Gray Matter

The team of people under the lights looked up. And standing by the monitors of the brain scans, directing the operations, was a large man in street clothes.

Lucius Malenko.

Seeing the four of them standing there in horrid disbelief, Malenko coolly announced, “We seem to have uninvited company.”

“Drop the masks and keep your hands high,” Zakarian said, fanning them with the shotgun.

The surgical team was made up of six people—two teams of three and dressed in scrubs, caps, and masks. But nobody moved.

“NOW!” he growled.

Malenko nodded to them, and slowly one by one they began to remove their masks.

Rachel let out a gasp. They were children.

The surgical operating teams were all children—kids in their teens.

One was so short that he had to stand on a low footstool to adjust some instrument affixed to the head of one patient.

“What are you doing?” Martin said, stunned.

“If you weren’t so impatient, your son might have had the opportunity to join us someday.”

“They’re kids.”

“Only chronologically speaking,” he said. Then he turned to Zakarian. “Officer, this is not a police matter. There’s no need for guns. Please,” he said, waving to lower the weapons.

“I don’t think so,” Zakarian said. “Hands high. All of you.”

One of the masked children was holding a large syringe, one of several on a tray, ready to be inserted into the brain probe of the child on the left table—the one with the red wristband. Two others were manning the drill probes, the high-whining motor still cutting the air.

“Drop it and hands in the air.”

Rachel moved closer to the child banded with green.

It was Dylan.

Rachel groaned. He was breathing through a respirator. His head had been shaved and slathered with some bitter-smelling jelly-stuff-like burnt almonds. Clamped to his skull was a metal frame that looked like some medieval torture device. No probes had yet been inserted into his head, but a high-speed drill was poised to bore its way through his skull above his left ear. On the stainless steel tray beside Dylan’s head lay surgical knives, drill bits, and other glistening steel tools.

Unconscious beside him was some hapless child whose brain matter they were ready to harvest. Several probes aligned at his skull at different angles were poised for insertions. Beside his head were half a dozen large syringes for extraction.

“Turn off that drill,” she growled to one of the kids, who looked about twelve.

He shot a look to Malenko for help.

With both hands Rachel raised the pistol. “Turn it off, or I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

He turned it off.

“But isn’t this what you wanted, Mrs. Whitman?” Malenko asked. “To undo the damage you’d done? To make him a brilliant little boy so he could learn to love literature like that of the poet whose name he carries? Isn’t that what you wanted, Mrs. Whitman? Wasn’t that your dream—the scientifically correct child?”

“You son of a bitch,” she hissed.

Malenko looked at Martin. “And wasn’t it you who wanted a son to follow in Daddy’s footsteps?”

“But you’re harvesting other kids,” Martin said in utter disbelief.

“And where do you think incandescence comes from—battery implants? Just ask him,” he said, flashing his grin at Brendan LaMotte.

Brendan looked in shock.

“Oh, yes, I remember you,” Malenko continued. “When they brought you to us, you had little more language capabilities than the domestic cat. But we fixed you, didn’t we, Brendan? Perhaps a bit too much, I hear. But we solved your language deficiencies, no?”

“Y-y-you messed me up.”

“Messed you up? If it weren’t for me, you’d still be working on your ABCs.”

“You made me a f-f-freak.”

“No system’s perfect, but we’re getting there.”

Malenko did not seem the least bit intimidated by Zakarian or their weapons. He looked over Rachel’s shoulder.

Zakarian shouted to the other man behind the computer terminal. “Over here and hands high.”

Rachel looked at the child beside Dylan. “But you’re killing them.”

“Not technically,” Malenko said. “Just a little … simplified.” Then he smiled, showing that row of white teeth and sugary pink gums. “The universe loves a balance.”

“You monster.”

“Monster? But you hired me, Mrs. Whitman. What does that make you? Or all the other good earnest parents who want their supertots. Should I be crucified because I’ve raised the dead?”

“We didn’t know.”

“And now you do.”

Why was he confessing all this with a police officer here and the guns on him? They had to get Dylan out of here. “Take that thing off his head now!”

Malenko looked at her without expression for a moment. “Ahh,” he sighed. “About time.”

A voice behind them: “Freeze!”

Behind them stood a woman holding a pistol, which she moved between Rachel and Zakarian. Martin raised his hands, Brendan was frozen in place. The woman she had seen earlier at the camp. With little Daniel and Tanya, the girl in the room.

“You too, asshole!” A man’s voice. Coming up from behind the woman was the guard they had encountered outside. He too had a pistol. The woman had freed him. He and the other man were closing in on Rachel and Zakarian.

“Is there a safety on this?” she said under her breath.

Zakarian looked. “It’s off.”

“Drop them,” the guard shouted.

“Get them out of here,” Malenko bellowed. “Immediately. Outside, and get rid of them.”

In a flash, Zakarian spun around and dropped to his knees and fired. The huge explosion reverberated in the closed structure. Rachel fell to the ground. When she looked, the woman was on the floor half in and half out of the swinging doors, the front of her blasted in red.

The guard shouted something to the other man, and fired his pistol. People scattered everywhere as the shots rang out.

But all Rachel could think was that a stray bullet would hit Dylan and the other boy. She held her breath and took aim with both hands as she had seen in movies …

Just squeeze

… and she did. The explosion instantly jolted her backward. But the guard was hit, because he fell backward against some equipment. His left sleeve had been torn away and was turning red.

The next instant erupted into frenzied and deafening commotion. The guard began firing with his good hand. The operating-team kids were hollering and scattering for cover. From behind computer terminals, the other man had scrambled over for the dead woman’s pistol. On his knees with the shotgun, Zakarian shot at the man, who collapsed to his knees, bleeding in the hand and side. The air filled with sulfurous smoke, and Rachel was nearly deaf from the gunfire. Her only thought was Dylan and the other child on the operating tables.

But the guard was up with his gun taking aim. Rachel took one look and squeezed off another shot.

The explosion rocked the room again, and when she opened her eyes, the guard was on the floor clutching his leg. And Zakarian was upon him.

With Martin scrambling on the floor, Rachel dashed to the operating tables. Neither of the children had been hit by the gunfire.

Dylan was still breathing through the respirator, his vital functions pulsing on the monitor overhead. His skull had been marked with black ink, long evil-looking metal probes poised for insertion into his head, calibrated brain scans on the screen above. All she could think was: God, what have we done to you?

She flashed the gun at a female in a mask cowering behind the surgical table. She still wore her mask and cap. There was a bandage on one of her thumbs. “Take that off his head.”

The girl stood up. A tall girl.

From behind her, Brendan suddenly snapped off her mask. “Nicole!”

That girl. Rachel knew that girl. At Bloomfield. The girl in the psych lab.

“You asshole! You just wouldn’t let go, would you?” Nicole said to Brendan. “Now you ruined everything.”

She lunged toward him, but Rachel whacked her in the chest with her left arm. She raised the pistol to Nicole’s face. “Take that off him or I’ll fucking kill you.”

Nicole regarded the fury in Rachel’s face and the gun trained at a spot between her eyes, and she began to unfasten the screws.

On the floor the other kids were huddled together. Rachel flashed the pistol at them. “Help her. NOW!”

They shot up and began to remove the head frame apparatus from Dylan while Martin started to disconnect the IVs.

“NO!” Brendan shouted.

Before Rachel could turn, Nicole had grabbed a scalpel and lunged for her. By reflex, Rachel threw herself between Nicole and Dylan to block her aim. But in the scurry, she dropped the pistol to stop Nicole’s hand, which came down, catching Rachel across the forearm.

To keep Nicole from Dylan, Rachel pushed the gurney out of her reach with her back, blood spurting from the gash. But Dylan had not been touched.

As Rachel got her balance again, Nicole raised the blade again and brought it down on Martin’s neck.

Rachel let out a scream as he fell to his knees.

The next moment passed in a flurried haze. Brendan grabbed Nicole from behind and flung her across the room to where Officer Zakarian was cuffing the other two men. Then he dashed toward the rear, snatching the shotgun off the floor behind the officer, and ran out the door.

Malenko was nowhere in sight. But that did not register on Rachel. Only the fact that Dylan was safe and that Martin lay in a pool of blood.

Brendan ran down the corridor, checking all the rooms as he did. Only the children he had seen before. No Malenko.

His head was a wild cacophony of voices—a continuous tape of scraps that kept pulsing with the rhythm of his feet pounding the floor.

He raced upstairs and ran through the house. He was halfway up to the second floor when he heard the sound of an engine outside.

He dashed back down and out the front door.

The dock.

He bounded down the path half-expecting to see Malenko cutting across the lake in the boat. Instead, the floatplane pulled away from its mooring, its props driving it into the black open water, the red and yellow safety lights blinking on the wings, a small cabin light illuminating Malenko’s white hair. The plane made a U-turn in the water to the left to take off toward the southeast and over the ocean.

“No!” Brendan shouted.

The engines revved as the plane picked up speed in the distance.

Brendan dropped to his knees and braced himself against a mooring pole with the shotgun. As the plane lifted off the water maybe a hundred feet ahead of him, he squeezed off a shot just ahead of the plane’s exterior lights, pumped another shell into the chamber and fired a second.

He barely registered the recoil.

For a moment, he had no idea if the shots would even reach at this distance, or merely pepper the fuselage.

But at about thirty feet off the water the nose of the plane suddenly lit up in flames, as one of the engines streamed fuel back over the windshield. The engines roared in protest as they tried to gain altitude. The plane made a tipsy roll to the right and headed back toward the dock. As it came closer, Brendan could see the interior of the cabin awash in flames, and the figure of Malenko frantically flailing his arms. From fuel spraying through the shattered windshield, his head was on fire.

The plane sputtered and rocked, and for one last moment shot up as if taking off to the stars. Then it made a deep curtsy and came down in a flaming streak into the lake no more than fifty feet away.

Fuel and debris burned on the surface for a few minutes and mushrooms of air belched from below, then all was black again, as the night returned to silence. Overhead the sky had opened, and a new moon set the clouds in motion.

Brendan tossed the shotgun on the dock and stood there staring out over the opaque water. He trembled against the cold air, but inside he felt as if something had opened up—like a sac of warm fluid bursting.

He wrapped his arms around himself and cried.

EPILOGUE

SIX MONTHS LATER

BOSTON

The auditorium blazed in colored lights.

The stage was set with Christmas trees, giant candles, and nutcracker soldiers. Large shiny ornaments hung from the rafters. The orchestra, formally attired in black and white, was warming up as the children filed in to take their places on the dais.

It was the Children’s Yuletide Pageant at Symphony Hall, and from all over the commonwealth, young people had been selected to make up the special holiday choir.

Dylan was in the second row dressed like all the rest in a white robe.

Rachel had managed to get tickets in the orchestra, middle section, ten rows back, so that Dylan could see them from the stage. When he spotted them, he broke into a wide grin and waved.

And Rachel’s heart flooded with love.

While the performers got settled, her mind rumbled back to that awful night six months ago.

They had seen things almost too sordid to imagine, and it still sickened her that they had been unwitting parties to it all. Over the course of a decade, Malenko had enhanced over eighty children, kidnapping as many from randomly scattered locales across the country so as not to establish any coherence. He had apparently had a small but organized network of people who did freelance kidnappings almost always from poor rural families where the authorities had neither the resources nor the wherewithal for deep investigations. They were diabolically clever, often staging the disappearances as fatal accidents. On a few occasions they had crossed the border into Mexico and bought snatched street kids from local criminals. They never left tracks or telltale clues connecting the disappearances.

Luckily, the little boy who had been the harvest for Dylan had suffered no brain damage. His name was Travis Valentine, a gifted child with a love of butterflies, who had been safely returned to his mother in Florida.

As for the enhanced kids, some were Malenko’s clients from the Nova Children’s Center. But neither the parents nor other Nova clinicians had any idea of Malenko’s secret practice nor how he had scanned the database for prospective harvests—nor the fact that those children had been stolen, rendered brain-damaged, and disposed of at sea.

As one reporter had written: “The brain is the most wondrous creation in the universe—and, as Lucius Malenko had confirmed, the most frightening.”

The media had dubbed him a latter-day Josef Mengele.

And like his Nazi counterparts, Malenko kept extensive records of his practice. He even had a photo album and full medical report on each enhanced child, allowing authorities to contact the parents. None claimed any knowledge of the harvesting. While nearly all the treated children were exceptionally bright, some suffered serious behavioral problems that were being treated by medication and counseling.

The kids who had made up the surgical team were turned over to juvenile courts. Nicole DaFoe was arrested for the murder of Martin and was awaiting trial as an adult. The surviving cronies of Malenko were indicted for serial kidnappings and murder.

Rachel wore a permanent scar on her arm from the scalpel attack.

Because of the awful associations, Rachel sold her house in Hawthorne and moved to Arlington, which bordered Cambridge and which had a more diversified population. In the fall, Dylan was enrolled in a local school where they had a well-trained support system for LD children. And, most importantly, he was very happy.

When it was discovered that Sheila had recruited Rachel and Martin on the promise of a commission from Malenko, she was arrested for being an accessory to crimes—although her lawyers would probably get her off on a lighter sentence of abetting medical malpractice rather than kidnapping and murder. It was also discovered that she had switched videocassettes the night of Vanessa Watts’s death, having been spotted by one of the waiters.

Brendan LaMotte was put in the care of neurologists at Children’s Hospital. When he had visited Rachel last weekend, he seemed to be doing much better and was back in school. To the delight of his grandfather, he was talking about going to college next year.

A burst of applause brought Rachel back to the moment. The conductor had entered the stage.

Shortly the program began, and Rachel took Greg Zakarian’s hand and settled back.

She had, of course, gone through the Kubler-Ross stages of dealing with Martin’s death—denial, anger, a sense of sadness and grief. She even still harbored guilt for the loss of him. And, yet, with Greg’s help she had come to believe that what she had done was necessary to save her son’s life.

Of course, Dylan missed Martin. He sometimes spoke of him, recalling some of the things they had done together. And for a few weeks, he wore his father’s college ring on a chain around his neck. But that soon ended up in a bureau drawer. And that sometimes-miraculous healing process possessed by children had begun to take over.

It helped that Greg was beginning to fill the void in Dylan’s life. He came up every weekend from the Cape, or they went down there. He was back on the police force and had been promoted to detective sergeant. During Sagamore’s Town Day celebration in September, his superior officer, Lieutenant T.J. Gelford had presented Greg with a medal of commendation for his actions that night in July. Rachel and Dylan attended the ceremony. Rachel cried, and Dylan gave Greg a standing O.

After weeks of cross-checking Malenko’s files with those of missing children, Greg had determined the identity of the Sagamore Boy. His name was Emilio Cruz from Clayton, Alabama. His father was a farm worker, his mother cleaned other people’s homes. The boy, who was kidnapped just a week before his sixth birthday, had tested brilliantly.

Greg had accompanied Emilio’s remains to his parents. A private funeral was held at a local Catholic church, attended by Emilio’s family and many classmates from the local elementary school that Emilio had attended. With the aid of local residents and business people, Greg established the Emilio Cruz Scholarship Fund for rural Alabama children. Even from afar, he continued to raise money, and not just to help bring emotional closure for himself, but to keep alive the memory of that little boy.

About forty minutes into the program, Rachel felt a flutter of anxiety. They had reached the last vocal number before the intermission: “What Child Is This?” And, as written in the program, the piece featured a solo by Dylan Whitman.

Rachel squeezed Greg’s hand as she naturally tensed up. But there really was no cause for apprehension. Dylan sang like an angel.

Other Novels by Gary Braver

Elixir

WRITING AS GARY GOSHGARIAN

Atlantis Fire

Rough Breast

The Stone Circle