Authors: John Saul
“It’s beautiful,” Lucy breathed, moving closer to the statue and lowering herself onto one of the wing chairs.
“And you never thought I’d spend money on something like that?” Jim asked, his voice lilting with a half-taunting humor. “I’m afraid I gave up on Mediterranean furniture and decor by
Playboy
about the same time I moved out of Adultery Acres.” He sat down on the sofa opposite her, and his expression turned serious. “Something
did
happen, didn’t it?” he asked.
Lucy nodded, then told him about the visit she had had with Sally Montgomery that afternoon.
“And is that why you came over here?” Jim asked when she was done. “To see if I could figure out what’s going on?”
“Not really,” Lucy replied. “I’m putting all that on hold till Monday. There just isn’t anything I can do right now. It seems like both of us have done everything we can, and—” Her voice broke, and she let herself sink into the softness of the chair. “I guess I’m just wearing out,
Jim. And I almost didn’t come over here. But I was lonely, and I was driving around, and suddenly the only person I could think of to talk to was you.” She glanced at Jim sharply, hoping he wouldn’t misunderstand her. “I mean, right now you and I have a lot in common, despite our differences.”
“Maybe there aren’t so many differences anymore,” Jim suggested. Then, before Lucy could answer, he stood up. “Can I fix us some drinks?”
“Do you have any gin?”
“Tanqueray.”
“With some tonic.” As Jim disappeared into the kitchen, Lucy stood up and wandered around the room. In a bookcase against the wall opposite the fireplace she found several books she had read over the past few years and a series of framed pictures.
Mostly, they were of Randy.
Several of them were of herself, and all but one had been taken before the divorce. One of them, though, was recent.
“I see you found my gallery,” Jim observed as he came back into the room.
“Where did you get this?” Lucy asked, picking up the picture. It had been taken two years earlier.
Jim blushed slightly. “I’m afraid I got sneaky. Randy told me you’d had a portrait made for his grandmother, and I called every studio in town till I found it.” He paused for a moment. “I’m sorry about your mother. I always liked her, even though she never thought much of me.”
Lucy smiled at him. “I think if she knew you now, she might change her mind.”
The two of them stood still for a moment, and Lucy had a feeling Jim was going to kiss her. And then, as if he sensed her sudden unease, he moved away from her. “You doing anything for dinner?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Lucy admitted. All day she’d been dreading the evening alone in the empty house. Then, after Sally had gone, she’d finally gotten into the car and driven aimlessly for nearly two hours,
trying to decide where to go, until a little while ago, when she’d found herself a few blocks from Jim’s apartment “You want to go out somewhere?”
“Not really,” Jim replied, his easy grin spreading over his face. “I still have to pay for the Thai dancer, and there’s Randy’s education to think of. So I’ve learned to cook. Feeling brave? I make a mean Stroganoff.”
“Fine,” Lucy decided. The idea of spending a quiet evening with Jim was suddenly very appealing. Then she said, “Jim? When you mentioned Randy’s education just now, were you.… Do you really think we’re going to find him?”
Jim hesitated for a moment, forcing himself to maintain a cheerful façade. “Who knows? I know what Sergeant Bronski thinks, and I know what the statistics are, and I don’t have any more of an idea than you do as to what to do next So, I suppose, we should accept the fact that he’s gone. But deep down inside I don’t believe he ran away either. I believe in you, Lucy, and if you think someone took him, then someone took him. If you think he’s alive, then he’s alive. And if you think we’ll find him, then we’ll find him. So I guess I better not spend his college money yet, had I?”
Lucy felt her eyes tearing, and made no move to wipe the dampness away. Instead, she reached out and tentatively touched Jim’s hand.
“Thank you, she whispered.”
Their eyes met, and then suddenly Jim winked. “And on Monday, you get down to CHILD and find out what they did with our son. Okay?”
Silently, Lucy nodded.
T
HE GLASS-AND-STEEL MONOLITH
that housed the offices of CHILD rose up out of the heart of the city like a great impersonal tombstone. The faceless people within it would continue their endless sojourn, year after year, until one day they would finally leave their offices and begin their “golden years,” unaware they had spent most of their lives within a spiritual graveyard. As Lucy Corliss approached its expressionless façade on that unusually muggy spring morning, she felt as though she already knew what would happen inside.
Nothing.
The people at CHILD, she was sure, would be reflections of the building in which they worked—efficient, featureless, bland, and, in the end, impenetrable. Still, she had to try.
The elevator rose swiftly and silently to the thirty-second floor, and when its doors slid open, Lucy was confronted with a wide corridor stretching away in both directions. At the end of the hall was a pair of imposing double doors. Behind those doors lay the CHILD offices. Steeling herself, Lucy opened the doors and slipped into a mahogany-paneled reception room containing a small sitting area—empty—and a desk behind which sat a cool blonde who appeared to be cut from the same die as
morning talk-show hostesses. Lucy approached the desk, but the receptionist, talking softly on the telephone, held up her hand as if forbidding Lucy to get too close. A moment later she hung up the phone and turned on her smile.
“May I help you?”
“I’d like to see Mr. Randolph. Paul Randolph?”
The receptionist, who neither wore a name badge nor had a nameplate propped helpfully on her desk, looked doubtful.
“I’m afraid Mr. Randolph is very busy.”
“I have an appointment,” Lucy said firmly.
The receptionist frowned. “With Mr. Randolph?”
“That’s right,” Lucy replied, her original sense of intimidation turning rapidly to irritation. “My name is Lucy Corliss. If you’ll just tell me where his office is—” But the receptionist was already on the phone, talking softly to someone hidden in the depths of the offices. Then she was back to Lucy, smiling brightly.
“If you’ll just take a seat, Mrs. Corliss? It’ll just be
a
minute, and I’ll be happy to get you some coffee while you wait.”
But Lucy didn’t want coffee. She simply wanted to sit for a minute and savor her tiny victory over the cool blonde. The blonde, however, saw fit to ignore her.
A moment later a much older woman strode into the reception room and offered Lucy her hand.
“I’m Eva Phillips, Paul Randolph’s secretary. We’re so sorry to keep you waiting, but you know how things can be.”
She ushered Lucy through the offices, chattering amiably all the way, and finally showed her into a large corner office dominated by an enormous desk. Behind the desk sat a man who was obviously Paul Randolph.
He was in his indeterminate forties, his face smooth and handsome in a bland sort of way. His sandy hair was thinning, and, to his credit, he made no attempt to hide that fact. He rose to greet Lucy, and as he came around the end of his desk, he moved with a lithe grace that Lucy had always associated with old money, private
schools, and summers on the Cape. When he spoke, his voice was perfectly modulated, his accent pure Brahmin.
“Mrs. Corliss, how nice to meet you. Won’t you sit down?” He indicated a sofa that sat at right angles to his desk, and without thinking about it, Lucy seated herself where Randolph intended her to sit. He himself took a chair that was substantially firmer than the sofa, and Lucy, not quite understanding the psychological ploy, suddenly felt that she was somehow at a disadvantage. From his slightly higher position, Paul Randolph smiled cordially down at her. “Would you like coffee?”
“No, thank you,” Lucy replied. With a quick gesture, Randolph dismissed Eva Phillips, who silently closed the door as she left the room.
“Now, what can I do for you?” Randolph asked. “May I assume you’ve become interested in our work?”
My God, Lucy thought, he thinks I want to donate money. “Yes, I have,” she said. “You see, I just found out a few days ago that your people have been studying my son.”
The smile on Randolph’s face stayed firmly in place, but something in his eyes changed, and Lucy immediately realized that the man was suddenly on guard. When he spoke, however, his voice was as mellow as before.
“I see. Of course, we study thousands of children here. And I must say,” he added with a touch of a chuckle, “this is the first time one of the children’s parents has come to see me.”
“Mr. Randolph, my son has been kidnaped.”
Finally, the smile faded from the man’s lips. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Corliss?”
“I said my son has been kidnaped. At least that’s what I think happened to him. The police …” She faltered for a moment, then, in a rush, poured out the whole story of the last few days. When she was done, Randolph sat silently, his eyes clouded with concern, his hands clasped together.
“But what brought you here, Mrs. Corliss? Surely you
don’t think that we could have had anything to do with your son’s disappearance?”
Lucy hesitated. Put so bluntly, in surroundings as eminently respectable as those of CHILD, it sounded unthinkable. And yet, that was exactly what she thought.
“I don’t know,” Lucy hedged, sure that if she told him the truth he would show her the door. “I don’t know what to think. But when I found the notation in Randy’s medical files and learned that he’d been part of a project I knew nothing about, well, naturally I began to wonder.”
Randolph’s head bobbed understandingly. His smile returned. “So you want to know what we’re doing, is that it?”
“Exactly.”
Randolph rose and began to pace the room. “Well, I’ll do my best, but I have to tell you that I’m not even sure I understand it all myself. I’m afraid I’m an administrator, not a scientist.”
“Then you’ll use language I can understand.”
“I’ll try. To begin with, the work we’re doing here is what you might call passive work, as opposed to active work. We conduct surveys and put together statistics, primarily concerning genetics.”
“I’m not sure I do understand.”
Randolph lowered himself into the chair behind his desk and leaned back, folding his hands across his stomach. “All right, let’s go back to the beginning. Are you aware that almost all babies, at birth or even before, go through a process of genetic screening?”
“Sort of.” Lucy was beginning to feel that she was going to get lost right at the start. But Randolph smiled at her encouragingly.
“It’s really not terribly complicated. Samples of the baby’s tissue are taken, and the chromosomes are analyzed. We can often discover genetic weaknesses that, if left uncorrected, can lead to various problems, the most obvious, but not the least of which, is Down’s syndrome.”
Lucy held up a protesting hand. “I’m sorry, but you’re losing me,” she said.
Randolph tried again. “All right. The chromosomes, or genes, act as a pattern for the cells. They dictate what chemicals the cells will produce, and, therefore, determine the cell’s shape, function, and purpose. Over the years, we’ve discovered that certain genetic deficiencies cause chemical imbalances that, in turn, cause certain mental or physical problems later on in life.”
“And what, exactly, does CHILD do?”
“It’s very simple, really. All we do is track certain children, from the time of birth through adulthood. We keep track of their genetic records and then simply observe them. For instance, let’s suppose that there are two children who, at the age of, say, ten or eleven, begin to develop symptoms of mental illness. Say, also, that there are no environmental similarities between the children. But say, even further, that when we go through our records, we discover that both children share a specific genetic abnormality. Bingo! It would appear that the particular disorder displayed by the two children may have its roots in genetics.”
Lucy shook her head. “It sounds too simple.”
“Yes,” Randolph agreed. “But even granted the oversimplification, that’s basically what we do. In the long run, of course, the idea is to determine which genetic deficiencies are benign and which ones are going to cause problems to the child later. It’s up to other researchers to try to figure out ways of correcting or compensating for the deficiencies and abnormalities.”
“And that’s all you do?” Lucy asked.
“That’s all we do,” Randolph assured her.
“Then why wasn’t I told you were studying Randy?”
“Perhaps you were and don’t remember it,” Randolph suggested.
“Where my son is concerned, I wouldn’t have forgotten,” Lucy shot back. “I would have wanted to know exactly what the study was about, what would be required from Randy, and how he had been chosen.”
“But that’s just the point, Mrs. Corliss.” Randolph’s
voice was gentle and soothing. “The study was no more than a survey, it required nothing from Randy, and he was chosen at random. It was purely a matter of chance that Randy was selected for our study.”
“Then you won’t mind showing me the results of the study, will you?”
“Results? But, Mrs. Corliss, there aren’t any results yet. The survey will go on until the children are all grown up.”
“But what about the ones who don’t grow up?” Lucy asked. “What about the ones who die in infancy, or get sick, or are victims of accidents? Surely you must have
some
results? If you don’t, I should think you’d have given the whole thing up by now.”
For the first time, Randolph seemed at a loss for words. Lucy decided to press her advantage. “Mr. Randolph, the nurse at Randy’s school says that of all the children in the school, Randy and the three others you’re studying have the best health records. Randy’s never been sick a day in his life, never hurt himself badly, never shown any signs of being slow, or abnormal, or anything else. Now, doesn’t it seem reasonable that if I discover someone has been studying him, I might also wonder just
why
they were studying him? And if Randy is remarkable—and he is—doesn’t it seem reasonable that I might begin to think the people who are studying him might want a closer look?”