Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

He thought about the body dumps from two years earlier. About the testing of his serum that had led to them. All those homeless men recruited from the streets of Vegas with offers of money and sometimes drugs were housed in seclusion in the basement of the institute.

And then when they had enough viable and anonymous subjects, they’d put them into rooms in batches of ten, administered doses of the serum and a placebo to the control group, and then waited for the results. The drug and its antidote were delivered via an implant in the men’s heads that could be controlled from a distance.

Every test had proved disastrous. Not from the perspective of inducing psychotic breaks. That was easy enough. In fact, 50 percent of the placebo group was able to match the ferocity of the medicated. What proved abortive was the ability to control the behavior. The antidote hadn’t worked, and neither had electric collars, subdermal shock implants, or even tear gas. The rage just couldn’t be harnessed. And in the end, in every test, no matter what variations they made to the serum and antidote, all the subjects died. They simply beat one another to death. In any other clinical trial of a drug, adverse events were expected — side effects, some more drastic than others, escalating from a skin rash to a clinical trial subject dying. But the numbers here were beyond belief.

The body dumps that followed had been Brewster’s idea. Sunil hadn’t known any of the details. Brewster had simply drafted him to help the investigation as forensic expert with the intent to steer any possible connection away from the institute. Not that the institute’s possible involvement ever came up. There just wasn’t any reason for the police to suspect them. Sunil surmised that Brewster knew that all along. His motives remained unclear to Sunil. Maybe he should be studying Brewster.

The kettle shrieked. He emptied the water into the teapot and let it brew. From the fridge he took out the other half of the cantaloupe from the night before, laid it on a wooden chopping block, reached for the ceramic knife, and, still in the dark, cubed it perfectly. From the corner of his eye, through the kitchen window, he could make out the spotlight from the Luxor.

He poured some tea, stirred in some sugar, and drank it in the dark, watching the dramatic sunrise through the blue-tinted kitchen windows. He couldn’t make up his mind which he loved best: Vegas at night with all the neon and flashing lights, or Vegas in the morning, when the neon was replaced by a fresh light — an innocence.

It was a Saturday and he wished he weren’t going in to work. It would be nice to hike today. Somewhere hot but shaded, like the many arroyos that hid the scars of an older Vegas, of a past that was now held only in unreliable narratives; a confounding mix of hoaxes and urban legends. Sunil was drawn to those stories because he believed that there was real history embedded in their occluded forms and he loved nothing more than collecting them, sifting through them, and decoding the deeper truths he was sure were hidden in them — as if he could read the mind of the landscape, uncover its intentions and motives, and recalibrate its secret histories.

In the meantime, he’d settle for being able to uncover the secrets the twins were concealing. The real secrets, not the ones they had half buried for him to stumble on. He knew they were playing some strange game, but he couldn’t tell what it was. The thing about half-truths littered in among outright lies is that they distract from the deeper secrets, the ones you really want to find. But Sunil was good at finding secrets. That’s what he’d done at Vlakplaas all those years ago. Found secrets and used them against their owners.

Sheila, Sunil said as Sheila stepped into his office.

Sunil, she said, and it sounded like a seduction. I was kind of hoping you’d made some of that amazing coffee you have, she said, and pointed to the machine on the sideboard.

Sunil smiled. Of course, he said.

This had become a little game they played. Every morning Sheila came in and pretended she was only asking for coffee. He didn’t know where it could lead, if anywhere, but he liked it just the same. Watching her cross the room he couldn’t help but notice how attractive she was: slim, fit, and tight, with perfect black skin. She stirred something in him. But in that same moment, while Sheila was a rational impulse in his mind, Asia was an ache that made him cross his legs.

As she stirred her coffee, Sheila turned to him. Sleep well, she asked, licking the wooden stirrer before throwing it into the trash.

Not really, Sunil said.

Oh, why?

You mean you haven’t heard about the conjoined twins, he asked. You must have, there aren’t any secrets inside this building.

Sheila gave him a look. What the hell are you babbling about, she asked.

Yesterday while I was meeting with Brewster I got a call from Salazar, he said.

Don’t know him, she said.

The detective from the homeless killing case I consulted on two years ago, Sunil said.

She shrugged: Okay. And someone killed some conjoined twins?

No, he arrested conjoined twins as suspects in the homeless murders.

Sheila looked bewildered. No fucking way, she said. The twins are the killers? How is that even possible? How are they joined?

Sunil opened the folder on his desk and passed her the Polaroid.

Oh my God, she said, holding it away. They’re undifferentiated. I’ve never seen a case like that.

I know. It’s crazy. I mean this one — he pointed at Fire — is barely a foot long and yet he talks incessantly. It’s crazy, the way they are joined. Fire, the small one, looks like a sea slug growing out of his brother’s side. And this one, the normal-looking one, only talks in factoids.

Factoids?

Yes, like, oh, I don’t know, giraffes have no vocal cords. Stuff like that.

Is it true, Sheila asked.

Is what true?

That giraffes have no vocal cords?

Yes, it’s true.

It’s weird that you know that, she said.

Whatever, he said. Anyway, the detective asked me to conduct a psych eval on them last night. I wanted to say no, but Brewster insisted that I do it.

Wow, you certainly had an adventurous evening, Sheila said, taking a sip of coffee. It was really good, as always.

So now I have the twins here, Sunil said. And we’ll keep them for at least seventy-two hours. I think Brewster wants to keep them indefinitely, but we’ll see.

You have them here at the institute?

Yes.

But if you don’t want Brewster to have them indefinitely, why would you bring them here, she asked.

Salazar can’t hold them legally so—

He’s asking you to keep them here. But why?

Well, when he arrested them, they were near a blood dump, but there were no bodies and so no evidence to tie them to the blood dump except proximity.

But if they are the killers—

I know, I know, Sunil interrupted. He filled her in quickly and she sat on the edge of the couch the whole time. When he was done, she sat back.

Jesus, she said. Why does stuff like this always find you?

I don’t know. Another troubling thing is that I think Brewster is running tests behind my back using my research, and I think these two things are connected.

That’s creepy, she said.

I’m not worried about the creepy factor. More important is the blood.

How so?

Well, Sunil said, if the blood dump is connected to my research it can mean only one thing.

Brewster is testing the drug you developed to trigger psychopathic behavior?

Yeah, Sunil said. Human trials of a psychopathic pathogen.

So what will you do, Sheila asked.

I don’t know.