Mutation

by Robin Cook

  Marsha nodded.

  “How is he these days?” Stephanie asked. “I don’t have much occasion to see him.”

  “I’m afraid he still doesn’t have many friends. He’s not very outgoing.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said Stephanie.

  Marsha gathered her courage. “I hope you don’t think me too forward, but I’d like to ask a personal question. Mr. Remington told me your late husband died of cancer. Would you mind if I asked what kind of cancer?”

  “I don’t mind,” said Stephanie. There was a sudden tightening in her throat. “It was a while before I could talk about it,” she allowed. “Ray died of a form of liver cancer. It was very rare. He was treated at Mass. General in Boston. The doctors there had only seen a couple of similar cases.”

  Although Marsha had expected as much, she still felt as though she’d been hit. This was exactly what she was afraid of hearing.

  As tactfully as she could, Marsha ended the conversation, but not before enlisting Mrs. Cavendish’s aid in getting an invitation over to Joe Arnold’s house.

  He wasn’t the sort of stuffy history professor-type Marsha had expected. His warm brown eyes lit up when he opened the door to greet her. Like Stephanie Cavendish, he seemed about her own age. Between his swarthy good looks, empathic eyes, and somewhat disheveled clothing, Marsha could see he had a beguiling demeanor. He was no doubt an excellent teacher; he had the kind of enthusiasm students would find infectious. No wonder David had gravitated toward this man.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Frank. Come in, please come in.” He held the door for her and led her into the book-lined study. She looked around the room admiringly. “David used to spend lots of afternoons right here.”

  Marsha felt unbidden tears threaten to appear. It saddened her a little to think how much of David’s life she didn’t know. She quickly composed herself.

  After thanking Joe for seeing her on such short notice, Marsha got to the point of why she was interested in seeing him. She asked Joe if David had ever discussed his brother VJ.

  “On a few occasions,” Joe said. “David admitted to me that he’d had trouble with VJ from the first day that VJ had arrived home from the hospital. That’s normal enough, but to tell you the truth, I got the feeling it went beyond the usual sibling rivalry. I tried to get him to talk about it, but David would never elaborate. We had a strong relationship, I think, but on this one subject he wouldn’t open up.”

  “He never got more specific about his feelings or what the trouble was?”

  “Well, David once told me that he was afraid of VJ.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “I was under the impression that VJ threatened him,” Joe said. “That was as much as he’d say. I know brothers’ relationships can be tricky, especially at that age. But quite frankly, I had a funny feeling about David’s trouble with VJ. David seemed genuinely spooked—almost too afraid to talk about it. In the end, I insisted he see the school psychologist.”

  “Did he?” Marsha questioned. She’d never heard about that, and it added to her guilt.

  “You bet he did,” Joe told her. “I wasn’t about to let this thing drop. David was very special . . .” For a moment, Joe choked up. “Whew, sorry,” he apologized after a pause. But Marsha was touched by such an obvious display of feeling. She nodded, moved herself.

  “Is the psychologist still on staff?” Marsha asked.

  “Madeline Zinnzer?” Joe asked. “Absolutely. She’s an institution around here. She’s been here longer than anybody else.”

  Marsha made use of Joe Arnold’s hospitality to get herself invited over to Madeline Zinnzer’s home. Marsha couldn’t thank him enough.

  “Anytime,” said Joe, giving her hand an extra squeeze. “Really, anytime.”

  Madeline Zinnzer looked like an institution. She was a large woman, well over two hundred pounds. Her gray hair had been permed into tight curls. She took Marsha into a comfortable, spacious living room with a picture window looking out over the Pendleton Academy quad.

  “One of the benefits of being on the staff so long,” Madeline said, following Marsha’s line of sight. “I finally got to move into the best of the faculty housing.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my stopping by on a Sunday,” Marsha began.

  “Not at all,” Madeline insisted.

  “I have some questions about my children that maybe you can help me with.”

  “That’s what Joe Arnold mentioned,” Madeline said. “I’m afraid I don’t have the memory he does of your boy, David. But I do have a file which I went over after Joe called. What’s on your mind?”

  “David told Joe that his younger brother, VJ, had threatened him, but he wouldn’t tell Joe much more than that. Were you able to learn anything more?”

  Madeline made a tent with her fingers and leaned back in her chair. Then she cleared her throat. “I saw David on a number of occasions,” she began. “After talking with him at length, it was my opinion that David was using the defense mechanism of projection. It was my feeling that David projected his own feelings of competition and hostility onto VJ.”

  “Then the threat wasn’t specific?” Marsha asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Madeline said. “Apparently there had been a specific threat.”

  “What was it about?”

  “Boy stuff,” Madeline said. “Something about a hiding place that VJ had that David found out about. Something innocuous like that.”

  “Could it have been a lab rather than a hiding place?” Marsha asked.

  “Could have been,” Madeline said. “David could have said lab, but I wrote hiding place in the file.”

  “Did you ever talk with VJ?” Marsha asked.

  “Once,” Madeline said. “I thought it would be helpful to get a feeling for the reality about the relationship. VJ was extremely straightforward. He told me that his brother David had been jealous of him from the day VJ had arrived home from the hospital.” Then Madeline laughed. “VJ told me that he could remember arriving home after he was born. That tickled me at the time.”

  “Did David ever say what the threat was?” Marsha asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Madeline said. “David told me that VJ had threatened to kill him.”

  From the Pendleton Academy Marsha drove to Boston. Much as she resisted putting the pieces together, she felt utterly compelled to assemble them. She kept telling herself that everything she was learning was either circumstantial, coincidental, or innocuous. She had already lost one child. But even so, she knew she couldn’t rest until she found the truth.

  Marsha had taken her psychiatric residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Visiting there was like going home. But she didn’t go to the psych unit. Instead, she went directly to Pathology and found a senior resident, Dr. Preston Gordon.

  “Sure I can do that,” Preston said. “Since you don’t know the birthday, it will take a little searching, but nothing else is happening right now.”

  Marsha followed Preston into the center of the pathology department where they sat at one of the hospital computers. There were several Raymond Cavendishes listed in the system, but by knowing the approximate year of death, they were able to find the Raymond Cavendish of Boxford, Massachusetts.

  “All right,” Preston said. “Here comes the record.” The screen filled with the man’s hospital record. Preston scrolled through. “Here’s the biopsy,” he said. “And here’s the diagnosis: liver cancer of Kupffer cell of reticuloendothelial origin.” Preston whistled. “Now that’s a zebra. I’ve never even heard of that one.”

  “Can you tell me if there have been any similar cases treated at the hospital?” Marsha asked.

  Preston returned to the keyboard and began a search. It took him only a few minutes to get the answer. A name flashed on the screen. “There has only been one other case at this hospital,” he said. “The name was Janice Fay.”

  Victor tuned his car radio to a station that played o
ldies but goodies and sang along happily to a group of songs from the late fifties, a time when he’d been in high school. He was in a great mood on his drive home, having spent the day totally engrossed and spellbound by VJ’s prodigious output from his hidden basement laboratory. It had turned out to be exactly as VJ had said it would be: beyond his wildest dreams.

  As Victor turned into the driveway, the songs had changed to the late sixties, and he belted out “Sweet Caroline” along with Neil Diamond. He drove the car around the house and waited for the garage door to open. After he pulled the car into the garage, he sang until the song was over before turning off the ignition, getting out and skirting Marsha’s car, heading into the house.

  “Marsha!” Victor yelled as soon as he got inside. He knew she was home because her car was there, but the lights weren’t on.

  “Marsha!” he yelled again, but her name caught in his throat. She was sitting no more than ten feet from him in the relative darkness of the family room. “There you are,” he said.

  “Where’s VJ?” she asked. She sounded tired.

  “He insisted on going off on his bicycle,” Victor said. “But have no fear. Pedro’s with him.”

  “I’m not worried about VJ at this point,” Marsha said. “Maybe we should worry about the security man.”

  Victor turned on a light. Marsha shielded her eyes. “Please,” she said. “Keep it off for now.”

  Victor obliged. He’d hoped she’d be in a better mood by the time he got home, but it wasn’t looking good. Undaunted, Victor sat down and launched into lavish praise of VJ’s work and his astounding accomplishments. He told Marsha that the implantation protein really worked. The evidence was incontrovertible. Then he told her the pièce de résistance: solving the implantation problem unlocked the door to the mystery of the entire differentiation process.

  “If VJ wasn’t so intent on secrecy,” Victor said, “he could be in contention for a Nobel Prize. I’m convinced of it. As it is, he wants me to take all the credit and Chimera to get all the economic benefit. What do you think? Does that sound like a personality disorder to you? To me it sounds pretty generous.”

  Without any response from Marsha, Victor ran out of things to say. After he was quiet for a moment, she said, “I hate to ruin your day, but I’m afraid I have learned more disturbing things about VJ.”

  Victor rolled his eyes as he ran his fingers through his hair. This was not the response he was hoping for.

  “The one teacher at the Pendleton Academy who made a big effort to get close to VJ died a few years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “He died of cancer.”

  “Okay, he died of cancer,” Victor said. He could feel his pulse quicken.

  “Liver cancer.”

  “Oh,” Victor said. He did not like the drift of this conversation.

  “It was the same rare type that both David and Janice died of,” Marsha said.

  A heavy silence settled over the family room. The refrigerator compressor started. Victor did not want to hear these things. He wanted to talk about the implantation technology and what it would do for all those infertile couples when the zygotes refused to implant.

  “For an extremely rare cancer, a lot of people seem to be contracting it. People who cross VJ. I had a talk with Mr. Cavendish’s wife. His widow. She’s a very kind woman. She teaches at Pendleton too. And I spoke to a Mr. Arnold. It turns out he was close to David. Do you know that VJ threatened David?”

  “For God’s sakes, Marsha! Kids always threaten each other. I did it myself when my older brother wrecked a snow house I’d built.”

  “VJ threatened to kill David, Victor. And not in the heat of an argument.” Marsha was near tears. “Wake up, Victor!”

  “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” Victor said angrily, “at least not now.” He was still high from the day’s tour of VJ’s lab. Was there a darker side to his son’s genius? At times in the past, he’d had his suspicions, but they were all too easy to dismiss. VJ seemed such a perfect child. But now Marsha was expressing the same kind of doubts and backing them up so that they made a kind of evil sense. Could the little boy who gave him a tour of the lab, the genius behind the new implantation process, also be behind unspeakable acts? The murder of those children, of Janice Fay, of his own son David? Victor couldn’t consider the horror of it all. He banished such thoughts. It was impossible. Someone at the lab killed the kids. The other deaths had to have been coincidental. Marsha was really pushing this too far. But then, she’d been on the hysterical side ever since the Hobbs and Murray kids had died. But if her fears were in any way justified, what would he do? How could he blithely support VJ in his many scientific endeavors? And if it was true, if VJ was half prodigy, half monster, what did it say of him, his creator?

  Marsha might have insisted more, but just then VJ arrived home. He came in just as he had a week ago Sunday night, with his saddlebags over his shoulder. It was as though he’d known what they’d been talking about. VJ glared at Marsha, his blue eyes more chilling than ever. Marsha shuddered. She could not return his stare. Her fear of him was escalating.

  Victor paced his study, absently chewing on the end of a pen. The door was closed and the house was quiet. As far as he knew, everybody was long since tucked into bed. It had been a strained evening with Marsha closeting herself in the bedroom after Victor had refused to discuss VJ anymore.

  Victor had planned to spend the night working on his presentation of the new implantation method for Wednesday’s board meeting. But he just couldn’t concentrate. Marsha’s words nagged him. Try as he would, he couldn’t put them out of his mind. So what if VJ threatened David? Boys would be boys.

  But the idea of yet another case of the rare liver cancer ate at him, especially in light of the fact that both David’s and Janice’s tumors had that extra bit of DNA in them. That had yet to be explained. Victor had purposefully kept the discovery from Marsha. It was bad enough he had to think of it. If he couldn’t spare her the pain of what might be the awful truth of the matter, at least he’d spare her each small revelation that pointed to it.

  And then there was Marsha’s question of what else VJ was doing behind his lab’s closed doors. The boy was so resourceful, and he had all the equipment to do almost anything in experimental biology. Aside from the implantation method, just what was he up to? Even during the tour, extensive though it was, Victor couldn’t help but feel VJ wasn’t letting him in on everything.

  “Maybe I ought to take a look,” Victor said aloud as he tossed the pen onto his desk. It was quarter to two in the morning, but who cared!

  Victor scribbled a short note in case Marsha or VJ came down to look for him. Then he got his coat and a flashlight, backed his car out of the garage, and lowered the door with his remote. When he got to the end of the driveway, he stopped and looked back at the house. No lights came on; no one had gotten up.

  At Chimera, the security guard working the gate came out of the office and shined a light into Victor’s face. “Excuse me, Dr. Frank,” he said as he ran back inside to lift the gate.

  Victor commended him for his diligence, then drove down to the building that housed his lab. He parked his car directly in front of it. When he was sure that he was not being observed, he jogged toward the river. He was tempted to use his flashlight, but he was afraid to do so. He didn’t want others to know of the existence of VJ’s lab.

  As he approached the river, the roar of the falls seemed even more deafening at night. Gusts of wind whipped about the alleyways, kicking up dust and debris, forcing Victor to lower his head. At last he reached the entrance to the clock tower building.

  Victor hesitated at the entranceway. He was not the type to be spooked, but the place was so desolate and dark that he felt a little bit afraid. Again, he would have liked to use the flashlight, but again it would have been a giveaway if anybody happened to see the glow.

  Victor felt his way in the dark, tapping his foot a
head gingerly before taking a step. He was deep into the first floor level, close to the trapdoor, when he felt the flutter of wings right at his face. He cried out in surprise, then realized he’d only disturbed a bevy of pigeons that had made the deserted clock tower building their roost.

  Victor took a deep breath and moved on. With relief, he reached the trapdoor, only to realize he didn’t know how to raise it. He tried in various locations to get a grip on the floorboards with his fingernails, but he couldn’t get it to lift.

  In frustration, Victor turned on the flashlight to survey the area. He had no choice. On the floor among the other trash was a short metal rod. He picked it up and returned to the trapdoor. Without much trouble, he was able to pry it open about an inch. As soon as he did, it rose effortlessly.

  Victor quickly eased himself down the stairs far enough to allow the trapdoor to close above him. It was dark in the lab save for the beam of his flashlight. Victor searched for the panel that would turn on the lights. He found it under the stairs and flipped the switches. As the room filled with fluorescent light, Victor breathed a sigh of relief.

  He decided to examine a lab area VJ hadn’t shown him, a room he’d been fairly dismissive of even when Victor questioned him.

  But he never made it to the door. He was about fifteen feet away when the door to the living quarters burst open and an attack dog came snarling at him. Victor leaped back, throwing his arms up to guard his face. He closed his eyes and braced for the contact.

  But there wasn’t any. Victor opened his eyes cautiously. The vicious dog had been brought up short by a chain held by a Chimera security guard.

  “Thank God!” Victor cried. “Am I glad to see you!”

  “Who are you?” the man demanded, his heavy accent clearly Spanish.

  “Victor Frank,” Frank said. “I’m one of the officers of Chimera. I’m surprised you don’t recognize me. I’m also VJ’s father.”

  “Okay,” the guard said. The dog growled.