Date of publication: August 2015
A neuroscientist-turned-FBI-profiler discovers a genetic
signature that produces psychopaths in The Ripper Gene, a
thrilling debut novel from Michael Ransom.
Dr. Lucas Madden is a neuroscientist-turned-FBI
profiler who first gained global recognition for cloning the ripper gene and
showing its dysfunction in the brains of psychopaths. Later, as an FBI profiler,
Madden achieved further notoriety by sequencing the DNA of the world's most
notorious serial killers and proposing a controversial "damnation
algorithm" that could predict serial killer behavior using DNA alone.
Now, a new
murderer-the Snow White Killer-is terrorizing women in the Mississippi Delta.
When Mara Bliss, Madden's former fiancée, is kidnapped, he must track down a
killer who is always two steps ahead of him. Only by entering the killer's mind
will Madden ultimately understand the twisted and terrifying rationale behind
the murders-and have a chance at ending the psychopath's reign of terror.
He who himself
begins to loathe,
grows sick in flesh
and spirit both.
-- Theodore Roethke
PROLOGUE
Halloween, 1983.
Crossroads, Mississippi .
Every Halloween the
ladies from Crossroads Baptist took us to different church members’ houses for
trick-or-treating, so no razor blades, rat poison, or liquid Drano would end up
in our candy. My mother was always one of the chaperones, and that
night she rode in the front seat of Mrs. Callahan's station wagon with us.
The car rolled
steadily beneath the swaying fingers of Spanish moss as we left the swamps.
Glowing faces floated in the back seat around me as we bounced over the rutted,
gravel road. A ghost, a cowboy, a ballerina, a ghoul. One kid even
wore a devil mask beside me.
I wore a knight’s
costume, replete with a wooden sword and a breastplate of armor made from an
aluminum trashcan. The lid served as my shield.
Mara, my twelve
year-old girlfriend, sat beside me. She was dressed like a princess,
a silver tiara glinting atop her raven black hair in the moonlight. We’d
stolen a kiss in the bathroom of the church basement earlier, during the
apple-bobbing contest. There, in the darkness of the back seat, I
could still taste the cinnamon from her glossed lips. The memory of
kissing her, somehow finding her mouth with my own in that dark and forbidden
bathroom, had sent pulsating waves of excitement through my young torso for the
entire night.
We continued along
the gravel roads not speaking, just stealing glances in the moonlight. No
man-made lights or lampposts punctuated the pine-choked countryside surrounding
us. Out the windows a million stars spread away from the Milky Way
like a white paint explosion across a midnight-blue canvas.
Just as Mara leaned
towards me to finally speak, the car slammed to a halt, screeching in the
gravel and sliding a good twenty feet on the road. All the kids
toppled to the floorboard and after a moment’s silence, Mrs. Callahan’s voice
whispered in the dark. “Oh, my God. What’s that?”
I poked my head
above the back seat just as my mother replied, the thick curls of her black
hair spilling over the seat and filling my view. “Oh, just some
young boys horsing around up there. Wait. Is that blood,
Marjorie? Drive on up.”
Mrs. Callahan
shifted into drive, but didn’t take her foot off the brake. “Probably
just a Halloween prank, Mrs. Madden. We best go on around.” Mrs.
Callahan’s eyes were so intensely focused ahead that I craned my neck away from
my mother’s hair to follow her gaze.
Two teen-age boys,
both in white T-shirts and jeans, stood illuminated on the road ahead. One
of them turned toward us, shielding a hand in front of his eyes, the front of
his T-shirt stained a deep red. A moment later the other boy
staggered and fell sideways into the shallow ditch along the far side of the
road.
“Margie, I think
they’re really hurt,” my mother said. “Maybe they were in a car
wreck.”
Mrs.
Callahan's eyes narrowed and her voice fell to a growl. “Ain’t no cars around
here, Mrs. Madden. Why don’t we just go to the next house and call an
ambulance?”
I inhaled the air
behind my mother’s hair. She used Prell, and her hair smelled just
like the green liquid in the bottle. She faced Mrs. Callahan, but
caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye and cupped my chin in her hand
as she spoke. “It wouldn’t be Christian, Margie. Drive on
up, and I’ll roll down the window and ask them what happened. Go on.”
Mrs. Callahan eyed
my mother as if to speak, but instead released the brake and we rolled forward
in the night slowly, approaching the boys. The one boy still lied
face down in the ditch, unmoving. The other one stumbled at the edge
of the road, moving in circles back and forth as though tracing the symbol for
infinity.
My mother rolled
down her window.
The boy who was
still standing was crying. His blond hair hung in front of his face,
and he whined. “Help us, please. There’s another boy on
the other side of the hill. He ain’t moving, either. We
had an accident. We were riding motorcycles.”
My mother unlocked
and opened her door. “Margie. You stay with the
children--” she began, but Mrs. Callahan’s hand shot across the seat and
clutched my mother by the sleeve of her white sweater.
“Mrs. Madden. Really. I
don’t know.”
My mother leaned
back inside and smiled. But it wasn’t the genuine kind, rather the
kind she always used whenever she was about to end a conversation. I
knew it, and Mrs. Callahan knew it, too.
“Margie, these boys
are hurt,” she said, “and I’m a nurse. It’s the only thing I can
do. Ya’ll go on up to Nellie’s. Call 911 and the
ambulance. Then call Jonathan and let him know I’m all right. Leave
the children at Nellie’s for the time being. When the police get
there, bring them here. We’ll be waiting right here on the side of
the road. Hopefully that poor boy in the woods isn’t hurt too bad.”
“Mama,” I said.
“Hush. Go
on up with Mrs. Callahan and I’ll help these boys, then I’ll see you and daddy
up at the house. I love you, Lucas.”
The memory always
goes fuzzy then. The next thing I remember is my mother’s face
receding into the dark woods as Mrs. Callahan drives away. I press
my face against the glass of the window, a tear trickling for some reason over
my cheek as the one bloodied boy holds my mother’s wrist and leads her into the
overgrown grass and small trees. My mother looks back at me one last
time, smiling the way only women can, the one that’s sad and frightened and
turned in the wrong direction but is supposed to reassure you that everything
will be fine.
It’s the last time
I’ll ever see my mother’s face.
They disappear into
the woods.
And just before our
station wagon crests the hill, I see the other mortally wounded boy suddenly
stand up in the ditch, not looking at all as sick and hurt as he’d appeared before. He
looks furtively about to make sure no one is watching, then runs into the
woods, sneaking behind my mother and her bloodied companion.
I wrestle and thrash
in the car, begging Mrs. Callahan to stop, until she finally screams at the top
of her voice, swearing at me with a stream of profanities that stun us all into
silence, screaming at me to be quiet because I’m scaring the other
children. She drives faster and I can still hear the sounds of
children crying all around me as the dark forest envelopes the empty gravel
road behind us, separating me farther and farther from my mother, forever.
About the Author:
MICHAEL RANSOM is a molecular pharmacologist and a
recognized expert in the fields of toxicogenomics and pharmacogenetics. He is widely
published in scientific journals and has edited multiple textbooks in
biomedical research. He is currently a pharmaceutical executive and an adjunct
professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Pennsylvania
School of Medicine. Raised in rural Mississippi ,
he now makes his home in northern New
Jersey . The Ripper Gene is his first
novel.
The Ripper Gene [Forge Books / Macmillan] is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and in brick-and-mortar bookstores across North
America .
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