But the Children Survived (55 page)

“Not right now, guys, I have some work to do.” 

The kids protested but he and Jason kept walking.  They got to the residence door and Andrew knocked. 

“Christie's been staying here.  I don't want to scare her by just walking in,” Andrew said.  They listened but no one answered, so Andrew and Jason entered the residence. 

It was so much nicer in there, like someone's home.  They looked around to see if there were any obvious places Wilmer might have stored paperwork.  The living room was pretty straightforward – sofa, chairs, tables, etc.  Andrew led Jason through the hallway that led past the theater, the virtual room, and the kitchen. 

“All the bedrooms are in the back.  There's a library and a study back there, too.” 

Wilmer had built the residence to resemble his New Jersey home.  There were more rooms in the back than in the front, like someone had just kept adding on with no thought as to how the home would look in the end.  When he and Jason walked to the end of the hallway, they were standing before three doors. 

“The library is that way.”  Andrew said, pointing at the first door.  Jason searched the library while Andrew went into the second door, the study.

Wilmer had planned on being the last man standing and had taken the best of Western Civilization with him, sparing no expense.  The living quarters were full of rare original art pieces, and the library contained the several first editions.  There were glass cases containing books you couldn’t touch due to their age.  The books on the shelves were alphabetized and surprisingly clean.  The biosphere's filtration system kept the dust away. 

Jason was glancing at the books rather absentmindedly when he stopped dead in his tracks.  He walked backwards looking at the books again.  He was right.  He had seen it.  There on the middle shelf was a book titled “Mortevida.”

Jason pulled on the book and the library wall opened up to reveal a secret room.  The room contained stacks of gold bars and empty glass cases waiting to be filled. Why had Wilmer used the name Mortevida to open this room?

Jason walked the length of the room, but he couldn't find anything unusual.  He ran his fingers along the walls.  He found a door set into the wall without a doorknob.  Jason could just make out the outline. 

Jason felt around the wall looking for some kind of button to open the door.  His hand moved over a section of the wall and it lit up, revealing a number pad.  Jason ran out of the room and into the study.  He found Andrew going through the contents of the desk. 

“Come on, Andrew, I found something and I need you.”  Jason ran back to the library with Andrew following close behind. 

“Holy crap,” Andrew said when he saw the secret room. 

“Come over here and watch.”  Jason slid his hand across the wall and the number pad lit up again.  “I need the code.” 

“I didn't do that one.  It must have been programmed by somebody else.” Andrew looked at the number pad.  “If it's a safe, we'll never get it open without the code.  There are no gaps in the door for a crowbar to pull it open and I’m no safecracker.  He must have something pretty special in there.” 

“What do you think he would use for a code?”  Jason wasn't going to give up that easily.

“How did you get in here?” Andrew asked. 

Jason showed Andrew the book he had pulled down. 

“What made you pull on that one?” 

“It was the name of the plants my dad brought back from Brazil.  They were named after the lady who discovered them.  Her name was DeMorte.  She had given the plants to a guy in 1953 named George....” 

Jason brought up the number pad and entered the name Ranier.  The door swung open.  “That son of a bitch Wilmer thumbing his nose at you again, George,” Jason said out loud.  He looked into the wall safe and saw what Wilmer had been hiding from the world.

*****

In the stainless-steel-lined safe, there were 20 glass shelves.  On each shelf were rows and rows of glass tubes.  And in each tube were the lovely purple Fetura spores. 

The tubes were sealed.  They looked quite old to Jason.  Then it hit him.  These were not Fetura spores.  These were Mortevida spores. 

Jacob Wilmer had kept them for himself all these years.  He’d brought them here because he knew if he ever got sick, these spores would save his life.  Not his chemical pharmaceuticals, but these little purple spores scraped from the edge of a poisonous plant from the rainforest.  Wilmer had known all along what he had, and there was no way he was going to market it. 

Jason turned to Andrew.

“Those are the purple spores that made me invincible,” said Jason.  “He kept them for himself, the greedy bastard.  If he’d produced them in the first place, my dad would never have tried to do it himself.  He would have lived, at least for a few more years.”

“But that doesn't answer your question, does it?”

 Andrew picked up one of the tubes.  On the side were numbers that looked like dates.  Most of them were created in 1955.

“All the lives he could have saved.”  Andrew looked very sad and tired. 

Jason saw something in the back of the cabinet.  It looked like a small notebook.  He took several rows of tubes out carefully, one by one, and laid them on the floor.  He was just able to reach in and grab the notebook without knocking anything over.  He and Andrew went back to the study and sat on the couch.

Jason flipped through the notebook.  It had belonged to Jacob Wimer.  It contained abstract thoughts and doodles, with Jacob's brother James being the victim of Jacob's hangman drawings.  Jason flipped a few more pages and then Andrew grabbed the notebook out of Jason's hand.  He was looking at a page with a date written on it and the words “Orlando.  Send Simon.” 

“That's a day before my birthday,” Jason said.  “My eighth birthday.  That's when...”  He stopped talking. 

Suddenly everything came together in Jason's head.  Maisie had told him that Tomlinson was incapable of killing Antonio.  She was so sure of Tomlinson’s innocence, that it had rattled Jason's faith in what he’d believed to be true all his life.  But now, looking at the note written in Jacob's hand, it became clear that Wilmer had sent Simon to Orlando to kill his father. 

“Jeez, I never would have thought that Simon…I didn’t even know he worked for my father before we came down here.  He never said a word,” Andrew said.

“He killed my dad.  Wilmer killed my dad.”  Jason kept shaking his head. 

“Why would he kill your dad?” Andrew asked, and then returned his attention to the notebook.  He flipped through a few more pages but found nothing else of interest in it.  “Really, why
would
Wilmer kill your dad?” 

“You really don't know anything, do you?”  Jason said shaking his head. 

For the next two hours, Jason recounted the story of his family, George Ranier, Tomlinson, Maisie, the dogs, and the children living in the biosphere and St. Thomas.  When Jason finished, Andrew was sitting on the edge of the couch, rocking back and forth. 

“But Jason, if Matthew Wilmer passed on making the drug, why would Jacob kill Antonio?  It just doesn't make sense.” 

“Maybe because the greedy son of a bitch decided to make it after all once old Matthew died.  My dad was helping people.  Maybe word was getting around.  Maybe another company was getting ready to buy it from him and Tomlinson.  I bet that would have pissed off Wilmer.”

Andrew stopped rocking and sat back on the couch.  He sighed deeply.  He held the notebook in his hand.  He flipped through it one more time, and then stood up.

“Come on Jay, I've gotta show you something.”  Andrew walked out the door and Jason quickly followed him.

*****

Andrew led Jason to Jacob's bedroom.  He walked through the bathroom to a door that Jason hadn't seen before.  Andrew opened the door and beckoned Jason to come inside.  Jason was just about to enter when he looked up and stopped dead in his tracks. 

It was a woman's frilly bedroom.  From top to bottom, it was filled with small boxes of varying shapes and sizes.  There were two paths in the carpet; one leading to the bed from the doorway and one leading from the bed to the bathroom.

  The walls were covered with rows and rows of shelves.  And on the shelves were 12” fashion dolls perched on stands.  There were hundreds of them.  They were all naked and they all had one defining feature – their hair was permed into wild, curly halos. 

Some of the dolls had corkscrew curls, other waves, and others had frizzy tresses.  Jason just kept staring at the dolls.  He’d never seen so many.  The boxes were also filled with dolls, but they were new and hadn't been taken out and curled yet.  Jason turned to Andrew with wide eyes.

“How did you know about this?” he asked Andrew.

“Because I set them up.  They were my mother's.”

Chapter 70

Jason turned around and walked back to the library.  Andrew closed the bedroom door and joined him.  They replaced the spores and closed the safe door.  They closed up the library and then the study.  As they were walking through the living room, Jason began to talk.

“They don't know who you are, do they?”  Jason asked Andrew. 

“Nah, they don't.  It wasn't on purpose, it was just easier, you know.  My dad wasn't that popular and they would’ve treated me differently if they knew.”  Andrew paused to collect his thoughts.  “I came down here from Jersey and worked in Tampa setting up the servers and connecting everything. My dad wasn't thrilled that I wasn't that interested in running the family business, but he let me run the IT department.  I worked for him since I graduated from college.  I wanted to transfer down here, but my mother.....”  Every time Andrew thought of his mother, he would get a catch in his throat.

“She...wasn't well.  She had good days and bad days.  The dolls...kept her happy.  It got to a point where my dad had to make a decision about hiding her somewhere, to save her from embarrassment.  She had lots of friends and they were always calling, asking her to come to this event or that luncheon.  We didn't know what to do and then one day I got the idea to build this place, a place where she would be safe.  He made up a story about a nuclear holocaust and how he would have to take her underground.  This whole place was for her.”

Andrew and Jason were sitting in the comfortable overstuffed chairs in the living room.  They were just like the ones in Andrew's New Jersey home. 

“As long as I was nearby, her good days went on longer.  Sometimes, when I feel really bad, I come in here and think about her being in her bedroom.  It makes it a little easier.  Before I left Jersey, she gave me....”  Andrew's eyes grew wide.  “She gave me a box to bring down here.  I never got around to emptying it.  It's in the basement.” 

Andrew got up and ran to the kitchen.  He pulled open the floor door and went down the steps.  When he couldn't find any room in her bedroom, he’d brought the box down here.  Andrew spied the big, cardboard box pushed into the back of the basement.  

He had transported the box in the back of his car from Jersey to Florida.  His mother, Emily, hadn’t wanted Jacob to know what was in it, so Andrew had assumed it was more dolls.  Jason was behind him when he got to the box.  Andrew opened it.

“Are we taking it upstairs?”  Jason asked.

“Yeah, the light's better up there.”

Andrew picked up the box and carried it to the stairs.  Jason went up first.  Andrew lifted the box and handed it to Jason, who carried it to the dining area where there was a big empty table. 

Andrew opened the box and poured the contents out.  Jason sat at one end of the table and Andrew at the other.  They began to sort through all the pictures and bits of paper that the box contained. 

Andrew's mother had written thousands of tiny notes.  They were all just thrown into the box with no rhyme or reason.  It would take days to sort through them.  Jason began looking at the pictures.  He found one of a purple baby.

“Who's this?” he asked Andrew and held it up.

“I have no clue.  Does it have a name on the back?”

Jason turned it over and read, “Andrew, 1972.” Jason’s eyes lit up.  “You're just like me, Andrew.  You would have lived anyway.”

Andrew grabbed the picture out of Jason's hand.  The baby in the picture was tiny.  It was definitely a newborn.  You could only see the infant's head.  The rest was wrapped in a blanket, but the face of the infant was purple.  Andrew thought of the tubes in Jacob's safe.  He’d always counted himself so lucky he’d been inside the biosphere.  The fact that it didn't matter pissed him off.  Why hadn't she told him?

“He must have given that stuff to my mother.”  Andrew had never seen this picture before.  His mother must have hidden it for years. 

Jason continued to look through the pictures.  He was looking on the backs of them now and found one of James Wilmer.  He was standing in front of what looked like a vineyard.  He had his arm around a young man and looked exceedingly happy.  The back of the photo indicated that the young man was named Alfredo. 

“Was your uncle gay?”  Jason asked.

“I don't know.  We never talked about him.” 

“Well, your mother sure did.”  Jason held up an album filled with pictures of James and his life in Italy.  There were letters and a label from his wine.  In all the pictures, James looked so happy.  He was pictured with other young men, but Alfredo seemed to be in the most pictures.

“He must have sent them to her,” Andrew said.  “I never knew they corresponded.” 

Jason kept digging through the papers while Andrew got to know his uncle through the photos and letters in the album.  James was a prolific writer who loved to describe Italy in detail.  As Andrew went through the letters, he saw something and looked at Jason.

“What was your father's name again?” he asked Jason.