All because my damn car broke down.

So far, the structure of Basil Jenrette’s brain is unremarkable except for the incidental finding of a posterior cerebellar abnormality, an approximately six-millimeter cyst that might affect his balance a little, but nothing else. It is the way his brain functions that isn’t quite right. It can’t be right. If it were, he wouldn’t have been a candidate for the PREDATOR research study, and he probably wouldn’t have agreed to it. Everything is a game to Basil, and he is smarter than Einstein, thinks he is the most gifted person on earth. He has never suffered one moment of remorse for what he’s done and is quite candid in saying that he would kill more women given the opportunity. Unfortunately, Basil is likeable.

The two prison guards inside the MRI suite vacillate from confused to curious as they stare through the glass at the seven-foot-long tube, the bore of the magnet, on the other side. The guards wear uniforms but no guns. Weapons aren’t allowed in here. Nothing ferrous, including handcuffs and shackles, is permitted, and only plastic flex-cuffs restrain Basil’s ankles and wrists as he lies on the table inside the magnet, listening to the jarring knocks and wonks of radiofrequency pulses that sound like infernal music played on high-voltage power lines-or that’s what Benton imagines.

“Remember, this next one is color blocks. All I want you to do is name the color,”Dr. Susan Lane, the neuro psychologist, says into the intercom. “No, Mr. Jenrette, please don’t nod your head. Remember, the tape is on your chin to remind you not to move.”

“Ten-four,” Basil’s voice sounds through the intercom.

It ishalf past eightat night andBentonis uneasy. He has been uneasy for months, not so much worried that the Basil Jenrettes of the world are going to suddenly explode into violence inside the gracious old brick walls of McLean Hospital and slaughter everything in sight, but that the research study is doomed to failure, that it is a waste of grant money and a foolish expenditure of precious time.McLeanis an affiliate ofHarvardMedicalSchool, and neither the hospital nor the university is gracious about failure.