When she came to, Jennifer knew she was sitting in Carny’s car and could tell that it wasn’t moving, but that was all she knew. Her head felt funny – fuzzy-headed and disoriented – and she struggled to remember where she was and how she had come to be there. She squinted and sat up, looking around her at the thick copse of trees that surrounded the small clearing where the car was parked.
The sun was up, its golden light filtering through the trees, leaving dapples of light and shadow on the ground, the car windows, and the seat. Directly ahead Jennifer saw a small, log cabin nestled among the trees – a boxy looking structure with a steeply slanting roof, a stone chimney climbing up one side, and a small porch at the front. A strong scent of pine permeated the interior of the car, and through the inch or so opening in her window she could hear the early morning lilt of animal chatter and bird song. For one brief second, the idyllic surroundings had Jennifer wanting to lean her head back and close her eyes, letting the scents and sounds drown out everything else in her mind. But then her memory returned in a sudden, searing flash.
Tanner!
She whirled around to look in the back seat and uttered a tiny moan. There was no one there. She was alone in the car. Tanner was gone. Carny was gone. Her whole damned life was gone.
A squeaking sound made her face forward and she saw the door to the cabin open. Jennifer watched as Carny stepped out onto the small wooden porch, pausing to look around before she came down the three stairs, heading for the car. With a chill, Jennifer saw that there was a pistol tucked into the waist of Carny’s jeans.
The sight of the gun did her in. She fell back against the seat, uttering a strangled cry of defeat. There was no point in fighting anymore. Carny’s betrayal – the one person in her life she was sure she could trust – had undermined the last vestiges of her will to fight. Carny – her friend, her confidant, her sister – was going to kill her. Not that it mattered anymore. For all intents and purposes, she was dead already.
Eric’s words came back to haunt her; he had been right all along. She had trusted Carny with their lives, and now they would all pay for it. Eric already had. And thanks to her blindingly stupid trust, Carny had an idea where the papers were hidden, so there was no further need to keep herself or Tanner alive.
Carny opened the car door. “Oh, good,” she said. “I was just going to try and bring you around.” She stepped back. “Let’s go inside.”
“Where’s Tanner?” Jennifer’s voice, though filled with resignation, still dripped with venom. “What have you done to Tanner?”
Carny frowned at her, her brow puckered. “Come on, Jen. Inside.”
With the best expression of disgust and hatred she could summon, Jennifer climbed out of the car. She glared at Carny, wanting to say something – something burning, something scathing, something to let her know just how deeply wounded she was – but her mind and tongue failed her. Lowering her head, she walked toward the cabin, hearing Carny’s footsteps behind her, wondering if the pistol was still tucked in her pants, or if it was, at this very moment, aimed at the back of her head. What is it like to die? Will it be painful? Peaceful?
Then she wondered if Tanner was still alive. If not, she prayed his end had been painless. If she found out otherwise, she vowed she would go down fighting, ripping Carny’s face off even as she gasped her last breath.
She mounted the cabin steps feeling as if her legs were weighted down with lead boots, and opened the door. She stepped into a darkened room and, unable to see after the bright light from outside, stopped a moment to let her eyes adjust.
A small voice came out of the dark in front of her. “Mom?”
Tanner! Tanner was still alive!
She called out to him, heard his feet running toward her, saw a dim shadow and held out her arms. He plunged into them, hugging her tightly. She held him as close as she could, breathing in the scent of his hair, relishing the warmth of his breath on her neck. Her arms enveloped him, wanting to pull him even closer, to absorb him through her skin. She held him tightly and cried, the tears dribbling down her cheeks and off her chin into Tanner’s hair.
As her eyes gradually adjusted to the dimly lit interior she blinked to clear the tears away and realized there was another person standing a few feet away. Her brief sense of relief was instantly vanquished. Reluctantly, and with menace in her eyes, she looked up, knowing in her heart that she would be facing Derrick once again. So convinced was she that Derrick’s simpering, sadistic face would be staring back at her, her mind actually saw his vapid, leering grin. Then the image shifted and Jennifer’s mouth fell open.
“Eric?” She blinked again, harder, convinced that her overwrought mind was conjuring up imaginary images in an effort to avoid reality.
He grinned stupidly at her, wagging a couple of fingers in a wave.
“Are you alive?” Jennifer asked haltingly. For one brief moment she thought that maybe Tanner’s powers had grown to the extent that he was able to bring the dead back to life, not just communicate with them.
“Last time I checked,” Eric said, “though a bit the worse for wear.” He came toward her and Jennifer released Tanner and threw herself into Eric’s arms, half expecting his image to dissolve right before her eyes. Instead, she felt the very real, very solid warmth of him.
“Oh, Eric, you’re real … you’re alive.” Her arms wrapped tight around him, fearful that if she didn’t hang on tight enough, he might slip away. In response, she heard Eric draw in a sharp, hissing breath.
“Ouch, careful there,” he said, twisting back away from her.
Belatedly, Jennifer felt the bulk of a large bandage beneath his shirt, one that wrapped around his left shoulder and chest. She stepped back and looked at him, still not trusting her eyes. Maybe her mind had finally cracked. Maybe this was nothing more than a hallucination. Or maybe she was dead already, reunited in the afterlife with Tanner and Eric.
“I don’t understand,” she said slowly, afraid to believe what her eyes were seeing.
“Maybe I can help clarify things for you,” Carny said from behind her.
Jennifer had been so stunned to see Eric alive, she had momentarily forgotten all about Carny.
“I know you feel as if I have betrayed you, Jennifer,” Carny said. “But in reality all I have done is deceive you a little. And that was out of necessity.”
“Carny’s a spy, Mom!” Tanner said excitedly. “Like James Bond. Except she’s a girl,” he added with some disappointment.
“A spy?” Jennifer repeated. The room was beginning to spin and her knees started to wobble.
Eric grabbed her arm and said, “I think you better sit down before you fall.” He led her to a nearby couch and gently pushed her down onto it, settling in next to her, and draping his good arm across her shoulders. Tanner climbed up on her other side and nestled his head against her arm.
Jennifer’s mind was reeling with a zillion questions. Hard as she tried, she could make no sense out of all this.
Carny sat in a chair across from the couch and leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. “Perhaps it will help if I start at the beginning,” she said.
Jennifer nodded dumbly, her mind too bewildered to do much else.
“It started back when Tim first went to work for Bioceutics. He was assigned, as you said, to the genetic engineering section. He was working on some gene splicing experiments when he accidently made a remarkable discovery. Actually, he made two remarkable discoveries. One was a technique for mutating certain genes through a process that uses injectable nucleotides.”
“What’s a nuclear tide?” Tanner asked.
Carny laughed. “It’s nuc-le-o-tide. They’re nitrogenous bases that link up with one end of the deoxyribose.”
Eric was nodding his head, but Tanner and Jennifer merely looked puzzled.
“Anyway,” Carny continued, “there are only four types of nucleotides.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Adenine and guanine, which always pair up together, and thymine and cytosine, which also have to pair up together. Having these nucleotides pair up properly is requisite to the double helix formation in DNA and to the replication process.” She paused a moment to see if her audience was following her lecture. When they asked no questions, she continued.
“Tim discovered a synthetic nucleotide that, when injected with an appropriate marker, can bond in place of one of the four naturally occurring nucleotides, thereby altering the DNA structure.”
“And producing a mutation,” Eric said.
“Exactly.” Carny bestowed a proud smile on Eric, one that Jennifer recognized as her standard teacher’s smile, the one she kept in reserve for her prize students. Except Carny wasn’t really a teacher after all. Was she?
Carny continued her explanation. “The problem with Tim’s discovery was that it only worked on certain genes, as others had a tendency to be less stable. Still, it was a remarkable find as it carried far-reaching implications for the treatment of certain medical conditions.
“The second discovery Tim made was that one of the genes, one that was particularly susceptible to this mutative process, was the gene involved with the regulation of serotonin.”
“What’s that?” Tanner asked.
Carny smiled at him. “Patience, my boy, I’m getting to that. Serotonin is a hormone and neurotransmitter that acts as sort of an aggression regulator. Tim did some experiments with mice and monkeys, adjusting their level of serotonin and observing what, if any, effect it had on their behavior. What he found was that the animals with particularly low levels of serotonin had a tendency to become extremely violent. In fact, the monkeys with the lowest serotonin levels would, when provoked, attack and kill the other monkeys in their group, including their own families. This finding was rather startling as monkeys are notoriously social animals with a keen sense of family.”
Jennifer held up a hand and gave a quick shake of her head. “Slow down. Let me see if I’m following all this. Tim found a way to alter the genetic code for the regulation of this serotonin. Correct?”
Carny nodded.
“And he also discovered that if this serotonin gets too low, it can lead to extreme aggression and violence?”
Again, Carny nodded. “And to make matters worse, he also discovered that when a low serotonin level is combined with a high noradrenaline level” – she paused and looked at Tanner – “noradrenaline is another hormone, one that helps prepare the body to react to danger.”
“Fight or flight,” Jennifer said. Carny nodded. Tanner looked at his mother like he was really impressed.
“Anyway, the combination of low serotonin and high noradrenaline is like throwing a lighted match on a puddle of gasoline. Behavior becomes explosive with frequent episodes of impulse violence. Just as scary is the combination of low serotonin and low noradrenaline. When the noradrenaline levels drop low enough, it causes a state of underarousal. This combination made the monkeys seek out violent behavior in an effort to produce a high of sorts – a more predatory, cold-blooded violence that occurred without provocation.”
“That’s all very interesting, Carny,” Jennifer said. “But what does it have to do with us?”
“I think I’m beginning to see the light,” Eric said slowly. “And I don’t like what I’m seeing.”
“It’s not a pretty picture,” Carny agreed. “Tim began to get suspicious when Peter McClary became extremely interested in the experiments.”
“Peter McClary?” Jennifer said. “Tim’s boss?”
Carny nodded.
Jennifer turned to Eric. “McClary is the one who insisted Tim take a vacation. He even offered us the use of his cabin in West Virginia.”
Carny went on, her voice more subdued than before. “It seems that McClary arranged to have Tim demonstrate one of his monkey experiments to a group of people he invited to the lab late one night. Tim thought it was an odd request, particularly when he viewed it in conjunction with McClary’s unusual interest in the whole experiment. So, as a precaution, he hid a tape recorder in the lab. The demonstration went off without a hitch, the injected monkey killing and maiming its partners. The invited guests were not only not appalled by the demonstration, they became very excited.
“That alone was enough to worry Tim, but then he was asked to leave the lab while McClary and his guests hung back. Tim obliged, but later went back and listened to the tape he had hidden. What he heard sickened him.
“He realized that the group was a secret and subversive organization of Neo-Nazi types – bigots of the worst kind. Their goal was to eliminate all of the undesirables: minorities, poor people, cripples and such. Much like Hitler’s regime during the Second World War. They saw Tim’s experiment as the perfect vehicle for achieving this goal. They felt that with the ever increasing rate of violent crime in our country, an additional escalation would be seen as nothing more than a normal evolution of this trend. With the use of Tim’s injectable nucleotide, they hoped to genetically mutate as many of these undesirables as they could, thereby achieving two purposes. One, the undesirables would exercise their violent tendencies amongst themselves, thereby eliminating many of them ... a sort of self-inflicted genocide. Second, the resultant social chaos would make it easy for the group to step in and seize control of the government.
“They also discussed the possibility of combining mind-altering therapies with the more cold-blooded, premeditated violence recipe to create an army of cruel and unmerciful assassins.
“As if hearing all of that wasn’t frightening enough, Tim became even more disturbed when he realized that most of the members of the group were faces he recognized: high level, well-positioned, and well-respected members of the community, such as lawyers, doctors, policemen, and politicians.”
Hearing that, Jennifer realized that her initial impulse not to involve the police was probably a wise one.
“Anyway, Tim became concerned and placed a call to the FBI.”
“Tim called the FBI?” Jennifer said, askance.
Carny nodded. “Anonymously, of course. He tipped off the person on the phone that something illegal and immoral might be going on at Bioceutics, though he wasn’t specific. We were able to trace the call to Bioceutics and figure out that it was Tim who placed it. We did a little investigating, discovered McClary’s little elitist group, but no illegal activity. They were a bit zealous in their beliefs, but had yet to act on any of them.
“So then we started looking into Tim’s research. We discovered the main gist of his experiments but the impact of it all eluded us at first. No one was able to put two and two together. In fact, we were about to dismiss the whole thing as nothing more than another subversive group we would need to monitor, when Tim was killed in that car accident. We thought that was a little too much coincidence and investigated. Sure enough, we discovered that the accident was no accident.”
“Then Bioceutics did have Tim killed,” Jennifer said.
Carny nodded soberly. “Yes, they did. We found a remote control explosive device that had been planted on your car’s brakes and tires, and another one on the steering and brake lines of the gas truck you hit. The weather obliged some by providing the rain-slicked roads. It took some clever timing on their part, but they pulled it off.”
“See, I told you, Mom,” Tanner piped up.
“I know, honey.” She ruffled his hair. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” She looked at Carny. “What I don’t understand is why? Why kill Tim?”
“Apparently he was asking too many questions, getting too curious. Obviously he knew something was going on or he wouldn’t have stashed the evidence he had.”
“Evidence? Of what?” This was from Eric.
“Well, the tape of course. But Tim also had the forethought to hide some of his notes regarding the process involved in his experiment. We think he either approached McClary with his suspicions and told him about the incriminating tape, or perhaps the group invited Tim into their fold and he refused. Whatever the scenario, Tim had become a definite liability in their eyes and had to be eliminated.”
Carny paused and everyone in the room stared off in silence, absorbing the implications of Carny’s revelations. It was Eric who spoke first.
“So they planned to have these undesirables, as they called them, eliminate themselves, and at the same time develop a team of genetically and psychologically altered assassins to eliminate others.”
Carny nodded. “Except Tim second-guessed them.”
“So they didn’t do it?” Jennifer asked hopefully.
“We think they have now,” Carny said. “It took them eight years of trial and error, but I believe they have finally discovered the missing link they needed.”
“Then what do they want with us?” Jennifer asked.
“Well, there is still the tape. We have no actual proof of what is going on. That tape, and any other evidence Tim might have stashed, has the potential to blow their whole scheme. I firmly believe that you and Tanner were meant to die in the same accident that took Tim’s life. As soon as we discovered that the accident had been arranged, we started watching you closely, in case they tried for a second time. But when McClary couldn’t find the evidence Tim had hidden, I think they decided it might be wiser to let you live, in hopes that you would eventually lead them to the tape.”
“My God,” Jennifer said, falling back against the couch.
“How did you get involved with all this, Carny?” Eric asked.
“I was a plant put in place way back when Tim first made his phone call. I was supposed to take a job as a teacher, and make some noise about how irritated I was with the so-called undesirables. Jennifer, do you remember Paul Jensen?”
“The vice principal?”
Carny nodded. “We discovered he was a member of McClary’s little group. So after saying all the right things in front of Jensen, I was eventually invited in, though only on a limited, need-to-know basis. Jensen assigned me to you, to see what information I could find out about Tim. They didn’t tell me why at first, although I, of course, already knew. It was perfect, really. It gave me an opportunity to keep tabs on the group and what they were doing as well as to befriend you, giving me an inside line to Tim.” Carny gave Jennifer a pained look. “I’m sorry I didn’t know about their plans to kill Tim. If I had, I would have tried to save him.”
“So you are like a double agent,” Tanner said, obviously impressed.
Carny smiled at him. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
Jennifer said, “You mean McClary and his group think you’re one of them?”
“They do. Why do you think they made it so easy for you to get away from the house?”
Jennifer’s face screwed up in puzzlement. Looking back on it, she realized that their escape had been ridiculously easy considering everything else the group had managed to do. “I get it,” she said slowly. “They were banking on my friendship with you, figuring you’re the first person I’d run to. And if I did know where the papers and the tape were hidden, I would confide in you. They let us escape on purpose.”
“Exactly.”
Jennifer’s eyes took on a haunted, wild look. “Then they know we are here,” she said with panic edging her voice. She started to stand.
Carny raised her hand, palm outward. “No, they don’t. Relax. They trust me enough at this point that they let me take you off, thinking you might suspect something if you thought we were being followed. They have no knowledge of this place, which, by the way, is government owned. Their main purpose in keeping me on the payroll all these years was as a sort of insurance policy, just in case you ever did find the papers. They figured you would confide in me before anyone else.”
“But I don’t know where they are,” Jennifer protested. “I mean, I have a general idea now, but back then I didn’t even have that.”
“I think they realized that. But they didn’t know if the evidence might someday turn up. Actually, they’ve paid little attention to you until recently. When they found out what was going on with Tanner – these conversations he was supposedly having with Tim – things got a little frantic. And though they still believed you knew nothing about the tape or the papers, Tanner was apparently convincing enough to make them worry. I think some of the things they overheard had them concerned.”
“So they did have the house bugged,” Eric said.
Carny nodded. “I’m not sure how they became alerted to what was going on with Tanner, but something tipped them off and they started eavesdropping on you just a few days ago.”
“That explains what happened at the hospital,” Eric said, looking over at Jennifer.
“That little incident went all wrong,” Carny said. “Though they may well have meant to kill you, Eric, their main intent was to kidnap Jennifer and Tanner. They wanted them alive.”
Jennifer’s mind flashed back on the incident, and the terror she had felt at the time washed over her again. She shivered. “I thought you were dead,” she said to Eric. “How did you get away from that thug up in Maine?”
Carny answered her. “That thug happens to be one of our people, another plant. He’s been with the group for three years now. Fortunately, the bullet Eric took in his shoulder didn’t hit anything vital. We flew him down here last evening.”
“What about my mother?”
“Safe and sound at a safe house in Canada,” Carny told her. “Along with Butterscotch.”
“Scotch is okay?” Jennifer said wide-eyed.
“Well, she took a bullet in her leg that required some surgery, but except for a limp, she’s progressing along nicely,” Carny told her with a smile.
“She came back from the woods right after you left,” Eric explained. “It was all we could do to keep her from eating the agent who was left behind,” he said with a chuckle.
“Oh. Thank goodness.” Jennifer’s face split into a huge grin. “And to think I thought it was all over.” She turned and cast an apologetic look at Carny. “I thought you were really one of them, Carny. I thought you were going to kill me, for heaven’s sake.”
“I won’t hold it against you. Under the circumstances ....” She shrugged and grinned back.
Jennifer shook her head in amazement, recalling the empty terror she had felt when she found the frizzy red wig in Carny’s purse. “That disguise you came up with was pretty good,” she said.
“It’s amazing what you can do with a wig, some contacts, and a little latex,” Carny said with a shrug. “Actually, the group wasn’t sure I could pull it off. They thought you’d recognize me.”
“I didn’t have a clue,” Jennifer said. Her face drew into a puzzled frown. “But you called me at my mother’s. How did you get to Maine so quickly?”
“You just assumed I was calling from Virginia,” Carny explained. “In actuality, I was on a cellular phone, calling you from Portland. I convinced them to take me along, telling them you would be easier to handle if I was there. But that was only if the original plan failed, if you recognized me or something else went wrong.”
“But how did you know where to find me?”
Carny shrugged. “It wasn’t hard to figure out. I knew about your mother and figured you’d think that was a safe hideaway. When I discovered that McClary’s group also knew about her, I knew I had to get involved somehow. I had a couple of agents posted at the ferry landing. They called me as soon as you showed up.”
Jennifer again shook her head in amazement. “Eight years? You’ve been following this case, acting like a spy for eight years?”
Carny smiled and shrugged. “Sort of, but very part time, from the periphery. Since I managed to get the group to trust me to some extent, I’ve continued to be available to them over the years, figuring it would allow me to monitor their activities. It certainly paid off when they started showing a keen interest in you again. Over the years we’ve had a couple of agents who managed to infiltrate the group to some degree because we felt they bore watching, though until recently we thought they were nothing more than another subversive group with high aspirations and few actual accomplishments. To be honest, we’d begun to doubt that Tim ever hid any evidence. If he had, we would have found it by now. Either us or McClary. Both Tim’s lab and your house were thoroughly searched back when you were in the hospital after the accident. Without that evidence, or any real proof of illegal activity, all we’ve been able to do is watch. But I knew something was up with the group here lately. There’s been a certain level of excitement and activity at McClary’s house that led me to believe they had not only discovered the missing data from Tim’s experiments, but were actually using it. Then when Tanner here started coming up with information he had no way of knowing, it got the group interested in you again.”
Carny flashed Jennifer a weak smile. “I wish you had told me what was really going on with Tanner,” she said. “It would have saved us a lot of trouble.”
Jennifer recalled her decision to keep Tanner’s odd declarations about Tim to herself, back when she believed they were nothing more than delusions. “I’m sorry. I honestly thought Tanner was suffering from some sort of mental or emotional problems along with his physical ones. Besides, how was I supposed to know you were spying on me?” she asked, her voice carrying a hint of betrayal.
“I wasn’t, really, at least not for the past few years, although that was the impression I wanted McClary’s group to have. My friendship with you was the edge I needed for them to keep me involved. But our friendship, while admittedly convenient, was just that – a friendship. During the years I’ve been monitoring McClary’s group, I’ve continued to work for the Bureau on other cases. You know all those mini vacations I take all the time?”
Jennifer nodded, recalling her suspicions that Carny was involved with a married man.
“Well, most of those were training or debriefing sessions, or other cases I was called in on. The teacher cover has served me well, giving me the scheduling flexibility I need. And the reason I’ve been able to pull it off is that my background really is in mathematics. My specialty is code breaking.”
“Cool!” Tanner said.
Carny smiled warmly at the boy. “To be honest with you, you were one of the more enjoyable assignments I’ve had.” Her gaze grew serious as it shifted to Jennifer. “I may have deceived you about some things, Jennifer, but not our friendship.”
Jennifer studied the other woman’s face and saw the sincerity there. She was relieved to know that her trust in Carny had not been totally misplaced, though she was still struggling with all the deception and betrayal that had occurred.
“So now what?” Jennifer asked.
“Now,” Carny said, getting up from her chair, “we need to find the evidence that Tim stashed before McClary’s group gets their hands on it. As I mentioned, my involvement with the group has been relatively limited. They allowed me to know what their purpose is and what they were after from you, but my exposure to the actual group members has been restricted to a mere few – and I suspect most of them are fairly low on the food chain. We still have very little knowledge of the people involved at the top. We have long suspected that McClary is the ringleader and that he maintains a database of some sort. But he is a very rich and powerful man with a house that is guarded better than Fort Knox. We’d love to search the place, but so far we’ve had no legal reason to solicit a search warrant. And our attempts to bug his house have been unsuccessful. We’ve watched it, of course, but he entertains quite frequently and we have no way of knowing which of the people who come and go are members of this group and which ones are simply guests. I’ve had my suspicions about Evan for some time, but I never had any proof. Until now.”
“Evan?” Eric asked, looking back and forth from Carny to Jennifer. “What are you talking about?”
“It seems that Evan is one of them,” Jennifer said with contempt, her shock over that discovery now fully replaced by anger over the way she had been used.
“Bastard!” Eric spat out. “I knew there was something about him I didn’t like.” Then with a lopsided grin he added, “Besides the obvious, of course.”
“Anyway,” Carny went on, “most of the people you’ve had contact with, Jennifer, are nothing more than hired help, people who do the group’s dirty work for money. We need some hard evidence of who the real power people are.”
“Dr. Singleton is doing something,” Tanner said.
Everyone turned and stared at him. Eric leaned back so suddenly it was as if he’d been slapped.
“I mean Eric’s dad,” Tanner added. “That day in the doctor’s office when he told that guy he gave him a vitamin shot. He was lying. I could hear what he was thinking. I just didn’t know what it all meant.”
“Shit!” Eric said, running a hand through his hair. “Of course! It makes sense when I think about it. The old man always was rather intolerant of certain types of people. Not to their faces, of course. But I can remember many a night at the dinner table when he would carry on about the poor white trash, or the kikes, or the niggers. It drove my mother crazy when she was alive.”
“And,” Carny added, “he’s in a perfect set-up to administer this stuff. It would also explain how the group got wind of what was going on with Tanner.”
Eric sat in crushed silence, staring at the floor, shaking his head.
Jennifer reached over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Eric,” she said.
“Don’t be,” he said brusquely. “I never liked the old bastard anyway.” With that, he got up and headed outside.
Jennifer frowned after him, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“He’ll be okay,” Carny said. “He just needs a little time.”
Jennifer looked over at her. “Time is something we don’t have much of,” she said. “Where do we go from here?”
Carny walked over to the couch to take the spot Eric had just vacated. “I have a plan,” she said.