Chain of Evidence

“My guess is that our Mr. Payne was in a gene therapy program.”

Dart finally saw what Bragg was getting at. He nearly shouted, “A program involving sex offenders, wife beaters?”

Bragg nodded. “It’s called anti-sense technology. What it amounts to is divining which gene produces ill effects and then attaching DNA material to that gene to resequence its behavior. It’s been effective with Huntington’s disease, high cholesterol. It’s a wide-open field. The government has been actively mapping human DNA since the eighties in something called the Human Genome Project. Everyone’s involved-even Bill Gates.”

“We found injection marks,” Dart stuttered. “We thought maybe giving blood or selling plasma.”

Bragg acted out giving himself a shot in the arm. “Shooting up dead viruses mixed with fresh genes. It’s the ultimate solution,” he said. “Nothing barbaric about it. Fix the gene, correct the hormonal imbalance, improve the behavior. Like cutting the nuts off without a knife. Break the chain. I’m not saying that’s what’s going on here. But it’s possible.”

“How possible?”

“Quite possible.” Bragg pointed to the vials. “If this shit is what I think it is, it’s the cutting edge.”

CHAPTER 28

“And what do you think?” Abby asked.

“I think Zeller knows about these gene therapy tests. I think he doesn’t want anybody offering a ‘cure’ to sex offenders-another excuse to parole them. Nesbit was on parole at the time he killed Lucky and the three others.”

“It’s difficult, isn’t it?”

“How’s that?” Dart asked.

“No tears for guys like Gerald Lawrence. There’s a part of me-a big part-that wishes them dead. I work with their victims-but week in and week out-and what’s been done to them makes me sick. Oh yes,” she reassured him, “me too. Don’t think I get used to this. You never get used to it.”

This came as a relief to Dart, who had worried that she had become hardened-that something had been stolen from her as well. He explained, “That was a major part of my reasoning for not going forward with the Ice Man: Who cares? Making them dead is somehow more satisfying than locking them up. But what if there is treatment?”

“And what about so many sex offenders expressing pressing remorse and genuinely wanting to stop?” she asked. “I know. It’s not an easy issue.”

“I know what has to be done,” Dart said, dreading this thought.

“Well, I know what has to be done too,” she said seductively. She wore a pair of tight blue jeans and a loose-fitting gray sweater that Dart found provocative, because when she leaned over it fell open at the neck. Drinking a beer from the bottle, she was sitting in Dart’s one remaining captain’s chair, her left leg kicked up over the arm.

He was prepping a radicchio and shrimp risotto and trying to concentrate on the recipe. Mac was snoring at Abby’s feet.

“Before you start that,” she said, “take a break. Once you get going on a risotto, you can’t stop.” She motioned him into a chair. “Tell me about Kowalski.”

Dart opened a beer. “It’s possible that he’s telling the truth. He told us the same story three times in a row. And he remembered details well. The trouble with interviewing a cop-he knows what you’re looking for. He could be full of shit. It’s hard to say.”

“But you believe him,” she stated.

“I do. Haite doesn’t. And I can’t tell Haite because it involves Zeller, and I’m not ready to lay all that on him.”

“Personally, I’ve never believed anything Kowalski says. He’s a bullshitter from way back.” She asked, “What’s his status?”

“It’ll be reviewed. Meanwhile, he’s still active.”

“I don’t imagine he’s too keen on you.”

“He never has been.”

She took a pull on the beer and set down the bottle. There was something brewing in her.

“What about these tests?” he asked.

“You mean, have I heard anything? Have they discovered some abnormal gene in sex offenders? To my knowledge: no. But listen, there have been rumors for years about a crime gene. You’ve heard that stuff. The Times reported last February that the gene-a combination of genes-had been identified. Nothing’s impossible.” She asked rhetorically, “Is there a Prozac for sex offense? Not that I’ve heard of. Not yet. But as Teddy Bragg says, ‘Stay tuned.’”

“Would you have heard if there is such a thing being tested?”

“Doubtful. No. Something that controversial would be cloaked in secrecy. I wouldn’t know about it until it hit the mainstream. And there’s nothing close to mainstream. I do keep up.”

It felt right to have her here. Comfortable. Easy. She drew down the beer, got up, and found her way through the kitchen drawers until she had what she needed to set the table. Dart enjoyed his moment off his feet.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked him, placing down a fork for his place.

“Kowalski,” he lied. He coughed.

“That cough sounds bad,” she said. “You live with that thing, don’t you?”

He didn’t feel like telling her about it. He had never told anyone and didn’t see why he should start now. He said, “It’s not the best story” and wondered how it was that his mouth had so purposely disobeyed his brain. “It’s a bad story, actually,” he added, wondering where that too had come from.

“You don’t have to tell me, you know.”

No, I don’t want to, his brain answered. “I had what you might call a reckless mother. A drinker. She was a drinker. And my father was nobody. I never knew him. At least I don’t think I did. But my mother was … her brother was a dealer. Big time. Lots of money. She was, I don’t know, confused. He took care of her. She was eighty miles of bad road is what she was. And I was on that road, at least at the beginning I was. The beginning for me. As a kid, you know. I ran errands. Cooked. Booze mostly, the errands. Bought her booze for her. I think about it now-this kid buying brown bags in the back alley. Jesus, what a time in my life that was.”

“Bad road?” she asked.

“An angry drunk,” he answered. He tried the beer. He didn’t want to talk about this, and he thought if he kept his mouth busy then maybe she would get the hint. Change the subject. It didn’t seem to work: She stared at him, waiting.

“She got confused about things. Money. The booze. Sometimes she would drink an entire bottle while I was at school, and by the time I got home she would think that I had never bought the bottle, that I had spent her money-as if it were hers anyway, the money. She got a check once a month. From the brother. Drug money, I later found out. Bad money.”

He felt a little more relaxed. It wasn’t as hard to talk about as he had imagined. She seemed interested, but not terribly upset. He had always thought that if he talked about it, the person would get upset-the way he felt about it. Mad. Real mad.

“So you got sick?” she asked. “The cough,” she reminded.

“No, no,” he said. “Not sick. I … she … when she got mad, when she mixed things up, she … she took it out on me. I was handy, I guess.”

“Hit you?” she asked, but in a way that sought to clarify, not accuse.

“Yeah,” he answered. “I guess so.” He thought about starting to eat the risotto. He was feeling nervous, not comfortable at all. “Yeah, she hit me,” he admitted. How many times had he lied to the school nurse about this? How many years had he covered for her? And on this particular night he suddenly unloads. What the hell is going on? he wondered. “Hit me all the time. And you can only take so much of that- I could only take so much of that-before you learn to run. It kind of trains you to be a coward,” he said. This came the hardest for him-that he had run. All these years later, and it still felt cheap to run