Brains

by Jaq Wright

  “So, Agent Hansen,” Terrence began, “where've you been the past couple of days?”

  “Up in the Berkshires with a lady friend. Just got back into town.”

  “Hmm. Regular girlfriend?”

  “Uh, kind of complicated, really. Regular friend, sporadic, um, date. More like several spaced out one-night stands. Nothing really serious or anything. But she's a close friend.” Way too much explaining, he thought. He shut up.

  “When were you last here?”

  “I left the apartment Wednesday morning, haven't been back in until now.” He winced inwardly, having answered in a way he could tell himself was truthful. As if that mattered, given the big lie about the Berkshires.

  “You don't seem worried about anything being missing.” Terrence waved around the room.

  “You said that they did not come in.”

  “True, that's how it looks. Still, kind of funny you didn't even look around.” He peered intently at Cameron.

  “How did it go down?” Cameron tried to sidestep the subject.

  “Funniest thing. It looks like the dead guy brained the little guy, then tried to jump out the window and accidentally skewered himself on the glass.”

  “Sounds awful.”

  “It looks worse. Wanna come examine the scene, agent?” His eyebrows shot up.

  Cameron shrugged, not quite sure whether hesitant or eager would be most convincing. They stood up and walked to the door. “Truth is, I guess with the bodies gone, not much to see,” the detective said as he led Cameron out. That was true near the door, just a football-sized blood stain on the carpet. The window was something else. Thick dried blood was on the remains of the glazing, and sprayed on the casement and walls, as well as thick and black on the radiator. The carpet was soaked for about six feet back from the window.

  Cameron tried to appear curious as he looked at the scene. “Do you really think this has anything to do with me at all?” he asked. “Seems like a couple of burglars had a fight, one hit the other, then panicked and tried to run. Maybe he was afraid someone heard the noise? Maybe there was yelling?”

  Terrence didn't answer, but asked, “What do you keep in your apartment, Agent Hansen?”

  Cameron laughed, “Dirty clothes, dirty dishes, pizza boxes and stale burritos, mostly.”

  “How about documents related to your work at ATU?”

  “No, no reason I would bring any of that stuff home, even if it were allowed.”

  “Any reason anyone would want to harm you?”

  “No, I'm just an office analyst.”

  “Okay, well, let me know if you think of anything.” He pulled out a card, started to hand it to Cameron, then pulled it back. “Oh, I forgot, you already have my number.” He started towards the stairs. After a couple of steps he turned around. “Curious thing, though.”

  “What's that?”

  “What they were carrying.”

  “You gonna tell me or make me beg?”

  “Get this – they each had a gun, 9 mm, all identifying numbers eradicated, and the dead guy had a taser. And plastic cuffs. And a headbag. And duct tape. What does that say to you?”

  Cameron thought quickly. The detective would certainly expect a CIA agent to know what he was describing. “Sounds like they wanted to snatch someone.”

  “Exactly. Someone here, don't you think?”

  “Maybe they were at the wrong place. Maybe that's what they fought about.”

  Terrence shook his head. “Let's see. CIA former undercover agent lives behind door number one. Downstairs is a retired grocer. Upstairs, a lower echelon stockbroker's assistant. Piano teacher above him. Buildings on both sides, similar nobodies. I even checked the same addresses on the streets north and south. Nothing more interesting than a guy from the chorus in the revival of 'Hello Dolly.' They were at the right place, Agent Hansen. You sure you can't give me a little help here?”

  “Sorry detective, I've really got nothing.”

  “Okay, well, as I say, if something comes to mind . . .” he mimed a phone. He turned and started away again. He stopped again, shaking his head once more.

  “I almost forgot. You know how there's often a big pile of garbage bags across the street?”

  “I guess. Just part of the ambiance.”

  “Have you ever seen homeless guys sleeping in the garbage pile?”

  “Not that I've noticed. Why do you ask?”

  “Funniest thing. The guy next door took his dog out around eleven, noticed a guy sleeping there. Went out again around four. Dog has a weak bladder. Anyhow, no homeless guy the second time. Thursday morning was garbage day, and by the time we got the neighbor's report, the pile of garbage was gone. Pity.”

  This time, the detective really did leave. Cameron waited a half hour, then also left, walking as quickly as he could to Amsterdam Avenue, where he caught a cab to the FBI offices to pick up Mitzi. Terrence, parked in a car at the end of the block, watched him walk away.

  ◆◆◆

  At exactly seven o'clock, Perez was back behind the glass. Blaylock was slightly ahead of schedule, and the robot arms were busily and apparently randomly touching Jorge with probes a little larger than from the morning. Blaylock explained that cold was less precise than touch, and hence the larger probe. They were just finishing. Jorge was whimpering, but almost completely unable to squirm.

  It took the techs about five minutes to change out the tips, substituting slender needles for the blunt cold probes. Blaylock started the program, and immediately small pricks were started, again randomly. Jorge screamed as tiny drops of blood oozed from a dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand needle pricks. Blaylock nodded, satisfaction showing in his face.

  “Clean him up,” he ordered, and the techs went in and wiped away the blood with clothes wet with a solution that foamed. Peroxide, Perez assumed. Blaylock came out.

  “This is superb data. It appears that the brain's encoding is even more orderly than I thought. It will take several hours to analyze, but it looks like we don't really have to map the entire body for cold and pain, it is more like there is encoding for position on the skin, then additional brain activity which indicates touch, versus cold, versus pain. Interesting, since the nerve endings for those different sensations are quite distinct. I'll finish with the heat, and then run an algorithm to predict the responses to cold, pain, and heat for the back. We can then see how close we come. If we are close enough, we may find we don't have to do anything but the simple touch, then just enough of the other sensations to calibrate. Could save us a lot of time on future subjects.”

  While he was talking, the techs had attached squared-off tubes to each of the robot arms, and given Jorge a second cleaning with the peroxide. They then dried him carefully and motioned to Blaylock, who said, “Back to work,” and went back into the lab.

  Perez watched, fascinated again as the robot arms moved in their pitiless course. This time, a laser emitted by the new apparatus caused tiny puffs of smoke from the boy's skin. Heat. Perez shivered involuntarily. He hoped Blaylock's algorithm worked. It would certainly be nice to shorten the process.

  Chapter 25

  Friday, October 28

  New York

  During the week, Dr. Overbridge had quickly regained his strength, and by Thursday was again walking to and from work. He was somewhat distressed that his trip to work that morning took him 2312 steps, over fifteen percent more than his usual. Most definitely not Roman, he thought. If I had been a Legionnaire, I would most certainly have been flogged. Thursday evening was better, 2235, and he had been confident that he would soon be back on track. His head still hurt, but he was able to simply put that realization in a box to the side of his consciousness, and not be bothered. He finished work on Friday without having canceled a single surgery or patient appointment, and no one at Our Lady had any idea that he had been sick. He was satisfied. Friday evening he walked home, then flagged a cab without going into the building, and headed to the New York Athletic Club
to meet Jack and Cathy.

  He had discharged his incognito patient on Thursday, and was to see him at the facility in Queens on Saturday. If all was well, they planned to try the device the next week. Dr. Overbridge was very excited. He was helping to solve one of the most elusive problems in medicine, the reanimation of the paraplegic. He was very pleased to be part of the team.

  ◆◆◆

  The New York Athletic Club was certainly an athletic club, but it was also a superb restaurant in midtown Manhattan. Dr. Overbridge had been a member for decades, having not given up his membership when he had stopped going there for racketball and weight training after he left the Neurological Institute. He now went there each week for the Sunday brunch, and on those rare occasions when his father came down from Boston. Rarer and rarer – in fact, the last time had been four years previously. They were not close, and had nothing to discuss. All the elder Overbridge found interesting was money, and although his son made an enormous amount, spent very little, and had, by consequence, literally millions saved, he gave it almost no thought. Which his father did not even start to comprehend.

  Cathy was curious to meet Dr. Overbridge, and when they entered the dining room, Jack scanned the room and pointed him out. “He looks like an alien,” Cathy whispered as they made their way over. He was already seated and waiting for them, but was situated so that they approached the table, unseen, from behind him. He was sitting perfectly motionless, with the exception that his pale bald head was turning slowly from left to right. As they were coming across the room, she noted that when he was turned all the way to the right, he suddenly turned quickly all the way to the left, then started slowly back again to the right. “What is he doing?” she asked Jack.

  “Probably counting something. I have noticed he does that. Hard to believe he is the same man I knew as a resident. Of course, I guess we all have different paths than people would expect.” He gave her arm three quick squeezes, and was rewarded with a peck on the cheek.

  Dr. Overbridge rose when they arrived at the table. Jack introduced him to Cathy.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Cathy smiled.

  “The pleasure is all mine.” Dr. Overbridge was gracious. He called the waiter over. “Shall we start with some wine? No, that's right, you two are Mormon.”

  Clearly a contrived opener, Cathy thought.

  Jack was curious. Why did Overbridge really want to have dinner? He had checked around. No one in the medical community had heard of him doing anything social with anyone for decades. This whole week had been extraordinarily strange, starting with that text about this exact time the preceding Friday.

  In fact, Dr. Overbridge was completely asocial. He was not connected to society, insofar as he could arrange it. He did not own a cell phone, nor a television. Although he used computers extensively at work, he did not have a home computer or tablet. Nothing. He continued to receive all his medical journals in the mail, and they provided his entertainment in the evenings. He had a large collection of delivery menus, and often his only contact with anyone after work for weeks on end was with the restaurants that he called for meals. And the housekeeper. He had minimized his other contacts as well. All of his income was deposited into an account at Chase, and his accounting firm made tax payments and sent him a very short stack of checks to sign every two weeks to take care of his utilities and such. He personally stopped into the bank on his way home once a month and drew out whatever cash he needed. He preferred cash, preferred carrying a lot for emergencies, and typically had at least three thousand dollars on his person at all times. If the denizens of East Harlem had been aware of that little fact, it is certain that his walks to Our Lady would not have been so peaceful.

  Jack could not have known all of that, but did know enough to realize that this was an unusual event for Dr. Overbridge.

  He decided that if Dr. Overbridge was going to bring it up, he might as well talk about his conversion as anything else.

  “Yes, that's right. How did you know?”

  “Everyone knows, Dr. Tucker. It was big news when you converted.” As a matter of fact, Overbridge had overheard the other two neurosurgeons at Our Lady discussing it in the surgeons' lounge. Not that he was talking with them, of course. He considered them so inferior as to not be worth considering. They did not share in his reputation, or his patients, and were relegated to dealing with the normal impoverished patients at Our Lady of Salubrious Penitence, meaning the trauma cases and tumors that walked in off the streets of East Harlem.

  He had been curious. It was at about the time Jack converted that Overbridge had decided to re-label his films with Jack's name, as Dr. Peterman at Mount Sinai was getting past his prime.

  “Are you a man of faith, Dr. Overbridge?”

  That was a question that required some thought. Overbridge stared up at the opposite wall, counting the crenellations in the crown molding of the ornate old room. He was not sure how to answer that. His official internal stance was that he was agnostic, but that did not explain his feelings of being haunted by the dead. If the dead could haunt, logically that would imply an afterlife, which led to consideration of God. He had not attended church since leaving Exeter, as he did not feel that organized religion had anything to offer, and their platitudes tended to interfere with his chosen college and military lifestyles. Since Lake, he had lived an essentially monastic life, but his religion had been the brain. The complexity of that organ itself seemed to imply a higher being, since he had decided that the capacity for art and philosophy which mankind showed did not seem likely to have been the result of any Darwinian pressure that had been observed or that he could imagine. So, he supposed that no, he was not agnostic, but rather that he believed that there must be a higher power.

  So, after a delay of a few awkward minutes, during which he had verified for the fourth time that evening that there were indeed three hundred and eighty-one crenellations on the west crown molding, he responded, “I believe that there is a higher power.”

  “So, you believe in God.”

  Again a delayed response. The mahogany panels below the crown molding required his attention. There were twenty-four. God was a bit more specific than he was willing to go. God sounded, well, too personal, too contrived. Too “organized religion.” Certainly, the God that was variously described and worshiped by the diverse religions of the world. Which God? An Essence? A Person? Singular? Plural? He did not have enough information to be confident in his response.

  “I believe there is a higher power,” he finally repeated.

  “May I ask you a question?” Cathy interjected.

  “Certainly.”

  “What was your motivation for inviting us to dinner tonight. Rumor has it that you are not much of one for social engagements.”

  Another tough question. He began again to count the panels.

  “It would be less off-putting if you could count something more at eye-level,” she suggested. “Perhaps the gray hairs on Jack's head, or my eyelashes or something. Just a thought.” She smiled and winked at him. He blushed.

  “I had not realized it was so evident.”

  “It makes me wonder what you are feeling, or rather, what you do not wish to be feeling.”

  He was beginning to think that, with these two, it might be easiest to simply count the difficult questions. Or maybe he was just completely out of practice and had lost his conversational skills.

  He decided to answer the prior question. “I wanted to get to know the man who saved my brain, er, I mean, my life. I saw the scans. It was not really possible, you know.”

  “I guess we both got lucky.”

  Cathy broke in. “You know better than that.” She turned towards Overbridge. “God helped you by helping him. Believe it. But listen, you brought up the whole religion thing. Why was that?”

  “After the Lake incident, some things from the past came up that led me to some quasi-religious musings, and so I became attuned to the metaphysical in a way I had not been
before.”

  “What things from the past?” Cathy leaned forward.

  “From the war. I had seen a lot of combat. I became cognizant that I was using the practice of medicine to work out my post-traumatic stress, I suppose, and the death of Mr. Lake threw a wrench in my self-therapy.” He was startled that he had confided that to this woman he had just met. He must have looked shocked. “I am sorry, that was perhaps more than I should have said.”

  She smiled. “People often tell me things, Dr. Overbridge. What exactly was surgery helping you work out?”

  “I had destroyed a lot of brains. I was trying to save them to make up for that. Losing another through negligence felt like a giant step backwards.”

  “When you say you had destroyed brains, do you mean you had to kill during the war?”

  “I was a very good shot from long distance. The Marines made good use of me. They haunt me, the men I killed.”

  They ate in silence for a few minutes, then Overbridge turned to Jack. “You did not answer my question, Dr. Tucker. What turned you to religion? Was it this young woman?”

  Jack smiled. “No, I met Cathy after I was baptized. I guess you would say that I was also perhaps a little haunted. Not actively, but when my daughters and I were invited to visit the church by one of their friends, I was in a place where I was thinking more about God. Once there, the feeling of the Spirit was what drew me in. Perhaps you would like to give us a try.”

  He did not respond to that immediately. He started to count the crenellations, then stopped himself. He abruptly pushed away from the table and excused himself, “I'm sorry, I need to visit the restroom. I'll be right back.” He hurried away.

  Jack turned to Cathy. “What do you think?”

  “Pretty odd,” said Cathy. “What is going on with the counting?”

  “A lot of obsessive compulsive behavior seems to be related to guilt. I would guess that it was always there, at least after Vietnam, but he seems to have really gone over the top since the whole catastrophe with Alexander Lake. Most of the time, surgeons are able to get past something like that, ego-maniacs that we are.”