Gray Matter

by Gary Braver

  “You know that.”

  “And you were aware that this eighteen-year-old had scars on his head that he himself was not aware of, correct?”

  “So?”

  Greg picked up the photocopy of the newspaper article on the mystery skull and held it to Doria’s face. “This is child abuse as far as it can go—kidnapping and murder.”

  “What’s your point, Officer?” Doria asked.

  “My point is that in the state of Massachusetts, as doctors and nurses you are mandated reporters of child abuse. By penalty of law, it is incumbent upon you to report directly to the DSS any suspicions you have that a minor has been wrongfully injured. Failing to do so can result in your arrest and incarceration.”

  “But we had no such suspicions,” Doria protested. “The kid had old scars.”

  “But you said the kid didn’t know he had them.”

  Doria’s face turned red. “Many adults walking the streets have scars from appendectomies, but they didn’t get them from abuse as children.”

  “You’ve treated a patient with very unusual scars in his head similar to those of a murdered child. Did you notify the DSS?”

  Doria looked at Dr. Budd who both looked at Nurse Porter. Sheepishly, Porter said, “Well, I called you.”

  “That’s not what I asked you,” Greg said. “Did you file a report with the DSS as mandated by law?”

  “No.”

  “Wait a minute,” Doria said. “Are you threatening us, Officer?”

  “No, I’m offering you an option to jail.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Doria said.

  “Believe it.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?” Nurse Porter asked. She looked scared.

  “Show me the X rays.”

  “And if we don’t?” Doria asked defiantly.

  “Then I will file a complaint with the attorney general’s office, and you’ll be arrested.”

  Doria gave Greg a scathing look. “Give me a break.”

  “I am.”

  There was a moment of prickly silence. Then Dr. Budd said, “I have no problems with your seeing the films.”

  “Me, neither,” Nurse Porter said.

  Doria glowered at Greg like an angry schnauzer. “This is coercion, Officer, and you know it,” he said. “You can see them, but I’m drawing the line on revealing the patient’s name.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Doria left, and returned a few minutes later with a large envelope containing duplicates he had made without the patient’s name or ID number on them. He handed them to the radiologist.

  Budd pulled out the X rays and slid them onto the light board. He studied them for a moment, then with a pen he pointed to faint impressions on the top and side images. “These are the holes. There’s a cluster of eight here above the left ear each about a millimeter and a half in diameter—and ten more above the eyebrow, just behind the hairline—here.”

  The holes appeared on the images as white dots on the left profile, and tiny transect lines in the top views. “Can you tell how they were made?”

  “Since they’re so sharply incised, my guess is a cranial drill,” Budd said.

  “As the result of some medical operation or procedure?”

  “Yes.”

  The holes appeared to be clustered almost identically to those on the Sagamore and Dixon boys’ skulls.

  “The ones in front I noticed while working on him,” said Cindy Porter. “But I didn’t know about the others until I saw the films.”

  Budd continued. “What’s even odder are the three holes just behind the temple about where the left ear begins.” He tapped them out with the pen.

  Not wanting to influence their interpretations, Greg held back on Joe Steiner’s speculations. “What do you make of them?”

  “Well, I’m not really sure,” said Budd.

  “Have you ever seen clusters of holes like these before?”

  “No,” Budd said. “It’s possible he’d been treated for multiple tumors.”

  “Except that the surgeon wouldn’t have to make so many holes,” Doria added.

  Greg could see that he was warming up again. The threat of jail does that. “Why not?” Greg asked.

  “Well, if you’re going to drill so many holes—whatever the reason—it’s a lot easier to pull back the skin first, then drill.” He put his fingers to his forehead and rotated the flesh. “The scalp moves around easily. It makes more sense to do a line incision and push the skin back, then close the incision after boring.”

  “So you’re saying that this is an unusual technique.”

  “Very,” Doria said. “Why go to this length to make all these little incisions when it’s easier to make a clean slice?”

  “Unless he wanted to hide them,” Cindy suggested.

  “Why hide them?” Greg asked.

  “Maybe the surgeon was trying to avoid leaving a long Frankenstein scar,” said Budd.

  “Couldn’t he have made it behind the hairline?”

  “Sure, but then the kid grows up and starts losing his hair, and there it is.”

  Greg turned to Nurse Porter. “You said he didn’t know he had them.”

  “Yeah, he looked genuinely surprised when I pointed them out. In fact, he looked in the mirror like he was seeing them for the first time.”

  “Which makes sense, since they were flush to the scalp,” Doria added. “Through the hair, he wouldn’t be able to feel them with his fingers. And he’d never notice them unless he shaved his head.”

  “Why was he brought into the ER?”

  “He slipped and banged his head against a glass door.”

  “And you took the X rays to see if he had a concussion.”

  “Yes,” Nurse Porter said.

  Greg jotted down what they were saying. “Does his medical file have any record of his having a brain operation?”

  “No. In fact, the only entry for him is for a sprained ankle four years ago. He apparently slipped on ice. But that’s it.”

  “You still haven’t said what kind of brain operation this could be.”

  Doria took the question. “Because I’m not sure. Holes are made through the skull either to take something out of the brain or to put something in. If it was to remove something, then we’re talking needle biopsies or the removal of tumors, lesions, or blood clots. But I have never heard of needing twenty-one holes for any of those procedures. Even if the patient had multiple tumors, I would think that the surgeon would have removed segments of the skull instead of making multiple holes over so large an area. And frankly, tumor masses that large would probably be fatal.”

  He was right about the size, since the holes covered an area constituting most of the side of the head.

  “The other possibility is putting something into the brain. He could have had interstitial radiation therapy—the insertion of radioactive pellets into tumor tissue. What bothers me is that radiation therapy is local. It’s not commonly used for widely spread or multiple tumors. Another thing, if he doesn’t remember, he must have been very young. And multiple radiation implants in a child are almost never heard of, because a child’s brain is very susceptible to radiation.”

  “So, what are you saying?” Greg asked them.

  All three of them shook their heads. “I don’t know what they did to him,” Doria said.

  17

  From the inside of her closet, Brendan watched Nicole DaFoe undress.

  It was Friday night, and she was home for the weekend again. As usual, her father had picked her up at school. Brendan knew the patterns of her movements. He had watched her ever since that day at the club swimming pool. She had been wearing a rather revealing white bikini of which her mother did not approve because when she arrived and found Nicole sunning herself in a lounge chair, she spoke sharply to Nicole who snapped back then grabbed her towel and huffed away. Nicole was something of an exhibitionist. And her mother was very proper.

  But to Brendan’s mind Mothe
r DaFoe had no need to worry that her daughter was wanton, since she lacked the arousing fantasies and sexual urges of a true flasher. She had been genetically blessed with physical beauty and the instinct on how best to employ her baby-doll appeal for maximum gain. But she was like a polar cap—all light and no heat. Yet when she needed something, she could affect the turn-on, and the boys swarmed around her like heat-seeking missiles. And as long as the flesh was warm, they’d put up with anything, even a frozen core.

  Ironically, it was the ice that drew Brendan.

  When her parents drove off and Nicole went to the basement to do laundry, he slipped in through the back door and headed up to her bedroom, where he had waited for two hours until she had finished watching some medical video downstairs and came up.

  But while crouched in her closet, he discovered a lockbox stashed behind some storage bins of clothes. The box was not an expensive thing, so it was easy to jimmy open with a penknife. With a pocket flash he inspected the contents.

  At first glance it looked like a hodgepodge of things. But he went through them closely: two inexpensive men’s watches; a curled-up leather belt; a Swiss Army knife; two smaller pocketknives; a leather Pierre Cardin wallet which still had some cash, two ID bracelets with different male names on them; a fancy pen; a Bloomfield football high school ring; and a man’s gold wedding ring. They were all male effects. But, oddly, no photos or love notes or things that looked like gifts. On the contrary, they looked like collectibles. Probably from all the boys she had bedded. Things she had probably taken to commemorate her little conquests. Trophies.

  When Nicole returned, she didn’t go straight to bed. Instead, she stripped down to her panties and bra, then got down on the floor to do stretching exercises—probably one of her ballet routines. For nearly twenty minutes he watched her do sit-ups, push-ups, then an elaborate set of revealing stretches, at one point lying on her back and moving her hips up and down as if having sex with an invisible lover. Watching her like this, any other normal boy would have exploded on the spot. But Brendan just watched—feeling nothing. No, he was not gay. He was not anything.

  Just dead.

  When she finished, she pulled off her top and headed into the adjoining bathroom. He could not see her from his angle, but he heard the rush of water as she took a shower. He thought about taking a peek, but the glass door steamed up. Besides, she might catch him, which would be disastrous. So he remained in the closet peering through the black crack.

  When she came out, she had one towel wrapped around her head, another around her body, so he could see nothing. She sat on her bed and removed the towel. Her breasts were like pink-tipped pears. He had never touched a girl and wondered what it would be like. Until Nicole, he had never seen one naked in the flesh.

  She stood up and toweled her behind, then turned toward him and for a moment he saw her point-blank naked. But then she slipped into panties and a camisole top. A moment later she flicked off the light and got into bed.

  He waited until he was certain she was asleep, then crept across the floor, guided by the glow light of her aquarium. The creak of the floorboards caused her to stir, but she did not wake up.

  When he reached her bed he froze. Fortunately, she was sleeping on her right side. Fortunately, also, it was a warm night, so only a single blanket covered her.

  He had to be swift. He reached into his pocket, and in a clean move he pulled back the covers and clicked on a penlight.

  Nicole’s eyes snapped open.

  The next moment she yelped and jerked away. Before he knew it, she leapt off the bed and pulled a field hockey stick from wall mounts. Without a sound, she took a huge swipe at him.

  He jumped back just in time. “No, please, d-d-don’t,” he cried. “I’m not going to h-h-hurt you. Really.”

  But she came at him and swung again. He reflexed again, but this time he stumbled backward over a stuffed animal and came down on his backside, his head slamming on the edge of the closet door. As he lay there, she came at him with the stick raised high.

  “P-p-please, don’t. My head.”

  “I know you. You’re Brendan LaMotte,” she gasped.

  “Please don’t h-h-hit me, okay? Just don’t h-hit me.”

  Nicole backed up to her portable phone and picked it up. “You’ve been following me, you creep. At the club and the diner. You’re stalking me.”

  “No. Please don’t call the police. I b-beg you.” He dabbed his sleeve on his forehead.

  “Then tell me what the hell you are doing here or I’ll call them.”

  “I will, I will, but please don’t.” He checked his hand. He was bleeding from the scalp. “Can I have a t-tissue?”

  “No.” She tossed the phone down and raised the stick like an executioner’s sword. “Talk or I’ll bash your brains in.”

  “You have a t-t-tattoo on your hip.”

  Instantly her face shifted, and her hands flinched. But she said nothing.

  “I saw it once real fast when you were at the pool. You were wearing a t-two-piece white bikini, and you were on the lounge chair reading a copy of vogue, with a picture of M-Meg Ryan on the cover—she was wearing red—so it must have been the May issue because June had Charlize Theron in white chiffon.” He caught himself because his mind was beginning to flood with useless details that he could recite endlessly. He knew all the magazine covers because people left them at the pool all the time.

  “How did you see it?”

  “I c-c-can’t swim, so I don’t go up to the p-p-pool. Binoculars. I s-saw you through binoculars.”

  “You mean you broke into my bedroom to see my tattoo?”

  He nodded. “Ummm.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  “It’s important. Very important. Can I p-please get up? My head’s bleeding.” The second time in a week, he thought.

  He started to pull himself up, when she whacked him in the leg. “What do you mean, it’s important?”

  Blood now trickled down the side of his head. He blotted it with his sleeve then reached into his pants pocket.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said and raised the stick.

  “No, don’t.” When she didn’t strike, he said, “I just want to show you something. Please.”

  “How do I know you haven’t got a weapon?”

  “Because I d-don’t.” He slipped his hand into his pants pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper and unfolded it, revealing the blue cartoon. “It’s Mr. Nisha,” he said.

  Nicole glanced at it, and for a second her face seemed to have turned into a plaster mask. As the image began to sink in, little expressions flickered across it like eddies of electricity. “Where did you get that?”

  “You remember,” he whispered.

  She lowered the stick.

  “Please, can I get up?”

  She did not respond but took the drawing to the table beside her bed and turned on the lamp. While she studied the image, Brendan’s eye fell on a photograph tacked to the wall—Nicole and a bunch of other kids on a field trip. The eyes of the Asian girl at the end had been poked out.

  While Nicole continued to study the drawing, Brendan noticed a video camera sitting on the desk. Beside it was a cassette. Without thought, he picked it up, but she snatched it out of his hands and threw it into the desk drawer.

  Then Nicole turned the light toward herself and pulled down one corner of her panties. On her left flank was the same serene blue elephant with the big floppy ears, fat snaky trunk, and fingered human hands. And on its head some kind of crown. It was nearly identical.

  “W-w-where … ?”

  “Hampton Beach,” she said.

  “B-but how did … ?”

  “I wanted a tattoo, and when I saw an elephant sample, I knew that’s what I wanted. But all he had was stupid pink elephants or that freaky demon-beast shit for bikers. I made him draw it on paper until he had it right.”

  “But why did you have it done?”

  “Because I wante
d a tattoo is why.”

  “But where did you get the image from?”

  “Why’s it so important to you?”

  “Because I’ve been seeing this image for years in my brain. It’s like a ghost of something, but I couldn’t put it together. Until now. I th-think we’re connected somehow through that image.”

  She did not respond.

  “Does’M-M-Mr. Nisha’ mean anything to you?”

  “Mr. who?”

  “Nisha. M-Mr. Nisha. Or ‘dance with Mr. Nisha’?”

  Before she could respond, the sound of a car pulling into the driveway cut the air. “Shit! My parents! You gotta get out of here.” He started for her closet, but she stopped him. “They saw my light on, so they’ll be in. The window.”

  “We have to t-talk more.”

  “What for? I’m going back to school, then camp.”

  “But we have to.”

  “Go!”

  Brendan was overweight and unathletic, so the prospect of climbing down was not appealing.

  She pushed him toward the window and opened the screen just enough for him to climb out onto the porch roof. She pointed to the corner. “The drainpipe,” she said, and shoved him through. “GO!”

  He climbed out and steadied himself on the roof. He could hear the garage door close in the front of the house, leaving the night dark and still for his escape. From the roof, it was maybe a ten-foot drop to the ground, and little footholds attached to the corner column along the drainpipe made the descent easy. It was the path most taken.

  As he eased his way down, he wondered about Nicole’s other midnight visitors and wished that for one moment he could feel what they had come for. Just one little burst of spring fires. He would die for that.

  18

  The ride to Connecticut took about three and a half hours. After breakfast, Rachel bundled Dylan in the car and drove him to day care, leaving Miss Jean her cell-phone number. Then she headed south on Route 95 to New Haven and the Yale University School of Medicine where she had a one o’clock appointment with Stanley Chu.

  She listened to the radio to distract her mind. But she snapped it off after the news story about a controversial case of a mentally deficient man on death row in Texas. He could barely read and write and had flunked the seventh grade twice. He did menial work such as cutting grass. And last night, at thirty-three, after spending twelve years on death row for the rape and murder of a twenty-four-year-old woman, he had been executed.