J. Kerley - The Memory Killer

“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.”

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?”