James Rollins: Blood Brothers

For the first time since Arthur had found his mother in the crimson water — her stained blond hair floating on the surface, her head tilted back to stare at the plaster ceiling — he broke down and wept.

Arthur felt a hand shove him from behind, stumbling him back to the present.

“Get off my porch!”

He turned to discover a middle-aged woman standing there — about the same age his mother would have been if she’d lived. She scolded him and herded him off her home’s stoop, her flannel nightgown billowing in the night breeze.

Arthur’s reporter instincts came back. “Did you see anything?”

“None of your business what I saw.” She crossed her arms over her chest and sized him up. “But I can say that I don’t like how this Summer of Love has turned out.”

Later, when Arthur filed his story, the headline read Summer of Death follows the Summer of Love.

“I still haven’t heard any word from Christian,” Wayne said over the phone three days later. “Our friends in the city haven’t either.”

Arthur frowned, cradling the phone to his ear as he sifted through piles of police reports and forensic exams from the latest murder, a third victim. The young man was named Louis May, recently arrived from Kansas City. Like Christian, the man had likely been drawn by the promise of California, a modern-day gold rush of free love and openness, only to die on the sidewalk, his throat torn open and a flower in his hand.

Had the same happened to Christian? Was his body yet undiscovered?

“But something strange happened this morning,” Wayne said, interrupting Arthur’s line of worry.

“What?” He sat straighter and let the papers settle to the tabletop.

“A Catholic priest came by, knocking at my door at an ungodly early hour.”

“A priest? What did he want?”

“He asked if I knew where Christian might be, where he hung out, especially at night. Strange, huh?”

Strange barely fit that description. Despite his brother’s name, Christian had no religious affiliation. In fact, he only had disdain for those who piously bent their knees to an uncaring god, like Arthur’s parents had. So why would a priest be interested in his brother?

As if hearing Arthur’s silent question, Wayne explained. “The priest said it was important that he find your brother and talk to him. Said Christian’s immortal soul hung in the balance. He told me to tell Christian that he could turn his back on what he’d become and accept Christ into his heart and find salvation. Those were his exact words.”

Arthur swallowed, hearing an echo of his own words to Christian on that last night, words that could not be easily taken back. He had called Christian names, demanded he change, telling him that the path Christian had chosen would only lead to a lonely death. Their argument had grown more and more heated until the brothers fled from each other.

The next day, Christian was gone.

“You should have seen that guy’s eyes,” Wayne continued. “Scared the hell out of me, I have to say. Never met a priest like that. What do you think he really wanted?”

“I have no idea.”

After that call, Arthur sat in his tiny rented room, studying pictures and news clippings taped to the walls. Like Christian, all the victims were men in their twenties. They were dark-haired and handsome.

Arthur stared at a publicity photo of Jackie Jake. The folksinger’s black hair flopped over his eyes, reminding Arthur acutely of Christian. Jake even had the same bright green eyes.

It was at that moment that Arthur realized he didn’t have a single picture of his brother. After their quarrel, in a fit of pique, Arthur had destroyed them all. In many ways, he was as volatile and temperamental as his mother — and in the end, just as judgmental.

Arthur had been a fool back then. He knew it now. He wanted only to find Christian and apologize, but he worried that he might never get that chance. He could never make it right.

Over the following three days, he buried himself in the case, sensing Christian was linked to the murders. But how? Was he a victim, or somehow involved? The latter seemed impossible. Still, he remembered the madman at the memorial service. Could Christian have been drugged, maybe brainwashed by some murderous cult, and turned into a monster?

Needing answers, Arthur started his investigation with the orchids, but too many of the city’s flower shops sold them. He showed around the picture of Christian from Wayne’s flyer, but none of the shopkeepers remembered any particular customers buying those orchids around the times of the murders. It was no surprise. It was summer, and orchids were in demand for the dances of the upper class, those lofty creatures of wealth far removed from the men who lived on the streets or in squat houses or died holding one in their hands.

He touched base with Officer Miller every day, hoping for any news. All the while, the city held its breath for the next murder. Arthur learned from Miller that the latest victim, like the others, had also received his orchid on the morning of his death. It had been delivered to Louis May’s stoop, and twelve hours later the young man was dead.

With morning coffee in hand, Arthur contemplated this cruelty, this promise of death delivered to a doorstep. He climbed to his rented room and returned to his cluttered workspace.

There, resting on the keys of his typewriter, was a single white bloom.

A Brassocattleya orchid.

“Look, Mr. Crane,” Officer Miller said. “I can imagine you’re spooked, but folks around here think this might be as a publicity stunt. To sell more papers.”

Arthur stared dumbfounded across Miller’s desk into the crowded squad room. He had come straight here after finding the orchid. Right now it lay on the battered metal desk in front of him. “You can’t think—”

Miller held up a beefy hand. “I don’t. I trust you plenty, but I can’t help you. My hands are tied.”

Arthur’s stomach sank. He’d been fighting the police for hours, hoping for some kind of protection, but no one took him seriously. “How about I just sit in the police station then? Just for twenty-four hours?”

“I can’t allow you to do that.” Miller’s freckled face looked concerned, but his chin was firm. He wouldn’t give in.

“Then arrest me.”

Officer Miller laughed at him. “On what charge?”

Arthur punched him right in his freckled face.

It took three days for the Times to bail Arthur out. In the interim, a fourth victim had received an orchid and had been murdered. The new death further convinced the police that Arthur either had been lying about the orchid or someone had played a cruel prank on the British reporter.

Arthur knew better.

Still, what did it mean? Had the killer passed him by? Or was he just biding his time to make the kill?

Not knowing for sure, Arthur spent his first night of freedom in Sparky’s twenty-four-hour diner, afraid to go home. He brought a giant pile of notes and used the time to outline a book, a treatise about the murders. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood had come out two years ago, and the narrative of those killers had mesmerized him. He wanted to do something similar, to find some way of making sense of these deaths, to nail them down between the cold, dispassionate pages of a book.

Seated at a corner table of the diner, with a clear view to all the exits, he nibbled on his third piece of apple pie and downed his umpteenth cup of coffee. All night long, he had refused to give up his table, despite the jaundiced glances from the waitress.