ladder. Rats had the same peak. Cats. Dogs. Monkeys.
And man?
A subject was needed
.
Who else but himself? At least that was the plan. He’d need Thomas’s help to be sure; Thomas was the ideal partnerfor an ethically challenged experiment. He was adept, discreet, part of Alex’s inner circle.
Following that terrible night in the dog lab, he had spent two weeks in a state of alternating despair and ecstasy. He had murdered a man. From his limited knowledge of the law it could have been manslaughter, but Thomas nevertheless was dead and he had caused it. His anxiety skyrocketed when the body was found. Every day the articles in the papers would send him into a panic—then the agonizing phone call from the police and the interview with a simpleton detective that had meandered and mercifully sputtered.
Yet, the data was so perfect, so validating, that it almost liberated him from guilt and sent him soaring. Thomas had the peak too: just as predicted; but this was only the beginning. What molecule was lurking at 854.73
m/z
? What was its chemistry, its biology? Was it his Holy Grail? There was no point trying to isolate it from lower species. He eventually had to go to man anyway …
To really know
.
At night, lying awake next to Jessie’s slumbering warmth, so much heat from so small a body, he would turn his mind into a rollicking debating society, arguing the pros and cons of his next steps. He wasn’t a murderer, hewas a biologist. He wasn’t Mengele—he was a scientist. Should a few be sacrificed for the greater good? Could the end justify the means? Even if it did, could he stomach the act?
Could he live with himself?
Still, he couldn’t make the decision. In a madly detached way he felt he had to delegate it to someone else. Then, one night, staring at the dark ceiling, he found the decision transcendently taken out of his hands. He felt like a marionette, his movements controlled by invisible wires. He shifted to an altered consciousness whereby he became external observer, passively watching himself get dressed, drive to the lab, sign in at the security desk, pick up his sample tubes and instruments, sneak out a rear exit, hop into his car and cruise the streets.
The black girl was plump and unattractive: perversely, that had helped. He heard himself invite her into the car and observed the drive across the river to his garage. He watched himself strangle her, enduring her blows until she stopped fighting. Then he dispassionately viewed the medical procedures—the piercing of the skull, penetration of the ventricles, the satisfying rush of clear cerebrospinal fluid filling the barrel of the syringe.
When it was done he waited for the trembling to start but it didn’t. He remained cool. There was a body to dump, tubes to process at the lab. Only when he was back in bed next to Jessie did his body start to shake uncontrollably. Jessie awakened and probably thought he was having one of his nightmares because she held him, cooing and soothing until she regained sleep while he fought it, staying awake until the morning for fear of replaying the killing in his dreams.
It got easier.
The next two murders took on the quality of smoothly replicated experiments and he was able to quickly blot them from his mind and pay less attention to the newspaper stories that followed. Each new set of samples moved the ball farther down the field. He was learning more and more about his mystery peak, refining his methodologies, working out how to fractionate the samples. He felt like a hunter closing in on his prey, slowly, painstakingly flushing it from the thick undergrowth until he had it in his sights, a finger curled around the cold hard trigger.
He had learned so much from Thomas and the first two women. He had high hopes that the samples from the third prostitute, the pumpkin girl, would allow him to fractionate his mystery peak into a pure aliquot—and fromthere, a structure; then from structure to synthesis,
And man?
A subject was needed
.
Who else but himself? At least that was the plan. He’d need Thomas’s help to be sure; Thomas was the ideal partnerfor an ethically challenged experiment. He was adept, discreet, part of Alex’s inner circle.
Following that terrible night in the dog lab, he had spent two weeks in a state of alternating despair and ecstasy. He had murdered a man. From his limited knowledge of the law it could have been manslaughter, but Thomas nevertheless was dead and he had caused it. His anxiety skyrocketed when the body was found. Every day the articles in the papers would send him into a panic—then the agonizing phone call from the police and the interview with a simpleton detective that had meandered and mercifully sputtered.
Yet, the data was so perfect, so validating, that it almost liberated him from guilt and sent him soaring. Thomas had the peak too: just as predicted; but this was only the beginning. What molecule was lurking at 854.73
m/z
? What was its chemistry, its biology? Was it his Holy Grail? There was no point trying to isolate it from lower species. He eventually had to go to man anyway …
To really know
.
At night, lying awake next to Jessie’s slumbering warmth, so much heat from so small a body, he would turn his mind into a rollicking debating society, arguing the pros and cons of his next steps. He wasn’t a murderer, hewas a biologist. He wasn’t Mengele—he was a scientist. Should a few be sacrificed for the greater good? Could the end justify the means? Even if it did, could he stomach the act?
Could he live with himself?
Still, he couldn’t make the decision. In a madly detached way he felt he had to delegate it to someone else. Then, one night, staring at the dark ceiling, he found the decision transcendently taken out of his hands. He felt like a marionette, his movements controlled by invisible wires. He shifted to an altered consciousness whereby he became external observer, passively watching himself get dressed, drive to the lab, sign in at the security desk, pick up his sample tubes and instruments, sneak out a rear exit, hop into his car and cruise the streets.
The black girl was plump and unattractive: perversely, that had helped. He heard himself invite her into the car and observed the drive across the river to his garage. He watched himself strangle her, enduring her blows until she stopped fighting. Then he dispassionately viewed the medical procedures—the piercing of the skull, penetration of the ventricles, the satisfying rush of clear cerebrospinal fluid filling the barrel of the syringe.
When it was done he waited for the trembling to start but it didn’t. He remained cool. There was a body to dump, tubes to process at the lab. Only when he was back in bed next to Jessie did his body start to shake uncontrollably. Jessie awakened and probably thought he was having one of his nightmares because she held him, cooing and soothing until she regained sleep while he fought it, staying awake until the morning for fear of replaying the killing in his dreams.
It got easier.
The next two murders took on the quality of smoothly replicated experiments and he was able to quickly blot them from his mind and pay less attention to the newspaper stories that followed. Each new set of samples moved the ball farther down the field. He was learning more and more about his mystery peak, refining his methodologies, working out how to fractionate the samples. He felt like a hunter closing in on his prey, slowly, painstakingly flushing it from the thick undergrowth until he had it in his sights, a finger curled around the cold hard trigger.
He had learned so much from Thomas and the first two women. He had high hopes that the samples from the third prostitute, the pumpkin girl, would allow him to fractionate his mystery peak into a pure aliquot—and fromthere, a structure; then from structure to synthesis,
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