Unhaunting The Hours Read Online Free Page A

wanted. So I pulled the
pistol from my jacket and gave it to him.
    Then he said, “Second, if you come with
me, I’ll tell you why you might be – but you’re not.”
    I sat in the front seat of his car, and
he took me to his office.
    He closed the blinds, sat me in a
chair, and leaned against his desk.
    Balder said, “I’m sure you’ve heard
about this jimmy the press are calling the Berm Butcher. I know. I
hate the name too. Anyways, we got a partial DNA clip the first
time he struck. It was from a bit of burnt skin, so there was some
corruption. But we ran the part we had and got a match. It was you.
Do you follow? We had to be sure, so we stalked you.”
    “ Healing.” I
said.
    “ Healing? No. Healing’s an
impotent little half a scrotum. You know Healing?”
    “ He’s a friend of a friend.
But he’s been bugging me.”
    “ Hmm. I’ll be sure to take
that one up. But the point is, we no longer think you’re the
killer.”
    “ Okay.”
    “ Another victim popped into
the lab this morning. This time, our mutual friend was careless. He
left behind a finger print and skin cells with full DNA. The DNA
from the skin matched you 100 percent. But not the prints. And you,
George, do not have an identical twin.”
    We didn’t speak for a
minute.
    Then I said, “This means exactly
what?”
    Of course I knew; I’d been studying
this stuff all semester. It was my future job to know.
    I said. “You think I have a clone. A
serial killing clone, of course.”
    Balder rolled his eyes at the ceiling.
“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. Clones are rare - and serial
killers? I’ve never seen a real one in my career. But yes. Maybe.”
He held up his hands. “Sorry to bring it up this way. I see it
wasn’t for the best, but you understand that this sort of thing’s
outside of my emotional jurisdiction, as my wife calls
it.”
    I blurted, “Do you know much about
Abdera?”
    “ Ah shit. You’re one of
those. So that’s how you know Healing.”
    “ I used to be one of those.
I’m clean. But maybe you’ve got some idea about the kinds of
problems that makes for me. The whole experience inoculated me from
the bizarre. So there’s not much that can shock me.”
    “ It should. I’ve scanned
videos from around the estimated event times, and turned up no one
that matches your cute mug. I surveyed your environs and also found
no one – besides you. It’s possible the butcher commutes to work,
but that doesn’t fit the profile. I’ve also got some reasons to
believe he’s altered his appearance. Point is, he knows he’s a
clone and he doesn’t like it. The shrinks tell me he’s got this
overwhelming need to be unique.”
    “ Or he’d rather I take the
fall for him. Most clones that make it out of whatever slave market
they were sold into survive as criminals. They can’t get real jobs,
they’re invisible, and their donors can take the fall. Most donors
don’t know they have clones. Like you said: it’s rare. People don’t
think of it.”
    “ So what – you’re some kind
of expert?”
    “ I study genetic law at
State U. It comes up.”
    “ Okay.” said
Balder.
    Then he was quiet. He nodded his head
and smiled. I felt embarrassed that I’d volunteering the info so
freely. Balder was thinking that it was going to be easy to use me
for whatever he wanted to use me for. I’d spent so long in
isolation that it was too easy for me to ramble on.
    I said, “You don’t want to take my
prints, do you? So I can show you I haven’t changed
them?”
    “ I’ve lifted your prints at
least a dozen times. You know how it is; you leave them on
everything. That’s good – you’ve got nothing to hide.”
    “ Glad we’re on the same
page.”
    “ On that topic, I’d advise
you to leave that girl alone. It’s creepy. And it doesn’t make you
look good, you know, when you’re trying to distinguish yourself
from a killer. Do you follow?”
    I looked at my shoes, feeling like a
total halfwit. But then I