The Prophet Motive (25 page)

“Hey, Tom.”

“You got Marilyn Michaelsen back there somewhere?”

Tom glanced into the trees. “Sure do.”

“She’s coming with me. Won’t be back today neither.”

“I’ll go get her for you.” With a snicker for the palomino, Jim swiveled the animal and trotted off.

Tom jumped out of the vehicle to stretch his legs and light up a Marlboro. He spotted Marilyn between two rows of trees, less than fifty yards away. She wore a blue bandanna across her head and pushed a mower.

She slowed to a stop and dropped the handle as Jim pulled up beside her and spoke. A moment later, she jerked her head toward Tom and froze. Tom tensed too, something in her body language screaming alarm. Would she bolt?

No. He was wrong. Her body relaxed, and she sauntered up to the horse and began to pet its neck as she struck up a conversation with Jim. Tom took a deep drag on his cigarette, feeling a little foolish. She didn’t know enough to know how much trouble she was in now.

Or did she? Suddenly Jim flipped off the horse, saddle and all, and crashed to the ground. The horse turned skittish, and as it scrambled away, Marilyn ran up on it from behind, vaulted onto its back like a gymnast, and hugged the animal’s neck as it shot away . . .

“Shit!” Tom tossed his cigarette and lunged for his vehicle. She’d unhitched the saddle belt from beneath Jim while they’d been talking and heaved him over. “Oh, shit!”

He threw the vehicle into gear and gave chase . . .

He caught short glimpses of her through the breaks in the trees, enough to realize that she’d ridden bareback before. She sat easily on the palomino, clutching its mane, her own hair the same color, as if the two were one animal.

In the peach orchard, where the lanes between the trees were wider, his SUV was able to pull up directly behind the horse, its tail now less than ten feet from his front end. He floored the gas pedal, intending to plow straight into the animal’s haunches and unseat Marilyn—until he noticed the perimeter fence looming straight ahead and slammed on his brakes instinctively. Horse and rider sailed over the barrier clean and neat and bolted into specks on the horizon.

Marilyn knew something was wrong as soon as she opened the door to her Visalia motel room and saw the face of Deputy Fry. His eyes were a pair of tortured prisoners in adjoining caves.

“Marilyn,” he said, “something terrible’s happened.” In a hoarse and halting voice, he delivered his news . . .

“No,” she heard herself whisper. “That can’t be.” His words numbed her. Dizzied her. She stumbled backwards, turned, and wobbled across the room, through an open sliding glass door, and onto the rear balcony, where she halted, gripping a column for balance. Under the lash of her own guilt, the numbness fell away, like flayed skin, and the sting of the horror touched her raw. She wailed into the night.

Behind her came footsteps. She turned to face Deputy Fry, telling him, “It’s my fault. I failed to protect him. And now his life is ruined. Captain Switzer’s too.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Marilyn.” He crushed her with a bear hug. She spent her remaining tears in his arms.

When she could speak coherently again, she used the phone by the bedside to wake her co-worker and fellow police psychologist, Dale McPherson, from a sound sleep. Dale had already heard the news about John and Captain Switzer. He knew also that John would be appearing before a judge in the morning. The two psychologists agreed that, considering the circumstances, John would surely be transferred from jail, remanded to a secure psychiatric facility for evaluation.

“Can you be in court?” she said.

“If it’s important.”

“It is. I want you to introduce yourself to the public defender. Tell whoever it is that you wish to relieve the state of the cost of committing John to a public mental hospital for pretrial evaluation and treatment. Offer to pay to have John committed to a private facility with a secure unit, specifically the Wellspring Institute in Los Altos. I’ll reimburse you for any upfront fees.”

“Why Wellspring?” Dale said.

“I have a friend who’s a psychiatrist there. She’s familiar with the cult phenomenon. If I talk to her, I know she’ll agree to arrange for a deprogrammer to treat John as soon as the psychiatric evaluation is complete.”

“The judge will have to agree too.”

“Of course, but that shouldn’t be a problem, don’t you think? Resources are so scarce in the criminal justice system, the public defender and the judge should both jump at the offer.”

“You’re probably right. Are you coming back now?”

“No, Dale, not yet. I’m going to stay right here and continue with the investigation. I’m going to get this son of a bitch, L. Rob Piper. You won’t believe what he’s been doing to his followers.” She gave Dale a brief account of the collection and sale of human essences. “I’m going to get Piper put away for life, if it’s the last thing I do. I’m already well on the way, but I’ve got a lot more work to do.”

Hanging up, she found that Deputy Fry’s countenance wasn’t defiant, wasn’t matching her own mood. It was sorrowful.

“Marilyn,” he said, stepping closer to where she sat on the bed, “the investigation’s on hold. And you’ve been called back to San Francisco. A ‘Captain Baroudi’ phoned me this afternoon, before either one of us knew you’d fled the cult.”

Marilyn’s gaze plummeted to the floor. Her intestines twisted into knots as she absorbed this latest blow, wondered how many more blows she could take, considered whether a tactical retreat was in fact in order. Then she looked up at Fry.

“I’m staying. We still need to find Daryl Finck. We still need to link Piper to the murders. And I know my way around that farm. With a good disguise, I could come and go as I please. At least by day.”

“Marilyn, don’t do this. Don’t be a foolish amateur. Go back to San Francisco. Help John get well. Thanks to you, we’ve already got enough evidence to close Piper down and send him and his buddy, Mahorn, off to prison for a long, long time.”

Marilyn stood. “I want Piper’s head on a platter!” Fry stepped back, reflexively. “I want him charged with everything. All those charges you mentioned. Not just fraud, but conspiracy to commit murders, accomplice to murders. I want justice for Esperanza Chavez and Fred Ames and Captain Ron Switzer and Inspector John Richetti too!”

“So do I, Marilyn, so do I, but—”

She cut him off. “Did your criminal records check turn up anything on Piper?”

“Marilyn—”

“Well? Did it?”

Fry sighed. “Yes.”

“And?”

“One arrest, one conviction. Doctor Lawrence Robert Piper served eight years in prison for rape. That’s where he met Tom Mahorn. They were on the same cell block together.”

“Did you say, ‘Doctor Piper?’ ”

“That’s right. I accessed the trial records and had a peek. Piper’s a brilliant guy. Graduated from Yale Medical School. Became a prominent scientist in Los Angeles, a neurophysiologist. That is, until he raped a former girlfriend. She was a fellow research scientist. Happened back in—”

“Piper is a neurophysiologist?”

“
Was
a neurophysiologist,” Fry said. “His work was in experimental neurology, whatever that means.”

It means he was experimenting with new procedures for operating on the nervous system, including the brain . . .”

Her voice trailed off as an idea came to her, a vague idea she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around yet. She sat down on the bed again, deep in thought.

“What is it?” Fry asked.

“Sssh,” Marilyn said. “Let me think.”

Her pulse rate slowed as her creative juices began to flow, forming connections between seemingly disparate elements in her knowledge base. Several minutes passed. Fry paced at the periphery of her vision, but she didn’t notice him much until he approached, exasperated, unable to stand the silence any longer.

“Marilyn, what
is
it?”

“I’ve been trying to make sense out of all the strangeness. All the seemingly paranormal events that no one could explain. First we had the death of Esperanza Chavez, a strange, almost surreal death. The intense pain in her head, leading to suicide. Then Earthbound snatching her body. Her corpse.

“Why? Why snatch it? Then came that marathon of tears John and I witnessed. The two supposed conduits to Mother Nature, summoned by The Wizard. And then, of course, the bullfight in Tijuana. That . . . that really blew my mind . . .”

“Mine too,” Fry said, nodding.

“And now the singing sheep . . .”

“What did you say? ‘Singing sheep?’ ”

“That happened today.” She told him all about it.

“You’re putting me on, right?”

“Nope,” she said.

“C’mon now! Mary Had a Little Lamb?”

“And there are other strange things I’ve witnessed, things I haven’t mentioned to you.”

“Like what?”

“Well, I’ve come across three cult members on that farm who share the same unusual medical condition. They blink their eyes repeatedly, constantly.”

“You mean all day long?”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s a rare neurological disorder, usually caused by head trauma. I’d assumed that it meant the cult leaders were dishing out beatings. Severe beatings for the purpose of maintaining discipline. But now I don’t think that’s correct, and I may—I just may—be able to finally explain all of these bizarre occurrences. I think there’s a common thread. But to be sure, I need to make a phone call to another colleague.”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

Marilyn reached for the phone, dialed Information, and obtained the home phone number of Sanford Allen, a professor in the Berkeley Psychology department. His main area of research was in brain physiology.

As the phone rang, she glanced at her watch. It was a few minutes past midnight.

Mrs. Allen answered. Marilyn introduced herself, apologized profusely for phoning so late at night, then begged to speak to her husband, saying it was an emergency, “an awfully big emergency.” A minute later, Sanford came to the phone.

“You’ve made my wife highly suspicious, young lady, even if I am a fat old man. What do you mean by calling at this hour?”

“I’m so sorry to wake you, Sanford, but it’s urgent, I need to ask you some questions about electrical brain stimulation.”

“What?” he said, his voice cracking. “How in God’s name can that be urgent?”

“I’m assisting the police with a criminal investigation. I’ll explain everything later. Please, Sanford, put on a pot of coffee and talk to me.”

It had been possible for decades, Marilyn knew, for neurotechnologists to elicit predictable emotions and behaviors from mammals—including human beings—by implanting miniature electrodes in the brain and passing electrical current through specific areas. When the current was turned off, the elicited response would cease.

“What kinds of emotions and behaviors can be elicited with depth-electrodes?” she asked.

“You name it,” Sanford said. “You can implant the things in virtually any part of the brain, so you can elicit virtually any reaction you want by prodding the right cell clusters. Put one in a certain part of the septal region, for example, and you arouse the subject sexually. Put one in the hypothalamus, and you cause hunger. Place another one close by, about a millimeter away, and you cause thirst. You can do anything. You can cause the subject to feel intense pleasure or pain, or hear simple tones, or see colored lights. You can elicit hallucinations or old memories, accelerate the heart, dilate the pupils, cause limb movements. I could go on.”

“Could you stop a charging bull cold in its tracks?”

“Of course. It’s been done. In fact, the very first experiment demonstrating transdermal communication with the brain used a bull for the test subject. The experiment was conducted by a flamboyant Spaniard, who was a Yale professor at the time. Doctor Jose Delgado.”

“Yale University, huh?” Marilyn said into the phone, glancing over at Fry, who paced between the sliding glass door and the television, eavesdropping intently.

“Yes, why?” Sanford asked.

“Never mind,” she said. “When did this experiment with the bull take place?”

“Nineteen sixties. Sixty-three, I think.”

“How did the experiment work?”

“Well, first, Delgado planted electrodes in the caudate nucleus, the area of the brain that controls movement. Then he tied a radio frequency receiver between the bull’s horns. The receiver was connected by wires to the electrodes in the bull’s brain. Delgado had the bull charge, and then he used a portable stimulator to send a radio signal through the receiver to the electrodes in the caudate nucleus. The low voltage current caused the animal to stop instantly in its tracks.”

“If all that could be done more than four decades ago,” Marilyn said, “what could be done now? In particular, would it be possible to hide the receiver subcutaneously?”

“Absolutely. Delgado later developed such a receiver himself. In the nineteen seventies. It was placed just below the skin. The receiver was the size of a fifty-cent piece. He’d created this technology in the hope of regulating major brain disorders electronically, creating brain pacemakers, if you will, but medical interest in this kind of intervention diminished, for a long time, in favor of psychopharmacology. Only recently has there been renewed interest, spurred by advances in computation and microelectronics and brain-scanning technologies and so on.”