Adrienne let her head fall back against the wall behind the bed. “Where did this happen?” she asked.
“San Francisco.” Shaw filled her in on McBride’s background, from Bethel to Bowdoin to Stanford, including his parents’ deaths. “Bright young man—no question. Magna cum laude. Doctorate in psychology, prestigious fellowships—it was all ahead of him. Until…”
“What?”
“He went off the deep end. Suffered a psychotic break, of some kind. Beat his family to death. Swears he wasn’t on drugs, though you have to wonder if angel dust wasn’t involved.”
“He killed his wife?” Adrienne couldn’t believe it. Didn’t believe it.
“And his infant son. Three months old.”
They fell silent for a moment. Then she asked: “Was he arrested, or… what?”
“‘Or what,’ indeed!” the psychiatrist exclaimed. “According to the patient, everything slips into soft focus at that point. He remembers the murders, but that’s it. The next thing he knows, he’s in Washington, and he’s Jeffrey Duran, therapist.”
“So… where is he now?”
“In restraints. I have him on A-4. Security ward.”
Adrienne couldn’t imagine it. “You think he’ll try to escape?”
“No. I think he’ll try to kill himself. In fact, I’m sure of it.”
“Then… “ Adrienne was at a loss for words, and running short on ideas, as well. Finally, she asked, “What about… that thing?”
“The implant?”
“Yes.”
“That could have been a part of the problem, but I really can’t tell you anything. I’m having a helluva time finding out about it,” Shaw complained. “I’ve called the lab three times and… nothing.”
“So—”
“I’ll deal with the lab,” Shaw promised. “But, I have to say that if Mr. McBride’s recollection of himself as a murderer is accurate, it would explain a lot—the dissociation he experienced, the hysterical amnesia—even the sublimation of his personality into an alternate identity.”
“‘If’…”
“Pardon me?” the psychiatrist asked.
“You said, ‘if’ his memory is accurate.”
“So I did.”
Adrienne was quiet for a moment. Then she picked up the complimentary pen beside the telephone, and asked, “When is this supposed to have happened?”
“Five years ago—in San Francisco.”
“Let me look into it,” she suggested. “And if I find out it’s true… ?”
“I don’t think either of us would have any choice. We’d have to notify the police.”
She knew he was right. But she also knew there was room for doubt—and that any call to the police at this time would be premature. Until the day before, the recently-confessed murderer had been someone else entirely. “I just can’t believe it,” she said.
“Neither can I,” Shaw replied. “I really can’t. But I’ll tell you one thing.”
“What?”
“He does.”
The next morning, Ray Shaw sat behind the wheel of his Mercedes, going nowhere on his way to work. Unmoving, the car was stranded in the middle lane of the George Washington Bridge, immersed in a cacophony of horns. Irritated, Shaw removed the Star TAC from his briefcase, punched in a number that he knew as well as his own, and laid the cellphone against his right ear.
The thing was, Raymond C. Shaw was not a man who asked favors of other people. Not often, anyway, and on the rare occasions that he did, he expected the favors to be granted—especially when, as now, the prospective grantor was someone with whom he’d played squash, twice a week, for years.
Charley Dorgan was 1) his best friend and 2) the senior research physicist at Columbia University’s Laboratory of Engineering and Applied Materials. Shaw had sent him the implant for analysis within an hour of removing it from Lew McBride’s hippocampus, and only three hours after losing to Dorgan in straight sets at the Manhattan Sports Club.
That Dorgan had not yet gotten back to him was only mildly surprising: the physicist was a very busy man, juggling his teaching responsibilities while presiding over a department that had lucrative and complex relationships to a number of private firms and government agencies. So Shaw wasn’t really shocked that Dorgan should need prodding. But he was surprised to find that his calls were not getting returned.
And it pissed him off.
Charley was an old friend. When he pulled the Dorgan string, he expected it to hum.
So he called him—again. This time, at home. At seven in the morning. “Guess who?”
Dorgan grunted.
“Charley, it’s—”
“I know who it is.”
“Well?” Shaw asked, his voice larded with as much irony as he could manage.
“Well, what?”
“I’m calling about… about the object I sent you.”
Dorgan’s reply consisted of a long silence.
“Hello?” This, from Shaw.
“I’m here,” Dorgan replied.
“Good, because—”
“I really can’t talk about it, Ray”
Shaw thought he’d misheard him. “You can’t what?”
“I said I can’t talk about it. Neither of us should.”
“I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” Shaw replied. “What are you—”
“Look—I gotta go,” Dorgan told him. “I’m late. I’ll talk to you later.” And with that, he hung up, leaving his squash partner sputtering into his Star TAC.
By now, Adrienne knew the lions’ names: Patience and Fortitude. And she also knew where to go to find a computer that she could use to log onto Nexis. Sitting down at an open terminal in one of the library’s computer rooms, she went to the Nexis Web site and entered Slough, Hawley’s user-ID and password. When the appropriate page came up, she hit the Search button, and then News. Finally, she entered McBride’s name in the panel for search terms, then added, San Francisco, 1996 and—just to be certain—1995 and 1997.
Thirty seconds went by before a list of documents materialized on the screen. All in all, there were 204 that mentioned someone named McBride in the context of San Francisco during the relevant years. These included—indeed, were dominated by—trivial references that had nothing to do with anything. There were P/R releases announcing the promotions and retirements of executives who happened to be named McBride. Richard McBride. Fred McBride. Delano McBride. There were half a dozen stories about the Prep Football Top 25 (whose number included a wide receiver named Antwan McBride), as well as articles about a geriatric judge, a popular restauranteur, and a Bay area restaurant reviewer who—like the others—was named McBride. And more.
But there was nothing in any newspaper published in America in the last ten years that reported a murder, or a double murder, perpetrated by a man named Lew McBride—or Anything McBride—in San Francisco during the 1990s. Adrienne expanded her search, substituting California for San Francisco, and came up with half a dozen hits. Closer scrutiny, however, revealed that none of these were relevant. A man named McBride had killed a convenience store clerk with a shotgun in Fresno in 1996. Another McBride had been charged with vehicular homicide in a drunk driving incident that left two dead (the family wanted him charged with murder, but he wasn’t). And so on.
And so forth.
She was tempted to return to the Mayflower, call Shaw and tell him that Duran’s most recent identity, like his last, was an illusion. But because she was a lawyer—and prided herself on touching all the bases—on being prepared—she went through the original list.
Which wasn’t so bad, really. The KWIK Search feature highlighted the words in which she was interested as they appeared in each of the stories. So it wasn’t as if she had to read them all—just skim them.
And that’s what she did, going backwards from 1997 until she came to Article No. 138, which appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on June 16, 1996: