melody Doe was decomposing in peace in a mass grave.”

“That's the first problem.”

“What's the second?”

Mac kicked a chair at their table, glaring at the park like he held a personal grudge against trees and ground his teeth.

“Mac?” Sam prompted, trying not to sound amused.

“I pulled up Jane Doe's files while I was running some scans on Melody Doe.”

“So?”

“The trauma patterns to the bones match.”

Sam set her cup down with exaggerated care. “What are you suggesting?”

“Both women were killed by the same thing. I think Jane was hit harder, but I don't know what hit her.” He pulled out an efile on his small computer. “This . . .” Mac shook his head, obviously arguing something with himself. “This is Jane.” The suicide from May popped up on the screen.

The waitress stepped out with their lunches. “Thank you, Autumn,” Sam said, reading the girl's name tag. She took a bite of her sandwich, swallowed, and nodded at the screen. “Let's see Melody.” Mac hit a few buttons, and Melody Doe appeared, the fracture pattern on the skull was highlighted. “Okay, I see what you're saying, but it still doesn't work.”

He frowned at her.

“All this says is that both women were hit in a similar way. That's not enough of a connection. Melody wasn't—­” She caught the word “tortured.” This was a public place, after all. “Melody wasn't treated the same way as Jane. They weren't the same age. They don't show the same abuse. You need more of a connection if you want to tie them together. The same weapon doesn't make this a serial-­killer case.”

MacKenzie held his sandwich with reverence, venerating but not eating. “What about both being dead women with identical genetic matches to living ­people? No clone markers.”

Sam raised her eyebrows. “That could do it. You found a name for Jane?”

He nodded. “Eighty percent accuracy. There are a few differences, but there's also a five-­year age gap between the two.”

“That takes care of the other 20 percent.” She took another bite. “Okay. Give me the name.”

MacKenzie put his sandwich down and tapped at the screen. Another window opened next to the body, a file.

Sam turned the screen to read . . . Her name. Her file.

All the little things she'd noticed the first day and dismissed as quirks of genetic drift were there. Physical similarities listed next to those of Jane Doe's with little blue tick marks.

Check.

Check.

Check.

Sam smoothed her hands over her skirt. “Why . . . why don't we walk? Grab your sandwich.” She dumped MacKenzie's lunch into his hands, grabbed her own sandwich, and dropped their plates off at the cleaning station tucked behind an oleander bush. She didn't wait for him but knew he was following. “This way.” Her high heels clicked on the hot sidewalk as they crossed the empty street to the small park surrounding city hall in the center. MacKenzie was right behind her, juggling food and computers.

She took a deep breath. “If this is a joke, MacKenzie, it's not funny. Not at all.”

MacKenzie set his computer on a stone bench. “It's not a joke.” His breath was ragged. “I . . . I . . . stopped. Everything. No pills. No nothing. I'm sober. You wanted to know where I've been the past six days? This is where. When the search results came up, I thought I was hallucinating. I've rerun the data.”

“I'm not questioning your sobriety, you bastard,” she hissed. “I'm questioning your conclusion. Are you honestly suggesting that this woman was my clone?” She glared at him, nails digging into the stone bench.

“No.”

“Good.”

“Jane is five years older.”

Her heart stopped. “Older?”

He nodded.

That means. . .

“You think . . .” She didn't want to say it. It was too ludicrous. She looked at Mac's eyes. She had once thought, if they'd been sober, they'd actually be rather nice-­looking eyes. Now, all she saw was determination. He really believed it. “You think
I'm
a clone?” MacKenzie didn't answer.

“I am Catholic. My parents are Catholic. My mother goes to Mass seven days a week. There is no way in this world, or the next, that I am a shadow.” She waved her hand at him. It was pointless.
Saints have mercy.
Maybe Father Mark at the local church could give her a prayer.

Dear God, I'm a clone, please don't hate me.

She tossed her limp sandwich at the bench, where it bounced and fell to the ground. “I'm not a clone.”

“There . . . there are other explanations.”

“Eighty percent accuracy? I'm too good a genetic match. My career is going to hell because of 80 percent accuracy. What were you thinking, MacKenzie? I'm alive! Maybe that should have been your first clue that I'm not the dead Jane Doe!” Sam sucked in air. Hands on her hips, she walked back and forth in front of the bench. “This isn't happening.”

“I have two victims, with evidence they were killed by the same weapon, who are both genetic matches for living ­people. I'm not saying that Jane Doe is you—­obviously that's impossible. But what do you want me to say? You're a robot?”

“You think I'm a robot?” She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She wasn't sure she'd stay around to hear that much more anyway.

“No,” he said, meeting Sam's eyes. They didn't flinch. “No, I don't think you're a robot. But I don't . . . I don't have an answer.” He returned to staring at the ground. “Sam, I can't make the facts make sense. I can't. I need to run tests. On you. On Melody Chimes.”

“Testing for what?”

“A DNA sample to start. Melody's DNA sample was too perfect. Either Melody Doe is Melody Chimes, or the woman who signed as Melody Chimes somehow used Melody Doe's DNA for the security firm's genetic testing.”

“She was dead nine months before Melody Chimes even got the job, remember! Since I don't believe in vampires or zombies, I think we can eliminate that possibility.” Sam snapped. Tears burned her eyes.
God in heaven and Holy Mary, full of grace.

“Sam”—­it was the second time she'd heard him use her name—­“I need to test you for clone markers.”

Cleansing breath in, bad energy out.
Just like yoga class. She tugged at her blouse, trying to pull herself together.
Cleansing breath in. Cleansing breath out.
“You won't find any.”

“You wouldn't know if you were a clone,” Mac said quietly. “Your parents might not even know. There are cases where ransomed children were replaced with clones. One hospital in Monterrey was replacing high-­risk infants with clones and selling the real children.”

“That doesn't sound like a good moneymaking venture,” Sam growled.

“When the parents were already paying for a shadow? The hospital charged a little extra, gave them the clones, and sold the children who would live past fifteen into slavery.”

Sam glared at him. “Let me repeat: my parents are devout Catholics. Cloning is a sin. I have
never
had a shadow. It's
never
been an option.”

“Did you ever travel out of the country as a child?”

“Yes, my mother was the Spanish ambassador to Canada. We held dual citizenship until Canada joined the Commonwealth.” Europe hadn't welcomed the Commonwealth with open arms—­far from it, in fact. ­People who held dual citizenships were required to pick a country. Her mother picked Spain. Some days Sam thought the only reason her parents were still married was because her mother enjoyed the convenience of having a Commonwealth spouse. It made getting a visa so much easier. Regardless, they had definitely traveled a lot when she was younger.