The Ripper Gene
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For Jennifer, Michael, and Chloe
First and foremost I would like to thank my publisher, Tom Doherty, for ultimately enabling all of this to happen. I would also like to thank my senior editor, Bob Gleason, who has believed in me for a long time and who ultimately took me under his wing in so many ways and has really given me the chance to become a bona fide novelist. I’d like to thank Kelly Quinn and Elayne Becker at Tor-Forge for their support and answers to my endless questions as a new author. And I would like to thank all of the wonderful people at Tor-Forge who absolutely epitomize publishing as art. I am forever indebted to Tor-Forge for giving me this opportunity.
I’d also like to thank all of my friends and colleagues at literally hundreds of different pharmaceutical companies, biotech start-ups, diagnostic manufacturers, academic centers, and even government agencies (you know who you are) who have spoken with me about the science in my present and future books, and who have always encouraged and supported my writing aspirations over the years. I especially thank Jonathan Day for relentlessly arranging a fateful meeting with the ever-gracious Doug Preston, who introduced me to my wonderful friend and future agent, Susan Gleason.
I freely and happily acknowledge that I’m deeply indebted to Susan for believing in me for so many years before we convinced anyone else in the rest of the world to give this book a chance. And I look forward to many more lunches and drinks in Manhattan at Harry’s as we discuss our current and future plans! Those meetings often keep me going when the workload seems too great.
I’d also like to thank the organizers and members of several writing organizations who over the years have enabled venues and workshops that have helped me and other beginning writers in our craft, most notably ThrillerFest, the Author’s Guild, and Mystery Writers of America. Your support of writers and writing is invaluable and does not go unappreciated. At the same time I’d like to thank several of the SACs (special agents in charge) at the New York FBI field office for providing their time and valuable insights into their day-to-day activities and realities of life as an FBI agent. Their dedication is truly admirable, and they deserve to be main characters in books like these!
I thank my mother for her strict insistence on grammatical correctness when I was young, and my father for passing along his wisdom and incredible humility over the years. I’m just beginning to appreciate it. Thanks to my sister and brother as well, who I will not humiliate in my acknowledgments this time around. I also must thank so many close friends over the years who have intimately known me and my books and discussed them with me at length, and my current friends, especially those in Kinnelon, many of whom went so far as to read my manuscript and give me the feedback that at times propelled me to the finish line. Again, there are too many of you to name, so you know who you are, and I am indebted to you.
I also thank my wife, Jennifer, and my children, Michael and Chloe, for believing in me, for encouraging me, and for simply always being there for me on this incredible journey. I’m indebted to you forever and love you more than words can say.
For those of you who are interested in the controversial and intriguing scientific premise of
The Ripper Gene
, there are many scientific publications in the literature, but I would recommend
The Anatomy of Violence
by Dr. Adrian Raine, a colleague of mine who is a full-time professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Finally, to stay in touch with me, I would ask each and every person who finds the premise and/or the story here interesting to leave me some feedback at
www.MichaelRansomBooks.com
, and I will get back to you. I’m already looking forward to our next writing-reading endeavor together, and wish you all happy trails (and reads) until then!
He who himself begins to loathe,
grows sick in flesh and spirit both.
—THEODORE ROETHKE
HALLOWEEN 1983
CROSSROADS, MISSISSIPPI
Every Halloween the ladies from Crossroads Baptist took us to different church members’ houses for trick-or-treating so no razor blades, rat poison, or liquid Drano would end up in our candy. My mother was always one of the chaperones, and that night she rode in the front seat of Mrs. Callahan’s station wagon with us.
The car rolled steadily beneath swaying fingers of Spanish moss as we left the swamps. Glowing faces floated in the backseat around me as we bounced over the rutted, gravel road. A ghost, a cowboy, a ballerina, a ghoul. One kid even wore a devil mask beside me.
I wore a knight’s costume, replete with a wooden sword and a breastplate of armor made from an aluminum trash can. The lid served as my shield.
Mara, my twelve-year-old girlfriend, sat beside me. She was dressed like a princess, a silver tiara glinting atop her raven-black hair in the moonlight. We’d stolen a kiss in the bathroom of the church basement earlier, during the apple-bobbing contest. There, in the darkness of the backseat, I could still taste the cinnamon from her glossed lips. The memory of kissing her, somehow finding her mouth with my own in that dark and forbidden bathroom, had sent pulsating waves of excitement through my young torso for the entire night.
We continued along the gravel roads, not speaking, just stealing glances in the moonlight. No man-made lights or lampposts punctuated the pine-choked countryside surrounding us. Out the windows a million stars spread across the Milky Way like a white paint explosion on a midnight-blue canvas.
Just as Mara leaned toward me to finally speak, the car slammed to a halt, screeching in the gravel and sliding a good twenty feet on the road. All the kids toppled to the floorboard and after a moment’s silence, Mrs. Callahan’s voice whispered in the dark. “Oh my God. What’s that?”
I poked my head above the backseat just as my mother replied, the thick curls of her black hair spilling over the seat and filling my view. “Oh, just some young boys horsing around up there. Wait. Is that blood, Margie? Drive on up.”
Mrs. Callahan shifted into drive, but didn’t take her foot off the brake. “Probably just a Halloween prank, Mrs. Madden. We best go on around.” Mrs. Callahan’s eyes were so intensely focused ahead that I craned my neck away from my mother’s hair to follow her gaze.
Two teenage boys, both in white T-shirts and jeans, stood illuminated on the road ahead. One of them turned toward us, shielding his eyes with a hand, the front of his T-shirt stained a deep red. A moment later the other boy staggered and fell sideways into the shallow ditch along the far side of the road.
“Margie, I think they’re really hurt,” my mother said. “Maybe they were in a car wreck.”
Mrs. Callahan’s eyes narrowed and her voice fell to a growl. “Ain’t no cars around here, Mrs. Madden. Why don’t we just go to the next house and call an ambulance?”
I inhaled the air behind my mother’s hair. She used Prell, and her hair smelled just like the green liquid in the bottle. She faced Mrs. Callahan, but caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye and cupped my chin in her hand as she spoke. “It wouldn’t be Christian, Margie. Drive on up, and I’ll roll down the window and ask them what happened. Go on.”
Mrs. Callahan eyed my mother as if to speak, but instead released the brake and we rolled slowly forward in the night, approaching the boys. The one boy still lay facedown in the ditch, unmoving. The other one stumbled at the edge of the road, moving in circles back and forth as though tracing the symbol for infinity.
My mother rolled down her window.
The boy who was still standing was crying. His blond hair hung in front of his face, and he whined, “Help us, please. There’s another boy on the other side of the hill. He ain’t moving, either. We had an accident. We were riding motorcycles.”
My mother unlocked and opened her door. “Margie. You stay with the children—” she began, but Mrs. Callahan’s hand shot across the seat and clutched my mother by the sleeve of her white sweater.
“Mrs. Madden. Really. I don’t know.”
My mother leaned back inside and smiled. But it wasn’t the genuine kind; it was the kind she always used whenever she was about to end a conversation. I knew it, and Mrs. Callahan knew it, too.
“Margie, these boys are hurt,” she said, “and I’m a nurse. It’s the only thing I can do. Y’all go on up to Nellie’s. Call nine-one-one and the ambulance. Then call Jonathan and let him know I’m all right. Leave the children at Nellie’s for the time being. When the police get there, bring them here. We’ll be waiting right here on the side of the road. Hopefully that poor boy in the woods isn’t hurt too bad.”
“Mama,” I said.
“Hush. Go on up with Mrs. Callahan and I’ll help these boys, then I’ll see you and daddy up at the house. I love you, Lucas.”
* * *
The memory always goes fuzzy then. The next thing I remember is my mother’s face receding into the dark woods as Mrs. Callahan drives away. I press my face against the glass of the window, a tear trickling for some reason over my cheek as the one bloodied boy holds my mother’s wrist and leads her into the overgrown grass and small trees. My mother looks back at me one last time, smiling the way only women can, the one that’s sad and frightened and turned in the wrong direction but is supposed to reassure you that everything will be fine.
It’s the last time I’ll ever see my mother’s face.
They disappear into the woods.
And just before our station wagon crests the hill, I see the other previously mortally wounded boy suddenly stand up in the ditch, not looking at all as sick and hurt as he’d appeared before. He looks furtively about to make sure no one is watching, then runs into the woods, sneaking behind my mother and her bloodied companion.
I wrestle and thrash in the car, begging Mrs. Callahan to stop, until she finally screams at the top of her voice, swearing at me with a stream of profanities that stun us all into silence, screaming at me to be quiet because I’m scaring the other children. She drives faster and I can still hear the sounds of children crying all around me as the dark forest envelops the empty gravel road behind us, separating me farther and farther from my mother, forever.