The retarded, the handicapped, the elderly, the infirm, would find themselves low on the list and be treated accordingly. In the case of deformed and retarded babies, a twenty-eight-day waiting period would be offered so parents could choose infanticide for 'a life that has begun very badly'.
Anyone who fell short on objective criteria of 'person-hood: rational thought and self-consciousness', could be killed without fear of penalty. Humanely.
Gentle strangulation, indeed.
Britain's National Health Insurance had recently put forth a policy offering free abortions to mothers of genetically defective babies - rescinding the usual twenty-four-week limit and allowing termination til shortly before birth.
Also in England, the Green party's annual conference proposed a very deliberate twenty-five percent reduction in the U.K.'s population in the name of saving the planet, leading critics to evoke memories of the Nazi party's infatuation with ecology, natural purity, and antiurbanism.
The government of China was ahead of all this, having long enforced population control through coerced abortion, sterilization, and starving orphans to death in state-run facilities.
In the U.S., calls for prioritizing health-care services in the age of tight dollars and managed care had led many to question whether the seriously ill and the genetically disadvantaged should be allowed to 'dominate' health-care expenditure.
I found a U.S. News and World Report article detailing the struggle of a thirty-four-year-old woman with Down's syndrome to receive a life-saving heart-lung operation. Stanford University Medical Center had rejected her because, 'We do not feel that patients with Down's syndrome are appropriate candidates for heart-lung transplantation', as had the University of California at San Diego because it judged her incapable of cooperating with the medical regimen. Her doctor disagreed and the publicity had forced both hospitals to reconsider. But what of others, languishing outside the media spotlight?
It reminded me of a case I'd seen years ago, while working with child cancer patients at Western Pediatrics Hospital. A fourteen-year-old boy diagnosed with acute leukemia, by then a treatable disease with an excellent prognosis for remission. But this leukemia patient was retarded and several interns and residents began grumbling about wasting their precious time.
I lectured to them, with meager results - because I wasn't an M.D., wouldn't be administering chemotherapy and radiotherapy, simply didn't understand' what was involved. The attending physician, a passionate and dedicated man, caught wind of the protest and delivered a diatribe about
Hippocrates and morality that silenced the grumblers. But it had been a begrudging compliance.
What kind of doctors had those interns become?
Who were they judging, now?
Quality of life.
I'd worked with thousands of children with birth defects, deformities, mental retardation, learning disabilities, chronic and painful and fatal diseases.
Most experienced a full range of emotions, including joy.
I remembered one little girl, eight years old, a thalidomide casualty. No arms, stunted flipper feet, shining eyes, an eagerness to embrace life.
Better quality of life than some face-lifted psychopaths I'd known.
Not that it mattered, for it wasn't my role to judge, either.
The eugenecists argued that society's progress could be measured by the achievement of the gifted, and in part, that was true. But what good was progress if it led to callousness, cruelty, cold judgments about deservedness, a degradation of the godly spark in all of us?
Who'd be the new gods? Geneticists? Ethicists?
Scientists had flocked to Nazism in record numbers.
Politicians?
HMO executives with bottom-line obsessions?
And after we cleansed the world of one group of 'degenerates', who'd be next on the chromosomal hit list?
The flabby? The charmless? The boring? The ugly?
Scary stuff, and the fact that psychology had once swallowed it whole disgusted me.
The racist swill propagated by Goddard and Terman still reverberated in my head. Both had been names uttered with reverence in the corridors of the Psych Tower.
Like a child discovering his parents are felons, I felt a cold, dark pit open in my gut.
I'd administered countless IQ tests, had prided myself upon knowing the limitations of the instrument as well as the virtues.
Properly done, testing was valuable. Still, the rotten spot I'd just found at the core of my field's golden apple made me wonder what else I'd missed, despite all my education.
It was 1:00 p.m. and I'd been in the library for 5 hours. Lunchtime, but I had no appetite.
I picked up The Brain Drain.
The book's sole premise became obvious within pages:
Material success, morality, happy marriages, superior parenthood - all were caused by high g - a supposed general-intelligence trait whose validity had been debated for years.
This author presented it as a given.
The book had a smarmy, congratulatory tone: addressing itself to 'you, the highly intelligent reader'.
The ultimate kiss-up, virtue by association.
Maybe that - and a harnessing of upper-middle-class anxiety during hard times - could explain its best-sellerdom.
It sure wasn't the science, because I came across page after page of faulty assumptions, shoddy referencing, articles the author claimed as supportive that turned out to be just the opposite when I looked them up.
Promises to back up assertions with numbers that never appeared. Revival of Galton's one-gene theory of intelligence.
Hundred-year-old nonsense - who'd written this garbage?
The author bio at the back said a 'social scholar' named Arthur Haldane, Ph.D.
Resident scholar at the Loomis Institute in New York City.
No further credentials.
No book jacket on the library copy, so no photo.
Ugly stuff.
Ugly times.
So what else was new?
My head hurt and my eyes ached.
What would I report to Milo and Sharavi?
Pseudoscientific crap sold well?
What connection was there to three dead kids?
The killer, watching, stalking, culling the herd...
With scholarly justification?
Because some lives just weren't worth living?
So he wasn't really a murderer.
He was a freelance bioethicist.
The only thing I hadn't gotten to was Twisted Science, the critique of The Brain Drain, and though I couldn't see what it could add, I checked it out and took it home with me.
One message at my service. Milo's home number but the caller was Dr Richard Silverman.
Rick and Milo had lived together for years but he and I rarely spoke. He was more prone to listening than talking. Reserved, meticulous, fit, always well-dressed, he was a striking contrast to Milo's aesthetic impairment and some people saw the two of them as an odd couple. I knew they were both thoughtful, driven, highly self-critical, had suffered deeply from being homosexual, had taken a long time to find their niche, both as individuals and members of a couple. Both buried themselves in bloody work - Rick spent over a hundred hours a week as a senior E.R. physician at Cedars-Sinai - and their time together was often silent.
He said, 'Thanks, Alex. How's everything?'
'Great. With you?'
'Fine, fine. Listen, I just wanted to ask how Helena Dahl's doing - nothing confidential, just if she's okay.'
'I haven't seen her recently, Rick.'
'Oh.'
'Something wrong?'
'Well,' he said, 'she quit the hospital yesterday, no explanation. I guess what's happened to her could unnerve anybody.'
'It's tough,' I said.
'I met the brother once. Not through her. He came in with a gunshot case, never mentioned being her brother, and I wasn't paying attention to nametags. But someone told me later.'
/>
'Helena wasn't on duty?'
'No, not that particular night.'
'Anything unusual about him?'
'Not really. Big guy, young, very quiet, could have stepped right out of an LAPD recruiting poster. Back when that was the type they recruited. I was struck by the fact that he never bothered to ask for Helena, thought maybe he knew she was off. But when I told her he'd been in, she looked surprised. Anyway, I don't want to pry. Take care. If you do see her, say hi.'
'Will do.'
He laughed. 'Say hi to Milo, too. You're probably seeing him more than I am. This case - the retarded kids - it's really disturbing him. Not that he's been talking about it. But he's been tossing in his sleep.'
It was two-thirty. I hadn't come up with a thing on the DVLL killings. Robin was out for the afternoon, the house was too damn big, and the day seemed hollow.
I'd pushed Helena and Nolan to the back of my mind but Rick's call got me ruminating again.
What had caused her to make such a complete break?
Those family photos in Nolan's garage? Primal memories that strong?
She was tough and competent on the job but isolated in her private life.
More like her brother than she'd realized?
Had his self-destruction gotten her wondering about where she'd end up? Paths that hadn't been taken?
Depression ran in families. Had I missed something?
I called her home. The phone kept ringing and worst-case scenarios flashed through my head.
I thought about Nolan's showing up at the E.R., never asking for her.
Even when we were little kids we went our separate ways. Just ignored each other. Is that normal?
That kind of distance could pass for civility when life's rhythms remained shallow. But when things went bad, it could lead to the worst kind of guilt.
Parents dead, abandoned by her husband when he moved to North Carolina.
Going to work each day at the E.R., performing heroics. Coming home to... ?
Had the reliable engine finally broken down?
I had nothing to do and decided to take a drive out to her house.
Maybe I'd find her in a bathrobe on the sofa, watching soap operas and stuffing her face with junk food. Maybe she'd get angry at the intrusion and I'd feel like a fool.
I could live with that.
It took forty-five minutes to reach the west end of the
Valley and another ten to find her address in Woodland Hills.
The house was a small yellow structure of no particular style on a hot, wide side street lined with mature bottlebrush trees in full bloom. Red flowers and sticky patches from the trees littered the sidewalks and California jays dove among the branches. The sun bore down through the haze and even though I couldn't hear the freeway, I could smell it.
The front lawn was dry and needed mowing. Big, shapeless margarita daisy bushes pushed up against the front porch. No sign of her Mustang in the driveway and the garage door was shut. The mailbox was empty and my ring and knock went unanswered.
Two cars in the driveway next door, a white minivan and a white Acura.
I went over there. The ceramic plaque beneath the bell said the millers under a crucifix, and looked homemade. A window air conditioner played a waltz.
I rang and the brass cover on the peephole snicked back.
'Yes?' Male voice.
'My name is Dr Alex Delaware. I'm a friend of your neighbor, Helena Dahl. She hasn't been around for a while and some of us have been getting a little concerned.'
'Urn... one second.'
The door opened and cold air hit my face. A couple in their late twenties looked me over. He was tall, dark, bearded, with a sunburned nose, and wore a pink Hawaiian shirt, denim shorts, no shoes. The can of Sprite in his hand was sweating but he wasn't.
The woman next to him was slim, broad-shouldered, nice-looking, with butter-colored multiflipped hair sporting two curlers on top. An electric blue T-shirt was tucked into black shorts and her nails were long and pearly white.
'Who's concerned about Helena?' he said.
'Her friends, people she works with at Cedars.'
No answer.
I said, 'She quit her job without explaining why. Has she left town?'
He gave a reluctant nod, but didn't say more. Behind him was a neady appointed living room, home-shopping show on a big screen hawking a pearl necklace with matching earrings, only 234 left.
'We just wanted to know how she's doing,' I said. 'Do you know about her brother?'
He nodded. 'He never came around. At least not since we've lived here, which is two years.'
The woman said, 'But they both grew up here. It was their parents' house.' Southern accent. 'Helena said he was a police officer. How strange, what he did.'
'Any idea where she is?' I said.
'She said she was going on vacation,' said the man. He took a drink from the can and offered it to his wife but she shook her head.
'Did she mention where?'
'No,' he said.
'When did she leave?'
'What'd you say your name was?'
I repeated it and held out my business card and my police-consultant badge.
'You're police, too?'
'I work with them sometimes but that has nothing to do with Officer Dahl.'
His posture loosened. 'My work's kind of related to police-work. I teach traffic school, just opened my own business - you're sure this doesn't have anything to do with him -investigating his death, for insurance or something like that?'
'Absolutely not,' I said. 'I'm just concerned about Helena.'
'Well, she just went away to get some rest. At least that's what she said, and can you blame her?'
I shook my head.
'Poor thing,' said the woman.
Her husband stuck out his hand. 'Greg Miller, this is Kathy.'
'Pleased to meet you.'
'She left yesterday,' he said. 'Pardon the suspicion, but you can't be too careful, all the stuff that goes on, nowadays. We're trying to get a block association together, in order to look out for each other. Helena asked us to watch her house while she was gone.'
'Crime problems in the neighborhood?' I said.
'It's not Watts but it's worse than you'd think - mostly stupid kid stuff, now they've got the white kids thinking they're gang bangers, too. There was a party last week, over in Granada Hills. Gang bangers showed up and when they didn't let 'em in, they did a drive-by. Sometimes I work nights so I taught Kathy how to shoot and she's good. Probably gonna get an attack dog, too.'
'Sounds like serious problems.'
'Serious enough for me,' he said. 'I believe in prevention. All we had til recently was kids driving by booming their steroes late at night, speeding, screaming, throwing out bottles. But the last few months there've been burglaries, even during the day, while people are at work.'
Another glance between them. She nodded and he said, 'Last burglary was Helena, as a matter of fact. Just two days ago. With her brother and that, you can't really blame her for wanting to take off, right?'
'Two days ago?'
'At night, hers was a night time thing. She went out to do some grocery shopping, came back, found the back door jimmied. Kathy and I were out, thankfully they didn't hit us. They took her TV and the stereo and some jewelry, she said. Next day she was packed up and asking us to look after the house. Said she'd had enough of L.A.'
'Did she call the police?'
'No, she said she'd had enough of the police, too. I figured she meant her brother, didn't want to push it. Even though I thought we definitely should call it in. For block security. But she was so stressed out.'
'Of all the people for it to happen to,' said Kathy. 'She was so down to begin with. And she's such a nice person. Mostly she kept to herself, but she was always real nice.'
'Any idea where she went?' I said.
'Nope,' said Kathy. 'She just said she needed a rest and we didn't want to be nosy. S
he had a couple suitcases in the back of the car but I don't even know if it was a driving trip or she was heading for the airport. I asked her how long she'd be away but she said she wasn't sure, she'd call to let us know if it was going to be long. If she does call, would you like me to tell her you were by?'
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 12 - Survival of the Fittest Page 22
