“Upbringing, socialization, environmental cues, neurological differences, genetic makeup, chemical imbalances-some people even think spiritual forces are at play-”
“Yes, but we can’t blame bad genes or our parents or the devil for our crimes. We’re each accountable for our own choices.”
“Not if we don’t have free will.”
A slight pause. “Dr. Libet’s experiments.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “This afternoon I looked over the articles you posted in the electronic files. There are any number of precipitating factors that could have produced the precognitive neural activity that he found: participant expectation, mental rehearsal, goal orientation to either impress the researcher or confound the experiment. Besides, there’s a burgeoning field of research that seems to indicate that there’s no such thing as the unconscious.”
“But, Lien-hua, there are actions we do that we’re not consciously aware of.”
“Yes, but rather than a duality between the conscious and unconsciousness, it’s likely the brain processes information along a continuum, and that intentionality occurs at differing points depending on the stimuli involved and the complexity of the decisions being made.”
That made sense to me, seemed almost self-evident. “Okay, but consider how some people are interpreting Libet’s findings. What if you believed that free will really was an illusion? That instinct trumps conscious intention? That we’re hardwired to unequivocally act certain ways when exposed to certain stimuli at certain times? Courts have already ruled in favor of this defense.”
She was quiet.
“You read about those rulings? In the files?”
She took an uncertain breath. “I did.”
“So,” I said, “assuming we interpreted the findings as some people are-that behavior is directly and fixedly caused by genetic and neurological factors-then, if we understood enough about the brain, we could tell by genetic or neurological testing who would be a psychopath.” I glanced at her. “For argument’s sake.”
“Putting epigenetics aside, the fact that behavior and environment can alter epigenomes, all right, I’ll go along with that.”
“Tie that in with the in-vitro testing…” Margaret’s words about society’s changing views on the right to life came to mind.
Justice reform.
Congressman Fischer’s policy: a more progressive approach to curbing criminal behavior.
And the pieces slid into place.
“Lien-hua, here it is. Test the unborn, find out who’s going to grow up to exhibit psychopathic behavior-”
“And abort them,” she said softly, echoing my conclusion.
Motives.
That can change everything.
“Get rid of serial killers,” she said, “before they ever kill. Cut down on crime by eliminating potential criminals.”
“Preemptive justice.”
The death penalty. For crimes that had never been committed.
“If you agree that abortion is morally tenable,” Lien-hua said sensitively, knowing how tender a subject it was because of how close Christie had come to aborting Tessa, “and assuming you concur with the verdict that the courts have started giving-that in some cases we’re not morally responsible for our behavior because it is, for lack of a better term, instinctual, then the reasoning makes perfect sense. Tell a mother her child is going to grow up to be another Jeffery Dahmer or Sevren Adkins and who wouldn’t terminate the pregnancy?”
“But it wouldn’t stop at psychopathology,” I said.
“No.” Her voice was soft, strained. “It would not. Pedophiles. Rapists. Where do you draw the line? Maybe people who’ll grow up to be manic depressive or inclined to drug addiction-”
“But if there is no free will, there is no line.” I thought of the countries that pressure women to abort their baby girls-the most lethal kind of sex discrimination in the world. “Get rid of anyone whom those in power don’t feel would be good for society.”
“No.” Lien-hua shook her head. “This is crazy. You can’t determine what someone will do, only what they might be prone to do. We’re free to choose, to act or not to act.”
“Not if you interpret Dr. Libet’s findings as some people are.”
“The neurological tests could never be that conclusive.”
“They’ve already been conclusive enough to get people off for first-degree murder. I don’t think this is much of a jump. It’s just social engineering in the name of justice reform. And as the house minority leader, Fischer is powerful enough to actually push something like this through Congress.”
A pause.
Then she said, “Aren’t people supposed to have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? We have a right to make our own choices. To determine our own future.”
“But what if we can’t? If free will and moral responsibility are only illusions?”
“Then pursuing happiness would be an illusion too.”
“And so would liberty,” I said.
The comment brought a stretch of palpable silence.
I took the exit to the Academy.
Earlier, when I was at the command post, I’d tracked the relationships forward in time. Now with a renewed sense of urgency, I mentally did so backward.
Rodale to Lebreau.
Lebreau to Basque.
Basque to Lansing.
Lansing to Vice President Fischer.
Vice President Fischer to…
“During the assassination attempt,” I said, “there were two rooms on the eighth floor that were used-do we know if they were both paid for by Hadron Brady?”
“Remember? The hotel didn’t keep the records that far back.”
Who would?
Who would keep the “No,” I breathed, thinking aloud. “We don’t have records of the rooms, but there are records of the payments.”
“No, Pat, they’re all gone. They-”
“But yet they exist.”
She looked at me curiously. “What are you thinking?”
“At six hundred dollars per room most people wouldn’t have paid for their stay in cash.”
Then it hit her. “Credit cards.”
“Yes.”
“Aha.” A slight smile. “Since 9/11 the government has required all credit card companies to keep records of all transactions for ten years to help track terrorism suspects.”
“Exactly. We won’t be able to tell who stayed in which room, but we can find out the names of people who charged a room at the Lincoln Towers Hotel on March 15 or 16th six years ago.”
“And we can see if a person from the suspect list used a card to pay for a room,” she finished my train of thought.
“Yes. Or someone named Patricia E.”
She tugged out her phone. “Pat, I have to say, the way you string things together sometimes… I don’t know, you remind me of Sherlock Holmes.”
“Don’t tell that to Tessa. She might just agree with you.”
“There you go.”
“Trust me. From her it would not be a compliment.”
“We’ll need warrants.”
“Then we’ll need Margaret,” I replied.
100
1 hour left…
8:29 p.m.
Margaret came through for us.
It’d taken her less than five minutes to call a judge and get the warrants needed to contact the four largest credit card companies and begin the process of pulling up the credit card charges on the dates we were looking at.
I turned onto the road that led to the Academy. The security checkpoint lay a quarter mile ahead.
Lien-hua phoned Angela to get her team started on the project and found out she was in the middle of reanalyzing Mollie Fischer’s laptop-apparently, another technician had failed to follow up on the emails sent and received, and Angela was left picking up the pieces.
When Lien-hua hung up, she said to me, “She sounded a little overwhelmed.”
“Imagine that.”
I drove up to the gate, only one car in front of me.
Sergeant Eric Hastings, the young Marine who’d been working Tuesday evening when I’d arrived with Tessa for the panel discussion, and had also noted the discrepancy with Annette Larotte’s plates, was finishing checking the driver’s license of a man in the Toyota minivan just in front of us.