The M1 Theory - Brian Hesse (best thriller novels to read .txt) 📗

happy unless barking, at minimum, three commands each day to a scared insecure wife, brainwashed by a childhood of playing with Barbie dolls and plastic oven sets.

 She continued, “we have a scantily clad young woman, with blue lips and chemical burns around the mouth. If you were to look inside you would see blistering and a partially dissolved tongue. If you were to stick a micro camera down her throat, you would see an esophagus torn to shreds by that dangerous yet, very effective, drain unclogger, Mr. Drain Clean.”

 “So, you think we have a serial killer?”

 She gave a light chuckle and looked at him with a purposeful expression of pity and replied, “no genius, we have a pimp killing his prostitutes. Sorry, not as exciting as a serial killer, but darn gruesome none the less. If you need any more obvious answers to dumb questions, I will be home in bed.”

  “You’re not even going to look at the body?”

 “Call me when you have a challenge for me,” she called through her open window, as her Chevy’s bald tires squealed away into the night.

Rejection (The Final Straw)

  “Now class, I know that many of you have literally dreamt of being the first scientist to map the entire human brain.” Professor Richardson gazed across the room at the sea of hopeful bright eyed young faces, as he perceived, faces glowing with the  hope of stranded shipwrecked passengers awaiting a heroic rescue from a turbulent sea. He always felt just a pang of guilt each semester as he prepared to dash their hopes of any rescue.

  He continued, “I would forget such childish fantasy. What we know of the human brain I could fit inside the head of this eraser.” He briefly held up his yellow number two pencil for dramatic effect.

  “Now before you bombard me with the temper tantrums of babies who just lost their pacifiers. Let me explain.”

  “No sir, you should not have a chance to ramble on with your conventional witch doctery,” came a loud steady voice from the back of the lecture hall. Professor Richardson looked toward the echoing voice, ready to reprimand the brave stupid soul for such a haphazard interruption. But he thought better of doing this. Debate was important for growth, as he always stated. Time to live by my own words, he thought, with an expression of self-restraint that masked the turbulent ocean beneath the surface of his skin.

 “Very well young man, tell us what’s on your mind.”

 “It is true sir that we are still living in the dark ages when referring to knowledge of the human brain, but it is possible to completely map the brain, in just a few short years.”

  “I don’t see how young man. I’m sorry what is your name?”

  After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, the confident steady voice replied, “I am Thomas Lorey.”

  “Very well Thomas, please continue.” “How is it possible to learn all there is to learn about the human brain?”

 As Thomas began explaining his theory of the M1 neural pathway in reference to controlling aggression, Professor Richardson remembered the name Thomas Lorey. Over the past few weeks he suffered under the weight of the tedious task of grading early submission thesis papers. He thought about the drudgery of grading so many, usually dull and uninspiring, thoughts, haphazardly committed to paper by overzealous students. Most of the students submitting early thesis papers were, in his experience, very plain and ordinary scientist hopefuls with temporary delusions of grandeur. He did not look down upon such students. Every person who is passionate about their field of study has such delusions, he considered.

 “So yes professor, I believe the M1 pathway is the birthplace of all future knowledge in the field of neuropsychology.”

 “Thomas, I believe you are forgetting one important detail in your theory. That detail involves the unethical practice of human experimentation.”

 Thomas returned to his seat, feeling embarrassed and rejected. He was embarrassed because just one word, ethical, created a brick wall too high for even a genius like him to climb. He felt rejected because he finally realized that he could never conduct his research under such an oppressive system based solely on religious principles. He thought about the centuries of human history, the centuries of scientific progress overshadowed by a carefully crafted blanket of guilt. Guilt created by religions designed for the hopelessly uneducated and lost.

 “That is all for today class. I want everyone to write a ten-page essay on ethics in the medical profession. I want it by Friday.”

 “Thomas can I speak to you.”

  Thomas walked slowly to the Professor Richardson’s podium as the rest of the class filed out to enjoy life and forget everything learned from the last hour lecture.

   “Thomas, I graded your paper. I gave you a 3.0 which isn’t really that bad for an early thesis submission.

   Professor Richardson felt a growing sense of unease as he considered Thomas’s eyes. He could see the rage bubbling just beneath the surface of the young man’s stone-faced countenance. I better smooth this over as gently as I can, he considered with uncharacteristic cowardice.

 “Listen Thomas, I find your paper very professionally written, worthy of publication in a journal. I find your theory fascinating and supported by very reliable and valid sources.” He was not lying when he stated this. Thomas’s paper was one of the very few he could remember from a student, so professionally written, and filled with a refreshing mix of logic and creativity. Too much creativity, he considered, and not any mention of ethical considerations concerning experimentation.

  “Professor, you are dull brained hypocrite. You have no business teaching bright minds anything.”

   Thomas stormed out of the lecture hall of Professor Richardson, never to return.   

Meeting with the Chief

  Police Chief, Daniel Morris hated talking to Detective Becks, as much as he hated Monday mornings. In fact, he would be the first to say, that he would rather spend a night out to dinner with his ex-mother in law, rather than talk to Sandra, and he hated his ex-wife’s Mother. He went out of his way this morning just to stop off at the local Quick Mart just to stock up on two-day old coffee and ant acid tablets in preparation for this morning’s encounter. He sat at his coffee stained desk with his head lowered staring at the black tarry residue left in the bottom of his Quick Mart plastic cup. He felt his stomach acid churn like waves violently crashing into the side of a rocky cliff, as he closed his eyes and remembered their last conversation.

 It was three years ago, and Sandra was a new detective to the division. She did not enjoy the distinction as the first female detective to work in the office. Three other women detectives stepped nervously into the office, only to be driven to the brink of insanity within six months by the coarse mannerisms of their fellow male detectives, but not Sandra. The day she walked into the sea of raging testosterone, everyone knew they were in for trouble. He remembered the day with the crystal-clear clarity of a shaved diamond necklace.

 “Oh yea, fresh meat coming through,” replied detective Carlson, as Sandra walked by his desk on her first day on the job.

 The Chief watched with a broad smile forming across his neatly shaved face. He kept his door closed purposely, so as not to be a witness to the vulgarities and harassment he knew would be thrown Sandra’s way. As he thought at the time, I’m still Chief and would be obligated to act if I witnessed poor behavior.

  What he wasn’t expecting, was Sandra’s reaction to the comment. He watched through the sound proof glass of his office window, like watching a silent comedy film, as Sandra turned around, seductively walked to within just centimeters of the loud mouth’s face. She brought her full moist lips to his ear. Just as the bulge in his pants began to rise, to his embarrassment, she reached down and squeezed between his legs with just enough pressure to cause a painful cramping sensation to course through his legs. This gesture was followed by a loud smack to his face, that caused every other detective in the room to quickly resume their duties.

#

  “Have a seat Sandra, and that’s an order.”

  Knowing that she was still subject to the para military rules of the Stare police environment, she held back her instinctive response of telling him to go to hell, and sat down without a word.

  “I received word that you had yet another call for a dead body, but did not even process the scene. You know we have normal operating procedures here. You know I have to answer to the Commissioner, the Governor, and always, the damn press.”

  Sandra again suppressed her natural urge to storm out of the office rather than talk to her, as she perceived, obtuse boss. She considered the fact that she was walking on thin ice as it was already. This was not the first time she rolled upon a murder scene, and rolled off just as quickly in her tired old Chevy.

   “Chief, I apologize, but the case is very cut and dry. Some pimp is out there forcing his, less than obedient girls, to drink drain cleaner. He’s sending a message to the other ladies, that he will not tolerate skimming off the top.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” His voice elevated in depth as he homed in on her curiously uncharacteristic docility this morning. He continued, “these three women are so different in background. Yes, Sally Wilks was a known drug addict off the streets, but the other two. They were both housewives from the upper West side. One married to a lawyer, and the other was married to a CEO of a nationwide security company. This looked like a serial killer to me.”

  Sandra looked at him with her poker-faced expression. The one expression she always used to mask her annoyance with the stupidity of a superior who held her career in the palm of his hands.

  “I just have a hunch. I can’t explain Chief, I just know this is not a serial killer situation.”

  “Sandra, you are my best detective, but your unconventional bullshit needs to stop. This is your last warning. One more slip of protocol, and your ass is suspended pending an investigation. You got it?”

  Sandra slowly rose from her chair and cleared her throat, as if expelling the words that lurked there just waiting for an opening to spring forth into the musky odor filled room of the Chiefs office.

  “Ok, Chief. I will not let it happen again.”

   He could do nothing but stare in shock as she calmly walked to the grease stained glass door to leave.

  “Oh, by the way. We caught the bastard. He was a pimp, and his name was Robert Teller. It would appear that he had some dirt on the two socialite ladies. Instead of blackmailing for money, he forced them to work as prostitutes, better pay off in the end I guess.”

 Without another word, Sandra walked out of the office smiling brightly as she made her way past the nervous men in the noisy dimly lit room.

Setting up Shop

  Thomas felt the muscles behind his eyes throb under the strain as he tightly squeezed them shut. His hands turned a ghostly pale white as he squeezed the corner of the stainless-steel cadaver table he bought on Samslist, a site where one could find any second-hand product, regardless the level of its oddity. He could feel the growing tide of rage swell deep within, just as it always does, listening to his Father destroy furniture in an alcohol fueled rage. Sitting in the make shift operating room of his basement, he could not resist the awakening of memories of the past once thought dead and buried deep inside the confines of his subconscious mind. Like the hand