The Unborn Read online

  The killer was elusive. Jantz had that DNA sample from one murder scene proving that the perp was male, and she had his fingerprints, too... along with matching fingerprints from seven more murder scenes. It was peculiar that the crime labs had only detected nucleated DNA from one of the scenes—but she knew that criminology was like that sometimes. Evidence packets came in all forms. Eight attractive women dead at the hands of one man. But there was no name or face or any background information about the killer, except that he’d started out as a fetus in Dr. Yordanius’s laboratory. The Director had scoffed at the possibility of an army of killer fetuses, something Jantz had never suggested. But if there was one killer that came from that laboratory, there could be more.

  Just the thought of one killer of that type was enough to upset her, but the idea of more of them sent chills down her spine. She shivered and trembled, then closed the door and looked around the large room. She felt as if someone was watching her, waiting to draw close—and kill her.

  As bad luck would have it, there had been satellite surveillance glitches that prevented any police agency from knowing the exact route the car had taken from Denver. Presumably it was the direct tubeway route. Satellite images showed the car exiting a garage and leaving Denver, heading west on the main tubeway. But there were no images of that car afterward, until the police reported finding it abandoned in Seattle. There were no images of the killer getting in the car or leaving it. The driver must have refueled on the way, so there might be something recorded by fuel depot surveillance cams or security drones. She would check.

  But this killer was like a ghost—so maybe his image wouldn’t show up on any recording device. It was a ridiculous thought. Or was it?

  CHAPTER 14

  It had been fifteen years since the U.S. Post Office delivered its last letter to a customer. The agency still existed, but was only a fraction of its former self. Meredith’s great grandfather had been a neighborhood postman during better times, but now there were no postmen with routes, personal or business. There were no postal delivery trucks, no mailboxes dotting the landscape, no letters or packages being delivered.

  Nowadays almost everyone had pneumatic systems that delivered letters and packages directly into their homes, via a vast underground and even undersea network that routed items from anywhere in the world to customers.

  Meredith heard the pop of a pneumatic tube, saw a plex door open on one wall of her living room. An oversized letter slid out, onto a table.

  Earlier that day, Meredith had received such a notification, the first in more than four months. Now she held the envelope, marked that it was from her ex-husband Zack. She opened it and found a hand-painted card with flowers inside—sunflowers, her favorite. He’d sent it on the ninth anniversary of their wedding day, saying he was sorry for everything, and that he still loved her deeply, despite the bitterness and acrimony of their break-up.

  Meredith wiped away a tear, then tore the card and envelope in half and tossed the pieces in a trash receptacle. The life she’d hoped for with him, their marriage, their baby, all of it, were gone forever. She didn’t need Zack to remind her of that. The card had just inflamed her wounds.

  Still, she couldn’t help thinking back to better times. She remembered the excitement between them when they met, the incredible spark and spontaneity of their relationship—even though they were of different races. But now he was her ex-husband, and they needed to go their separate ways.

  The less she thought about Zack the better. She still cared about him, even loved him, but didn’t want to.

  ~~~

  Zack did not expect to hear back from Meredith. Since their divorce he’d tried several times to reach her... through friends, by e-mail and V-phone, and most recently, by POMail. So far she had not answered.

  That afternoon he’d gone for a long run through the neighborhood park, thinking about her all the time, remembering when the two of them used to jog together. In the beginning he’d had to slow down for her, because he was in great shape from Army training, while she had never experienced anything like that. He’d taught her to run on the 3-mile path around Green Lake, instructing her in some of the techniques he’d learned, such as running on the balls of your feet instead of on the heels, and trying to land as lightly as possible with each step. She’d been very attentive, and had dramatically increased her speed and endurance during their marriage, until the terrible thing happened with their child, and everything fell apart.

  He was up late now in his loft studio, working on the watercolor painting of their dead son Travis, mixing a new color for the boy’s eyes, a shade of brown that he thought would be an improvement. Everything needed to be perfect.

  He didn’t think Meredith would want the painting, just because he was the artist. Though Zack Lamour was a well-known artist, with an increasingly successful career, he suspected she had either destroyed or given away every piece of artwork he’d given her when they were together.

  In their last conversation—at home on the day of their last big argument—she’d been extremely bitter toward him, refusing to listen to anything he tried to say. When he said that both of them were equally at fault for going through that dangerous neighborhood, she’d shouted over the top of him, her voice so loud and shrill that he had not been able to finish. Zack had not spoken to her since, and their lawyers had worked out a separation of property agreement.

  Time did not seem to be healing the rift. He intended to complete the painting and display it in his own apartment, and at some point he would stop trying to contact her. His friends were telling him he needed to move on with his life, and he couldn’t avoid that for much longer.

  But it was not an easy thing to do. He had never stopped loving that incredible woman.

  CHAPTER 15

  Riggio was sitting in a tavern after work, nursing a glass of beer. In the few weeks he’d lived in Seattle he had come here on occasion to relax, especially on Fridays. The place was a couple of blocks from his office, and he had two new friends here, older men who were teaching him to play English billiards. He thought it was a much more complex game than the variations of pocket pool he’d known, and he liked it.

  He was waiting for them now. They often came in together, around this time. They were a gay couple, had been married for more than thirty years. He was not homosexual himself, but was not judgmental about anyone who was.

  The walls were covered with sports memorabilia, signed action images of local athletes. The images moved in their frames, film excerpts from their various games. He found it intriguing, even hypnotic.

  But he looked away, to watch a news program on the T-screen at his table, with the sound sent exclusively into his ears via an invisible sound tunnel. It was the usual stuff, two ongoing wars—one in the Middle East and one in the South China Sea. He was tired of hearing about such things, couldn’t understand why violent confrontations kept taking place, and had been occurring since time immemorial. He’d heard someone say that once, but could not recall who.

  He didn’t like violence himself, found it appalling—and this made his ongoing memories and nightmares of bloody corpses even more troubling. A day didn’t go by when he didn’t think about those horrific images, and worry about them.

  The tavern door opened and he looked up, hoping to see his friends. Instead it was Nicole Sheehan. She spotted him right away, went straight to his table and sat down without an invitation.

  “I’ve never seen you here before,” she said.

  “I come once in a while, to play billiards.” He nodded toward the empty table in one corner, and told her about his friends.

  Nicole ordered a beer from a waitress, then said to Riggio, “Why don’t you show me how to play while you’re waiting for them? I’d like to learn.”

  He laughed gently. “It’s a complicated game, involving angles of ricochet off the cushions of the table, not direct shots, the way it is so often in pool.”

  “Sounds interesting.”
>
  He didn’t really like her, found her overly aggressive and unladylike. She was not at all like Meredith, didn’t have her grace and style. Riggio would much rather be with Meredith, but the very thought of this caused him discomfort, the worry that he might harm her for no reason at all. It was strange, and inexplicable.

  Riggio did find Nicole physically attractive, a pretty brunette with large blue eyes and implanted red eyelashes.

  She looked closely at him with those curiously seductive eyes, then reached out and touched his face. This made him uncomfortable, and he pulled back, but with a nervous smile.

  Riggio started to explain the rules of billiards to her, still hoping his friends would arrive and he could break away from her. But they didn’t, and as time passed he thought less and less about them and more about her. He admired the way she leaned over the table, and found himself looking more and more at her figure, and thinking increasingly about making love to her. It had been a while since he’d been with a woman—he wasn’t sure exactly how long, but knew it was too long....

  An hour later Nicole was on top of Riggio in a hotel room, in control of their lovemaking. Though his memory was not perfect, he didn’t think he’d ever been with such a dominant woman. He didn’t like her much as a person, and felt guilty for being with her. But she was highly sensual, and he was aroused.

  “Put your hands around my neck,” she said.

  “What?” Her command caught him by surprise, and he paused.

  “Don’t stop making love to me!” she said. “And put your hands around my neck!”

  He did as she instructed, and gripped her neck, but not hard. “Like this?”

  “No, squeeze hard, like you’re strangling me. Then let go at the last possible moment, when I’m about to pass out. Afterward I’ll do it to you. I have strong hands.”

  “You want me to strangle you?”

  “Not to death, lover, but close to it. It’s a real turn-on.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “It can also be done with a strap that is tightened around the neck, but you can do it with your hands more quickly. Don’t spoil the moment!”

  “Spoil the moment? Nicole, do you have any idea how crazy this sounds?”

  But suddenly Riggio felt his hands squeezing her neck. She groaned in pleasure as their bodies moved together. He squeezed tighter and tighter, almost as if someone else was doing it, not him, but it gave him an unexpectedly perverse pleasure. Then Nicole cried out in pain. It scared him, and he let go—but only after a moment’s hesitation and reluctance. She rolled to one side on the bed, where she lay moaning and gasping for breath.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asked. “Are you all right?”

  Nicole climbed out of bed, looked at her neck in a full-length mirror. He saw the bruises as she touched her fingers to them.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said. “I thought I was doing what you wanted.”

  “Your technique could use some improvement,” she said, with a slight smile.

  “You told me to choke you. You could have been killed.” He stared at his hands, asking himself if they could be murder weapons. He began to wonder if he had actually killed the two women he’d seen in macabre visions, both of whom had been stabbed.

  “Maybe I like balancing on the edge of life and death,” Nicole said. “I think that was the closest I’ve ever come. You’re a rough one, all right.”

  “I can’t believe you’re so cavalier about your own life.”

  “Let me do it to you, and you’ll learn the right way. Believe me, it’s real sexy.”

  “It’s sick,” he said, shaking his head. “No way.” But part of him wanted to try again.

  “Very well,” she said, in a disappointed tone. She looked around for her clothes, started dressing.

  He could not imagine a more strange and perverse date, and didn’t know how they could possibly work in the same office after this. He certainly didn’t want to be intimate with her again. She was too odd. The sex was weird, and she could get him into trouble.

  He watched her dress, then caught himself desiring her again, and looked away. Riggio’s thoughts whirled. Images of death filled his mind, the two images he’d seen before, and then another he’d never seen, the body of a young Asian woman lying on a carpet in her own blood, a grievous wound in her chest and a pair of scissors next to her body. Then more bodies of women, dumped by highways and in the woods. He shuddered, began to shake.

  “We’ll have to do that again,” she said. “Next time I’ll show you how to do it better.”

  “No offense, Nicole, but that was our first and last date.” She’d caught him in a moment of weakness, and he’d fallen prey to her physical charms.

  She looked hurt, dressed hurriedly and left.

  Riggio sat alone for several minutes, trembling in fear. His mind filled with the image of three dead women lying side by side—the redhead, the blonde, and the Asian woman, all killed by different murder weapons with each body, a knife in the chest, a screwdriver in the face and throat, a pair of scissors through the heart. Previously the dead women had appeared to him in separate visions, but now they were together, in one horrifying scene.

  Why is this happening to me? The thought drifted in his imperfect mind, searching for an answer.

  He wished the terrible images would go away and leave him alone, but they were getting worse, appearing all at once now. He cried out in anguish, and the horrific images began to fade, then vanished, giving him some relief. But leaving him with questions, and deep concerns.

  That night as Riggio slept he heard a woman’s voice in a dream, whispering to him from far, far away... but it seemed closer than that, and seemed like more than a dream. The whispering grew louder.

  “You murdered your lovers,” the dream voice whispered. “You killed all the women in your visions, and more.”

  Riggio awoke in the darkness, trembling, and said a long prayer.

  CHAPTER 16

  The next morning Meredith arrived at work early, to catch up on the risk-management reports she needed to write, having fallen behind on them. Though she was a creative writer—or wanted to be one—she didn’t like to write business reports. Even so, she did enjoy her job—just not every part of it.

  A few minutes before the Johansen Agency was scheduled to open to the public, Riggio walked in the main entrance. From her desk Meredith watched him through the open door of her office. He sat down at his own desk in the cubicle outside her office, and turned on his computer, undoubtedly to find the list of work she’d prepared for him. He looked disheveled, upset.

  She saw Nicole pass his desk and say something angry to him, before continuing on to her own office. Riggio didn’t reply, just stared at his computer screen. Nicole was unhappy about something—and obviously it had to do with him. And Meredith noticed Johansen standing in the middle of the office, watching the whole thing and scowling.

  Johansen came into Meredith’s office, said, “Word has it that our new risk-management assistant and Nicole had a torrid date last night. You know how I feel about that sort of thing. No fraternizing between employees. Sooner or later it adversely effects their work. As a policy, I can’t allow it.”

  “I know that,” Meredith said, “and I understand the reason for your rule. But Piers, why are you telling me this?”

  “Because Riggio is your special project, the hero who saved your life. In reward, you rescued him. If you think about it, he’s like that foundling kitten you brought back to life. You have a good heart, Meredith, but in Riggio’s case your compassion might be misplaced. If he doesn’t straighten out, he’s on the way out of this office. But before firing him, I thought you might want to know what’s happening—just in case he can still save his job. You can save him again by straightening him out. I’ll give him one more chance.”

  “And Nicole?”

  “I want you to talk with her, too. She’s your friend. I want to give both of them a second chance. They
’ve done good work.” He paused. “So far.”

  Meredith smiled. “Thanks, Piers. I’ll talk with them.”

  She started with Nicole, going into her office and closing the door.

  Nicole looked up from her computer. Her eyes were bloodshot; she stared at the closed door, then looked inquisitively at her visitor.

  “Piers is going to give you and Riggio a second chance,” Meredith said. “You know the rules here. He’s giving you a break.” She mentioned the names of two other employees who had been fired the previous year for their personal relationship—they’d been falsifying reports about where they were during working hours, saying they were calling on clients when they were not.

  “That was different,” Nicole said. “They were dishonest, cheated Piers out of company time. When they collected paychecks for work they didn’t do, they were committing fraud. I’ve never done that, and don’t intend to.”

  “Piers likes both of you, but he’s worried that your relationship could escalate, to the detriment of the agency. That little flare-up you had a few minutes ago, for example.”

  “Well you can tell Piers there’s nothing to worry about. I’m not going to deny what happened last night, but there were problems between us. I won’t go into details, but I assure you, Riggio wants nothing to do with me. And I feel the same way about him.”

  “If the two of you don’t like one another now, that can also have an adverse effect on your work. Piers was watching you and Riggio this morning.”

  “I know. I saw him there. Well, he doesn’t need to worry. I’m a professional, and I’m going to have a case of selective amnesia. I’m going to forget about last night. It never happened. Back to square one.”

  “Not quite,” Meredith said. “This time you stop flirting with him.”

  She smiled stiffly. “I’d already cut back on that, but when we saw each other in the tavern, something happened between us, a spark...” She fell silent.