37
Freddy Hagerman was used to cold trails, but this one had gone cold as a penguin’s ass. If it wasn’t for pure stubbornness, he would have given up a long time ago. Of course, knowing that he wouldn’t have a job to go back to if he didn’t come up with something had added a little extra motivation. Even so, amidst all the glowing interviews with the Rondham Institute staff and follow-ups with the cancer survivors, he had almost missed it.
Of the thirty-eight experimental subjects, he had tracked down all but one, a fourteen-year-old boy named Billy Randall. By all reports, Billy had been every bit as successful in his recovery as any of the other patients. But tragically, he and his entire family had been killed in an automobile accident on their drive back to Arizona, after his release from the institute. The horror of the news had shaken the small community of Wickenburg, Arizona, to its core.
The entire town had planned a welcome-home celebration, complete with banners and a parade. Instead, the collision between the family Taurus and a semi-truck just outside Barstow, California, had left the bodies so disfigured that the people of Wickenburg were left to bury three sealed caskets.
The thing that had attracted Freddy’s attention was the Barstow medical examiner’s report. Containing a detailed description of the fatal injuries suffered by each member of the Randall family, the report was well ordered and typical. It had taken Freddy three passes through it before he could place a cause for the feeling of wrongness.
All three family members had suffered fatal head injuries as several pipes from the semi’s load had penetrated into the car’s passenger compartment. Everything was thoroughly described in the report. There was absolutely nothing unusual about it.
There was only one problem with that. The car had been carrying one very unusual young man who had been injected with nanites derived from Rho Project research. Freddy had read Priest William’s journal, had seen the evidence of what those nanites could do. And even if these people should have been killed instantly, those microscopic machines didn’t just give up without trying to repair broken bodies. There should have been signs of unnatural healing on Billy’s corpse, even if that healing had not saved his life. But the report contained no mention of anything unusual about the boy’s mortal wounds.
Freddy straightened his aching back and looked up. It was unbelievable how many stars you could see at 2:00 a.m. in the high desert of Arizona, especially on a night with no moon. Well, staring at the stars wasn’t going to give him his answers.
Freddy stomped down, driving the shovel deep into the soft dirt. There was no way around it. He was going to have to see Billy Randall for himself.