Робин Кук - Mutation

“Could have been,” Madeline said. “David could have said lab, but I wrote hiding place in the file.”

“Did you ever talk with VJ?” Marsha asked.

“Once,” Madeline said. “I thought it would be helpful to get a feeling for the reality about the relationship. VJ was extremely straightforward. He told me that his brother David had been jealous of him from the day VJ had arrived home from the hospital.” Then Madeline laughed. “VJ told me that he could remember arriving home after he was born. That tickled me at the time.”

“Did David ever say what the threat was?” Marsha asked.

“Oh, yes,” Madeline said. “David told me that VJ had threatened to kill him.”

From the Pendleton Academy Marsha drove to Boston. Much as she resisted putting the pieces together, she felt utterly compelled to assemble them. She kept telling herself that everything she was learning was either circumstantial, coincidental, or innocuous. She had already lost one child. But even so, she knew she couldn’t rest until she found the truth.

Marsha had taken her psychiatric residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Visiting there was like going home. But she didn’t go to the psych unit. Instead, she went directly to Pathology and found a senior resident, Dr. Preston Gordon.

“Sure I can do that,” Preston said. “Since you don’t know the birthday, it will take a little searching, but nothing else is happening right now.”

Marsha followed Preston into the center of the pathology department where they sat at one of the hospital computers. There were several Raymond Cavendishes listed in the system, but by knowing the approximate year of death, they were able to find the Raymond Cavendish of Boxford, Massachusetts.

“All right,” Preston said. “Here comes the record.” The screen filled with the man’s hospital record. Preston scrolled through. “Here’s the biopsy,” he said. “And here’s the diagnosis: liver cancer of Kupffer cell of reticuloendothelial origin.” Preston whistled. “Now that’s a zebra. I’ve never even heard of that one.”

“Can you tell me if there have been any similar cases treated at the hospital?” Marsha asked.

Preston returned to the keyboard and began a search. It took him only a few minutes to get the answer. A name flashed on the screen. “There has only been one other case at this hospital,” he said. “The name was Janice Fay.”

Victor tuned his car radio to a station that played oldies but goodies and sang along happily to a group of songs from the late fifties, a time when he’d been in high school. He was in a great mood on his drive home, having spent the day totally engrossed and spellbound by VJ’s prodigious output from his hidden basement laboratory. It had turned out to be exactly as VJ had said it would be: beyond his wildest dreams.

As Victor turned into the driveway, the songs had changed to the late sixties, and he belted out “Sweet Caroline” along with Neil Diamond. He drove the car around the house and waited for the garage door to open. After he pulled the car into the garage, he sang until the song was over before turning off the ignition, getting out and skirting Marsha’s car, heading into the house.

“Marsha!” Victor yelled as soon as he got inside. He knew she was home because her car was there, but the lights weren’t on.

“Marsha!” he yelled again, but her name caught in his throat. She was sitting no more than ten feet from him in the relative darkness of the family room. “There you are,” he said.

“Where’s VJ?” she asked. She sounded tired.

“He insisted on going off on his bicycle,” Victor said. “But have no fear. Pedro’s with him.”

“I’m not worried about VJ at this point,” Marsha said. “Maybe we should worry about the security man.”

Victor turned on a light. Marsha shielded her eyes. “Please,” she said. “Keep it off for now.”

Victor obliged. He’d hoped she’d be in a better mood by the time he got home, but it wasn’t looking good. Undaunted, Victor sat down and launched into lavish praise of VJ’s work and his astounding accomplishments. He told Marsha that the implantation protein really worked. The evidence was incontrovertible. Then he told her the pièce de résistance: solving the implantation problem unlocked the door to the mystery of the entire differentiation process.

“If VJ wasn’t so intent on secrecy,” Victor said, “he could be in contention for a Nobel Prize. I’m convinced of it. As it is, he wants me to take all the credit and Chimera to get all the economic benefit. What do you think? Does that sound like a personality disorder to you? To me it sounds pretty generous.”

Without any response from Marsha, Victor ran out of things to say. After he was quiet for a moment, she said, “I hate to ruin your day, but I’m afraid I have learned more disturbing things about VJ.”

Victor rolled his eyes as he ran his fingers through his hair. This was not the response he was hoping for.

“The one teacher at the Pendleton Academy who made a big effort to get close to VJ died a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“He died of cancer.”

“Okay, he died of cancer,” Victor said. He could feel his pulse quicken.

“Liver cancer.”

“Oh,” Victor said. He did not like the drift of this conversation.

“It was the same rare type that both David and Janice died of,” Marsha said.

A heavy silence settled over the family room. The refrigerator compressor started. Victor did not want to hear these things. He wanted to talk about the implantation technology and what it would do for all those infertile couples when the zygotes refused to implant.

“For an extremely rare cancer, a lot of people seem to be contracting it. People who cross VJ. I had a talk with Mr. Cavendish’s wife. His widow. She’s a very kind woman. She teaches at Pendleton too. And I spoke to a Mr. Arnold. It turns out he was close to David. Do you know that VJ threatened David?”

“For God’s sakes, Marsha! Kids always threaten each other. I did it myself when my older brother wrecked a snow house I’d built.”

“VJ threatened to kill David, Victor. And not in the heat of an argument.” Marsha was near tears. “Wake up, Victor!”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Victor said angrily, “at least not now.” He was still high from the day’s tour of VJ’s lab. Was there a darker side to his son’s genius? At times in the past, he’d had his suspicions, but they were all too easy to dismiss. VJ seemed such a perfect child. But now Marsha was expressing the same kind of doubts and backing them up so that they made a kind of evil sense. Could the little boy who gave him a tour of the lab, the genius behind the new implantation process, also be behind unspeakable acts? The murder of those children, of Janice Fay, of his own son David? Victor couldn’t consider the horror of it all. He banished such thoughts. It was impossible. Someone at the lab killed the kids. The other deaths had to have been coincidental. Marsha was really pushing this too far. But then, she’d been on the hysterical side ever since the Hobbs and Murray kids had died. But if her fears were in any way justified, what would he do? How could he blithely support VJ in his many scientific endeavors? And if it was true, if VJ was half prodigy, half monster, what did it say of him, his creator?

Marsha might have insisted more, but just then VJ arrived home. He came in just as he had a week ago Sunday night, with his saddlebags over his shoulder. It was as though he’d known what they’d been talking about. VJ glared at Marsha, his blue eyes more chilling than ever. Marsha shuddered. She could not return his stare. Her fear of him was escalating.