'I don't know, Lou. I really don't.'
'Listen, I don't want to come across hysterical, but let me explain my position. In general, I stay away from bonds. Both for myself and in managing portfolios. Historically they haven't performed well, and at best you're protecting your flanks. But I have some clients who insist on them: conservative types like you and fools who are so rich they've deluded themselves that they have enough money. So I keep my eye out for good issues and buy in quickly. It doesn't happen often, but Bitter Canyon was one of those times, and I got in heavily. So far I've made a lot of people happy with it. But if it slides, those same people are going to be very unhappy. Murderously so. No matter that last year I was Midas. One mistake and I'm as popular as Arafat at the B'nai B'rith. All those years of charisma building down the proverbial crapper.'
'Like I said, Lou, I haven't heard anything. If I do, I'll call you.'
'You do that,' he said fiercely. 'Collect. Twenty-four hours a day.'
I GOT to campus at seven the next morning. Although the psych building was locked, a side door was open, as Jennifer had promised.
The lab was two floors below ground level, at the end of a murky hall, just past an animal dormitory that smelled of rat chow and dung. She was waiting in the windowless room when I got there, seated at a grey metal table, flanked by stacks of books, photocopied journal articles, and a pad of yellow legal paper. An Edward Gorey poster graced the rear wall. To the left was a black-topped lab table, its gloss dulled by years of scalpel nicks; to the right, a barracks of cages. Atop the table was an open dissection kit and a spool of electrode filament. The cages percussed with activity -dark, oblong blurs banded with white, scurrying from side to side: hooded rats. They seemed especially restless, interrupting their exercise only to scratch, chirp, suck the spouts of their water bottles, or gnaw the bars in protest of man's inhumanity to rat. Some of them had sacrificed for science, their heads topped by pink caps of paraffin. Underneath
the wax, I knew, was exposed brain tissue, strategically lesioned. Extending from the centre of each cap was an inch of filament - electrode lead wire - that quivered with each movement of the skull that housed it.
'Alex.' She rose quickly, as if startled. A rat squeaked in response to the movement.
She'd dressed completely in black: bulky sweater; skintight denims; high-heeled knee boots. Her tawny hair was shower-damp; her face, freshly scrubbed. Black plastic triangles hung from her ears. Her fingers jitterbugged on the table top. A dramatic-looking and very attractive young lady. Less than half my age.
'Good morning, Jennifer.'
'Thanks for coming down. I know I wasn't too forthcoming last night. I didn't want to get into it over the phone because it's so complex.'
'If you know something that can help Jamey, I'm all ears.'
She looked away nervously.
'I'm not - I may have overstated myself. It's all conceptual at this point.'
I sat down, and she followed suit.
'What's on your mind?' I asked.
'You remember I said his mental deterioration had intrigued me for a while? Well, the points you raised crystallised that intrigue: the lack of psychopathy; the contradiction between his supposed mental state and a serial murder profile; the visual hallucinations; the questions about drug use. I thought about it for a long time and kept going in circles. It was maddening.'
After picking up a pen from the table, she used it as a conductor's baton, punctuating the rhythm of her speech.
'Then I realised that I'd been proceeding bass-ackwards, trying to adapt the facts - the givens - to an unverified hypothesis that he was both psychotic and a serial murderer. The key was to throw all that out and start from scratch. Conceptually To establish alternative hypotheses and test them.'
'What kinds of alternatives?
'All the permutations. Let's start with murderer but not psychotic. Jamey's a sadistic, homicidal psychopath who's been faking schizophrenia in order to escape responsibility for his crimes. It's a tactic that's been used before by serial killers - the Hillside Strangler, Son of Sam - totally in character with a psychopath's manipulative nature. But from what I've read, it doesn't work very well, does it?'
'No, it doesn't,' I said. 'Juries are suspicious of psychiatric testimony. But a defendant facing overwhelming evidence might still chance it.'
'But Jamey could have avoided capture in the first place, Alex. There's no reason someone that bright - given the assumption that he's not psychotic - would allow himself to be caught red-handed and then rely on a low-return strategy. Besides, the psychosis wasn't something he just tossed on like a sweater. He was deteriorating long before he was arrested. You don't think he was faking, do you?'
'No,' I said. 'He's been suffering too much for too long, and it's got worse. The day I talked to you guys he threw himself against the walls of his cell and ended up with a concussion. It was bloody. Even a prison guard who'd been sure he was malingering had second thoughts when he saw it.'
She turned her head toward the cages, watched a rat wiggle its snout through the bars, and winced.
'That's horrible. I read about it in the paper, but there were no details. How is he?'
'I don't know. I've been removed from the case and haven't seen him since.'
That surprised her. Before she put the surprise into words, I said:
'In any event, you don't have to convince me he's not a psychopath. What's your next hypothesis?'
'Psychotic but not a murderer. The problem of the visual hallucinations remains, as does the general drug abuse issue. But both could be explained by the possibility that he was schizophrenic and a drug user.'
' Simultaneously?'
'Why not? I know drug abuse doesn't cause schizophrenia, but hasn't it been known to put some people - borderline types - over the edge? Jamey's never been well adjusted - at least since I've known him. So, couldn't he have dropped acid or PCP and had a bum trip that loosened his ego boundaries and caused a psychotic break, then continued to take dope afterward?'
'Jen, according to almost everyone, he was antidrug. Nobody's even seen him take anything.'
'What about Gary? Did you find him?'
'Yes, and he did say Jamey was a user. But he'd inferred it from Jamey's behaviour and admitted he'd never actually seen him trip out.'
'So at least it's still an open issue, she insisted.
'The big problem with hypothesis number two,' I said, 'has nothing to do with drug use or psychosis. If he's not a murderer, how did he end up with a knife in his hand?'
She hesitated.
'Here's where it get a little theoretical.'
'Okay.'
'What if he was set up? It would handle several conceptual problems at once. The question was how. And once I got on that track, it led me to the third alternative, the one I think provides the best fit because it eliminates all the inconsistencies. He's neither a murderer nor truly schizophrenic. Both the crime scene and his mental deterioration are the products of a psychobiological manipulation.'
'Meaning?'
'Chemical mind control, Alex. Psychological poisoning. Someone used hallucinogens to drive him crazy. And planted him at the murder while he was stoned.'
'That's a quantum leap,' I said.
She reached across the table and grabbed my hand.
'I know it sounds far-fetched, but just hear me out.'
Before I could reply, she was off.
'The concept isn't really that weird after all. Didn't the field of psychedelic research develop precisely because psychiatrists were looking for drugs that could simulate schizophrenia? In fact, before the term psychedelic was coined, LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline were called
psychotomimetics; they mimic psychosis. And until the hippies gave it a bad name, LSD was considered a research wonder drug because it had the power to create an externally induced model psychosis. Psychotherapists started taking it to find out what their patients were going through, and pharmacologists studied the molecular structure in order to discern the neurobiologic - ' She stopped, looked at our hands, and pulled away, embarrassed,
