Frankenstein

Dagget stopped beside it as if to dispose of the stick and his paper napkin after he finished the ice cream, of which little remained.
    No one else was nearby, so Dagget said, “Warm enough for you?”
    “I think it’s getting warmer,” Frost said.
    “Me too. Spent any time with your police scanner this morning?”
    “More than the usual traffic,” Frost said, referring to the recent flurry of communications among the local police.
    “Yeah. Very crisp, no chitchat. And what’s this code they’re using?”
    “I don’t know. Tried working with it on my laptop. It won’t be broken easily.”
    “So this time the whistle-blower blew some truth.”
    Unfortunately, the information that launched this investigationhad given them no sense of what was coming down in Rainbow Falls, only that it must be something of importance.
    Frost said, “Chief Jarmillo’s been on the move. The hospital. Elementary school. High school. This country-western roadhouse out past the edge of town. Hard to see how any of it’s policework.”
    They had placed a transponder on Jarmillo’s cruiser, which transmitted his constant whereabouts to an antitheft service on a commercial satellite, from which Frost periodically downloaded—
hacked
might be the more honest term—the chief’s itinerary.
    Along the park pathway came a middle-aged man on a skateboard. His beard was unkempt, his ponytail tied with a blue cord. He wore khakis, two layers of flannel shirts, and a toboggan cap. Without glancing at either of them, he shot past.
    “Only a loser?” Dagget asked.
    “Definitely just a loser.”
    “I keep thinking we’ve been made.”
    “Why?” Frost asked. “Your room been tossed or something?”
    Dropping the ice-cream stick and the napkin in the trash can, Dagget said, “No good reason. I just have this creepy feeling … I can’t explain it.”
    Frost and Dagget were FBI agents, though a kind of which even the Director had no knowledge. Their names appeared nowhere on the official rolls of the Bureau.
    “Personally,” Frost said, “I think no one’s interested in us. I was going to suggest we can start working together safely if you want.”
    “Works for me,” Dagget said. “I get the feeling any moment now we’re going to need each other for backup.”
    As one, with a furious beating of the air, the flock of pigeons flew.

    
chapter
40

    Riding shotgun, Michael phoned Erika Swedenborg to tell her that they were en route and would be at her door in a few minutes. Because they had been in San Francisco when she called them less than an hour earlier, their arrival surprised her.
    Michael said, “Our elderly friend knew a shortcut. We took a right turn at nevermore and then a hard left at everafter.”
    No sooner had Michael terminated the call than the female voice of the navigational system said, “Turn right in two hundred yards.”
    The oil-and-gravel road flanked by enormous pines and the steel-pipe gate were as Erika had described them. Carson stopped at the bell post, put down her window, pushed the call button, and stared directly at the embedded camera lens. The gate swung open.
    On the front porch, at the top of the steps, the woman waited.
    Carson had met Erika Four in Louisiana, and this fifth edition appeared to be identical to the fourth. Victor might hate humankind, but his appreciation of human beauty couldn’t have been more refined. This might have been how ancient Romans thought of Diana, thegoddess of the moon and the hunt: this flawless beauty, this exquisite grace, this physical vitality with which she seemed to glow.
    Introductions took place on the porch, and to Deucalion, Erika said, “That we should meet astonishes me.”
    “And that we should be alive,” he said.
    “In those days so long ago … was he then as he became?”
    “The pride was there, a tendency to corruption,” Deucalion said. “Pride can become arrogance. Arrogance is the father of cruelty. But in the beginning, there was also an idealism, a hope that he could change the human condition.”
    “Utopian ideas. They always lead to destruction … blood, death, and horror. And you—two centuries alone. How have you … endured?”
    “Rage and revenge at first. Murder and brutality. But gradually I realized I’d been given one gift greater than all others, the gift of possibility. I could become what I chose, better than my origins. Rage can be a kind of pride. I turned away from it before I became an