Mutation (12 page)

     Jean left VJ in the testing room, and went back to the reception desk. She called the service and got the pile of messages that had accumulated. She attended to the ones that she could and when Marsha's patient left, gave her the messages she had to handle herself.

     "How's VJ doing?" Marsha asked.

     "Couldn't be better," Jean reported.

     "He's being cooperative?" Marsha asked.

     "Like a lamb," Jean said. "In fact, he seems to be enjoying himself."

     Marsha shook her head in amazement. "Must be you. He was in an awful mood with me."

     Jean took it as a compliment. "He's had a WAIS-R and he's in the middle of an MMPI. What other tests do you want? A Rorschach and a Thematic Apperception Test or what?"

     Marsha chewed on her thumbnail for a moment, thinking. "Why don't we do that TAT and let the Rorschach go for now. We can always do it later."

     "I'll be happy to do both," Jean said.

     "Let's just do the TAT," Marsha said as she picked up the next chart. "VJ's in a good mood but why push it? Besides, it might be interesting to cross check the TAT and the Rorschach if they are taken on different days." She called the patient whose chart she was holding and disappeared for another session.

     After Jean finished as much paperwork as she could, she returned to the testing room. VJ was absorbed in the personality test.

     "Any problems?" Jean asked.

     "Some of these questions are too much," VJ said with a laugh. "A couple of them have no appropriate answers."

     "The idea is to select the best one possible," Jean said.

     "I know," VJ said. "That's what I'm doing."

     At noon, they broke for lunch and walked to the hospital. They ate in the coffee shop. Marsha and Jean had tuna salad sandwiches while VJ had a hamburger and a shake. Marsha noted with contentment that VJ's attitude had indeed changed. She began to think she had worried for nothing; the tests he was taking would probably result in a healthy psychological portrait. She was dying to ask Jean about the results so far, but she knew she couldn't in front of VJ. Within thirty minutes they were all back at their respective tasks.

     An hour later, Jean put the phone back on service and returned to the testing room. Just as she closed the door behind her, VJ spoke up: "There," he said, clicking the last question. "All done."

     "Very good," Jean said, impressed. VJ had gone through the five hundred and fifty questions in half the usual time. "Would you like to rest before the next test?" she asked.

     "Let's get it over with," VJ said.

     For ninety minutes, Jean showed the TAT cards to VJ. Each contained a black and white picture of people in circumstances that elicited responses having psychological overtones. VJ was asked to describe what he thought was going on in each picture and how the people felt. The idea was for VJ to project his fantasies, feelings, patterns of relationships, needs, and conflicts.

     With some patients the TAT was no easy test to administer. But with VJ, Jean found herself enjoying the process. The boy had no trouble coming up with interesting explanations and his responses were both logical and normal. By the end of the test Jean felt that VJ was emotionally stable, well adjusted, and mature for his age.

     When Marsha was finished with her last patient, Jean went into the office and gave her the computer print-outs. The MMPI would be sent off to be evaluated by a program with a larger data base, but their PC gave them an initial report.

     Marsha glanced through the papers, as Jean gave her own positive clinical impression. "I think he is a model child. I truly can't see how you can be concerned about him."

     "That's reassuring," Marsha said, studying the IQ test results. The overall score was 128. That was only a two-point variation from the last time that Marsha had had VJ tested several years previously. So VJ's IQ had not changed, and it was a good, solid, healthy score, certainly well above average. But there was one discrepancy that bothered Marsha: a fifteen-point difference between the verbal and the performance IQ, with the verbal lower than the performance, which suggested a cognitive problem relating to language disabilities. Given VJ's facility in French, it didn't seem to make sense.

     "I noticed that," Jean said when Marsha queried it, "but since the overall score was so good I didn't give it much significance. Do you?"

     "I don't know," Marsha said. "I don't think I've ever seen a result like this before. Oh well, let's go on to the MMPI."

     Marsha put the personality inventory results in front of her. The first part was called the validity scales. Again something immediately aroused her attention. The F and K scales were mildly elevated and at the upper limit of what would be considered normal. Marsha pointed that out to Jean as well.

     "But they are in the normal range," Jean insisted.

     "True," Marsha said, "but you have to remember that all this is relative. Why would VJ's validity scales be nearly abnormal?"

     "He did the test quickly," Jean said. "Maybe he got a little careless."

     "VJ is never careless," Marsha said. "Well, I can't explain this, but let's go on."

     The second part of the report was the clinical scales, and Marsha noted that none were in the abnormal range. She was particularly happy to see that scale four and scale eight were well within normal limits. Those two scales referred to psychopathic deviation and schizophrenic behavior respectively. Marsha breathed a sigh of relief because these scales had a high degree of correlation with clinical reality, and she'd been afraid they would be elevated, given VJ's history.

     But then Marsha noted that scale three was "high normal." That would mean VJ tended toward hysteria, constantly seeking affection and attention. That certainly did not correlate with Marsha's experience.

     "Was it your impression that VJ was cooperating when he took this test?" Marsha asked Jean.

     "Absolutely," Jean said.

     "I suppose I should be happy with these results," Marsha said, as she gathered the papers together, then stood them on end, tapping them against the desk until they were lined up.

     "I think so," Jean said encouragingly.

     Marsha stapled the papers together, then tossed them into her briefcase. "Yet both the Wechsler and the MMPI are a little abnormal. Well, maybe unexpected is a better word. I'd have preferred they be unqualifyingly normal. By the way, how did VJ respond to the TAT with the man standing over the child with his arm raised?"

     "VJ said he was giving a lecture."

     "The man or the child?" Marsha asked with a laugh.

     "Definitely the man."

     "Any hostility involved?" Marsha asked.

     "None."

     "Why was the man's arm raised?"

     "Because the man was talking about tennis, and he was showing the boy how to serve," Jean said.

     "Tennis? VJ has never played tennis."

     As Victor drove onto the grounds of Chimera, he noted that none of the previous night's snow remained. It was still cloudy but the temperature had risen into the high forties.

     He parked his car in the usual spot, but instead of heading directly into the administration building, he took the brown paper bag from the front seat of the car and went directly to his lab.

     "Got some extra rush work for you," he said to his head technician, Robert Grimes.

     Robert was a painfully thin, intense man, who wore shirts with necks much too large for him, emphasizing his thinness. His eyes had a bulging look of continual surprise.

     Victor pulled out the iced vials of VJ's blood and sample bottles containing pieces of the dead children's brains. "I want chromosome studies done on these."

     Robert picked up the blood vials, shook them, then examined the brain samples. "You want me to let other things go and do this?"

     "That's right," Victor said. "I want it done as soon as possible. Plus I want some standard neural stains on the brain slices."

     "I'll have to let the uterine implant work slide," Robert said.

     "You have my permission."

     Leaving the lab, Victor went to the next building, which housed the central computer. It was situated in the geometric center of the courtyard, an ideal location since the building had easy access to all other facilities. The main office was on the first floor, and Victor had no trouble locating Louis Kaspwicz. There was some problem with a piece of hardware, and Louis was supervising several technicians who had the massive machine open as if it were undergoing surgery.

     "Have any information for me?" Victor asked.

     Louis nodded, told the technicians to keep searching, and led Victor back to his office where he produced a loose-leaf notebook containing the computer logs. "I've figured out why you couldn't call up those files on your terminal," Louis said. He began to flip the pages of the computer log.

     "Why?" Victor asked, as Louis kept searching through the book.

     Not finding what he was looking for, he straightened up and glanced around his office. "Ah," he said, spying a loose sheet of paper and snatching it from the desk top.

     "You couldn't call up the files on Baby Hobbs or Baby Murray because they'd been deleted on November 18," he said, waving the paper under Victor's nose.

     "Deleted?"

     "I'm afraid so," Louis said. "This is the computer log for November 18, and it clearly shows that the files were deleted."

     "That's strange," Victor said. "I don't suppose you can determine who deleted them, can you?"

     "Sure," Louis said. "By matching the password of the user."

     "Did you do that?"

     "Yes," Louis said.

     "Well, who was it?" Victor asked irritably. It seemed like Louis was deliberately making this difficult.

     Louis glanced at Victor, then looked away. "You, Dr. Frank."

     "Me?" Victor said with surprise. That was the last thing he expected to hear. Yet he did remember thinking about deleting the files, maybe even planning on doing it at some time, but he could not remember actually having done it.

     "Sorry," Louis said, shifting his weight. He was plainly uncomfortable.

     "It's quite all right," Victor said, embarrassed himself. "Thank you for looking into it for me."

     "Any time," Louis said.

     Victor left the computer center, perplexed at this new information. It was true that he'd become somewhat forgetful of late, but could he have actually deleted the files and forgotten about it? Could it have been an accident? He wondered what he'd been doing November 18. Victor went back to the administration building and slowly climbed the back stairs. As he walked down the second-floor corridor toward the rear entrance of his office, he decided to check back over his calendar. He took off his coat, hung it up, and then went to talk to Colleen.

     "Dr. Frank, you frightened me!" she exclaimed when Victor tapped her on the shoulder. She'd been concentrating on typing with dictation headphones on. "I had no idea you were here."

     Victor apologized, saying that he'd come in the back way.

     "How was the visit to the hospital?" Colleen asked. Victor had called her early that morning to explain why he wouldn't be in until afternoon. "I hope to God VJ is okay."

     "He's fine," Victor said with a smile. "The tests were normal. Of course, we are waiting on a group of blood tests. But I feel confident they'll be fine as well."

     "Thank God!" Colleen said. "You scared me when you called this morning: a full neuro work-up sounded pretty serious."

     "I was a little worried myself," Victor admitted.

     "I suppose you want your phone messages," Colleen said as she peeked under some papers on her otherwise neat desk. "I've got a ton of them for you somewhere here."

     "Hold the messages a minute," Victor said. "Would you haul out the calendar for 1988? I'm particularly interested in November 18."

     "Certainly," Colleen said. She detached herself from her dictation machine and headed for the files.

     Victor went back into his office. While he waited, he thought about the harassing phone call that VJ had unfortunately received, and he debated what to do about it. Reluctantly, he realized there was little he could do. If he asked any of the people he was having a problem with, they'd obviously deny it.

     Colleen came into his office carrying the calendar already opened to November 18, and stuck it under Victor's nose. It had been a fairly busy day. But there was nothing that had anything even slightly to do with the missing files. The last entry noted that Victor had taken Marsha into Boston to eat at Another Season and go to the Boston Symphony.

     • • •

     Removing her robe, Marsha slid into the deliciously warm bed. She turned down the controls of the electric blanket from high to three. Victor had edged as far away from the heat as possible. His side of the electric blanket was never used. He'd been in bed for over a half hour and was busy reading from a stack of professional journals.

     Marsha rolled on her side, studying Victor's profile. The sharp line of his nose, the slightly hollow cheeks, the thin lips were as familiar to Marsha as her own. Yet he seemed like a stranger. She still hadn't fully accepted what he'd done to VJ, vacillating between disbelief, anger, and fear, with fear being paramount.

     "Do you think those tests mean VJ's really all right?" she asked.

     "I'm reassured," Victor said without looking up from his magazine. "And you acted pretty happy in Dr. Ruddock's office."

     Marsha rolled over on her back. "That was immediate relief that nothing obvious showed up, like a brain tumor." She looked back at Victor. "But there still is no explanation for his dramatic drop in intelligence."

     "But that was six and a half years ago."

     "I'm still worried that the process will start again."