Stone Shadow

Dallas

He did not remember driving in from the Lido, only parking his vehicle, so absorbed was he in the planning process of the minutes and hours to come. He did his mental homework with the same meticulous concern for detail that he'd exercise the moment when it all started coming down around their ears. Pure copper now, cold and objective. The thing beginning to collapse like so many of the big ones did, as much from the weight of the paperwork as from the skein of unraveling events. Getting very close. And this crazy mother had taken off more people than a plane crash and there were lots more lives at stake. And that's when you sometimes have to take chances and play a little fast and loose.

And Jack moved into high gear, the day sliding along slicker'n possum fat, greased by MCTF and the fates, Eichord playing out his hand with a cop-friendly judge as if it were high-stakes poker. Letting it slide into place with the judge's reticence sending phrases like probable cause and reasonable doubt and civil libertarians flowing along the phone lines like honey. And by noon he had the court order and several other things as well.

There was some trouble about the home entry. The friendly judge wasn't quite all that friendly. There were statutes here and Supreme Court rulings over there and violations of privacy somewhere else, and he'd already gone out on one helluva limb with the drugged-hypnosis thing, so Eichord tap-danced off it and went on to other things.

And he got MacTuff to reach out for him and games were played and probable cause got found, and it's like corruption, it's just part of the Big Picture we're always hearing about, but when you're laying a trap inside the famous Noel goddamn COLLIER residence, ole buddy, you better flat make sure there are some deep dip probables to get you through that door.

“Hello.” Or wait outside in the tall weeds like they do on TV.

“Doc?” And one other thing.

“Yo.” You better make it WORK.

“It's me."

“Right."

“I talked to the judge this morning."

“His honor was cooperative?” he asked hopefully.

“Sure—to a point."

“You and I being friends of the court and all."

“Uh-huh."

“So nu?"

“Let's do it."

“Uh, yes. But you don't sound terribly gung ho about the thing. You fear repercussions? Because if that's it I told you I'd take full—"

“No, no. Not really."

“No?"

“Well. He laid it out for me pretty clear. If it goes badly it doesn't matter one hoot in hell that Ukie gave permission. We're laying the foundation for a nice mistrial."

“I see. And your concern is—as we talked and as I mention in my memo to you on the thing I want to try with Ukie—if he's a party to the murders, as we both believe he could easily be, you could still end up with half a mass-murder team cut loose and on the street.” “It's our only game. Let's go for it."

They wished each other luck and Eichord took an incoming phone call on the next line.

“Mr. Eichord?"

“Yes?"

“Randy Vinson."

“Who?"

“Randy Vinson. I understand you've been trying to reach me."

“Oh, boy. Have I ever. Did you say your name was Vinsa?"

“Vinson.” He spelled it for him.

“That explains some of my problem in finding you. I had been given your name over the phone by Dr. Douglas Geary in Scottsdale, Arizona."

“Oh, yes!” He lit up at Doug's name.

“I worked with Dr. Geary on a murder case a number of years back and he was kind enough to try to help me examine some theoretical possibles that I ran by him. I assume you know about the Grave-digger murders in Dallas?"

“No, sorry, I haven't seen a television set in weeks. I'm doing some research work here in Switzerland and I don't know what's going on back in the States.” Eichord took him through a précis of the Hackabee case. When he hit the word “twins” it was like he'd stepped on a trip wire, and Dr. Vinson began speaking very rapidly, machine-gun fast and in a precise monotone of words Eichord didn't know. “Are these monozygotic or dizygotic,” it sounded like he was saying, and there was a long question in which the only word longer than two syllables that Jack recognized was “monovular.” Slowly, he had Vinson take him back through it and was able to answer the question. The twins were maternal twins. From a single egg. Clinical definition: monozygotic. Identical twins.

“What do you want to know?” the doctor asked.

“Lots. For example, what about a possibility of a neural pathway or plateau that would link the two twins?” He doodled Os.

“Not a possibility. It's a certainty. Absolutely."

“Just so I'll understand. How do you know?” OOO interlinked.

“The information is just coming out now. The results of years and years of research and careful testing. We're just releasing the findings. And I must tell you the findings about twins and crime are VERY spooky.” The first O becomes a P. S-POO-KY

“Did you say SPOOKY?” He remembers both Ukie and Joe saying it.

“'Fraid I did. No other word for it. Were the Hackabee twins raised apart?"

“First of all I'm not sure. I only have their word so far. The, one who is in custody claims they were together through their formative years but has been rather vague about the point where they went their separate ways. I'm not certain offhand what the other twin says. There may be a secret background of molestation. So far we can't be certain of their background. There's obvious animosity."

“Well. That doesn't necessarily mean much. Our studies showed that the environment was vital in the twins’ personality structuring, perhaps more than that of the same environment on a non-twin, but until you have third-person source corroboration there's no point in basing anything on your data. Twins scheme. They lie. Contrive. Criminal twins have a profile that is complex and interlocking beyond anything we've imagined."

“Is this telepathy thing in twins for real or is it somebody's fantasy theory or what?"

“Is there hard evidence to substantiate that there is a telepathic element stronger in single-egg twins or twins in general, than in non-twins? Monos, absolutely. You have the identical internal structure. I mean barring some birth accident, you're talking about the exact same chromosomes, genes, and the,—-” Another sentence came out that has to be translated. It was almost a parallel of listening to Ukie. Something, something, zygomorphic, bilaterally symmetrical something. RNA. Recombinant something. And Jack had made the mistake of asking him to explain one of the words and he almost choked in the deluge of chromatinic, polymerized nucleic this, and the basophilic bodies of the cell that, and the protamine or histone the other thing. Finally, Jack thought he had the beginnings of a grasp.

“How real is the ability to manipulate telepathically?"

“For a one-ovum twin it is as real as real can be. Remember, even without an aggression/passivity syndrome going you have that perfectly matched structure. The minds think alike. Work alike. Even in cases of identicals raised apart they'll choose the same color schemes, name their kitty cats the same names, everything is similar. The neural thing—the pathway you ask about—anybody has this. The problem is we can only seem to utilize it when strong, dominant, negative happenings trigger the avenue of thought. Illness. Pain. Imminent danger. Death. Think of the occasions where you've heard of or experienced something approximating the transmission or reception of so-called telepathic communication. It's been where threat, or illness, or pain, or death has been involved."

“That's true. Especially death or danger to a loved one."

“So with monozygotics imagine that you took one person and sawed them in two. A copy. Identical from face to fingerprint patterns to footprint similarities. Now stir in something negative.

“If you had the neural structure we're talking about with monozygotic twins, the chromosomes, the RNA, everything is dictating identical forensics, barring as I said birth accident, and the environmental influences, you have the perfect background for a telepathic potential to exist."

“How does one manipulate over the other?"

“That's the part nobody can really define. Through charisma, strength, that quirk that makes one's desire to dominate more emphasized, through whatever channel of energy the one-half of the same-egg twin can quite literally influence the thought patterns of the other, weaker half. It's a forcing-through of information. Very rare and as I told you one of the spooky things we've learned about the identical criminally psychotic twins. But the interaction is there. It's fact, not fancy."

“You said a birth accident. What would that do? Give me a scenario where the birth accident or the environmental situation might create a mass murderer."

“There's a thousand ways. A very plausible one would be anoxia. If one of the single-ovum identicals had a very brief cutoff, not long enough for complete brain impairment, but for just that split second necessary to accomplish it, the one might be missing something that he or she would have had with the proper oxygen supply to the brain—and just that moment's damage wiped it out."

“What would that something be?"

“A conscience,” he said quietly—the line perfect all the way from Switzerland to Dallas, not a whisper of noise.

“Would that also explain sexual anomaly such as one finds in an exhibitionist?"

“Not so likely. Perversion, inversion, whatever—it all comes from the pleasure thing. Learned pleasure. It felt good before this way let's do it again. Something learned in childhood. You tried on your mother's dress and loved it. The smell of the perfume. The feel of the silk as you wobbled about in her high heels. Remembered pleasure in tandem with guilt. An extremely intricate interweaving."

“The anoxia thing, or whatever caused one of the two twins to want to dominate over the other, and the reverse ... How would that manifest itself in the individual? Are there signs? Is there a profile of the type of aggressive, strong, criminally psychotic type twin we've been talking about? What can I look for?"

“Obviously you know who he is, the question you've got to resolve is, What he is? Or what SHE is if you have twin sisters. In your case, the Hackabees, you look to the successful, influential brother. If he's a loner, if he was a hyper-type kid, or if you can still see some of those signals, if he's got some unusual pressure valves—"

“Like flying ultra-light planes, hang-gliding, things like that?"

“Sure. Real loner personality. Manipulative. You'll at least know that you're dealing with a very dangerous breed of cat."

“I've gotta ask you one question. What about...” And Jack mentioned the name of an infamous mass killer whom he only knew from print and television.

The doctor laughed wildly and said, “He's exactly where he should be—death row."

“That's what I heard."

“Yeah. That's the most dangerous son of a bitch I've ever come anywhere near. They need to put him to sleep as soon as possible. Like your killer or killers there, not an ounce of conscience in him. Totally without even a flicker of remorse."

Eichord apologized for taking up so much time and then as an afterthought he mentioned a drug and asked him, “Have you heard about this?"

“I guess so"—he chuckled again—"since I was on the team that tested it for the company."

“Sorry. I didn't realize. But please, what's your off-the-record opinion of it insofar as a drug-induced or -supplemented hypnotic situation might be made use of? Any general feelings?"

“Not an easy question. The whole area of narcoanalysis for criminal interrogation is back in another Twilight Zone category. We started out back in the LSD-25, Mescaline years. My feeling is that...” And a tide of words and phrases like “diencephalic and cortical anesthetization” and “id and superego” and “scopolamine hydrobromide” rose, and it kept rising and Jack was dogpaddling for his canoe by the time the conversation drew to an end. And praying it didn't have a hole in the bottom.