Squiggle Cat gives me a totally catlike baleful glare then recommences fucking reading her book.
The sun will be gone in a half an hour, but I layStranger in a Strange Landaside and stroke Hailey’s hair. I can read back at the cabin. I take a sip of the wine, a nice Chardonnay, and bask in the serenity of simply doing nothing much at all while the world spins without us.
One day, I will tell her everything I know. It must be better than living dishonestly.
33
HIGH AND NOT-SO MIGHTY
Clay Skinner
“Thank fucking god! They’re gone!” I go to one knee with my putter planted before me like a sword. At this late an hour, the golf course is deserted. The sun is casting pink and purple hues over the grass, and I sit down and stretch out my legs, open my arms and grin at this course that I own by proxy if not by name. “Magnificent.”
The coke has kicked in and I own that too. I need some recreation after two fucking… “Two days!” I scream at the course. “Hallel-fucking-lujah. Goddam investors.”
Two days of letting the frankenstruct and the Tarrant girl run about unchecked, mostly untracked. There are some things I will risk with the investors in town and doing a tour of Revenant Institute, but not that.
“Sir!”
I swing around, swiveling on my ass. “Cannon!”
The man trudges up the green, holds up his phone. “I texted, sir, but since you didn’t answer, I came here.”
“Fucking secretary. She told you I was here, yes?”
He rocks his head. “Important developments needed to be communicated.”
I stand up, toss the putter into the golf cart. “And those are?”
“The DNA results you had expedited are back. We had samples from that severed finger found near the mineshaft, some blood on the bodies. A semen sample from the girl’s house. And we also used a scraping off a toothbrush and a pillow. Her DNA was eliminated and what we assume is his DNA was crosschecked with a worldwide database, not just the police one. No one except her, our operatives, and him have been inside the house for months, sir. And maybe the neighbors, too, but they aren’t using toothbrushes or pillows, or leaving semen on the bed.”
“You hope. That is a lot of words that still tell me nothing. Who is he?”
“Or who are he? He’s more than one person, as expected. Body parts are from all over the US. All the DNA came from US military members. Soldiers. Marines. One pilot.”
“Okay. That tracks with what we have been doing, and yet he is not a frankenstruct created by us.” I’m struggling to see how this is possible. “All are ours?”
“Yes.”
If only I were back at the clubhouse with a drink in hand, though this is so sensitive that being way out here is best. “This suggests he is a US creation? How?”
“Maybe, sir. I don’t know the how. Yet. There is one other significant piece of data we obtained from the DNA.”
“Go on. He’s part fucking alien?”
“No, sir, but one of the soldiers was a man called Brian Vendow.”
I shrug. “Don’t know the name.”
“He raped and killed at least nine women while on leave from his base in Germany. We never got him to court as he jumped off a cliff over there. It appears someone has salvaged a part of him.”
“Fuck me. Wow. I like this.” I grin and wave at the cart. “Hop in, Cannon. You can drive.” He climbs into the driver’s seat, and I slide in the other side. “The question arises, what if you do something criminal in life, kill those nine women, die, then come back, partly, as a frankenstruct. Do we get to charge you and execute you?”
“The judges would be perplexed, sir.”
I clap my hands together, rub them. The cart goes over a bump, and I grab the side. “That was all very interesting. Next! Where are they and when can you drag him into the institute, and her too.”
“I advise against that, sir. If we get detected kidnapping them and holding them at the institute, there could be huge problems. When it was just her, sure. Do it quick, rearrange the evidence, disposal. It is achievable. In some ways, elimination can be simpler though now we know what he is, even killing him may be problematic.”
