The Cure

by Douglas E. Richards

  “I really thought the prisoners would be bound,” she admitted unhappily. “And that you’d have a guard in there with you.” She shook her head in determination. “But no matter. I’m sure I can find a way to overcome this little … problem. I’m willing to bet I can make myself look pretty hideous. I can wear clothing so that inmates will barely be able to tell I’m a woman, let alone a woman who might have any physical appeal.”

  Apgar sighed. “At the risk of being accused of sexual harassment, that would take quite some doing.”

  Erin smiled back sweetly. “Thanks for the compliment,” she said. She paused for several seconds and then, in a level just above a whisper but with undeniable intensity, added, “But I think you’ll find that when I set my mind to something, I don’t let anything get in the way.”

  * * *

  ERIN’S MIND RETURNED to the present. Had it really only been five years since she had met Jason Apgar? Sometimes it seemed like five days. But for some reason, today it seemed like an eternity ago. An eternity in which she had given herself a literal prison sentence, just as surely as if she had been convicted by a judge.

  She had intended for this to be a normal session with the human monster named John, who could casually beat two people to death over some scratched paint. She would strap goggles containing a visual LED display over his eyes, pack his head with pillows, and slide it and his upper torso inside the doughnut-shaped MRI device. Then she would take a baseline. Finally, she would begin collecting new data.

  Simple and routine.

  But it wasn’t to be. John insisted on talking. In a different way, and about a different subject than he had ever spoken of before. After thirty minutes he showed no sign of slowing down. He seemed filled with remorse. And Erin believed him.

  And, strangely, she was as horrified by this turn of events as she was elated.

  3

  “YOU MUST BE the hardest working woman on this campus,” said Lisa Renner. “And that’s really saying something.”

  Erin Palmer smiled. “Okay, so I’m a bit driven. I confess. But I don’t think I’m that bad.”

  They arrived at their destination, a cozy Greek restaurant on the outskirts of campus, and waited to be seated.

  “Are you kidding me?” said Lisa. “Sharing an apartment with you is like having an apartment to myself.” She grinned. “Except that some mysterious stranger is nice enough to pay half the rent. It’s a good deal if you can get it.”

  Erin laughed. Actually, she felt as though she had gotten the better end of the deal. She couldn’t be more thrilled to have found Lisa Renner. Erin’s roommate of several years had done the unthinkable two months earlier—she had finished her Ph.D. and had taken a postdoc on the other side of the country. Erin had been wrapped up in her research as usual, and had been slow to realize that the few people she was close enough with to want as a roommate were happy with their current living arrangements, and she was forced to advertise for someone to room with. Urgently. Either that or learn how to beg for money on street corners.

  Graduate students were notoriously overworked and underpaid. In her case, she received some funding from grants and for teaching undergraduate courses, but she would have to get a substantial raise just to be considered poor. Lisa, a third-year history graduate student who also found herself running low on funds, had come along at exactly the right time seven weeks earlier, and they had hit it off immediately.

  Lisa was possibly the sweetest girl Erin had ever met. She was hardworking but spontaneous. She was relentlessly upbeat and full of life, both qualities that Erin knew she needed to work on. At twenty-four, she was three years younger than Erin, exactly the same age that Erin’s sister, Anna, would have been, and Erin was surprised by how quickly she’d come to love this quirky, endearing history student.

  “Okay. I work late a lot,” confessed Erin. “But I have been getting better since you moved in. I mean, I’m here, aren’t I? On a Monday. Having an actual lunch with a friend at an actual sit-down restaurant.”

  As if on cue the hostess appeared and led them to a small, isolated table against the window.

  When they were seated, Lisa shook her head slightly and pursed her lips in a classic what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you gesture. “I do appreciate you coming to lunch with me,” she said. “But I had to practically put a gun to your head to get you to do it.”

  “Well I’m glad you did,” said Erin. “Keep forcing me to remember I’m a human being.”

  Lisa brightened. “Well, you teach once a week, right? So why don’t we do this every week on your teaching day?”

  Erin realized that while this might have seemed impossible only three weeks before, now it was actually worth considering. Because the unimaginable had happened. She had achieved the results she had been working toward.

  Perhaps.

  Preliminary results were breathtaking, true, but they were still preliminary. She would need to confirm and refine these results for several months by doing careful, rigorous, statistically significant science. Only then would she be able to shout eureka, if only to herself—and to Hugh Raborn. But if her initial success could be duplicated, repeatedly, she really would be able to throttle back, enjoy life a little. But she couldn’t agree just yet, and certainly not without a little banter. “Lunch every week?” she said in amusement. “Now that’s just crazy talk.”

  “It’d be good for you,” said Lisa. “You just admitted that yourself. Just cut your office hours in half and use this time to bond with your roommate. Come on, does anyone ever visit you during your office hours anyway?”

  “Well, there was this one guy once. In 1943…”

  Lisa laughed as the waitress came over to take their order. Lisa ordered a massive plateful of food, while Erin ordered a gyro sandwich and water, declining to add an appetizer or at least a side dish or two as Lisa urged her to do.

  “If I had your figure,” said Lisa as the waitress left, “I’d be ordering everything on the menu.” She frowned. “Which probably explains why I don’t have your figure.”

  Erin suppressed a smile. “Come on, Lisa. You’re not in the least overweight. I bet we weigh exactly the same.”

  “Yeah, but you’re a few inches taller, and your weight is, ah … distributed better.” She sighed. “Let’s face it, if I were going into a prison, I wouldn’t have to wrap gauze around my chest every day like you do. My breasts would hide out just fine in that ugly, baggy outfit of yours.”

  “From what you’ve told me, Derrick doesn’t seem to have any problem with your figure.”

  Erin’s roommate raised her eyebrows. “He does seem to be a bit insatiable, doesn’t he?”

  Derrick was finishing up an MBA, and he and Lisa had started dating just four weeks earlier—but they were seeing more and more of each other and the trajectory looked promising.

  “So did he call you today?” asked Erin.

  Lisa beamed. “He did. I think I really like this guy. I mean really like him.” She shook her head and frowned. “But you’ve really freaked me out, Erin. Before I met you, I didn’t even know how to pronounce the word psychopathy. I would have said psycho-pathy instead of psy-cop-athy.”

  Lisa gazed up at the sky as if pondering a long-ago memory. “Those were the good old days,” she said. “Seven weeks ago. When I was blissfully ignorant of not only the pronunciation of this word, but the fact that fricking one percent of the fricking population is fricking psychopathic. Now I’m totally paranoid. I’m seeing psychopaths everywhere. I mean, take career politicians. Are there any who aren’t psychopathic?” She shook her head. “Thanks, Erin.”

  “That isn’t fair. You asked me what percentage of the population were psychopathic. I didn’t bring it up. What was I supposed to do, lie?”

  “Yes,” said Lisa emphatically, but with an amused twinkle in her eye. “I really like this guy,” she added. “But he does fit the characteristics of psychopaths you told me about. He’s bright, handsome, smooth, totally at ease in
social situations, articulate…”

  “Sounds like a real monster,” said Erin wryly.

  “I’m serious,” complained Lisa. “Didn’t you say these people are great at manipulating you to like them?”

  “Look, just because psychopaths fit a certain profile doesn’t mean that normal people can’t fit that profile also. In fact, far more normal people have these qualities than psychopaths. They just have a soul as well.” She raised her eyebrows. “Which is always a nice feature.” The corners of her mouth turned up into an amused smile. “But sometimes a pickle is just a pickle.”

  “As opposed to a psychopath?” said Lisa.

  “Right.”

  Lisa considered. “Okay. But he still could be one, couldn’t he?” She looked intently at Erin. “You’re always so busy on the weekend with your ninety-hour-a-week work schedule, but this coming weekend you’ve got to meet him. I don’t care if I have to take him to your lab and pull you away from the computer. I mean, if anyone would know if he was a decent guy or a monster in hiding, you would.”

  The waitress appeared with their food, set it down in front of them, and left.

  “Hey, even the experts can be fooled,” said Erin. “Fairly easily. I mean, I’d have a far better chance than you would of figuring it out, but I wouldn’t be infallible. Did you Google this guy?”

  “Of course,” snapped Lisa, as if her roommate had just called her an idiot. “No bodies chopped up and found in his refrigerator—at least as far as I can tell.” She leaned forward. “I can’t even imagine working with these monsters year after year. If I’ve become paranoid, I can only imagine what this has done to you. I mean, how can you trust anyone? Is that why you don’t have a guy?”

  Erin had just torn a large bite from her gyro and motioned for her friend to give her a few seconds to finish chewing and swallowing. She did, set her gyro back down on the plate, and said, “Okay, I’ll admit trust isn’t my strong suit. But I’ve been in relationships before. Really.”

  “When was the last time you were in one?” challenged Lisa, taking a sip from the Coke she had ordered.

  “Two years ago.”

  “So … what? You’ve been doing one-night stands since then?”

  Erin rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, one-night stands are ideal if you aren’t the trusting type. Nothing like going home with a total stranger.” She shook her head. “I’m not a one-night stand kind of girl.”

  Lisa’s eyes widened as she hurriedly swallowed the bite she had just taken. “So you haven’t been laid in two years? Are you kidding me? No wonder you seem a little stressed out most of the time. I’m amazed you don’t explode. Just spontaneously erupt into a ball of repressed sexuality. We have to find you a guy.”

  “Two years isn’t that long,” said Erin.

  Lisa just ignored her. “We have to find you a guy,” she repeated.

  “Uh … thanks,” said Erin. “I know you mean well. But I can take care of that myself when the time is right. Let’s get back to Derrick.”

  “Wow, that was the least subtle attempt to change the subject I’ve ever seen. I’m not giving up on this. You’re a workaholic, we’ve established that. And I like you far too much not to want to help you. I can’t even imagine how depressing it must be to work with murderers and rapists in prison all the time. I’m taking it upon myself to counteract the gloom of that place. Just think of me as the self-appointed ray of sunshine in your life.”

  “And you’re doing a great job,” said Erin. “In fact, I just might start calling you Ray.” She paused. “So now can we change the subject?”

  “Okay,” said Lisa. “But I’m making this my mission. I’m warning you.”

  “Warning received. Now let’s get back to Derrick.”

  “Okay. Why not? He is my favorite subject, after all.” She stared at her roommate. “So give me some advice. There has to be some way to spot a psycho.”

  “Psychopath,” corrected Erin.

  “Yeah, I get it. People use psycho to refer to crazy. You told me. But whenever I say it, just know I’m referring to the people you study, okay? The evil but sane people. Anyway, how do you spot them?”

  “I could tell you a possible way, but you aren’t an expert. You’d probably misdiagnose most of the time.”

  “You’re probably right, but tell me anyway. Now you’ve piqued my curiosity.”

  “Okay. You know how people use their hands when they talk? Humans are wired that way. Even when we’re on the phone and the other person can’t see us, we do it—although we don’t ever think about it or realize we are. This gesturing increases when we’re trying to get across a difficult concept. Next time someone you’re talking with is searching for the right word and it’s on the tip of their tongue, watch their hands. They’ll be more active than ever—as if these movements will help them find the memory or convey the meaning. Am I making sense?”

  “Perfect sense.”

  “Good. And if you’re using a second language that you aren’t as comfortable with as your first, your hand movements increase in amount. Probably for the same reason. Well, emotions are a second language to a psychopath. They don’t really have them. They know the words but they can’t hear the music. Hook an EEG up to a normal and their brains respond differently to a word like chair, and an emotionally charged word like torture. Not a psychopath. Their brains react to these words in the exact same way. They’re like color-blind people who teach themselves to fake seeing color. So when they’re trying to voice something emotional they move their hands more than normals would.” She paused and raised her eyebrows. “Like I said, emotions are a second language to them.”

  “Fascinating,” said Lisa. “And scary as hell. But you’re right. This doesn’t help. I have no idea how much an average person uses their hands. I mean, I’ll start paying attention now, but I’d hate to kick Derrick in the balls because he spoke with his hands.”

  Erin laughed. “I’m sure Derrick would hate that also.”

  “I know what we can do,” continued Lisa. “If Derrick and I start getting really serious, you can put him in your MRI machine and scan his brain. Then we’d know for sure.”

  “Haven’t you already told him what I study?”

  Lisa frowned. “Yeah. You did come up. The mystery roommate. So you’re saying he’d probably figure out that’s what we were doing. That he might not appreciate it that his girlfriend thinks he might be a psycho.”

  Erin opened her mouth to respond when her phone vibrated in her pocket. She pulled it out and read the caller ID. “Sorry, it’s my boss. I need to take this.”

  The phone conversation lasted less than a minute, but all the sunshine that this discussion with Lisa had let into Erin’s life quickly vanished.

  “Erin?” said Lisa worriedly, not having to be an expert in body language to know that something was very wrong.

  “Sorry, but I have to go,” said Erin, shoving the last of her sandwich into her mouth and chasing it down with a long drink of water.

  “What is it?”

  “Seems the dean of my department wants to see me and my advisor in his office,” she replied. “Immediately. If not sooner.”

  “What about?”

  “I have no idea,” replied Erin. She frowned deeply and then added, “But, apparently, he isn’t a happy camper.”

  4

  ERIN AND HER thesis advisor sat before the desk of Dean Richard Borland in two brown leather chairs that looked stately, well padded, and exceedingly comfortable, which only went to show that you couldn’t judge a chair by its appearance. Whoever had designed the chairs must have been the world’s leading expert on the human body to be able to design one this unsuited to the human posture.

  Erin watched the dean’s glowering face and wondered if he had bought these chairs on purpose to unsettle his visitors. Not that he wasn’t fully capable of making visitors squirm and become miserably uncomfortable all by himself.

  The dean handed her a section of the Wall
Street Journal once she was fully locked into the torture chair, doing so with such contempt that he threw it on her lap more than handed it to her. She glanced down. It was one of the weekend sections of the paper that boasted the highest circulation of any in the country. The lead story, which took up the entire front page of the section, top and bottom, and continued onto the next page was entitled, “The Psychopaths Among Us.”

  Erin handed the paper to Apgar beside her, having learned on her way here that he didn’t have any better idea than she did as to why the dean had demanded an audience, and why the man seemed so unhappy. Apgar scanned the title as well.

  “Have you seen this?” demanded the dean.

  Erin and her advisor both shook their heads no.

  “Really?” said the dean to Erin pointedly. “I find that hard to believe.” He leaned toward her with a scowl. “Since you’re quoted in it.”

  Erin blanched. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  “I didn’t know. I don’t read this paper. And there has to be some mistake. If I had spoken with a reporter from the Wall Street Journal, believe me, I’d remember it.”

  “Can you give us a few minutes to read this, Richard?” said Apgar.

  Dean Borland fumed but nodded, handing Erin the same section from a second copy of the paper he had on his desk. She and Apgar read silently while the dean drummed his fingers on his desk impatiently.

  The story spoke of the progress being made in the study of psychopathy, especially focusing on the differences in brain physiology that were continuing to be uncovered almost every year now. And then the story got to Erin, who was quoted on the second page. She was introduced as a graduate student at the University of Arizona, studying differences in the brains of psychopaths and normals, both with respect to their structure and the electrical patterns given off in response to certain stimuli. The article went on to say: