As I drew closer to Persico, I saw he was bald, old, frail, and sickly, a far cry from the publicity photos I’d found on the internet, which showed him as a tanned, healthy man in his early fifties.
“Was it you?” I asked, eyeing the pistol.
“Of course,” he replied. “Inside.”
He gave a lazy wave of the gun, and I suddenly felt sick, realizing I’d misjudged my visit, that the man I’d turned to for counsel on the top of the mountain was my foe.
Golden light fell through the doorway, and I walked slowly toward it. The old man drew close and pressed his pistol into my back as he reached for the gun tucked into my waistband.
The three robots followed us, their feet clacking on the flagstone floor.
Persico’s home was a shrine to his daughter Freya. There were photos of her everywhere, and he featured in many of them. She watched me as a baby, a young child, and then as a teenager, her eyes judging me.
You can’t escape your past, Freya Persico’s ghost said, and I almost fell to my knees under the weight of guilt. She’d been locked up so tight, somewhere deep between my black heart and rotten soul, but now she was free.
“You know who I am now, don’t you,” the frail gunman said.
I nodded, trembling. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not interested in your apologies,” he said calmly.
“I didn’t mean—”
He cut me off with a blow, swinging the pistol into my face. The world flashed white, and my nerves shot fireworks everywhere. He wasn’t strong, but the weight of the gun made the beating count.
“I wasn’t there for her when she died,” he said with tears in his eyes. “My little girl died without me. Because of you.”
He hit me again, and it took more than a moment for me to come to my senses.
“I was in the hospital. Waiting for her to save me.”
His words made no sense.
“Downstairs.”
He gestured at a doorway to our left, and I opened it to find a wooden staircase that led to a cellar.
As my eyes settled and the world came into sharp focus, I realized he looked even more sickly in the glow of the overhead spotlights. His skin was yellow, with harsh shadows cast by his gaunt features. Was he jaundiced? His eyes were black platters, made so by disease or drugs. I was pretty sure he was planning to kill me.
“Down,” he said.
I complied and walked the steps to what I was sure would be my doom.
Persico followed, and the robots stalked down after us, their limbs click-clacking on the stairs.
“You took her from me. You did that. You took my baby away.”
“I’m sorry,” I responded, but my words weren’t enough. They would never be enough.
The cellar was a large twenty-by-forty-foot space decked with solidwood floorboards that had been polished to a high shine. There were two desks and a table covered by computers, papers, and folders. An open safe stood against the back wall. Next to it was a glass-fronted refrigerator.
Inside the chilled cabinet, I saw human organs: a heart, brain, kidneys, and lungs, which must have been the trophies Frankie Balls had taken from my victims.
It was hard not to be freaked out by the gruesome display, but my attention was drawn to another troubling sight. Rosa Abalos had been gagged and bound to a chair. Her eyes were on me, but she looked drowsy, as though she’d been drugged.
“I never got to say goodbye to my little girl, Mr. Collard,” Persico said. “When you killed her, I was in a medically induced coma, awaiting lifesaving treatment.”
“If I could take it back, I would,” I said.
He ignored my remark. “Do you know who was going to save me?” Persico asked. “My daughter. She was a genetic match for Lazarus cells, T-cell clones that had been grafted from my depleted immune repertoire. I have cancer you see. The aggressive kind, as you can tell. My doctors had placed the Lazarus cells in Freya to grow and multiply within her organs. If she’d lived, it would have been a matter of days until she’d provided the cells needed to save my life.”
I looked at the organs in the fridge with a new horror.
“Reagan Medical Center recovered her from the crash. When she passed, they saw only that she was a registered organ donor. Only my doctors, Freya, and I knew about the special cargo she carried, so her organs were listed for transplant. By the time I was revived from my coma and given the novel peptide treatment that has maintained my tenuous grip on life all these years, her organs had gone to others. You didn’t just rob me of my little girl. You took my life from me. You took my hope. You turned me into this.”
“That’s why—” You used me.
“There was no legitimate way to recover them, and I had to see if any of them still contain the Lazarus cells I so desperately need to kill the cancer within me. So, in the late hours, I dreamed up a plan that seemed less and less crazy as my body faded. You should have faced the chair for what you did to my girl. You have no idea how much I love her. You got three years in prison. People serve longer for wire fraud.” He snorted derisively. “My plan would enable me to recover the Lazarus cells and see you and Mark Batch get the punishments you really deserve.”
I struggled to take it in.
“Did you recognize Batch when you first saw him? I doubt it. We’re all so different now. You took something good from the world, and the bad that followed warped us all. I kept an eye on you in prison through various guards and inmates who were easy to turn informant. Some even took money to give you an education in the harsh realities of life, and I enjoyed hearing the tales of how they’d beaten you. But your pain still wasn’t enough. It will never be enough. I watched your life fall apart, your wife and child leave you, and when you got released, I saw you drink and drink and drink. And finally, you’d made such a mess you were ready for my offer. Desperation turns men to all kinds of evil. I know. It’s taken me almost four years to convince myself to go through with this. Four years to tell myself I had to kill the innocent. To weigh their lives against mine. Four years to become desperate enough to do what’s necessary. I’m dying, you see. And when a person is facing their end, their morals become malleable. And you grew desperate too. So desperate and easy to manipulate. I made those lies. I created those websites. I told you what you wanted to hear so you could maintain the illusion you were a good man, but you were doing the foulest work. You and Batch, killing and carving up the innocent.”
Rosa’s eyes were still on me, but they were heavy and vacant. She was definitely drugged.
“He’s dead, you know?” I said.
Persico hesitated. “It doesn’t matter. I have what I need. There’s a desperate, near-bankrupt clinical immunologist with a terrible gambling habit who will harvest the Lazarus cells from these organs, and my life will go on.”
“And her?” I nodded at Rosa.
“Unfortunately, Detective Abalos stumbled in here following a lead she didn’t understand. She found out about the organ donations that linked the victims, and, like you, she came to talk to me about them. I had to take measures to protect myself from exposure. She is another innocent who will have to suffer for what you’ve done. You will kill her before I shoot you. I will tell the world you became obsessed with my daughter, that you tracked down the recipients of her organs and slaughtered them in brutal fashion. Then you came here intent on murder. Hero cop Rosa Abalos arrived almost too late, but she managed to save me at great cost to herself. Her intervention enabled me to grab a gun and shoot you dead.”
He waved his pistol menacingly.
“I never meant to hurt you, Mr. Persico, and there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about what I did, but please don’t do this. Let Detective Abalos go. She doesn’t deserve this. And neither does my kid. I have a daughter too.”
“I know all about Skye, and I want to assure you she’ll suffer,” he replied. “I want you to know that the sins of the father will be visited on her. After you’re gone and I’m reborn, I will make it my business to ensure she fails at everything she ever does. I will thwart her every ambition, crush her every dream. I won’t kill her, but I will put her in hell. Just like you did me. Her suffering will be a mirror image of mine. I want you to know that any hope your daughter has of a good life will die with you. It’s the least I can do for the man who took away the light of my life. My Freya.”