John Saul - Brain Child

Finnerty stiffened. “Can you show me?”

“Down the road. It’s right down the road.”

Finnerty glanced toward the squad car, where Jackson was still on the radio. “Let’s take your truck, José. You feel good enough to drive?”

José looked uncertain, but then climbed into the cab, and while Finnerty yelled to Jackson that he’d be right back, pressed on the starter and prayed that now, of all times, the truck wouldn’t finally give up. The engine sputtered and coughed, then caught.

Half a mile down the hill, José brought the truck to a stop and pointed. “There,” he said. “He went in there.”

Finnerty stared at the house for several seconds. “Are you sure, José? This could be very serious.”

José’s head bobbed eagerly. “I’m sure. Look at the mess. They cut the vines off the wall and didn’t even clean them up. I don’t forget things like that. That’s the house the boy went into.”

Even with the vines off the wall, Finnerty recognized the Lonsdales’ house. After all, it had been little more than eight hours since he’d been there himself.

He got out of the truck, and noted the empty garage. “José, I want you to go back up to the hacienda and send my partner down with the car. Then wait. Okay?”

José nodded, and maneuvered the truck through a clumsy U-turn before disappearing back up the hill. Finnerty stayed where he was, his eyes on the house, though he had a growing feeling that it was empty. A few minutes later, Jackson arrived, and at almost the same time, a woman appeared from the house across the street and a few yards down from the Lonsdales’.

“There isn’t anyone there,” Sheila Rosenberg volunteered. “Marsh and Ellen left two hours ago, and I saw Alex leave in Ellen’s car a few minutes ago.”

“Do you know where they went? The parents, I mean?”

“I’m sure I haven’t a clue,” Sheila replied. “I don’t keep track of everything that happens in the neighborhood, you know.” Then her voice dropped slightly. “Is something wrong?”

Finnerty glared at the woman, certain that she did, indeed, keep track of everything her neighbors were doing. “No,” he said. If he told her the truth, she would be the first one up the hill. “We just want to get some information, that’s all.”

“Then you’d better call the Center,” Sheila Rosenberg replied. “I’m sure they’ll know where to find Marsh.”

Despite Sheila Rosenberg’s assertion that the house was as empty as he thought it was, Finnerty searched it anyway.

In the bedroom he was sure was Alex’s, he found the blood-soaked shirt and carefully put it in a plastic bag Jackson brought from the squad car. Then he called the Medical Center.

“I know exactly where he went,” Barbara Fannon told him after he’d identified himself. “He and Ellen went down to Palo Alto to talk to Dr. Torres about Alex. Apparently he’s having some kind of trouble.” And that, Finnerty thought grimly as Barbara Fannon searched for the number of the Institute for the Human Brain, is the understatement of the year.

Marsh felt his patience slipping rapidly away.

They had been at the Institute for almost two hours, and for the first hour and a half they had cooled their heels in the waiting room. This time, Marsh had ignored the journals, in favor of pacing the room. Ellen, however, had hardly moved at all from her place on the sofa, where she sat silently, her face pale, her hands folded in her lap.

And now, as they sat in Torres’s office, they were being fed double-talk. The first thing Torres had done when he’d finally deigned to see them was show them a computer reconstruction of the operation.

It had been meaningless, as far as Marsh could tell. It had been speeded up, and the graphics on the monitor were not nearly as clear as they had been when Torres had produced the original depiction of Alex’s injured brain.

“This is, of course, an operating program, not a diagnostic one,” Torres had said smoothly. “What you’re seeing here was never really meant for human eyes. It’s a program designed to be read by a computer, and fed to a robot, and the graphics simply aren’t important. In fact, they’re incidental.”

“And they don’t mean a damned thing to me, Dr. Torres,” Marsh declared. “You told me you’d explain what’s happening to Alex, and so far, all you’ve done is dodge the issue. You now have a choice. Either get to the point, or I’m walking out of here— with my wife — and the next time you see us we’ll all be in court. Can I make it any clearer than that?”

Before Torres could make any reply, the telephone rang. “I said I wasn’t to be disturbed under any circumstances,” he said as soon as he’d put the phone to his ear. He listened for a moment, then frowned and held the receiver toward Marsh. “It’s for you, and I take it it’s some sort of emergency.”

“This is Dr. Lonsdale,” Marsh said, his voice almost as impatient as Torres’s had been. “What is it?”

And then he, too, listened in silence as the other person talked. When he hung up, his face was pale and his hands were trembling.

“Marsh …” Ellen breathed. “Marsh, what is it?”

“It’s Alex,” Marsh said, his voice suddenly dead. “That was Sergeant Finnerty. He says he wants to talk to Alex.”

“Again?” Ellen asked, her heart suddenly pounding. “Why?”

When he answered, Marsh kept his eyes on Raymond Torres!

“He says Cynthia and Carolyn Evans are both dead, and he says he has reason to think that Alex killed them.”

As Ellen gasped, Raymond Torres rose to his feet.

“If he said that, then he’s a fool,” Torres rasped, his normally cold eyes glittering angrily.

“But that is what he said,” Marsh whispered. Then, as Torres sank slowly back into his chair, Marsh spoke again. “Please, Dr. Torres, tell me what you’ve done to my son.”

“I saved him,” Torres replied, but for the first time, his icy demeanor had disappeared. He met Marsh’s eyes, and for a moment said nothing. Then he nodded almost imperceptibly.

“All right,” he said quietly. “I’ll tell you what I did. And when I’m done, you’ll see why Alex couldn’t have killed anyone.” He fell silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, Marsh was almost sure he was speaking more to himself than to either Marsh or Ellen. “No, it’s impossible. Alex couldn’t have killed anyone.”

Speaking slowly and carefully, he explained exactly what had been done to Alex Lonsdale.

Ellen tried to still her trembling hands as her eyes searched her husband’s face for whatever truth might be written there. But Marsh’s face remained stonily impassive, as it had been all through Raymond Torres’s long recitation. “But … but what does it all mean?” she finally asked. For the last hour, at least, she had no longer been able to follow the details of what Torres had been saying, nor was she sure the details mattered. What was frightening her was the implications of what she had heard.

“It doesn’t matter what it means,” Marsh said, “because it’s medically impossible.”

“Think what you like, Dr. Lonsdale,” Raymond Torres replied, “but what I’ve told you is the absolute truth. The fact that your son is still alive is the proof of it.” He offered Marsh a smile that was little more than a twisted grimace. “The morning after the operation, I believe you made reference to a miracle. You were, I assume, thinking of a medical miracle, and I chose not to correct you. What it was, though, was a technological miracle.”

“If what you’re saying is actually true,” Marsh said, “what you’ve done is no miracle at all. It’s an obscenity.”