The Syndrome by John Case Read Free Book Online Page B

Overhead, the branches of trees rocked in the gusting air, even as the windows of storefronts rattled up and down the avenue.
    He thought about the feminists—who had become entangled in the Satanic Ritual Abuse controversy. Many of them believed that denying the reality of SRA was the first step in disavowing more pedestrian forms of sexual abuse. Which made every skeptic an “enabler,” or even worse, a collaborator in the sexual destruction of innocent women and children.
    And yet …
    If there really
was
a Satanic underground whose sacraments included human sacrifice, cannibalism, and pedophilia—where was the evidence? Where were the bodies, the bloodstains, the bones?
    This had always seemed like a good question to Duran, but there were consequences to asking it aloud. For many, it was the sexual equivalent of denying the reality of the Holocaust. And, in fact, SRA
was
a kind of latterday holocaust—or so it was claimed.
    He looked up at the wide-open sky and for a moment, thought that he was going to faint. The words in his head—
bloodstains, bones
—seemed disconnected.
    Nico, he reminded himself. You are thinking about Nico.
No matter what she told him, Duran kept a lid on his own feelings. No shock, no doubt. Just his own, helpful neutrality, his informed sympathy and concern.
Something
had happened to her, he told himself, and this story, this fable—if it was a fable—was her way of dealing with her own dysfunction, her own dissociation. She’d plucked it out of the culture, out of the air, and fixed on it as an explanation for her problems. Somehow, it helped her to function, and his job as her therapist—was to …
    But he’d arrived at the mailbox. He slid the JetPak into the mail slot and turned around and began to walk home. At least he told himself to walk—just
walk
—but after a few steps, and almost imperceptibly, his pace began to increase so that, by the time he got back to the Towers, he was practically running. The security guard—today it was the kid with the Buddy Holly glasses—gave him a funny look as he came crashing into the lobby, but then the kid recognized him and lost interest. Duran managed a smile. A nonchalant salute. And then the elevator took him back to his sanctuary.

3
    For a guy who didn’t get out much, Jeff Duran was in very good shape.
    This was owing, in part, to his determination to stay in shape, and in part to the fact that he lived in a building with a health club on the top floor. Since membership in the “club” came with residence in the Towers, the facility was undersized and not quite state-of-the-art. But it had all the basics, the treadmills and Nautilus, Stairmasters and free weights, and in addition boasted a terrific view of Georgetown and the National Cathedral.
    Duran was there every morning at six-thirty. His body was well-muscled and flexible, and he kept it that way with a demanding regimen of stretches, cycling, jogging, and weights. His midsection was flat and hard, the result of a punishing routine of sit-ups and crunches. Five days a week, he ran six miles on one of the treadmills that stood in front of the windows, looking out across the city. From that vantage point, he could see Georgetown University’s spires and, beyond it, the curling band of light that was the Potomac.
    He always did the first mile at an eight-minute pace, warming up to the next five, which he covered in thirty-seven minutes. It was always the same. When he was done with his run, forty-five minutes had transpired (give or take a minute, here and there).
    He could have run faster, but there were two reasons that he didn’t. First, he’d reached the point of diminishing returns:neither his VO-max nor his pulse rate would benefit from speeding up.
    Second … Well, the second reason was idiosyncratic. It was, simply, that when the treadmill exceeded eight and a half miles an hour, it gave out a high-pitched whine that most people couldn’t hear, but which Duran