Cloning Can Kill

Cloning and biogenetics is a hot, hot topic right now and will continue to be so in the future. Just think about it. If cloning dogs is perfected – and when your ‘Rover’ dies – you can have him cloned exactly as he always was. Show dogs that cost $120,000.00 a year to campaign can be duplicated and sold internationally. It would be a multi-million dollar business.
And where there’s big profit you’ll find organized crime. It’s the end of October. A New York Police Department marine patrol launch spot’s a man’s body floating in a marshy area of Jamaica Bay. He’s been shot in the head. Lieutenant Clocker Corrigan and his partner Sergeant Tim Laslow of Homicide are assigned to the case. That same Sunday Lady Daphne Hamilton-Jones, an American millionaire heiress, is assaulted and drugged in her Park Avenue penthouse. By two men impersonating FedEx messengers. Causing her to miss the Best In Show judging at the prestigious Nicholas Abbey Kennel Club, Dog of the Year spectacular with her Champion West Highland White Terrier. Who was favoured to win. The dog, Jock, who had already won Supreme Champion at Crufts in England earlier in the year was also drugged and skin tissue samples were mysteriously taken from him by the FedEx men. Daphne loses Dog of the Year, the $300,000 cash award and the chance to have Jock acclaimed the top dog on both sides of the Atlantic. Lady Daphne is heiress to the Whitcombe industrial fortune. She’s married to Lord Jeremy Hamilton-Jones, himself a wealthy baron of industry. They live on a huge estate in Derbyshire, England. She hires her former lover, Eddie Ryan, to find out what’s going on. Ryan is a Special Agent with the U.S Treasury Department, as well as a professional dog handler.
Lieutenant Corrigan and Inspector Ryan have known each other from previous criminal cases. They join forces to solve Daphne’s mystery and the murder of the man found in Jamaica Bay. He turns out to be her missing butler. Ryan discovers that other top show dogs have had their tissue samples stolen. His investigation leads to a Las Vegas casino operator who owns the Papillon who had won the Nicholas Abbey show and the Dog of the Year award. Corrigan is told by an informant, Charlie Twenty Twenty, that he saw the ‘Surgeon’ near Daphne’s apartment building the day of the assault. Charlie has worked with Corrigan for years and, in reality, is a very wealthy investor and real estate owner who disguises himself as a blind street person with his dog King. The ‘Surgeon’ had been a prominent New York plastic surgeon who hit the fast lane and lost his medical license because of cocaine use. He now works for the mob. Corrigan calls an old contact, a Mafia Don, who talks to the ‘Surgeon.’ The doctor reveals he was contracted to steal dog tissue samples. By a company called The Mirror Image. They’re attempting to find a way to clone top show dogs. One of Lady Daphne’s companies is a research laboratory in the mountains near Carmel, New York. It’s run by Doctor Maximillian von Otto, a biogenetics genius nicknamed Mad Max. Daphne’s father hired him away from Nazi Germany at the end of World War Two. Mad Max reveals that he’s dying of cancer so he’s given all his files on his experiments to his attorney to give to Daphne at his death. He also shocks her with the news that he’s perfected a simple technique to clone humans. He introduces her to his two sons – one who appears to be about 30 and the other who looks 10. Mad Max reveals they are, in reality, only a few months old. A few days later gunmen visit the lab in the mountains. They kill the guards and force Dr. Max to tell them where his cloning records are by threatening to shoot his two sons. He gives them a fake set of records. But before they leave they murder the doctor and his two sons and set fire to the lab facility.The story ends with Daphne’s dilemma. She now owns the secret for cloning humans – with all its ethical problems. Will she use it to expand her corporate empire or destroy the secret forever?