“Now,listen to me,” he gasped. “We are on the verge of a huge breakthrough here. Synthetic bone, stronger and tougher than the real thing, created by combining CT images and composite materials and computer-controlled production equipment. Surely you, of all people, can understand the importance. We’re so close, Bill. Almost close enough to fool even you.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me this was the point of the research, Glen? I would have done all I could to help.”
“Because he was greedy,” said another voice. Raymond Sinclair stepped from behind the scanner, just as I’d done moments earlier. But unlike me, Sinclair was holding a gun in one hand. “He didn’t want to share the glory, and he didn’t want to share the money. It’s a billion-dollar revenue stream, isn’t that right, Glen?”
“Get out of here, Ray,” Faust snapped. “Now.Leave while you still can.”
I stared at them, finally realizing that underneath the surface tension I’d witnessed between them there was a bond of complicity. “You supply tissue for his research,” I said to Sinclair. “You sent him bodies and parts from a Knoxville funeral home you talked about buying.” Neither of them denied it. “You bastards,” I said. “You’re like two sides of the same bad coin. Black-market bodies and stolen bones.”
“You hear that, Glen? We’re both bastards,” said Sinclair. “Not just me. All our lives, you’ve rubbed my nose in the difference between us. You were the real son; I was the halfway version. But your precious Dr. Brockton’s right: We’re both bastards. Two sides of the same coin.”
“Our circumstances were different,” said Faust. “That wasn’t your fault, but it wasn’t mine either. It was our father’s. Put down the gun, Ray. You don’t have to shoot him. Just get out of here.”
“It’s too late for that,” Sinclair said to Faust, and then—to me—he added, “He wasn’t stealing the bones, Billy boy, he was putting themback. ”
I was struggling to keep up. “Putting them back? Why would he be putting them back?”
“Because he’d gotten everything he needed from them, right, Glen? Because he likes to think of himself as one of the good guys, right, Glen?” Sinclair waved the gun at Faust. “Get off him.”
Faust released my arms and got to his feet. “Ray, listen,” he said. “If you walk away now, you can get out of here and get a fresh start someplace else.”
“It’s so touching,” said Sinclair, “all this brotherly love and brotherly wisdom. Do you have a big brother, Bill? A half brother? Doesn’t that term, ‘half brother,’ sum up the genetics and the dynamics of it perfectly? It’d be wrong to con a full brother into robbing graves and committing crimes, but it’s okay if he’s only a half brother, right, Glen?”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Faust. “I thought that together we could do great things.”
“No, you thoughtyou could do great things, and you were willing to use me along the way. You were the beloved son, the golden boy, the stuff of medical school and engineering school. I was the bastard child, the dirty little secret your father never acknowledged. When I finally tried to join the family, you used me to do your dirty work. I got to get blood on my hands so you wouldn’t have to.”
“You didn’t have to kill that embalmer, Ray. You panicked.”
“Easy for you to say, Glen. You weren’t the one who’d helped him dismember one body and steal another. You weren’t the one about to take a fall.”
“We could have worked something out with him.”
“Bullshit, brother. That’s twenty-twenty hindsight and hundred-percent bullshit. I had a split second to make a decision, and you weren’t there to help me make it.”
“But I’m here now,” Faust said. “Let me help you make this decision. Dr. Brockton’s a good man. He does good work.”
“Helping the cops catch killers? Helping them catch scum like me?”
“Walk away, Ray. Give me the gun and get out of here. We’ll wait an hour, and then I’ll turn myself in. I’ll confess to the Roswell murder.”
Sinclair laughed bitterly. “Nice try, but you know it wouldn’t work. You’ve got an airtight alibi, remember? You were off delivering some keynote speech at Johns Hopkins or the Mayo Clinic when I tried to call you that night.”