Predator Read Free Page A

red I mean blue, green, red…” Basil’s voice violates the room as he gets all of them wrong.
         “He ever tell you why?” Dr. Lane asks Benton.
         “I’m sorry,” he says, distracted. “Why what?”
         “Red, blue shit! Uh red, blue-green…”
         “Why he gouged their eyes out.”
         “He said he didn’t want them to see how small his penis is.”
         “Blue, blue-red, red, green…”
         “He didn’t do so well on this one,” she says. “In fact, he missed most of them. What police department did he work for, so I remember not to get pulled for speeding in that part of the world?” She pushes the talk button. “You okay in there?”
         “Ten-four.”
         “Dade County PD.”
         “Too bad. I’ve always liked Miami. So that’s how you managed to conjure this one up. Because of your South Florida connections,” she replies, pushing the talk button again.
         “Not exactly.” Benton stares through the glass at Basil’s head in the far end of the magnet, imagining the rest of him dressed like a normal person in jeans and a button-up white shirt.
         The inmates are not allowed to wear prison fatigues on the hospital campus. It’s bad public relations.
         “When we began querying state penitentiaries for study subjects, Florida thought he was just the guy for the job. He was bored. They were happy to get rid of him,” Benton says.
         “Very good, Mr. Jenrette,” Dr. Lane says into the intercom. “Now, Dr. Wesley is going to come in and give you the mouse. You’re going to see some faces next.”
         “Ten-four.”
         Ordinarily, Dr. Lane would go into the MRI room and deal with the patient herself. But women doctors and scientists are not allowed physical contact with the subjects of PREDATOR. Male doctors and scientists have to be cautious, too, while inside the MRI suite. Outside of it, restraining research study subjects during interviews is up to the clinician. Benton is accompanied by the two prison guards as he turns on the lights inside the MRI room and shuts the door. The guards hover near the magnet and pay attention as he plugs in the mouse and places it in Basil’s restrained hands.
         He is nothing much to look at, a short, slight man with thinning blond hair and small gray eyes closely spaced. In the animal kingdom, lions, tigers and bears—the predators—have closely spaced eyes. Giraffes, rabbits, doves—the preyed upon—have eyes more widely spaced and oriented toward the sides of their heads, because they need their peripheral vision to survive. Benton has always wondered if the same evolutionary phenomenon applies to humans. That’s a research study nobody’s going to fund.
         “You doing all right, Basil?” Benton asks him.
         “What kind of faces?” Basil’s head talks from the end of the magnet, bringing to mind an iron lung.
         “Dr. Lane will explain it to you.”
         “I’ve got a surprise,” Basil says. “I’ll tell you when we’re done.”
         He has an odd gaze, as if a malignant creature is looking out through his eyes.
         “Great. I love surprises. Just a few more minutes and you’re done,” Benton says with a smile. “Then we’ll have a follow-up chat.”
         The guards accompany Benton back outside the MRI room and return to the suite as Dr. Lane begins to explain over the intercom that all she wants Basil to do is click the left side of the mouse if the face is male and right if it is female.
         “Nothing for you to do or say, just press the button,” she reiterates.
         There are three tests, and the point of them is not the patient’s ability to distinguish between the two genders. What is actually measured in this series of functional scanning is affective processing. The male and female faces appearing on the screen are behind other faces that flash too quickly