Deficiency (24 page)

"What are you telling me?" Terri asked realizing what he had said about the picture on the front pages of the newspaper. "That he's your twin brother?"

"Not in the traditional sense, no," he replied. "And I'm not a schizophrenic. I assure you. He is a separate entity. I'll tell you what I can, if you tell me everything you know about him. I'm sure he's said something I can use. He's very arrogant. He would not hesitate to tell one of his victims things about himself so he most probably revealed important information to the woman you began to examine.

"He has anticipated my every move so far and is always a step or two ahead of me. Part of his brilliance, you see. He possesses qualities we cannot fathom."

"How do you know so much about him?" she asked. She had found the door knob, but she was drawn to remain both out of curiosity and fear he was right — she would not be able to get away.

"I created him," he replied. "I'm Dr. Garret Stanley. I work for a research corporation that is hidden within layers and layers of legal detours, so sophisticated even the CIA would have trouble getting to the heart of it." He smiled. "There's that arrogance showing, I'm afraid. He shares my best and worst qualities."

She narrowed her eyes.

"Are you telling me… are you saying, he's a clone of you?"

"Precisely," he replied. He put up his hands. "I know, I know. Cloning human beings has been outlawed by our government, but believe me, there are people in our government who are not only aware of my work, they find ways to support it."

"How do I know you are not simply a madman, a schizophrenic?"

"If I were, I would have killed you by now," he said, "especially if you consider how quickly he's accumulating new victims."

"Why is he doing that?"

"What can you tell me, Doctor?" he asked instead of replying.

"I wasn't lying to you. That young woman I examined, Kristin Martin, was unable to speak intelligibly. She went into cardiac arrest almost immediately. She mouthed something that sounded like he, and that's it."

"He?"

"I think she was trying to tell me her situation wasn't caused by any allergy or the like. He… whoever he is… caused it, but how, why?" she asked.

He looked pensive.

"Maybe she was trying to tell me her grandmother was in danger. The tourist house they owned burned down and she died in the fire. That's all I can tell you. That's it."

His face grew gray with disappointment, but she also recognized a fury in those penetrating eyes. Despite what he was telling her, was he really a schizophrenic? He looks capable of violent rage, she thought.

"The FBI is here," she said, making it sound like a warning.

"I would expect so. They were in Pennsylvania, too. There were only two killings in the whole state, so you see what I mean. He's already killed three here in this New York county and by now, I fear a fourth and maybe even a fifth. Whoever dies after today might very well be on your conscience, Doctor."

"They might have his fingerprints on a glass," she warned. "Which, if you're telling me the truth, would be your fingerprints too," she said, still hoping to make him back off.

He smiled.

"Fingerprints from what? The bar at that tavern? Well? Are you saying the bartender didn't wash the glasses before she left for the night? Well?"

She sucked in her breath. Of course he would know about the story in the papers.

"You were there already?"

"No. Forensic evidence is a waste of time. Forget about that. What else were you told about the events at the tavern?"

"Nothing. I'm not part of a police team. I'm just…"

He shook his head.

"Doctor, you're wasting precious time. There is a significant witness you're protecting." He smiled. "This drawing in the paper wasn't done only from your description of me in the office. I know he spent significant time with that bartender and I know her name, Darlene Stone. She knows more than she has told the police at this point. I'm sure of that. They're incompetent, especially when it comes to something like this. Only I can find him."

She was afraid to say another word. Stall him, she thought.

"I don't understand how he causes deaths through vitamin deficiencies," she said. And then she added, "I don't trust you, trust what you're telling me."

He looked away, took a deep breath, and looked back at her.

"Okay," he said, "this is what happened."

Despite how drawn she was to what he was saying, as he spoke it occurred to her that if he was telling the truth, if he was this research scientist and if he did indeed work for a powerful, clandestine corporation, she would now be in a different sort of danger, but one perhaps just as potentially fatal.

"I'm sure you know that toward the end of the twentieth century, there were basically three types of cloning: embryo cloning in which one or more cells are removed from a fertilized embryo and encouraged to develop into one or more duplicate embryos; adult DNA cloning, cell nuclear replacement producing a duplicate of an existing animal; and therapeutic cloning in which the stem cells are removed from the embryo with the intent of producing tissue or a whole organ for transplant.

"My work centers around adult DNA cloning, but the production of an identical twin without the use of sperm, although successful, had one drawback: time. It took too much time before the twin would develop into a mature adult, capable of utilizing all the talents and knowledge of its host. By the time it reached that capacity, what it knew could not only be obsolete, but what is more important, not further developed, not benefiting from that time, understand? I mean, reproducing Einstein at the point when he made his important discoveries, but having that reproduction spend years to get to that point, makes no sense. What I have been working on is speeding up the growth, accelerating the development of the duplicate.

"Of course, none of this is perfected and in the process of my experimentation, I did succeed in creating a duplication of myself and bring its development to approximately my age in a matter of months, but an unusual disorder developed almost immediately: my second self, as I like to refer to him, was unable to store most necessary vitamins and minerals. They are passed through his digestive tract and not broken down and carried by the blood, and so I had to put him on an intense vitamin and mineral therapy program to keep him alive while I tried to determine what exactly was malformed.

"One of our assistants basically screwed up and missed a treatment and that was, unfortunately, when we discovered a second unusual disorder, a true threat to others. My research partner was killed. Like a bee drawing pollen from a flower, my second self appears to have the ability to draw what he needs at the moment from another human source, mine it, so to speak, vacuum the blood. I'm not absolutely sure of how he processes the material, but it bypasses the digestive breakdown somehow and provides what he needs. In a true sense of the word, I have inadvertently created a monstrous parasite, but a parasite, however, that also possesses a high degree of intelligence, charm, wit, in short,
moi,
yours truly. That's why I know he's arrogant," Garret Stanley said.

Terri continued to stare at him.

"Don't tell me you are one of those who have some religious objection to human cloning, one who believes there will be no soul in the new individual if he or she is created without the use of sperm?" Garret asked with some disdain.

"No, I'm not, but what I am is one of those who believes in strict observance of research guidelines to prevent exactly what you've done," she replied.

"If we followed the guidelines, as you call them, we wouldn't be doing this at all and the human race would lose a golden opportunity to end disease and aging. As far as our puritanical and fundamentalist religious influences go, all they have done is permitted groups in other countries to move ahead of us. Including the Raelians. You have heard of them, I assume?"

Terri shook her head.

"They are a religious sect that believes, among other things, that human beings were created in laboratories by extraterrestrials, and that the resurrection of Jesus was a cloning procedure. You would be shocked to know who belongs to the sect and how much money they have already invested in their research. Recently, I saw a list of women, surrogate mothers, who have paid close to a half million dollars to be part of their experiments.

"No, Dr. Barnard, I am not some mad scientist running amok, but they are out there who are mad and they are working. I am, in fact, our best hope to seize the initiative and capture the patents and processes which will one day recreate the world, vastly improve on the current model, so to speak, for in my world, you will see no human misery, no starvation, and every beautiful thing, every wonderful talent will be truly immortalized, so don't try to make me feel in the least bit guilty about all this."

"Is that what you will tell the parents of Paige Thorndyke, the families of Kristin Martin and Paula Gilbert, not to mention all the others he's destroyed on his way here?"

"Every great stride in history, in progress came at some cost," Garret said. "I regret what he's done of course, and that's why I'm pleading with you to help me find him so we can stop it."

"You just don't want anyone to know what you've created and what responsibility you bear," she told him, her eyes narrow and steely.

"All right. Let's say that's my motive. The result will be the same, won't it? He'll be brought to an end before he does any more damage. For Christ sakes, woman, you're a doctor. You're supposed to care about people."

She turned away from him.

"I don't know that much. I'm not holding back," she said after a moment. "I told you exactly what Kristin Martin was unable to say. The bartender at the Hasbrouck Tavern was able to give the police a more detailed description. That's all I know," she practically spit at him.

"Putting that picture in the paper was a big mistake. It will drive him off. He might be gone already and I won't know where to go until he takes another victim."

"How do you find out so quickly?" she asked.

He looked at her.

"That's not important. We've got to go see this bartender. I told you. The police won't know what else to ask her, what to look for," he said.

"If you try to speak with her, she will think you're him, it, whatever," Terri pointed out.

"That's right." He smiled. "That's why I need your help. And don't ask me something stupid like why don't I just go to the police. You know the reason why I can't do that. Will you help me or won't you?"

Terri looked at her watch.

"I'm already seriously late for my office visits thanks to you."

"You'll find a way to explain it. Look, surely you realize this is more important than treating some flu and arthritis problems."

She sat thinking a moment.

"When are you going to let that policeman out of the trunk?" she asked.

"We'll go back, get your car, and let him wake up in his uniform," he promised.

"Get me back to my car," she said. "I need to use my phone."

He studied her face.

"If you betray me, I'll disappear and believe me, no one will believe a word you say and no one will be able to track me down or my work. All you do is permit him to take more lives. You'll attend more funerals."

"All right," she said. "I said I would help you. I'll help you. Drive."

He started the engine and turned the car around.

"Someone who has decided to devote her life to medicine, to helping people, shouldn't be so unsympathetic," he muttered.

"Oh, I'm sure you have only altruistic motives for your research, Dr. Stanley," she replied dryly.

"If in the end the result is we benefit mankind, what difference will that make?" he fired back. "Yes, I have to compromise to get the necessary funding and protection, and I have to promise great profits to these people, but it would be naive to think that hasn't been the story since the first cave man corporation invested in a new and better wheel.

"You more than anyone know how opportunistic and profit-driven our best pharmaceutical companies are, and last I heard, doctors don't take jars of peaches for their services any longer."

"Whatever," she said. "The time for philosophical debating is long over apparently."

"Precisely," he said.

Hyman got on the phone himself when she called in from her car. While she spoke, Garret Stanley went behind the building to free the patrolman. When he returned, the policeman was dozing in the front seat and back in his uniform. Garret was back in his own clothes as well.

"I'm sorry, Hyman," she told him, "but it's not something I can prevent."

"What are you doing, Terri?"

"I don't have time to explain it all, Hyman, and frankly, I don't know if I can. I'll call you as soon as I am able to do so," she said. "I promise and I'm sorry, really. You'll just have to trust me."

"All right. I'll cover for you here, but please, please be careful."

Garret Stanley brought his vehicle next to hers. When she hesitated, he turned his hands palms up and nodded at the police car.

She got out and into his car.

"Do people at this tavern know who you are?" he asked.

"They might."

"I thought so. That will help enormously," he said and she drove out of the hospital parking lot, looking back once in a rearview mirror toward Curt's floor, imagining to herself just how wild he would become if he had even an inkling of what she was doing.

He was able to remember a time when anticipation was a sweet thing. It was almost as if a bell went off inside him then and a clock began ticking. As vague as time was, he realized that it wasn't very long ago when it was always that way. There was a signal to go hunting, but without the intensified urgency he now experienced. Or should he say, suffered, because he didn't enjoy it, not at all. He felt like an addict in withdrawal, writhing in agony, ready to claw up the walls in fact.

Something within him was clawing up his walls now. In his imagination, he saw an ugly, rodent with sharp talons stripping away his flesh, leaping from side to side and crying with a piercing shrill metallic sound that reverberated through his bones and into his head. He actually put his hands over his ears and pressed as hard as he could to stop it. That didn't work. Only one thing would work.