Chapter 23 - The Triplicate Records
The ambulance smelled of isopropyl alcohol, wet wool, and the bitter trace of burnt copper radiating from my own skin.
The paramedic, a young woman with hollow circles under her eyes, was trying to clean the crust of dried blood from the Thanksgiving wound. Every time her gauze pressed against the right parietal ridge, my left eye twitched involuntarily.
"You’ve got severe swelling around the suture line," she murmured, shining a penlight into my pupils. "Your left pupil is sluggish. Did the hospital take post-op films after they put this dressing on?"
"They took a CT," I said, my teeth still rattling. "They found a five-inch plate. They told me it was surgical titanium from an old skull fracture when I was four."
"Who told you that?"
"My father. For twenty-eight years."
She didn't answer. She pulled back slightly, her eyes flicking to the journal sitting on my knees. I had pulled it out the moment she turned her back to fetch an IV bag.
The cover was stiffened by moisture, the edges warped into brittle scallops. On the first leaf, written in purple indelible pencil that had bled through the paper like a venous bruise, was an entry dated *November 14, 1991*:
> *Subject A: Terminated at 18 months. Rejection of neural lead array at the dura mater. Uncontrollable grand mal activity. Disposed in trench sector 1.*
>
> *Subject B (Arthur): Lead array accepted. Encephalogram demonstrates persistent suppression of secondary trauma recall. Acoustic threshold holding at 4,000 Hz. If tone is sustained, speech center ceases vocalization within 12 seconds. He will believe the scar is from the fall down the cellar stairs. The mother continues to object. Her access to the cellar has been revoked permanently.*
>
> *Subject C: Implantation scheduled for third trimester post-delivery. Institutional funding secured through the Blackwood Foundation via Dr. H. Evans.*
Dr. H. Evans.
The name felt like an ice pick driven through my ear. Dr. Harold Evans had been my primary pediatrician until I was sixteen years old. He was the one who signed my school exemption forms. He was the one who told my mother that my childhood seizures were simply "night terrors" brought on by an overactive imagination and weak blood.
He was also the doctor who had walked into the emergency room bay four hours ago, patted my shoulder with his liver-spotted hand, and told Detective Vance that I had a documented history of paranoid schizophrenia and self-inflicted head trauma.
"Artie?"
Marcus stood at the ambulance doors, his jacket torn, mud smeared across his forehead. The troopers had finally let him go after checking his PI license and verifying his status as my legal power of attorney.
"They're bringing something up from the trench," Marcus said, his voice flat, devoid of its usual brashness.
"What?" I asked, closing the journal and jamming it into my boot.
"A box. A zinc utility chest. It was buried four feet beneath the third crib." Marcus stepped into the rig, pulling the doors half-shut against the wind. "Vance cracked the latch with a prybar. It’s full of dental casts. And audio reels. Hundreds of them."
"I have one of the tapes," I whispered.
Marcus stared at me. "Where did you get it?"
"From Crib A. The duffel bag."
Marcus reached down and felt the front of my jacket. "Art, Vance is calling for the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit out of Philadelphia. He thinks James was running an unregistered black-market adoption ring with clinical trials. But that’s not the worst of it."
"Tell me."
Marcus looked out the frosted rear window toward the house. "They ran the serial number on that excavator. It doesn’t belong to a rental company. It was purchased three days ago from an industrial auction in Scranton."
"Purchased by who?"
May you like
"By Billy," Marcus said softly. "Using an account registered to your mother's maiden name. Arthur... your mother didn't die in that hospice in Maryland twelve years ago. Her Social Security number was used to sign the delivery manifest for that backhoe yesterday morning."
***
