Free Pawnbroker: A Thriller by Jerry Hatchett Page A

not CSI.
    “Exactly what part of all this grossness am I supposed to be looking at?” I said.
    “This!” Doc said, beaming.
    I guess I was becoming conditioned, because I expected to lurch, but my stomach held. Doc was holding up the brain as if it were a particularly nice cauliflower off the produce rack at Kroger.
    “I ask you again, what am I looking at?”
    “Come closer.”
    I wasn’t excited about this, but I shuffled his way.
    “Now look at this,” he said. It was then I noticed he had separated the two halves of the upper part of the brain, the bouncy Jello-looking part. Underneath those parts was what I can only describe as looking like a bunch of interconnected glands.
    “See anything wrong with this picture?” he said.
    “These parts,” I said, pointing to the gland things underneath and trying not to touch anything in the process, “look sort of...sick.”
    “That’s an understatement, Gray. This man’s limbic system is necrotic!”
    “And that means...what?”
    “See how the edges are turning white?”
    I nodded.
    “It’s because the tissue is dying. That’s called necrosis.”
    “That’s very interesting but I don’t see what it has to do with my shooting him.”
    “The limbic system controls behavioral elements, like aggression.”
    “You’re saying this guy could’ve been wigged out?”
    “I’m not familiar with ‘wigged out,’ but beyond a shadow of a doubt, this man’s behavior would have been dramatically affected.”
    I looked over at Penny. “Is this helping us?”
    “It’s a piece of a puzzle,” she said. “Johnny was a prick, but he wasn’t a robber and he was definitely not the type to put himself in a position to be killed. He thought way too much of himself.”
    “So you think this brain condition caused him to show up in my shop and stick a gun in my face.”
    “Doc?” she said. The two of them had obviously chummed up in a hurry.
    “A limbic system in this condition could definitely have caused him to do things not in keeping with his normal personality.”
    “Okay, he had a brain disease that drove him nuts. I still don’t see how it helps our case,” I said.
    “Tell him the rest, Doc.”
    “The rest?” I said.
    Doc was pacing now, still carrying the brain. “This is not the result of a disease, not in the conventional sense of the word, at least.”
    “Then what is it?”
    “It sounds almost too crazy to say out loud twice in the same day,” he said.

 
    Chapter 30
     
     
     
    “T he tissue—” Doc began just as my cell phone rang.
    “Sorry,” I said, pulling it from my pocket, flipping it open. “Hello?”
    “Beer’s getting warm, buddy. Any longer and I’ll have to drink it myself. Can’t let good beer go to waste, you know!” Teddy. Crap.
    “Uh-oh,” I said. “Something came up. Sorry, Teddy.”
    “Where are you?”
    “I’ll tell you later, I—”
    “Understand I do. No time for your old friend!” He had obviously put down plenty of brew already. He was loud and his words were in Early Slur.
    “I’ll make it up to you soon, Teddy. Gotta go.” I closed the phone with him still blabbering. “Go ahead, Doc,” I said.
    “The tissue in this man’s limbic system appears to have been cooked. Specifically, microwaved.”
    I just looked at him.
    “Let me show you something.” He put the brain upside down on a stainless steel table and then used a scalpel to slice a layer off a non-affected part. It reminded me of that scene near the end of the movie Hannibal, when Hannibal Lecter cut off a chunk of that cop’s brain.
    “Follow me,” he said, and walked into the little outer office.
    “Please tell me you aren’t really going to do this,” I said as he put the sliver of tissue in a microwave.
    “Calm down, Gray. This is a purely scientific demonstration.” He set the timer for fifteen seconds and keyed START.
    When the bell dinged, he opened the door and carefully extracted the sliver with a pair of tweezers.