John Saul - Brain Child

The dusty road wound steadily up the hill, and Alex looked neither to the left nor to the right. He knew every inch of these hills, for he’d ridden over them with his father ever since he was a little boy. Now, though, he walked, for along with his father’s land, the gringos had taken the horses as well. Indeed, they’d taken everything, even his name.

Still, he hadn’t left La Paloma — would never leave La Paloma until finally the gringos had paid with their lives for the lives they had taken.

He came to a house, opened the gate, and stepped through into the patio. Not too long ago he’d been in this patio as an honored guest, with his parents and his sisters, attending a fiesta . Now he was here for another reason.

For a few centavos , the new owners would let him take care of the plants in their patio. Idly he wondered what they would do if they knew who he really was.

As he worked, he kept a watchful eye on the house, and one by one the people left, until he knew that the woman was alone. Then he went to the front door, lifted the heavy knocker, and let it fall back against its plate. The door opened, and the woman stood in the cool gloom of the foyer, looking at him uncertainly.

He reached out and put his hands around her neck.

As he began squeezing her life away, he felt her terror, felt all the emotions that racked her spirit. He felt her die, and began to sweat.…

He woke up with a start, and sat up. The dream ended, but Alex could still see the face of the woman he’d strangled, and his body was damp with the memory of fear.

And he knew the woman in the dream.

It was Valerie Benson.

But who was he?

The memory of the dream was clear in his mind, and he went over it piece by piece.

The road hadn’t been paved. It had been a dirt road, and yet it hadn’t seemed strange to him.

And he didn’t have a name.

They’d stolen his name.

He knew who “they” were, just as he knew why he’d strangled Valerie Benson.

His parents were dead, and he was taking vengeance on the people who had killed them.

But it still made no sense, for his parents were asleep in their room down the hall.

Or were they?

More and more, the line between what was real and what was not was becoming indistinct.

More and more the odd memories of things that couldn’t be were becoming more real than the unfamiliar world he lived in.

Perhaps, that very night, he had killed his parents, and now had no memory of it. He glanced at the clock by the bed; the fluorescent hands read eleven-thirty. He had been in bed only half an hour. There hadn’t been enough time for him to go to sleep, then wake up, kill his parents, go back to sleep, then dream about it.

He went back over the evening, step by step, and all of it was perfectly clear in his memory, except for one brief moment. He’d parked across the street from Jake’s when María Torres had spoken to him.

Spoken to him in Spanish.

The next thing he remembered was going into Jake’s, and that, too, was very clear: he’d gotten out of the car, locked it, and walked from the parking lot into the pizza place.

The parking lot.

He distinctly remembered parking his car on the street across from the pizza parlor, but he also remembered entering Jake’s from the parking lot, which was next to the restaurant.

The two memories were in direct conflict, but were equally as strong. There must, therefore, have been two events involved. He must have gone to Jake’s twice.

He was still trying to make sense out of his memories, and tie them to the dream, when he heard the wailing of a siren in the distance. Then there was another sound, as the telephone began to ring.

Alex got out of bed and put on his robe, then went down the hall to his parents’ room. Though their voices were muffled by the closed door, he could still make out the words.

“They don’t know,” he heard his father say. “All they know is that they’re bringing her in, and that they think she’s a DOA.”

“If you’re going down there, I’m going with you,” his mother replied. “And don’t try to argue with me. Valerie and I have been friends all our lives. I want to be there.”

“Honey, neither of us is going anywhere. I’m not on call tonight, remember? They called because they knew Valerie was a friend of ours.”

Slowly Alex backed away from the closed door and returned to his own room.

Valerie. He searched his memory, hoping there was another Valerie there, but there wasn’t. It had to be Valerie Benson, and she was dead.

Then, though he had no conscious memory of it at all, he knew why he had arrived at Jake’s twice.

He’d gone there once, and then left. After María Torres had spoken to him in Spanish, he’d driven away and gone to Valerie Benson’s house, and he’d killed her. Then he’d gone back to Jake’s, and sat down at the table with Kate and Bob and Lisa, and talked for a while.

And then he’d come home and gone to bed and dreamed about what he’d done.

But he still didn’t know why.

His parents were still alive, and he’d hardly even known Valerie Benson. He had no reason to kill her.

And yet he had.

He got back in bed, and lay for a while staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Somewhere in his mind he was sure there were answers, and if he thought about the problem long enough, he would figure out what those answers were.

He heard a door open and close, then footsteps in the hall. It was his mother. He heard her going downstairs, then, a little later, he heard his father following her.

For a few minutes he toyed with the idea of going downstairs himself, and telling them about his dream, and that he was sure he’d killed Valerie Benson, and probably Mrs. Lewis too. But then he rejected the whole idea. Unless he could tell them why he’d killed the two women, they surely wouldn’t believe he’d done it.

Instead, they’d just think he was crazy.

Alex turned over and pulled the covers snugly around him. He let his mind run free.

And, as he was sure they would, the connections began to come together, and he began to understand what was happening to him.

A few minutes later, he was sound asleep. Through the rest of the night his sleep was undisturbed.

“I’m telling you, Tom, the kids did it,” Roscoe Finnerty said as he and Jackson sat in the police station the next morning.

Neither of them had had any sleep, and all Tom Jackson really wanted to do was go home and go to bed, but if Finnerty wanted to talk — and Finnerty usually did — the least he could do was listen. In fact, with Finnerty, listening was all he really had to do, since Finnerty was as capable of posing the questions as he was of coming up with the answers.

“Lookit,” Finnerty was saying now. “We got two killings, same M.O. And we got the same two kids discovering both bodies. What could be simpler? And don’t tell me there’s no previous record of trouble with these kids. They were both up at that bash last spring, when the Lonsdale kid smashed up his car, and they were both drunk—”

“Now, wait a minute, Roscoe,” Jackson interrupted. “Let’s at least be fair. Did you give any of those kids a test?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then don’t tell me you’re going to stand up in court and tell a judge they were drunk, ’cause you ain’t! Now, why don’t we just go home and let the plainclothes guys do their job?”

Finnerty stared at his partner over the edge of his coffee cup for several long seconds. “You think we ought to just forget it?”

Jackson sighed, and stretched his tired muscles. “I’m not saying to forget it. I’m just saying we’ve got a job to do, and I think we oughta do it, and not butt in where we aren’t invited.”