Free The Memory Killer by J. A. Kerley Page 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.”

14
     
    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?”
    “Shut up, bitch, I’m telling the joke. The bartender tells the boys to drop trou and
set
their penises on the bar. So one by one the boys slide their jeans to their knees, scrunch up to the bar, and lay their doodles across it, pulling them out as far as they can. Just then, a guy walks in the