Prodigal Son

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 simplicity. 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.