Predator (2 page)
The two prison guards inside the MRI suite vacillate from confused to curious as they stare through the glass at the seven-foot-long tube, the bore of the magnet, on the other side. The guards wear uniforms but no guns. Weapons aren’t allowed in here. Nothing ferrous, including handcuffs and shackles, is permitted, and only plastic flex-cuffs restrain Basil’s ankles and wrists as he lies on the table inside the magnet, listening to the jarring knocks and wonks of radio frequency pulses that sound like infernal music played on high-voltage power lines—or that’s what Benton imagines.
“Remember, this next one is color blocks. All I want you to do is name the color,” Dr. Susan Lane, the neuropsychologist, says into the intercom. “No, Mr. Jenrette, please don’t nod your head. Remember, the tape is on your chin to remind you not to move.”
“Ten-four,” Basil’s voice sounds through the intercom.
It is half past eight at night and Benton is uneasy. He has been uneasy for months, not so much worried that the Basil Jenrettes of the world are going to suddenly explode into violence inside the gracious old brick walls of McLean Hospital and slaughter everything in sight, but that the research study is doomed to failure, that it is a waste of grant money and a foolish expenditure of precious time. McLean is an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and neither the hospital nor the university is gracious about failure.
“Don’t worry about getting all of them right,” Dr. Lane is saying over the intercom. “We don’t expect you to get all of them right.”
“Green, red, blue, red, blue, green,” Basil’s confident voice fills the room.
A researcher marks down results on a data-entry sheet while the MRI technician checks images on his video screen.
Dr. Lane pushes the talk button again. “Mr. Jenrette? You’re doing an excellent job. Can you see everything okay?”
“Ten-four.”
“Very good. Every time you see that black screen, you are nice and still. No talking, just look at the white dot on the screen.”
“Ten-four.”
She releases the talk button and says to Benton, “What’s with the cop jargon?”
“He was a cop. That’s probably how he was able to get his victims into his car.”
“Dr. Wesley?” the researcher says, turning around in her chair. “It’s for you. Detective Thrush.”
Benton takes the phone.
“What’s up,” he asks Thrush, a homicide detective with the Massachusetts State Police.
“I hope you weren’t planning on an early bedtime,” Thrush says. “You hear about the body found this morning out by Walden Pond?”
“No. I’ve been locked up in this place all day.”
“White female, unidentified, hard to tell her age. Maybe in her late thirties, early forties, shot in the head, the shotgun shell shoved up her ass.”
“News to me.”
“She’s been autopsied already, but I thought you might want to take a look. This one ain’t the average bear.”
“I’ll be finished up in less than an hour,” Benton says.
“Meet me at the morgue.”
The house is quiet and Kay Scarpetta walks from room to room, turning on every light, unsettled. She listens for the sound of a car or a motorcycle, listens for Marino. He is late and hasn’t returned her phone calls.
Unsettled and anxious, she checks to make sure that the burglar alarm is armed and the floodlights are on. She pauses at the video display on the kitchen phone to make sure the cameras monitoring the front, back and sides of her house are operating properly. Her property is shadowy in the video display, and dark images of citrus trees, palms and hibiscus move in the wind. The dock behind her swimming pool and the waterway beyond are a black plain dabbed with blurred lights from lamps along the seawall. She stirs tomato sauce and mushrooms in copper pots on the stove. She checks dough rising and fresh mozzarella soaking in covered bowls by the sink.
It is almost nine, and Marino was supposed to be here two hours ago. Tomorrow she is tied up with cases and teaching, and she doesn’t have time for his rudeness. She feels set up. She has had it with him. She has worked nonstop on the Johnny Swift alleged suicide for the past three hours, and now Marino can’t bother to show up. She is hurt, then angry. It is easier to be angry.
She is very angry as she walks into her living room, still listening for a motorcycle or a car, still listening for him. She picks up a twelve-gauge Remington Marine Magnum from her couch and sits down. The nickel-plated shotgun is heavy in her lap, and she inserts a small key in the lock. She turns the key to the right and pulls the lock free from the trigger guard. She racks the pump back to make sure there are no cartridges in the magazine.
Chapter 3
“We’re going to do word reading now,” Dr. Lane is telling Basil over the intercom. “Just read the words from left to right. Okay? And remember, don’t move. You’re doing great.”
“Ten-four.”
“Hey, want to see what he really looks like?” the MRI technician says to the guards.
His name is Josh. He majored in physics at MIT, is working as a tech while working on his next degree, is bright but eccentric with a twisted sense of humor.
“I already know what he looks like. I got to escort him to the showers earlier today,” one of the guards says.
“Then what?” Dr. Lane asks Benton. “What would he do to them after he got them into his car?”
“Red, blue, blue, red…”
The guards wander closer to Josh’s video screen.
“Take them someplace, stab them in the eyes, keep them alive a couple days, rape them repeatedly, cut their throats, dump their bodies, pose them to shock people,” Benton is telling Dr. Lane matter-of-factly, in his clinical way. “The cases we know about. I’m suspicious he killed others. A number of women vanished in Florida during the same time frame. Presumed dead, bodies never found.”
“Take them where? A motel, his house?”
“Hold on a second,” Josh says to the guards as he selects the menu option 3D, then SSD, or Surface Shading Display. “This is really cool. We never show it to patients.”
“How come?”
“Totally freak them out.”
“We don’t know where,” Benton is telling Dr. Lane as he keeps a check on Josh, ready to intervene if he gets too carried away. “But it’s interesting. The bodies he dumped. They all had microscopic particles of copper on them.”
“What on earth?”
“Mixed in with dirt and whatever else was adhering to blood, their skin, in their hair.”
“Blue, green, blue, red…”
“That’s very strange.”
She pushes the talk button. “Mr. Jenrette? How are we doing in there? You okay?”
“Ten-four.”
“Next, you’re going to see words printed in a different color from what they spell. I want you to name the color of the ink. Just name the color.”
“Ten-four.”
“Isn’t this awesome?” Josh says as what looks like a death mask fills his screen, a reconstruction of one-millimeter-thick high-resolution slices that make up the MRI scan of Basil Jenrette’s head, the image pale, hairless and eyeless, ending raggedly just below the jaw as if he has been decapitated.
Josh rotates the image so the guards can see it from different angles.
“Why’s his head look cut off?” one of them asks.
“That’s where the signal from the coil stopped.”
“His skin doesn’t look real.”
“Red uh green, blue I mean red, green…” Basil’s voice enters the room.
“It’s not really skin. How to explain… well, what the computer’s doing is volume reconstruction, a surface rendering.”
“Red, blue uh green, blue I mean green…”
“Only thing we really use it for is Power Points, mainly, to overlay structural with functional. Just an MRI analysis package where you can put data together and look at it any way you want, have fun with it.”
“Man, he’s ugly.”
Benton has heard enough. The color naming has stopped. He gives Josh a sharp look.
“Josh? You ready?”
“Four, three, two, one, ready,” Josh says, and Dr. Lane begins the interference test.
“Blue, red I mean… shit, uh red I mean blue, green, red…” Basil’s voice violates the room as he gets all of them wrong.
“He ever tell you why?” Dr. Lane asks Benton.
“I’m sorry,” he says, distracted. “Why what?”
“Red, blue shit! Uh red, blue-green…”
“Why he gouged their eyes out.”
“He said he didn’t want them to see how small his penis is.”
“Blue, blue-red, red, green…”
“He didn’t do so well on this one,” she says. “In fact, he missed most of them. What police department did he work for, so I remember not to get pulled for speeding in that part of the world?” She pushes the talk button. “You okay in there?”
“Ten-four.”
“Dade County PD.”
“Too bad. I’ve always liked Miami. So that’s how you managed to conjure this one up. Because of your South Florida connections,” she replies, pushing the talk button again.
“Not exactly.” Benton stares through the glass at Basil’s head in the far end of the magnet, imagining the rest of him dressed like a normal person in jeans and a button-up white shirt.
The inmates are not allowed to wear prison fatigues on the hospital campus. It’s bad public relations.
“When we began querying state penitentiaries for study subjects, Florida thought he was just the guy for the job. He was bored. They were happy to get rid of him,” Benton says.
“Very good, Mr. Jenrette,” Dr. Lane says into the intercom. “Now, Dr. Wesley is going to come in and give you the mouse. You’re going to see some faces next.”
“Ten-four.”
Ordinarily, Dr. Lane would go into the MRI room and deal with the patient herself. But women doctors and scientists are not allowed physical contact with the subjects of PREDATOR. Male doctors and scientists have to be cautious, too, while inside the MRI suite. Outside of it, restraining research study subjects during interviews is up to the clinician. Benton is accompanied by the two prison guards as he turns on the lights inside the MRI room and shuts the door. The guards hover near the magnet and pay attention as he plugs in the mouse and places it in Basil’s restrained hands.
