CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (17 page)

“I don’t know. As I said, the name Proteus is never mentioned in the paper. Mine’s a supposition, based on the fact that this subgroup of patients stands out.”

Diane’s hypothesis made perfect sense. But then the next question was: what linked those kids to Chromo? And more importantly: how were we to bypass all HIPAA and PPA bullshit in order to find out who these kids were?

“I’m off,” Diane said, retrieving her purse. “I’ll stop by Computer Forensics tomorrow to check on the status of Tarantino’s and Huxley’s hard drives. Good night, guys.”

My nose held onto Diane’s trail as it disappeared down the hallway and vanished into the elevator. So damn different from just a few hours earlier.

Satish grinned. “You seem distracted, Track.”

I grunted. “Distracted by what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Ladies’ charms, maybe?”

Scowling, I retrieved the computer and propped it back on my lap. “Look who’s talking, Sat. You and your ugly polka dot tie. Don’t tell me you’re going to wear it tomorrow to show off in front of Kelson.”

Satish slid the tie between his fingers. “What’s wrong with my polka dot tie?”

“Did you find out how Kelson and Conrad met?”

“I did a little research.”

“Allow me a wild guess, then. They met at Chromo.”

Satish’s eyes shifted from his tie to my face. “Good job, Track. I see your psychic abilities go beyond guessing a person’s attire.”

“I can do better than that. White and Kelson went to Chromo in the early ’nineties for genetic counseling. They wanted a child, and Chromo convinced them a good DNA check-up was in line with painting the nursery and buying diapers.”

Satish nodded silently, brows curled together in a deep thinking frown. “They wanted to do everything by the book,” he said. “White and Kelson. They went to see doctors, counselors, and geneticists. Everything had to be perfect for the baby they were going to have. What a peculiar concept.”

“I bet it reminds you of something.” I opened the laptop and touched the keyboard. The blank page of my unwritten report came back to life and scowled at me. Outside, the sun had lowered on the horizon, and a sickly pink washed on the walls through the Venetian blinds.

Satish looked at the ceiling. For a moment I thought I’d caught him off guard, that he didn’t have a story to share this time. I was wrong. “It does. It reminds me of calendars.”

“Calendars,” I repeated, typing a few random words on the screen just to make it look less blank.

“Wall calendars, specifically. The ones you use to note doctor’s appointments and things like that. Did you have one in high school, Track?”

“No. There were too many things I preferred not to remember.”

“Ah, but you see, you weren’t playing the clarinet like I did back then.” Satish folded his arms across his chest and gazed at the ceiling.

I typed another sentence. “I didn’t know you used to play the clarinet.”

“I was quite good at it, too. So good in my junior year I decided I was finally ready for the Annual Jazz Competition. Kids from all over the county could sign up for auditions. It was a highly competitive event, because if you made it to the finals, you’d go to the statewide competition. The final prize was a full music scholarship.”

Half of my brain was typing the report and the other half listening to Satish. “Did you want to become a musician?”

“My destiny was to become a jazz player. So I signed up and dutifully noted the day and time of the auditions on my wall calendar—my
sports car
calendar. It had the best models: Jaguar XK-E, Porsche 911S, Corvettes… And guess what the month of July was?”

“No idea.” I wrote,
I drew my weapon upon realizing the suspect was still within the residence and advanced towards his hiding spot
.

“A 1978 Alfa Romeo Spider. Do you remember those, Track?”

I nodded without paying attention, searching for ways to explain in the report how I ran for Huxley’s laptop instead of the suspect.

“I practiced the clarinet six, sometimes eight hours a day, and by the end of the summer I could play my song perfectly. I was proud of myself. I had carefully nursed every single note of my piece. The breathing time, the rhythm—everything was absolutely impeccable. At last, the big day came. The night before I polished my clarinet and my mother ironed my best
kurta
.”

I typed the final remarks on the report. I had to justify my choice of course of action without looking stupid. That by itself required some brainwork, which I had already demonstrated the lack of. No wonder the expression “catch 22” was invented in the
army.

“The big day I got to the auditorium and it was closed.”

“Closed? Why?”

“Shut and locked. And completely deserted. There was a little piece of paper taped to the door with the names of the people who had passed the auditions.”

“What?”

Satish chuckled. “You see, I loved the Spider so much I didn’t want to turn the page on my calendar. I was dead sure I had the right day and time in my head.”

“You didn’t even check it?”

“Uh-uh. I checked my clarinet. My mother checked my clothes. My old man checked the alarm clock to make sure I got up in time. I did not check the calendar.”

“Man, Satish. That’s too bad.”

He sighed and got to his feet. “Not to mention stupid. It was a good lesson.”

I saved the report, closed the laptop and dropped it on my desk over a pile of old files. “I bet you didn’t see it that way back then.” I got my jacket and followed Satish to the elevator. We rode the car down in silence, and only when the chime announced our arrival to the ground level, Satish offered one last thought on the matter. “You see, Track, sometimes it’s the most obvious things one tends to neglect. Just because they’re right under your nose, you fail to see them. Ingraining is the best deceit.”

I smiled, bade him goodnight, and watched his car drive away before looking around for my Dodge. “SHIT! Satish!” I called. Too late, he was gone already. Fucking right as always, this partner of mine. It’s the obvious things one tends to neglect. My Charger was happily parked in my driveway. Satish had picked me up from home that morning.

*  *  *

Between going back to the third floor, getting the car logs,
signing out the unmarked cruiser, and justifying why it needed to go for a ride, I wasted another half hour. Fortunately, by the time I left downtown, traffic had dwindled to a snake of headlights all cruising at the same speed. I could get home in fifty minutes instead of the ninety it took during peak hours.
Un
fortunately, by the time I left I was ravenous, tired, and irritated. It had been a long day, with an ominous beginning and a plain ending. As I went over the events of the day, I concluded that, besides letting my blood pressure enjoy various roller coaster rides, the report I finally managed to put together was the only thing I could actually pin down as accomplished.

I continued to beat myself up as I took the Two northbound, passed the junction with the One-Thirty-Four, missed my exit, and kept heading north. It was the car, really. It drove all the way to the end of the Two, merged into the Two-Ten southbound, swerved into the Lincoln exit ramp, and kept going northbound toward Loma Alta. As for me, being behind the wheel, I had no choice but follow.

Yellow streetlights and tall neon signs sped by the side of the road—some flashing famous store names, others only half-lit and making me feel dyslexic. Soon dark trees replaced the stores buried in wide parking lots. The car made another turn and entered a residential area in Altadena. Ah.
This is where you wanted to go
. Front porch lights washed down middle class doors, the friendliness of the white picket fence revoked by the threatening ARMED RESPONSE sign stuck on the ground by the doorstep. 

I slowed, turned the headlights off, and peeked at the door numbers until the car decided it was time to pull to the curb. Across the street, a row of colonial style townhouses loomed over a welcome mat of lawn so uniformly green it looked like it had been spray-painted. The façade of each unit was identical to the next, and seen from the side, they had the disorienting effect of double mirrors reflecting off one another. The first floor of the unit I was staring at was lit, and the bay windows framed a couple eating dinner while a TV yawned the evening news.

I turned the engine off and watched. Something in my head told me what I was doing was wrong. Something in my head told me to shut up and do it anyways. Something in my head switched to automatic, went its merry own way, and pretended not to be there.

The man whispered something to the woman sitting next to him, kissed her, and got up. She picked at her dinner with little interest, while the TV pooled flashes of blue light on her face. The man reappeared a few minutes later, a cell phone pressed to his ear. He paced, listened, frowned. He blabbered something into the phone, then snapped it closed.

Whatever the call was about, it made her mad. She got up and cleared her plate, seething. For the next few minutes, man and woman came in and out of sight, the tone and meaning of their words coded in their body language. He swayed a hand past his head, the phrase spat with the gesture clearly readable on his lips. He snatched his jacket from a chair, grabbed the beer he left on the coffee table, walked to the door, and slammed it behind. The slam I heard.

Now alone, the woman slumped on the couch and dropped her face in her hands. I left her there and followed the man. He drained what was left of the beer can on the doorstep, crushed the can, and tossed it in the trash bin against the sidewall of the building. What an environmentally conscious guy.

I watched him shuffle to the sidewalk, where a black Lexus blinked to life. The engine roared, the tires screeched, the exhaust exhaled poisonous gases. Thirty seconds later everything was back to normal: the street was dark again, the air still and silent. A cricket resumed its interrupted song. The bay windows were dark—the show was over. A faint light was on up on the second floor, behind a cream-colored curtain.

And there I went.

No
, yelled a voice in my head.
It’s illegal, stop
! I ignored the voice, stepped on the lawn of a private residence without having a search warrant and went straight to the trashcan.

Ulysses, you son of a bitch, stop and leave NOW
!

I lifted the lid, took a handkerchief out of my pocket, and, careful not to wipe off fingerprints or saliva smudges, I retrieved the beer can. I stared at it, then brought it to my nose. Malt, alcohol, and sweat.
His
. And a bit of Diane mixed in.

Ha, ha
, the voice laughed.
And what are you hoping to obtain with that? Whatever you milk out of the can, it will be inadmissible evidence
.

If that happens
, I replied, jogging back to my car and dropping the can into an evidence bag,
I’ll tell them a voice in my head made me do it
. The voice shut up and, with my newly retrieved piece of evidence, I drove back home.

CHAPTER 20

____________

Friday, October 17

José Salazar beams his flashlight, a silent blade sweeping the darkness around him. The sky is a sheet of tar, broken only by the shy grin of a crescent moon and the yellow halo blanketing downtown. The jets of the fountain have quieted, and the water is still in the shallow pool. The building looms tall against the night sky, its glistening façade a waterfall of shimmering black.

Salazar adjusts the belt to his waist and checks his gun holster. The familiarity of what he sees reassures him: everything looks in order. He walks to the side entrance, his steps producing a ghostly sound in the stillness around him. He lifts the call
box lid and punches in the six-digit number he has memorized at the beginning of the month. Every month a new number. A soft click from the lock grants him access to the building. Ah.
I’m the king of the world now
, he thinks, as his military boots echo in the open hall. He takes the elevator down to the basement, where halogen lights hum tacitly, and AC vents whisper in unison. Nothing else breaks the quiet of the place. Eerie, anybody else would deem it. Not Salazar, though. He loves the intimacy the night offers. In a few hours, the place will be bustling with life. Voices will holler down the corridors, conference rooms will witness brainstorming ideas, equations will be scribbled over white dry boards. Orders will be delivered and rants vented. Computers will sweat line after line of code, centrifuges will spin vials of blood, refrigerators will freeze jars of samples. All of that will happen after sunrise. Right now, everything holds still and waits. It’s what makes Salazar love his job so much: his kingdom, the solitude of an empty building, for him to guard, secure, and keep safe until dawn.

The bang, sudden and unexpected, echoes across the walls, so surreal he wonders if he just imagined it. A second bang follows, the sound of metal crushing. Salazar draws his weapon.
The labs
, he thinks, darting down the corridor.
Some scatterbrain lab tech must have forgotten to lock a cage
, he reasons—the most plausible hypothesis. Salazar slams the fire doors open and crosses the basement in its full length. He flicks on the switches. The lab greets him with the smell of hypochlorite and the impersonal sheen of stainless steel surfaces.

A cart lies on its side. Blue trays of vials are strewn on the floor. Salazar steps closer, boots crunching on glass shards.
Who did this
? A clonk this time, then metal dragged on the floor, coming from the wall to the right. A high-pitched scream makes the hair on his back stand up.
The macaques
!

Salazar punches the passcode to the animal lab but his sweaty fingers slip on the pad.
Damn it
! He re-enters the passcode, and when he finally hears the beep and click he shoulders through the door into the bedlam behind it. The reek of urine embraces him, intense. Feces are sprawled on the floor and smeared on the walls. A wreck of open cages and metal bars, spilled feeders and steel trays. The corpse of one of the animals withers in a corner, its skull squashed under a heavy dishpan. Panicked, one of the macaques swings from an AC pipe on the ceiling and squeals intermittently. A second animal shivers in a corner, coiled in a pool of its own excrement. The ones still trapped in their pens clutch to the bars and bang their heads, voicing their distress in shrieks. 

The screech makes Salazar jump. A row of white teeth flashes before him, Salazar raises his gun and fires. The monkey collapses on the ground, its face blown off in a star of splintered bones. Frightened by the blast, the other animals cry out. A few run back to their cages, others leap to the door seeking a way out. Straying his eyes across the room, Salazar notices something that doesn’t belong: an unlaced sandal, lying on the floor behind a pile of metal rods. And then a shaking foot, legs, the hem of a lab coat. Salazar crouches, clasps one of the wrecked cages and shoves it out of the way, uncovering a sight so gruesome he feels cold chills sweep down his back. He draws in a sharp breath, mesmerized for a moment, before he regains lucidity and finally dials the emergency code on his radio.