The officers glanced at each other. “Those can be faked. And that’s a conveniently specific alibi.”
“My face will be on the cameras,” said Lyle.
“Cameras can be faked, too. You could get somebody who looks like you—that guy from the hospital, maybe—to be on camera for you.”
“But what if I’m on the camera and that other guy robbed the house?” asked Lyle. “You could have the wrong guy.”
“DNA evidence doesn’t work that way,” said Officer Luckesen. “It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot harder to fake than a camera.”
Lyle snapped his fingers. “The security guard! Saturday night is such a weird time to be at work, the security guard usually comes in and talks to me for five or ten minutes. He gets bored. He’ll definitely remember me.”
Officer Woolf sighed. “We’ll call from the station to check, but you’re going to have to get processed regardless.”
Lyle’s cell phone rang, and he looked at the officers. “Can I get that?”
“Go ahead.”
“Thanks.” He pulled out his phone and checked the number; it was the hospital. Probably something about Pedro. He thumbed the screen. “Hello, this is Lyle Fontanelle.”
Dr. Allgood’s voice boomed on the other end. “I’m sorry this took so long, but I have that blood test you requested.”
“Which?”
“One of Jon Ford’s old tests, from a visit three years ago. Do you have a fax number I could send it to?”
Lyle looked at the policemen in the front seat. “I’m actually not sure if I’ll be able to get to a fax machine anytime soon.” He pulled a folded paper from his jacket pocket and fumbled in his pants for a pen. “I’ve got a copy of the other blood test here, could you just read me the results and I can jot them down for comparison?”
“Sure thing,” said Allgood. “Line by line, here we go: Name: Jon Ford. Age: twenty-two. Blood Type: O negative. Red cell count—”
“Wait,” said Lyle, staring at the paper spread awkwardly on his knee. “His blood type is A positive.”
“No,” said Allgood. “It’s right here on my printout: O negative.”
“The notes in the file said A positive.”
“What in the…” Lyle heard papers rustle and shuffle, then a low whistle. “Saints and angels, you’re right. Our last test with him was A positive.”
“Are you sure you have the right Jon Ford?”
“The patient numbers are identical,” said Allgood. “The address and phone number match. It’s even the same insurance policy number, he just has … two different blood types.”
“How is that possible?”
“It isn’t,” said Allgood, sounding eager, “but it is consistent. A positive is anathema to O negative; if he had enough A positive in his bloodstream it would attack the old blood and cause all the problems we talked about—the stroke, the hemolysis, the renal failure. It’s amazing he lived as long as he did.”
“But you said he hadn’t had a transfusion,” said Lyle, “you specifically checked into it.”
“Oh, goodness no,” said Dr. Allgood, “a full transfusion of A positive blood would have killed him in hours; we had him for almost a full day, and he was sick for quite a while before that. No, to react the way he did, the foreign blood would have to be introduced very slowly, over a very long time, or you’d get a sudden shock that overwhelms the system.”
“Was somebody trying to kill him?” asked Lyle.
“If they were, they hid it really well. I told you before, we couldn’t find any needle marks except the ones we made, and the first one of those was the A positive blood test.” The doctor whistled. “It’s almost as if it was all internal—like his body just decided out of the blue to make the wrong kind of blood. Maybe his DNA got confused; I don’t know.”
Lyle gasped, thoughts flashing in his mind like a hail of bullets. Blood type. DNA. Heterochromia. “I’m going to have to call you back.” He ended the call without saying goodbye, staring at nothing. Skin bleaching. Bone deformation. Weight loss. Lyle’s mind staggered as realization dawned. I couldn’t find a trend in the test subjects’ symptoms because they’re not trending in a single direction, they’re normalizing toward a central point.
Me.
Lyle rubbed his face, stared blankly, then rubbed it again.
“You okay back there?” asked Officer Woolf. “What was that all about—you said something about somebody trying to kill someone?”
Lyle ignored him, running through each case in his mind: Christopher Page was big and heavy, so he lost weight until he matched me. Pedro Trujillo was short, so he gained weight and mass and height until he matched me—and then his skin color changed to match mine, as well. William England has darker skin that got lighter; Tony Hicks had very light skin, practically white, that got darker. I bet if I call him back his hair color’s changed, as well.
They’re all becoming me.
It was something in the plasmids—he was sure of it. Changing DNA is their whole job; it wasn’t supposed to be this dramatic, but somehow it was. Lyle sat motionless, his jaw hanging open. Everyone who’s handled the lotion is turning into me. That’s why I’m the only one who never changed—or perhaps I’ve been changing all along, but I was changing into myself and didn’t notice. Except—
He paused.
Except I don’t have A positive blood. I’m O negative, which is a universal donor—that’s why the men turning into me aren’t having the same blood reaction that Jon Ford had. But then who was Ford turning into?
In a flash Lyle remembered the autopsy report: half-formed ovaries and mammary glands, high levels of estrogen, and even a semideveloped uterus. Susan applied Jon’s lotion directly—the first day of the test she rubbed it right onto his hands, skin to skin. He was turning into Susan.
So then who is Susan turning into?
“Hey, buddy,” said Officer Luckesen, practically shouting at him. “Wake up. Hey!” He banged on the protective grate between the front and back seats, and Lyle jerked out of his reverie.
“I have to make a phone call.”
