2
"Doctor Vecca?"
Julia looked up to see her assistant standing in the doorway.
"What is it, Toni?"
"Mister Bethlehem is here. He wants to see you. Says it's important."
Jeremy? Why on Earth—?
Oh, yes. It was Tuesday—time for his weekly injection of D-287. The clerical staff—and most of the medical staff, for that matter—knew him by his new identity. The personnel in the max security section who knew Jeremy Bolton thought he'd been transferred and they'd have no contact with an outpatient like Jerry Bethlehem.
But even so, Julia preferred that he spend as little time as possible at Creighton.
"Send him in."
A moment later Jeremy strode through the door and slammed it closed behind him. He looked frazzled. That made Julia a bit uncomfortable. A frazzled Jeremy Bolton could be a dangerous Jeremy Bolton, even with his trigger gene suppressed.
"Get Levy in here," he said. "We need a powwow."
"Something wrong?"
"Yeah. Lots."
Julia didn't like the sound of that.
"Care to share?"
"Damn fuck right I care to share. Soon as Levy's here I'll be sharin like crazy."
Normally the idea of allowing an inmate, even one as special as Jeremy, to give orders was unthinkable, but she decided to make an exception in this case. She wanted to find out what was upsetting him and then send him on his way as soon as possible.
Julia buzzed Toni. "Call Doctor Levy and tell him I need him for a conference with Mister Bethlehem."
Jeremy stepped to her window and stood staring out at the grounds.
"Coffee?" she said.
He shook his head. "Just Levy."
Rather than twiddle her thumbs while they waited, she turned to her computer and called up the Jerry Bethlehem file. Yes, he'd been receiving his injections as scheduled, and he'd been testing negative for drugs—any THC or opiates in his urine and the clinical trial would be cancelled. Couldn't allow drugs to muddy the water.
Jeremy was being a good boy.
Aaron came in a few moments later. He looked almost as spooked as that night last week when Jeremy had tried to kidnap him.
Get over it, she thought. Jeremy's dangerous but not that dangerous.
"Good morning, Aaron," she said, indicating one of the chairs on the far side of her desk. "Jeremy has something to say to us."
Aaron seated himself gingerly, as if he feared the cushion might be wired with electricity.
"What's up?"
Jeremy had ignored his arrival. He turned now and fixed each of them in turn with his ice-blue stare.
"That detective is still fuckin with me. I thought you told me you were gonna get him off my ass."
Damn that man. Just a few minutes with that Robertson character had been enough to convince her he was trouble. When she'd run his license plate and found it defunct, she'd been sure. First Gerhard, now another one. Couldn't these idiots simply take the money and mind their business?
"Fucking with you how?"
"First he tells my girl's mother that I killed Gerhard, and now he's doin DNA testing on me."
Shock shot her to her feet. She slammed her hand on her desk.
"What?"
She glanced at Aaron who looked as alarmed as she.
"You heard me," Jeremy said.
She dropped back into her chair as an icy tremor shuddered along the walls of her heart. It couldn't be for oDNA—no one knew about it and Creighton had the only means to screen for it. Still…
"What—" She swallowed around a dry tongue. "What sort of DNA testing?"
Jeremy suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Just looking into my family tree, that sort of thing."
"What did he find?" Aaron said.
"Nothin. JNothin to find. Thing 1 want to know is, where's he gettin this in-formation?" That cold look again, shifting from Julia to Aaron. "You got a leak here?"
Julia forced a laugh. "Here? You must be joking!"
"This ain't no jokin matter, lady. Because I got to thinkin about how you two've been awful damn interested in my DNA and my family tree ever since I got here, and now along comes this detective, right out of the blue, and all of a sudden he's got the same kinda interest. Kinda makes you wonder, don't it?"
Aaron cleared his throat. "We paid him not to do any further investigation on you." He turned his watery gaze on Julia. "Didn't we, doctor."
Didn't we, doctor… always so formal.
"We damn well did. Paid him handsomely. Looks like he's been taking us for a ride. I think—"
"I don't give a damn about your money. He's lookin into my DNA and I want to know why."
Aaron cleared his throat again. He seemed to do that only when Jeremy was around.
"Well, one reason might be because he tried to find something incriminating through your fingerprints and couldn't. Doctor Vecca had the foresight to have them erased from ViCAP, so he came up blank."
Jeremy looked at her. "Pretty smart, doc."
Julia allowed a small smile. "I thought so."
"With fingerprints a dead end," Aaron continued, "maybe he's going the DNA route."
Jeremy turned his gaze on him. "What's my DNA going to tell him?"
"Well, if he has a contact in one of the police departments, he could have it checked against the DNA database of sex offenders."
"Well, he ain't gonna find me there."
Only because you've been locked up the whole time it was being compiled, Julia thought. If you'd been out there…
"Of course not," Aaron said. "We know that, and you know that, and now he knows that. But it was a good thought on his part. Imagine the leverage he would have had on you if he found a match to someone with a sex offense conviction. Or better yet, a match to an unsolved crime."
Jeremy glared at him. " 'Better yet'?"
Aaron shrank half an inch deeper into his chair. "I meant for him."
Julia wondered about that. Aaron had seemed to be warming to the subject of Jeremy taking a fall for a sex offense.
Julia said, "What does he say he found in your DNA?"
Again that cagey look. "Just a bunch of personal junk that don't mean nothin."
Julia kept her tone as level and soothing as possible. "Then why are you so upset?"
"Because I want to know where he's getting this information. And where's he getting my DN-fuckin-A?"
Aaron said, "Many commercial labs do DNA analysis. And as for obtaining a sample, all this detective would need was some of your hair or blood or saliva."
Jeremy shook his head. "I ain't had a haircut or cut myself recently and I never developed the spittin habit." His mouth twisted. "When you're inside and you spit, you're spittin where you live."
Julia had noted a thickening of his redneck accent during the course of the conversation. Over the years she'd noted that it usually occurred when he was upset. She*d come to see it as an unconscious affectation to put people off guard, make them underestimate him.
She said, "He could get saliva from an envelope or a fork or a spoon."
Jeremy looked at the floor and shook his head. "Shit. That means someone's been followin me and I ain't had a clue." When he looked up again his expression was fierce. "Where can I find this sonuvabitch?"
Julia glanced at Aaron and found him looking at her.
"We don't know," she said.
Fury blazed in Jeremy's eyes as he took a step toward her.
"Bullshit!"
It was all Julia could do not to flinch. But she held his burning gaze as she blurted a reply.
"It's true. He calls himself John Robertson, says he's a licensed private eye, but the man who holds the license is dead."
"You ain't gonna tell me he's a ghost, are you?"
"No, just someone who's very good at hiding his tracks." She thought about that. "I guess in a way he is a ghost."
Jeremy's expression became frustrated. "Well, what about this agency you're always threatening me with? Can't you sic them on this guy?"
"There's nothing I'd like better, but we've got nothing to go on. He wears gloves, so we have no fingerprints. The plates on his car are not registered to anyone. The only thing I might be able to give them is his physical description, but that's no help. He looks like a million other men his age."
"And what age is that?"
"Yours, I'd say. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes. No distinguishing features. Very average looking, wouldn't you agree, Aaron?" She looked to him for support and found him staring at her with a shocked expression. "What?"
He shook his head. "Nothing."
What was eating him?
"What about his face?" Jeremy said. "Big nose, little nose? Fat lips, thin lips? Scar? Anything?"
Julia shook her head. "Nothing. An eminently forgettable face."
"Fuck! And you have no idea where I can find him?"
Julia looked at him. Jeremy had unsettled her. Time for a little payback.
"Somewhere in your general vicinity, I imagine. Not now, not here, but sometime during the course of the rest of the day I would suspect he'll be watching you."
The flash of uncertainty in Jeremy's eyes was gratifying, but didn't last nearly long enough.
"Well, now that I know he's watchin, I'll catch him at it. And when I do…"
Julia pointed at him. "Don't do anything foolish. If you think you've spotted him, keep your distance. Call me instead. Anytime day or night—call me and I'll have him taken care of."
"I can handle this myself."
"I'm sure you can, but you mustn't. You were able to get off easy with that barroom fight. But if you assault this man, you'll be locked up again and we'll have to cancel the clinical trial. And then where will you be? Be sensible, Jeremy. If you spot him, you make the call, and that's all. Understand?"
He nodded. "Oh, yeah. I understand."
Julia wondered if he did. Only time would tell.
Without another word he walked out, leaving the door open behind him.
Julia turned to Aaron and found him staring at her again with that shocked look. One of her mother's favorite expressions came back to her.
"Close your mouth, Aaron. You're catching flies."
"I don't believe you did that."
"Did what?"
"Gave him Robertson's description. You might as well have served him up as a sacrificial lamb."
Julia shook her head. What an old woman.
"Think of it as a provocative stimulus. How can we know whether or not the suppresser therapy is working if we don't challenge it?"
"You did the same with Gerhard, and now you're condemning Robertson to the same fate."
"Not necessarily. If the higher dose of suppresser therapy is working, Jeremy will call in and we'll handle Robertson."
"And if it's not working, Robertson could wind up dead."
Julia had had just about enough of this.
"And if he does, so what?" She remembered his crack about her underwear. The bastard. "He's been playing us for fools, Aaron. He's not supposed to be anywhere near Jeremy, so if he's caught snooping around, it's on his head, not ours. Besides, I see it as a win-win situation."
"Not for Robertson."
"No, for us. If Jeremy removes Robertson, not only will we have him off our backs, but we'll also have an indication that we need to up the dose of two-eighty-seven."
"But what if he's clumsy about it and gets caught?"
"We'll clean things up before he gets caught—just like last time."
"Last time we were lucky."
"We must provoke him, Aaron. And think about it: If he calls in instead of attacking, not only will we know the suppresser is working, we'll have an idea of the proper milligram-per-kilogram dose. I don't see a downside."
"Unless you're Robertson."
"Why do you care about that lying swindler?"
"He's a fellow human being. Isn't what we're doing here supposed to make the world a safer place for our fellow human beings?"
Julia sighed. "Yes, I suppose it is."
But not that particular human being.