The Darkness to Come (25 page)

“That’s not all you did,” Dexter said. “You left out the most important part. I’ve been seeing a syringe . . . in my visions.”

“Yes.” Devereaux clasped his hands across his stomach. “The centerpiece of our study: the introduction of Substance X.”

“Substance X?”

“The naming convention is quite appropriate. We had no idea how it might affect you.” Devereaux laughed, as if it were a joke.

Dexter gritted his teeth. “You injected me with some shit and didn’t know what it might do to me?”

“You seem shocked, Mr. Bates. How are we to learn the value of our research without human experimentation? In the medical and pharmaceutical communities, prisoners traditionally have been ideal subjects for Phase One trials. There is no true need to follow the guidelines of informed consent. As a convicted felon, you have no rights.”

“I have rights,” Dexter said, lamely. He knew Devereaux was correct. When you were convicted of a felony, robbed of the right to vote, and forced to bear the equivalent of a scarlet letter for the rest of your life, you didn’t have rights—what you had were problems.

“Would you like to know what Substance X is all about?” Devereaux asked. He chuckled, clearly enjoying having the upper hand in their encounter.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t give a damn.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Devereaux crossed his legs. “At IDS, we specialize in the emerging technology of molecular manufacturing.”

Dexter only stared at him. He wouldn’t give this asshole the pleasure of asking him what he meant by such arcane language.

“A more popular term is nanotechnology,” Devereaux said. “Essentially, the engineering of functional systems at the molecular scale. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter, about the width of three or four atoms.”

“I know all about nanobots,” Dexter said. “They’re itty-bitty machines, the size of atoms, like you say. Someday, they could be used to create medical devices that travel through the bloodstream to seek out and destroy cancer cells before they spread. Or a box the size of a sugar cube could contain the entire contents of the Library of Congress. Applications that sound more like science fiction than reality.”

Devereaux frowned, dismayed that Dexter was not as ignorant as he would have wished.

“When you’re on lockdown, you have a lot of time to read,” Dexter said. “Hell, I met brothers in the joint who know more about the law than I do.”

“Spare me the details of your jailhouse education.” Devereaux waved his hand dismissively. “At IDS, molecular manufacturing is no longer science fiction. We’re developing usable, powerful military applications.”

“Such as?”

“Imagine a nanotech-built antipersonnel weapon capable of seeking and injecting toxin into a target population. The human lethal dose of botulism is about a hundred nanograms. As many as fifty billion toxin-carrying devices, enough to kill every human being on the planet, could be packed into an ordinary suitcase.”

“Gives new meaning to the term, ‘baggage check,’ huh?”

Devereaux made a scornful sound in his throat. “Imagine far more powerful firearms, self-guiding bullets—”

“I’ve always preferred self-guided fists.”

In spite of Dexter’s derisive commentary, Devereaux continued: “Lighter and higher performance aerospace equipment, built without even metal and impossible to track on radar systems. Embedded computers to enable remote activation of any weapon—”

“What does any of this brave new world bullshit have to do with Substance X, Dr. Frankenstein?”

“You’re a fool.” Devereaux shook his head, lips arched with disgust. “I’m an important man in my field—a
great
man. You sit there, a convicted felon, a murderer obsessively pursuing a young woman who wants nothing to do with you, yet you have the temerity to mock my life’s work. I ought to have you dumped at the bottom of the Chattahoochie River like the human slime that you are.”

“You should, but you won’t. I’m your prize subject, aren’t I?”

Muttering, Devereaux removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“I’m getting hungry,” Dexter said. “Can you have one of your goons swing by McDonald’s and grab me something? I could eat about a dozen Big Macs.”

“You’ll eat when I allow you to eat,” Devereaux said, like a stern parent addressing a child.

“Whatever, man.” Dexter shrugged.

“As I was saying, at IDS, we are making miraculous strides in cutting edge, military weaponry. Substance X is a product of our research in creating the perfect human assassin.”

“Finally, we get around to how your life’s great work is relevant to me,” Dexter said.

Devereaux ignored him. “Substance X was conceived to act upon the mind, to stimulate the dramatic and rapid development of new neural pathways, more powerful synapses. Imagine an army of
billions
of nanobots, every one of them geared solely toward improving the functions of that pea-sized organ between your ears that I’m disinclined to regard as a brain.”

“Fuck you,” Dexter said.

Devereaux only laughed. “We had no idea what the result might be—results in mice and our simian relatives have been mixed. We’ve also tried injecting a handful of other human subjects—violent prisoners we freed, like yourself—but they apparently didn’t possess your innate aptitude for quite literally getting away with murder, and the experiments were unfortunately short-lived. They were summarily executed by police or their peers.”

“So?”

“So you, Mr. Bates, with your varied background and high level of intelligence, have nimbly evaded capture, and in so doing, appear to have developed a most fascinating talent. The ability to harness your body’s energy to create a force field that refracts light waves.”

“Invisibility,” Dexter said. He sighed. “And I thought no one knew about it.”

“We’ve lost sight of you on our cameras many times. One moment, you are in view—the next, poof! It’s quite remarkable. We might have lost you altogether if I hadn’t had the foresight to implant a tracking microchip.”

“You implanted something in me, to follow me?” Dexter glanced at the computer monitors, wondering which of the displays had charted his movements.

“Of course we did. We couldn’t allow our insolent little guinea pig to get away from us, could we? How then could we be witness to your spectacularly depraved acts of violence and madness?”

Dexter spat in Devereaux’s face. The wad of saliva landed on the doctor’s cheek, like a fat tear.

“You sick fuck,” Dexter said. “I’ve been wondering why you’ve been telling me all of this shit. I finally figured it out:
you’re
a psychopath. You’re getting off on manipulating me like I’m your goddamn puppet, showing off your knowledge, and you probably cum in your lab coat every time you find out I’ve killed someone else.”

Smiling a death’s head grin, Devereaux wiped his face clean with his handkerchief. “As useful as you’ve been to us, Mr. Bates, I will not regret when your lunatic mission results in your death. I only hope that your demise is a painful one.”

“No one’s going to kill me. You want to take a shot at it, Oreo Boy?”

“Why would I want to do that—when I’ll be the doctor who performs your autopsy after you die?”

Anger smoldered in Dexter’s chest. He pulled, uselessly, at the cuffs.

“Let me go,” he said.

But Devereaux spun away in the chair. Facing the stainless steel shelves, he began to prepare a syringe.

“I hate needles,” Dexter said, voice trembling. “Keep that away from me and let me out of here.”

“We collected you from your most recent victim’s house to place you under observation for the night,” Devereaux said. “With the high-risk crimes you’ve been committing, it’s only a matter of time before your spree of violence comes to an end. There are several tests that we wish to conduct . . . while you are still alive.”

Devereaux turned around, gripping a syringe that looked large enough to knock out a gray whale.

“I told you to stay away from me with that goddamn needle,” Dexter said.

Devereaux squirted a jet of golden fluid from the needle’s gleaming tip.

“Where would you like it?” he asked, with a devilish grin.

* * *

When Dexter awoke, he was back in the dead woman’s garage, fully dressed, lying on the cold concrete floor. Early-morning sunlight slanted through narrow, rectangular windows in the top of the garage door and shone in his eyes.

Shielding his face, he sat up, and groaned. His body was sore, as if he’d been pricked with a hundred needles.

That mulatto motherfucker.

Dexter didn’t remember much of anything after his illuminating chat with the mad scientist. He’d flitted in and out of consciousness all night while that asshole had run his tests on him in the van.

He got to his feet. The dead woman’s body had gone undiscovered since last night, but that wouldn’t much longer. He needed to clear out of there before someone arrived.

He’d memorized his wife’s address. He had the keys to the Mustang in his hand.

Devereaux and his team would be following, watching. He was going to give them a show for the ages.

Chapter 41

“So Rachel was married before,” Eddie said. He shook his head as he tapped sugar and cream into his coffee. “Damn, dawg. The jaw-droppers keep coming, don’t they?”

That morning, Joshua and Eddie had met at Aurora Coffee, an indie coffee shop on Moreland Avenue, in the east Atlanta neighborhood of Little Five Points. Eddie had picked the spot. Aurora had some of the best—and most inexpensive—java in the city. With its New Age, industrial design and minimal frills, it wasn’t somewhere you went to luxuriate in sensory impressions, but a Starbucks had opened a short distance away and Aurora was still packing in customers, so they obviously knew their stuff.

Stifling a yawn, Joshua sipped his double latte. He needed the caffeine jolt. After his late-night telephone conversation with Thad, he’d been unable to sleep. He was tormented by the idea of Rachel married to cold-eyed Bates, and an endless series of questions revolved restlessly through his mind.

He hoped that Eddie, with his knowledge of computers and information databases, could help him root out a few more of Rachel’s secrets. Eddie had brought one of his laptops to the shop, to take notes during their conversation.

“What I don’t understand is why she lied to me,” Joshua said. “I wouldn’t have stopped pursuing a relationship with her if she’d said that she’d been married before. I wouldn’t have cared.”

Eddie pointed to the inmate record of Bates that lay on the table; Joshua had made a color copy for him. “If I’d been married to a crazy brother like this, I might not have told you about it, either. She was probably scared to death, man. She knew this dude would eventually be released from prison and would come after her.”

“I can understand that, but she should’ve told me. I don’t know what to believe about her any more.”

“She was trying to cover her tracks, I think. Make it harder for him to find her. She couldn’t do that if she told the whole world about her past.”

“I’m not ‘the whole world.’ I’m her husband.” Joshua set down his coffee cup so forcefully that liquid slopped over the lip.

 Eddie raised his hands defensively. “You’re right, dawg. She should’ve told you the truth. I’m not agreeing with what she did. I’m only trying to see things from her perspective.”

Joshua checked himself. Eddie was not a suitable target of his anger; the only appropriate target was Rachel. She had to explain to him why she’d lied. In the past, he’d never asked her the tough questions, and had accepted her tendency to gloss over details about her background. No more. The next time he spoke to her, he was going to apply the full-court press and not let up until she had spilled everything. He deserved at least that much.

 “Joy Bates,” Joshua said, and the name felt like a four-letter word coming from his mouth. “That was her married name—Thad said ‘Rachel’ is actually her middle name. I want you to find out everything you can about her. Where she was born, where she lived, where she went to school, if she has any close relatives, if she was ever married to someone before Dexter, if she has any children—
everything
.”

Eddie had been typing furiously on his laptop. At the mention of children, however, he looked up, scowling.

“You think she might’ve had kids by this dude, man?”

“No—well, I hope not.” Joshua thought about the child of his that Rachel claimed she was bearing. He wanted to believe that Rachel, in spite of all the lies she’d told him, hadn’t lied about her pregnancy, and that their child would be the first for her. Joshua couldn’t explain why that was so important to him, but it was.

Nodding, Eddie resumed pounding the keyboard. “We’ll assume that she lived in Illinois before she moved to ATL, since that’s the state where Bates did his time. Didn’t she always say she lived in Chicago before she relocated?”

“Yeah, but her word doesn’t count for much right now,” Joshua said with a sour expression. “But based on this guy’s prison record, I guess it’s a sensible assumption.”

“I’ll start with her marriage records and the details of Bates’ arrest, backtrack from there.” Eddie grinned. “Hey, I might be able to find out everything you want to know without cracking into any private databases.”

“Whatever it takes, Eddie. Hit me on my cell when you have something. I’ve got to make a run after I leave here.”

“Where you going?”

He told Eddie about the property management company, and his suspicions that Rachel owned property somewhere in Georgia.

“Speaking of property, can you add that to your research?” Joshua asked. “See if she owns something down here.”

“That’s a matter of public record, too. Piece of cake.”

“Good. Maybe that’ll tell us where she’s staying.”

“Maybe.” Eddie looked up from the computer. “Wanted to ask you—you toting that piece?”

“The gun? I left it at home. I don’t have a permit to be carrying it around everywhere with me, remember?”

“I don’t know, man.” Eddie glanced at Bates’ inmate profile. When he looked up at Joshua again, concern shone in his eyes. “This dude, Bates, sounds like a psycho. What if he finds out where you live?”