Before Nathan could respond, Sharon came back out. “I talked to your mom, Brad, and she agreed that you and Nathan need to help clean up the mess you made. So let’s go work on that. She’ll be here in about an hour to pick you up.”
Brad mumbled something as both boys followed Sharon into the office. I tagged along behind. Inside, the office was a smoky, soggy mess. Once they started the fire, the boys had wanted to be sure they used enough water to put it out. So they had doused everything thoroughly.
We began carrying things out from the office to the patio. Lots of wet books, folders, stacks of papers, and a couple of soaked area rugs. We had to bring out the furniture as well, because water had pooled around it. The boys worked hard, said little. Sharon got them brooms to sweep the water out the open sliding glass doors. By the time Brad’s mother came to pick him up, he looked grateful to be getting out of there, even though he was probably worried about what his mother would have to say about this escapade.
After they drove off, Sharon told Nathan to go inside and take a shower. “I need to finish taking care of this mess,” she told him. “So we’ll talk more about this later. After your shower, stay in your room. I’ll bring you some supper in a while.” Nathan nodded, put down his broom and went inside.
As soon as he was gone, Sharon darted over to a pile of stuff at one side of the patio and came back carrying what looked like a locked steel cash box, about 8 inches by 12 inches and maybe 4 inches deep. It looked like it could hold a good-sized stack of money. “I found this hidden behind some books,” she said. “I didn’t want the boys to see it, since I have no idea what’s inside. I’m hoping one of Adam’s keys will open it. Let’s take it inside and see.”
We took the box into the kitchen. Sharon moved a stack of dirty dishes, jars of peanut butter and jam, a loaf of bread and some banana peels off the table, and put the metal box there. She fished around in a drawer, pulled out a key ring, and began checking for keys that might fit the lock. Just as she was about to try one that looked likely, Nathan appeared in the doorway.
“I’m starving, Mom. You said you were bringing me some food.” Then he noticed the box. “Hey, what’s that?”
“Nathan, I asked you to stay in your room. This is just a box I found in Dad’s office.”
“Is there money in it? Maybe Dad left us a bunch of money. Let’s open it.”
“I am going to open it. You can watch if you’re quiet.” Sharon stuck a key in the lock and turned it. The box popped open. Inside was a thin manila envelope. If it held money of any significant amount, it would have to be big bills. But all she found inside were some papers.
Nathan’s face fell. “No money? He didn’t leave any money in there for us? Hey, maybe it’s a map to lead us to the money.”
“Enough about money, Nathan.” Sharon sounded exasperated.
“It’s not a map, just some business papers. Now go back to your room and I’ll bring you something to eat.”
Chapter 37
Sharon got out some bread and cheese, fixed a sandwich for Nathan, and took it to him with some watermelon and a glass of milk. She offered me a snack, but both she and I were more interested in getting a look at the papers in the envelope, than we were in eating. Sharon spread out the papers on the table, and we sat down to look through them. The papers were all printouts of pages from a website called Creating An Ideal World. It started with this mission statement:
This project is designed to demonstrate that it is possible to create an ideal society by sacrificing individual freedoms. People are not born the way they are, they learn to behave in certain ways by their interactions with the total environment in which they live. The philosophy of Creating An Ideal World is radical behaviorism. Behaviorism offers the possibility for change, for improving the human condition by rewarding desired behavior and punishing behavior that is not desired. The principles of behaviorism work equally well for everyone, regardless of race, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. This project will show that by shaping children’s behavior from infancy, we can create an ideal world.
“Wow! This is some strange stuff,” Sharon said, reading on down the page. “I can’t imagine why Adam had this in a locked box. It’s not the kind of thing he’d usually keep. It sounds more like my dad’s kind of thing than Adam’s.”
“It sounds a little scary,” I said. “Shaping children’s behavior from infancy? How do they get parents to agree to that?”
“Oh look at this.” Sharon pointed to a page in front of her. “This project is in Mexico! I wish I knew why Adam had this stuff.”
“It looks like this was printed out last March,” I said. “See, here’s the web address and the date on the bottom of each page.”
“So I guess Adam printed it out from that website. But why? And why lock it up?”
We read through more pages that went on and on about how we can become better people and build a superior society by applying behaviorist principles. I found a couple of pages that had data tables with information about individual children. “Look at this, Sharon. This project has about thirty children, all age three or younger. It looks like they were all in it since they were born.”
“So these kids’ parents all agree to raise them by behaviorist principles? I feel sorry for them. I know I never liked being trained that way as a kid. Whenever I’d complain to my dad about him doing things to shape my behavior, he’d tell me the story of baby Albert. Back in the 1920s a psychologist named Watson taught a baby named Albert to be afraid of a white rat by loudly banging on metal with a hammer every time the baby touched the rat. Little Albert associated the rat with the noise and before long he would cry whenever he saw the rat, or even when he saw any white furry thing like a toy or a fur coat. Dad would remind me that he could have used methods like that, but he didn’t. I guess I was better off than little Albert, but I always felt manipulated—all those charts, tokens and point systems.”
“Yeah, I guess being the child of a prominent behaviorist can have its downside,” I sympathized. “Reminds me of the baby box that B.F. Skinner invented for his daughter back in the 1930s. It was an incubator-like thing, sort of a combination crib and playpen with glass sides and a temperature-controlled environment. Most people thought it was terrible because the baby didn’t get enough human contact or affection. People compared it to keeping animals in cages.
But Skinner raised his daughter in it until she was two and a half.”
Suddenly I found a page that really hit me. “Oh my God! This project is buying babies from Mexican mothers for this experiment.”
“What? Are you sure? How could they get away with buying babies? Let me see that.”
I showed Sharon the section I had been reading. “Look, it says right here that they are not only conducting a unique experiment that will change the world, they are providing babies born into poverty with the opportunity for an exceptional life. And, then they say they are compensating the babies’ parents significantly so they can lift their entire family out of poverty.”
“So who is running this? Is my dad involved in this? Is that why Adam had this stuff?”
It took us a long time to find the names of the project directors, but when we did—sure enough—one of them was Waycroft. “You know, I remember now—Holly said your dad had some project in Mexico.”
“Paying for babies to use in research has to be illegal, even in Mexico,” Sharon said. “How can Dad be doing this?”
“You know, maybe we should call Elisa and see if she can come look at this stuff. She knows a lot more about psychology research than we do.”
We gave Elisa enough information to get her to agree to come down right away. But we knew it would take her at least forty minutes to get to Sharon’s. In the turmoil of the past few hours, we’d almost forgotten we had Adam’s computer back. Once we remembered, we decided we should boot it up and try going to the website. We got the computer from my car, put it on the dining room table, entered the password Sharo
n had written down after she contacted Adam, and the computer booted right up. We went to the web browser, typed in the URL that was on the printed pages from Waycroft’s project, but all we got was a blank page with the notice: The page cannot be found. The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.
We looked in Adam’s “Favorites” list for a link to the site, and found one, but when we clicked on it, we got the same blank page with the same frustrating message. We tried a Google search on “Creating an Ideal World.” It came up with about 125 links when we put the phrase in quotes—stuff about utopian visions, ecology, religion, progressive political groups, and so on—but nothing that connected us to Waycroft’s project.
We were pretty frustrated by the time Elisa got there. We gave her the papers to read, while Sharon went to get Nathan to bed, and I continued the fruitless computer search. By the time Elisa had read all the stuff and Nathan was down for the night, it was 9:30. Sharon and I realized we were starving, so we made some grilled cheese sandwiches and got out the watermelon to snack on while we talked with Elisa.
“This is some serious shit,” Elisa said, handing the papers back to Sharon. “I told you Donald is obsessed with proving behavioral principles work. But I never thought he’d go to this extreme to prove his theories.”
“And didn’t you find out that the university’s institutional review board wouldn’t let him do some of the research he wanted to do?” I asked.
“Well, there’s sure no way they’d let him take babies and raise them in a controlled environment to test behavioral principles,” Elisa said. “I’d think Donald knows better than to even ask permission for that.”
“So you think he just decided to run this illicit project in Mexico?” Sharon asked. “But who are these other people? And where do they get the money to pay the families and run the project? And how did Adam know about it?”
“It looks like Adam found the website somehow, and printed out these pages,” Elisa said. “He clearly thought this material was important, or he wouldn’t have locked it in this box. But he must have been worried about how you’d react. I assume that’s why he didn’t tell you. Maybe that’s what he was so worried about before he died.”
I remembered Erik had told me the night before that Adam had been worried about Waycroft, but I didn’t want to bring up Erik and explain why I hadn’t believed him. So I just asked, “Did Adam ever say anything that gave you the idea he had concerns about your dad?”
“It’s hard to say. Adam and my dad never got along—which was mostly Dad’s fault. Adam didn’t have too many good things to say about Dad, but I can understand why he wouldn’t have wanted to tell me about this. I’m sure he was freaked out about it.”
“I would say Donald has some explaining to do,” Elisa said. “And with this information we shouldn’t have any trouble getting him to back off and quit harassing the three of us.”
“But shouldn’t we report this somewhere?” I asked. “We can’t just use it to get him to leave us alone.”
“I don’t think we have enough information to report it,” Elisa said. “You can’t even find the website now. And who would we report it to? The project isn’t even in this country. I think we need to talk to Donald. Maybe we can find out more.”
“Okay, let’s go to his lab tomorrow morning while Nathan is at soccer practice,” Sharon said. “Dad’s always at his lab on Saturday morning. That way we can find him without having to tell him in advance that we’re coming.”
We agreed to meet at my office at 9:30 the next morning, so we could go together to confront Waycroft.
Chapter 38
Waycroft’s lab was part of a cluster of research buildings on the East Campus, off 30th and Arapahoe. We drove over together in Elisa’s car. Not surprising on a summer Saturday morning, the property was mostly empty.
The building that housed his lab was one of those so-called “temporary” buildings that have been around university campuses for generations. This one was the typical prefabricated flat rectangle with gray plastic-coated steel walls. We parked behind and walked around to the front door, which was unlocked—so we walked in.
Banks of stainless steel rat cages lined one wall. A long shelf on another wall held about fifteen desktop computers, each connected to a white rectangular box on a shelf above it. Waycroft sat with his back to us typing on a computer at a built-in desk. Ceiling-high shelves crammed with electronic equipment surrounded his desk on both sides.
He swiveled his desk chair around to face us as we came in. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?” he asked with a scowl. “I thought none of you were speaking to me.”
“We want to talk about your ideal world project in Mexico,” Sharon said.
Waycroft looked momentarily startled, but quickly regained control. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Dad, we know about the project. Adam printed out stuff from the website and left it in a locked box. I found it last night.”
“Sharon, I don’t know what you think you found, since I haven’t seen it. Why don’t you tell me about it?” Waycroft appeared calm and cool.
“You can drop the act, Donald,” Elisa stepped closer to him. “We have detailed printouts of your Creating An Ideal World project, including the part about paying poor families to give you their babies to use for your research. You know as well as I do that research like that is immoral, unethical and illegal. Did you really think you could keep a project like this a secret?”
Donald remained calm. “Look, I’ve finally gotten this project going with some great scientific minds involved,” he said. “We’re not hurting those kids. In fact, we’re helping them. Their lives would be nothing without us. But the project’s not politically correct. We’d be wiped out if people knew. Obviously we have to keep it secret.”
Elisa took that as an opening. “Okay, we’re here to offer you a deal. You stop this project now, and return those children to their parents. You drop your complaint against Cleo, quit interfering with the way Sharon is raising Nathan, and stay out of my tenure process. If you agree to all that, we won’t tell anyone your secret. But if you don’t agree, I’m going to give all this material to the university administration.”
While Elisa issued her ultimatum, Waycroft swiveled his chair around so he faced his desk again. As she finished, he opened the desk drawer in front of him, took out a gun, jumped up and pointed it at us. I froze. My legs were rooted to the floor. I don’t think I could have moved if the building had been on fire.
“Dad! What are you doing?” Sharon gasped.
“Shut up, Sharon! None of you has any idea what you’re doing. This project is the culmination of my life’s work. I have no intention of dismantling it. It’s taken me years to find investors and put together this international research group. I’m not going to let anyone destroy this project. It’s too important, too valuable. I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep it going.”
“So where did you find the members of this so-called research group?” Elisa said, not intimidated by Waycroft’s gun. I admired her guts, but I couldn’t see what good could come from continuing to confront him.
“None of your business. But we’re already seeing amazing results, even though we’ve only had the project up and running for three years. Children raised in our controlled environment will show the world what can happen if we take control and design a society that is totally consistent in rewarding good behavior and extinguishing bad behavior. Someday this project—my project—will change the world. And all those bureaucrats who tried to hold me back will find out how wrong they were.”
Could he be serious? I didn’t feel anywhere near as confident as Elisa sounded. I was scared. This was the first time anyone had ever pointed a gun at me, and I took it very seriously. I stood rigidly in my spot slightly behind Sharon and Elisa, moving only my eyes around and around the room in search of an escape. Eventually I bega
n to regain feeling in my legs, like I could move if I had to. But I couldn’t see any good moves to make. While I figured there was no way he could shoot all three of us if we ran in different directions, it seemed likely he’d get one or maybe even two of us. Not good enough odds. Nor did I think we could overpower him and get the gun, even if we could find a way to jump him all at once. We were all in good shape, but Waycroft was stocky and solid with the broad well-muscled shoulders of a former football player who worked out daily.
“Is this project worth killing for?” Sharon challenged. A look of horror came over her face. “Wait a minute—have you already killed for it? Did you know Adam found out about the project? Did you push him off the trail? You were right there in the area when it happened.”
“Yes, I knew Adam had gotten on the website.” Waycroft somehow maintained his cool in the face of Sharon’s allegations. “It was a password protected site for internal use only, but somehow Adam found it and got on. He used my password—that was my mistake, using Nathan’s birthday for my password. Adam didn’t have to work too hard to figure it out. As soon as he told me, we took the site down, but he already knew too much.”
“What do you mean, he knew too much?” Sharon screamed, her face contorted in anger. “You mean he might have told people you were buying babies?”
“I thought I had him convinced not to tell anyone about the project. I was going to make it worth his while. But right before he took the Grand Canyon trip, he told me he was going there to think about what to do and he’d tell me what he’d decided when he got back. He had begun to lose his nerve. He was a liability. He was going to destroy my greatest accomplishment. I couldn’t take the chance.”
“My God, Dad! You killed Adam! You killed my husband. How could you do that to me and Nathan?” Ignoring the gun, Sharon ran at Waycroft as if to choke him.
Too Near the Edge Page 21