The Syndrome

by John Case

  A baby.

  He heard Shaw’s voice, but it was very faint, and muffled, as if it were traveling a long distance, or moving through layers and layers of insulation.

  “Jeff? What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  He didn’t reply. He was in the ochre room. The nursery. The abattoir. He had the bat in his hand, the Louisville Slugger that Judy kept in the umbrella stand by the door. He could feel it cracking bone, then sinking into the soft melon-flesh of, first, his son, and then his wife. The blood was flying, misting the air. He was skating in it, slipping and swinging until there was nothing left of Joshua and Judy but pulp.

  Chapter 31

  Finding out about Calvin Crane was about as easy as taking a cab to the New York Public Library. Walking past the magnificent stone lions that guard its entrance, Adrienne climbed the stairs to the third floor reading room, where she found a much-thumbed copy of Who’s Who among a shelf of reference books. Taking the burgundy tome to a mahogany conference table, she sat down beside an elderly man with a nimbus of flyaway hair, and searched for Crane’s entry. Finding it, she began to read:

  Crane, Calvin Fletcher

  Philanthropist, foundation head. B. July 23, 1917, Patchogue, N.Y. Yale, ‘38. Harvard Law, ‘41. Atty., Donovan, Leisure (New York), 1942, 1945. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), London, Basel, Maj., 1942-5. Central Intelligence Group (CIG—Washington, D.C.), 1946-7. Foreign Service Officer, Dept. of State (Zurich), 1947-9. Secretary-Treasurer, Institute of Global Studies (IGS), 1949-63 (Zurich). President and Treasurer, IGS, 1964-89; President Emeritus, IGS, 1989-. Legion d’Honneur, 1989. Member, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderburger Society. Clubs: Yale, Century, Athenaeum. Residence: Longboat Key, Florida.

  Adrienne sat back in her chair, and drummed her fingertips on the open page. As she did, the old man to her right gave her a sidelong glance, then returned to the book he was reading: Secrets of the Great Pyramid.

  The Who’s Who entry required a certain amount of deconstruction, Adrienne thought. Harvard and Yale suggested money. Then a job at some law firm, interrupted by the war. OSS. That was spy stuff. Then back to the law firm. Then a spy again, and then a job with State—in Switzerland where, she noticed, he’d been before. After that, the foundation job. For forty years. Prestigious clubs and honors, capped by a Florida retirement.

  Prematurely ended by her crazy sister.

  There had to be more. Getting up from her chair, she went to the reference desk and asked directions to the periodicals reading room, which turned out to be just down the corridor. With a librarian’s help, she selected microfiche spools from the New York Times, Miami Daily News, and the Sarasota Star-Tribune. Each of the spools covered the same period in October when Crane had been killed.

  Sitting down at one of the readers, she went from obit to obit until she had a sense of the man—if not an understanding of her sister’s relationship to him.

  The references to the OSS were especially interesting. From what she read, the organization had been formed under the influence of British intelligence at the outset of World War II. Like its European counterpart, it had recruited from the country’s upper classes, drawing as much as possible from the best schools and most prestigious firms on Wall Street. According to the Times, the OSS was “at once the principal precursor of the CIA, and a transatlantic Old Boys network par excellence.”

  As if to emphasize the point, there was a page of photographs—billed as “a visual tribute”—in the Star-Tribune, showing Crane at different ages. As a young man, he’d been almost movie-star handsome, with bold eyebrows, a strong chin, and a shock of thick dark hair that fell, Kennedyesque, over his forehead. He was shown shaking the hand of Franklin Roosevelt; posing on the slopes around Gstaad with Allen Dulles; clinking champagne flutes with de Gaulle; and escorting Audrey Hepburn through the front doors of the Esplanade Hotel in Zagreb. Forty years in Switzerland, give or take a day. Lawyer, spy, foundation head. How do you make that transition, Adrienne wondered. And then Florida. Where he supported a slew of good causes, including the Sarasota Symphony Orchestra, the Conch-House Preservation Society, and Native Ground, an ecological group dedicated to combating the overthrow of native flora by invasive species. Before his confinement in a wheelchair, those causes and the game of golf seemed to constitute the major parameters of the old man’s life.

  It was all very interesting, Adrienne decided, but it didn’t tell her anything about why her sister took a train to Florida and shot him. It occurred to her that Nikki might have imagined Crane to have been one of the men who’d “abused” her, but it seemed a stretch. In fact, if his Who’s Who entry was accurate, Crane had been living in Switzerland all during the time that Nikki had been growing up.

  Returning to her hotel, Adrienne found the red diode blinking on the telephone next to the bed. Retrieving the message—Call ASAP, any hour—Ray Shaw—she phoned him at his home.

  “We’ve had a breakthrough,” Shaw told her.

  “Fantastic! So… “ She cleared her throat. “So come on, who is he?”

  “Well, he’s a very troubled man.”

  “Doc…”

  “His name is Lew McBride—Lewis with an ‘e.’ That’s the good news. The bad news is: he beat his wife and son to death with a baseball bat.”

  “What!?”

  “I think you heard me, though whether this is another fantasy of his—or something else—we can’t be sure.”

  Adrienne let her head fall back against the wall behind the bed. “Where did this happen?” she asked.

  “San Francisco.” Shaw filled her in on McBride’s background, from Bethel to Bowdoin to Stanford, including his parents’ deaths. “Bright young man—no question. Magna cum laude. Doctorate in psychology, prestigious fellowships—it was all ahead of him. Until…”

  “What?”

  “He went off the deep end. Suffered a psychotic break, of some kind. Beat his family to death. Swears he wasn’t on drugs, though you have to wonder if angel dust wasn’t involved.”

  “He killed his wife?” Adrienne couldn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it.

  “And his infant son. Three months old.”

  They fell silent for a moment. Then she asked: “Was he arrested, or… what?”

  “‘Or what,’ indeed!” the psychiatrist exclaimed. “According to the patient, everything slips into soft focus at that point. He remembers the murders, but that’s it. The next thing he knows, he’s in Washington, and he’s Jeffrey Duran, therapist.”

  “So… where is he now?”

  “In restraints. I have him on A-4. Security ward.”

  Adrienne couldn’t imagine it. “You think he’ll try to escape?”

  “No. I think he’ll try to kill himself. In fact, I’m sure of it.”

  “Then… “ Adrienne was at a loss for words, and running short on ideas, as well. Finally, she asked, “What about… that thing?”

  “The implant?”

  “Yes.”

  “That could have been a part of the problem, but I really can’t tell you anything. I’m having a helluva time finding out about it,” Shaw complained. “I’ve called the lab three times and… nothing.”

  “So—”

  “I’ll deal with the lab,” Shaw promised. “But, I have to say that if Mr. McBride’s recollection of himself as a murderer is accurate, it would explain a lot—the dissociation he experienced, the hysterical amnesia—even the sublimation of his personality into an alternate identity.”

  “‘If’…”

  “Pardon me?” the psychiatrist asked.

  “You said, ‘if’ his memory is accurate.”

  “So I did.”

  Adrienne was quiet for a moment. Then she picked up the complimentary pen beside the telephone, and asked, “When is this supposed to have happened?”

  “Five years ago—in San Francisco.”

  “Let me look into it,” she suggested. “And if I find out it’s true… ?”

  “I
don’t think either of us would have any choice. We’d have to notify the police.”

  She knew he was right. But she also knew there was room for doubt—and that any call to the police at this time would be premature. Until the day before, the recently-confessed murderer had been someone else entirely. “I just can’t believe it,” she said.

  “Neither can I,” Shaw replied. “I really can’t. But I’ll tell you one thing.”

  “What?”

  “He does.”

  The next morning, Ray Shaw sat behind the wheel of his Mercedes, going nowhere on his way to work. Unmoving, the car was stranded in the middle lane of the George Washington Bridge, immersed in a cacophony of horns. Irritated, Shaw removed the Star TAC from his briefcase, punched in a number that he knew as well as his own, and laid the cellphone against his right ear.

  The thing was, Raymond C. Shaw was not a man who asked favors of other people. Not often, anyway, and on the rare occasions that he did, he expected the favors to be granted—especially when, as now, the prospective grantor was someone with whom he’d played squash, twice a week, for years.

  Charley Dorgan was 1) his best friend and 2) the senior research physicist at Columbia University’s Laboratory of Engineering and Applied Materials. Shaw had sent him the implant for analysis within an hour of removing it from Lew McBride’s hippocampus, and only three hours after losing to Dorgan in straight sets at the Manhattan Sports Club.

  That Dorgan had not yet gotten back to him was only mildly surprising: the physicist was a very busy man, juggling his teaching responsibilities while presiding over a department that had lucrative and complex relationships to a number of private firms and government agencies. So Shaw wasn’t really shocked that Dorgan should need prodding. But he was surprised to find that his calls were not getting returned.

  And it pissed him off.

  Charley was an old friend. When he pulled the Dorgan string, he expected it to hum.

  So he called him—again. This time, at home. At seven in the morning. “Guess who?”

  Dorgan grunted.

  “Charley, it’s—”

  “I know who it is.”

  “Well?” Shaw asked, his voice larded with as much irony as he could manage.

  “Well, what?”

  “I’m calling about… about the object I sent you.”

  Dorgan’s reply consisted of a long silence.

  “Hello?” This, from Shaw.

  “I’m here,” Dorgan replied.

  “Good, because—”

  “I really can’t talk about it, Ray”

  Shaw thought he’d misheard him. “You can’t what?”

  “I said I can’t talk about it. Neither of us should.”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” Shaw replied. “What are you—”

  “Look—I gotta go,” Dorgan told him. “I’m late. I’ll talk to you later.” And with that, he hung up, leaving his squash partner sputtering into his Star TAC.

  By now, Adrienne knew the lions’ names: Patience and Fortitude. And she also knew where to go to find a computer that she could use to log onto Nexis. Sitting down at an open terminal in one of the library’s computer rooms, she went to the Nexis Web site and entered Slough, Hawley’s user-ID and password. When the appropriate page came up, she hit the Search button, and then News. Finally, she entered McBride’s name in the panel for search terms, then added, San Francisco, 1996 and—just to be certain—1995 and 1997.

  Thirty seconds went by before a list of documents materialized on the screen. All in all, there were 204 that mentioned someone named McBride in the context of San Francisco during the relevant years. These included—indeed, were dominated by—trivial references that had nothing to do with anything. There were P/R releases announcing the promotions and retirements of executives who happened to be named McBride. Richard McBride. Fred McBride. Delano McBride. There were half a dozen stories about the Prep Football Top 25 (whose number included a wide receiver named Antwan McBride), as well as articles about a geriatric judge, a popular restauranteur, and a Bay area restaurant reviewer who—like the others—was named McBride. And more.

  But there was nothing in any newspaper published in America in the last ten years that reported a murder, or a double murder, perpetrated by a man named Lew McBride—or Anything McBride—in San Francisco during the 1990s. Adrienne expanded her search, substituting California for San Francisco, and came up with half a dozen hits. Closer scrutiny, however, revealed that none of these were relevant. A man named McBride had killed a convenience store clerk with a shotgun in Fresno in 1996. Another McBride had been charged with vehicular homicide in a drunk driving incident that left two dead (the family wanted him charged with murder, but he wasn’t). And so on.

  And so forth.

  She was tempted to return to the Mayflower, call Shaw and tell him that Duran’s most recent identity, like his last, was an illusion. But because she was a lawyer—and prided herself on touching all the bases—on being prepared—she went through the original list.

  Which wasn’t so bad, really. The KWIK Search feature highlighted the words in which she was interested as they appeared in each of the stories. So it wasn’t as if she had to read them all—just skim them.

  And that’s what she did, going backwards from 1997 until she came to Article No. 138, which appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on June 16, 1996:

  LOCAL MAN FEARED

  DEAD IN PLANE CRASH

  Cap Haitien (Reuters)—San Francisco resident Lewis McBride, 26, was feared dead today when rescuers called off their search for his missing plane in the rugged mountains west of this city.

  McBride was the only passenger in a chartered Cessna that disappeared in a storm Tuesday evening. Haitian air controllers in Port-au-Prince report that no urgent or emergency broadcasts were received from the plane.

  The area in which the Cessna is believed to have gone down is uninhabited, mountainous jungle. Efforts to search for the plane have been inhibited by continuing bad weather.

  A Stanford University graduate, with a doctoral degree in psychology, McBride had been traveling on a foundation grant for the last two years. Professor Ian Hartwig of Stanford expressed his shock and sadness at the “tragic loss of this fine young man.”

  McBride leaves no survivors.

  Graphic: photo (McBride)

  Adrienne sat back in her chair and thought about it. Was Duran really McBride? Or was this just another stolen identity? What if he had a whole series of identities, a nesting set like a matrioshka doll—and this one, Lew McBride, was still several shells away from the innermost one? What was this business about beating his family to death? There was nothing in the papers about it—and, clearly, the Reuter’s article meant it never happened. If McBride had killed someone, the story would have mentioned it—and the Stanford professor would not have described him as a “fine young man.”

  Nexis generated text, not images, but if a photograph appeared with a story, that information was included in the printout. Graphic: photo (McBride). So that meant when she found the article on microfiche, there’d be a picture, too. A picture of McBride.

  When Charlie Dorgan got to work, Ray Shaw was waiting for him on the couch in the reception area outside his office. Seeing his old pal, Dorgan lowered his head, nodded to his secretary—“Pearl”—and marched into his inner sanctum.

  With Shaw hard on his heels, closing the door behind them.

  “Charlie—”

  “I don’t want to hear it,” Dorgan told him, raising a hand as if he were about to swear an oath. “I can’t talk about this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean we can’t talk about it. I mean that you will not receive a report about the little item you sent—so stop asking me, or you’re going to ruin a beautiful friendship.” With that, the physicist collapsed into the chair behind his desk, swiveled around and turned his eyes toward the ceiling.

  Shaw made a helpless gesture. “I
don’t get it.”

  “It’s classified,” Dorgan said.

  “What is?”

  “The device. It’s a neurophonic prosthesis. Made of bioglass.”

  “So it’s invisible to the body’s immune system.”

  “Right.”

  It was Ray Shaw’s turn to sit down. Settling onto the arm of a leather chair, he thought about what the physicist was saying.

  “You should have told me how sensitive this was,” Dorgan complained.

  “I didn’t know—”

  “I was showing the Goddamn thing to anyone who’d look at it! And Fred—you know Fred—he goes way back—he takes a look, and he says, ‘We used to play with these in grad school.’ And I said, when was that—the Stone Age? And he laughs, and says, ‘Yeah, it was—everyone in the lab had his own lava lamp.’ Very funny. So I asked him: what is it? And he says, ‘Well, Charlie, it’s a neurophonic prosthesis—now I have to kill you.’ Ha ha, I say. And he gives me a funny look. A funny look!”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “The hell I am: he gives me a funny look, and says, ‘Seriously,’—seriously—‘you shouldn’t have that thing. It was a government program. Very hush-hush. One of those programs that never happened. An experimental program.’”

  Shaw’s face darkened. “This wasn’t an experiment,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I removed it from a patient.”

  Dorgan blinked several times. Got his breath back. And asked: “Is that supposed to be a joke?”

  “No.”

  The physicist pursed his lips, and took a deep breath. “The next thing you know, I’ve got visitors.” He paused for emphasis.

  “Who?” Shaw asked.

  “‘Who?’ Who do ya think? The Smoking Man and his evil twin—the Other Smoking Man.”

  Shaw chuckled.

  “I’m not kidding,” Dorgan insisted. “These guys were straight out of Central Casting. Big trench coats, and no sense of irony.”