“What brought you to me?” He carded his fingers through wiry salt-and-pepper hair with an energy that seemed less nerves and more the fire of a man with a cause. “Outside certain academic circles you don’t hear Hooker’s name much anymore. He’s been a forgotten man since he dropped out of the public eye.” Setting his mouth grimly, he amended, “Forgotten except by me.”
I leaned back, sprawling with casual comfort in my best imitation of a seasoned journalist. “I read a whole stack of books. Well, skimmed them—most were thicker than the phone book. Some had articles that quoted your opinion on your former colleague. He was quite the bad boy of genetics, according to you. It seemed like a good look back, what with all the cloning brouhaha being pretty much over now and the stem-cell matter being the new target.” Michael had donned his glasses again, but I could see the humor in his eyes. I would bet he thought he would never see a pretentious word like brouhaha pass my lips—junior high detention had been proctored by our librarian. As for taking credit for his research, I was sure I’d pay for that later on.
“Colleague.” Bellucci tasted the word and found it bitter from the twist of his lips. “Try friend. The son of a bitch was my friend.”
“And what changed that?” I opened the notebook and fixed him with an expectant and sympathetic gaze. From the feel of the contortion that sent my face into, as with my smile, I should’ve practiced the expression in a mirror first.
“Two words. Human experimentation.” He enunciated the last so clearly, I could hear the pause between each syllable.
“He experimented on people?” I didn’t have to fake outrage. It wasn’t precisely news, but my fury hadn’t faded since day one of discovering what that maniac was up to at the Institute.
“It wasn’t quite as simple as that,” Bellucci denied, beating a tattoo with his fingers on the arm of the chair he’d chosen. “He started on himself. You’re familiar with his rare genetic makeup? That he’s a chimera?” At my nod, he continued. “He wanted to prove something that simply wasn’t true. And when he couldn’t, he decided to make it true.” Sighing, he got to his feet and paced across a rug brilliant with a jungle print. Candy-colored birds and cheetahs peeked from emerald green foliage. “But he couldn’t. Chimeras are nothing more than people with a little extra DNA. He wouldn’t accept that, though, and that’s when he started with the pregnant girls.”
Apparently Jericho had held back more than the true nature of the experiment to Bellucci. He also hadn’t revealed his healing abilities. “Pregnant?”
He nodded with a grimace. “He figured if he could accomplish the manipulation he had in mind in utero, it would be merely a series of extrapolations to achieving the same in those already fully formed.”
“And what exactly were the accomplishments he hoped to make?” I doodled something on the pad, nonsense basically, to give the impression I was actually taking notes.
“Faster, smarter, stronger.” There was a pained crease between his eyebrows. I wondered what would happen to that deepened line if he knew the “improvements” Jericho had actually ended up making instead. “Nonsense, all of it.” He sat back down and tapped a toe restlessly on the floor. “They were volunteers. He did pay them money. They knew more or less what he was doing to the fetuses, what little they could understand, but the women were poor . . . desperate. Many of them were drug users, which didn’t precisely lend any kind of credence to the experiment results, human trial violations aside.”
“Then what the hell was he thinking?” I asked for appearance’s sake. I knew precisely what he’d been thinking, and science had been only half of it. “No one would touch him or his work after he was found out. He had to know that.”
“You would think.” Shaking his head, he repeated with a soft incredulity unfaded by time. “You would think.” He stood and walked to the expanse of windows to stare blindly at the rain. “John was the most determined person I’d ever met . . . will ever meet. He truly didn’t believe there was anything in the world he couldn’t do if only he wanted it badly enough. Maybe he thought he was too smart to be found out. Maybe he thought the ends justified the means. Maybe he was completely out of his mind.” His shoulders hitched in a dismissive motion. “Could be all three. We’ll never know.”