Mutation

Madeline made a tent with her fingers and leaned back in her chair. Then she cleared her throat. “I saw David on a number of occasions,” she began. “After talking with him at length, it was my opinion that David was using the defense mechanism of projection. It was my feeling that David projected his own feelings of competition and hostility onto VJ.”

“Then the threat wasn’t specific?” Marsha asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Madeline said. “Apparently there had been a specific threat.”

“What was it about?”

“Boy stuff,” Madeline said. “Something about a hiding place that VJ had that David found out about. Something innocuous like that.”

“Could it have been a lab rather than a hiding place?”

Marsha asked.

“Could have been,” Madeline said. “David could have said lab, but I wrote hiding place in the file.”

“Did you ever talk with VJ?” Marsha asked.

“Once,” Madeline said. “I thought it would be helpful to get a feeling for the reality about the relationship. VJ was extremely straightforward. He told me that his brother David had been jealous of him from the day VJ had arrived home from the hospital.” Then Madeline laughed. “VJ told me that he could remember arriving home after he was born. That tickled me at the time.”

“Did David ever say what the threat was?” Marsha asked.

“Oh, yes,” Madeline said. “David told me that VJ had threatened to kill him.”

From the Pendleton Academy Marsha drove to Boston. Much as she resisted putting the pieces together, she felt utterly compelled to assemble them. She kept telling herself that everything she was learning was either circumstantial, coincidental, or innocuous. She had already lost one child.

But even so, she knew she couldn’t rest until she found the truth.

Marsha had taken her psychiatric residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Visiting there was like going home. But she didn’t go to the psych unit. Instead, she went directly to Pathology and found a senior resident, Dr.

Preston Gordon.

“Sure I can do that,” Preston said. “Since you don’t know the birthday, it will take a little searching, but nothing else is happening right now.”

Marsha followed Preston into the center of the pathology department where they sat at one of the hospital computers.

There were several Raymond Cavendishes listed in the system, but by knowing the approximate year of death, they were able to find the Raymond Cavendish of Boxford, Massachusetts.

“All right,” Preston said. “Here comes the record.” The screen filled with the man’s hospital record. Preston scrolled through. “Here’s the biopsy,” he said. “And here’s the diagnosis: liver cancer of Kupffer cell of reticuloendothelial origin.” Preston whistled. “Now that’s a zebra. I’ve never even heard of that one.”

“Can you tell me if there have been any similar cases treated at the hospital?” Marsha asked.

Preston returned to the keyboard and began a search. It took him only a few minutes to get the answer. A name flashed on the screen. “There has only been one other case at this hospital,” he said. “The name was Janice Fay.”

Victor tuned his car radio to a station that played oldies but goodies and sang along happily to a group of songs from the late fifties, a time when he’d been in high school. He was in a great mood on his drive home, having spent the day totally engrossed and spellbound by VJ’s prodigious output from his hidden basement laboratory. It had turned out to be exactly as VJ had said it would be: beyond his wildest dreams.

As Victor turned into the driveway, the songs had changed to the late sixties, and he belted out “Sweet Caroline” along with Neil Diamond. He drove the car around the house and waited for the garage door to open. After he pulled the car into the garage, he sang until the song was over before turning off the ignition, getting out and skirting Marsha’s car, heading into the house.

“Marsha!” Victor yelled as soon as he got inside. He knew she was home because her car was there, but the lights weren’t on.

“Marsha!” he yelled again, but her name caught in his throat. She was sitting no more than ten feet from him in the relative darkness of the family room. “There you are,” he said.

“Where’s VJ?” she asked. She sounded tired.

“He insisted on going off on his bicycle,” Victor said.

“But have no fear. Pedro’s with him.”

“I’m not worried about VJ at this point,” Marsha said.

“Maybe we should worry about the security man.”

Victor turned on a light. Marsha shielded her eyes.

“Please,” she said. “Keep it off for now.”

Victor obliged. He’d hoped she’d be in a better mood by the time he got home, but it wasn’t looking good. Undaunted, Victor sat down and launched into lavish praise of VJ’s work and his astounding accomplishments. He told Marsha that the implantation protein really worked. The evidence was incontrovertible. Then he told her the pièce de résistance: solving the implantation problem unlocked the door to the mystery of the entire differentiation process.