Project Cain (19 page)

G
OT YOU!

The sound of Castillo’s voice boomed like shattering thunder in the small motel room. I jumped awake to an echo of: I got you, you son of a bitch!

I assumed he was talking to me. The magnificent
son of a test tube
that I am. Maybe he’d figured out I’d made a call on his phone or that I’d laughed my ass off as I fell asleep thinking about him freaking out like he had. Maybe he’d just decided that catching and killing the clone of Jeffrey Dahmer was a good start. But he was only talking to his laptop.

I sat up as Castillo pumped his fist at nothing (the laptop perhaps) and hurried across the room to the map. I asked WHO?, wanting to know who the “son of a bitch”—if not me—was.

Don’t worry about it, he grunted. Just more dead people.

Oh, I said. His quick dismissal of me only served to remind me what I’d committed to the night before. It was time to talk about DSTI. To tell Castillo I just wanted to go “home.” No matter how dangerous that home might prove to be. It was still clearly the only place in the whole world where I truly belonged.

Castillo stopped, sighed. Guess he felt bad. And before I could get a word out about DSTI, he told me that a couple of new names had just come in. Names somehow connected to all of this. Specifically three new homicides in Delaware. The police had found them only a couple of hours ago in two different homes. Goddamn, he added. I got you guys.

He’d grabbed his red pen and marked the map.

Husband and wife, he said. A Mr. and Mrs. Nolan.

These names meant nothing to me.

But another woman was murdered in the house just across the street, Castillo said. That was the important part. Castillo said: Want to guess her name?

I said no.

•  •  •

The other dead woman was named McCarty. Nancy McCarty.

McCarty, Castillo continued. Nancy F-in’ McCarty. Chicken girl.

Yes, chicken girl. I pictured one of my dad’s most shameful notebook scribbles, and then said the name out loud. My mind focused more on the cartoon.

Bet your ass, Castillo said, and beamed. Want more?

I said no again. I didn’t wanna hear a single other word. These three people had been killed because of my dad. I didn’t know how exactly, but there was something. This dead woman’s name
had
been in his notebook.

But I was so tired of thinking about all this. My whole brain hurt. My heart hurt too.

I didn’t want to think anymore about anything. Least of all about
my dad or murder or . . . well, any of it.
DSTI
, I thought, looked for the words to shout it out,
JUST TAKE ME TO DSTI!
Then, whatever happened, even if they
killed
me, I wouldn’t have to think so much anymore.

But I kept quiet.
Something
about that chicken, bird . . .

Castillo found the TV remote. Her teenage son was missing too, he said.
And
the prime suspect. Then he cursed some more, and said we were “cookin’.” He asked if I wanted to guess HIS name? The missing kid? He’d put the television on. Found the news channels.

What is it? I asked. He seemed so excited, it felt rude not to. I wondered if it were that simple? The picture, I mean. My dad’s clue.

Castillo said: Al. Albert McCarty. Age fifteen. Albert Fish, maybe. Or Albert DeSalvo. Both names are in your dad’s notes.

Of course they were in my dad’s notes.

Fish and DeSalvo were famously violent serial killers.

•  •  •

What we learned later.

Thirteen years before Nancy McCarty’s death, she’d agreed to adopt a baby boy.

For this she was paid two thousand dollars in cash every single month.

Every few months a doctor from the institution she’d adopted the baby from would stop by to check in on things. His name was Dr. Jacobson.

The baby’s name was Albert.

The baby was a clone of Albert DeSalvo.

A man better known by history as the Boston Strangler.

Albert DeSalvo sexually assaulted and then murdered at least a dozen women in the Boston area in a two-year period back in the 1960s. He was murdered himself in prison in 1973. His clone, one of them, was born more than thirty years later.

The original (DeSalvo) had been raised by an alcoholic father who’d often beat his wife and forced his sons to watch him have sex with prostitutes he brought home.

The copy (McCarty) was raised by an alcoholic mother who used a good slap across the face as the best form of punishment and often had sex right in the living room with guys she’d picked up. Guys who’d often taken a punch or two at young Al.

You’d think this was absurd coincidence. But it wasn’t.

It was business. It was an experiment.

Because Albert was, as noted before, on the list Castillo had found in my father’s notes.

That’s what two thousand dollars a month was for.

Light beatings and a little sexual irresponsibility now and again.

Just imagine what the “parents” getting
five
thousand were doing.

•  •  •

Castillo was already back on his phone, flipping through the digital pics. Hoping to find anything he could in my father’s notes about a clone named Albert and/or the McCartys. He told me to pack up. Said we we’re leaving for Delaware “five minutes ago,” which I assumed meant now.

M. Carty, Castillo kept saying. McCarty. So . . . So, then what’s with this damn chicken?

He thought it was a stand-in for the letter
C
maybe.

I now knew that it wasn’t.

I said: It’s not a chicken.

I said: It’s a hen.

Chicken, hen, he scoffed and asked what the difference was.

I retreated to my book bag and kept packing.

Forget that shit. Castillo waved his hand. He was all like: You got something to say, Jacobson, say it.

So I dropped my bag and confirmed that those three people had gotten killed in Delaware.

So? Castillo asked.

I said: They’re the Blue Hens. (He didn’t have a clue.)

Blue Hens, I repeated.

And then I told him: The University of Delaware sports teams are called the Blue Hens.

He still didn’t get it.

It’s the state bird, I told him.

He cursed, stammered some. It was fun to see. Castillo then stared at his phone.

Is that all this is? he gasped. McCarty in Delaware.
That’s
the big secret code?

I just shrugged.

I thought about telling him of my time at the University of Delaware. One of my science tutors had driven me down once a month for the whole year as part of some national science club. My dad would always ask what I’d learned when we got back.

But Castillo didn’t seem so interested in any of that. So what’re these, then? he asked, all angry. These other birds? This circle? The squiggle? Castillo waved me over and pulled up the next images, staring at the screen.

I slid off the bed slowly. I took the phone and thumbed through the pictures too. Nothing made any more sense than it had the first time. I thumbed back through—

And then one did.

For the first time in days, something actually maybe made sense.

Something about it. I’d stopped on the image and now just stared. A memory on the tip of my mind. I knew this one. I . . .

OK, so what the hell is
that
? Castillo barked next to me.

Could be . . .

What?
Could be
what, goddamn it?

I glanced briefly at the Murder Map taped to the wall.

What? Go ahead . . . Castillo turned and nudged me toward the map.

I studied it. Moved toward the map now slowly, crossing the room like I was sleepwalking again or something. Ran my finger across all those red dots and half-formed lines.

I’d pointed to a small cluster of blue dots. What’s this? I asked.

Castillo explained it was missing persons. Now he was up and standing beside him.

A mother and her two children last seen at a playground in Ohio. Little park just outside McArthur. Maybe a custody thing with the husband, Castillo said. Maybe something else. Why? he asked.

I turned and looked him in the eye for the first time ever.

I told him I thought I knew what the squiggle was.

It was a snake.

He wasn’t buying it. Thought it could be anything.

But now we know it’s places, I explained. The Blue Hens, the doodles represent
places
.

Maybe, he replied. He didn’t seem so sure.

Then
maybe
it’s a snake, I said, and then told him it looked kinda like Serpent Mound.

Castillo asked: What the hell is Serpent Mound?

•  •  •

I remember walking over hundreds of dead people. And the bees.

My dad was a guest speaker at a symposium on genetics being hosted at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Geneticists from all over the world were attending. Most times (and there were plenty) he’d have someone watch me for a couple of days. But every so often he’d bring me along. I’ve been to New York and Boston and Baltimore and Annapolis. I even went to Montreal in a private jet once.

From Cincinnati we drove an hour east one afternoon and ended up at someplace called Serpent Mound. Three feet high, a thousand feet long, a thousand years old. Curving back and forth over acres of land in the shape of a giant snake. At its head the snake’s mouth is
open and eating something round. An egg? The whole world? No one knows. The Indian tribe who built the enormous figure has been gone for centuries. Many of that tribe are buried beneath and within the colossal grass-skinned reptile.

My dad and I walked together along its twisting shape, following the enormous spine framed with woods and a small stream. Beneath our feet human ancestors from more than a millennium ago.

There is no escape,
my father said.
We are the sum of our ancestors’ measures.

I had no clue what he was talking about. (I do now.)

I remember climbing a metal ladder and some scaffolding that overlooked the head of the giant snake and most of its half-coiled body. My dad did not climb up with me. He waited below. As I climbed, several bees buzzed around me, and the higher I climbed, the more bees there were. A dozen. As if blocking my ascent. I turned, decided to turn back down.

Below, however, my dad just looked up at me.

He seemed even bigger to me than the snake.

So I kept climbing.

•  •  •

I told Castillo only that it was some old Indian burial site built in the shape of a giant snake. Something my dad took me to once. I told him it was on the list I’d made for him.

Where? Castillo’s eyes were wide.

I dropped my finger on a spot in southern Ohio.

Castillo put his own finger over the missing family in McArthur, Ohio.

A third person, if one had been there with us, might have drawn a straight line between our two fingers. A straight line and less than a two-hour drive.

It’s not Al Baum, I said. It was Albaum. Just like McCarty. And the picture was just a hint to the location.

Castillo agreed, then cursed happily. He grabbed his laptop, typed.