In The Blood
by Ilsa J. Bick
It's bad when Homicide calls. It's worse when they think it's one of your girls.
It's February. The sky spits snow. I'm standing on the east bank of the Potomac, downstream from Georgetown University. Business was brisk last night, and I'm whacked. My coffee's got a sludge layer so thick you could pan for gold. My head aches, I haven't slept in twenty-two hours, there's stubble icing my jowls, and I smell bad.
And this takes the cake. Not only the Homicide boys, but the chief and the mayor huddle by the morgue van. Terrific.
At least Paul Gallagher's here. We go back—hell, feels like centuries. He's Aussie, but don't let that Kris Kringle look fool you. He's one tough M.E. Figures. You can't spend a lifetime tearing up dead people and be a sentimentalist. Catching my eye, he gives that shit-hitting-fan look and lifts his chin in the direction of the river.
I look. Divers float a black body bag. Perfect.
Deputy Chief of Homicide Jack Strong sidles up. We worked Homicide together before I jumped ship for Vice. Strong's black, handsome: resplendent in a knee-length camel hair coat, silk scarf, black cashmere turtleneck. The bulge of a top-of-the-line pulse laser on his right hip. Homicide's been good to Strong.
"Thorne." Strong smiles a grin that's all ivory. "You look like hell."
"Thanks." Strong's right, though. Today I look like a hairball your cat hawked up on your best rug. I know; I checked in the rearview of my skimmer on the way out. My eyes are yellow around the edges, like underdone eggs. My shoulder-length black hair, going gray at the temples, is oily enough to blind you. You could catch daylight through my jeans, and my leather bomber jacket is white at the elbows.
My only quality items: an antique Glock in a cross-draw shoulder holster and a black .40 S&W snugging my right ankle. I don't go anywhere without that S&W. There's no safety, and you don't need to pull back on the slide to get a bullet in the chamber. Just jack in a clip and that baby's ready to go. Dangerous as hell, but I can't stand pulse lasers. Must be the smell of burnt meat.
"Think it's her?" Strong says.
"Maybe."
Strong frowns. I know what he's thinking. He's Homicide. He's supposed to know who gets done and where. Vice overlaps sometimes, especially when there's snuff, or things get out of hand. On my watch, that doesn't happen. Snuff … well, call me old-fashioned, but a customer wants that, I send him to Vice in Baltimore or across the river to Fairfax. Let my brother cops deal with the mess.
"Well, Bunko," Strong says, "if it's her, it'll be your ass. You saw her when?"
I sigh, exasperated. "We've been over this. A week ago, Thursday, Stevens picks her up. They head out to Cole's. Next thing, I know Stevens is dead and the skimmer's toast. I told you, I told Cole." This, at least, is true.
Strong looks over my head. "Well, seems like you get to tell him again."
"Oh, shit." I turn. Sure enough, there's Cole's limo. Some flunkie palms open the door—like it's some big-deal job—and then Thurmont Cole comes barreling out of that skimmer like he's got rockets up his ass.
"Thorne!" Cole bawls. "Thorne!" Thawun. "You there!"
Cole's Mississippi born-and-bred. After twenty-plus years in D.C., he's still got the drawl. And the attitude. He probably beat slaves in some past life. With his mane of white hair, he can look very Wrath-of-God … someone Cole believes he is anyway. You can't blame him. Presidents come and go; wars get won or lost; but Thurmont Cole, Director of Homeland Security, survives.
"They're bringing out the body now, sir." I point at the divers lugging the bag through snow. My stomach's doing flips. But I say, "Why don't we take a look first?"
Cole fumes inarticulately as we trudge over. Never a stupid man, Strong lags behind. We cluster around the bag: Cole to my left, Gallagher immediately to my right, followed by Strong. The chief and the mayor line up on the far side of Strong, putting distance between themselves and Cole. Now they're stupid. They're also cowards.
Gallagher squats over the bag—no mean feat for a guy his size. He paws the zipper. Metal rasps against ice crystals. He tugs the bag apart, and the plastic crackles like used cellophane.
We stare for a good five, ten seconds. Suddenly I'm not breathing too good.
Gallagher looks up. "Thorne?"
Before I can speak, Cole says, "It's her."
He gets right in my face. Two spots of color dot his withered cheeks. His nose is red, and it's running.
"You piece a trash." A bead of snot trembles on the tip of his nose. "You sorry, worthless piece a trash." Wuhthless. Turash.
No one jumps to my rescue. I take it, staring at that snot and waiting for it to fall off. It doesn't, though.
Cole jabs a finger at my face like a stiletto. "You better get on your knees, Thorne, and pray they find a scrap of DNA in that mess, or you are done. You hear me, boy?"
Whipping around, he stalks to his limo. Palming the back door closed, the flunkie flings me a reproachful look. A second later, and the skimmer jets toward Cole's estate near Mather Gorge.
The divers pack up. The mayor and the chief leave. Gallagher's assistants load the bag.
Gallagher says, "I'll call you."
"You do that," I say.
Strong asks, "Think you can salvage anything?"
Gallagher shrugs. "Her cells are probably the moral equivalent of vermicelli. Give me time."
Gallagher lumbers to his van, and the van puffs east, toward his office in District Headquarters.
I look at the Potomac. The river's gray as gunmetal. Snow frosts my shoulders.
Strong says, "Lot of fuss over a goddamned clone."
"Yeah," I say, aware of the blood thrumming in my veins. "It sure as hell is."
· · · · ·
Strong and I had been partners: did a regular beat in Southeast when it was still D.C. instead of part of Maryland, like it is now. Those weren't the good old days. I mean, ride around all day, cleaning up what scum does to scum, and your opinion of the human race gets pretty damn bleak. When detective slots opened up in Homicide, we jumped ship. Beat cops don't make money. Everyone knows detectives run the show in D.C. You want a hooker? Go to Vice. Drugs? No sweat. A contract killing, some little annoyance you want out of the way? Homicide's happy to oblige, and that's not counting clones the eggheads churn out for those red-blooded Second Amendment Americans who want to hunt something a little more interesting than Bambi.
Eventually I drifted to Vice. No stomach for Homicide, I guess. Strong and I worked up our respective ranks until we got where we are today—deputy chiefs. I direct the girls; Strong manages contracts.
About three months ago, Peggy turned over and said, "New girl coming this afternoon."
"Yeah?" I yawned. Sex in the afternoon always makes me sleepy.
"Yeah." Peggy stretched, like a cat. She's not a bad looker—ash blonde hair, blue eyes, good breasts—though she's been around the block a couple two-three times. Peggy's official title is Personal Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Vice. Translation: She's admin. Does four divisions—Straight, S&M, Bestiality, Lesbian and Gay. Like I said, we don't do Snuff, and forget Child. Of course, there's overlap. Vice is never cut and dried. But, by and large, Peggy makes sure the squad detectives get everyone where they're supposed to be and back in one piece.
She propped herself up on an elbow. "She's Special Order."
"Yeah?" I tweaked her right nipple. "More special than you?"
"Get serious."
My fingers moved to her belly, then lower. "Never more."
"Thorne," she said, though she didn't tell me to stop. Peggy hasn't had it easy. My first day on the job, she told me how the last deputy chief treated her. He's gone now. Pissed off someone and is sleeping with the fishes in the Potomac.
I treat my girls well. Peggy thinks I'm a romantic, but that's a bunch of bull.
"Earmarked for Cole," Peggy continued, right on track despite where my fingers were. Like I said, a remarkable woman.
"Cole?" I was surprised enough to stop. I'd only been on the job about two weeks by then. So, being new, I didn't know all my customers very well. Oh, the President, the Joint Chiefs, them I knew. In my job, you got to prioritize. But I should've thought of Cole. Homeland Security's big: lot of money, lot of power. Big names and big appetites.
"Yeah. Cole gets a new one every quarter from that cloning outfit in Gaithersburg … GenPlex. Very class operation. And these girls aren't cheap. But then he ups and ruins them. Sick old goat."
"Don't tell me," I said. The less I knew, the better. It's a fact. These girls and boys are disposable pleasure models, pure and simple. Clones.
I find it helps to think of it this way. A doctor has a kid who grows up to be a doctor, and so on. It's in the blood. Like me: I'm a cop from a line of cops. It's in my blood.
So these clones are hookers. It's in their blood. Dumb as shit, though. I mean, think about it. One minute they're in a vat, the next they're out walking around. No past, no experiences. Me, I can't see having sex with a blank. But I'm old-fashioned, I guess.
Peggy said, "This Abby model isn't just re-tooled. GenPlex's into memory enhancement. With each new Abby, they build on the Abbys before—what she was, what Cole does with her."
Peggy shook her head. "Sick."
"How do you know all this?"
"I spent time with the last Abby before Cole … before he …" She swallowed, paused. "That's the worst of it. You stick around long enough, these girls come and go, and they've got this idea about what's coming. Only it's cloudy, like a bad dream. But the last Abby knew she only had three months, period. Thorne, it's inhuman, even for a clone. It's not right, going through life knowing it's a countdown."
She had a point. Ever play that game when you're a kid—the one where you wonder how long you'll live and how you'll die? And remember how you decide you really don't want to know?
I wasn't sure what to say. So I didn't say anything. Instead, I told Peggy to knock off worrying about things she couldn't change for a couple two-three minutes and let me take her mind off things.
She let me. I take good care of my girls.
Strong drops me around ten a.m. My office is in a condo on the corner of New Jersey and K, four blocks north of Police Headquarters on Indiana and within spitting distance of Union Station and the Capitol. There are two ways into my office: the front and the back, natch. The front is the office-office. The back, where I live, is in an alcove off the main hall. You'd miss it if you didn't know it was there.
Peggy's waiting. She looks like she's been up all night, which she has. "Well?" she asks as I stamp snow off my feet.
I bend to work my laces. Old-fashioned. "They found her," I say, fumbling with the knots. My fingers are stiff and don't work right.
"Gallagher?"
"Give him time." I tug at the knot on my right shoe. "Damn it."
Peggy stoops. "Let me."
"You don't have to do that."
"Shut up," she says. So I shut up and let her play around with my shoes.
When she's done, she says, "Get out of your clothes. You need a bath and a shave and a good breakfast." She's already disappearing in the direction of the bathroom before I can open my mouth. In another second, I hear water running.
The tub's steamy. Given everything that's happened, I figure I'll soak five, ten minutes max. An hour later, Peggy's shaking me awake, and the water's cold. By the time I've shrugged into my standard uniform—blue jeans, black turtleneck, S&W on the ankle—and pulled my hair back in a tail, Peggy has breakfast waiting. Two eggs over easy, five strips of bacon, two slices of buttered toast with cherry jam, and grits with Tabasco and butter. I'm crazy for grits. Peggy thinks they're disgusting, so I make sure to eat them a lot, just to get her going. Only this morning, she doesn't say much. Just pours herself some coffee and keeps my cup full.
We're both waiting for the call, and Gallagher doesn't disappoint. The vid screams at eleven. I tell it to shut the hell up and put him through. Gallagher's face wavers into focus. "Yeah?" I say.
Gallagher's face is flat. "I've got the chief, the mayor, and Strong on hold. Cole, too. Everyone wants in."
Peggy moans, but I don't turn around. This is for keeps. I got to be careful, or we're all dead.
"Well," I say, "put them on."
Everyone appears. Only Strong says hey.
Cole looks like he's sucking lemons. "All right, all right," he raps, "what's the verdict? Did you salvage anything?"
But Gallagher won't be pushed. "First, let's establish whether this is murder or suicide, Director."
Cole harrumphs. "Can't see it matters one whit."
"It does. And I'm sure Deputy Chief Strong cares." Gallagher doesn't mention me.
Cole glares, but Gallagher doesn't even twitch. Then Cole says, "All right. Have it your way."
"Thank you," says Gallagher. "First of all, that girl suffocated."
"And how do you know that?"
"No water in her lungs."
Cole makes exasperated noises. "So she was dead before she hit the water. Doesn't prove a thing."
"On the contrary, Director," says Gallagher, as if he's talking to a two year old. "Most people who die in the water don't drown. They suffocate, because as soon as water hits the larynx, it spasms and nothing gets through."
"So she suicided," Strong says, hopeful now. He'd be off the hook then, and I'd wriggle on. "Jumped and did that spasm thing."
"Only there's a wrecked skimmer and a dead cop." Gallagher pauses. "Except Director Cole is right: She was dead when she hit the water. She's banged up, but there's little blood loss. She's got broken bones but practically no bruising."
"Meaning?" Cole asks.
"Meaning she was thrown from a height. She probably hit face first. Her facial bones are smashed." Gallagher says it casually, but still I wince. "But with no bruising, it means her heart stopped before that happened."
"Could she have taken something?" Strong asks. "Poison or something?"
"And then jumped?" Gallagher says it in such a way that you know, immediately, he thinks that's a dumb question. "Sure. She takes something, staggers to the edge of wherever—all the while not breathing and with no blood flow—and then throws herself into the water for good measure, conveniently dying on the way down. Not to mention the fact that women tend to drown themselves in the ocean or the bath. They're not as melodramatic as men."
He paused to let that sink in. Then: "I'm sorry, Strong, but this is pure, unadulterated murder."
The sentence hangs in the air. No one says anything, but I see Cole's fists bunching and unbunching.
"Poison?" I ask, my heart pattering in triple time.
Gallagher nods. "But I'll be damned if I know what type. I've been through brain, heart, liver, kidney, muscle, and bone marrow. There's nothing."
Cole leans forward. "So let me understand this, Doctor." He says it like an epithet. "You're saying murder, but you don't know how?"
"No, I said she died and I don't know how. But I do know what murdered her."
"Say again?"
"How she suffocated, I can't say. But there's killing, and then there's erasure. Murder."
Cole's mouth works. "Stop talking riddles. What about murder?"
"Whoever did this made sure this girl isn't coming back."
Cole misses the emphasis, but I get it.
So does Strong. "This girl?"
"Her DNA is ruined," says Gallagher. Short, sweet, to the point. You got to admire the guy. "You can't make her again."
Even through a vid, I can see the color mottling Cole's neck, like something crawling up a centimeter at a time. "And why not?" Cole asks.
"Because her mitochondrial DNA is toast. For my money, we're talking gene-terrorists here."
"Gene-terrorists. You want the long or the short version?"
That red flush has sprouted along Cole's jaw. "Short."
Gallagher ticks it off on his fingers. "Genetics 101: You've got DNA in the nucleus and in the mitochondria, the organelles that give your cells energy. Two, you've got hundreds of mitochondria per cell. Mitochondria are passed along the maternal line, and certain ethnic groups carry very specific markers."
"Like the Yanomami plague of 2010," I say.
Gallagher nods. "Exactly. Gene-targeted warfare directed against a specific South American Indian tribe: It wiped them out, and then, not coincidentally, allowed the Brazilian government to move in and annex some very valuable land. Same thing here. This girl's mitochondrial DNA has been snipped in two, as if with a tiny scissors. The only way to do that is to target a very specific marker. Snip enough mitochondria and the cell dies, very quickly."
"Which explains why her DNA was so degraded."
"You got it, Thorne." Gallagher folds his pudgy hands over his middle. "And that's why every cell line, exclusive of her red blood cells, looks like oatmeal. When the mitochondria died, the cells burst wide open."
I would've let it slide, but Strong says, "And how come her blood's okay?"
"Not her blood." Gallagher pauses. "I said her red blood cells."
His eyes flick my way, then back to Strong. "Red blood cells don't contain DNA and are pre-programmed to turn over every one hundred twenty days.
"Anyway, Director Cole, we're talking designer gene-poison, tailor-made for this one girl. And here's the kicker. It went for that portion of her mitochondrial DNA that says she's a clone. Every clone has one, unique to him or her, like a fingerprint or an I.D. I think you wrote the original legislation some thirty years ago."
Cole's face is the color of a ripe plum. "The Originator Bill."
"Exactly. As I recall, the aim was to keep the human line pure and the numbers of clones strictly controlled. With clones running around, you'd never know who was a dyed-in-the-wool human being and who was, shall we say, born again," Gallagher deadpans without a trace of irony.
"So you're saying … you're saying that … that …"
"That whoever murdered her wanted her dead and the clone gone. Truly, irrevocably dead."
"But there's the cell line," Cole splutters, "the cell line where she came from …"
"GenPlex," says Gallagher. "But, Director, that's the problem."
Strong flinches, and I see he's figured it out a second before Cole asks the question.
"What," Cole gargles like someone's got him by the throat, "who could make this kind of weapon?"
Gallagher favors him with a mild, disingenuous look. "Why, Mr. Director, where ...
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