The Big Sheep Page 17

  “But—”

  I cut her off and gave Priya a hard slap across her face. She yelped and then backed away from me.

  “Priya,” I said. “Do you know who I am?”

  “F-Fowler,” she said after a moment.

  “Right, I’m Blake Fowler. Keane’s partner. I’m here to help you. Do you believe me?”

  She nodded uncertainly.

  “All right,” I said. “In about three seconds, that door is going to open and things are going to get very scary. You’re going to be okay, but you have to trust me. Can you do that?”

  She nodded again. The elevator chimed.

  I slid behind Priya, putting my arm around her throat and holding my gun to her temple. The elevator doors slid open, and I saw two cops with guns pointed at me. A clerk cringed behind the front desk, and an elderly couple cowered in a corner, but the lobby was otherwise clear.

  “Don’t anybody fucking move,” I screamed, “or I swear to God I will put a bullet in this bitch’s brain!”

  Priya squeaked in fear and struggled vainly against my grip. I couldn’t tell if she was acting or if she really was trying to get away, but I was a lot stronger than she was, and the sedative had taken most of the fight out of her. I moved slowly through the lobby, making sure to keep Priya in front of me as much as possible. “And don’t fucking follow me,” I hollered as we approached the front door, “or I’ll shoot her in the head and throw her body out the window!”

  We made it through the front door, and I shoved Priya outside. April’s car was nowhere to be seen. I double-checked in both directions, but it wasn’t there. Had the police gotten to her? Seconds were ticking away. The cops wouldn’t wait forever. I needed to make a decision, and fast. So: ditch Priya and make a run for it? Hope the police would protect her? I didn’t like it, but it was looking like my only option.

  “Fowler!” I heard a woman’s voice cry. April. She was getting out of the front seat of a cab, parked just down the street.

  “Let’s go,” I urged Priya, grabbing her arm. I holstered my gun as we ran to the cab. April opened the door and we slid inside. April slammed the door behind us and got in the front. “Go!” she yelled to the driver, an elderly Middle Eastern man.

  I looked behind us and saw that the cops still hadn’t followed. I must have been pretty convincing with my threats. “What’s up with the cab?” I said. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “Figured it was safer,” said April.

  She was right. The hotel would have cameras covering the front. If they got April’s license plate, they’d be on to us damn quick. A cab was practically invisible. As the hotel receded in the distance, I saw the cops pouring onto the street.

  “Clear?” April said.

  I turned around to face her. I shook my head.

  April put two crisp twenty new dollar notes on the dash. “Faster,” she said.

  The driver nodded, and the cab leaped forward. Glancing back, I saw flashers in the distance, but I doubted they knew which car we were in. By the time they thought to check the monitors, we’d be long gone.

  The cab weaved through traffic, passing cars left and right. “Go right here,” April said, and the driver complied. After some time, she had him make another right, and then another. Soon we weren’t far from where we had started. She told the driver to pull over. “Stay here,” she said, handing the driver another twenty. She took off down the street.

  A few minutes later April pulled up behind us in her car. She helped me transfer Priya to her backseat, and then we took off, leaving the cab behind. She turned right on Wilshire, and I ducked as we drove past the hotel. Several police cars were now parked out front.

  “Drive slow,” I said. “We don’t want to attract any attention.”

  “I’ve got this, chief,” said April, with a smile.

  Half an hour later we were back at the office. April parked in front and helped me carry the semiconscious Priya into the building. I was tempted just to put her in the guest bedroom on the first floor and let her sleep off the sedative, but I thought Keane would want to see her. I grabbed a blanket and put it around her shoulders, and then we got into the elevator and took it up to the third floor. I banged a couple of times on the door to his study and then threw it open. “Look what I found,” I said. Priya had one arm around my neck and the other around April’s, and her head lolled from one side to the other, like a drunk in an old movie.

  And then I saw Keane wasn’t alone. Sitting in a chair facing him was a woman with long black hair. When she turned, my knees almost buckled. It was Priya Mistry.

  NINETEEN

  The two Priyas stared at each other for a moment in shock.

  “Well,” said Keane. “This is awkward.”

  “Who … is that?” asked the Priya hanging on to my shoulder.

  “Just a bad dream,” I said. “We’re going to take you downstairs so you can get some rest.” April gave me a wide-eyed glance but was smart enough not to say anything. We escorted Priya back downstairs and carried her to the guest bedroom. I went back upstairs while April tucked her in.

  “So it’s true,” said the Priya in Keane’s office. “They made copies of me.” She was stunned but not hysterical.

  I took the chair next to her and looked at Keane. He shot me a pained look. We were going to have to tell her the truth.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “We believe the woman downstairs is genetically identical to you.”

  “Like a twin,” said Priya. “A perfect copy.”

  “More or less,” I said.

  She looked from me to Keane, a puzzled expression on her face. “What?” she asked. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  I sighed. There wasn’t any easy way to break it to her. “She’s not a copy of you,” I said. “That is … we’re not certain you’re the original.”

  Priya laughed. “Of course I’m the original,” she said. “I wasn’t raised in a lab. I grew up in Tucson.”

  “What is your real name?” asked Keane.

  “I was born Bryn Jhaveri. But everyone knows me as Priya.”

  “And the stuff about the copies?”

  “Selah put me up to that. She said someone pretending to be me had hired you, and that the only way to get you to leave me alone was to tell you that story.”

  “You didn’t think that was strange?” I asked.

  “I thought it was ridiculous,” said Priya. “But Selah is the reason I’m a star. I owe her everything. So when she asks me to do something, I do it.”

  “But something changed your mind,” Keane said. “Something brought you here.”

  She bit her lip. “Noogus,” she said. “How the hell did you know about Noogus?”

  “You told us,” I said. “Or someone who looked exactly like you did.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never mentioned that to anybody. Not since I was four years old. When you mentioned Noogus in Selah’s office, I was … shocked. I almost broke down. But I’ve been acting so long, I guess my instincts just took over. I finished the scene and exited the stage.”

  “So you see the problem,” said Keane. “Someone who looks exactly like you came to our office two days ago and told us about Noogus. She hired us to look into a threat against her life.”

  “That woman downstairs,” said Priya.

  I shook my head. “No. We don’t know what happened to the original. That is, the first Priya we encountered. I suspect she was killed in that explosion on the set.”

  “I was there,” Priya said. “When the bomb went off.”

  “You were?” I asked. How was that possible? How could there have been two Priyas on the set without anyone noticing?

  She nodded. “My memory is a little fuzzy,” she said. “But I remember the explosion.”

  “So you saw the car explode?” asked Keane. I shot him a puzzled glance.

  “I think so?” said Priya. “Like I said, my memory is fuzzy.”

  “But you were definitely on
the set at the time of the explosion.”

  “Yes.”

  “So you saw the burnt-out wreckage of the car after the bomb went off.”

  She nodded.

  “Did anything strike you as strange about the wreckage? The way the car was parked facing the wrong way on the side of the street, for instance?”

  She nodded again. “That was … a little weird, I guess.”

  “Or the fact that the car seemed to be made entirely out of mozzarella?”

  “Uh … what?” Priya asked.

  “There was no car bomb,” said Keane. “A store exploded. You didn’t see any blast. You were implanted with artificial memories. The other Priya, the one who hired us, was killed, and you were brought in to replace her.”

  “I’m not lying!” cried Priya. “I was there!”

  “We don’t think you’re lying,” I said, glaring at Keane. “We think you’ve been tricked into thinking you were there.”

  Keane continued, “Your memory is fuzzy because you were only given the bare details of what happened. You’re trying to fill in the gaps, but you can’t, because you weren’t there. What’s the last vivid memory you have from before the explosion?”

  “I was on the set,” she said. “Doing a scene. With Taki, I think.”

  “No,” said Keane. “If you have to think about it, it didn’t happen. Your brain is constructing false memories based on the coaching you received. Close your eyes. Where were you before the explosion?”

  “The hotel?” Priya offered.

  “No!” snapped Keane. “Don’t think about it. Don’t try to put things into sequence, or make sense of events. Just tell me the last thing you clearly remember before the explosion. Quickly!”

  “I don’t know!” she cried. “Everything is fuzzy. All I see is black.”

  “It doesn’t have to be visual,” Keane said. “A sound, a taste, a smell … anything that—”

  “Licorice,” she said.

  “You tasted licorice?” Keane asked.

  She shook her head and opened her eyes. “No, I smelled it.”

  “Anything else?” Keane asked. “An image or sound that goes along with the smell? Do you know where you were when you smelled it?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I remember a place, but I’m not sure if it was a dream.”

  “What place?” Keane said. “Where were you?”

  Priya sat for a moment, her eyes closed. Her head swayed slightly as if she were drifting with her thoughts. “I was … on a cliff overlooking the ocean,” she said after some time. “It was very peaceful. I wanted to stay there, but then someone made me go inside a building. It was white, like a hospital. That’s where I smelled the licorice. It was a … bad place.”

  “Who made you go inside the building?” Keane asked.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember.”

  “Do you remember anything that happened there?”

  “No.”

  “And after the bad place?” Keane asked.

  “I’m not sure if it even happened,” said Priya. “I … went back to the hotel, I think? It all gets fuzzy after that. I think it was some time ago. A few months, maybe, but it’s hard to be sure. I work such long hours on DiZzy Girl that everything starts to run together. What does it mean?”

  Keane was silent for a moment, lost in thought.

  “To be honest,” I said, “we aren’t entirely sure.”

  “You’re a clone,” said Keane, apparently having concluded his ruminations. “You and the woman downstairs. Copies of the original Priya, who may be an actual person, but could be some sort of fictional construct. It’s possible you’re the original, but the odds are against it. There are at least three of you, and probably more.”

  “But why?” Priya asked, horrified. “Why would somebody do this?”

  “Partly because the demand for Priya Mistry is too high to be met by a single person. They needed more of you. But I suspect there’s another reason as well. A somewhat more troubling reason.”

  I wasn’t entirely certain I wanted to hear a rationale more troubling than cloning a human being to meet the demands of a populace desperate for more Priya Mistry, not to mention the insatiable greed of Selah Fiore and Flagship Media.

  “What is it, Mr. Keane?” Priya asked. “Please, I have to know.”

  “The first Priya we met,” said Keane. “Let’s call her Priya One.”

  “Ritz-Carlton Priya,” I interjected. I didn’t want to have to deal with the Priyas fighting over who got to be number one. “You aren’t staying at the Ritz, are you?” I asked the Priya next to me.

  She shook her head. “The Peninsula Beverly Hills.”

  “Okay, then you’re Peninsula Priya,” I said. “Sorry. We need some way of keeping everybody straight.”

  She nodded glumly.

  “Ritz-Carlton Priya,” Keane continued, “was considerably more agitated than you are at the possibility of some sort of conspiracy surrounding her. She was convinced somebody was trying to kill her.”

  “So?” asked Priya.

  “Fowler,” said Keane. “What is your assessment of the mental state of the Priya downstairs? Let’s call her—”

  “Palomar Priya,” I said. “She’s been drugged, but I don’t think she’s doing well. She was on the verge of losing it at the hotel bar last night—assuming that was the same Priya—and she didn’t show up for work today. I think they gave her a sedative because she was getting hysterical.”

  “Does she think people are out to kill her?” Keane asked.

  “Well, yes,” I said. I figured to err on the side of tact by not pointing out that people were trying to kill her.

  Keane nodded. “What we’re seeing is a progression,” he said. “Each clone has a different incept date. Ritz-Carlton Priya was born first, for lack of a better term. She also went nuts first. Palomar Priya is a little behind her on the crazy scale, but she’s gaining fast. And then there’s you, Peninsula Priya. You were brought in to replace Ritz, probably only yesterday.”

  “What about the one I met in Griffith Park?” I asked. “Four Seasons Priya.”

  “Not enough information to say,” said Keane. “Probably somewhere in the middle.”

  Priya stared at him in horror. “So all my memories before today—”

  “Somebody else’s,” said Keane. “Well, your memories before your visit to the bad place are somebody else’s. The ones after that are probably artificial implants. The fuzzy memories start at the point the original Priya’s memories leave off. Priya Zero. Sorry, we don’t have a hotel to name the original after.”

  “Priya Zero,” Priya murmured. “But if that’s true … what happened to her? Where is she?”

  “No idea,” said Keane. “But she may be the one who sent that letter. The one from Noogus.”

  “Letter?” asked Priya.

  “Sorry,” said Keane. “I forgot you don’t know. Ritz Carlton Priya showed us a letter warning about a threat on her life. That’s when she told us about Noogus.”

  “But, Keane,” I said. “The conspiracy is real. You can’t blame her—them—for being paranoid.”

  “Paranoia is a form of psychosis,” said Keane. “Whether or not it’s borne out by the facts.”

  I frowned. “You’re saying the woman downstairs is crazy for thinking there are people out to get her, despite the fact that there actually are people out to get her.”

  “The ability to correlate one’s condition with external circumstances doesn’t preclude the possibility of a pathological response,” Keane said. “It’s perfectly natural to be paranoid if people are out to get you. It’s also perfectly natural to hemorrhage internally when exposed to the Ebola virus. Neither condition, however, is optimal.”

  “So the healthy response would be to remain ignorant, or delusional.”

  “Depends how you define healthy. She’d certainly be happier.”

  “Until she winds up dead.”

 
“That’s true for everybody,” said Keane, with a shrug.

  Priya listened to this exchange in silent horror. Finally she spoke: “You’re saying I’m doomed to go insane.”

  “There’s a possibility that if we were to put a stop to Selah’s plans and eliminate the other Priyas, you might live a relatively normal life,” Keane offered.

  “What kind of possibility?” Priya asked.

  “Fifty-fifty?” said Keane. “This isn’t an exact science.”

  Priya started to cry.

  We got Peninsula Priya calmed down at about the time Palomar Priya woke up. Palomar seemed somewhat recovered from her ordeal and kept asking about the “woman who looked just like me.” We weren’t going to be able to keep them apart for long inside our building, and there wasn’t any other safe place where we could easily keep an eye on them, so we decided to bite the bullet and introduce them to each other. After the initial moment of shock, they both handled it pretty well.

  “You know what the hardest part is?” said Peninsula to her double.

  “Having somebody tell you that you’re one in a billion,” replied Palomar. “Only to find out it’s not true.”

  “I’d give anything to go back to that life,” said Peninsula. “Just to be another face in the crowd, to forget all this.”

  “A nobody,” said Palomar. “In a sea of nobodies.”

  A sheep, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

  An hour later they were watching TV together in the sitting room we had set up just behind the lobby. They had the same taste in shows, so that helped.

  “Clones,” April murmured, watching the two of them sitting on the couch, eating popcorn together. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. And they each think they’re the original?”

  “They did until today,” I said. “Neither one of them knew about the existence of any of the others. They each have a complete set of Priya’s memories. The death of her parents, being adopted, growing up in Arizona, coming to Los Angeles, auditioning for a bit part on one of Flagship’s shows, becoming an international superstar. For all practical purposes, they are both Priya Mistry.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” she asked.