Sins of the Flesh Read online

  Her voice ceased, her explanation apparently over.

  “So you rented the women apartments and supervised their post-operative progress,” Carmine said.

  The slim figure stiffened. “I most definitely did not!” Jess snapped. “Each one came to me for an operation, then returned from whence she came with specific instructions as to what must be done and a request for a full outline of that progress for my records. I had no knowledge on the patient before the relevant January second, nor after it.”

  “I’d like to digress,” said Carmine. “What did your own operation on these women entail?”

  “As the brain has no ability to feel pain,” Jess said, answering in a way that told her audience she was used to such questions, “provided the invasion is relatively small and benign, one doesn’t need to worry about sequelae—sorry, after-effects—due to the invasion itself. It’s vitally important that the patient be fully conscious! I need general anesthesia only for fixing the stereotaxic frame’s calipers into the bone of the skull—the skull must be rigidly fixed, and the calipers do that. Of course the patient is strapped immobile as well. I leave no scars because the burr holes for the calipers are surrounded by hair, and I raise no bone flap. Instead, I go in through the orbits—the two round holes in the skull where the eyeballs reside. It’s easy. I simply retract each eyeball—what’s the matter, Delia?”

  Delia had gone white. “You pull the eyeball out?”

  Jess laughed. “No! Retract means I push the eyeball very gently just enough out of the way to let me insert my instruments around or behind it. The eyeball itself is quite unharmed, really! On the other side of orbit bone lies brain, and with good stereotaxy plus my own knowledge, I can drill through orbit bone, maneuver my microelectrodes, and be where I want to be in the patient’s brain. With the patient awake, I electrically stimulate, guided by her answers, until I find the areas I must ablate—that is, destroy. Even though she may not have spoken logically for years, she does when I stimulate. It’s a very long, taxing procedure.”

  “How can a demented person answer logically?” Delia asked.

  “The dementia falls away as the pathways are adjusted.”

  “What do you mean by adjusted?” Carmine asked.

  “I destroy some pathways, and as I do so others, freed from the malign influence of those I have destroyed, actually begin to function as they were intended to,” Jess said, matter-of-factly.

  “What is stereotaxy?” Carmine asked.

  “It’s a mathematical plotting of the brain.” Jess said, “akin to the navigation co-ordinates of the world, but different. Externally, the stereotaxic device renders the head immobile and possesses mathematical co-ordinates that have been calculated from many brains in what is called a stereotaxic atlas. Having the stereotaxic atlas enables me to place my electrodes and other invasive tools in exactly the right place. There are limitations, unfortunately,” she said in the same tone of voice. “The atlas was prepared using skulls of a common kind, skulls those six women owned, and that many own, including males—it’s possible to extrapolate simple enlargement or diminution on the skull, provided its proportions are identical—Walter Jenkins, for example, has this skull, merely larger.”

  “So not all candidates for your kind of surgery are suitable?” Carmine asked.

  “Correct. I have to see every kind of X-ray, plain or with the addition of dyes or air, plus a specific set of measurements, before I can decide.”

  “Do you mean these requirements could be—well, posted to you in the mail?”

  “Why on earth not? Together with blood tests and other relevant information.”

  “How long did each woman remain in your care, Doctor?” Delia asked, light dawning.

  “Admission was at six a.m. and discharge at nine p.m., January second of the years between 1963 and 1968, inclusive,” Jess said, “but I first saw each one at seven, and paid my last visit at six p.m. So I myself can state that I saw each woman for a total of eleven hours. Nine of those hours were on an operating table. None of the patients exhibited aftereffects, so each was discharged per ambulance as arranged prior to operation.”

  “Who assisted you to operate, Doctor?” Carmine asked.

  “A professional neurosurgical technician named Ernest Leto. He and I had worked together at the National Hospital, Queens Square, in London. Since 1959, he’s freelanced so he can work with the surgeons he admires.”

  “I’ll need his address,” Delia said.

  The thin black brows lifted. “I fail to see why, but good luck! I placed an ad in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

  “I see. Considering the gravity of the surgery, Dr. Wainfleet, you think a fifteen-hour admission adequate?”

  “The post-operative course for this kind of surgery isn’t plagued by the usual bugbears—hemorrhages, wound infections and extreme pain. I operate scrupulously cleanly in a scrupulously clean environment, and have never had a wound infection. Any pain takes the form of headache, but is nothing like, for instance, the pain of migraine. Over-the-counter medications relieve it.”

  “Did you use an anesthesiologist?” Delia asked.

  “No. I acted as my own anesthesiologist, with Mr. Leto as my assistant. This was possible because Mr. Leto is expert at positioning the stereotaxic frame. I left him to do that while I administered the general anesthetic and injected the local anesthetic in both orbits. Once the stereotaxic frame was in position, I could rouse the patient. Mr. Leto then kept custody of a syringe of general anesthetic he could inject through the IV line very rapidly if the patient became violent. As they had been adequately pre-medicated, they never were uncooperative,” Jess said, her pride obvious.

  Carmine stared at her a little grimly. “Dr. Wainfleet, we brought you in this morning to get a lesson on the possibilities of brain surgery for psychiatric reasons, but I confess I didn’t expect you to solve—partially, anyway—a missing persons case we’ve had on our hands for some years. Candidly, I’m staggered. Before I decide what to do with you, I’ll have to ask you more questions, but if in answering you incriminate yourself, you should have a lawyer present. It’s your choice. We can conclude this session now and reconvene when you’ve found a lawyer, and I’m warning you that you might need one; or we can continue without you having legal representation.”

  “Let us continue,” she said, seeming unconcerned. “I’ve done nothing wrong, and can’t incriminate myself, as you put it. Ask your questions, Captain.”

  “Were you aware of police interest in the six women you operated on, Doctor?”

  “Absolutely not. Each was a patient a year apart.”

  “Even though you have social contact with Sergeant Carstairs?”

  “I knew she had a missing persons case, but we don’t discuss our work when we meet, Captain.”

  “Doctor, you must have some idea what happened to your patients after you operated on them. Surgeons don’t operate and then fail to follow up—it’s not Hippocratic.”

  Dr. Wainfleet sighed, her hands moving as if she was holding onto her good nature. “You want details I can’t give you, sir, because I don’t know them,” she said slowly. “The cases were not American. The patients were not American. The referring agency was not American. It happens every day, Captain! Someone in a particular country is the best practitioner in his or her field—usually medicine, but there are other fields—and gets referrals from abroad. Well, these six women were all referred to me from abroad, and came to this country so that I, an expert in the field, could operate on their brains.”

  “Then there will be records of that with the I.N.S.”

  “I have no idea how the patients were processed, but I presume they were processed. It was my understanding that they left the country a week after surgery.”

  “But you didn’t follow up on that?”

  “My contract was specific. Just the operation plus a very detailed description of postoperative care for six months.”

  “Can
you produce that contract, Doctor?”

  She looked haughty. “Of course.”

  “Then we require you to produce it.” Carmine paused; the more he was in Jess Wainfleet’s company, the less he liked her, but he knew Delia was fond of her, which put him in an awkward position. “Do you really expect me to believe, Doctor, that you knew nothing about the six months each of your patients spent in Holloman living quiet but normal lives?”

  “I knew they would be somewhere, but I assumed it would be outside America. There’s no point in—er—grilling me, because I genuinely don’t know one thing more about these women than that each was my patient for a much-modified lobotomy of the prefrontal region of the brain. I saw each woman on the day of operation, and that is the end of the matter.”

  “I need the name and location of your referring agency as well as your contract, Doctor.”

  “No, I can’t give you that,” she said flatly.

  “The name at least will be in your contract.”

  “True, but good luck tracing it.”

  “Dr. Wainfleet, you’re a medical scientist with what I gather is an unparalleled knowledge of neuroanatomy—I have your word for it that your reputation extends far enough abroad to attract foreign patients,” Carmine said, laboring to penetrate her veneer of self-righteous confidence. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that you didn’t follow up on your surgery?”

  “Oh, but I did! Just not in person, as I understood my subjects had returned to their countries. The reports I received indicated recovery to the extent I had hoped for—indeed, in two cases, Silberfein and Bell-Simons, the recovery was superior to all my expectations. I think you fail to understand, Captain, that these women were institutionalized, certified insane. The legally insane have few rights and little redress. They are at the mercy of their keepers, who unfortunately tend to be unaware of emotions like compassion. I am not in the business of destroying souls, for I believe a soul is that vital spark inside the brain that makes an organism human rather than animal. To produce a zombie is an offense against Nature. It is purely a cost-effective measure, and I don’t deal in such measures. I have done nothing wrong, and I defy you to prove that I have.”

  Delia had played little part in the interview, which rolled down on her like a slow landslide; a trickle of small, troubling things that kept increasing in magnitude and frequency until it swept her away, overwhelmed. How could she look at this woman who had been such a good friend in any way approaching the old way? Oh, she would try, but she was too rational not to know her efforts would be in vain. No, she wouldn’t tell Carmine, but she herself couldn’t overlook some of the conversations that had occurred between Jess, Ivy and her, Delia. The names of the Shadow Women had been spoken, she was positive of it. In which case, Jess had deliberately suppressed the fact that they had been her patients. Knowing her friend, Delia could grasp at why the secret had been kept: Jess would simply have told herself that nothing she knew or had done would advance the case. The only proof would be the production of the missing women alive and, apparently, much better than before the surgery. But that she wasn’t willing to do. Why? All Delia could think was that Jess herself didn’t know who they were or what had happened to them postoperatively.

  It was all forgivable between true friends, but her career was affected; she was put at a disadvantage by the conduct of one who called herself a friend, and she disliked the sensation.

  Carmine was speaking again. “Do you realize, Dr. Wainfleet, that you are now a suspect in a case of multiple murder?”

  Jess smiled and clicked her tongue. “Nonsense!” she said crisply. “What I’ve told you should be sufficient to close your file as solved, Captain. The chances that my patients have been murdered are millions to one. Clearly they survived some kind of social adjustment test that followed my recommendations, and have returned from whence they came. To prove murder without a body is extremely difficult, but to prove six murders without one single body is so difficult it would be laughed out of court.”

  “You’re quite right, Doctor,” Carmine said. “You’re free to go. However, there is one more matter I’d like to clarify, if I may?”

  “You may ask,” she said stiffly, at liberty now to display her outrage at the turn events had taken, and not looking at Delia.

  “Walter Jenkins. How does he fit in? Is he yet another triumph for your kind of surgery?”

  She couldn’t help herself; her face lit up. “Absolutely!”

  “Did he suffer the same kind of disorder?”

  “The only similarity was in antisocial behavior, and even in that the differences were as many as the leaves on a tree. Walter’s syndrome was unique. I am still looking for another of his kind, but thus far I’ve had no luck. Good day.” And she swept out, taking, thought Delia, all the honors of battle.

  “That taught us our place,” Delia said to Carmine.

  “I’m very sorry, Deels. She’s your friend.”

  “Was, more like, though I’ll persist, chief. She can’t just virtually confess to six crimes of some kind and expect us to take her word that she’s committed no crimes,” Delia said firmly. “She awed me, which means she turned me into a puppet and pulled my strings for some purpose I don’t know. Or that’s how I feel after this morning. I don’t know, Carmine! Do you honestly think Jess could murder six inoffensive women? And why, if she did palliative surgery on them? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “You’re right, it doesn’t. Except that she’s a fanatic of some kind. For all our sakes, I hope it’s the legal kind. She’s going to go back to HI and dig out the contract, plus operation reports on six women. All aboveboard, try to prove otherwise.”

  Carmine ejected the tape from the recorder and tucked it into a special pocket in a cardboard file folder he proceeded to label WAINFLEET, DR. JESSICA with a felt marker; the result was so neat and regular that it might almost have been machine done.

  “Your first conflict between duty and friendship,” he said.

  “One expects a first for that, does one?”

  “One should, but never does,” he said gently. “That’s why it hurts so much. If you want off the Shadow case, Delia, then all you have to do is say so.”

  “No, boss, I’m not as wimpy as that. If she has done anything wrong, she’ll be very hard to catch out, I can tell you that. I think I’m developing an aversion for people whose professions start with ‘p’—psychiatrists, priests, paper-pushers, politicians.”

  His mouth twitched. “What about police? Starts with a p!”

  “It’s c for cop,” she said gruffly. “I forgot to ask her about the studio pictures of the women.”

  “Immaterial,” he said. “You may be a little stiff with Jess for a while, but you’ve still got Ivy.”

  Delia brightened. “Yes, I do. But she’s terribly troubled, Carmine, and I don’t know why. In all honesty, neither one may prove a lasting friend.”

  He frowned. “Well, you’ve got family, and family never ever changes. The pains in the posterior continue to be pains in the posterior, and the gems shine as bright as your eyes.”

  Said eyes glowed at him; he was right, as always. What she really needed was tea with Aunt Gloria Silvestri.

  SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1969

  When the spirit moved her, Ivy could cook very well; the trouble was getting her into the right spirit. The heat wave had broken in a terrifying cluster of storm cells that hung over Connecticut for two days, unleashing their fury one by one, and making the inhabitants wonder how any place this hot could possibly get that cold in winter. For Ivy, the proper stimulus for an orgy in the kitchen—just not her Little Busquash kitchen. If she cooked, she used the stainless steel perfection of Rufus’s home next door. All of which was well and good, though none of it answered Ivy’s moving spirit.

  The real cause was her worry about Jess, who had gone for an interview at the Holloman PD on Tuesday morning and refused to discuss it in any way. She wouldn’t even tell Ivy who had been p
resent!

  Therefore, a dinner at Busquash House on Saturday with a severely limited guest list: Rha, Rufus, Jess and Ivy. Not a handsome waiter or assistant in sight. Extreme privacy and three loyal, loving friends ought to do the trick, especially if the food were out of this world. Oh, gastronomy didn’t work on Jess, but it set a mood, and it certainly worked on two of the most charming men in existence; if Jess could resist Rha and Rufus combined and properly briefed, then it would be a first, even for Jess. No one knew better than Ivy how a united front of several intelligent, resourceful people could bolster the efforts of a lone fighter. Time that Jess was made to see that she wasn’t as solitary as she imagined. The specter of Walter Jenkins rose before Ivy’s mind as she busied herself in the kitchen, and she had no idea whether to laugh or to shiver: Jess’s relying on Walter as sole ally was both brilliant and disastrous, but it was definitely, definitely inadequate. Jess needed allies—allies in the plural.

  For a first course Ivy was serving a seafood salad of small pasta bows, chunks of lobster and chunks of jumbo shrimp, all mixed in a pink mayonnaise and horseradish cream dressing; she garnished it with tissue-thin slices of varicolored bell peppers and tendrils of crab. After it would come something that looked dull and boring: a steak-and-potato casserole whose appearance belied its stunning taste.

  As she worked, Ivy thought, trying to see a way out for all of them. The trouble was that no one could accurately see what the future contained, even though at the time the future had loomed ahead unmistakably, couldn’t go anywhere else. Then you found that it did go somewhere else, despite its looking identical on the surface—it was the layers, and how they tilted the planes into geometrical shapes that were not what they seemed at all—looking straight and perfect, but up close and in reality skewed, twisted, jumbled. Like getting old, thought Ivy, who was getting old. Her eyes were the perfect example of how one looked at the future: everything looked perfect because her lenses didn’t focus as well as they ought anymore. When a merciless magnifier was put on what seemed smooth, it was a lava field of obstacles.