The Immortal Gene Read online

  Jake had no interest in dealing with the past right now.

  Maybe never.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The house was in rural Huntsville with no sidewalks. The lawn ran the length of the house and stopped at the shoulder of the road. The shoulder was littered with at least a dozen cars, but that didn’t bother Edwin. He parked on the far end by an access area to the forest. Once he had Megan sedated, he would guide her outside the back of the house under the cover of night and lead her through the woods until they came out at the opening by his vehicle. He had hoped for such an opening and was overjoyed to find it.

  Chance favors the prepared mind.

  Well, if so, then so be it. But fate wasn’t real. Neither was God. Or the Devil. There was dust, air, fire, man, animal, and a rotating Earth circling a star and that was it. And what people did with the time they had on planet Earth was up to them. Edwin thought of himself as an entrepreneur in the flesh. He chose his family and he chose them well. He enjoyed what he did, as his father had. This is what they were made to do. Wally had taught him that. His stepfather had stolen so many lives, little Edwin could never count the times he saw dead bodies in the basement. Sometimes, before Wally had disposed of a decaying woman, he would bring another one home and violate her for days while the other corpse was bound to a chair. It was to obtain obedience from his new victim. And Wally had let Edwin observe it all from the stairs.

  Learning about sex in such a way at twelve years old had given him core values, an understanding of what women were here for, and all the tools he would need to make Megan’s life better than any woman Wally had taken. Because Edwin was better at it than Wally, he would keep Megan alive for at least a year. Or until he tired of her. Even when he performed his fetishes and fantasies on her, hurt her in ways that would make it hard for her to perform her wifely duties, Edwin would allow her time to heal. He would provide ointment, oil, gauze, bandages. He would also offer lubrication for the tighter spots. This wasn’t about Megan’s suffering as much as it was about Edwin’s pleasure.

  “I mean,” Edwin whispered as he turned off the car, “what’s a wife for if not to pleasure her man?”

  He checked his mirrors, saw nothing untoward, then exited the Honda. Under one arm, he held the small box of wine and in the other, the bottle of rum and the whiskey.

  At the front door, the bass from the music sounded as if someone was knocking on the inside to a rhythmic beat. The sun was setting, the sky a mix of purple and pink. He admired the pink, making him think of his new wife.

  “Tonight, baby. Tonight.”

  Edwin rang the doorbell.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Jake had read through three case files, three separate boxes and wrote so many notes that a bump had formed on his writing finger. Kirk had been reading case files as well, but had stopped half an hour ago to open a bottle of wine. Kirk seemed to be handling the heat better, but Jake could tell it was making him sleepy.

  Jake got up to make coffee. Wine would put him out. He grabbed the beans from the freezer, ground them and poured hot water over them in a French press. He leaned on the counter and crossed his arms to wait.

  “Tell me about Edwin the mortician,” Jake said.

  Kirk looked up from his work, set down his pen, and lifted his wine glass to his lips. He sipped, rolled the wine around in his mouth, then swallowed, and set the glass back down.

  “What’s there to tell? He’s our chief medical examiner. When bodies pile up, he’s the one who deals with it without protest. He’s also the go-to guy for the Blood Eagle Killer. Edwin works late nights, all the time, does an awesome job according to the lawyers he ends up working with. He excludes or implicates suspects based on fact. Lawyers love him. Why do you ask?”

  “Nothing really. Just got an odd feeling about him when those cops showed up at the liquor store.”

  Kirk took another sip of wine, his eyes on Jake. “Did you sense something?” Kirk asked. Then in a lower voice, “Or smell something?”

  Jake’s eyes narrowed. Kirk had to suspect something was different about Jake, something physical, but was likely waiting until Jake brought it up. The longer Jake left Kirk out of the loop, the further he would push the boundaries of their friendship.

  “Edwin physically stepped back when the cops showed up.” Jake shrugged, ignoring the other comment. “It just seemed to me that he was afraid of them.” He turned around and poured his steeped coffee into a cup. “Have you ever checked the guy out? Is he on the up and up?” He started back to the dining room table, coffee in hand.

  “Edwin worked with Detective Joslin. If there was something fishy about Edwin, she would’ve rooted it out long ago. No doubt in my mind.”

  “And where is she now?”

  Kirk leaned back in his chair. “No idea. Working homicide in Kingston or somewhere. Why?”

  “That’s my point. She was all about control. The cases she worked were about her. I’m not sure she put solving the case as her priority, otherwise she might have had a chance at solving this one. Evidently, she was pulled from the case and it was given to you. And look what you’re doing with it. If she was as good as we all thought she was and lost the lead on this case, who’s to say she didn’t miss things about the people she worked with?”

  “Wow, you’re really on Edwin’s case. Did he piss you off or something?”

  “You’re missing my point. His behavior among colleagues was unbecoming. I’m simply asking a few questions, maybe raising some. Look into it. Think about it. Or leave it alone. It’s up to you. But one thing is for sure. He acted off and if I could smell him, he emitted the scent of fear when those officers pulled up.”

  Kirk seemed to consider things a moment longer. Then he nodded slightly.

  “Point taken. How’s everything going with those files? Patterns emerging? Getting anywhere? One of the biggest dilemmas we’ve had with this case is how he picks the families. If we could nail that down, we could begin to track him geographically and pinpoint with a certain level of accuracy a probable location for the next time and then work from there.”

  “I can tell you that the blood eagle shit is obfuscating. He’s doing it to confuse, to be unclear with his motives. We see what he leaves behind. But what he’s really doing is murdering families and raping the wife. In the end, his motive is to steal a family—the soul of a family—like what probably happened to him when he was younger. Your unsub will have bounced from foster home to foster home. He would’ve been a problem child who lost his parents before he was a teenager.”

  “How can you tell when he lost his parents?” Kirk asked, going for more wine.

  “He was old enough to know them, to love and be loved by them, to have felt their loss when they were either incarcerated or killed. Family is something that he takes. It’s not something you work on, nourish. If he believed in the traditional family, he wouldn’t be destroying them.”

  Kirk seemed to think about what Jake was saying. He stared off for a moment, blinked, then turned back to Jake.

  “Tell me something else, Jake.”

  Jake gestured with his hand to go on, then drank more coffee, swallowing it hot.

  “I finally got a hold of Dr. Sutton down in Brazil. He faxed me a couple of medical files. Figured you’d be angry, but what the hell? You gonna fly back down there to punch the guy?” He paused, studying Jake’s face. “I read the files. Did Sutton share everything with you?”

  Jake shook his head and sipped from his mug. He didn’t like where this was going.

  “So you don’t know what happened to yourself? What happened to your body?”

  “Sutton mentioned a few things, but I didn’t pay much attention.”

  Whether it was the sun setting or what he surmised Kirk was about to ask him, Jake felt a chill go through him as if a thick icicle had rubbed along the enamel of his teeth.

  “Your body has mutated. Yet you seem to be living a normal life. Above normal, actually.” />
  “Okay,” Jake said in a cautious voice. “Why do I care?”

  “Because it could affect your life span. Or the quality of your life going forward.”

  “Fair enough. I’m not a doctor and I haven’t self-diagnosed myself. So, end of discussion?” He made the last part sound like a question.

  “But those cops said you hunted those perps,” Kirk went on as if he was talking to himself. “I saw you run through those woods like a cheetah. I saw your tooth—your adult tooth—replace itself.” Kirk stared at Jake, his head tilted to the side. “A fight against four guys? In your condition? And yet you are unscathed and a few of them are hospitalized? You need the house to be thirty degrees. You eat raw meat now. And when I saw you return to the house after fighting those four guys, you came up the road, turned down the driveway and paused before you entered the house. But two things got me and I haven’t been able to figure them out yet.”

  Jake held his mug with both hands. How had he ever thought he could hide from a seasoned detective like Kirk? He’d been fooling himself. Now, since Jake hadn’t been forthcoming and honest, Kirk had decided to draw it out of him. It probably didn’t hurt that Kirk needed a drink or two first, but here it came nonetheless.

  “I watched you stop and sniff the air, your mouth open. Then you advanced on the house, cautiously. It was as if you could smell me and knew I was in the house. Secondly, I parked a hundred yards away, toward the highway, the opposite way you came. That meant you picked up the scent of my radiator leaking from a great distance and it wasn’t windy or some shit, so don’t try explaining it away.” Kirk drank the last of his wine, grabbed the bottle, filled his glass, and sat back in his chair, looking accomplished. “Anything you want to say?”

  Jake contemplated maintaining silence. He considered the ramifications of honesty and the loss of his friend, really the only one he had in this new world of his. If he was going to die in a month or two, or even live another year, wouldn’t he want Kirk in his life? He’d lost so much and to keep Kirk meant he had to be honest.

  That decided, how would Kirk respond to the news?

  “Let me start from the moment of consciousness in the clinic,” Jake said, looking down at his hands. “There was this nurse. She has a daughter.”

  Jake talked about the vibrations, the scents, knowing when people came and went. How he’d known Cindy was pregnant, how he’d detected fear on Edwin, and how he’d hunted those thieves through the woods. Yes, he’d broken the kid’s arm with one hand. Yes, he’d lost a tooth and it had regrown in less than a day. He had no idea what had happened to him because of the snake bite and during the subsequent coma, but he was determined to find out.

  Jake studied Kirk’s pensive face. “I told you everything because you gave me your word you’d help discover who Fortech Industries is. In order to do that, you might need to know what happened to me because of their fucking green liquid shit that I ingested in Luke’s tent.”

  Kirk had listened with rapt attention. His wine glass was empty again, but he didn’t reach for the bottle. Jake figured what he had told his friend had sobered him up pretty fast.

  “I’m so sorry, Jake.” Kirk shook his head. “For everything.”

  “I’m not. Not now. I’m alive and feel one hundred percent. I just want to know what happened to me.”

  “We’ll do it together. We’ll find out and nail those bastards.”

  Jake nodded, his lips pursed, a sense of determination overwhelming him. He sipped from his coffee, then spit the cold liquid back in his cup. “I hate cold coffee.”

  “I’ll make some more,” Kirk said, getting up from the table. “I could use some myself.” He stopped beside Jake and placed a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get through this, bro.”

  “I know, but I don’t have much time.” He faced Kirk. “Sutton said I’m dying. My left lung is not working right. My heart formed some kind of protective sac around it. I have neurotoxins in my saliva. I think my blood is even chemically altered. My eyes changed color. A lot has happened to me that the human body isn’t supposed to endure.”

  “How much time did he give you?”

  “He wasn’t definite, but he said I could go any time. A month, maybe two. Could be as long as six months.”

  Kirk’s eyes welled up. “Dude, I couldn’t lose you again. Not so soon.”

  Jake got to his feet and stood in front of his partner, feeling closer to him now.

  “Then help me find the guys in the SUV and make them reverse what their liquid did before it’s too late.”

  Jake stuck out his hand.

  Kirk ignored the proffered hand and instead pulled Jake in and hugged him tight.

  “We’ll do it together, man,” Kirk said into his ear. “We’ll do it together if it’s the last thing we do on this planet. We’ll find Fortech Industries and make them pay for what they did.”

  “We won’t have to look too hard. They know where I am. They’ve been watching me.” He pulled back and looked Kirk in the eye. “It’s only a matter of time before they make their move. They aim to kill me, but I have a surprise for them. We’ll see who’s the better hunter, the better killer.”

  They hugged again.

  “It’s only a matter of time, brother,” Jake said. “Then I’ll die in peace.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Canada Day party was in full swing early with Terry, Megan’s soon-to-be-former husband, cooking burgers and hotdogs for the guests on the backyard BBQ.

  Edwin had been nursing the same glass of wine for the last hour, pretending to drink as he chatted with several guests, being overly pleasant on purpose, but keeping a close eye on Megan’s children.

  One of the biggest changes to his MO was that he was going to be at the scene of the crime before it happened, where he could be recognized and named as a guest at the party. During previous Gatherings, Edwin befriended his prey, shaved his body hair, then dealt with the family, mindful of leaving no chemical trace of himself behind. And if he made a mistake, he was in a position as the chief medical examiner to clean up his own mess.

  Up until now it had worked absolutely.

  Tonight, he was a part of the action before the crime. He would be seen. The fact that the crime was going to be different and the chief medical examiner for the BEK killer was at the party where Megan Radcliffe was abducted, would never lead the authorities to suspect him. He was so sure of it that he’d staked his freedom on it. In fact, he wouldn’t be at this party if he was even slightly nervous about being caught.

  Bumping into Detective Aiken and coma man at the liquor store in town earlier today had been a freak accident. When those RCMP officers pulled into the parking lot, he was sure they were backup, arriving to arrest him.

  What he’d realized from that incident was that he really didn’t like coma guy, Jake Wood. There was something about him, something about the way he stared at Edwin. Like he could see right through him. Like he saw Edwin’s will, his belief systems, and everything else about him. Even the wonderful stuff.

  Jake Wood creeped the hell out of Edwin.

  Across the room, Megan excused herself from a conversation to meander through a throng of guys discussing a golf game, on her way to Edwin.

  “Jeffrey, so glad you could make it.” Megan raised her glass in a toast to Edwin, then sipped from it. “And your wife?” Megan made an effort to scan the crowd. “I haven’t seen her.”

  Edwin bowed his head and looked longingly at his beverage.

  “She left me a few days ago.” He shrugged as if there was nothing that could’ve been done.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Megan clutched at her chest. Her faux sympathy came across devoid of feeling.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I guess she traded up for a younger, better model. But that’s why I’m here. I needed to get out. Be around people.”

  “Of course. I completely understand. Good for you. You have to be strong. Have you gotten enough to drink?” Megan didn
’t pause for an answer. “If not, there’s more on the table over there.” She pointed at the table where Edwin had placed the wine he’d brought. “Make yourself at home. Mingle. Get to meet people.” She edged away. “I’m sure we’ll see each other again later. Gonna go check on the husband. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  Megan stepped outside onto the back patio and disappeared behind a wall of people waiting for hotdogs.

  That would cost her. A wife shouldn’t treat her new husband that way. She deserved a beating. The kind of destructive beating that took a week to heal. To treat him like that when she’d invited him to the party was unconscionable.

  “You’re supposed to treat your invited guests a little better than that, wifey,” he muttered under his breath.

  Edwin checked the kitchen for the children, but they weren’t there. Megan’s three girls had slipped out when he wasn’t paying attention. In the living room, he caught sight of Tracy, the eight-year-old daughter, talking to a young woman. Tracy’s sisters, Lindsay and Erica, sat to her left. The smiles on their faces, the joy in their voices, almost made him think they knew their fate. Their new father was across the room watching them and they were mingling like little adults in an attempt to impress him.

  How lovely.

  A man in a Molson Canadian T-shirt waddled up to Edwin, an extra beer in his hand.

  “Got one for ya,” the guy said.

  He was either from Australia or Newfoundland. Edwin could never tell the difference.

  “Thanks.” Edwin set his wine glass down on a cabinet-hutch unit and took the beer.

  “And you are?” the Aussie asked.

  “Jeffrey Harris. You?”

  “Chris Manks. Pleased to meet you.”

  They clinked the necks of their bottles together, then ceremoniously drank a sip.

  “Manks?” Edwin said. “Isn’t your brother a cop?”

  “That’s the one.” Chris smiled, then frowned as a thought hit him. “Wait a sec. How do you know Dwayne? You’re not in trouble with the law, are you?” He laughed to make the question come across as a joke.