Brain Child

by John Saul

  “Oh, God,” she heard Carolyn whimper. “It’s Alex. Mama, it’s Alex.”

  “Quiet,” Cynthia said softly. “Just don’t say anything, Carolyn. Everything will be all right.” Then, her voice louder: “Alex? Is that you?”

  Alex stepped out of the shadows, the shotgun held firmly in his hands. “I am Alejandro,” he whispered.

  His face was dripping blood from a cut above his left eye, and his shirt was stained darkly from another on his shoulder, but if he felt any pain, he gave no sign. Instead he walked slowly forward.

  “There,” he said, gesturing with the gun toward the south wall. “Over there.”

  “Do as he says, Carolyn,” Cynthia said softly. “Just do as he says, and everything will be all right.”

  “But he’s crazy, Mama!”

  “Hush! Just be quiet, and do as he says.” She waited for what seemed like an aeon, praying that Carolyn wouldn’t try to get back in the car or bolt toward the gates. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her daughter begin to move slowly around the end of the car until she was standing at her side. Cynthia took the girl’s hand in her own. “We’ll do exactly as he says,” she said again. “If we do as he says, he won’t hurt us.”

  Slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on Alex, she began backing around, pulling Carolyn with her. “What is it, Alex?” she asked. “What do you want?”

  “Venganza,” Alex whispered. “Venganza para mi familia.”

  “Your family, Alex?”

  Alex nodded. “Sí.” Again he began moving forward, backing Cynthia and Carolyn Evans slowly toward the wall.

  He could see the wall as it had been that day, even though they’d plastered over the damage and tried to wash away the blood of his family. But the pits from the bullets were still there, and the red stains were as bright as they had been on the day he’d watched his family die.

  And now, the moment was finally at hand.

  He wondered if the gringa woman would face death with the bravery of his mother, crying out her defiance even as the bullets cut the life out of her.

  He knew she wouldn’t.

  She would die a gringa’s death, begging for mercy. Even now, he could hear her.

  “Why?” she was saying. “Why are you doing this? What have we done to you?”

  What did my mother and my sisters do to deserve to die at the hands of your men? he thought, but it was not the time for questions.

  It was the time for vengeance.

  He squeezed the trigger, and the quiet of the afternoon exploded with the roar of the shotgun.

  The gringa’s face exploded before his eyes, and new blood was added to the courtyard wall. Then, as with his mother before her, the woman’s knees gave way, and she sank slowly to the ground as her daughter watched, screaming.

  As Alex squeezed the trigger a second time, his only wish was that the courtyard was as it should have been, and he could have watched as the blood of the gringas disappeared into the dust of the hacienda.

  José Carillo turned up Hacienda Drive, and shifted his battered pickup truck into low gear. Listening to the transmission’s angry grinding, he hoped the truck would last long enough for him to begin the job at the hacienda. With the amount of money that one job would produce, he would be able to afford a new truck. But he was already late, and worried that he might lose the job before he ever got it. He pressed on the gas pedal, and the old truck coughed, then reluctantly surged forward.

  It was on the second curve that he saw the boy coming down the road, a shotgun cradled in his arms, his face and shirt covered with blood. He braked to a stop and called out to the boy. At first the boy hadn’t seemed to hear him. Only when José called out a second time did the boy look up.

  “You okay?” José asked. “Need some help?”

  The boy stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and continued down the road. José watched him until he disappeared through the gate in the wall whose vines had just been torn down—something Jose’s gardener’s eyes had noticed as he’d come up the hill. Then he forced the truck back in gear.

  He was already inside the courtyard before he saw the carnage that lay against the south wall.

  “Jesús, José, y María,” he muttered. He crossed himself, then fought down the nausea in his gut as he hurried into the house to find a telephone.

  Alex stared at himself in the mirror. Blood still oozed from the cut over his eye, and his shirt was growing stiff.

  He’d already examined the shotgun, and knew that he’d fired three shells.

  The last two were now in the chambers.

  And though he had no conscious memory of it, he knew where he’d been when the voices began whispering to him and the images from the past began to flood his mind. He also knew where he’d been when it had ended.

  When it began, he’d been on the hillside overlooking the hacienda, remembering María Torres’s stories of the past.

  And when it ended, he’d been walking away from the hacienda, and the smell of gunpowder was strong, and he was bleeding, and though his body was in pain, in his soul he felt nothing.

  Nothing.

  But tonight, he was sure, he would dream again, and see what he had done, and feel the pain in his soul.

  But it was the last time it would happen, for now he knew why it had happened, and how to end it.

  And he also knew that he, Alex, had done none of it.

  Everything that had been done, had been done by Alejandro de Meléndez y Ruiz. Now all that was left was to kill Alejandro.

  He changed his shirt, but didn’t bother to bandage the cut on his forehead.

  Picking up the shotgun, he went back downstairs and found the extra set of keys to his mother’s car in the kitchen drawer.

  He went out to the driveway and started the car. He shifted the gear lever into reverse, then kept his foot on the brake as a police car, its siren screaming, raced up the hill past the house.

  He was sure he knew where it was going, and he was sure he knew what its occupants would find when they reached their destination. But instead of following the police car and trying to explain to the officers what he thought had happened, Alex went the other way.

  His mind suddenly crystal clear, he drove down the hill, through La Paloma, and out of town. It would take him thirty minutes to reach Palo Alto.

  “I’m telling you, something’s wrong,” Roscoe Finnerty had been saying when the phone on the kitchen wall suddenly rang, and he decided it could damned well ring until he’d finished what he was saying. “The kid said he parked across the street from Jake’s. It’s right here in my notes.”

  “And my notes say he parked in the lot next door,” Tom Jackson replied. He nodded toward the phone. “And we’re in your kitchen, so you can answer the phone.”

  “Shit,” Finnerty muttered, reaching up and grabbing the receiver. “Yeah?” He listened for a few seconds, and Jackson saw the color drain from his face. “Aah, shit,” he said again. Then: “Yeah, we’ll go up.” He hung up the phone and reluctantly met his partner’s eyes. “We got two more,” he said. “The chief wants us to take a look and see if it looks like the other two. From what he said, though, it doesn’t. This time, it’s messy.”

  But he hadn’t counted on its being as messy as it actually was. He stood in the courtyard wondering if he should even try to take a pulse from the two corpses that lay against the wall. On one of them, the face was gone, and most of the head as well. Still, he was pretty sure he knew who it was, because the other corpse had taken the shotgun blast in the chest, and the face was still clearly recognizable.

  Carolyn Evans.

  The other one, judging from what Finnerty could see, had to be her mother. “Call the Center,” he muttered to Jackson. “And tell them to bring bags, and not to bother with the sirens.” Then he turned his attention to José Carillo, who was sitting by the pool, resolutely looking away from the corpses and the bloodstained wall they rested against.

  “You know any
thing about this, José?” Finnerty asked, though he was almost certain he knew the answer. He’d known José for almost ten years, and the gardener was known only for three things: his industriousness and his honesty and his refusal to involve himself in violence under any circumstances.

  José shook his head. “I was coming up for a job. When I got here …” His voice broke off, and he shook his head helplessly. “As soon as I found them, I called the police.”

  “Did you see anything? Anything at all?”

  José started to shake his head, then hesitated.

  “What is it?” Finnerty urged.

  “I forgot,” the gardener said. “On the way up, I saw a boy. He looked like he’d been fighting, and he was carrying a gun.”

  “Do you know who he was?”

  The gardener shook his head again. “But I know where he went.”

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  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.”

  Ellen’s eyes filled with tears, which she made no attempt to wipe away. “But he’s alive, Marsh,” she protested, and then shrank back in her chair as Marsh turned to face her.

  “Is he? By what criteria? Let’s assume that what Torres says is true. That Alex’s brain was far too extensively damaged even to attempt repairs.” His eyes, flashing with anger, flicked to Torres. “That is what you said, isn’t it?”

  Torres nodded. “There was no brain activity whatever, except on the most primitive level. His heart was beating, but that was all. Without the respirator, he couldn’t breathe, and as far as we could tell, he made no response to any sort of stimulation.”

  “In other words, he was brain dead, with no hope of recovery?”

  Again Torres nodded. “Not only was his brain dead, it was physically torn beyond repair. Which is the only reason I went ahead with the techniques I used.”

  “Without our permission,” Marsh grated.

  “With your permission,” Torres corrected. “The release clearly allowed me to use any methods I deemed necessary or fit, whether they were proven or unproven, traditional or experimental. And they worked.” He hesitated, then went on. “Perhaps I made a mistake,” he said. “Perhaps I should have declared Alex dead, and asked that his body be donated to science.”

  “But isn’t that exactly what you did?” Marsh demanded, “Without, of course, the niceties of telling us what you were doing?”

  Torres shook his head. “For the operation to be a complete success, I wanted there to be no question that Alex is still Alex. Had I declared him dead, what I have done would have led to certain questions I was not yet prepared to deal with.”