CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
July 4 2001
Dr. Cox enjoyed dinner with his family, confident that Miss Parker was turning the incriminating tapes on the Inner Sanctum over to the FBI. A week had passed since Jarod barged into Raines's, correction, his office and there was no sign of the Pretender or Miss Parker. The Grim Reaper was sure the Pretender would not dare run away even if Miss Parker knocked him out and then raped him for keeping her on the go all those years. But, thought Cox, she must have or how did she get pregnant? She'd have to tie him up to make it happen. The thought of Miss Parker hitting Jarod over the head with her gun or a vase brought a smile to the Doctor's face. However, the last time he saw them, Miss Parker had acting like her mother but with the determination of Mr. Parker or rather what Mr. Parker would have been if he was not under that curse.
The doctor tried to find out where Jarod and Miss Parker went. Why he even knocked on the door of that corporate lawyer's office, but the lawyer's face said, "I'm not telling." Besides, he was reaching for something in his drawer at the same time. Cox made a tasty exit. He did not want to wind up on the Centre roof, hanging over the edge and that rather vengeful man holding him by his thumbs.
"You'd think that they would consider that women my size are not little children."
Brought out of his reverie, The Grim Reaper turned to the young mother of his kids. "You could go through the catalogue, and find one that matches and I'll get it for you."
She scoffed. "I suppose so. They don't have exclusive petite shops in this town."
A man in his twenties stood at the kitchen door. He had dark brown hair that flowed over his shoulders, the same color as the girl's, but he was of medium height. "Maybe they should have. Oh someone's about to be at the door."
The doctor sighed as if this had happened before and finished his meal.
By that time, Gino opened the door with a mock flourish. "Miss Parker!"
"Who are you?"
"Gino, Dr. Cox's butler, man of the house, chauffeur, killer," His smile was almost as evil as Cox's.
"When I want your services, I'll ask the Doctor," she said pushing past him with Jarod following close enough to whisper something in her ear. "You know Jarod, Cox. I've come to ask you a few questions."
"We've met. I was taking Liza to the opera."
Jarod was usually out in front with Miss Parker chasing him and now he followed her like a lap dog. Only he did not act as one. Well it would take time for the servile expression and the kneeling.
Liza, thought Miss Parker, he doesn't say his wife or his daughter, just Liza. She whispered to Jarod. "You insinuated about Raines damaging your relationships with the opposite sex. I presume she went through the same procedure. Knowing Cox's character, she wouldn't take up with him normally."
"Then to avoid a charge of corrupting the morals of a minor, he takes her in his home, passes her off as his concubine or mistress—keeps her children."
"What about this, Cox?" she demanded showing him the report.
"I made it up to fool your brother and Dr. Raines. Wait until I get the real one."
Lady Angela tapped her heels, glaring at Liza who looked as haughty as only a Dominant female could. A few minutes later, Cox handed Miss Parker the true medical report. "Raines wanted to wipe out all the Pretenders. However, Mr. Parker had other ideas. By the way, the day after you left on your, ah, honeymoon, Lambourni barged into his office and took Raines's radio and stereo combination player. Said he didn't deserve it. Guess someone told him of Angelo. Was it you. Jarod?"
"I only saw him for a few minutes. Did you Miss Parker?" She nodded as if to say, 'of course I did for what he did to Timmy.'
"Miss Parker said that the Centre 'hired' Lambourni before she went to the Island," said Jarod. "What do you know about him?"
"Not much," said Cox, "Born in New Jersey, took corporate law, worked for some rather unsavory people. He married this Mexican girl, well not Mexican exactly. Her family is from an Artist colony. Embittered Americans or Englishmen, fed up with the war, leftists, leave their country and go south. Girl meets this young man entering the legal profession, only she doesn't know he's working for the syndicate."
"New Jersey? Is that all you know of him?"
"I heard he was adopted. I saw some of his low rent relatives from New Jersey. I thought I was on the set of The Sopranos. I did some investigation of my own. Oh he's quite strong. Tried to drive us insane."
"How?" asked Jarod, feigning ignorance, "Is he a Pretender as well? How old is he?"
"If he was, he'd be smart not to tell us. I'd say somewhere in his twenties. Oh and do you want the details?"
"I would be interested if he succeed. So how did he proceed in driving the Centre staff mad?" asked the Pretender, getting the irony.
Cox shrugged. "He started with 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall and when he got to zero, sang Camp Granada, Just a Gigalo, Burning Down the House, and then back to 99 Bottle of Beer again."
Miss Parker almost broke into a smile. "Oh an 80s fan who camped frequently as a kid. How long did he keep that up?"
"It started when you left. At first, I thought it a relief, but he kept it up for three hours, took a break, and then started it up again. He's an excellent singer, a tenor. I read his files. He won a few cases. One was about identity theft. The perpetrator stole the identity of this singer, not popular, but classical. Lambourni asked her the name of an aria and the first artist who sang it, and asked her to sing a few lines. She couldn't do it. "
"I doubt anyone could do that," said Jarod and Miss Parker glared at him. He then decided that he had better keep quiet or placate her, "except someone like Lambourni. Wonder why he took up law."
"Don't you know? You're a Pretender. The godfather probably told Signor and Signora. Lambourni, 'Your son's got an excellent voice, but we need a mouthpiece to get us off.' And he probably paid for Antonio to go to law school. Anyway, they need someone in the family with a good income. Not that it'd do any good." She turned back to Cox. "Go on. How did you escape?"
"I made an excuse. Said there was an emergency at the hospital, delivered a baby, and rushed over here." Cox reached for a package of Aspirin. "Although I can't blame him, can you Jarod?" He waited. "You look quite well, considering."
"The priest said a few words in Latin, sprinkled some water on us."
"That'll do it," said Cox, "by the way your brother, Miss Parker, was asking about you. Why haven't you been to see him?"
"I have no desire to," she said, "Now what's this information about Lambourni, you're just itching to tell us?"
"A couple of years ago, when Mr. Parker was settled in the Centre and you were hunting Jarod," said Cox, "Raines and he decided to get some more employees. Only Mr. Parker told me they had to be born around a certain date. I had someone in mind."
"So they were looking for someone," said Jarod, "any other secrets I don't know about?"
"What was the date?" asked Miss Parker.
"July the twelfth. I forget the year. As well as Lambourni, there's a new nurse, a supervisor, a clerk, and two bodyguards. Raines made sure that neither of them came in touch with each other," said Cox.
July the twelfth meant nothing to the Centre. Jarod knew Miss Parker's, Mr. Parker's, Raines', and Lyle's birthdays. There was some other information not known to the public which Angelo helped get for him, but July the twelfth was not on the list.. He went over other possibilities, an explosion orchestrated by the Centre, witnesses to that, but the only thing he could figure was it was something to do with Mr. Parker himself and then he got it. It was so obvious, so brilliant, and so easy. There was only one reason why that date had any significance, but Jarod decided he had better keep that to himself until a later time.
Miss Parker walked to the small toddlers, playing on the floor. Their eyes showed intelligence and their vocabulary was above their age. "Hello children."
The youngsters chatted away, showing her their toys. One of the girls had constructed a miniature Eiffel Tower although not as good as Jarod's model of his childhood.
Miss Parker thought of the irony. Here is Cox with a Pretender wife, correction concubine and four Pretender children under the Centre's nose and they can't do anything about it. And then we have Jarod and the others, either, captured, pursued, or killed by the Centre goons. How did he swing it?
She wondered whether Liza was one of the show Pretender children, but she doubted the later. More than likely, Liza and Gino came from the Inner Sanctum, Cox took them to hold over someone else. Cox, although a Centre man, was loyal to the Parkers, that is Mr. Parker, but certainly not Raines who was loyal to the Triumvirate. Raines probably passed Gino off as one of his successful projects. So in effect, the Living Corpse took credit for something he had no hand in producing and Cox got the benefit.
As she observed Liza, she saw she was not like an innocent taken advantage by an older man. There was no case of molestation here. Liza acted like someone in her twenties, rather than a teenaged girl and as Miss Parker now knew, her species had specific rules as to conduct and deportment written down somewhere in that Dominant Book. As for Cox, in his way he loved her and certainly did not act the way a leech did towards an underage girl, that is, no pawing, no obscene remarks about her breasts, no lifting up her dress and patting her behind. It was all so proper. And Liza does not cuddle next to Cox and call him "big Daddy" or had a sucker, Mary be praised, thought Miss Parker.
'They like you Miss Parker," said Liza who whispered to the children.
"We have to go now. Gino will look after the youngsters. I don't exactly trust the Centre nor the ones we tried to hire, "said Cox.
Liza complained about the rejected babysitters that reminded Miss Parker of the movie, Baby Boom "She looked like Nurse Bratlowsky, and had a harsh voice. ' Children need discipline and a cold bath.' Her voice was a perfect imitation of the Russian woman. The next one had on this none dress, Brittany Spears style, and says "she'll not do any food preparation as it might ruin her nails and could her boyfriend come over…" This time, she did sound like a brainless hedonistic irresponsible teenager.
"Then Doctor," Miss Parker said, "you can also fill me about Raines and that Inner Sanctum. You can afford two more guests, can't you?" She paused and whispered into his ear. "How did you get her? Did Raines hand her over to you to buy your silence? And what of Gino?"
"Gino?" asked Jarod who heard all of this.
"You know all about my father, a mortician," said Cox, "What you don't know is that I was born in London while my parents were on holidays. When the Centre called my parents back, the Coxes neglected to inform Immigration that they had a son. They hid me in my mom's knitting basket. I was a month at the time."
"So in order to get you into Harvard and for you to be a doctor, Mr. Parker got your father to promise that you would work for the Centre."
Cox smiled. "The Parkers actually: I got my residential alien papers, the chance to travel between the two countries, and a position in Blue Cove Hospital as chief of staff of obstetrics and I'm not much younger than the Pretender or you for that matter." .
When Mr. Parker returned, after Brigitte's death, to take charge of the Centre, once more, Cox learned, that unlike the official statement, that there were more than six Pretenders. These half dozen, the Centre had sacrificed so the government would not probe too deeply.
"And," he said, "I learned that the Pretenders have a shorter childhood than normal although they appear as us. I wrote a colleague of mine, a certain Doctor of Anthropology, a Dr. Ann Coulter, who previously telephoned me that she had similar suspicions about a group coming from Mexico, but I didn't get an answer to my correspondence. I later learned she had been murdered."
"Did my father know about this?" asked Miss Parker, "Of course he did. The Hercules project. Maybe your father was on it as well, Dr. Cox." She gave him a dirty look. .
Cox steered his car into the opera parking lot. Several patrons of the arts, all dressed in their finest, were getting out. They entered the lobby, mingling with the socially acceptable crowd. Miss Parker kept questioning Cox, asking for more details.
"I know nothing of this Hercules Project. Gino filled me in on some of Raines's more notorious activities," he said, "Gino has an excellent visual memory. He was created at the Centre, I think his father might have been one of the six who were murdered, or someone else. I can't be sure. I obtained him and Liza, his daughter from the Inner Sanctum."
"His daughter?"
Cox smiled. "That's why I wrote to that Doctor in California. There were certain incidents with a new group reproducing at tremendous speed, too fast for the regular courtship. I did a calculation, taking in account teenaged pregnancies. I estimated that their girls got pregnant at about eight years old, had four children at a time as did the boys, but they claimed not to mate until they were nine or ten years old. .Oh and the boys look older for their age until they reach maturity."
"How old?"
"I think it's fifteen or sixteen. I questioned a nurse that worked at the Nugenesis. She said there was a mix-up in one of the records of which she could not prove because the Centre destroyed them, but she was sure that a couple had a still born son and later had another son two years later on around the same date. Then they returned for a third. She told the doctor who told her it was nonsense. The boys were four not two years apart. I assume it was Jarod and his brother Ethan. If they switched Jarod's birth date, they thought they were safe."
"Does that mean that Jarod was not four when they brought him into the Centre, but two years old? And what about me? I got pregnant before I was a teenager!"
"So that's what the July twelth is all about," said Cox. His face widened in an evil smile. "Trying to find another Parker " He then corrected himself and once more became the obstetrician. "Well it could have happened just before your periods started. Your parents gave you more than an adequate diet, no junk food or pop. Your father must have been concerned about you. I read the records," said Cox, "It would put Jarod's age off a bit, understandable. Off hand, I would say you're almost the same age."
They did not think it was possible, or did they? "I always thought that Pretenders were sterile, something to do with the gene."
"Oh so that's why you were so eager for the ah-encounter."
"You don't know me very well, Cox. I wasn't that eager."
"I knew all along that the Pretenders weren't sterile. It was a rumor set out by Raines and later Lyle. You aren't so eager to escape when there's no hope, is there? Besides, the females were too young to have children."
And so was Liza, thought Jarod. "Did Liza or you instigate the mating?" asked Jarod.
"It was mutual and I went through that Official Joining as soon as possible. If anything happened to me, I wanted my children to get my inheritance. The Dominants will see to that —although I had no idea how they showed up. Must be an inner sense, not like your's Miss Parker, something we had thousands of years ago, but lost," said Cox, "I blame Raines for her actions, not that she was able at eight years old."
"The girl doesn't look a day over thirteen," whispered Miss Parker.
"She's probably about ten or eleven years old. The children are two or three years old," said Jarod, "and quite mature by human standards. Of course, her intelligence and personality would be normal for a 1.6r. I read Mr. Attwood's notes on the computer. He has a web site."
"Oh. I wonder what they call it. 'Humanity is in peril dot org.' probably."
Dr. Cox told how Gino informed him about Raines. That was a few years after Gino had been in the employ of the Grim Reaper or slave of, thought Jarod. By that time, the effects of the drug wore off. He added something, which rather startled them. "Oh I was told by a certain Dominant that some children like what I and Liza have, mature faster."
"Do you mean they'll look eighty when they're forty?" asked Miss Parker with apprehension.
"I have been told of one, a boy called John, who at the age of six months, could speak in complete sentences, and appeared to be three years old. At the age of six, he could pass for someone twice his age, and then when he approached eight, he slowed down and was normal for them. My children are fortunate, in that they didn't have to go through that, but if your kids start doing physics when they're supposed to be in diapers, don't worry."
"Thanks. Now not only will I have to think about getting them Pampers, but I'd have to get a book of calculus to entertain the little darlings!"
One of the benefits of the withdrawal of Neogenesis was an increased memory, usually scattered and unconnected, but after years, becoming a complete knowledge of the forgotten events. Jarod remembered what it was for him, recalling those incidents he explained only by the phrase, "The Centre is an evil place."
Jarod, however, still had his predicament to consider. If he tried to remove the chip, he might die. For the first time of his life, since he was a little boy, he felt helpless. Helplessness was something Jarod no longer could keep and there were these other feelings raging inside him.
Jarod and Miss Parker's daughter, Margaret,was one of the accompanying choir of women and children who sang when the opera star entered the village square. It was a scene out of seventeenth or eighteenth century Italy and was supposed to show the heroine as this simple country girl in love with a young man her parents did not approve of. It sounded all so familiar, him and Miss Parker. Now that they were together, it had changed. Although he wanted to grab Miss Parker, make passionate love to her, get inside her rough like a Dominant, but he could not or else they would assume he was a thing, an animal.
Cox and his woman were enthralled. Well she was a Pretender, correction, Dominant, and became a high class opera devotee as easily as anything Cox fixed up. The doctor still carried enough of his English background to appreciate the finer things.
Miss Parker was doing two things at once, listening to the opera, and having her hands all over Jarod who was trying to sit just the right way so no one could see what they were doing. However, the way she talked and tried to turn to see the stage, meant she was more interested in the theatre than trying a new way of making love. "My Italian's not that good," she said. That of course was a lie.
"Too busy chasing me?" asked Jarod, "Oh I doubt many people here know about the Centre. Say someone taking pictures of the audience, and he's not from around here."
She lifted her hands from underneath Jarod's trousers. "Spoil sport! I kind of liked this."
"Nothing to it. Margaret has an excellent voice."
"That isn't what I meant."
Jarod tried to suppress a smile. His arm around Lady Margo Angela's shoulder, he turned to Cox. "Now you said that Gino knew about the goings on with me and the hidden Pretenders. How?"
"He was the result of those goings on, as you put it. Course you grew older. Must have been all that running and sleepless nights."
"Quit with the commentary. You used Zoe to get me to the Centre, so you're no prize."
Cox smiled.
"So were you going to chain me to a wall?"
"Or locked in a cage. Seems more appropriate for what did they call you, a lab rat? Now don't get angry, Jarod. You and I are around the same age, so I had nothing to do with your, but I must backtrack a bit," he said, "You were in another part of the Centre."
The doctor's suave speech did not fool the Pretender one minute. Although he did not have the perversions that Raines had, the killer instinct of Lyle, nor the coldness of Mr. Parker, Cox was just as evil. He always came up on top because he mesmerized his enemies, made them appear his friends. If the Centre fell, Cox would come up on top.
"I had no idea what level, Cox. and I thought it was normal. Get on with your story."
Jarod flipped through the program, noting that in the second act, the villain, that one that would cause the young couple to separate, was about to make his entrance by singing an aria which roughly translated was, 'I am the greatest man in the village. All adore me! Look at my fine clothes and my fine robes. Am I not Benvenito the Magnificent?
The doctor continued. "One night I couldn't sleep so I followed my father and Raines to this place they referred to as the Inner Sanctum. There was this metal door, and Raines had a key, my father was besides him. I could see figures in there, smelled rotten garbage, saw chains on the walls. I saw Raines motion to two of the sweepers."
"If you weren't allowed in the Inner Sanctum, how'd you have gotten Gino?" asked Jarod, "It appears to me that you are lying about being there."
"I do not lie. They made Gino breed with a Pretender girl. My father put his hands over my eyes before I saw the actual event, but I remember Raines whisper to father, 'oh let him watch. It'll be a good education.' That's when I decided that to ally myself with Mr. Parker rather than that monster."
Jarod figured that Cox filled the other details in with his imagination but it was amazing how accurate he was. When Jarod and Miss Parker looked at the tapes, it was in a large room. Chains hung from the walls, and the floors were bare except for the feeding area. It would just be like Raines to dump the food on the ground and watch his creatures scramble for it.
Miss Parker almost gagged. "No wonder I felt sick whenever Raines looked at me! All that false piety. A mere child," she said, "Correction since Gino was a Dominant he stopped being a child at ten but even then, it's not right!"
"Years later when I became a doctor, Mr. Parker asked me if there was anything I requested. I said I wanted to know about the inner sanctum. He had Raines show me, and I recognized one of the men there as Gino and a young girl with him, Liza. I asked if they would work for me. They said they would cost a certain amount of money. I thought Mr. Parker used the wrong pronoun. I later learned…"
"That you now owned them," said Jarod.
"Yes took some time getting them used to wearing clothes, and they both needed a decent bath, and neither could read nor write, but it was amazing how much they learned in a few weeks."
"Raines treating them like animals?" asked Miss Parker.
"Now you know how I felt or still feel," said Jarod, but Miss Parker did not show any feelings of guilt. The Pretenders were different, more different than the Negroes were from the Whites back in the nineteenth century. Their DNA was different although it was mostly European based. There was an added factor that continued through each generation, possibly the same factor that the Centre called the Pretender gene and there was also the absence of any highly charged activity in the area that served for the seat of emotions and personality. No wonder Centre preyed upon the Pretenders for little emotions and a low personality meant no humanity and thereby greatly exploited. He wondered if they had a soul.
The opera continued without incident. The stage manager led them to the back where they greeted the singers and actors and learned that Benito and his followers, who all sang in chorus, Miss Parker offered to take Margaret home, but she declined. They were going out for drinks to which Jarod told Margaret to be careful, because even if she was more mature than the others, the others would not understand if she took a sip. Knowing the danger it would give to her species, Margaret got in the car with Dr. Cox and they drove to Broot's house where the computer genius said that the girl would keep Debbie company.
"Now," said the Doctor, "I must invite you to my house."
"We must decline," said Miss Parker.
"To miss seeing what Gino took out from a certain room near the Inner Sanctum, tapes of a rather disturbing manner? You said you wanted to know more about Raines's methods?"
Gino greeted them at the door of the doctor's house and was only to eager to show Miss Parker and Jarod his tapes. As Jarod suspected, Mickey Mouse was prominent on two of them.
"My son," said Gino with an evil grin, "checked them out. He is Security and Records."
"Oh," said Miss Parker, "He likes that show." She spotted a WB poster on the wall.
Shooing Liza and the children out the room, Gino inserted the video. As Jarod and Parker suspected, it showed more evidence, but in such a graphic fashion that Miss Parker rushed to the bathroom and threw up. Gino was eyeing Cox's gun, deciding whether he could reach it in time, run out the house, drive to the Centre, and kill those responsible.
Miss Parker put on her best smile. "If find that Raines took Jarod into the Inner Sanctum and you knew about it."
"Not the true purpose" said Cox, "besides Raines had moveable walls brought in to make a room like the regular cells in the Centre. Jarod do you remember any of this and don't go into details of the actual experience."
"As far as I can recall," said Jarod, "it was what you assumed. They first joined me with this girl. I had no idea what was going on. Sydney kept me in the dark about such things. A few months later, they took me to that place again. I still had no idea. They made me. There was a gun to my head. They took me back to Sydney and then they came again when Sydney was occupied elsewhere. It was about an hour each time."
"Twenty to twenty five years ago, society was getting wise about child molestation," said Cox, "so they decided to produce their own."
"I'll write it out for you, Cox what they did to me. Just destroy it as soon as you read it." He took the pad and wrote about the girl, the starving baby, and the men grabbing the infant. "The man looked something like you, Doctor. Graying hair, glasses, and I remember his left hand had a mole."
"My father had melanoma at the time, but had the mole removed." He read the note. "Raines wanted that baby to die. When my father told me about it, I was thinking of being a mortician like he, like my grandfather but hearing about that baby changed my life. I never regretted that decision." He handed it to Miss Parker. "Sickening. Don't you agree?"
Her face turned pale as she looked at it.