Chapter 22

DEVIANCE: A LEARNING EXPERIENCE

by P.C. Cromwell

PHILADELPHIA—It’s after midnight. Cary Walters carefully approaches the Vagelos Laboratory on the campus here at Penn. He and two companions are dressed entirely in black. Walters uses a passkey he has appropriated from one of his professors. Once inside, he leads the group to the area where laboratory animals wait in cages for their turn to play their part in the steady march of scientific progress.

Walters and his cadre stealthily open the cages and transfer a dozen or so healthy white rats to the confines of a gunnysack …

Out of patience with the setup, Bruno scanned ahead to the meat of the article. Apparently the college kids waited until the next day and then dumped the live rats from the window of their dorm room onto the heads of passersby. They did this to fulfill a requirement for their course in Deviant Behavior.

Peaches was trying to spin it as a protest against animal testing, but the kids were quite emphatic.

“This is no protest,” Walters affirms. “It’s simply deviant. We need to learn to feel what social outcasts feel. It’s about learning to empathize.”

According to Peaches, other students fulfilled the course requirement by cross-dressing, abusing strangers with vulgar language and gestures, going to morning classes drunk, and refusing to pay their library fines. “Professor Nate Littlejohn is viewed as a sort of minor deity on campus,” the article enthused,

and while the campus police and administration generally find their workload increases every time Dr. Littlejohn’s final paper is due, they bear it with good humor as a longstanding campus tradition.

“They’re all meshugge,” Bruno explained to Maggie. “They should learn to empathize with a good swift kick in the tuchus.”

Maggie gave a low moan.

Bruno threw the article on top of a messy stack, which served as his work-in-progress file. He picked up the NewGarden Biosciences annual report, and thumbed through it until something caught his eye. A French company was the principal shareholder; that explained why Dr. Jurevicius, and also Dr. Fischer, might be a bit testy in his presence. “Alla sudden, everybody’s a dahkta.” Bruno snorted. “Doctor Littlejohn. Doctor Fischer. Doctor Jurevicius …”

He rummaged through the pile, and picked up his brand-new copy of Kabbalah for the Complete Shmegegge and the hair sample taken from the faceless girl. “It’s funny that Peaches’ article appears at the same time we’re investigating this Deviant Behavior course. And Maggie, you know, you and I do not believe in coincidences.”

Bruno sat in a comfortable chair and tried to reconstruct the chain of thought leading to the breakthrough he’d had that afternoon in the museum. He’d been staring down the Pharaoh, Ramses II. Then Peter Lorre interrupted him and told him how to make a mummy. All the careful washing and marinating and wrapping. To keep out the dust of centuries.

Bruno looked again at the plastic baggie with the hair sample. There was definitely some kind of sand or grit in there. Yellow-brown in color. Sort of loamy. He opened the baggie and again squeezed the hair between his thumb and forefinger. He concentrated. But nothing came into view.

It was time to try out the Kabbalah. He opened the book and turned to the chapter entitled “Visualization.” Following the instructions, he thought of the Hebrew word for truth, emet, and visualized it spelled out in Hebrew characters. Aleph, Mem, Tav. He held the word in glowing letters steady in his field of vision, etching the characters in stone. Next, he wiped away the extraneous mental pictures surrounding the letters, substituting instead glowing white fire. The visualization held and Bruno’s entire being was absorbed in it.

He came out of his trance sometime later and took Maggie for a walk. It was a quiet spring night in the Pines. Humid. Overcast. No stars to be seen. “Why did they bury her?” he asked. “Why bury her if they were going to leave her to be found in the meeting house?” He thought some more, then said with conviction, “Whoever planted the body was probably not the person who killed her.”