Grief overtook the woman’s face as she thought of the events yet to unfold. She stared down at the half-peeled fruit, her hands shaking. A soft grunting came from one of the figures around the table. She looked up, wiping the moistness from her eyes. “It’s OK, Sister Charity,” the woman said, smiling sadly. “Everything will be fine.”
The woman took a long breath, composing herself. “In fact, children, it will be better than fine. It will be glorious because today we start the second part of our plan. A plan that breaks the stranglehold of big pharma. A plan that yields an America where life-giving treatments aren’t withheld by greedy bureaucrats until they’ve extracted their thirty pieces of silver from the lobbies.”
Brother Justice swallowed his last bite of muffin, then issued a string of grunts and gurgles. The woman smiled at him. “Couldn’t have said it better myself, little one. And you’re right, the country is ready for that change. What they lack, however, is direction. They need leaders. People with vision to show them the way.”
The woman paused, the earlier pain returning to her face. “Jimmy was one such person.” All around the table looked up, recognition of the name showing in their eyes. “He was a man whose passions nearly matched my own. Passion for a new order, one where medicine transforms the impossible into reality. No one will ever replace Jimmy.”
The woman slowly shook her head, as if trying to gently dislodge a ghost from her mind’s eye. “We won’t replace him. Not with one person. But we can recruit others. Individuals who will find a reason to rail against the inhumanity that is our public policy. Together, these ambassadors for medical justice will finish what Jimmy started.”
As if the assemblage sensed the woman had reached the finale, a chorus of murmurs spread through the room. The woman sighed deeply, her eyes traveling back to Sister Prudence and the untouched food sitting on her plate. “Justice,” she said, nodding toward the plate. Justice reached over slowly, carefully watching Prudence’s face, but his sister showed no reaction. He took the food and started eating.
“That’s good, little one,” said the woman. “Today’s a big day, and you’ll need your strength.”
The woman got up and walked to the other side of the table. She pulled an empty chair from along the wall and sat beside Prudence. Raising her hand, she gently stroked Prudence’s hair. “You’re so beautiful, child. The first real generation of my family. The first to be born and raised here. Everyone else?” The woman slowly shook her head. “They came from outside, but you’re mine. You’re all mine.”
Everyone except Brother Justice was finished eating. The woman rose and pulled a deck of picture cards from a pocket. She walked around the table, handing several cards to each person. As they shuffled through them, their verbalizations became more animated. They didn’t dread the demanding physical activities denoted on the paper; they reveled in them. They opened doors to relaxation, to additional food, to games with their siblings. And for the older ones, they provided an opportunity to explore their sexuality.
Prudence had reached that age, but the woman had stopped her journey. She had missed the early warning signs of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, thinking the child’s pain was just part of her training. And now, the damage was done.
Justice reached out and touched the woman’s hand as she passed behind him. “No, no cards for you today. Today, you have a mission.” He smiled. “Yes, you know that word, mission, don’t you?”
The woman sat again beside Prudence. “And you, too, my child. I’m so sorry I didn’t figure out what was going on with you earlier. And now, even the methotrexate isn’t helping much, is it? Just killing your appetite.”
The woman turned away, tears starting to roll down her cheeks. “Oh, how I wish you could be the mother to the next generation of warriors. You have the soul of a tigress. But your affliction ….” The woman stopped, the words catching in her throat, mixing with the sobs she tried to swallow. “It’s just too likely to follow in your sons and daughters. I can’t let that happen.”
The woman looked into Prudence’s eyes, steeling herself for what had to be done. “Today, child, I promise you an end to your pain. Today, you’ll send a reminder to a forgetful city and nation. But more importantly, today you will recruit the first of our spokespeople, individuals who will kill for our cause. It’s your legacy. It’s what I will remember when I think of you.”
The woman got up. She pointed at Justice and Prudence. “Stay.” Then, sweeping her finger across the rest, she said, “training.” When the six had left, the woman spoke. “OK, let’s get ready. We’ve got a lot to do before I see Nicole Veles and Sam Price one last time.”
Dr. Laura Greenwood stood and led her two charges from the room.
9:57 AM – The Offices of Ruger-Phillips
Warmth rose from the sun-drenched concrete as I walked across the parking lot and got into my car. Glancing at the clock, I confirmed what I already knew; I had an hour to pick up an anniversary card. It had been one month since I had proposed to Nicole. I expected another “sweet, but incredibly sappy” remark from my fiancé when I gave it to her, but she liked the attention. I could tell. After the errand, I’d need to get back for a call on the virtual maintenance technician study. The 60 minutes I had, however, would be more than enough with a drug store only about ten minutes away.
Funny or romantic?
The question struck me as I pulled onto the road. But with it came the realization that I had no idea what was available. Did they even make funny anniversary cards? For the first month? Were the funny ones mostly about sex? We had become intimate—had we ever—but that didn’t mean Nicole would appreciate quips about our lovemaking. Or maybe I wasn’t ready, not knowing exactly what they said?
Even my somewhat compulsive mental simulations sputtered when I had no data and I was quickly realizing I had none. But this mystery was easily solved. It just required a short drive.
I knew the route well, often coming this way for lunch or a tank of gas. It would be easy to negotiate it without paying attention, but I did that too often. I pushed my thoughts out to the world around me, intent on enjoying the day. And that wouldn’t be difficult, because it was beautiful. A rain shower had moved through overnight, and the air was clean and fresh. There were residences just a block to the north, adding the scent of freshly mowed lawns to the aromas of coffee and bread escaping from the small eateries and a bakery lining the street. I put my arm out the window, letting the rays of the sun warm my skin. The shouts and screams of playing children reached my ears from the elementary school across the street.
As I passed, a boy was pushing a small girl of maybe eight or nine in a swing. At the peak of the outward arch, she slipped from the seat. I tensed, wondering if she would get hurt, but she landed lightly on a foot. Then, she spun around and curtsied to the boy. With a move like that, someday she could be a Crusader.
That’s it!
I swerved to the side of the road, eliciting a few honks of irritation, a couple of raised middle fingers. I apologized, although no one paused to hear, and reviewed the sudden insight. It was, in a word, horrendous. I didn’t want to believe it. And if I was wrong, saying it aloud would brand me as a crackpot. But the inference fit the facts too well to ignore. I pulled my phone from a pocket and dialed Marte. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Doc. What’s up?”
Same Time – I-70 Eastbound, outside of St. Louis
Rebecca glanced at her ringing phone, then at Clements behind the wheel. “Sam Price is calling.”
She was surprised—pleasantly so, but still surprised. She could think of nothing in the ongoing Crusader saga that would have affected him. But then, that wouldn’t stop him from turning it over in his head, again and again. She smiled at the memory of some of his stories and raised the phone to her ear. “Hi, Doc. What’s up?”
“It’s Greenwood,” Doc said. “I think she may be growing her own army of Crusaders.”
Rebecca pulled the p
hone down and stared at it for a long moment. She raised it back to her ear. “What are you talking about?”
“Let me start at the beginning.”
“Just give me the condensed version,” interrupted Rebecca. Then, realizing how that sounded, she said. “Sorry, Doc, your greeting caught me off guard. Let’s start with a summary, so I know where we need to go.”
The oddity of Rebecca’s side of the conversation caught Clements’s attention, and he glanced sideways at her. She held up a single finger in a wait-a-moment sign.
“No, it’s my fault,” said Doc. “I shouldn’t have blurted that out. Anyway, Greenwood’s treatment has an unusual side effect. As all the news stories say, it pauses brain development in newborns, but at the same time, the baby’s body continues to grow and it matures quickly. If she used it on a newborn, in three or four years, she’d have a full-grown Crusader. And yeah, I know that sounds crazy, but it fits what we know. And maybe most important for the FBI—well, for me too, really—you can test this idea quietly.”
“Hold on a moment,” Rebecca said into her phone and pressed mute. She turned to Clements. “Doc has either had an insight into a totally heinous crime or … well, he’s completely lost it. Can I bring you in?”
“Doc?”
“You can give me grief later,” said Rebecca. “Right now, I need you to hear this.”
“OK. What’s he said so far?”
Rebecca summarized quickly. As she was finishing, Clements pulled off at an exit from the freeway. “I want to be able to concentrate on this.”
Rebecca nodded and unmuted the phone. “Doc, I’m in a car with Special Agent Clements. Mind if I put you on speaker so both of us can listen?”
There was a long pause. “I was sort of hoping you’d play devil’s advocate before anyone else heard this because what I’m suggesting she’s done … well, it’s atrocious, completely devoid of humanity. Even saying it out loud makes my skin crawl.”
“I understand,” replied Rebecca. “But Agent Clements will treat anything you say as confidential, just as I would.”
There was another pause but shorter this time. “OK, put me on speaker.”
Rebecca tapped her phone. “Doc, say hi to Senior Special Agent Clements.”
After introductions and Doc’s disclaimers—this is nearly impossible to believe and there’s no definite proof—he summarized his thoughts, ending with how Constance could have been an adult in body and a newborn in mind. Rebecca felt his reasoning was logical, although approaching unbelievable. As for Clements, she couldn’t tell. He just sat there, tapping two fingers on his chin, looking out the windshield.
“I looked up Dr. Greenwood online,” said Doc, after covering the fundamentals. “Just curiosity, before we had dinner, but I noticed she had worked on a project at St. Louis University. In her line of work, she’d know the buildings where the bombs were planted and the routines of the people who worked there. I also told you that dozens of people could have known that Nicole was working for Greenwood, and any one of them could have located a floor plan for Nicole’s apartment. But I found out just this morning that Greenwood already knew the layout. She was in Nicole’s unit earlier on the day of the attack. Add that to the fact that the whole assassination looked staged ….”
Doc paused. When he restarted, he said, “I just realized something. Did you get a report on Greenwood’s injuries?”
Rebecca glanced at Clements. “I’m not sure we asked, but we can. Why?”
“Well, the cut on her forehead was long and jagged, but thin. I thought, flying glass. But I just remembered. She had another one on the palm of her hand.”
“Like an accident she might have had when cutting her forehead?” asked Clements.
“Damn,” said Rebecca. “I remember a Band-Aid on her palm the morning I interviewed her. I didn’t think anything about it.”
“Neither did I,” said Doc on the phone, “until just now.”
“Can you give us a minute?” asked Clements. But almost immediately, he said, “No, forget that. You’ve been upfront with us. There’s been a lot of speculation about how Constance was controlled, but nothing’s ever appeared on the medical screens stronger than ibuprofen in her system. Not even the telltale signs psychological stress might leave on someone’s body. But if we knew what drugs Greenwood uses in her treatments? Well, that could be very enlightening. Is that what you meant when you told Agent Marte there was a simple test of your ideas?”
“Actually, no,” replied Doc. “Not to sound crude, but I wasn’t sure you could run tests on what remained of Constance. I was thinking you could compare the DNA you got earlier to the databases for missing children, say newborns who disappeared three to five years ago. In that amount of time, they’d be fully grown.”
“OK, we can do that,” said Clements. “Between that information and any residual drugs in Constance’s system, we’ll have more than enough to bring her in.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but there’s another possibility,” said Rebecca. The line to Doc stayed silent as Clements stared at her. “We could be looking at second-generation Crusaders, meaning they’re the sons and daughters of babies stolen six or more years ago.”
“You’re right,” said Clements. “Or for that matter, the fathers could be sperm donors rather than stolen newborns. That’ll add another complication to the DNA search.” Clements paused. “Sorry, Doc. It’s not like we’re trying to shoot holes in your plan. It just might not be as straightforward as you thought.”
A single laugh came through the phone. “No worries. I’m just relieved you’re not asking where I am.”
Clements and Rebecca exchanged a confused glance. “Why would we do that?” she asked.
“To send the men in the white coats with a straitjacket.”
Clements snorted. When Doc’s voice came through the phone again, his amused tone had been replaced with seriousness. “The thing I still can’t figure is why Greenwood would be doing this. I mean, she’s delusional if she’s growing an army, but could she be so far out of it that she thinks people will rally around medicine if she hurts it enough?”
Unsure how much she should say, Rebecca glanced at Clements. He seemed to read her mind and took the lead. “We’re in the same place,” he said. “But we have enough to go back to our Behavioral Analysis Unit, see what they think.”
“Thanks,” said Doc.
“The place I’m stuck,” said Clements, “is how a person with a newborn’s mental ability could break into a building. OK, maybe it’s not rocket science, but a newborn doesn’t even know what a window is, much less that you can break one.”
“I got this,” said Rebecca toward the phone, then turned to Clements. “Doc explained it to me. A human with the brain of a newborn could be trained to perform simple things, like hiding in a spot until a beeper went off. With each new signal, the person would take the next step—scaling a wall to get to the top of a passageway.”
“Behavioral chains,” said Clements softly.
It was probably a comment to himself, but it elicited a somewhat animated response from the phone. “Exactly,” said Doc. “If we’re right, Constance was trained to respond when a stimulus occurred, then another action with the next stimulus, and so on. When the sequence was complete, she would receive reinforcement—food, water, warmth, sex, whatever Greenwood used. After that kind of training, her mind would be trapped during a mission, performing these chains with no concept of right and wrong to stop her.”
“Doc, I’m convinced,” said Clements. “At least enough to take the next step, so we need to get going. Agent Marte will be in touch.”
After a quick round of goodbyes, Clements drove up the exit ramp. But rather than continuing through the intersection to St. Louis, he turned onto the overpass, then onto the ramp going west.
“I was afraid you’d want to go back to the office,” said Rebecca, “even though in my mind, checking out Greenwood is a lot more important.�
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“Ditto,” said Clements. “It’s time for a closer look at her farm.”
As Clements accelerated onto the freeway, Rebecca leaned back in her seat, wondering about the bizarre conclusion they had just reached. “Who would have thought,” she said aloud, although mostly to herself. “A mind in chains.”
11:17 AM – The Greenwood Farm
Clements pulled off the road about a quarter mile from the gate to the Greenwood farm. “The place is too heavily monitored for me to feel comfortable walking up to the front door—assuming we could get past the gate. Maybe we can ….” He stopped, since Rebecca was already bringing up a satellite map on his in-car display.
When she located the address, he said, “I’m thinking this long, narrow plot is Greenwood’s, since the fields on either side are large and look like they’re used for crops.”
Inside the rectangle that defined her farm, the driveway ran straight from the road for a short distance, turned sharply to the right and then, immediately back. Finally, it resumed its original path toward the farmhouse. “That bend in the road is probably to block direct, line-of-sight between the gate and the residence,” said Clements. “But we should be able to see the house if we come up to her property from the fields on either side or from the back.”
“Ah, maybe,” said Rebecca, as she zoomed into a section of the driveway. “The evergreens are in a double row, but is that a glint off metal between them?” she asked, pointing at the display. “Maybe a fence?”
“I think you’re right. But when we get past the first row, we’ll be able to find gaps between the branches in the second. Even a small opening can tell us a lot about what’s going on.”
“And the fence placed between the rows of trees? Is that to disguise the fact you’re inside a secured compound?” asked Rebecca.
“Yeah, makes the cable guy a lot less suspicious. I’ll take some wire cutters with me, just in case we need to get inside.”
Mind in Chains Page 22