The Gender Experiment: (A Thriller) (19 page)

A cowboy name fitting for the Colorado location. “Special Agent Andra Bailey. This is an unusual location.”

“I know. Long story.”

She wasn’t interested and didn’t ask.

He started down the hall. “Let’s get some coffee and talk in the conference room.”

Caffeine would be essential. The few hours on the plane might be the last shut-eye she got for the next couple of days. With mugs of dark coffee from a small kitchen, they entered a windowless interior room with a long table. Another man stood as they entered. Shorter and older, he looked sunburned, as if he’d been skiing. “Special Agent Dennis Pritchard.”

“Thanks for meeting me.” Bailey took a seat, realizing that she probably appeared disheveled and her makeup was long gone. She didn’t care what they thought, but physical attractiveness gave her power. “I need help investigating a group of suspicious deaths.” She cited the names and circumstances of the clinic victims. “All three men were born the same year and delivered by the same doctor, Charles Metzler.”

“And they all died recently?”

“In the last three weeks.” Bailey passed Agent Zane a printed file of what little intel they had on the victims. “A source tells me these men were all intersex, meaning they were of mixed gender and all born to women who were patients of Carson Obstetrics in Colorado Springs.”

Agent Zane’s thick brows arched. “Is this about a problematic medication? Is the FDA involved?”

The older agent added. “Why just the one clinic?”

“I don’t have answers yet. Just more crimes. A receptionist at the clinic was murdered, and the Denver morgue attendant who discovered the similarities in the dead men is now missing.” Bailey downed the second half of her coffee. “My source says the woman disappeared about twenty-four hours ago, right in front of the Colorado Springs Police Department.”

Both agents shifted forward in their chairs. Zane offered, “We’ll get a full team on this as soon as we can.” He glanced at the older man. “We have a huge sex trafficking operation going on right now, and we’re about to raid multiple locations, but I’ll personally start on this. When are you traveling to Colorado Springs?”

“Soon after I leave here.” Bailey gave them her contact information. “First, I’ll stop at the morgue and look at the bodies—if they’re still there.”

“What’s the missing woman’s name?” Zane asked.

“Taylor Lopez. Headquarters already has a nationwide alert out for her.” Bailey paused, searching her memory for a misplaced piece of intel. This wasn’t like her.
Oh, yes.
“Lopez is also intersex and was born in the same year, same doctor. I suspect there are more, but I haven’t seen the supposed list yet.”

“What year? How old are the victims?”

“Most were born in 1996 and are twenty years old.” She felt the coffee kick in and a new urgency about the investigation. “My priority is to locate and question the doctor if he’s still in Colorado Springs. I hope he’ll lead me to the missing woman.” She stood, ready to leave.

“Who’s your source?” Agent Pritchard got up too.

“A reporter that Lopez contacted.” She wanted to keep Wilson’s name confidential for now.

Pritchard’s eyes widened in alarm. “I wouldn’t trust him. Or her.”

Reporters were tools, like any other informant or source.
Would Pritchard have warned a male agent about working with a journalist?
Probably not. With her successful track record, she could afford to ignore doubts about her ability. She glanced at Zane. “Update me about the Denver deaths as soon as you have something.” Bailey strode out, eager to get down to Colorado Springs and see what the hell the military was up to.

An hour later she was on the highway headed south, watching the sunrise over a familiar countryside. Images from her childhood surfaced, but she pushed them aside. Her ability to lie extended even to herself, so she often didn’t trust her own memories. She knew for sure that her mother had left when Bailey was young because she couldn’t face a child with sociopathic tendencies, but beyond that, her past didn’t matter. The present was all that existed. She planned for a long life, but didn’t count on it.

Bailey focused on the investigation. Viewing the bodies at the morgue had felt like a waste of time. The two she’d seen hadn’t looked all that similar. Zion Tumara’s lower torso had been torn up by bullets, and Logan Hurtz’s corpse was almost a month old and so shriveled, he looked more like a horror-movie prop. Adrian Warsaw, the drowning victim whose body would have been the most helpful to see, had been shipped to his parents. When she’d asked why Hurtz was still in the morgue, the attendant had said that the victim’s family had called him an abomination and refused to claim him.

Most people weren’t geared to deal with human abnormalities. But who decided what was acceptable? Bailey felt perfectly normal. No, correct that. She was obviously different from most people, who made their decisions based on emotions. But she didn’t hate herself or feel inferior. In fact, it seemed smarter and more honest to function according to analysis and self-interest—within limits. Her dad had tried to teach her reasonable boundaries from an early age, but she hadn’t developed good impulse control until late in her teens.

Thinking about her father made her realize Garrett might be right. It seemed logical to visit the old man while she was in the state. In her own way, she loved him and enjoyed his company. He was the one person she could really be herself around. Too bad his circumstances made contact with him inconvenient. If she wasn’t too burned out after the investigation, she would call the jail and ask about visiting him. He might do the same for her if she were ever incarcerated. She worked hard to ensure that never happened, but the possibility was real. She’d realized that the day a police officer visited her high school civics class and announced that at least one student would end up in prison. She’d known in her gut it would be her if she didn’t learn some control.

As she approached Colorado Springs, she took the first Nevada Avenue exit. The landscape was familiar, yet changed. New stores had been constructed, and the sidewalk widened. The farther she drove though, the more it looked like the same old route to the army base. A big brick building on the left came into view. The police department, where Taylor Lopez had last been seen. According to Jake Wilson, the abduction had happened before dawn, so finding a witness seemed unlikely. Bailey kept driving, watching for the first decent motel. According to the GPS, the obstetrics clinic was just down the road, and her source was staying nearby.

The Desert Manor didn’t look up to her standards, but it would suffice. She pulled in, registered in the dinky front office, and paid for two nights. She’d likely be in town much longer, but not necessarily this motel. Bailey grabbed her luggage out of the rental car and stepped inside her temporary workspace. The carpet had a slight funk smell, but the room was decorated in shades of beige and sky blue, so at least it wasn’t visually offensive. She set her shoulder bag on the desk and pulled out the copies of the Denver death investigations she’d picked up at the morgue. Eager to read them, she brewed a cup of coffee and took a fast shower. The morning routine and clean clothes tricked her brain into feeling like she was starting the day fresh, instead of just arriving after a red-eye flight.

Now that she’d recharged, she decided to skip the reports and jump right into the fieldwork. She called Wilson on the burner phone she’d picked up at the bureau, and he answered with a timid hello.

“Agent Bailey. Let’s meet. Where are you?”

“The Rocky Ridge Motel, near the clinic.”

“What cross street? What room?”

He gave her the information, then asked, “Have you learned anything new? Is Taylor on a national search list now?’

His raw emotions were annoying. “Yes and yes. I’ll see you soon.” Bailey hung up, put on a dark-green suit jacket, and headed out.

At her car, she glanced back in the direction she’d come in. At some point, she wanted to retrace the abducted woman’s footsteps in front of the police station, but getting the list of subjects and questioning the doctor were more important. Taylor Lopez could be dead already, so finding the killer had to be her priority now, especially if more of the subjects were targeted. How many were there? If she uncovered solid evidence, the bureau would send a full team to confiscate computers and interrogate suspects.

The reporter’s motel proved to be only a few blocks away—an even cheaper version of the one she was staying in. She stopped in front of the office and glanced around the parking lot. No one was sitting in a dark car, and no vehicle had followed her. She stepped out and scanned the surrounding rooftops. No armed unsubs that she could see. Wilson claimed the killer had come after him in broad daylight in a public place, so the caution seemed necessary. Bailey checked her Glock just for security, then hurried to room seven and rapped on the door. The young man who answered had a three-day stubble on his chin, and a musty smell wafted from his dirty clothes.
Oh hell.
Had she been lured here by a crackpot?

“Who are you?” Bailey shoved her hand under her jacket, ready to pull her weapon.

“Jake Wilson.” His eyes were clear and his voice steady.

“Special Agent Andra Bailey.”

He motioned her in. After another glance over her shoulder, she stepped into the narrow room. A small table near the window had two chairs. Good. Somewhere they could sit and talk. A laptop on the bed reassured her that Jake might actually be a reporter—and not some homeless guy with paranoid delusions about conspiracy theories.

“Do you want some coffee or something?”

“No thanks.” She headed for the table. “I want to see the list you mentioned. The email you received too.”

Jake grabbed the laptop and sat down across from her. “This is Taylor’s email. She’s the one who heard from Bonnie at the clinic.” He turned the computer screen toward her.

The email was brief and from a Hotmail server. Her bureau analyst, Gunter Havi, could probably trace it. She forwarded it to him before opening the attachment. The list of names looked as though it had been copied and pasted out of a database and into a text-only document. She scanned down, noticing four checkmarks, three that corresponded to the men in the morgue. An asterisk floated next to Taylor Lopez’s name. If this was a scam, it was elaborate and inexplicable.

“Thirty-three,” Jake offered.

“Any idea why these men were targeted?”

“They seem to have an obsession with fire. That’s the only common trait we could find.”

Pyromaniacs?
Was that an unexpected side effect of the medication? This case grew stranger by the minute. A wild thought hit her. If the military was involved, the project could be nationwide, making it nearly impossible to uncover or halt. Their goals might even be in the best interest of the country. They probably thought they were. If not for the murdered receptionist and the missing woman, Bailey might be tempted to walk away from this investigation. But this case was more challenging and complex than anything she’d encountered in the bureau yet, and she rarely backed down. Ego wouldn’t let her. The worst that could happen was a bullet to her head, and she didn’t fear death. Once she was gone, she wouldn’t know. All she had was this moment, and a burning need to know what was so important the army had invested twenty-one years in the project.

The fourth marked name was a priority too. “Seth Wozac,” she read, looking up at Wilson. “Do you know anything about him?”

“I located Seth yesterday in the hospital. He had hurt himself, but that’s another story.” Jake ran his hands through his shaggy hair, face tightening. “The assassin followed us from the hospital and came to Seth’s door. We got lucky and a dog attacked him.” Wilson let out a harsh laugh. “Saved by an ugly boxer. Plus the neighbor who called the police. The assassin fled, but I’m sure he’s still out there, waiting for me or Seth to surface.”

“Where is Wozac?”

“I’m not sure. He went to stay with a friend who lived nearby.” Wilson gave a sympathetic shake of his head. “I don’t think Seth is rational. He performed surgery on himself to remove a uterus from his body.”

Holy shit.
“And he’s walking around?”

“He shouldn’t be.”

An addict?
Sometimes meth or PCP users did insane things that might kill a normal person. Maybe Wozac was just mentally ill. She would ask the bureau to locate and protect him if they could. The uterus inside the man’s body was intriguing, and she hoped to question Wozac before this was over. “Any word from Lopez?”

Wilson shook his head. “What’s your plan?”

Bailey knew he was asking about how she intended to find his girlfriend, but that effort was a long shot. She couldn’t offer false comfort. “You said you went to the clinic. What else did you discover?”

The reporter stared at her for a long moment, and she realized he was attractive in a scruffy way. He was also holding back. “Did you steal files?”

A lengthy pause. “I downloaded information.”

“Show me.” Why wait for a subpoena if this guy already had what she needed?

Wilson turned the computer back to himself, pressed a couple of keys, then showed her the monitor again. “These are women who went to the clinic for prenatal care in 1995. Their files are coded, and there’s a reference to ImmuNatal. I think it’s a drug. Taylor’s mother took it, and so did the others. But I can’t find any information about the drug online.”

Intriguing.
Bailey scanned through several files, noting the coding. NPIN, NPST, and APST. The meaning of the last two groups of letters seemed obvious. IN meant ImmuNatal, and ST indicated Standard. A group that received the test drug versus a control group that got standard care. The NP/AP reference came to her a moment later. Normal pregnancy and abnormal pregnancy. More important, Charles Metzler, appeared consistently as the physician for women who took ImmuNatal.

“I want a copy of these files and the list.” She dug a flash drive out of her bag and handed it to Wilson. “Any idea where to locate Dr. Metzler?” It was worth asking. Wilson seemed resourceful.