Читать книгу Sqerm - James A. Moore - Страница 12

Chapter 8

Sage, freshly awake from his office slumber, was happy to be out of the nightmare, though it saddened him when he remembered what had happened to Vickie. Sweat beaded lightly on his face, and he wiped it away with his palm. He placed his moistened hand onto the newspaper given to him by Hal. As the sweat soaked in and dampened the paper, Sage noticed the periodical for the first time. Somehow, in his business of researching, he had forgotten it. Now giving notice to the paper and remembering Hal’s words, a review of the article was in order. He smiled to himself. He leafed through the paper with no particular section in mind. He flipped a page, scanned it, then another flip and another scan. After several flips and scans, he reached a page buried in the paper. There was an article about a murder. It seemed familiar, but he could not recall why it possessed a familiarity.

He stared at the photo, pondering, wondering. He shifted in his chair and then trained his focus to a black-and-white photograph of the crime scene. Police tape cordoned the scene, and bystanders gawked. Sage squinted and investigated the picture a bit more closely. Fearing that he was not completely awake, he rubbed his eyes in hopes of clearing them up. He returned to the paper; there was a man in the picture whose eyes seemed to be just a bit off.

His brain began to race, and his heartbeat hastened. Tonight would likely be another long night. Oh, well. Sage returned to his computer screen and started clicking on various web links. He found multiple articles and websites and bookmarked them. Operating a computer and surfing was child play, but his skills could not hold a candle to Parker’s. He returned to an earlier page and compared it to the picture that was in the paper. He had located the same image—but in color. Using his mouse, he scrolled and enlarged the picture so that he could focus on the eyes of the man he saw in the newspaper. While doing so, he remembered the old adage about the “eyes being the window to a soul.” It made more sense to him now. As he focused more intently on the man in the photo, the man appeared to have red-eye.

Sage hit redial on his smartphone. The phone rang a couple of times, and Parker answered.

“Hello…”

“What’s up, bro?” Sage asked. “What did you find?”

Parker’s reply was somewhat sarcastic. “Not much yet. Building a new search engine with parameters on sperm.”

“Cool. Appreciate you, bro,” said Sage.

“Anytime. It’s late…or early—depending on how you look at it. What’s on your mind?” said Parker.

Sage paused and was deliberate in his explanation. “Either I have found something, or I am cracking up.”

“C’mon, man, who you talking to? Lay it on me, but mind the language.”

Sage rustled the newspaper. “My bad. I was going through this paper, and I saw a guy…”

“Guys in a paper. Yup, bro, you’re losing it.” Parker laughed.

“Parker, can you be serious for one second?” said Sage sternly.

“My bad. Go on,” Parker said sheepishly.

Not mentioning the sarcasm in Parker’s voice, Sage continued. “So I noticed this anomaly in the guy’s eyes.”

“An anomaly?” Parker questioned.

“Yes. It was a black-and-white pic, but the eyes were off a bit.”

After a short pause, Parker asked, “Like spaced too far apart or too close…like beady?”

“Wow,” said Sage, somewhat astonished that Parker would make fun of someone’s physiognomy. “Not off in terms of distance.”

“Okay, so we are dealing with a bad pic, in a paper, and the eyes are off,” Parker said.

“That’s just it, the eyes were not off. I think they were on. I’m sending you an e-mail.” Sage hit a few keys on his computer.

“On or off?” Parker asked.

“Just wait for the e-mail,” said Sage.

“Got it.”

“Cool, enlarge it and zoom in,” said Sage.

Parker complied. “Okay, so what’s the big deal?”

“Bro, you don’t see it?”

Parker asked, “See what?”

Sage grunted in frustration. “His eyes.”

Parker said, “Sure, a bit of red-eye. So what? That happens. It depends on the camera, the angle. The person’s retina and so on.”

“Why doesn’t everybody in the picture have it?” questioned Sage.

“As I said, the angle, the retina,” explained Parker.

“You don’t find it strange?” Sage retorted.

“Bro, have you slept?”

Sage was quiet. “A bit. So you’re saying all of this happens based on lighting, retina, etc. Right?”

Parker responded, “Definitely.”

Sage was once again trying to keep his frustration from showing. “Wait just a sec.” Sage used his hand to smooth and flatten the paper and then open camera mode on his smartphone to take a picture of the newspaper and send it to Parker. Parker’s phone beeped indicating the receipt of a message.

“Got it. I see a bit of an anomaly,” said Parker. “Okay, you have my attention.”

There were some computer beeps in the background. Parker had been compiling code in the building of his search engine. Parker mentioned, “Bro, some people get red-eye sometimes.”

Trying not to show any indication of the small victory, Sage said, “My stepdad had red-eye in every picture…”

“Yeah, man, but he was an assh—sorry, bro,” Parker said, shifting into an apologetic tone.

“Don’t be,” said Sage.

Parker asked, “So what are you thinking?”

Sage paused for a moment and interlaced his fingers on his head. “What if things that we took for granted or normal weren’t normal?”

“Are you trying to tell me that red-eye isn’t normal?” asked Parker.

“I am saying that we have always accepted the validity of something until someone proved otherwise. You of all people should understand this,” retorted Sage.

“Okay, Sage, I am trying to track you. Continue,” Parker said.

“We take red-eye as normal, but what about red-eye before cameras?” Sage said.

“Bro, you are all over the place. Where are you going with this?” asked Parker.

Sage continued, “Okay, no one accurately measured days—until we had sundials and eventually hours only after we had clocks. Then we had stopwatches, and we could more accurately measure events. Then digital devices that measured the smallest increments of time—”

Parker interrupted, “And they say that I am the crazy one.” Parker snickered.

Sage picked up where he left off, “My point is this: we could not measure milliseconds before the digital age—”

Parker interrupted again, “So now you want to measure red-eye?”

“Well…more like find out what it is and how many people get it…Maybe it is tied to something,” posited Sage.

Laughing just a bit, Parker said, “Like your killer sperm?”

“Like certain characteristics. Remember my stepdad with the constant red-eye? Parker, you are a researcher. Let’s see what the data says,” said Sage.

“Okay, so far, you have told me that there might be killer sperm impregnating people, that folks with red eyes might be what…killers…and you gave me a lesson on clocks. Man, you need some sleep.”

Sage was not sure if Parker was teasing or being sincere. He paused before his next comment. “This killer sperm thing seems impossible and complicated. But so was everything before we could accurately measure. What if they are not measuring?”

Parker was lost with the current turn in the conversation but tried to follow Sage’s path. “Measuring what?” asked Parker.

Sage took a breath. “The documentary said that killer sperm is generated when there is a couple that spends time apart. When they are reunited, the man releases killer sperm to hunt and kill any possible foreign sperm.”

“You got us talking about sperm again, bro…” teased Parker.

“My thought is that perhaps there is no real way to measure or determine if one of the killer sperm impregnated a woman. After all, who could count or determine which type of sperm put the stem on the apple—so to speak? The show mentioned the traveling or separation variable. That might be the key,” said Sage.

Parker slowly dragged the word, “So…”

“I am saying that hypothetically—and the percentages are probably pretty small—if one of these sperm, whose job it is to hunt and kill, actually fertilized an egg…what do we get?” said Sage.

Parker laughed just a bit. “Red-eye.”

“Just a hypothesis,” said Sage.

There was a long pause. “Can you dig up some stats on serial killers?” asked Sage.

Parker accepted the challenge. “Sure, BTK, Dahmer, Jack the Ripper—which ones?”

“All of them, or as many as you can. I want to know if any of the killer’s parents were travelers or spent long periods away from each other,” said Sage in a tone that suggested that he might have been asking.

“I’m on it, bro. When are you coming through? I got this lady that would love to meet you. She dances—”

Sage’s response cut Parker short. “I gotta get some rest. Talk to you soon, bro.”