 I need to get this story out. I think if I tell you, if I just tell someone, then I can live with the choices I've made. I'm a private investigator, and I run a moderately sized but highly successful investigation and consulting firm. My name's not important. About three months ago, a well-off client hired me to investigate the disappearance of her sister, let's call her Monica. Monica was the kind of kid who would get into trouble because her parents always used their resources to get her right back out of it. And she carried that entitlement into adulthood. Most recently, after getting pulled over for a DUI and being caught holding more than a personal use quantity of some very illegal drugs in the process, Monica was forced into court-ordered treatment at an upscale psychiatric and substance abuse treatment facility called the Wasserman Center. After her mandatory treatment period was up, Monica called her family to let them know she was out and that she was taking a cab back to her apartment, evidently still disgruntled at the family's refusal to use their considerable money and influence to spare her from compulsory rehab. According to the driver, she asked to be let out downtown, saying she had an errand to run, and that was the last time anyone saw her. The police suspected she ran afoul of some of her own unsavory contacts and her parents followed that line of inquiry, offering rewards for information and hiring private investigators. My client, though, had other suspicions. She said her sister sounded strange on the phone, her language stilted and toneless where she was usually loud and extroverted to a fault. The cab driver, when questioned, told a similar story. None of the other investigation firms her family hired turned up anything concrete, but they did turn up rumors about the Wasserman Center, unethical experimental treatments, excessive secrecy, stuff out of the real life horror studies of abusive mental hospitals in the early 20th century. The thing is, Wasserman also underwent regular inspections from state regulators and always passed with flying colors. There were no grounds for a police investigation, especially since Monica evidently left the center under her own power and in good health. Unfortunately, I didn't have any better luck with my own inquiries. My small but highly capable staff of ombudsman and apprentice investigators was shut down at every turn by a bureaucratic wall of silence. But I didn't get where I am in this business by taking no for an answer. I got here by doing what other people wouldn't even consider. It turns out that it's relatively easy to get yourself committed, pretending to be crazy in order to get locked up. After all, isn't exactly the kind of behavior people expect from a sane person. A 911 call using the right keywords to convince them I was a potential danger to myself and others was all it took to get myself picked up and sent off for a 72 hour evaluation. Contacts I cultivated in the police department and municipal government ensured that I was one of the limited number of psych cases from police processing who were sent to Wasserman for treatment. It's a private facility, but they contract to take a certain number of cases per month from the county as a sort of public service. Once on the inside, I was able to begin my investigation in earnest. I came in knowing it was a high end facility that frequently catered to the rich and well connected, but even I was surprised at how well nice the place seemed. It seemed that the center had a stated policy of cultivating a safe nurturing environment for recovery and treatment by restricting the patients as little as possible, just enough to ensure their safety and that of the staff. This openness gave it a remarkably homey feel and also meant that I was relatively free to move around the part of the complex where my small private room was located. I could also avail myself of the beautifully landscaped grounds that lower risk patients were permitted to roam freely. There was no doubt a hidden perimeter of electronic surveillance and security personnel in closing this park-like expanse as tightly as a razor wire fence, but it was kept tactfully discreet from patients and visitors to the facility. Still, by my second day at Wasserman, I was beginning to think my client had sent me on a wild goose chase. I hadn't found any evidence of anything going on at the complex. There was only one place left to search, the secure wards, where supposedly high risk patients were kept. I'd studied aerial photos of the campus, Google Earth can be a PI's best friend, and knew that in some places the parts of the grounds adjoining these wards were separated from the section I was allowed in. By nothing more than a tall dense hedge, which was difficult, but not impossible for me to squeeze through unnoticed when the staff wasn't watching me too closely. What I found on the other side wasn't immediately shocking. A group of patients standing in four neat rows facing the same direction. At first I thought I just stumbled on some kind of organized group activity, but there was no member of the staff nearby, no one leading the class. I frowned and took a step forward. It being a bad idea to startle a patient in a metal hospital, I cautiously worked my way around the group and approached them so they'd see me in their peripheral vision before I got too close. Hello? I called to them, glancing around for any signs of nearby staff. They gave no response, continuing to stare straight ahead. Carefully, I approached one of the patients in the front row, an older man with just a fringe of white hair on his otherwise bald head. Hi there! I said a little louder as I glanced around furtively. He slowly turned his head to face me, and as I saw his face, I recoiled in shock, a chill running down my spine. Uh, I... He replied, haltingly, blinking slightly puffy and discolored lids over unfocused eyes. I'd seen faces like that before in photographs when I was researching the history of abuse at mental health facilities in preparation for my investigation at Wasserman. The man had two black eyes, but not the kind you get in a fistfight. This was the telltale bruising that forms from the insertion of a sharp surgical probe under the eyelids and into the brain through the roof of the eye socket during a transorbital lobotomy. The elderly man with the bruised eyelids said nothing more to me, turning just as slowly back to facing front after a few seconds. As I scan the slack vacant faces of the patient standing in their neat rows, I noticed two others with similar discoloration and one more with bruises that were almost faded. Judging by the docile and transfixed behavior of the entire group, I suspected the ones with bruising were just those who'd had the procedure most recently. They'd performed the procedure. On all of them. Mass lobotomization was supposed to be a thing of the past, a dark chapter in medical history. But judging by what I saw here, it was very much alive at the Wasserman Center. I pulled out the tiny digital camera I'd smuggled into the facility with me and snapped several pictures of the patients. This was the evidence I needed, sterling inspection record or not. I knew this would be enough to at least launch an investigation by the state medical board. I made my way back to the hedgerow and forced my way through again, squeezing my eyes closed to avoid scraping my corneas as I pushed past the tightly woven tangle of thin branches and sharp edged leaves. When I opened them on the other side, I froze. A short older man in an ill-fitting brown suit faced me, a grim expression on his deeply lined face. I recognized his face from my research. Standing before me was Dr. Henry Wasserman, flanked by two burly hospital orderlies. He sighed heavily, his expression turning slightly sad. I really wish you hadn't seen that. I didn't struggle when the two orderlies patted me down and relieved me of my contraband, the tiny camera. My lockpicks and a few other compact items I'd smuggled into the asylum and the carefully hollowed out soles of my shoes before grabbing hold of my arms and gently but insistently guiding me away across the green. I'm an investigator, not a kung fu master, and it was pretty clear that the doctors grim, hulking minions were more than capable of manhandling me all the way to wherever I was going if I pushed my luck. As we walked, Dr. Wasserman casually showed me the compact syringe he carried with him and raised an eyebrow pointedly. I scowled back at him but said nothing. I realized there was no point in trying to call for help or make a scene. For one thing, if he was willing to perform mass lobotomies on the patients in his care, it seemed plausible that he'd be willing to inject me with something a bit more permanent than a sedative. Even if it was just a tranquilizer, I rated my chances of getting out of this a lot higher if I remain conscious. Please secure Mr. Bly in room N2 and keep an eye on the door. I'll be along to join you shortly. Wasserman ordered his goons as we re-entered the center through a small side door. Me and the two orderlies parted ways with the doctor and headed down a long, narrow corridor. I hadn't been in this part of the center, leading me to conclude that we must be in one of the secure wards I'd been unable to access earlier in my investigation. Look, you don't have to do this. I murmured softly to the pair of giants clad in scrubs. My name is Nelson Bly. I'm a private investigator. People at my firm know where I am, and if I'm still here after 72 hours, they're gonna come looking for me. Your boss won't be able to cover this up. But look, if you help me, please keep quiet, Mr. Bly. We're almost there. One of the thugs said, mildly, I'm trying to help you. I hissed, listen, right now you're making yourself accessories to multiple felonies. But if I cried out in pain and stumbled slightly, as the other orderly tightened his grip on my arm to a surprisingly painful degree, the two didn't even break their stride, dragging me forward until I got my feet under me again. Please keep quiet, Mr. Bly. The first orderly repeated, his voice still calm and professional. Since a broken arm wouldn't improve my rapidly diminishing options for escape, I walked between my stoic captors in angry silence until we reached a plain door with a simple plastic nameplate reading N2. They opened the door and brought me inside. It was just an empty, unlit room with four chairs and a table in one corner. The only unusual feature was a long curtain covering a window along the wall opposite the door unless I was much mistaken in my understanding of the center's layout. This room shouldn't have an exterior wall. Wait here. One of the captors added as he flicked on the lights in the room. Then he looked at me and pointedly added, we'll be just outside. I snarled as the orderlies retreated and closed the door behind them. A jangling of keys followed by a sharp click told me that they locked it as well. I paced for a minute or two looking around frantically for any potential means of escape. The walls were painted concrete. There wasn't a hanging ceiling so nothing to climb up to and no one bigger than the average house cat would ever fit inside the single HVAC event. That just left. The mysterious window. I slowly walked over to the side of it and tugged on the pull cord that hung there. The curtain parted smoothly and my eyes widened. I hadn't expected that. On the other side of the thick glass was a room that looked a lot like a small version of the neonatal ward in a hospital. There were four basinettes in a neat row, each one accompanied by a medical chart affixed to the end and one preemie incubator. At the end of the row, a woman dressed in the loose fitted sweats that were the patient uniform at the Wasserman's Center sat in a large armchair, smiling faintly down at the small bundle cradled in her arms. The child the patient held immediately drew my eyes. It looked off. His eyes were small in proportion to its head, which itself seemed misshapen, narrow at the top and broader in the jaw than an infant should be. The baby's nose was also sharply upturned and its tiny ears seemed strangely flattened against the side of its head. I glanced at the other basinettes and drew in a breath sharply. They were deformed as well, though in more pronounced ways than the child the woman held. I won't get into the details, but there were things deeply wrong with the children. God in heaven, I breathe. What the hell kind of experiments have these bastards been doing here? I turned my attention back to the adult female patient who held the oddly proportioned baby. Even if the children were experiments, why would Wasserman be allowing mental patients to handle them unsupervised? I tapped cautiously on the glass to no response and then again slightly louder. The woman heard it this time and I realized two things as she slowly looked up from the child glancing vacantly around the room. One, she clearly couldn't see me. The glass must have been a one-way mirror and two, I recognized her. It was Monica, the woman whose sister sent me here to investigate. My guts clenched as I realized the patient's identity and what had been done to her. With her head raised, I could see the faint shadow of faded bruises around her pale blue eyes. She'd been lobotomized, just like the patients in the grounds. I stiffened suddenly as I heard Dr. Wasserman's voice from behind me. I hadn't heard him enter. Tell me, have you begun to understand yet, Mr. Bly? I turned to see Dr. Wasserman entering the room and closing the door behind him. He carried a sheet of Manila folders under one arm. I understand that you're a sick son of a bitch. I snarled, taking a step towards the door, anger rising in me as I contemplated the deformed and mutilated children I'd seen through the viewing window. Calmly, he reached into the pocket of his rumpled suit and produced a compact suppressed pistol. I'm here to have what I hope will be a civil conversation with you, Mr. Bly. But I have no intention of permitting you to physically attack me. Why don't you have a seat? I took a deep breath. I wasn't really interested in what this twisted bastard had to say for himself. But if I was going to survive this long enough to find an opportunity for escape, I needed to be smart. So I cautiously took a seat, keeping my eyes on my deceptively innocuous captor. Thank you. The doctor said politely and moved to the table. I see you have seen our neonatal facility. He said conversationally as he began laying the folders out on the table. What do you think? I think there's a special place in hell for people who hurt children. I growled. Wasserman sighed heavily as he continued arranging the folders on the tabletop. They looked like patient files, each one marked with a name. If there is such a place, I expect you are probably right. So why are you doing it? I snapped. Wasserman raised his eyebrows in surprise and then nodded slowly as if coming to a new understanding. Ah, yes. You would think that, given what you've seen. But you misunderstand, Mr. Bly, I am not responsible for the suffering of the children in this ward. Yeah? Then who is? I retorted, skeptically. Why? He began as he lured himself into a chair across from me, keeping his pistol pointed in my direction, their parents, of course, their mothers in particular. I frowned in confusion as Wasserman gestured to the viewing window. The children there are the children of the patients. Women lost his substance abuse so completely that they could not moderate the feeding of their addiction, even for the sake of their own children. He began to list their afflictions, ticking them off on his fingers one by one. His voice had an error of clinical detachment, but I could detect a note of suppressed anger beneath the surface. Syndactyly, severe cleft palate, a heart defect requiring surgical correction, all a direct result of the substances their mothers abused while pregnant with them. I was beginning to understand the child Monica's holding in there. Her son Wasserman confirmed Tanner has one of the worst cases of fetal alcohol syndrome. Our pediatric specialist has ever seen the external physical signs are quite evident, of course, but only time will tell us the full extent of his mental and physical impairments. But Monica is a special case. How so? I asked. The mothers of the other children were alcoholics or drug addicts. Monica, in truth, is neither. Her disease is something else entirely. Wasserman explained, specifically, it is a disease of evil. You can't be serious, I replied. I am quite serious, Wasserman affirmed, without missing a beat. You see, Mr. Bly, many years ago, when I was in medical school, I was part of a small, I guess you might call it, a study group. This group's particular interest was the philosophy of medicine, and it was there that I first heard a fellow student broach the subject of a theory he developed while studying epidemiology. He believed that evil itself might be best understood, not as an ephemeral philosophical concept, but as a disease. I'm not sure I follow, I admitted cautiously. According to this theory is a disease that spreads in a predictable fashion. The doctor explained, from person to person, through acts of evil. You have doubtless heard, for example, of how most of those who abused children were abused as children. It is as though they were infected by the very evil that victimized them, which grew infested inside. And in time, push them to pass on the infection to others. That is one example, but far from the only one. So what, that's your treatment, I asked, gesturing to the woman on the other side of the window, still staring in vacant contentment at her deformed baby. No, the doctor replied, shaking his head, the power to make men good is something, I think, that will remain forever beyond the reach of medicine and psychiatry. What I do is not a cure. It is more a form of quarantine. I cannot cure them, but I can deprive them of the ability to spread their disease. Cut off the hand of the thief, so we can't steal anymore. Is that it? I challenged, certainly not. Wasserman replied with surprising vehemence, maiming thieves, castrating rapists, such barbaric acts are evidence of the diseases spread, not its containment. The aesthetic foundation of the value of human life in society is the inviolability of the human body, regardless of the evil ends a body may have been put to. It is invariably less evil to simply kill someone outright if you truly think them worthy of such butchery. Replacing death with physical mutilation is either vindictive cruelty or moral cowardice, both of which lead only to evil in the end. But you would maim the human mind, I pointed out, you're lobotomizing people. Not as such, he objected mildly. Transorbital lobotomy for all that it was performed with a sharpened probe was a blunt instrument in terms of its effects. We now know far more about the functioning of the brain than we did in the days when that procedure was common. The outcome is similar, I grant you, but the methodology is far more refined. He opened one of the folders on the table and slid it towards me. It contained an illustration of a small electronic device with long filament like wires extending from it. An implant not unlike the brain implants used to control epileptic seizures, only instead of electrically disrupting abnormal brain activity at the onset of a seizure, our devices use minute electrical impulses to constantly disrupt brain activity in the frontal lobe. It can be precisely tuned to the needs of the individual patient and the intensity of the impulses varied according to the severity of the disease they are infected with. He smiled riley, gesturing in a manner that was rather unsettling considering that he was holding a pistol. It turned out that the most efficient method for implanting the device's probes was via transorbital insertion, which produces that characteristic bruising, unfortunately. I stared in disbelief at the diagram on the table. It seemed like science fiction, but then I had heard of the seizure controlling implants the doctor described. That much was true, and in a way it was easier to believe than the seemingly reasonable and conscientious little man seated across from me, regularly scrambling his patient's brains with an icepick. The smart thing would be to go along with it, pretend to sympathize with him, but somehow I didn't think I'd be able to deceive Wasserman like that. He might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid, and I got the impression that his profession gave him uncommon facility at sussing out a lyre. I shook my head. Doctor, I can accept that maybe you really do have good intentions. Maybe this really is a kinder, gentler lobotomy. But that doesn't give you the right to do this to people. Is it really for you to decide who's evil and who's good? He shook his head. A false dichotomy there, Mr. Bly, one doesn't have to fully comprehend good to recognize the disease of evil, at least in its most acute forms. He opened another file, which I saw was Monica's. As I mentioned before, Monica was not an alcoholic. In fact, she was extremely high functioning and intelligent in how she managed her abuse of various recreational substances. She never took excessive doses and cycled between a wide array of different narcotics to avoid developing tolerances, which doesn't stop it from being self-destructive in the long term, much less an embarrassment to her wealthy parents. They threatened to cut her off if she didn't seek treatment on more than one occasion. They also refused to use their influence to spare her from court ordered rehab when she was arrested for a DUI while carrying a large quantity of illegal narcotics, which is, of course, how she first came into our care. Wasserman said as he scanned the file, I don't see how that she knew that eventually her parents would have made good on their threats to separate her from the family fortune and hints from the lifestyle she'd become accustomed to. Wasserman continued, cutting me off. As we learned from independent inquiries, as well as various discussions with the patient, which Monica naturally understood to be protected by doctor patient confidentiality, she came up with what she regarded as the perfect solution to her problem. Besides her more recreational pharmaceuticals, Monica also had a prescription for birth control pills, which she was generally fastidious about taking. That is, until it dawned on her, all she had to do to secure continuing financial support from her parents was to stop taking them. They might be willing to cut her off. She was, after all, now an adult, but they wouldn't abandon their grandchild. She was also aware of the consequences of regular alcohol consumption during pregnancy and decided that having a child with special needs would only serve a further assurance of her parents continued support. It wouldn't impact her either way. Since with her parents money at her disposal, she could hire nurses and domestic help to do most of the work of caring for the child. That that doesn't make sense. I protested. Horrified. She'd. She'd have to know that they could just have taken her to court and gotten custody of the baby for themselves. I've been hired by the grandparents of kids with addict parents to help them do just that. Wasserman shook his head. While we are long past the days when merely having a child out of wedlock would constitute a social scandal for a wealthy family like Monica's. She felt sure that the scandal resulting from dragging her into court for custody would be something they'd want to avoid. I'm not at all certain she was wrong in that assumption, to be honest. He tapped the file pointedly. The point is that this is not a mental illness, Mr. Bly, not one codified in the DSM at any rate. Indeed, you've seen how we treat actual mental illness first hand in the less secure wards. Those patients are treated with respect for their autonomy and compassion for their suffering using only fully ethical and scientifically proven modalities. Wasserman declared standing. But the people in these files, the ones you saw in the restricted grounds, they are not simply sick. They are evil. He flipped open a third folder laid out on the table. It contained a picture of one of the patients I'd seen on the grounds, along with a medical file, Wilson Hayes. He molested five children over the course of 15 years, employed as a groundskeeper for a private daycare center, but was acquitted of his crimes due to police misconduct and the unwillingness of his victims to testify. He opened another. Roberta Carlson, she believed her husband was having an affair, so she took a kitchen knife and castrated him while he slept. An incorrect diagnosis of mental illness by an inept or overly sympathetic court appointed psychiatrist spared her incarceration. He slapped open another folder. David Gallo killed a family of four while driving recklessly, all except for the mother, that is, who will live the rest of her life bereaved of her husband and children, as well as being confined to a wheelchair. And yet his family connections allowed him to escape punishment. He tore open another folder, then yet another outrage rising in his voice. Murder, rape, mayhem, wanton, cruelty and destruction in all of them. All of the patients you saw on the grounds escape the grasp of the legal system. All of them free to continue spreading the disease. I sat in stunned silence as the doctor took a deep breath and composed himself once again. If there is a God, Mr. Bly, I am most certainly not him. I know this. Perhaps I have no right to do what I do. Perhaps I cannot make evil men good. But I also know that I can stop them from spreading the disease of evil. To others. He said his brow furrowed as if in pain. And if I can, then I must. Like the doctors who finally apprehended the infamous typhoid Mary, an immune carrier of her disease and permanently exiled her to a quarantined island. I can mitigate the disease simply by removing the worst cases from the equation. He turned to the window where a gently smiling psychiatric nurse was coaxing Monica into returning her baby to his bassinet. Her vague, vacant expression turned slightly distressed as she reluctantly handed her son back to the nurse. Then she bent down and placed a gentle kiss on his misshapen forehead. The doctor smiled. Sadly, I cannot make evil men and women good, Mr. Bly, but when I take from them the majority of their capacity for will and reason and strip them of self-determination, they do get something in return. In most cases, it is simply a kind of peace in that they can no longer hear the demons of their nature ceaselessly urging them to inflict their disease on new victims. In Monica's case, however, I like to think she has also gained something else, the capacity to love her child. I stood beside the doctor in silence for a long time, watching the nurse lead her compliant charge out of the neonatal unit before I spoke again. Why are you telling me all this, doctor? I asked finally, because he sighed, you, Mr. Bly, you are not like the men and women in those files. You are not infected, which means that convenient, though it might be for me, I cannot do to you what I've done to them. Nor indeed can I kill you for the same reason. I will not become yet another vector of the disease I have struggled so long to combat. My mouth dropped open slightly as I processed what the doctor was saying. Yes, you are free to go, though I'm afraid I will have to hang on to the memory card from your camera. He said with a rye smile. Then his expression turned serious again. In spite of that, I don't doubt that knowing what you know and with the skills and resources at your disposal, you will be able to create serious problems for the center. Yes, I allowed cautiously, which is why I'm surprised you're just letting me go, to be honest. As I said, I do not feel I have a right to do otherwise, Wasserman said. And then he reached out to tap pointedly on the table. But when you leave this facility, Mr. Bly, when you are deciding what you will do next, I ask that you consider something. The procedure that has been performed on the people in these files is not necessarily irreversible, and in any case, their implants must be regularly recharged by induction in order to continue functioning. If this facility were to cease operation, if those confined here were to be rescued by the authorities, well, in time, they would regain their mental faculties and return to what they were before. The legal system has already failed to contain these individuals once. And while we are more than confident in our investigations, what would be admissible in a court of law is another matter. I looked over the file spread out on the table, contemplating the atrocities enumerated in each one, the evils perpetrated by each of the electronically lobotomized patients. And a chill ran down my spine as I imagined them walking free. The question you have to ask yourself, the old man continued solemnly, is not simply whether or not you should try to destroy what I've built here. You must also ask yourself if you're willing to throw open the gates of hell in order to do so. Then, without further conversation, Dr. Wasserman collected his folders and bid me farewell. The pair of heavy handed orderlies that had apprehended me escorted me quietly back to the nonsecure ward from which I was discharged shortly thereafter. And that's the story of how I infiltrated the Wasserman's center and discovered the secret behind Monica's disappearance. Dr. Wasserman didn't give me a chance to ask him about it, but it wasn't hard to deduce how the illusion of Monica's departure had been created. They'd simply had Monica herself make the call to her family after coaching her on what to say. Then they most likely had a staff member with a similar enough build and experience hire the cab to take her downtown using Monica's credit card, where she then disappeared into the crowds before making her way back to the center. Cab drivers see thousands of people in passing, even if he was shown a picture of the real Monica. There's little chance he would have noticed the difference when he was questioned about it later. That's it. Like I said at the beginning, I'm telling you this because I needed to tell someone the names have been changed to protect both the innocent and those I can't bring myself to pass judgment on. The official result of my investigation in brief is as follows. Despite a few spurious rumors to the contrary, the Wasserman's center is exactly what it appears to be a perfectly fine and efficient facility dedicated to treating the mentally ill and far ahead of the curve in terms of compassionate care and a respect for patients' rights. Though it is always discouraging to follow a seemingly promising lead to a dead end. The fact is that wherever she may be, the fault for Monica's disappearance does not lie with the center.