The Cure

When I arrived home Dr. Hess's information was still downloading. I walked across the street and picked up a sandwich for supper and when I got back the download had finished at a cool 27.3 Gigabytes. When I Unzipped the file, I found that I had sixty Gbytes of data meticulously organized into folders cross referenced with scanned images of the source material in the original German and Russian.

I scanned the list of patients that Dr. Hess had given me and then ran a backup routine that sent copies of all the files to the Herald's mainframe and my online backup company.

After getting everything squared away I sat down and began to go through Hess's information from the beginning. I was ready to puke twenty minutes into the Auschwitz files. The things that they did to those poor people read like a hellish nightmare.

They did every inhumane thing imaginable to their test subjects. Sensory deprivation, shock treatment, low protein diet, just plain torment for weeks and months over and over until the patient breaks. The Soviet methodology wasn't any better. The core of the process was to destroy the personality and replace it with whatever cover the case officer decided to give the sleeper.

As I read through this horror, I had the nagging feeling that I was missing something. The method called for using long periods of sensory deprivation and then using a voice to guide the subject. After months and months of isolation, the subject would crave human contact and would comply with the first voice that they heard. The original personality wasn't destroyed. It was simply deeply submerged and could be instantly recalled using a word or phrase as a trigger.

There was absolutely nothing in the material regarding sexual orientation. No mention at all. If the Freedom Clinic was using this to cure homosexuality, it didn't add up.

I looked up from my work and the clock was closing in on 1 am. Time had gotten away from me again. I put the computer in sleep mode and collapsed on my couch.

* * * *

My sleep was fitful. The images of those people being tortured haunted me.

Someone beating on my front door at a little after 5 am woke me up.

I shook off the cobwebs and went to get the door.

A big, grim faced detective was standing at my door flanked by his partner.

"Mr. Sawyer, I'm Lt. Brenner New Orleans PD Homicide. I need to speak to you for a minute."

I said, "Sure. Come on in. I'll put on some coffee and we'll talk at my kitchen table."

The hulking detective and his partner followed me into my kitchen. I turned on the coffee pot and said, "Please. Have a seat. How can I help you?"

Brenner asked, "Where were you at 7:30 last night?"

I said, "Right here having a po-boy for supper."

Brenner's partner said, "Can anybody back that up?"

I reached into the trash can and retrieved the bag my sandwich had come in. I pulled out the receipt that was time stamped 19:33. I handed it to the detective and asked, "Good enough?"

Brenner nodded. "I didn't really consider you a suspect but it's best to eliminate you early. Dr. Hess of Tulane was murdered at his home early last night. I understand you saw him yesterday."

"George is dead?"

"I'm afraid so. I understand that you've been friends for years."

I was shocked into silence. I couldn't imaging anyone harming old George. He had always been a soft-touch for students and soft-spoken with everyone else.

"Dr. Hess has been a friend since I was an undergraduate. I try to get by to see him every few weeks."

Brenner asked, "When you spoke to him yesterday, was he nervous about anything?"

"We talked about his latest work. He was talking about his studies of Cold War era manuscripts."

Brenner's partner asked, "Have you even known him to gamble or have money problems?"

I said, "No. His family owns a number of small oil refineries here and in Mississippi. He was comfortably well off and I've never known him to set foot in a casino."

Brenner said, "Whoever killed him was looking for something. They tore his place apart and there's evidence that they tortured him. Does he ever have valuable manuscripts or artifacts?"

"He would never take any of that stuff outside the controlled conditions of the archives at Tulane."

Brenner said, "I know that you're a reporter but we would appreciate it if you kept quiet about any details of the murder. If we get some mutt in the interrogation room it might help us trip them up."

I said, "I won't be on this story since I know the victim. If I can help in any way, give me a call on my cell."

Brenner and I exchanged cards and the detectives left me drinking coffee and looking for answers.