Too Near the Edge (28 page)

We read through more pages that went on and
on about how we can become better people and build a superior
society by applying behaviorist principles. I found a couple of
pages that had data tables with information about individual
children. “Look at this, Sharon. This project has about thirty
children, all age three or younger. It looks like they were all in
it since they were born.”

“So these kids’ parents all agree to raise
them by behaviorist principles? I feel sorry for them. I know I
never liked being trained that way as a kid. Whenever I’d complain
to my dad about him doing things to shape my behavior, he’d tell me
the story of baby Albert. Back in the 1920s a psychologist named
Watson taught a baby named Albert to be afraid of a white rat by
loudly banging on metal with a hammer every time the baby touched
the rat. Little Albert associated the rat with the noise and before
long he would cry whenever he saw the rat, or even when he saw any
white furry thing like a toy or a fur coat. Dad would remind me
that he could have used methods like that, but he didn’t. I guess I
was better off than little Albert, but I always felt
manipulated—all those charts, tokens and point systems.”

“Yeah, I guess being the child of a prominent
behaviorist can have its downside,” I sympathized. “Reminds me of
the baby box that B.F. Skinner invented for his daughter back in
the 1930s. It was an incubator-like thing, sort of a combination
crib and playpen with glass sides and a temperature-controlled
environment. Most people thought it was terrible because the baby
didn’t get enough human contact or affection. People compared it to
keeping animals in cages.

But Skinner raised his daughter in it until
she was two and a half.”

Suddenly I found a page that really hit me.
“Oh my God! This project is buying babies from Mexican mothers for
this experiment.”

“What? Are you sure? How could they get away
with buying babies? Let me see that.”

I showed Sharon the section I had been
reading. “Look, it says right here that they are not only
conducting a unique experiment that will change the world, they are
providing babies born into poverty with the opportunity for an
exceptional life. And, then they say they are compensating the
babies’ parents significantly so they can lift their entire family
out of poverty.”

“So who is running this? Is my dad involved
in this? Is that why Adam had this stuff?”

It took us a long time to find the names of
the project directors, but when we did—sure enough—one of them was
Waycroft. “You know, I remember now—Holly said your dad had some
project in Mexico.”

“Paying for babies to use in research has to
be illegal, even in Mexico,” Sharon said. “How can Dad be doing
this?”

“You know, maybe we should call Elisa and see
if she can come look at this stuff. She knows a lot more about
psychology research than we do.”

We gave Elisa enough information to get her
to agree to come down right away. But we knew it would take her at
least forty minutes to get to Sharon’s. In the turmoil of the past
few hours, we’d almost forgotten we had Adam’s computer back. Once
we remembered, we decided we should boot it up and try going to the
website. We got the computer from my car, put it on the dining room
table, entered the password Sharon had written down after she
contacted Adam, and the computer booted right up. We went to the
web browser, typed in the URL that was on the printed pages from
Waycroft’s project, but all we got was a blank page with the
notice:
The page cannot be found. The page you are looking for
might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily
unavailable.

We looked in Adam’s “Favorites” list for a
link to the site, and found one, but when we clicked on it, we got
the same blank page with the same frustrating message. We tried a
Google search on “Creating an Ideal World.” It came up with about
125 links when we put the phrase in quotes—stuff about utopian
visions, ecology, religion, progressive political groups, and so
on—but nothing that connected us to Waycroft’s project.

We were pretty frustrated by the time Elisa
got there. We gave her the papers to read, while Sharon went to get
Nathan to bed, and I continued the fruitless computer search. By
the time Elisa had read all the stuff and Nathan was down for the
night, it was 9:30. Sharon and I realized we were starving, so we
made some grilled cheese sandwiches and got out the watermelon to
snack on while we talked with Elisa.

“This is some serious shit,” Elisa said,
handing the papers back to Sharon. “I told you Donald is obsessed
with proving behavioral principles work. But I never thought he’d
go to this extreme to prove his theories.”

“And didn’t you find out that the
university’s institutional review board wouldn’t let him do some of
the research he wanted to do?” I asked.

“Well, there’s sure no way they’d let him
take babies and raise them in a controlled environment to test
behavioral principles,” Elisa said. “I’d think Donald knows better
than to even ask permission for that.”

“So you think he just decided to run this
illicit project in Mexico?” Sharon asked. “But who are these other
people? And where do they get the money to pay the families and run
the project? And how did Adam know about it?”

“It looks like Adam found the website
somehow, and printed out these pages,” Elisa said. “He clearly
thought this material was important, or he wouldn’t have locked it
in this box. But he must have been worried about how you’d react. I
assume that’s why he didn’t tell you. Maybe that’s what he was so
worried about before he died.”

I remembered Erik had told me the night
before that Adam had been worried about Waycroft, but I didn’t want
to bring up Erik and explain why I hadn’t believed him. So I just
asked, “Did Adam ever say anything that gave you the idea he had
concerns about your dad?”

“It’s hard to say. Adam and my dad never got
along—which was mostly Dad’s fault. Adam didn’t have too many good
things to say about Dad, but I can understand why he wouldn’t have
wanted to tell me about this. I’m sure he was freaked out about
it.”

“I would say Donald has some explaining to
do,” Elisa said. “And with this information we shouldn’t have any
trouble getting him to back off and quit harassing the three of
us.”

“But shouldn’t we report this somewhere?” I
asked. “We can’t just use it to get him to leave us alone.”

“I don’t think we have enough information to
report it,” Elisa said. “You can’t even find the website now. And
who would we report it to? The project isn’t even in this country.
I think we need to talk to Donald. Maybe we can find out more.”

“Okay, let’s go to his lab tomorrow morning
while Nathan is at soccer practice,” Sharon said. “Dad’s always at
his lab on Saturday morning. That way we can find him without
having to tell him in advance that we’re coming.”

We agreed to meet at my office at 9:30 the
next morning, so we could go together to confront Waycroft.

Waycroft’s lab was part of a cluster of
research buildings on the East Campus, off 30th and Arapahoe. We
drove over together in Elisa’s car. Not surprising on a summer
Saturday morning, the property was mostly empty.

The building that housed his lab was one of
those so-called “temporary” buildings that have been around
university campuses for generations. This one was the typical
prefabricated flat rectangle with gray plastic-coated steel walls.
We parked behind and walked around to the front door, which was
unlocked—so we walked in.

Banks of stainless steel rat cages lined one
wall. A long shelf on another wall held about fifteen desktop
computers, each connected to a white rectangular box on a shelf
above it. Waycroft sat with his back to us typing on a computer at
a built-in desk. Ceiling-high shelves crammed with electronic
equipment surrounded his desk on both sides.

He swiveled his desk chair around to face us
as we came in. “To what do I owe this unexpected visit?” he asked
with a scowl. “I thought none of you were speaking to me.”

“We want to talk about your ideal world
project in Mexico,” Sharon said.

Waycroft looked momentarily startled, but
quickly regained control. “I have no idea what you’re talking
about,” he said.

“Dad, we know about the project. Adam printed
out stuff from the website and left it in a locked box. I found it
last night.”

“Sharon, I don’t know what you think you
found, since I haven’t seen it. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Waycroft appeared calm and cool.

“You can drop the act, Donald,” Elisa stepped
closer to him. “We have detailed printouts of your Creating An
Ideal World project, including the part about paying poor families
to give you their babies to use for your research. You know as well
as I do that research like that is immoral, unethical and illegal.
Did you really think you could keep a project like this a
secret?”

Donald remained calm. “Look, I’ve finally
gotten this project going with some great scientific minds
involved,” he said. “We’re not hurting those kids. In fact, we’re
helping them. Their lives would be nothing without us. But the
project’s not politically correct. We’d be wiped out if people
knew. Obviously we have to keep it secret.”

Elisa took that as an opening. “Okay, we’re
here to offer you a deal. You stop this project now, and return
those children to their parents. You drop your complaint against
Cleo, quit interfering with the way Sharon is raising Nathan, and
stay out of my tenure process. If you agree to all that, we won’t
tell anyone your secret. But if you don’t agree, I’m going to give
all this material to the university administration.”

While Elisa issued her ultimatum, Waycroft
swiveled his chair around so he faced his desk again. As she
finished, he opened the desk drawer in front of him, took out a
gun, jumped up and pointed it at us. I froze. My legs were rooted
to the floor. I don’t think I could have moved if the building had
been on fire.

“Dad! What are you doing?” Sharon gasped.

“Shut up, Sharon! None of you has any idea
what you’re doing. This project is the culmination of my life’s
work. I have no intention of dismantling it. It’s taken me years to
find investors and put together this international research group.
I’m not going to let anyone destroy this project. It’s too
important, too valuable. I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep it
going.”

“So where did you find the members of this
so-called research group?” Elisa said, not intimidated by
Waycroft’s gun. I admired her guts, but I couldn’t see what good
could come from continuing to confront him.

“None of your business. But we’re already
seeing amazing results, even though we’ve only had the project up
and running for three years. Children raised in our controlled
environment will show the world what can happen if we take control
and design a society that is totally consistent in rewarding good
behavior and extinguishing bad behavior. Someday this project—my
project—will change the world. And all those bureaucrats who tried
to hold me back will find out how wrong they were.”

Could he be serious? I didn’t feel anywhere
near as confident as Elisa sounded. I was scared. This was the
first time anyone had ever pointed a gun at me, and I took it very
seriously. I stood rigidly in my spot slightly behind Sharon and
Elisa, moving only my eyes around and around the room in search of
an escape. Eventually I began to regain feeling in my legs, like I
could move if I had to. But I couldn’t see any good moves to make.
While I figured there was no way he could shoot all three of us if
we ran in different directions, it seemed likely he’d get one or
maybe even two of us. Not good enough odds. Nor did I think we
could overpower him and get the gun, even if we could find a way to
jump him all at once. We were all in good shape, but Waycroft was
stocky and solid with the broad well-muscled shoulders of a former
football player who worked out daily.

“Is this project worth killing for?” Sharon
challenged. A look of horror came over her face. “Wait a
minute—have you already killed for it? Did you know Adam found out
about the project? Did you push him off the trail? You were right
there in the area when it happened.”

“Yes, I knew Adam had gotten on the website.”
Waycroft somehow maintained his cool in the face of Sharon’s
allegations. “It was a password protected site for internal use
only, but somehow Adam found it and got on. He used my
password—that was my mistake, using Nathan’s birthday for my
password. Adam didn’t have to work too hard to figure it out. As
soon as he told me, we took the site down, but he already knew too
much.”

“What do you mean, he knew too much?” Sharon
screamed, her face contorted in anger. “You mean he might have told
people you were buying babies?”

“I thought I had him convinced not to tell
anyone about the project. I was going to make it worth his while.
But right before he took the Grand Canyon trip, he told me he was
going there to think about what to do and he’d tell me what he’d
decided when he got back. He had begun to lose his nerve. He was a
liability. He was going to destroy my greatest accomplishment. I
couldn’t take the chance.”

“My God, Dad! You killed Adam! You killed my
husband. How could you do that to me and Nathan?” Ignoring the gun,
Sharon ran at Waycroft as if to choke him.

I held my breath, waiting for the shot. But
Waycroft only reached out with his left arm and pushed her away
from him. She staggered, but didn’t fall.

“Back off, Sharon,” Waycroft said, sounding
irritated, but still in control. “Adam wasn’t Nathan’s father. And
he was a bad influence. He encouraged you to raise Nathan in a
sloppy home with no structure to his life. You’ll both be better
off without him.”