Splicer

“Splicer is another fast-paced thriller from the hand and mind of Theo Cage. The last third of the book literally had me staying up late to find out what happened as the non-stop action hurtled Rusty and me toward a blood-soaked ending. Highly recommended.” Amazon Reviewer

“Creepy! Suspenseful and even a bit scary! Loved it!” Amazon reviewer

“Diabolic or evangelic software could change our lives and people are willing to kill to obtain it. But what will they do with it? Another gripping book by Theo Cage.” Amazon reviewer

A billionaire geneticist is found garrotted in the parking lot of an exclusive business club. The prime suspect is a former employee who quickly lawyers up with one of the hottest criminal defenders in the city – pugnacious and troubled Janey McEwan.

She soon becomes embroiled in a battle between a crack team of professional killers, the CIA and her penniless client – who she happens to be falling in love with.

The deadly struggle is over a new technology called The Splicer – a desktop unit that would give users unprecedented power to manipulate DNA. In a matter of hours, a terrorist could build a new virus, create a deadly new disease or completely modify human engineering. With a few screen touches, it would be possible to create a monster with the potential to kill millions.

The CIA calls this new invention the “Frankenstein app” – and they will stop at nothing to prevent it’s spread.

The story reaches it’s dark climax on a craggy mountain in the wilds of Canada – the doomsday retreat of a shadowy CIA legend – a place they call Ragnarock.

“Splicer feels like an early Michael Chrichton thriller …”

AN EXCERPT FROM SPLICER …

MY OPENING STATEMENT

My name is Rusty Redfield and I didn’t do it.

Just wanted to get that out-of-the-way before we went any further. Most people don’t believe anything you say once you’ve been arrested for murder. Like wanting someone dead automatically makes you a liar too. I’d like to set something else straight. I’m thirty-six years old, not the thirty-nine the Toronto Star claimed in this morning’s edition.

Now you might think that missing the point by a lousy three years is not something to launch a major lawsuit over. But to me it all just smacks of that glorious public sport of playing loose with the truth. And that’s been my sad story this past year and I’m sick of it.

I’m also sick of half-truths, faint lies and lame excuses. After all, can’t someone at the newspaper do a simple calculation involving taking a birth date and subtracting it from the present and arriving at thirty-six for God’s sake? From my own personal experience with newspaper stories, and I’ve had a few, I’m guessing they have some guy employed over there, some Journalism graduate who’s related to the Sports Editor, who’s only job is to go around on a daily basis and randomly screw up the simple facts in headline stories. It’s as if reporting a story correctly by a tabloid is a mortal sin or contravenes Federal statutes.

The Star also has me listed as an unemployed salesman, a label only two notches above alleged child molester. Sure, I don’t have a job at this exact moment and for a brief time sold software for a start-up called Great Barrier Systems but my training makes me a programmer and I’m damn good at it. The fact that the Star reported me as unemployed though, and people are basically circumscribed by what they do – has relegated me to ‘nothing’ status today – a ghost wandering through a splashy murder story on the front page.

Speaking of jobs, if I would have been a bartender or a landscape gardener, things would have been a lot different. I never would have met Jeffrey Ludd – the man they say I murdered. That would have saved me a lot of grief and about $100,000 in legal fees. I also would never have met Shay (the ubiquitous ex-wife) and subsequently experienced the prolonged agony of having her walk out on me. I also would never have met Malcolm, the psychotic who started everything and of course I wouldn’t be in jail right now waiting for two detectives to come back and introduce my face to the floor.

What kills me about cops is they believe everything they read in The Star. About me being 39. Even the part about me being arrested for fraud two years ago despite the fact that one of them was in on that pinch. They forgot to mention the charges had been dropped but they didn’t fail to make the connection between Jeff Ludd and myself, how Jeff had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to right a wrong (translation: hounding me to the ends of the earth because he was afraid I had stolen something from him – his precious Splicer; something he never had and subsequently it was ripping his heart out).

Now Jeff ‘s just a corpse. And he’s still getting his way, which I understand is common for a billionaire. Even a dead one.

The room I’m sitting in is the shittiest little interview room I have ever seen, the walls dull grey and thick with paint the penal system must order by the truckload. It’s depressing, even the graffiti is listless and half-hearted. I’m waiting for my lawyer feeling like a kid about to meet the school principal. A lawyer who was far too expensive for an unemployed salesman/programmer, who never asked or cared if I was guilty or innocent and who would do this case for half price just to get a share of the TV spotlight.

When she enters the room she doesn’t even look at me. Maybe she thinks she would laugh, I’m such a mess. Some drunk had vomited on my shoulder in the lock-up and after three hours of disjointed sleep my hair is as unruly as sagebrush and my eyes are dark with anxiety. I am plain forlorn looking. I wasn’t working my way up in the world and I was distracted by what sounded like a mother crying somewhere. Probably mine.

“You’re a celebrity,” was all she said, her smile reproachful but hiding some satire she felt the world was redolent in. She was a lady after my own heart, someone who could relate to my skewed sense of reality. “Don’t weep in the flowers,” my dad used to say, “laugh in the outhouse”. He should have explained that one better. I might have turned out different. My old man was a strange bird.

“Want my autograph?” I asked.

“Right here, pal.” She stuck some papers under my nose and a fat fountain pen with a gold tip. She smiled showing perfect white teeth I had helped pay for.

“This my confession?” I asked, signing dutifully, ever aware that missing even a line or a period might keep me in here five minutes longer than I needed to be. Only idiots felt brave in jail.

“Ten more minutes and your two buddy’s, Koz and Otter, would have had you signing off on the World Trade disaster. I saved you from that.” Koz was a stringy old bird of a detective, flapping around in over-size clothes, his Adams apple bouncing up and down in his scrawny blue neck – his eyes as hard as ball bearings.

Otter was his partner. A big blocky looking guy in an expensive suit and shades. They had picked me up at the office I worked at for less than three days, arrested me right in front of the secretary’s desk and stuffed me in an elevator I shared with two other employees. When you’ve only worked somewhere for three days and they arrest you for murder on company property, prospects for career advancement look dim.

My lawyer sat down carefully in a bent steel chair. Judging by its wobbly architecture, I wondered how many heads it had bounced off in here. I stared at her for a few minutes as she perused the docket she brought with her. She was all I had now. My parents were dead, my ex-wife moved in with another man, my ex-business partner in jail. Oh yeah. I forgot. I was also broke and unemployed. Not my best moment. But I had a feeling somehow it was going to get a lot worse before there was even a faint hope of things getting better. And that hope was slim based on something only I knew about Jeff Ludd.

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