Michael Baden - Remains Silent

“You know that’s not permitted, Dr. Rosen. I’ll have to get it for-”

Jake darted past him and ran down the ramp. He saw his beat-up Olds enclosed in a thicket of new foreign cars. He made his way through, skinning an ankle. He didn’t care. He opened the passenger door and with his spare key unlocked the glove compartment. He reached in, rummaged. Tucked in back was something Jake had handled a thousand times, only never in so crucial a moment: an evidence bag.

He drew it out. Pete had left him a letter.

DR. HENRY EWING was in his eighties, Manny figured, but looked nearer sixty. His trim figure, when he rose to shake her hand, was ramrod straight, his face was rosy, his shoes and fingernails polished to the highest gloss. Now he was back behind his desk, Manny sitting across from it.

“You told my assistant it was an emergency, Ms. Manfreda,” he said, “but you seem to be in excellent health. I’ve made room for you in my schedule, but if you’re merely here to sell me something-”

“Oh, it’s an emergency all right.” Manny loathed the man from the moment she introduced herself. She watched him intently. Spring it on him. “I’m here at the recommendation of Dr. Peter Harrigan.”

A muscle twitched under Ewing’s left eye. He selected a paper clip from a bowl on his desk and toyed with it. Not a bad cover-up but not good enough. “I haven’t heard from Dr. Harrigan in decades. Strange that he would recommend me.” Got him. He talked to Harrigan the Monday before Harrigan died.

“But you were once colleagues, were you not?”

He shrugged. “Forty years ago. He worked for me.”

“Then you’re the right Dr. Ewing. It’s forty years ago I’m interested in.” I’ve interrogated tougher witnesses than this. That paper clip’s scrap metal. He’s limp pasta. “You see, I’ve been retained to investigate the death of one Lieutenant James Albert Lyons.”

Not a twitch, not a flicker. “Never heard of him. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

She bore in. “You might not know the name, but you’ll surely remember the circumstance. He was one of at least four patients- there may have been more- who died at your hands. For him the murder weapon you used was electroshock experiments. He died of a fracture of the cervical spine.”

Touchdown! The hatred in those eyes could burn asbestos. She pressed on. “Still, if you don’t remember him, perhaps the name Isabella de la Schallier is familiar. You killed her with mescaline, I believe. But here’s a question that puzzles me: How come you decided to save her baby? You can tell me, or you can tell the police.”

He faced her squarely. “I will not have you sully my reputation at this stage of my life. We weren’t in the business of killing people, Ms. Manfreda. Especially not babies.”

“So the deaths were accidents? Unfortunate results of vital government testing? Human experiments?”

“Yes.”

“And one patient died of strontium poisoning. Didn’t you know what would happen if you fed someone strontium ninety?”

“Dr. Harrigan handled the strontium ninety. He fed it to patients in breakfast cereal in different doses.”

“And the mescaline?”

“Harrigan wouldn’t touch that. He refused. A different doctor did it.”

“On whose orders?”

Look at him. He’s broken. “I can’t tell you that.”

“On your orders, right?”

“No.”

“Okay, on your orders because you yourself were ordered.”

He seemed to shrivel before her eyes. Like the Wicked Witch of the West. “I had no choice,” he said. “It was a government program. I was a patriot.” He laid his head on the desk and closed his eyes. Waiting for the guillotine.

“I’m not much of a government fan,” Manny said calmly, though her heart was a trip-hammer, “and I’ve seen more than my share of injustice, but what you did in the government’s name at Turner is beyond despicable.”

Ewing raised his head. His eyes were vacant. “It wasn’t only at Turner, it was all over the country. Remember, this was the Cold War. We were afraid the Russians might use their bombs. We had to know the levels of radiation a person could survive. It was self-defense.”

Bullshit. “And the mescaline?”

“The North Koreans used drugs in fifty-two, the Japanese throughout the Second World War, mescaline and all sorts of other mind-benders. Again, we had to know the levels, what a person could be subjected to before he gave up secrets, before he’d betray his country.”

“Of course you would never have used radiation or drugs or Serratia as weapons.”

A hesitation. “Never. This is America!”

Righteous jerk. “So you experimented on people whose minds were already gone. I’m afraid I don’t understand the logic.”

“Isabella wasn’t insane.”

“No, she was just pregnant. I guess that makes it all right. Did you try mescaline on nonpregnant women too? A kind of comparison shopping?” Manny stood, shaking with rage. “This has been really informative, Dr. Ewing. I thank you.”

He reached out a hand. “Where are you going?”

“To New York. I’m just a simple civil rights attorney, but I suspect a great many people will want to know what happened at Turner- or all over the nation, if you’re right in what you say. If I were you, I’d hire a good lawyer. Somebody from the Justice Department would probably be best. His boss’s interests might coincide with yours.”

She looked at him for one last time, feeling her stomach heave. “Tell me, was it only four?”

He hesistated, then shook his head.

“And their bodies?”

“Buried in the field with the others.”

No special day ends without a treat. “I suppose, then, they’ll have to stop construction while we dig them up. But don’t worry, you probably won’t have to give back your Nobel Prize.”

When she’d left, he picked up the phone and made a long distance call.

Jake had guessed right. If Pete was carrying something with him, something that would explain the existence of the child, what better place to hide it- where no one but Jake could find it- than in the glove compartment of Jake’s car? Why not give it to me that night? Because he didn’t want to be there when I discovered it. He was too ashamed. He opened the letter. The voice of Isabella de la Schallier rang out across the decades.

My dearest beloved,

This is the most painful letter I’ll ever write. When you finish it, I ask only for two things: that you do what I ask, agony though I’m sure it will be, and that you keep this letter always as a reminder of my love.

Dr. Ewing told me yesterday that I will be given mescaline. He told me it was for my benefit, that it will help me with my depression, but I know that’s a lie. I’m not depressed- you have brought me joy. And I’m not sick, except sick in love. So I will be another of the Turner victims, like Lyons and Millen, Tedesco, Ryan and Cochran, and three others whose names I don’t know. The ones who disappeared into the Seclusion Room before me. At worst, I will go mad. At best, I shall die.

Of course I refused. I pleaded, begged on my hands and knees. He told me that if I did not cooperate, he would kill the baby- our Joseph. He said that in exchange for my participation, he would let me find a couple to adopt Joseph when he’s born- he would even help me if I didn’t know anyone myself.

My “treatment” will be long and hard. It’s even possible I will survive it, though I doubt that very much. The tragedy is that you will not be at my side to guide me through it. The other condition that Dr. Ewing imposed is that we are never to see each other again. I know you’re going to try to save me, and I can’t prevent you from trying, except to urge you to heed me. Be at peace. I’m at peace. You are my Godsend, my light, my soul, and my life, and losing you is a different death, a more painful one.