Prodigal Son Read online

  Generally he preferred the intimacy of handguns. They virtually always allowed him to get close enough to explain that he held no personal animosity toward the target.

  “It’s an aesthetic issue,” he might say. Or “I’m sure you’ll agree, dead is better than ugly.” Or “I’m just doing Darwin’s work to advance the beauty of the species.”

  Shotguns were thrilling when he had the leisure to reload and to use with increasing proximity a total of four or six Federal three-inch, 000 shells, which had tremendous penetration. He could not only remove the ugly person from the gene pool but also, with the Federal rounds, obliterate their ugliness and leave a corpse so ravaged that there would have to be a closed-casket funeral.

  During those years of travel and accomplishment, Roy had known the satisfaction of noble purpose and worthwhile labor. He assumed that this would be his life’s work, with no need ever to learn new job skills or to retire.

  Over time, however, he reluctantly came to the conclusion that so many ugly people inhabited the world that his efforts alone could not ensure prettier future generations. In fact, the more people he killed, the uglier the world seemed to become.

  Ugliness has the momentum of a tsunami. It is the handmaiden to entropy. One man’s resistance, while admirable, cannot turn back the most titanic forces of nature.

  Eventually he returned to New Orleans, to rest and to reconsider his mission. He purchased this building and rebuilt the loft into an apartment.

  He began to suspect that he had too long associated with too many ugly people. Although he had killed them all, sparing humanity the further sight of them, perhaps their ugliness had somehow tainted Roy himself.

  For the first time, his reflection in a mirror disquieted him. Being brutally honest, he had to admit that he was still beautiful, certainly in the top one tenth of one percent of the most beautiful people in the world, but perhaps not as beautiful as he had been before he had set out in his Explorer to save humanity from ugliness.

  Being a forward-looking and determined person, he had not fallen into despair. He developed a program of diet, exercise, nutritional supplementation, and meditation to regain fully his former splendor.

  As any mirror now revealed, he succeeded. He was breathtaking.

  Nevertheless, he often thought of those years of rehabilitation as the Wasted Years, because while he restored himself, he had no time to kill anyone. And no reason to kill them.

  Roy was a goal-driven person with a deep desire to contribute to society. He didn’t kill just to kill. He needed a purpose.

  When he had struck upon the idea of harvesting and preserving the ideal parts of a perfect woman, he rejoiced that his life had meaning once more.

  Eventually he might anonymously donate the collection to a great museum. The academics and critics who championed modern art would at once recognize the value and brilliance of his assembled woman.

  First he must find that elusive living female who was perfect in every detail and who was destined to be his mate. Until then he would need the collection in order to lay it out and, item by item, compare his beloved to all those pieces of perfection, to be certain that in every way she measured up to his highest standard.

  No doubt his longed-for Venus would soon cross his path—another reason why he couldn’t tolerate the intrusion of the copycat killer into his life. That poor fool’s use of tacky, low-quality Tupperware imitations provided proof enough that his appreciation for beauty in all things was so inadequate that no friendship could ever flower between him and Roy.

  Now, in preparation for the copycat’s next visit, Roy loaded various pistols and revolvers. He secreted a weapon in each area of his expansive apartment.

  In the bathroom, a Browning Hi-Power 9mm in the drawer where he kept his colognes.

  Under a pillow on his bed, a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special, one of the best small-frame .38 Special revolvers ever made.

  Under a living-room sofa cushion, a Glock Model 23 loaded with .40 Smith & Wesson ammo.

  Concealed at two points among the array of exercise machines were a pair of SIG P245s.

  In the kitchen, Roy placed a Springfield Trophy Match 1911-A1 in the bread box, next to a loaf of low-fat seven-grain with raisins.

  When Roy closed the drop door on the bread box and turned, a sizable stranger stood in the kitchen with him, a red-faced, boiled-looking guy with mean blue eyes.

  How the intruder had gotten in and moved so quietly, Roy didn’t know, but this must be the copycat. The guy wasn’t aggressively ugly, but he wasn’t half pretty, either, just homely, so there could be no chance whatsoever of a friendship between him and Roy.

  The fierce expression on the copycat’s face suggested he had no interest in friendship, either. Maybe Roy had been mistaken to assume the copycat had come here, in the first place, out of admiration.

  He noticed the intruder wore latex surgical gloves. Not a good sign.

  Realizing that he wouldn’t be able to turn to the bread box and retrieve the pistol quickly enough to use it, Roy struck out at his adversary with confidence, employing what he had learned during four years of instruction in Tae Kwon Do.

  Although he didn’t appear to be as fit as Roy, the copycat proved to be fast and strong. He not only blocked the blows but seized Roy’s right hand, bent it backward, and snapped his wrist as if it were a dry branch.

  The pain rocked Roy Pribeaux. He didn’t handle pain well. His life had been mercifully free of it. The shock of the broken wrist robbed him of breath so completely that an attempt at a scream produced only a wheeze.

  Incredibly, the copycat grabbed him by his shirt and by the crotch of his slacks, lifted him overhead as if he weighed no more than a child, and slammed him down on the edge of a kitchen counter.

  Louder than the wheeze of his scream came the sound of his spine snapping.

  The copycat released him. Roy slid off the counter, onto the floor.

  The pain had stopped. This seemed like a good thing, until he realized that he had no feeling whatsoever below his neck.

  He tried to move his left hand. He could not. Paralyzed.

  Glaring down at him, the copycat said, “I don’t need to cut you open and see inside. You don’t have what I’m looking for. You’re all dark inside, and I need the other thing.”

  Darkness wanted Roy, and he gave himself to it.

  CHAPTER 55

  JONATHAN HARKER, Mercy-born and Mercy-raised, had joined the New Orleans Police Department sixteen years ago.

  All papers substantiating his identity and previous employment history had been impeccably forged. According to these records, he’d been a cop in Atlanta, Georgia.

  Other members of the New Race, already seeded in the department at that time, had falsified follow-up with officials in Atlanta, facilitating his employment. Later they greased his path into the NOPD Homicide Division.

  He had been a good son to Father, dutiful and dedicated…until the past year. He had lost his sense of purpose. The preparations for war against humanity, still at least a decade distant, did not excite or even interest him any longer.

  For several years he had felt…incomplete. Over the preceding twelve months, this feeling had matured into a terrible emptiness, a cold and yawning void at the center of him.

  He recognized in humanity a lust for life, a joy, that he did not possess. He wanted to know how this quality arose in them.

  Every detail of his own physical and mental design had been direct-to-brain downloaded when Jonathan had been in the creation tank, so that he would have a proper awe of Victor, his maker. Thus it occurred to him that by studying human physiology and comparing theirs to his own, he should be able to identify what the Old Race had that he lacked, perhaps a gland that secreted a hormone or an enzyme that was required for happiness.

  He began by studying human biology. He pored through medical texts.

  Instead of discovering greater complexity in their bodies, he found comparative simplic
ity. He didn’t lack anything they had; quite the contrary, they seemed less well constructed for durability than he was with his second heart and other redundant systems.

  Eventually he arrived at the conviction that they did contain some gland or organ that allowed them the possibility of happiness but that they themselves had not yet discovered and identified it. Therefore he could not find it in a textbook.

  Because the New Race came out of their creation tanks inculcated with a faith in their superiority to ordinary human beings, Jonathan had no doubt that through further self-education, he could find what had eluded Old Race physiologists. By cutting open enough of them and searching their innards, he would—by virtue of his sharper mind and keener eye—find the gland of happiness.

  When a serial killer appeared on the scene, Jonathan recognized an opportunity. He could pursue his own dissections with caution and eventually contrive to have them attributed to the killer. He’d used chloroform on one of his first two subjects for this very purpose.

  Investigating behind O’Connor and Maddison, Jonathan worked the Surgeon case twenty-four hours a day, without sleep. He had an eerie, intuitive understanding of the killer’s psychology and sensed early on that his quarry had embarked on a quest for happiness similar to his own. For this reason, he found his way to Roy Pribeaux in time to watch him court and kill the cotton-candy girl.

  Jonathan might have allowed Pribeaux to carry on indefinitely if not for the fact that his own circumstances had changed. Something was happening to him that promised the fulfillment for which he had long been yearning.

  He had learned nothing from probing inside his first two subjects. And what he’d done to Bobby Allwine had not been part of his researches, merely an act of mercy. Bobby had wanted to die, and because Father’s programmed injunction against murder had broken down in Jonathan, he had been able to oblige his friend.

  Yet though he’d discovered nothing to advance his understanding of the source of human happiness, Jonathan had begun to change in a wondrous way. He felt movement within himself. Several times he had seen something inside him, something alive, pressing against his abdomen, as if yearning to get out.

  He suspected that he was going to overcome another of Father’s key restrictions on the New Race. Jonathan believed that he would soon reproduce.

  Therefore, he needed to wrap up business with Pribeaux, pin all the killings to date on him, and prepare for what glory might be coming.

  He intended to conduct only a single additional dissection, markedly more elaborate than the previous ones. He would dispose of this final subject in such a way that when her body was found long after the fact, she also might be linked to Roy Pribeaux.

  As Pribeaux lay paralyzed and unconscious on the kitchen floor, Jonathan Harker produced a comb from his shirt pocket. He had bought it earlier in the day but had not used it himself.

  He drew it through the killer’s thick hair. Several loose strands had tangled in the plastic teeth.

  He put the comb and these hairs in an envelope that he brought for this purpose. Evidence.

  Pribeaux had regained consciousness. “Who…who are you?”

  “Do you want to die?” Jonathan asked.

  Tears swelled in Pribeaux’s eyes. “No. Please, no.”

  “You want to live even if you’ll be paralyzed for life?”

  “Yes. Yes, please. I have plenty of money. I can receive the finest care and rehabilitation. Help me dispose of…of what’s in the freezers, everything incriminating, let me live, and I’ll make you rich.”

  The New Race was not motivated by money. Jonathan pretended otherwise. “I know the depth of your resources. Maybe we can strike a bargain, after all.”

  “Yes, we can, I know we can,” Pribeaux said weakly but eagerly.

  “But right now,” Jonathan said, “I want you to be quiet. I’ve got work to do, and I don’t want to have to listen to your whining. If you stay quiet, we’ll bargain later. If you speak once, just once, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

  When Pribeaux tried to nod, he couldn’t.

  “All right,” said Jonathan. “We’re on the same page.”

  Pribeaux bled from his shattered wrist, but slowly and steadily rather than in arterial spurts.

  With a new eyedropper that he had purchased in the same drugstore where he’d bought the comb, Jonathan suctioned blood from the puddle on the floor. He transferred a few ccs at a time to a little glass bottle that he had also brought with him.

  Pribeaux’s eyes followed his every move. They were moist with self-pity, bright with curiosity, wide with terror.

  When he had filled the small bottle, Jonathan screwed a cap on it and stowed it in a jacket pocket. He wrapped the bloody eyedropper in a handkerchief and pocketed that, as well.

  Quickly he searched the kitchen drawers until he found a white plastic garbage bag and rubber bands.

  He slid the bag over Pribeaux’s damaged left arm and fixed it tightly above the elbow with two rubber bands. This would make it possible to move the man without leaving a blood trail.

  Effortlessly, Jonathan lifted Pribeaux and put him on the floor near the dinette set, out of the way.

  He cleaned the blood from the white ceramic tiles. Fortunately, Pribeaux had sealed the grout so effectively that the blood did not penetrate.

  When he was certain that not one drop or smear of blood remained and that no other evidence of violence could be found in the kitchen, he bagged the paper towels and other cleanup supplies in another garbage bag, knotted the neck of it, and secured it to his belt.

  At the desk in the living room, he switched on the computer. He chose a program from the menu and typed a few lines that with great thought he had earlier composed.

  Leaving the computer on, Jonathan went to the front door, opened it, and stepped onto the roomy landing at the head of the stairs that served Pribeaux’s loft. He stood listening for a moment.

  The businesses on the first floor had closed hours ago. Pribeaux didn’t seem to have friends or visitors. Deep stillness pooled in the building.

  In the apartment again, Jonathan lifted Pribeaux and carried him in his arms as though he were a child, out to the landing.

  In addition to stairs, the apartment was served by the freight elevator that was original to the building. With an elbow, Jonathan pressed the call button.

  Pribeaux’s eyes searched Jonathan’s face, desperately trying to read his intent.

  Aboard the elevator, still carrying the paralyzed man, Jonathan pressed the number 3 on the control panel.

  On the flat roof of the former warehouse were storage structures that required elevator service.

  When Pribeaux realized they were going to the roof, his pale face paled further, and the terror in his eyes grew frenetic. He knew now that there would be no bargain made to save his life.

  “You can still feel pain in your face, in your neck,” Jonathan warned him. “I will cause you the most horrific pain you can imagine, in the process of blinding you. Do you understand?”

  Pribeaux blinked rapidly, opened his mouth, but dared not speak a word even of submission.

  “Excruciating pain,” Jonathan promised. “But if you remain silent and cause me no problem, your death will be quick.”

  The elevator arrived at the top of the building.

  Only orange light of an early moon illuminated the roof, but Jonathan could see well. He carried the killer to the three-foot-high safety parapet.

  Pribeaux had begun to weep, but not so loud as to earn him the unendurable pain that he had been promised. He sounded like a small child, lost and full of misery.

  The cobblestone alleyway behind the warehouse lay forty feet below, deserted at this hour.

  Jonathan dropped Pribeaux off the roof. The killer screamed but not loud or long.

  In desperate physical condition before he had been dropped, Roy Pribeaux had no chance whatsoever of surviving the fall. The sound of him hitting the pavement was a lesson
in the fragility of the human skeleton.

  Jonathan left the elevator at the roof and took the stairs to the ground floor. He walked to his car, which he had parked three blocks away.

  En route, he tossed the garbage bag full of bloody paper towels in a convenient Dumpster.

  In the car, he used a cell phone that just hours ago he had taken off a drug dealer whom he rousted near the Quarter. He called 911, disguised his voice, and pretended to be a junkie who, shooting up in an alley, saw a man jump from a warehouse roof.

  Call completed, he tossed the phone out of the car window.

  He was still wearing the latex gloves. He stripped them off as he drove.

  CHAPTER 56

  THE ELEVATOR IS like a three-dimensional crossword-puzzle box, descending to the basement of the Hands of Mercy.

  Randal Six had turned left in the second-floor hallway, entering the elevator on his fourth step; therefore, the letter that this box contains—and from which he must proceed when he reaches the lower level—is t.

  When the doors open, he says, “Toward,” and steps o-w-a-r-d into the corridor.

  A life of greater mobility is proving easier to achieve than he had expected. He is not yet ready to drive a car in the Indianapolis 500, and he may not even be ready for a slow walk in the world beyond these walls, but he’s making progress.

  Years ago, Father had conducted some of his most revolutionary experiments on this lowest floor of the hospital. The rumors of what he created here, which Randal has overheard, are as numerous as they are disturbing.

  A battle seems to have been fought on this level. A section of the corridor wall has been broken down, as if something smashed its way out of one of the rooms.

  To the right of the elevator, half the width of the passageway is occupied by organized piles of rubble: broken concrete blocks, twisted rebar in mare’s nests of rust, mounds of plaster, steel door frames wrenched into peculiar shapes, the formidable steel doors themselves bent in half…