I found a U.S. News and World Report article detailing the struggle of a thirty-four-year-old woman with Down's syndrome to receive a life-saving heart-lung operation. Stanford University Medical Center had rejected her because “We do not feel that patients with Down's syndrome are appropriate candidates for heart-lung transplantation,” as had the University of California at San Diego because it judged her incapable of cooperating with the medical regimen. Her doctor disagreed and the publicity had forced both hospitals to reconsider. But what of others, languishing outside the media spotlight?

It reminded me of a case I'd seen years ago, while working with child cancer patients at Western Pediatrics Hospital. A fourteen-year-old boy diagnosed with acute leukemia, by then a treatable disease with an excellent prognosis for remission. But this leukemia patient was retarded and several interns and residents began grumbling about wasting their precious time.

I lectured to them, with meager results- because I wasn't an M.D., wouldn't be administering chemotherapy and radiotherapy, simply didn't understand what was involved. The attending physician, a passionate and dedicated man, caught wind of the protest and delivered a diatribe about Hippocrates and morality that silenced the grumblers. But it had been a begrudging compliance.

What kind of doctors had those interns become?

Who were they judging, now?

Quality of life.

I'd worked with thousands of children with birth defects, deformities, mental retardation, learning disabilities, chronic and painful and fatal diseases.

Most experienced a full range of emotions, including joy.

I remembered one little girl, eight years old, a thalidomide casualty. No arms, stunted flipper feet, shining eyes, an eagerness to embrace life.

Better quality of life than some face-lifted psychopaths I'd known.

Not that it mattered, for it wasn't my role to judge, either.

The eugenecists argued that society's progress could be measured by the achievement of the gifted, and in part, that was true. But what good was progress if it led to callousness, cruelty, cold judgments about deservedness, a degradation of the godly spark in all of us?

Who'd be the new gods? Geneticists? Ethicists?

Scientists had flocked to Nazism in record numbers.

Politicians?

HMO executives with bottom-line obsessions?

And after we cleansed the world of one group of “degenerates,” who'd be next on the chromosomal hit list?

The flabby? The charmless? The boring? The ugly?

Scary stuff, and the fact that psychology had once swallowed it whole disgusted me.

The racist swill propagated by Goddard and Terman still reverberated in my head. Both had been names uttered with reverence in the corridors of the Psych Tower.

Like a child discovering his parents are felons, I felt a cold, dark pit open in my gut.

I'd administered countless IQ tests, had prided myself upon knowing the limitations of the instrument as well as the virtues.

Properly done, testing was valuable. Still, the rotten spot I'd just found at the core of my field's golden apple made me wonder what else I'd missed, despite all my education.

It was 1:00 P.M. and I'd been in the library for five hours. Lunchtime, but I had no appetite.

I picked up The Brain Drain.

The book's sole premise became obvious within pages:

Material success, morality, happy marriages, superior parenthood- all were caused by high g- a supposed general-intelligence trait whose validity had been debated for years.

This author presented it as a given.

The book had a smarmy, congratulatory tone: addressing itself to “you, the highly intelligent reader.”

The ultimate kiss-up, virtue by association.

Maybe that- and a harnessing of upper-middle-class anxiety during hard times- could explain its best-sellerdom.

It sure wasn't the science, because I came across page after page of faulty assumptions, shoddy referencing, articles the author claimed as supportive that turned out to be just the opposite when I looked them up.

Promises to back up assertions with numbers that never appeared. Revival of Galton's one-gene theory of intelligence.

Hundred-year-old nonsense- who'd written this garbage?

The author bio at the back said a “social scholar” named Arthur Haldane, Ph.D.

Resident scholar at the Loomis Institute in New York City.

No further credentials.

No book jacket on the library copy, so no photo.

Ugly stuff.

Ugly times.

So what else was new?

My head hurt and my eyes ached.

What would I report to Milo and Sharavi?

Pseudoscientific crap sold well?

What connection was there to three dead kids?

The killer, watching, stalking, culling the herd…

With scholarly justification?

Because some lives just weren't worth living?

So he wasn't really a murderer.

He was a freelance bioethicist.

29

The only thing i hadn't gotten to was Twisted Science, the critique of The Brain Drain, and though I couldn't see what it could add, I checked it out and took it home with me.

One message at my service. Milo's home number but the caller was Dr. Richard Silverman.

Rick and Milo had lived together for years but he and I rarely spoke. He was more prone to listening than talking. Reserved, meticulous, fit, always well-dressed, he was a striking contrast to Milo's aesthetic impairment and some people saw the two of them as an odd couple. I knew they were both thoughtful, driven, highly self-critical, had suffered deeply from being homosexual, had taken a long time to find their niche, both as individuals and members of a couple. Both buried themselves in bloody work- Rick spent over one hundred hours a week as a senior E.R. physician at Cedars-Sinai- and their time together was often silent.

He said, “Thanks, Alex. How's everything?”

“Great. With you?”

“Fine, fine. Listen, I just wanted to ask how Helena Dahl's doing- nothing confidential, just if she's okay.”

“I haven't seen her recently, Rick.”

“Oh.”

“Something wrong?”

“Well,” he said, “she quit the hospital yesterday, no explanation. I guess what's happened to her could unnerve anybody.”

“It's tough,” I said.

“I met the brother once. Not through her. He came in with a gunshot case, never mentioned being her brother, and I wasn't paying attention to nametags. But someone told me later.”

“Helena wasn't on duty?”

“No, not that particular night.”

“Anything unusual about him?”

“Not really. Big guy, young, very quiet, could have stepped right out of an LAPD recruiting poster. Back when that was the type they recruited. I was struck by the fact that he never bothered to ask for Helena, thought maybe he knew she was off. But when I told her he'd been in, she looked surprised. Anyway, I don't want to pry. Take care. If you do see her, say hi.”

“Will do.”

He laughed. “Say hi to Milo, too. You're probably seeing him more than I am. This case- the retarded kids- it's really disturbing him. Not that he's been talking about it. But he's been tossing in his sleep.”

It was two-thirty. I hadn't come up with a thing on the DVLL killings. Robin was out for the afternoon, the house was too damn big, and the day seemed hollow.

I'd pushed Helena and Nolan to the back of my mind but Rick's call got me ruminating again.

What had caused her to make such a complete break?

Those family photos in Nolan's garage? Primal memories that strong?

She was tough and competent on the job but isolated in her private life.