Murder Is Pathological

by P. M. Carlson

  “Yes, recruit. But he was, something.” They waited. “Scared. He was scared. He didn’t, something. He didn’t.”

  “He didn’t mean to,” suggested Monica.

  “He didn’t mean to. Yes.” Ted smiled, pleased; then he added, “Hard. Hard for me, now.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Maggie. She seemed calm and accepting, but Monica could tell that she was shaken too.

  They went through the math lesson, painfully. For a while Ted kept being distracted by Maggie, surprised and puzzled each time he looked up and saw her. He kept losing his place. Then, on her own, she moved a little further to his right, and he ignored her for the rest of the lesson. Finally Monica suggested that they hum “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” When they finished, Maggie moved back around to where he would notice her. He greeted her as though she’d been away.

  “I want to sing too,” she said.

  Ted looked pleased. The three of them la-laed through “Michelle” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and even managed a little Bach. Maggie’s singing voice was a bit higher than Monica’s, and they harmonized well. Ted’s face lost its tense, puzzled, apologetic look and became joyous as they sang. This at least had not been taken from him.

  Then it was time to go. They signed out and walked silently toward the car. The sun slanted across the patchy lawn, the scuffed gravel driveway. Monica felt let down. Somehow it all seemed flat, not what she had hoped. Could Maggie truly understand anything from seeing them here? Monica wished now that she had not risked it. Her unsuspected dependence on Maggie’s friendship, her angry shock at those hideous accusations, had led her to a foolish, pointless move. Well, she could still back off, regain her independence, try to head off any mischief Maggie might want to stir up with Anita. That would be best.

  Maggie said thoughtfully, “I see why you want to help them.”

  “Yes.” Well, that at least had come across. Encouraged, Monica went on. “I can’t really help them, of course. Not these particular people. If Mary lives long enough, Dr. Weisen’s drug might help her. But she probably won’t. And the others have different problems. It’ll be years before we can do anything for their situations. Too late for them. But I can at least be a sort of friend.”

  “Ted seemed—I don’t know how to explain it. With the music he was so completely with us. And sometimes when we were talking to him, just for a minute there was nothing wrong.”

  “Yes, I know. He has very little frontal lobe damage. The damage is in the connections. He has trouble with his visual field, his body image. He has trouble finding words. But he knows them.” Monica shook her head. “That’s the terrible thing, Maggie. He’s still there. He’s blocked off, disconnected from his own brain and body. But whatever it is that we call a person is still there. Whole, and suffering.”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s what I sensed.” They were standing next to the car now. Monica unlocked Maggie’s door, but a gentle hand on her arm stopped her from going around to her own.

  “Monica, you knew Ted before his injury, didn’t you?”

  Damn. How could someone who called her a floozy be so sharp? Monica was silent a moment. Finally, she confessed, “Yes, I knew him.”

  “He was a special friend.”

  Well, she’d asked for it, hadn’t she, demanding that her suspicious roommate come along. What had she expected, the Florence Nightingale award? It was no good trying to turn back now. But she still had a sense of gambling her life away as she raised her chin gamely and made her admission.

  “Maggie, Ted is my husband.”

  “Your husband!” The shock in the blue eyes was followed by comprehension.

  “Till death do us part,” said Monica, trying to sound flippant, and failing. Then she was enfolded in her friend’s contrite and sheltering arms.

  IX

  The drive back from the nursing home was exhilarating. Maggie was full of perceptive questions and unstinting approval of everything Monica had done in her attempts to carve out some sort of life from the shambles Ted’s injury had left her. One part of the conversation especially excited Monica with its possibilities.

  “Monica, tell me again why he can walk so well but still bumps into things. He doesn’t stumble, he just walks very confidently right into a chair.”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with his motor connections. The part that was destroyed linked the visual area to the motor pathways. Those pathways are still good, but the connections are haywire. So he can’t guide himself visually, even though he can still coordinate all the muscular feedback that helps him balance and stride correctly and so forth. In fact, he usually does better at sitting down, for example, if he doesn’t try to look at the chair or think of what he’s doing.”

  “Suppose exactly the same injury happened to me. If I did a gymnastics routine, I’d do pretty well blindfolded but I’d fall off the bars if I looked at them or thought about it. Right?”

  Monica smiled. “Well, I wouldn’t recommend that particular experiment. But yes, if you’d known the routine really well before the injury, and could really keep yourself from thinking about it, that would be true.”

  “And that’s why he can talk but not read. He can say ‘mathematician’ with no trouble once he thinks of the word. His speech muscles know what to do. But the connection with its meaning is slow. And he can’t read it easily because of the visual disconnection.”

  “Right.”

  “What about writing? He can probably do that too if he doesn’t look at the paper, right?”

  Monica was staggered. “I don’t know, Maggie! I never tried!”

  “You never tried?”

  “Damn! We worked on the alphabet, of course, and numbers. But I never thought to ask him to try it without looking. He was in the hospital, and then home only two months before I went bonkers. Damn! What an idiot I’ve been!”

  “Hey, you’re wonderful with him, idiot!”

  “Yeah, but he even had to start the singing himself. He was humming one day and I joined in. And I never thought of writing.”

  “What did you mean when you said you went bonkers?”

  “Well, he can’t be left alone long. The visual neglect, the seizures. When he was discharged from the hospital, I gave up our apartment and we moved in with his parents. It was so we could share the burden, we thought, and keep him in one familiar place. But it didn’t work. We were all so tense, yelling at each other. His mother seems to think it’s my fault, I guess for not throwing myself in front of his troop plane. And I was no better, I screamed right back at her. It was terrible for Ted. He understands anger, all right. Finally my sister Carol brought me to my senses, said we couldn’t go on that way, and if I didn’t look after myself I could never look after him. So I got his parents to agree to put him into the home. Usually I don’t even visit the same day his parents do.” She paused, then added guiltily, “Actually they’re wonderful about visiting him. I’m not faulting them.”

  “I know.”

  “Maybe when my life is under control I’ll try again with them. I’m just as angry about it as his mother. We just have to stop taking it out on each other.”

  “Yeah. Nobody’s to blame.”

  “The stupid war’s to blame.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “So I went back to school.”

  “But you don’t want people to know about him?”

  “It’s so hard to explain it to people. Ted’s fraternity brothers visited a couple of times, found out how bad it was, and then told me how glad they were that Ted had a wife to nurse him along. They never came back.”

  “I see.”

  “And my own friends started out saying, don’t give up hope, he’ll keep improving. When I told them this was it, his development was going to be within these rigid boundaries, then they said I was still young, I’d find another husband with no trouble.”

  “God, Monica.”

  “They didn’t understand. He’s still Ted, somehow.”

 
; “I know.”

  “So I didn’t want to go through that again. It’s easier to pretend to be single. It’s a category people can understand.” Monica hesitated, then, not sure how to begin, said tentatively, “Um—about Les.”

  Maggie helped her out. “Anita isn’t interested at the moment. And when she is, then you won’t be. Is that it?”

  Monica shot her a grateful glance. “Yeah. Les loves his family.”

  “As long as you both understand. Ted can’t, is that it?”

  “I don’t know, Maggie. I just don’t know. He was in the hospital for a long time, and there’s no privacy, and the doctors pretend that part of your life doesn’t exist. He was really depressed too. When we took him to his parents’ house, I tried twice. He’d forgotten how to kiss, even. The second time I tried he had a seizure. A coincidence. It’s controlled by phenytoin and phenobarbital, but they can’t give him more than he gets now or it’ll interfere with function he has left. So the seizures are only seventy-five percent controlled. Anyway, you can imagine the scene. His parents heard and came in. There was their son thrashing on the floor, me struggling to get a hanky between his teeth, both of us stark naked. God, Maggie!” She winced at the memory. “I’ll never forget the look on his mother’s face.”

  “Oh, Monica!” Maggie winced too.

  “That’s when I gave up.”

  “Do you want his children?”

  “Oh, that’s out of the ques—no, damn it, I mean yes. I do. I really do, someday. If there’s any way in the world it can be managed. But that’s so very, very far away.”

  “What’s closer?”

  “Making money. Then l can bring him home, find a good day nurse while I work. And we’ll get to know each other again.”

  Maggie looked at her questioningly. “The gigolo of your choice?”

  Monica smiled. “Oh, I know he’ll never be a great lover again. But he still understands music. If I put Bolero or something on, who knows? And if it doesn’t work, maybe every now and then I’ll find someone like Les.”

  “Safely committed elsewhere.”

  “Right. And damn, why didn’t I think of writing before? Now with all this work we have to do for Weisen, I can’t try it with him until Friday. Damn.” She touched Maggie’s hand. “Also thanks. This has been the best day I’ve had since Weisen said he’d accept me.”

  Maggie squeezed her hand. “You’ve given me quite a day too. You’ve restored my faith.”

  “Your faith?”

  “That maybe some people—but even if he’s telling the truth—oh hell, I’m just not brave enough. But maybe I should tell him why.”

  “Maggie, you’re not making a lot of sense.”

  “Sorry.” Maggie focused on Monica again. “Listen, I’m going to be asking for your help. You’ll probably find it a burden.”

  “If I can help, just tell me how. No burden.”

  Maggie smiled sadly. “You’ll see. I’m not easy on my friends.”

  Nick was exhausted. He was used to the late, irregular hours of show business, used to piecing together a few hours at a time for rest. But he was not used to spending those few hours in other pursuits. Exploring laboratories. Fighting prowlers. Timing incinerators. For a week now he had napped rather than slept. His ravelled sleave of care was beginning to need knitting up.

  He and Gib and Murph, the big ex-Marine guard that Dr. Weisen had just hired, were sitting in the hall drinking coffee, but it wasn’t helping much. There was a new sign-in desk by the front door. The loading door and fire exits were not only locked but barred tonight, so they could watch the only possible entrance to the lab. Murph and his gun were supposed to tour the building outside every half-hour or so. He was not supposed to worry about the inside at all. Dr. Weisen had taken one look at the way he caressed his Smith .38 and, with visions of dead animals and holes blasted between clean and dirty areas, had forbidden its use indoors under any circumstances.

  “So,” said Murph. He had a nose even lumpier than Nick’s, and cauliflower ears. “Who do you guys think is doing it?”

  “Wish I knew,” said Gib.

  “Me too,” said Nick.

  “You’re new here too, aren’t you?” Murph took a gulp of coffee.

  “Yes. I’ve only been here a few days.”

  Murph’s little brown eyes inspected Nick. “You colored or what?” he asked abruptly.

  “My grandmother was,” said Nick. “But I’m mostly Irish, some German.”

  “Mm.”

  “A mongrel.”

  “Yeah.” Murph gulped some more coffee, clearly uncomfortable to find such a mixture of what he considered the best of races with what he considered the lowliest. He went back to his earlier question. “But seriously, you must think someone did it.”

  “I don’t see how anyone could benefit from it,” said Nick. “Unless maybe some student is doing it to keep Dr. Weisen from leaving. What do you think, Gib?”

  “Anything’s possible,” said Gib. “But there’s bigger fish than students around.”

  “You mean professors?” asked Nick.

  “No. I mean drug companies.”

  “These guys coming Thursday?” asked Murph.

  “Right. I guess it’s okay to say it now, there’s only three days to go. I was afraid if I noised it around before, some loony would decide to take advantage. But those babies are interested. Really interested.”

  “Sure. They haven’t kept it a secret,” said Nick, puzzled. “But there haven’t been any strangers around.”

  “Who needs strangers?” said Gib.

  Nick’s tired mind suddenly grasped his point. “You mean someone here is working for them? Spying?”

  “Right,” said Gib. “Course, I don’t know for sure, or I would have said something. All I know for sure is what happened to me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Guy called me up, couple months ago. Cagey. Don’t know who or where he was. Or even what he wanted me to do exactly. But he did ask if I’d be interested in a little money. I said sure. You know, my son is back from Nam trying to decide what to do with his life; he’s thinking about starting a business. I’d like to give him a hand. Anyway, the guy on the phone said he was interested in certain information related to Dr. Weisen’s experiment. And I said go to hell and slammed down the receiver.”

  “So you don’t know what he wanted?” Nick was wondering about Tom.

  “I thought later I was dumb. I should’ve led him on a little, maybe found something out. And all this other stuff just started last week. That call was two months ago. I told Dr. Weisen about it, of course, but he didn’t seem too worried. He said he had the patent, after all, and he also had a big head start. So maybe this has nothing to do with it. But it does make you wonder.”

  “So you think some drug company might be after him? Maybe trying to destroy his head start?”

  “Look, I’m not making any accusations. But that’s possible. Or if they’re working along the same lines, they might be glad to have his work discredited, so they can buy the patent cheap.”

  “What is this thing of Dr. Weisen’s?” asked Murph. “How come it’s so valuable?”

  “You ever known anyone with a brain tumor?” asked Gib.

  “No. Not really.”

  “Well, maybe you won’t understand. But people would give anything to cure it. The drug companies know that. So if Dr. Weisen has this drug that works, and can pass the federal tests, it’s worth lots.”

  “So I’m protecting a little gold mine,” declared Murph with satisfaction, patting his holster.

  “What’s left of it,” said Nick. He was still angry at himself for being in the wrong place while the rats were killed.

  “It may be okay yet,” said Gib consolingly. “The companies may be happy with the studies that are left. He told me once he tends to overdesign his investigations. Can’t help it, keeps thinking of extra questions.”

  “He’s a real scientist,” Nick said.

>   “Sure is. Anyway, all I’m saying is, anyone could be a spy for the company. I think most of the students would say no, but who knows? And maybe after my reaction the company gave up. I’ve been watching, and I haven’t seen anything odd. But these experiments have been destroyed, of course. That’s the only way I can explain it.”

  “Makes sense,” said Nick. “But who?”

  Gib shrugged and put down his plastic coffee cup. “Let’s just get to Thursday,” he said. “But right now I’d better be off. See you guys tomorrow.” He signed out.

  “Wait a sec,” said Murph. He rose to his feet too. “I’ll go take my little tour of the grounds right now.” He and Gib went out.

  Nick yawned, picked up the used cups and threw them away, then started on his own rounds. He wasn’t meeting Maggie till ten. There wasn’t much work tonight; Gib had hung around late to answer Murph’s questions, and had gone with Nick on his last tour, so all the water bottles had been recently filled, all the soiled cages recently changed.

  He checked Dr. Weisen’s rats first—no problems. The other experimental rooms were in good shape too. Barbara’s rats looked fine, and the cats at the east end, and the various other projects. He went into the big breeder room last. No problems, except for one young family of rats that had somehow pushed their water bottle askew. He straightened it, fastened it again, and then started reading cage cards.

  He had memorized three cards last night in the old lab, but with the excitement that had followed, this was the first time he’d been alone with the time to look at these. He yawned again and moved to the next row of cages. A dull business. Half a dozen banks of cages, in rows of twenty. Suddenly, he stopped. There was one of the numbers, D-407. On the card in the old lab the number had been in the blank for the rat’s mother; but here she was herself, D-407, with a new litter of nine pups only days old. He hunted on and found another mother that had been listed on one of last night’s cards. But the third card he had memorized had no numbers that repeated here.

  Perplexed, he stood back, squinting at the bank of cages, eight high and twenty wide, that held D-407. So many rats. And so many more in the next building, the offspring of these, apparently. How had it been managed? Gib didn’t know about it. Or wasn’t admitting it. What was happening? What did the elaborate setup in the old lab mean?