Death Qualified (45 page)

    Twenty minutes after they began, Prank made a grunting sound and held up his hand. Barbara and Mike took their headsets off.

    "I think this is the first one," Frank said. Mike was using the big machine. He removed his tape and Frank slipped his into the slot. They all listened:

    "September 14, 1982. Two days ago I told Emil I want to get out of all this and go home. Nell's right. This is all a piece of bunkum, and they're treating me like shit. Emil yelled at me and said to wait until he talks to Schumaker about my degree. He was sure it was just a technicality that kept it away from me. He promised to look into it ASAP. Today Emil said I should go to the lab and give a demonstration for Brandy wine. They've been in conference day after day, hour after hour. I've never even met her yet. I didn't want to, but finally I said okay, one last demonstration, and then we talk about my degree, and he said sure. He thinks Schumaker needs a paper, for the committee, for the files or something. A simple paper, not a real thesis, he said. Notes about my work with him would be okay, fifteen, twenty pages, up to fifty or more if I want to go that high, but I don't have to. And then the master's degree. I don't believe it.

    "I went to the lab. It's in the math building, a little room with a bunch of chairs with plastic seats, and a long table. I have a special chair with arms and buttons on the right one. And there's a big screen, a computer monitor.

    There's a glass window, one-way glass, I know, because sometimes I help with other subjects and those times I'm on the other side of that glass. We just do one at a time in here. So, I take the chair and they're all behind the glass and it starts like always.

    "I could go longer than anyone else, but even so after an hour or a little more I had to stop. It was tiring. Emil knew that, Schumaker knew it, and Margolis, but she didn't believe it. Go on, she kept saying over the micro phone. Keep going, she said, as if she thought I stopped to prove a point or something. I told her my head was aching too much, and that was the truth. Sometimes it was my stomach that ached, but usually my head hurt too much to keep on. And I just wanted to take a nap.

    "They came into my room and sat at the table. She said, why don't you go get a Coke or a cup of coffee, walk out in the fresh air to wake up. Take a ten-minute break.

    "So I left, but I didn't want anything to drink, or to take a walk. I wanted to have a nap, so I went in the other room, the one we called the control room, and I could see them at the table talking. I put my head on my arms to go to sleep, but I kept hearing what they were saying. And she said I was resisting. Emil said I was cooperating fully, and she said, I don't mean that, I don't mean deliberately.

    You say the others all begin to have physical symptoms after a time? He said yes, and she said, they're all resisting They meet a wall that terrifies them and gives them physical symptoms so they can retreat in good faith. I want to hypnotize him now, today, and see what that wall means.

    "Schumaker said, does that mean you're in? And she said, I don't know. Not yet. But I have a few suggestions. "I looked at them then and realized that Emil and Schumaker were treating her just the way they had treated Margolis when they wanted him to help with the computer programming. They were being very polite and acting like she was something really special, and she liked that. I could tell.

    "I decided I wanted to pack up my stuff in the car and just go home, as fast as I could drive back. I started to leave, and then I saw my backpack in the other room by the special chair, and I knew I had to get it. My car keys were in it, and my apartment keys, my wallet even. So I went back in.

    "She said, is your head better? and I said sure, it's fine now. She laughed and said, don't be silly. Sit down and I'll show you a trick to get rid of a headache. You can use it whenever you want. It's pain transference. I said no, I was okay, but she took my arm and sort of pushed me into a chair at the table. I said I didn't want to be hypnotized, and she laughed and said that since no one can be who isn't cooperative, there wasn't any danger of that. Keep that thought in mind, she said. Now where does your head hurt? I touched the back of my head without even thinking what I was doing, and she nodded as if she had thought so. Then she began talking about the pain, where it was, how it felt, on and on, and she told me to think of it as something I could see, something I could touch and move.

    She said, don't close your eyes, don't relax too much, just think about that pain. We're going to gather it up and start moving it. We'll move it down your neck, across your shoulder into your right arm and down into your hand.

    When it's all in your hand, you'll just throw it away. All with your eyes wide open. Simple pain transference.

    "She never said a word about trance, or sleep, or relax, or close your eyes, nothing that I associated with hypnosis, but she hypnotized me anyway, and that's all I can remember of what happened in the lab this afternoon.

    "Emil will tell me eventually. I know he will. It's night now, and I've tried and tried to remember and had to give up, but it's okay, because Emil will tell me. Now I have to get some sleep. It's going to be a long day tomorrow.

    We're going to start at eight in the morning and go through all the disks, everything. They're all excited. I know I planned to go home again, leave today, this afternoon, or tonight, but I'll wait until I find out what happened. An other few days won't matter, not after all these years.

    "And I'm going to start making a record of everything I know about what we've been doing. Not the paper Emil said I need. That's bullshit. But a record, something to take away with me. I'll tape over my music tapes. Nothing now to make them suspicious of what I'm doing. I don't think any of them would like it if they knew I'm making a record of all this."

    His voice stopped and the sound of Jimi Hendrix filled the living room. Mike turned off the machine.

    "Oh my God!" Barbara breathed.

    "He never had a chance," Mike said softly.

    "That poor guy never had a chance."

    Prank stood up.

    "You want anything to drink? I'm having a glass of wine and then I'm going to bed. You can fill me in tomorrow." His face was drawn with pity.

    Mike decided to make coffee; it promised to be a late night. Barbara got up to poke at the fire, but really, she understood, they all simply needed to move, as if to break the spell of that distant, dead voice. Poor Lucas, she thought. Poor Nell. All flip-flopped over. She had started out feeling only anger at Lucas for abandoning his wife and children, and sympathy for Nell, as well as admiration because she had handled it so well. Now the sympathy was for Lucas, and she was no longer certain how she felt about Nell.

    None of this, she thought bleakly, had a thing to do with the case she had to sum up tomorrow. She glanced at her watch. Twelve-forty. Another twenty minutes and she would have to go to bed, or she would be a wreck tomorrow, she knew. The tapes would keep. They had kept for seven years, and then another six months. They would keep another few days. She remembered her fierce wish to destroy Ruth Brandywine along with her accomplices, and she thought, maybe we will yet. Maybe we will.

    At five minutes before one Barbara found a tape Lucas had made in the woods on his way home. Frank had gone to bed; Mike had his coffee, and she was dead tired, but she and Mike listened to this tape together. Lucas sounded terribly tired:

    "November was cold. I remember how cold it was day after day, with a lot of snow up in the mountains, and a stiff wind that seemed not to let up. They were all fighting most of the time. Emil was making threats to take the work somewhere else if they all chickened out on him.

    Schumaker was threatening to blacklist him, and Brandywine was furious with everyone. No one was telling me anything by then, but I could see what was happening.

    Something had gone wrong with the kids Brandywine was hypnotizing, and they were all blaming each other. One of the parents was pretty upset, and the project was killed.

    Just like that, killed. Emil said he'd continue without their help, that he no longer needed anyone's help, that, in fact, he never had needed them, but that Schumaker had used him from the start. He was picking up street boys in Denver, taking them home, having them run the program, and testing them by himself.

    "They didn't know what to do with me. Brandywine said that as long as I didn't know anything or remember anything, there was nothing to do, and that's how it was.

    I had no work, no classes, nothing to do. I read a lot during those last two weeks. Now it seems strange that I didn't just leave, but at the time I don't remember thinking of that. Her doing, no doubt.

    "Then Emil called late in the afternoon. He was panicked by something, and I couldn't make any sense out of what he was saying. I got in my car and started for his house. The closer I got the more I was dreading getting there. I was really freaking out, seeing things, hearing voices, and one of the voices was of a kid, a laughing boy.

    He sounded delirious with joy, that's the only way I can think of him. He said he was hiding disks and showed me where they were, in my head. And I was scared, more scared than I've ever been. I must have been driving like a drunken driver, weaving back and forth, seeing things, the works, and I wasn't on anything. Nothing at all. So that's how I was when I reached Emil's house. The laughing boy said he would try to calm Emil down, in my head he told me that, but when I opened the door and went in, Emil was standing with a gun, and the boy was on the floor dead. There was blood everywhere. Emil saw me and shot at me, screaming something. Margolis came in right behind me and when Emil saw him, he shot again, and then turned the gun to his own head and fired it once more. Margolis and Brandywine put the gun in the laughing boy's hand, and they wrapped me in a blanket and carried me out and put me in my car. She drove me to her house, and I stayed there for weeks and weeks. I don't even know how long. No one ever questioned me about Emil's death, or anything else.

    "That's the first time I understood what we were doing, what we had done, why the boy was laughing and laughing. I saw the web and the network and the pattern, all of it, and they knew I would remember this time. That's why they had to keep me under wraps for the rest of my life. I wonder now why they didn't just kill me and be done with it. But she thought it was under control forever, and for all these years it was. Then it came out again, and I know why the boy was laughing and laughing. I know why."

    His voice broke; for a second, Barbara thought he was sobbing. A shudder passed over her when she realized it was laughter she was hearing, wild, joyous laughter.

    Shakily she stood up. The laughter stopped and there was the music of Paul Simon. She stared at the tape player in horror.

    "Brandywine wasn't lying," she whispered.

    "He was insane! She really was treating him for insanity."

    TWENTY-NINE

    at least nell looked almost rested, not as if she would keel over any second, Barbara thought the next morning.

    She felt a twinge of jealousy, thinking about the sleep Nell had had imposed upon her by Doc while she, Barbara, had had vivid dreams in her broken sleep. She stood on the front porch of Nell's house waiting for Nell's answer to her question, what do you intend to do today? dive's car was in the driveway; he had not come out of the house.

    The rain had almost stopped; the wind was gentle again, hardly present at all. The world smelled clean.

    "Clive thinks I should go on record telling the truth," she said hesitantly.

    "He sounds like Grampa. You know, the truth can't hurt, and all that."

    "Clive doesn't know diddly about law and criminal trials," Barbara said darkly.

    "I know that. He says the truth would be best, or take the stand and say I just can't remember what happened.

    Count on them to pity me, I guess. He thinks that from an outsider's point of view, an observer's, what looks worst is not to say anything at all. I can sort of see it that way, too."

    "And he's wrong. Let him stick to trees and woods and stay the hell away from the law," Barbara said.

    "What's your decision? Forget what Clive says."

    "I won't lie about it. I didn't do it. I remember clearly what happened, and I didn't do it. But the truth is too fantastic to tell, isn't it? It's the least likely of the three.

    Your way, Barbara. I'll sit there and keep my mouth shut, and pray."

    Barbara nodded and said briskly, "Okay. Clive will bring you in? What about the children? Have you made arrangements for after school? You shouldn't be distracted by worries about them today. Deliberation might take a long time." They both knew that what she meant was mat if the verdict went against Nell, Judge Lundgren could order her into custody immediately.

    Nell swallowed hard.

    "It's all taken care of." John and Amy Kendricks would cross the mountains some time during the day, but no one knew yet when; they were snowed in at the farm.

    "What did you do with the tapes? Will they help at all?"

    "We made copies and they'll go in a safe-deposit box today. No help, I'm afraid. I haven't heard them all, of course, but that's how it looks. So, we'll see you in court.