The Memory Killer

“I’ll run the sample back,” I said. “You go fill in your dance card.”

He trotted to the desk, me to the lab, a maze of offices opening to a wide expanse of tables topped with microscopes, centrifuges, computer monitors and the like. A large overhead door opened to the lot, useful when entire vehicles had to be inspected. I stopped at the day-officer’s cubbyhole and was pleased to see Deb Clayton. I tossed the bagged tissue on the desk.

“Part of the rapist case, right?” she said. “You want results in a couple hours?”

“Take your time, Deb. It’s gonna be exculpatory.” I explained the circumstances.

“This happen much?” Gershwin asked, stepping into the room. “A mix-up?”

Deb leaned her small frame against a table. “Big testing labs handle thousands of samples daily. Sometime whole batches get screwed up.”

“What if it got mixed up at the test site?” Gershwin asked. “At the university.”

“Happens less often, since protocols tend to be tighter. But it’s a possibility.”

I saw where Gershwin was going: instead of thousands of candidates for the mix-up, it might be dozens.

“Let’s head to the U,” I said.

Medically oriented studies were handled, naturally, by the medical department, a complex of buildings with related disciplines. We were directed to the Office of Experimental Research and entered a room looking more business than academe: russet carpet, peach walls hung with color-coordinated abstracts, a half-dozen chairs along the wall.

We announced ourselves to a receptionist and wandered the office, footsteps suctioned into the soft cushion of carpet. Dr Marla Roth appeared seconds later, a slim woman in her late fifties with short and graying hair and intelligent brown eyes that stared over the tops of half-circle reading glasses. When we produced badges she hid the surprise and led us down a short hall to her office, more cluttered than the entrance, three walls holding bookshelves arrayed with binders. Her voice was warm, but precise, like a friendly accountant. She directed us to sit, and I outlined the reason for our visit.

“Yes,” she said. “I was in charge of that survey. May I ask what you’re looking for?”

I gave her the Reader’s Digest version and she frowned, probably at the implication of a mistake. She went to a shelf, fingers flicking over files until pulling one and bringing it to her desk.

“Since you’re alluding to a potential mix-up in our process, I want to be exact.” She read for a minute, looked up over the glasses. “The study involved two phases. The first was purely observational, accruing data from participants ranging from moderately to morbidly obese. Eligibility criteria included repeated attempts to lose twenty per cent or more of body mass, but failing. A major percentage of those who lose that much weight regain it within two years.”

“Were you looking at factors other than obesity?”

“Psychological factors were a second eligibility requirement. Participants depressed by the inability to shed weight, with resultant problems. Insecurity, self-directed anger, that sort of thing. If you’d attempted suicide because of weight-related issues, you were automatically chosen. Group therapy was part of the study, both moderated and off-site, much like AA meetings.”

“What was phase two?”

“That was more quantitative and involved study of caloric intake and so forth. That’s when the DNA sampling was done, the intent being to determine whether obesity has genetic markers.”

“Who sponsored the testing?”

“The National Institutes of Health. Total enrollment was one hundred fifty-seven, males and female, about equally split.”

I looked at Gershwin. We could eliminate the females from the study, obviously. But investigating seventy-five potential suspects was a huge task.

“May I ask the name of the person you’re talking about?” Roth asked.

“Gary Ocampo,” I said. One name in seventy-five. “Do you recall him?”

A brisk nod. “Gary was as troubled as he was intelligent – and he’s very smart. He used self-deprecating humor to mask very deep insecurities, the result of a rather nasty childhood as well as a lifetime of being mocked about his weight. As with most of our larger participants, we did the tests and interviews at his home. For the support-group work he had to come to our facility. He was hesitant at first, but something changed and he really got into it.”

My breath stopped. Had we caught a break?

“How is sampling accomplished?” I asked.

“A nurse hands the patients a swab and explains how to gather material from between gum and inner cheek. The swab is immediately put into a vial and labeled with name and patient code. One swab, one pre-labeled vial. Swab to volunteer, to mouth, to nurse, to vial. No way to make a mistake.”

I sighed, the precise chain-of-custody not what I’d wanted, hoping the nurse tossed Ocampo’s spitty swab into a purse with a half-dozen others and didn’t think to label them until getting back to the U. I thanked Roth and stood to leave.

“Happy to help,” she said. “By the way, how much does Gary weigh these days?”

“About five hundred pounds.”

She looked down at her records and brightened. “Five hundred? Wonderful.”

“Why wonderful?”

“He must have gotten motivated. He’s lost over a hundred fifty pounds.”

13

Patrick White sat at the desk in his apartment, its surface covered with books: Gray’s Anatomy, Human Musculature, Medical-Surgical Nursing. An ironing board was opened at his back, three fresh-pressed nursing uniforms hanging from the board. Music played at low volume, études by Debussy. Outside his window the setting sun had turned the sky into layers of purple and orange.

Patrick’s cell shivered an incoming call. He studied the caller’s name and rolled his eyes.

“Hi, Billy,” he said. “What’s happening?”

“You going to Kevin’s birthday party on Saturday, Nurse Goodbody?”

“Hunh-uh. Gotta study.”

“Bitch. All you do is work anymore.”

Patrick leaned back and tossed his pencil on a book. He spun his head in a circle to loosen his neck. “I have to hit the books, Billy. Got a major anatomy final next week.”

“If Kevin’s party is like last year’s, you’ll see lots of anatomy.” A wicked chuckle. “Take notes.”

“If Kevin’s party is like last year’s, I’ll have a two-day hangover. Can’t do it.”

“Gawd … when did you get so serious? Listen, a few of us are going to the Grotto tonight, just a few drinkies. Here’s an idea: close the fucking book and grab your pretty ass.”

Pictures of the Grotto flashed through Patrick’s head: dark corners, flashing lights, splashing drinks and sweaty dancing bodies, eyes scoping from every direction. It was a pick-up bar, raw sex seeping from the dingy, paint-peeling walls, the bathroom air bitter with the scent of amyl nitrite, any conversation quashed under waves of bass-heavy dance tunes.

The Grotto was Billy’s kind of place, but not Patrick’s. Not any more.

“I’m not doing the Grotto, Billy. No way.”

“You want a study break, Nurse White, have a real one.”

“How about D’Artagnan’s instead?” Patrick said.

“Oh, puh-lease,” Prestwick pouted. “Darts is so lame. All people do there is talk.”

“I’ll go to Darts, Billy. Not the Grotto.”

“Oh, all right, little Miss Picky. if you’re not there, I’m gonna strangle you with your own stethoscope.”

Patrick flipped the textbook closed. “I’ll see you around nine, Billy. But when the clock strikes ten-thirty …”

“You’ll become a pumpkin and mice will pull you home. Buh-byeee.”

Gershwin and I were grabbing a fast taco from a downtown street vendor when word arrived that Gary Ocampo’s DNA sample was running through the new machine and the results were nearly analyzed. We used the siren to move traffic aside and I think there were a couple times I cornered on two wheels.

At the lab we found Roy frowning at the ceiling, arms crossed as his fingers twitched the need for a cigar. Deb Clayton had turned away to take a phone call.

“Who is it?” Gershwin asked Roy.

Roy shook his head. “You ain’t gonna believe it.”

“Out with it,” I said. “Who’s the perp?”

“The DNA says it’s Gary Ocampo,” Roy said, passing me the printout of test results. “Still.”

“No way,” I said, staring at the report. “No way in hell.”

“The perp’s DNA matches Ocampo’s DNA,” Roy said. “Somehow your quarter-ton comic-book salesman has abducted and assaulted at least two healthy men.”

Gershwin thought a moment, snapped his fingers. “Maybe Ocampo’s got some crazy accomplice who’s … it’s too weird.”

“What?”

“Squirting Ocampo’s juice into the victims. Ocampo jacks off and puts it in a turkey baster. The rapist …”

Roy held up a hand. “Let’s wait for Deb to get off the phone before we spin off the planet. She’s checking with a DNA expert.”

She hung up and turned to us. “It can’t be Ocampo, Deb,” I said, feeling like the world was upside-down. “There is no way the guy could assault anyone.”

“Yet it’s his DNA, Carson,” she said, a twinkle in her eyes. “And at the same time, it isn’t. Ever study biology?”

A long-ago memory interceded. I slapped my forehead.

“What?” Roy said, cigar-denied fingers twitching like he was typing.

“He’s a twin,” I said. “Ocampo’s got an identical twin.”

We were back at Gary’s Fantasy World in twenty minutes, the time almost nine o’clock, the shop window bright against the dark. Ocampo was sitting and tapping at a laptop, setting it aside as we entered. The room had recently been dosed with a pine-scented air freshener, but nothing removes the undertone of too much body in too little space.

I pulled a chair to his bedside. “You have a brother, right, Mr Ocampo? An identical twin.”

Ocampo’s mouth dropped open. “How on earth can you know that?”

“I, uh … took another sample of your DNA yesterday – a tissue. Legal, but perhaps a bit, uh, covert.”

He frowned and I feared another verbal assault. Instead, he crossed his arms in justification and arced an eyebrow. “What does that have to do with my brother?”

“Your DNA still matches the samples taken from the victims.”

“What?”

“There’s only one answer: the DNA came from your brother. Do you have any idea where he is?”

Ocampo looked like I was speaking backwards and he had to translate my words into forward. “Wait … what you mean is … you’re saying my brother, Donnie Ocampo, is the one doing these terrible things? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Beyond a doubt. Your brother’s name is Donnie?”

Ocampo nodded. “It was. I guess it still is.”

“He changed his name?” I asked, puzzled.

“Donnie died a week after he was born, Detective,” he said quietly. “He’s been dead for over three decades.”

14

Gershwin and I extracted as much information as possible from a confused and distracted Ocampo. He was born in a Texas border town, his father dead by the time Ocampo hit the world. He hadn’t known about the brother for years, until one day a drunken and teary-eyed mother spoke of a dead twin. At first he’d disbelieved the story as an alcoholic’s mutterings, but his mother had produced photos of two babies on a bed – home birth by a midwife – and the two children as exactly alike as, well, identical twins.

There was only one thing to do: go to the town of the Ocampo’s birth and check the records. Though Ocampo had lived the first ten years of his childhood in Laredo, Texas, he had been born across the border in Mexico, Nuevo Laredo. I took it that his father was a Filipino who’d been working a construction project in the town when Ms Ocampo went into labor. I also took it that Ocampo’s father only worked sporadically owing to a problem with alcohol.

Two alcoholic parents, I thought. No wonder the guy’s got problems.

“So there are these four boys in a gay bar and they’re arguing about who has the longest dick …”

Gerry Holcomb moaned. “Gawd, not again.”

Billy Prestwick reached across the table and slapped at Holcomb. “Don’t stop me if you’ve heard it. Just shut uuuup.”

Patrick leaned back in the upholstered booth. The place was half full, the crowd older and more professional, more paired. Several men wore suits or sport jackets from a day at a bank or ad agency. A couple of dykosauruses sat at the bar, rugged-looking women in their fifties, drinking shots and beers and grumbling about jai-alai teams. The bartender, a tall and balding man with a beret and a John Waters mustache, cradled a phone to his neck as he polished his nails with an emery board.

“The boys have been arguing about their dicks for like ten minutes,” Prestwick continued, pushing silver-blond hair from his eyes, his long arms pale and slender and in constant flittering motion. “They’re getting louder and more obstreperous and—”

“Ob-what?” Ben Timmons said.

“Ob-strep-er-ous, you illiterate slut. Buy a dictionary. So finally the bartender gets fed up and says he’ll settle the argument once and for all and to drop their pants and slap their dicks on the bar …”

Bobby Fenton grinned and fanned at his crotch. “You mean put them on the bar and really slap them?”

“Shut up, bitch, I’m telling the joke. The bartender tells the boys to drop trou and set their penises on the bar. So one by one the boys slide their jeans to their knees, scrunch up to the bar, and lay their doodles across it, pulling them out as far as they can. Just then, a guy walks in the door, glances down the bar, and yells, ‘I’ll have the buffet!’”

Moans and groans. Fenton said, “I’m gone. Some of us have to work in the morning.” Timmons said the same and he and Holcomb filed from the booth to back pats and air kisses until it was just Billy and Patrick standing outside the booth. Billy put his arm around Patrick’s shoulder and pulled him close. His breath was dense with tequila from a half-dozen margaritas.

“So there’s this guy comes out of a bar after drinking beer for three hours …”

“I heard it, Billy.”

“Shush! Not tonight you haven’t. The drunk staggers to an intersection, unzips his fly and yanks out his wand. Just then a cop runs up and says, ‘Hold on, mister, you can’t piss here.’”

Patrick crossed his arms and waited. Billy affected a drunken voice and pretended to aim a penis at the far horizon. “‘I ain’t gonna pissh here, occifer,’ the drunk says. ‘I’m gonna pissh way … over … there.’”

“It was funny the first three times,” Patrick yawned. “Four, maybe.”

“Gawd, Patrick,” Prestwick moaned. “Lighten up while I go way … over … there and take a piss.”

Prestwick started toward the bathroom, stopped when Patrick grabbed his arm and pointed at Prestwick’s half-filled glass, sitting on the edge of the table.

“You left your drink, Billy. What have I been telling everyone?”

Prestwick affected ignorance. “Don’t lay your doodle on bars?”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Uh, lemme see … Don’t leave drinkies unattended?”

“I mean it, Billy. Never let your glass out of your sight.”

Prestwick picked up the remainder of his drink, drained it away in a single chug, set it back on the table upside-down. He shot Patrick a wink, mouthed, “Thanks, mummy,” and ambled toward the bathroom tapping at his phone to check the barrage of tweets and Instagrams and Facebook updates. He walked into a barstool, corrected, re-aimed for the dark hall holding the bathrooms.

Patrick sighed, used to Billy’s hip-swinging sashays down a sidewalk, the vocal trills for emphasis, the bottomless supply of jokes. Patrick knew that somewhere in the twelve years since they’d met in high school, he had become an adult. He wondered if Billy ever would.

At times Billy showed flashes of adulthood, of introspection, moments in which he realized that his youth and looks were a finite commodity, and though they carried him now, the passage was growing briefer. But such moments were always transient, the span of a meteor across the night sky, as minutes later Billy was ordering another round, or leaving to “comfort” an older man who would repay Billy with one or another generosity, or sometimes just a fistful of cash.

“Come on, buddy,” Patrick whispered to Billy’s retreating back. “Grow up.”

Prestwick entered the bathroom and relieved himself from two feet away, allowing him to splash his initials on the rear of the urinal. He zipped up and turned to the mirror to check the magic.

A face appeared over his shoulder.

“Hello, Billy,” the face said.

Billy spun. “Uh, do I know you, dear?”

“It’s been a long time. You are Billy Prestwick, right?”

“Now you don’t know?” Billy said.

The face didn’t reply. It just stared, as if amused.

“Yes,” Billy said. What did this thing want? “I’m me.”

“And the man you’re sitting across from …” the face continued, like filling in a space on a crossword. “The fellow with the brown hair. That’s uh … lemme see if I can remember …”

Billy hated memory games. “Patrick, Patrick White. You know him, too?”

“Just briefly.”

Billy frowned. “When did we meet?”

“You really don’t remember me?”

“Of course I do, dear, I’m just so poor at names.” Billy also hated guess-where-we-met games. He reached out to touch the man’s shoulder but something made him stop short of contact. “Listen, dearie, great to see you again and all, but I’ve got a par-tay I’ve got to get to.”

The man nodded and smiled like he knew something Billy didn’t.

“Yes … there’s a party waiting for you, Billy.”

The man turned toward a urinal, unzipped as he walked. Billy started to wash his hands but suddenly realized he didn’t want to be in the bathroom any longer and stepped toward the door.

Patrick watched Billy exit the restroom and walk quickly to the table, his pale face frowning he glanced backward toward the dark hall that led to the bathroom.

“You look strange,” Patrick said. “You OK, Billy?”

“It’s nothing. I just saw a guy who knew me. He kinda looked familiar, but …”

Patrick looked toward the bathroom. The guy was either burrowing in for the long haul or had booked out the back door. “Probably someone you met at a party when you were drunk. How often does that happen, Billy?”

Prestwick grabbed at his bag, missed the strap, got it on the second try and slid it over a boney shoulder poking from a purple tank-top with a sequined target centering the chest. “Don’t be a nag, Nurse White.”

“Where you going?” Patrick asked.

Rolled eyes. “My gawd, Patrick … between you and the thing in the pisser I’m playing Twenty Questions tonight.”

“Someone’s gotta worry about you, Billy. Tell me where you’re headed.”

A flash of guilt was quickly replaced by a lopsided grin.

“I gotta date, sweetums. Kind of.”

Patrick frowned. “Someone you know, right? Someone safe?”

Billy shuffled through his bag, arranging phone and iPad, make-up and spare underwear. Patrick knew it as Billy’s avoidance move, and pressed forward.

“Come on, Billy. It’s someone you know, right? Not a stranger?”

“Oh, almost. He’s like a friend of a friend, just some old bear who likes to sit on his Miami Beach veranda and tell tales about the old days, Stonewall and the Castro and whatever. I’ve heard that he’s sweet and harmless and …”

“And might give you a loan you don’t have to repay?”

“I make sweet old men feel young for a few hours. I think of it as charity work. You flying back to Kansas?”

Patrick nodded to the half-mug of ale. “Two sips and I’m outta here.”

Prestwick affected a thousand-watt grin, teetering slightly in his burgundy loafers. “You’ll be running that place, one day. Head Nurse Patrick White, Queen of All the Bedpans.”

Patrick sighed. “You’re taking a cab, right, Billy?”

“My white knight.” Prestwick kissed Patrick’s temple. “Yes, girlfriend. I’m cabbing. Buh-byee!” He started for the door, but was stopped by an invisible force. Turning back to Patrick, without a word he wrapped him in a hug so tight Patrick imagined he felt the beating of Billy’s heart.

“Thank you, dear,” Billy whispered. “Thank you for caring.”

“Some of us do, Billy. We get worried about … about where you’re going. Where you’ll be five years from now.”

Billy stood back with a quiet smile verging on sadness. He flicked a comma of hair from Patrick’s forehead.

“Goodness, Patrick, so existential all of a sudden.”

“You’re smart and talented, Billy. Stop wasting it and use it to do something, go somewhere.”

Billy blew out a breath. His eyes went to the floor and when they rose to meet Patrick’s eyes, were clouded with guilt. But then, like a bright mask clasped to a penitent visage, Billy Prestwick’s face lit in mischief. He winked.

“I am going somewhere, dear Patrick. I’m going to Miami Beach.”

And like smoke in the wind, Billy Prestwick was gone. Patrick righted Prestwick’s glass, wiping spilled margarita with a napkin, putting the napkin in the glass and putting it aside. He walked to the window to see Billy gathered into a swooping flash of yellow taxi, heading to his next destination, never quite knowing whether it would hold danger or sanctuary.

Patrick shook his head. Had he ever been so self-consumed and moment-driven?

Once upon a time. And not all that long ago.

15

Debro sat in his car across the street from D’Artagnan’s and watched Patrick White through the window. He’d slipped out the back after his conversation with Billy Prestwick. An eight-year-old movie began playing in Debro’s head. The pictures still hurt. Sometimes they stung like hornets.

The movie montage comes from a trendy gay hangout long closed by the cops for underage drinking. The bar, owned by two old queens nicknamed Harold and Maudlin, kitsch collectors, was the place to be that spring, festooned with comic excess on the walls and ceiling: a moose head wearing sunglasses, a bent trombone, a blow-up doll dressed in a tie-dye miniskirt, posters from fifties sci-fi movies, funky birdhouses, a sagging accordion, a stuffed raccoon wearing Mardi Gras beads. The setting evoked fun and laughter.

Having spent days steeling his courage to step inside the bar, a younger Debro orders a gin-gin at the bar. The skinny, arrogant barkeep gives him a sneering once-over and brings the drink five minutes later, retreating to the far end of the bar to talk with a handsome boy in a Panama hat.

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