Cain's Blood by Geoffrey Girard Page A

escape, give me
the money, or fight me to take the gun. When I pressed him on
the issue of how he would “feel,” not what he would think or
do, subject had no response. None. MMPI scheduled for next
session. C-Subject’s custodian contacted to increase maternal
neglect by 2.0 degrees, fm abuse by 1.0.
    9 Nov—Lunch with Dr. Carla Bayliff (Tulane), who is heading a
symposium next spring and asked if I would be interested in
being guest of honor. Perhaps. Reviewed impact of common
functional polymorphism in MAOA on brain structure and
function. Low expression variants found on subject’s MRIs.
Erdman maintains reservations on limited test group. Recorded
pronounced limbic volume reductions and hyperresponsive
amygdale during emotional arousal. Marked diminished reactivity
of regulatory prefrontal regions compared with the high
expression allele. The clearest link between genetic variation
and aggression is located on the chromosome XP11.23. This is the
true mark of Cain. XP11 is the new number of the beast.
    22 Nov— . . . subject’s MAOA levels remain identical to DNA
patron. Latest blood tests confirm sustained low serotonin,
norepinephrine, and dopamine levels. Dogs bark as they are
bred. Note to visit John and Albert at secondary environments.
Voxel-based morphometry prescribed to canvass subject’s brain
for regional volume changes related to genotype.
    He requested his room be painted tan. A genuine emotional
preference or mimicry of conventional exchange? He asked again
about his mother today. Falsehood has a perennial spring. Perhaps
I should never have brought him here.
    6 April—Dreams should remain banished to the night. In the sun,
they become vile trespassers. The Triazolam shots abridge REM
sleep, but now they have somehow found me in the day. I could
not see her face again. The warmth spilling from her insides
was like a mother’s blanket enfolding me. I awoke at my desk,
drenched in sweat, my belly warm and wet with semen. I heard
from Rochester today and everything is now arranged. Mankind
remains ceaselessly motivated by genetic characteristics
inherited from ancestors long buried. Individual experiences of
childhood can modify, inhibit, or augment these, but can never
truly erase. I shall be there when he is lifted again from the
earth.
    04 May—Tumblety’s DNA is a match, and I am filled with
abundant joy. It is, as I’d always hoped it would be,
comforting to find our basest traits in our forebears. It
absolves us.
    Castillo tossed Jacobson’s journal back inside a box with the rest.
Mostly technical jargon and arbitrary fortune-cookieish dictums on
violence and heredity.
    A stack of clinical studies on various known serial killers (Castillo
hadn’t heard of any of them). A partial aerial shot of Afghanistan (likely)
he had marked with a series of colored circles growing out from the small
village at its center, and the word “SharDhara” scrawled across the top
(familiar almost, but not enough). Papers on Supermale Syndrome, Xyy
children, and something called klinefelter’s syndrome. PCr printouts
from a machine Jacobson kept in the same room, which mapped double
helix pairings Castillo couldn’t understand in the slightest, though he
remembered the significance of “MAOA levels” from erdman. Some
graphs comparing oxytocin and vasopressin levels for several subjects
made even less sense. But there were also color photos of mutilated victims. Sliced and broken. These Castillo understood perfectly. Crimes,
from the clothing and photo qualities, from the early 1900s through
present day. There were maps of east London from the nineteenth century. Old photos of someone named francis Tumblety, and an old pamphlet written by this same guy entitled The Kidnapping of Dr. Tumblety .
    he’d gathered from Jacobson’s journals that francis Tumblety was
the withered stiff he’d spent the bulk of the night with. A quick Google
search revealed