Murder Theory Read online

  For a fleeting moment, I’m afraid she’s literally asking me if I’m the Butcher Creek Butcher, the answer to which is technically yes. But what she means is this part of the case she saw me leave the airport to go pursue.

  “Yes. It’s something I’m working on.”

  “I thought so. Did the FBI ask you?”

  “No,” I reply. “They stopped listening to me. I had to go out on my own.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “I told you I was okay with you helping them out, but this has already turned into a one-man Theo crusade. I hoped you were over that.”

  “Over it? How can I be over helping people? If I don’t do something, people will die.”

  “And if I don’t send all the things I bake to feed people in starving countries, they’re going to die. And you know what? I don’t send them there. Why? Because there’s only so much I can do. You, you at least have a choice between the right things you can do.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Carol has gotten more ill. The treatments aren’t working. When I sat on the couch, holding her hand, I couldn’t stop thinking, What would Theo do?”

  Carol is her mother-in-law. I never even asked Jillian how the trip went. I am a horrible person.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, but I don’t follow.”

  “Theo, you’re the most un-self-aware self-aware person I’ve ever met. It’s like you’re constantly standing two feet in front of yourself, watching yourself go through the world without ever seeing your place in it all. You’re brilliant, not in the smartest-guy-in-the-room kind of way, but a one-in-a-million kind. I run into people in the shop from the university who know you. They tell me how they all thought you were going to win a Nobel Prize or do some kind of groundbreaking research. Instead, in their eyes, you became some kind of glory-seeking monster hunter.”

  “That’s insane. I’m trying to help people.”

  “How many people would you help if you tried to cure Carol’s condition?”

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t work like that. It takes years.”

  “And you can do that kind of thing faster. I don’t know what you should be doing. But I do know that if you were doing what you originally set out to do—cure diseases—more people would be alive today than the number of potential victims if you’d just let Joe Vik do his thing.”

  “That’s . . . that’s absurd.”

  “Maybe. But another part of me wonders if you do know how smart you are, but you’ve never tried to tackle a bigger problem because you’re afraid you’ll fail and then . . . well, and then in your eyes, you’ll be a failure to your father.”

  I can’t respond, because I still haven’t even processed it all. My face feels like it’s been slapped. Where did all this come from?

  What if she’s right? What if monster hunting is some kind of easy kill for me that makes me feel better while avoiding the larger issues? Hiding away in my lab doing bullshit work for the government was my way to find time to pursue my hobby. What if my hobby is just a way of avoiding the harder problems?

  I’d be out of my league trying to cure Carol, but there are plenty of diseases in the third world I might be able to tackle with my methods. There are even treatable ones I could help with if I were willing to follow the same kind of outrageous impulses that led me to Butcher Creek and apply them to a big problem.

  Damn it. What am I doing?

  “I can tell by watching you that’s food for thought,” says Jillian.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” I reply.

  She grabs my hands and places them on her hips. “Think later. Do me in my kitchen now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  PATTERN RECOGNITION

  “It’s me,” I say into the burner phone the moment Gallard answers.

  “Theo? I didn’t recognize the number. I’m glad to hear from you. This Butcher Creek thing, have you been following it?”

  “It’s not important. Did you get the email I sent you?”

  “Email? What email?”

  “It would be sent from a Eugene Chantrelle. I thought you might pick up on the clue.”

  “Uh, no. Let me check my inbox. Who’s Chantrelle?”

  “A French teacher who lived in Scotland and murdered his wife. Robert Louis Stevenson knew him.”

  “Stevenson?”

  “The author of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” I reply. “Chantrelle’s a pseudonym.”

  “Oh brother. You do know I’m a real detective, right? Not the kind that sips tea on the leather couch of an English manor explaining why Lord What’s His Face poisoned Colonel Whoever in the laundry room.”

  “Yes. Sorry. I just got carried away. Anyway, inside the email you’ll find seven folders. Each one contains images of men I think could be our culprit. I was hoping this would help the case.”

  “The Butcher Creek case?” asks Gallard.

  “No. Your Phantom case. The guy who cultivated the Hyde virus,” I reply, frustrated.

  “Who are these men?”

  “Suspects.”

  “Theo. I get the concept of a suspect. Why are they suspicious to you? Why should I tell the FBI to find out who they are?”

  “They’re the seven people at the Butcher Creek crime scene that I can’t find any information on. None of them came up in image searches. I suspect that at least six are county or state employees, but you have better resources to look into that. The images are too fuzzy to give me a solid match.”

  “Wait. These photos are from Butcher Creek? Inside the crime scene? How did you get them?”

  “No comment.”

  “The angle is kind of high. What did you use, some kind of military drone?”

  “Something like that. What’s important is that one of these men is very possibly Jekyll. All you have to do is identify them. Ask around. See which person stands out as an outsider.”

  “So, he did show up at Butcher Creek, huh? I guess he couldn’t avoid that. Great timing on your part in getting the photos. Was the Butcher Creek killer someone you’d been after, too?”

  “Not quite. I wouldn’t worry about the Butcher Creek thing.” I try to decide how much to tell him. “Doesn’t it feel a little staged to you?”

  “Yeah, but with serial killers getting ideas from CSI, I don’t know what’s real or not.”

  “This one isn’t real at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I’m confident that if Jekyll showed up, he’s one of the seven men I photographed. There’s no point in letting this dumb charade continue any longer. I just have to avoid implicating myself.

  “Can I tell you something confidentially?”

  Aside from the fact I’m calling him from a phone that can’t be traced back to me.

  “Within reason.”

  “Your forensic people are going to find out that the victims all died of other trauma. They’re not even Americans. They’re cadavers from a hospital in Ukraine.”

  “That’s one hell of an intuitive leap, Theo. Care to elaborate?”

  “No. Focus on the images I sent you. Identify them and you have Jekyll.”

  “And ignore Butcher Creek? It’s not that easy.”

  I simply can’t tell him that I set it all up. I broke a lot of laws—even if the intent was noble.

  “Call hospitals in Ukraine. Send them photos of the victims. You’ll get a match.”

  Unless Rayner lied to me about the source of the bodies.

  “Yeah, well, it’s more complicated than that, Theo.”

  “How so?”

  “I can’t get into that right now. But I’ll take a look at the photos you sent me. How exactly did you take these?”

  “I can’t tell you,” I reply, then add ominously, “I may have used assets meant for other purposes.”

  It’s a lie meant to reinforce Gallard’s earlier assumption that I used some secret military tech to get the images. Let hi
m believe what he wants.

  “Okay. I’ll ask around.”

  “Gallard, Jekyll is very likely one of the men I sent you. We don’t have time to sit on it.”

  “I get it, Theo. But understand that right now the FBI is more concerned with catching the Butcher Creek killer. I’ll follow up your Ukrainian-hospital tip, but the authorities already have suspects.”

  Suspects for an imaginary crime? Oh man. What have I done?

  They probably rounded up a number of local men with rap sheets. Hell, I’ll bet some crazies called and claimed they were the Butcher Creek Butcher.

  I kept fearing that the hoax would get exposed too quickly—I never stopped to consider the implications if the authorities never caught on. Real lives could be at stake.

  I toyed with the idea of planting some kind of clue or evidence that it was fake but dismissed it because I didn’t have the time and couldn’t think of something that didn’t run the risk of being found too soon.

  “Besides call Ukrainian hospitals, can you give me any other insight?” asks Gallard.

  I could tell him how the science-fiction books were selected and how their excerpts were spread around with the victims or how to find the autopsy marks I concealed, but all of that would point the finger right back at me. And despite the friendly relationship Gallard and I have, there’s nothing stopping him from telling his colleagues at the FBI that they should be paying a lot more attention to Dr. Theodore Cray.

  “Tell them to look at the embalming fluid inside the veins. Being soaked in the liquid won’t get it that deep into the tissue.”

  “Okay. I’ll do that, but . . . you’re kind of scaring me. You know a lot more about this Butcher Creek . . .” There’s a long, awkward pause. “Damn it. You idiot. What did you do?”

  “Remember our conversation about how far we’d go to catch Jekyll?” I reply. “I took it seriously.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  BREATHE

  Jillian is asleep in the bedroom while I sit in front of my monitors, reflecting on my life. On one screen are the seven male faces, one of which could belong to Jekyll. On another is a map of the world. The third monitor contains a list of all the things I could be doing with my skills besides faking crime scenes.

  Infectious-disease research stands out the most.

  Increasingly we’re finding that the cure to many pathogens can be found in the environment from which they emerge. Recently, a man with a life-threatening infection in his heart was cured by using a bacteriophage—a virus that infects bacteria—found within an hour’s drive of where he contracted the infection.

  As bacteria outpace the development of antibiotics, treatments like bacteriophages are looking increasingly like the solution. My interest in computational biology and fieldwork could be useful.

  The fact that I’ve decided I’m okay with stepping outside legal frameworks could be an advantage as well. I’d have few qualms about setting up a lab in a less regulated country, provided I didn’t put people at an unnecessary risk.

  Scrolling through the list of the top infectious diseases in the world and places where treatments could be used the most, I realize what Jillian was saying is true. I could do a lot more good if I stepped back and paid attention to the world around me.

  And yet . . . I still keep thinking of Jekyll. He’s out there. He’ll kill and kill again. Hyde isn’t merely his murder weapon; it’s also an experiment. I have a strong feeling that he’s trying to turn it into something much more dangerous. But I still don’t understand his endgame.

  I pull up an image of Hyde’s structure. I’ve been trying to think of a vaccination for it. A rabies vaccine may help prevent infection after the fact, but only right after infection. The disease works too quickly for the vaccine to be effective if you wait too long.

  The only treatment I can imagine—and it’s more science fiction than practical—is using stem cells to try to regrow the damaged part of the brain. Another possibility is boosting the brain’s production of microglia to get it to repair itself.

  There’s been some promising research into this. But, as with everything else, time’s the biggest factor.

  It can take at least a decade from when you have an idea of how to treat something until you can actually try it on a human. If it doesn’t work and you have to go back to the drawing board, it could add another five years.

  I could probably make something that would stop Hyde in a few weeks. My approach would be to make a vaccine that had a dozen different vectors to attack the virus and then create a hundred random variations of it.

  This method would let me test ten times as many vaccines at once. It’s a beautifully simple approach that’s perfectly fine to test on bacteria, but once you scale it up to humans, the paperwork alone could consume a researcher’s lifetime.

  There are dozens of little hacks I could do to increase the efficacy of laboratory research, but they’d all have to clear legal hurdles that would frustrate me to no end.

  Granted, a number of these are important hurdles to keep mad scientists from killing people, but many delays kill more people than they’ll ever save.

  I’ve heard the argument made that simply doubling the budget of the FDA could save hundreds of thousands of lives by speeding up the approval process. The counterargument goes that, historically speaking, the increase in employees would lead to even more roadblocks and an increased misuse of the precautionary principle, killing even more people.

  It’s why I like my computer simulations. I can create entire universes where I don’t have to ask permission to try something radical or genocidal.

  I have an open offer from a philanthropist to fund any start-up I can think of. I’d avoided the offer because the thought of running a company didn’t appeal to me. I took up Figueroa’s offer because it sounded a lot like university research and he offered me certain protections.

  I’m now wondering if I should have taken the philanthropist up on his offer. Maybe I still can.

  If trying to cure disease directly is too frustrating because of the time involved and the regulatory problems, is there some other way I could speed up the development of drug discovery?

  I’d been using my modeling program, MAAT, to make predictions about ecosystems before I used it to catch Joe Vik and Oyo. How hard would it be to apply MAAT to something like eradicating a disease?

  If I were to describe to MAAT something like pneumonia and the different pathogens that can cause it, the system might be able to steer me into an interesting direction for research. My latest iteration of my modeling program has been using machine-learning models to understand relations between things at a much faster rate. I could give it a data set of the structures and genomes of bacteria and viruses that cause pneumonia and then a set of treatments that have some effect. MAAT might then be able to find a correlation or show where to look for possible treatments.

  Doing this with the Hyde virus would be tricky because it’s based on a strain that there’s not a lot of treatments for. But when I have the time, I should try.

  Most of the time, MAAT shows me approaches researchers have already thought about, but sometimes it’s capable of surprising me. After I type in the structure of Streptococcus pneumoniae and ask MAAT to make a best guess for a bacteriophage to fight it, he tells me to check out the lungs of blue whales.

  This doesn’t mean that MAAT thinks that there’s a cure to be found there, only that it’s an environment worth looking into. If I had to guess why MAAT came up with that, it might be that since Streptococcus pneumoniae is a respiratory issue and blue whales have the largest lungs of any creature that ever lived, MAAT came to the conclusion that the whale’s lung environment might contain a virus that preys upon Streptococcus pneumoniae.

  Interesting . . . Even though marine animals can get pneumonia—especially in captivity—it might not be a bad idea to see if they don’t have a slightly higher resistance to it.

  I lose myself in thought and only notice
my phone after the third time Gallard tries to call me.

  “Hello?” I reply, vanquishing all thoughts of blue whale lungs.

  “Bad news, Theo.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  INTENT

  It’s amazing how much thinking the human mind can do in the span of time between two words like bad and news. My mind races through a thousand different scenarios. Not so much complete thoughts as images. An image of another body.

  An image of thousands of Hyde particles floating through the air in a kindergarten. An image of Joe Vik standing over Jillian’s sleeping body. An image of myself covered in blood . . .

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “First things first. We didn’t have this conversation. Understand?”

  “Yeah. Got it. What’s going on?”

  “You have a good criminal attorney?” asks Gallard. That’s never an encouraging question.

  “Yeah . . . a couple. I had one help me out with the Oyo case. I also got a guy back in Montana who’s been keeping them off my back. Why?”

  “You’re a clever guy, Theo. But not that clever. Those photos you gave me? I sent them around as you asked. You didn’t tell me how you acquired them.”

  “I don’t even know that I sent them to you . . .”

  “Oh, let me back up. I didn’t mention your name. But they couldn’t help but notice the angle of the photos. It didn’t take them too long to put things together. They found your little hidden cameras.”

  I don’t know if the call is being monitored. I trust Gallard, I think, but I still don’t know. “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about or how that affects me,” I reply.

  I was expecting them to find the cameras at some point. I sprayed them with a lab-grade degreaser to remove any fingerprints I may have left on them.

  “Fine. Whatever you say. But here’s the part you may not have anticipated. After they realized the corpses were . . . well, corpses, they started putting the squeeze on people involved in the tissue trade. They started asking questions and showing your photo. Someone pointed you out.”

  “Me? For what?”

  “Illegal purchase of human tissue, or something to that effect. The point is that you’re now the FBI’s main suspect for the Butcher Creek whatever they’re calling it.”