Mutation

“I don’t know,” Marsha said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a result like this before. Oh well, let’s go on to the MMPI.”

Marsha put the personality inventory results in front of her. The first part was called the validity scales. Again something immediately aroused her attention. The F and K

scales were mildly elevated and at the upper limit of what would be considered normal. Marsha pointed that out to Jean as well.

“But they are in the normal range,” Jean insisted.

“True,” Marsha said, “but you have to remember that all this is relative. Why would VJ’s validity scales be nearly abnormal?”

“He did the test quickly,” Jean said. “Maybe he got a little careless.”

“VJ is never careless,” Marsha said. “Well, I can’t explain this, but let’s go on.”

The second part of the report was the clinical scales, and Marsha noted that none were in the abnormal range. She was particularly happy to see that scale four and scale eight were well within normal limits. Those two scales referred to psychopathic deviation and schizophrenic behavior respectively. Marsha breathed a sigh of relief because these scales had a high degree of correlation with clinical reality, and she’d been afraid they would be elevated, given VJ’s history.

But then Marsha noted that scale three was “high normal.”

That would mean VJ tended toward hysteria, constantly seeking affection and attention. That certainly did not correlate with Marsha’s experience.

“Was it your impression that VJ was cooperating when he took this test?” Marsha asked Jean.

“Absolutely,” Jean said.

“I suppose I should be happy with these results,” Marsha said, as she gathered the papers together, then stood them on end, tapping them against the desk until they were lined up.

“I think so,” Jean said encouragingly.

Marsha stapled the papers together, then tossed them into her briefcase. “Yet both the Wechsler and the MMPI are a little abnormal. Well, maybe unexpected is a better word. I’d have preferred they be unqualifyingly normal. By the way, how did VJ respond to the TAT with the man standing over the child with his arm raised?”

“VJ said he was giving a lecture.”

“The man or the child?” Marsha asked with a laugh.

“Definitely the man.”

“Any hostility involved?” Marsha asked.

“None.”

“Why was the man’s arm raised?”

“Because the man was talking about tennis, and he was showing the boy how to serve,” Jean said.

“Tennis? VJ has never played tennis.”

As Victor drove onto the grounds of Chimera, he noted that none of the previous night’s snow remained. It was still cloudy but the temperature had risen into the high forties.

He parked his car in the usual spot, but instead of heading directly into the administration building, he took the brown paper bag from the front seat of the car and went directly to his lab.

“Got some extra rush work for you,” he said to his head technician, Robert Grimes.

Robert was a painfully thin, intense man, who wore shirts with necks much too large for him, emphasizing his thinness.

His eyes had a bulging look of continual surprise.

Victor pulled out the iced vials of VJ’s blood and sample bottles containing pieces of the dead children’s brains. “I want chromosome studies done on these.”

Robert picked up the blood vials, shook them, then examined the brain samples. “You want me to let other things go and do this?”

“That’s right,” Victor said. “I want it done as soon as possible. Plus I want some standard neural stains on the brain slices.”

“I’ll have to let the uterine implant work slide,” Robert said.

“You have my permission.”

Leaving the lab, Victor went to the next building, which housed the central computer. It was situated in the geometric center of the courtyard, an ideal location since the building had easy access to all other facilities. The main office was on the first floor, and Victor had no trouble locating Louis Kaspwicz. There was some problem with a piece of hardware, and Louis was supervising several technicians who had the massive machine open as if it were undergoing surgery.

“Have any information for me?” Victor asked.

Louis nodded, told the technicians to keep searching, and led Victor back to his office where he produced a loose-leaf notebook containing the computer logs. “I’ve figured out why you couldn’t call up those files on your terminal,” Louis said. He began to flip the pages of the computer log.

“Why?” Victor asked, as Louis kept searching through the book.

Not finding what he was looking for, he straightened up and glanced around his office. “Ah,” he said, spying a loose sheet of paper and snatching it from the desk top.

“You couldn’t call up the files on Baby Hobbs or Baby Murray because they’d been deleted on November 18,” he said, waving the paper under Victor’s nose.

“Deleted?”

“I’m afraid so,” Louis said. “This is the computer log for November 18, and it clearly shows that the files were deleted.”

“That’s strange,” Victor said. “I don’t suppose you can determine who deleted them, can you?”

“Sure,” Louis said. “By matching the password of the user.”