The Night Bird, page 7
“Sneaky.”
“No, it’s just how memory works. How fast do you think the blue car was going when it blew through the stop sign? Want to hazard a guess?”
Frost shrugged. “I’d say thirty-five miles an hour.”
“It was going twenty. The control group in my studies typically guesses twenty-five. You went much higher. Do you know why?”
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Frost said, slightly irritated.
“I’ve described the blue car several times as zipping or racing through the intersection. ‘Blew through the stop sign.’ My characterization influences your brain. You sped up the car because of how I described the incident, not because of what you actually remembered.” Stein leaned forward and added, “In addition, you haven’t corrected me about two important details, even though I’ve made the same mistakes several times.”
“Namely?”
“The car in the video was dark green, not blue. And there was no stop sign at the intersection. It was a yield sign.”
Frost thought back to the video, and he realized to his dismay that he wasn’t sure if she was telling him the truth or not. Stein smiled at him with a slight turn of her lips.
“I’m not trying to make you feel like a fool, Inspector. It’s simply that this is how memory fails us. It’s highly suggestible. If an attorney or police officer did what I did to an accident witness, they’d be very likely to remember a blue car going through a stop sign the next time they tried to recall the incident. And that might be in a courtroom.”
“No offense, Dr. Stein, but you’re not exactly making me feel good about your memory treatments. The whole process sounds dangerous. I read that some of your colleagues have tried to drum you out of the profession because of what you’re doing.”
“You’re right,” Stein admitted. “Altering memories is very risky. Because of the dangers involved, the traditional viewpoint in psychiatry is that you should never do it. You can try to sever the emotional response from the memory, but you shouldn’t try to erase or replace the memory itself. Many therapists and scientists think our life is the product of our varied experiences, good and bad, and that we shouldn’t mess with that.”
“But you’re right, and they’re wrong?” Frost challenged her.
“Not necessarily. I just take a different view. I believe that a patient can decide for himself or herself how they want to be treated. It’s their life, not mine, not anybody else’s. The people who argue against assisted suicide aren’t the ones who have to experience debilitating pain or watch a family member suffer. It’s the same with painful memories. I’d rather empower the patient to live a better life, and if they want to do that by altering part of their past, that’s their choice. After all, a tumor is part of your life experience, too, isn’t it? But we wouldn’t hesitate to surgically remove it. So I don’t think memories are sacrosanct.”
Frost thought about his sister, Katie. All he had left of her was what he remembered. It made him believe that memories were sacred, the good and the bad. Even though there were things that he wished he could forget.
The car in the parking lot at Ocean Beach.
The body in the backseat.
“And how exactly do you alter someone’s memory?” he asked.
“If you talk to my husband, Jason—he’s a neuroscientist—he’ll tell you that someday soon, we’ll be able to use a laser and an MRI machine to light up the synapses in your brain and zap a particular memory. I try to do the same thing therapeutically. It’s a process I’ve spent more than fifteen years honing and perfecting. It combines hypnosis with audiovisual stimuli.”
“And drugs?” Frost asked.
“For some patients, yes, I’ll use drugs to increase susceptibility to hypnotic suggestion.”
“Does it always work?”
“No, of course not. There are no guarantees in psychiatry. My patients sign a release before treatment, because working on the brain is not like working on a car. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Some people can’t let go of memories. In very rare circumstances, treatment can even make it worse—intensifying the emotion or the memory, rather than removing it.”
“Enough that someone might, say, jump off a bridge?” Frost asked.
“If you’re talking about Brynn Lansing, my answer is no. Her treatment was weeks ago. It went fine.”
“So she couldn’t suddenly wake up and imagine herself being attacked by hundreds of feral cats?”
“That’s not how it works, Inspector. I don’t know what caused Brynn to behave as she did, but it was nothing that happened in my treatment room. This was something else entirely. There’s no connection.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am,” she insisted.
“Really? Then how do you explain Monica Farr?”
He saw anxiety bloom in Stein’s eyes. “What?”
“Monica Farr was another of your patients, wasn’t she? I checked the contacts on her phone. She had an entry for ‘Frankie.’ Guess whose number it was? And don’t worry, I can get a signed release for her patient records, too.”
“Are you saying that Monica—”
“Is dead,” Frost told her. “She had a psychotic breakdown just like Brynn. She shot herself in the head.”
The color vanished from Stein’s face. Her lips parted in horror. “Oh my God.”
Frost leaned forward across the table, and his voice was harsh. “Let’s face it, Dr. Stein, that’s a hell of a coincidence. Two patients come to you for treatment, and both of them wind up going crazy and killing themselves? I think you better start asking yourself what you really did inside their heads.”
10
“What do you remember about Monica Farr?” Jason asked.
Frankie stood in front of the solarium windows in her penthouse condominium on O’Farrell. It was almost midnight. She watched the city, and she could feel the city watching her. The art deco building between Leavenworth and Hyde was tall, with an east view toward the bay. When the Giants played at home, she could see fireworks over the stadium. In the distance, the lights of the Bay Bridge stretched toward Oakland, and she shivered as she thought about Brynn Lansing. Heights had never bothered Frankie, but she wondered what it was like to die that way, at the mercy of gravity. Like Brynn did. Like her father did.
Jason came up next to her and handed her a new glass of red wine. She’d already drunk too much this evening, and she felt the world floating, but she wanted more.
“Monica was an emergency-room nurse from Utah,” Frankie told him. “Three children arrived at the hospital after a house fire in Salt Lake. All of the kids were badly burned, and all of them died. Monica couldn’t get the episode out of her head. She moved to San Fran to get away from it, but she kept having flashbacks. She couldn’t do her job anymore.”
“How did you deal with it?”
Frankie pictured Monica in her head. Young. Redheaded. Slightly overweight. Monica’s face lit up when she talked about patients she’d helped. They had that in common. Frankie remembered the treatment strategy she’d chosen for her. The strategy was the most delicate part of therapy; that was where she had to read her patients and create a new reality that their minds would embrace.
“I didn’t want her to forget that the kids had died,” she said. “She dealt with loss every day. It was too much a part of who she was as a nurse. Instead, I helped her believe that she wasn’t really in the room when it happened. She didn’t see them die with her own eyes. I was hoping that would be enough to let her work through it. Monica wasn’t fragile. Nurses are tough. This was simply one tragedy too many.”
“Did the treatment work?” Jason asked.
“I thought it did. Monica called me a few weeks later. She was working as a nurse again. Graveyard-shift ER. It doesn’t get harder than that. But she sounded happy. She was calling to thank me.”
“So you did your job, Frankie. Don’t second-guess yourself.”
“Yes, but now she’s dead, and so is Brynn Lansing. That’s two of my patients showing signs of severe brain dysfunction.”
Jason shook his head. “Whatever happened to them wasn’t your fault.”
“How do you know?” Frankie asked.
He had no answer for her. He was just trying to make her feel better. He put an arm around her waist as they stood by the windows. She liked the closeness of him. She could see his reflection in the glass—his short, gelled dark hair; his sharply angled chin; his arching eyebrows and intense stare. He wore gray dress slacks and a slim-fit forest-green shirt. Her fingertips drifted onto his thigh, making soft circles, but then she pulled away, and she could feel his disappointment.
“Is it possible?” she asked.
“What?”
“Could I have harmed these women with my memory treatment?”
Jason scowled. It was late, and he didn’t want a clinical discussion. She knew what he really wanted. Sex.
“I can’t say it’s impossible,” he admitted. “There aren’t any absolutes in brain chemistry, you know that. People behave in unexpected ways. All I can tell you is that it’s very unlikely that your treatment could have produced such an extreme reaction, particularly so long after the therapy ended. I’m not saying the possibility is zero, but the risk is low.”
“Risk,” Frankie murmured. She was thinking about her father again.
It was funny how everything eventually led her back to him and their last weekend together. She couldn’t escape it. The theme of the discussion he’d chosen for their annual camping trip was risk. What chances are you willing to take to get what you want? What dangers do your choices create for other people? She could hear her father’s voice in her head; it had no intonations, no ups, no downs. He lectured and posed questions the way a professor would, rather than a father with a child. He jabbed with his finger to make his points. His grizzled face didn’t move.
Question. Is it acceptable to pursue your own selfish satisfaction when it causes risk to someone else?
Question. Is it okay to risk another’s life or happiness simply because you really want something?
“My father thought I was playing games with people’s lives,” Frankie said. “He said what I was doing was immoral.”
Jason reacted with impatience. “What did Marvin understand about morality? He was the least emotional person I ever knew. Forget about all of his academic posturing.”
“I would, but now I wonder if he was right. Maybe Brynn and Monica are dead because of me. Maybe I’m playing with fire.” Her voice turned smoky. “Remember Darren Newman?”
He didn’t like hearing that name, and she couldn’t blame him.
“You didn’t make Darren Newman the man he is.”
“Tell that to the girl who was killed,” Frankie said.
“Newman manipulated you. And a lot of other people, too.”
Frankie didn’t say anything more. Jason was right. Darren Newman had come to her as part of a deal to stay out of prison, and she wasn’t responsible for the consequences.
Except they both knew that wasn’t the whole truth.
She turned and faced her husband. Between the wine and the darkness of the solarium, she felt herself getting aroused. That was a rare experience this year. Her mind and her body had been strangers to each other, but right now, she wanted an escape from everything else. From memories. From loss. From her past. Her inhibitions fell away. Her fingers played with the down on the back of his neck. She kissed his lower lip and then teased him with her tongue, and she felt him respond. Her hands undid a button on his shirt, then another, and one of her fingernails explored his chest. She didn’t care if the world was watching them through the windows. It had been way too long, and she needed him urgently. He sensed it. His hand tugged at the zipper of her dress pants, and when it was down, his fingers fished inside, rubbing her through the lace of her panties. Her breath caught in her chest. Her legs slipped apart. She braced herself against him.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the living room, and she froze in embarrassment.
Pam.
She’d come out of her downstairs bedroom. She wore her shorty nightgown, with a mug of tea cradled in her hands. Her blond hair was mussed. She stood there, watching them, a smirk on her lips.
Frankie stepped away. Trying to be discreet, she zipped up and smoothed her hair and blouse. Jason’s face screwed up in annoyance, until he glanced over his shoulder. Pam wiggled her fingers in a sarcastic greeting, and then she returned to her bedroom and closed the door loudly. They were alone again, but the moment was broken.
When Frankie kissed him again, she didn’t get the same erotic response.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
He shrugged. “Bad timing.”
“We could go upstairs,” she suggested.
“Actually, I need to finish a project. I’ll work in my office for a while.”
“Should I wait up?”
“No, you’re tired. Go to bed.”
His voice had a cold, dismissive quality. Once he’d shut the door, it didn’t open again. His rejection left her humiliated but still aroused. She kicked off her heels and picked them up in one hand. She climbed the spiral staircase in her stockinged feet to the loft, where they kept their master bedroom suite, and she slipped inside and closed the door behind her. It was dark. More windows faced the bay.
She took off all her clothes inside the walk-in closet without looking in the full-length mirror. If she stared at her naked body, she would find fault with herself. Too skinny, with her ribs and hip bones showing. Breasts too small. Right now, she wanted to think of herself as perfect. She padded nude across the lush carpet and slipped between the satin sheets of the king bed without putting on a nightgown. The coolness caressed her bare skin. Her body wanted sex, but drunkenness made the bedroom spin. She squirmed with frustrated excitement, but every time she blinked, her eyes stayed closed a little longer.
She slept.
Not for long. It felt like only a minute or two. She could have slept all night, but something disturbed her. She awoke with a start, feeling anxious. Her heart raced. She’d been dreaming about something bad, but the dream vanished in an instant, and she had no memory of it. When she checked the clock, she saw that an hour had passed. She was still alone. Jason was one of those people who needed little sleep himself, and he was always working.
What awakened her?
Frankie looked around the bedroom, and nothing felt amiss. The curtains were open, letting in the San Francisco glow. Sometimes hawks or gulls struck their high windows, so loudly she was sure the glass would shatter, but she didn’t think it was one of their collisions that had jarred her awake.
She looked at her nightstand. And she knew.
Her phone.
Frankie unlocked the screen. A new e-mail waited for her. The date stamp was only seconds earlier. She saw the address of the sender, and it was the same person who had stalked her at Zingari.
thenightbird@gmx.com
Her skin rippled as if someone had stroked it with a fingertip. She shivered at the chill. Normally, hate mail didn’t bother her, but this was different. These messages had a quiet menace. Just like his name suggested, he felt like a bird of prey, hiding in the darkness. Instinctively, she tugged the sheet over her bare chest, as if he were somewhere among the city lights, behind the long eye of a telescope, watching her. I see you.
She almost deleted the message without reading it, but she had to know. She tapped on the e-mail with her fingertip.
The message, like the others, was a single line.
I’m going to watch you die.
11
The room was white.
Shimmering white. Fluorescent white. Blinding white. As her eyes blinked open, the woman named Christie felt lost in the whiteness. She was at peace, drifting nowhere and everywhere. The atmosphere was warm and perfectly silent. She lay on her back on a chaise so soft and comfortable it practically enveloped her. Wherever she was, time had no meaning here. A minute could be an hour; an hour could be a minute. She had no sense of anything but bliss.
Her body felt oddly heavy. When she went to lift her arm, it wouldn’t move. The same was true of her legs. Soft bonds held her firmly in place. She couldn’t turn her head from side to side or lift her torso off the cushions. And yet it didn’t matter. Her mind wandered freely, untethered from her frozen body, floating with a faint breath of air. Her mind was a bubble, lazily exploring the white, windowless world.
Nothing could ever be wrong in that world. Nothing at all. She could stay there forever.
Only one strange smudge of darkness disturbed Christie’s peaceful visions. Far away, farther than her mind could see, something was missing. There was a memory she could no longer grasp, a blank space as white as the walls. When she reached for it, it darted away. The memory teased her with its emptiness. It was like a sailboat hovering on the far edge of an ocean horizon, dotting up and then disappearing. She could hardly be sure it had ever been there at all.
But she knew it had.
She had a sixth sense that whatever was behind that blank space was worse than anything she’d known in her life. Behind that blank space was terror. Behind it was madness. She knew—she knew—that if she had to stare at it again, her mind would shatter like glass. She could feel herself sprinting to get away from it. Running without looking back at whatever terrible thing was behind her. Pleading. Praying. Screaming.
No.
Right now, that seemed impossible. Nothing so empty, so far away, could frighten her. She was as warm as sunshine. The room was as white as the sand on an endless beach. She never wanted to leave.
Christie’s lips folded into a smile. Her eyes sank shut again, and she slept. Beautiful dreams filled her mind, as if a voice outside her brain could tell her what to see: meadows in bloom, with a gentle wind she could feel on her face; a mountain lake, waveless and deep blue, scented by pine; a porch swing, empty, creaking, with a rumble of thunder in the distance.
