A Heartbeat Away

CHAPTER 59

“Johnny Ray Davis?” Griff asked, though he’d already seen photos of the pale-skinned convict.

“It’s J.R. Who’re you?”

Davis had an odd twang that Griff placed somewhere between Midwestern and Creole.

“Griffin Rhodes. Griff. I’m a virologist.”

Davis stiffened. A fearful expression chipped away some of his tough-guy persona.

“You with that woman from the mission in Wichita?”

“I was at one time. She’s dead now.”

“Good. I tried to get those fuckers busted for what they done to me,” he said. “Her and that bogus preacher. I called the police, but I couldn’t leave my name. It weren’t just me, you know. There were others, too. But the police ain’t much for listenin’ to the ramblins of a junkie. Know what I mean? Hey, you got a smoke?”

“Sorry.”

“Then how about you send someone to get me some?”

The killer already knew that whatever was going on, he had some leverage. Griff warned himself not to underestimate the man. He turned to the warden, who had felt it was in his best interest to remain in the room and oversee the most important prisoner visit of his career.

“Can you do that?” Griff asked him. “Cigarettes?”

“Marlboro Reds,” Davis clarified.

“You’ll get what you get,” the warden snapped.

A guard exited the room to get the smokes without his needing to be prompted.

Griff leaned across the table.

“What did they do to you, J.R.?” he asked in a low, sympathetic voice.

Griff could see the gears turning in the convict’s head. Davis was clearly not ready to give away anything for free.

“What’s this all about?” the man asked.

“I need to know what happened to you at the Certain Path Mission,” Griff said.

“Why?”

“It’s important.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Special privileges,” Griff said.

It was the first thought that came to his mind. The warden gave him a disapproving glare.

“That wasn’t part of any discussion I had,” he said.

Impatient and exhausted, Griff glowered back at him.

“I’m sure the federal government will find a way to subsidize you for any added cost or burden.”

The warden grinned, and so did Davis.

“Federal government, eh?” Davis said. “You mean, like the president?”

“That’s right.”

“So it ain’t just rumor.”

“What isn’t?”

Davis sat up straighter and tapped his feet on the floor in a quick rhythm.

“Rumor going round the cells is that the president himself personally arranged this little meeting.”

“Who told you that?” Tobert demanded.

Griff decided in that moment that in any clash of character or intellect between prisoner and jailer, his money was on the prisoner.

“Hey, easy there, warden,” Davis said. “The cons and guards talk. We learn things, they learn things. So is it true? Did the president send you?”

“He did.”

“This have anythin’ to do with what’s goin’ on in Washington?” Davis read the surprise in Griff’s expression. “We got newspapers in the library, you know. Not all of us are as dumb as we look. Some of us can even read.”

“It is about the Capitol.”

Davis looked contemplative as he traced the scar on his lip with a nicotine-stained fingernail.

“Special privileges, huh?”

“Now, tell me what happened at the Certain Path Mission.”

Davis fell silent. He stared at Griff through his two different-colored eyes and remained silent until the guard returned with his cigarettes and an ashtray, lit the smoke, and handed it to him. The convict jostled with his irons to slip the butt into his mouth. Then he took a long, hard drag and exhaled a plume in the warden’s general direction.

“They tested on me,” he said. “The lady in a white suit, like a spaceman, I mean spacewoman, sprayed stuff in my face. She injected me, too. And almost every day, she drew blood outta my arm.”

“Did she tell you what it was she injected?”

“Said it would help me get clean off drugs,” Davis said. “But it didn’t take the cravin’s away none. Once I heard her and that fake asshole monk talking about burnin’ bodies. But the police didn’t think much of my report, like I told you. That Chinawoman and the monk are the ones what should be sittin’ here, not me.”

“Did they do any other experiments on you?”

“She asked me stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Davis thought for a beat.

“She gave me a stack of cards,” he began. “Each card had a number on it, from one to ten, or sometimes a shape, like a star or a circle. Then she’d tell me to pick up a card and study it. I weren’t allowed to show her the number, see, but she asked me what it was. Sometimes she told me that I had to lie about it, like if I had a four, I’d tell her it was a seven, or something. You see?”

“Go on,” Griff said. “You’re doing great.”

“But then she’d ask me if I was lyin’ to her. Well, of course I were lyin’ to her,” Davis said with a laugh. “She told me to. That were the instruction. But here’s the rub—the real weird part. Sometimes, she said to me that if I admitted to lyin’ about the number, she’d burn my arm with a solderin’ iron.”

“So you were supposed to tell her that you weren’t lying about your card number, even though you did.”

“That’s right,” Davis said. “Simple. No, I’m not lyin’, it’s really a seven, so don’t burn me.”

“And what happened when she asked if you were lying?”

“I was sort of woozy—half asleep, if you know what I mean. But I do know that I told her the truth. I mean the real truth. I admitted to her when I ’uz lyin’, and I admitted to her when I weren’t.”

Davis looked down at his cigarette, clearly upset at what he was remembering.

“You admitted to lying even though it meant you’d get burned?”

Davis turned his wiry arms over and showed Griff a series of crisscross scars that covered both forearms and extended nearly up to his biceps. The scars were almost certainly burns. Griff felt his stomach turn and his heart begin to race.

This was it!

“Did you even try to lie to her?”

“Every time,” Davis admitted. “I knew how bad that damn iron burned. But she’d ask me, ‘Johnny Ray, tell the truth now. Are you lyin’ to me about that number?’ Sometimes, I’d shake my head no, but then I’d answer yes. And then she’d burn me. And we did it over and over again.”

Davis, clearly distressed by the memories, asked the guard for another smoke.

Griff could only stare at him. Not only did he survive his WRX3883 exposure, but the virus in his body had actually worked on the will center. For all of Chen’s shortcomings, the test she had devised was truly brilliant—brilliant and elegantly simple. Johnny Ray Davis lacked the willpower to lie, even though he knew the consequence of telling the truth would be extreme pain.

Then Griff felt a knot developing in his gut. He knew that he desperately needed this man’s blood. He needed to study it, to figure out what had allowed him to live when all the others had died. But he also knew using Davis’s serum would be tantamount to the most egregious violation of his own code. He had committed his life’s work to testing on computer models, not animals. But Orion kept failing him, and time was running out. To make his program work, he needed to feed it better data. And the data that he needed was coursing through the arteries and veins of the man seated across from him.

Did it matter that Johnny Ray Davis was a convicted double murderer? Did it matter that Griff wasn’t the one who had exposed him to the virus and tested its effects? Sooner or later, every drug intended for use in humans or animals needed to be tried in humans or animals. Where should the line be drawn?

Help me, Louisa. Help me know.

“I need your blood,” Griff suddenly heard himself saying.

Davis treated the request the way he might a ten-dollar cigarette trade. “How much blood?” he asked.

“All of it.”

Davis coughed out a thick cloud of smoke and stubbed away the last embers of his Marlboro.

“How’s that possible?” he asked.

“It’s called plasmapheresis,” Griff explained. “We’ll replace your blood with a substance called albumin, and where necessary, a fresh supply that matches your blood type. Hospitals do it all the time.”

“What’s this for? You tryin’ to figger out why I’m still alive?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m trying to figure out.”

“Why do you think I didn’t die?”

“If I had to guess?”

“Yeah, if you had to guess.”

“You’re heterochromic,” Griff said.

“I’m hetero what?”

“Your eyes. They’re two different colors. It’s a genetic marker. Often accompanies other genetic deals. That’s why I need your blood. I need to see what’s different about it—what else beside the gene for your eye color. Because to be honest, you should be dead.”

“My sister’s eyes’re just like mine.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“Well, ain’t that just a peach,” Davis said. “You need my blood. But you can’t just gut me like a fish to get at it, can you?”

“No, I can’t.”

“But what you’re really sayin’ is that the president hisself needs my blood.”

“I have paperwork you’ll need to sign to authorize the transfusion,” Griff said.

“Not so fast, amigo,” Davis answered. “You know that I’m innocent. The bastards are gonna fry me for a crime I didn’t do.”

Griff’s mind flashed on the photographs of the brutally murdered husband and wife that were included in the case file he had reviewed.

“I’m not here to judge you, J.R.,” he said. “I’m here to take your blood.”

“Well, I thought you should know that I ’uz innocent before I tell you what it’s gonna cost.”

“You want money?”

Davis laughed sharply and lit another smoke.

“No, you stupid prick,” he said. “I want you to call your buddy, Mr. President, and get him to issue me a full presidential pardon. You can have my blood all right. But I’ll be a free man before I give you one innocent drop of it.”