Brain Child

by John Saul

Vaguely he became aware of another sound, and turned to see a woman standing framed in the light of an open doorway.

  “Alex?” Valerie Benson asked. “Alex, are you all right?”

  She’d heard the gate open, and waited for the doorbell to ring. When it hadn’t, she’d gone to the door and pressed her eye to the peephole. There, standing in the patio, she’d seen Alex Lonsdale, and opened the door. But when she’d spoken, he hadn’t replied, so she’d stepped outside and called to him.

  Now he was looking at her, but she still wasn’t sure he’d heard her words.

  “Alex, what is it? Has something happened?”

  “Ladrones,” Alex whispered. “Asesinos …”

  Valerie frowned, and stepped back, uneasy. What was he talking about? Thieves? Murderers? It sounded like the ravings of a paranoiac.

  “K-Kate’s not here,” she stammered, backing toward the front door. “If you’re looking for her, she’s gone out.”

  She was inside and the door was halfway closed when Alex hurled himself forward, his weight slamming into the door, sending Valerie sprawling to the floor while the door itself smashed back against the wall.

  Valerie tried to scramble away across the red quarry tile of the foyer, but it was too late.

  Alex’s fingers closed around her neck, and he began to squeeze.

  “Venganza …” he muttered once more. And then again, as Valerie Benson died: “Venganza …”

  * * *

  Alex stepped through the door of Jakes and glanced around. In the booth in the far corner, he saw Kate Lewis and Bob Carey sitting with Lisa Cochran and a couple of other kids. Carefully composing his features into a smile, he crossed the room.

  “Hi. Is it a private party, or can anybody join?”

  The six occupants of the booth fell silent. Alex saw the uneasy glances that passed between them, but he kept his smile carefully in place. Finally Bob Carey shrugged and squeezed closer to Kate to make room at the end of the booth. Still no one said anything. When the silence was finally broken, it was Lisa, announcing that she had to go home.

  Alex carefully changed his expression, letting his smile dissolve into a look of disappointment. “But I just got here,” he said.

  Lisa hesitated, her eyes fixing suspiciously on Alex. “I didn’t think you’d care if I stayed or not,” she said. “In fact, none of us thought you cared about anything anymore.”

  Alex nodded, and hoped that when he spoke his voice would have the right inflection. “I know,” he said. “But I think things are starting to change. I think …” He dropped his eyes to the table, as he’d seen other people do when they seemed to be having trouble saying something. “I think I’m starting to feel things again.” Then, making himself stammer slightly, he went on. “I … well, I really like you guys, and I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

  Once again the rest of the kids glanced at each other, their self-consciousness only worsening at Alex’s words.

  It was Bob Carey who broke the embarrassed silence. “Hey, come on. Don’t go all weird on us the other way now.”

  And suddenly everything was all right again, and Alex knew he’d won.

  They’d believed his performance.

  But slowly, as the conversation went on, he began to wonder, for Lisa Cochran still seemed to be avoiding talking to him.

  Lisa herself was not about to tell him that she was wondering exactly what he was up to.

  Long ago, before the accident, she’d heard Alex stammer and seen him look away when he was talking about his feelings.

  And always, when he did that, he’d blushed.

  This time, everything had been fine except for that one thing.

  This time, Alex hadn’t blushed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Come in with me.”

  Bob Carey couldn’t see Kate’s face in the darkness, but the tremor in her voice revealed that she was frightened. His eyes moved past her silhouette, focusing on the house beyond. Everything, he thought, looked normal. Except for the gate.

  The patio gate stood open, and both he and Kate clearly remembered closing it when they had left earlier in the evening.

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he assured her, trying to make his voice sound more confident than he was actually feeling. “Maybe we didn’t really latch it.”

  “We did,” Kate breathed. “I know we did.”

  Bob got out of the car and went around to open the other door for Kate, but instead of getting out, she only gazed past him at the ominously open gate. “Maybe … maybe we ought to call the police,” she whispered.

  “Just because the gate’s open?” Bob asked with a bravado he wasn’t feeling. “They’d think we were nuts.”

  “No they wouldn’t,” Kate argued. “Not after …” She fell silent, unable to finish the thought.

  Bob wavered, telling himself once more that the open gate meant nothing. The wind could have done it, or Mrs. Benson might have gone out herself and left the gate open. In fact, she might not even be home.

  He made up his mind.

  “Stay here,” he told Kate. “I’ll go see.”

  He went through the open gate into the patio and looked around. The lights flanking the front door were on, and the white walls of the patio reflected their glow so that even the shadowed areas of the little garden were clearly visible. Nothing seemed to be amiss, and yet as he stood in the patio, he sensed that something was wrong.

  Bob told himself the growing uneasiness he felt was only in his imagination. As soon as he rang the bell, Mrs. Benson would come to the door and everything would be all right.

  But when he rang the bell, Mrs. Benson did not come to the door. Bob rang the bell once more, waited, then tried the door. It was locked. Slowly he backed away from the door, then hurried to the car.

  “She’s not here,” he told Kate a few seconds later. “She must have gone somewhere.” But even as he spoke the words, he knew they weren’t true. He started the car.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to call the police, just like you wanted to. It doesn’t feel right in there.”

  Fifteen minutes later they were back. Bob parked his Porsche behind the squad car, then got out and went to the patio gate.

  “Stay in your car,” one of the cops at the front door told him. “If there’s a creep in here, I don’t want to have to worry about you.” Only when Bob had disappeared did Roscoe Finnerty reach out and press the bell a second time, as Bob himself had done only a few minutes earlier. “She probably just took off somewhere,” he told Tom Jackson, “but with these two, I guess we can’t blame them for being nervous.” When there was still no answer, Finnerty moved to a window and shone his flashlight through into the foyer. “Shit,” he said softly, and Tom Jackson immediately felt his stomach knot.

  “She there?” he asked.

  Finnerty nodded. “On the floor, just like the other one. And if there’s any blood, I don’t see it. Take a look.”

  Tom Jackson dutifully stepped to the window and peered into the foyer. “Maybe she’s just unconscious,” he suggested.

  “Maybe she is,” Finnerty replied, but both men knew that neither of them believed it. “Go ask the Lewis girl if she’s got a key, but don’t tell her what we’ve seen. And when you ask for the key, see how she reacts.”

  Jackson frowned. “You don’t think—”

  “I don’t know what I think,” Finnerty growled. “But I sure as hell know Alan Lewis didn’t do this one, and I keep thinking about the shit that came down in Marin a few years back when that girl and her boyfriend killed her folks, then went out and partied all night. So you just go see if she has a key, and keep your eyes open.”

  “Is she all right?” Kate asked when Jackson approached the car.

  “Don’t even know if she’s here,” Jackson lied. “Do you have a key? We want to take a look around.”

  Kate fumbled in her purse for a moment, then silently handed Jackson a single key on a ring. “S
tay here,” Jackson ordered. He started back to the house, wondering what he was supposed to have been looking for. Whatever it was, he hadn’t seen it—all he’d seen were two kids who’d had a horrible experience only a few days ago, and were now very frightened.

  “Well?”

  Jackson shrugged. “She just gave me the key when I asked for it. Asked if the Benson woman’s okay.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I lied. Figured we should both be there when we tell them.”

  Finnerty nodded, and slid the key into the lock, then pushed the door open and led his partner into the silent house. One look at Valerie Benson’s open eyes and grimace of frozen terror told him she was dead. He called the station and told the duty officer what had happened, then rejoined Jackson. “Might as well tell them.”

  From then on, the long night took on a feeling of eerie familiarity, as Finnerty replayed the scene he’d gone through less than a week earlier when the same two kids had found the body of Martha Lewis.

  The dusty road wound steadily up the hill, and Alex looked neither to the left nor to the right. He knew every inch of these hills, for he’d ridden over them with his father ever since he was a little boy. Now, though, he walked, for along with his father’s land, the gringos had taken the horses as well. Indeed, they’d taken everything, even his name.

  Still, he hadn’t left La Paloma—would never leave La Paloma until finally the gringos had paid with their lives for the lives they had taken.

  He came to a house, opened the gate, and stepped through into the patio. Not too long ago he’d been in this patio as an honored guest, with his parents and his sisters, attending a fiesta. Now he was here for another reason.

  For a few centavos, the new owners would let him take care of the plants in their patio. Idly he wondered what they would do if they knew who he really was.

  As he worked, he kept a watchful eye on the house, and one by one the people left, until he knew that the woman was alone. Then he went to the front door, lifted the heavy knocker, and let it fall back against its plate. The door opened, and the woman stood in the cool gloom of the foyer, looking at him uncertainly.

  He reached out and put his hands around her neck.

  As he began squeezing her life away, he felt her terror, felt all the emotions that racked her spirit. He felt her die, and began to sweat.…

  He woke up with a start, and sat up. The dream ended, but Alex could still see the face of the woman he’d strangled, and his body was damp with the memory of fear.

  And he knew the woman in the dream.

  It was Valerie Benson.

  But who was he?

  The memory of the dream was clear in his mind, and he went over it piece by piece.

  The road hadn’t been paved. It had been a dirt road, and yet it hadn’t seemed strange to him.

  And he didn’t have a name.

  They’d stolen his name.

  He knew who “they” were, just as he knew why he’d strangled Valerie Benson.

  His parents were dead, and he was taking vengeance on the people who had killed them.

  But it still made no sense, for his parents were asleep in their room down the hall.

  Or were they?

  More and more, the line between what was real and what was not was becoming indistinct.

  More and more the odd memories of things that couldn’t be were becoming more real than the unfamiliar world he lived in.

  Perhaps, that very night, he had killed his parents, and now had no memory of it. He glanced at the clock by the bed; the fluorescent hands read eleven-thirty. He had been in bed only half an hour. There hadn’t been enough time for him to go to sleep, then wake up, kill his parents, go back to sleep, then dream about it.

  He went back over the evening, step by step, and all of it was perfectly clear in his memory, except for one brief moment. He’d parked across the street from Jake’s when María Torres had spoken to him.

  Spoken to him in Spanish.

  The next thing he remembered was going into Jake’s, and that, too, was very clear: he’d gotten out of the car, locked it, and walked from the parking lot into the pizza place.

  The parking lot.

  He distinctly remembered parking his car on the street across from the pizza parlor, but he also remembered entering Jake’s from the parking lot, which was next to the restaurant.

  The two memories were in direct conflict, but were equally as strong. There must, therefore, have been two events involved. He must have gone to Jake’s twice.

  He was still trying to make sense out of his memories, and tie them to the dream, when he heard the wailing of a siren in the distance. Then there was another sound, as the telephone began to ring.

  Alex got out of bed and put on his robe, then went down the hall to his parents’ room. Though their voices were muffled by the closed door, he could still make out the words.

  “They don’t know,” he heard his father say. “All they know is that they’re bringing her in, and that they think she’s a DOA.”

  “If you’re going down there, I’m going with you,” his mother replied. “And don’t try to argue with me. Valerie and I have been friends all our lives. I want to be there.”

  “Honey, neither of us is going anywhere. I’m not on call tonight, remember? They called because they knew Valerie was a friend of ours.”

  Slowly Alex backed away from the closed door and returned to his own room.

  Valerie. He searched his memory, hoping there was another Valerie there, but there wasn’t. It had to be Valerie Benson, and she was dead.

  Then, though he had no conscious memory of it at all, he knew why he had arrived at Jake’s twice.

  He’d gone there once, and then left. After María Torres had spoken to him in Spanish, he’d driven away and gone to Valerie Benson’s house, and he’d killed her. Then he’d gone back to Jake’s, and sat down at the table with Kate and Bob and Lisa, and talked for a while.

  And then he’d come home and gone to bed and dreamed about what he’d done.

  But he still didn’t know why.

  His parents were still alive, and he’d hardly even known Valerie Benson. He had no reason to kill her.

  And yet he had.

  He got back in bed, and lay for a while staring up at the ceiling in the darkness. Somewhere in his mind he was sure there were answers, and if he thought about the problem long enough, he would figure out what those answers were.

  He heard a door open and close, then footsteps in the hall. It was his mother. He heard her going downstairs, then, a little later, he heard his father following her.

  For a few minutes he toyed with the idea of going downstairs himself, and telling them about his dream, and that he was sure he’d killed Valerie Benson, and probably Mrs. Lewis too. But then he rejected the whole idea. Unless he could tell them why he’d killed the two women, they surely wouldn’t believe he’d done it.

  Instead, they’d just think he was crazy.

  Alex turned over and pulled the covers snugly around him. He let his mind run free.

  And, as he was sure they would, the connections began to come together, and he began to understand what was happening to him.

  A few minutes later, he was sound asleep. Through the rest of the night his sleep was undisturbed.

  “I’m telling you, Tom, the kids did it,” Roscoe Finnerty said as he and Jackson sat in the police station the next morning.

  Neither of them had had any sleep, and all Tom Jackson really wanted to do was go home and go to bed, but if Finnerty wanted to talk—and Finnerty usually did—the least he could do was listen. In fact, with Finnerty, listening was all he really had to do, since Finnerty was as capable of posing the questions as he was of coming up with the answers.

  “Lookit,” Finnerty was saying now. “We got two killings, same M.O. And we got the same two kids discovering both bodies. What could be simpler? And don’t tell me there’s no previous record of trouble with th
ese kids. They were both up at that bash last spring, when the Lonsdale kid smashed up his car, and they were both drunk—”

  “Now, wait a minute, Roscoe,” Jackson interrupted. “Let’s at least be fair. Did you give any of those kids a test?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Then don’t tell me you’re going to stand up in court and tell a judge they were drunk, ’cause you ain’t! Now, why don’t we just go home and let the plainclothes guys do their job?”

  Finnerty stared at his partner over the edge of his coffee cup for several long seconds. “You think we ought to just forget it?”

  Jackson sighed, and stretched his tired muscles. “I’m not saying to forget it. I’m just saying we’ve got a job to do, and I think we oughta do it, and not butt in where we aren’t invited.”

  “And leave that poor drunken slob locked up for something he obviously didn’t do.”

  “Whoa up, buddy!” Jackson said, deciding that enough was enough. “You forgetting that the two events might not be connected at all? That we just might have two different perps here?”

  “Oh, sure. Both of them apparently let into the house by the victims, and both of them strangled. And both of them discovered by the same girl, who happens to live in the houses where the crimes are committed. You ask me, that’s just a bit too much.”

  “So what are you suggesting?” Jackson asked, knowing full well that whatever it was, it wasn’t going to involve going home and going to bed.

  “For openers, I think we might have a talk with the other kids that were down at Jake’s last night, and see if they noticed anything funny about their friends.”

  Her eyes puffy from lack of sleep, Carol Cochran stared at the two policemen on the front porch, then glanced at her watch. Though it was a few minutes past seven, it felt much earlier. But despite her exhaustion, she was sure she knew why they were here.

  “It’s about Valerie Benson, isn’t it?” she asked.

  The two officers exchanged a glance, then Finnerty nodded. “I’m afraid so. We … well, we’d like to talk to your daughter.”

  Carol blinked. What on earth were they talking about? What could Lisa have to do with what had happened to Valerie? “I … I’m sorry,” she stammered, “but I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jim, she thought. Call Jim. He’ll know what to do. As if he’d heard her thought, her husband emerged from the kitchen.