“I saw part of his ear, but it was so far away.”
“Hair?”
“Only the sideburns. He only raised the mask partway, but it was enough to see the sideburns. Jesus, I remember them so clearly now. Am I making this up?”
Scott had read extensively about manufactured memories, and memories recovered while under hypnosis. Such memories were viewed with suspicion, and were never used by L.A. County prosecutors. They were too easily attacked, and created reasonable doubt.
Goodman closed his notebook on the pen.
“Making this up as in imagining you saw something you didn’t?”
“Yeah.”
“You tell me. Why would you?”
Scott hated when Goodman went all psychiatrist on him, asking Scott to supply his own answers, but Scott had been seeing the man for seven months, so he grudgingly accepted the drill.
Scott had awakened two days after the shooting with a vivid memory of the events that night. During three weeks of intensive questioning by the Homicide Special detectives in charge of the investigation, Scott described the five shooters as best he could, but was unable to provide any more identifying detail than if the men had been featureless silhouettes. All five had been masked, gloved, and clothed from head to foot. None limped or had missing limbs. Scott had heard no voices, and could not provide eye, hair, or skin color, or such identifying information as visible tattoos, jewelry, scars, or affectations. No fingerprints or usable DNA had been found on the cartridge casings, in the Kenworth, or in the Ford Gran Torino found abandoned only eight blocks away. Despite the case being handled by an elite team of detectives from the LAPD’s Homicide Special detail, no suspects had been identified, all leads were exhausted, and the investigation had ground to an inevitable, glacial halt.
Nine months and sixteen days after Scott James was shot, the five men who shot him and murdered Stephanie Anders remained free.
They were still out there.
The five men who murdered Stephanie.
The killers.
Scott glanced at Goodman, and felt himself flush.
“Because I want to help. Because I want to feel like I’m doing something to catch these bastards, so I’m making up bullshit descriptions.”
Scott was relieved when Goodman wrote none of this down. Instead, Goodman smiled.
“I find this encouraging.”
“That I’m manufacturing memories?”
“There’s no reason to believe you’ve manufactured anything. You’ve described the large elements of that night consistently since the beginning, from your conversation with Stephanie, to the makes and models of the vehicles, to where the shooters were standing when they fired their weapons. Everything you described that
Goodman always got into it when he described memory. Memory was his thing. He leaned forward, and pinched his thumb and forefinger together to show Scott what he meant by “tiny.”
“Don’t forget, you remembered the cartridge casings in our first regression. You didn’t remember hearing the Kenworth’s engine before you saw the truck until our fourth regression.”
Our regressions. As if Goodman had been there with him, getting shot to pieces while Stephanie died. Regardless, Scott had to admit Goodman had a point. It wasn’t until Scott’s first regression that he recalled the spent casings twinkling like a brass rainbow as they arced from the big man’s rifle, and he hadn’t recalled hearing the Kenworth rev its engine until the fourth regression.
Goodman leaned so far forward, Scott thought he might fall from his chair. He was totally into it now.
“When the little details begin coming back—the tiny memories forgotten in the stress of the moment—the research suggests you may begin remembering more and more, as each new memory leads to another, the way water trickles through a crack in a dam, faster and faster until the dam breaks, and the water floods through.”
Scott frowned.
“Meaning, my brain is falling apart?”
Goodman returned Scott’s frown with a smile, and opened his notebook again.
“Meaning, you should feel encouraged. You wanted to examine what happened that night. This is what we’re doing.”
Scott did not respond. He used to believe he wanted to explore that night, but more and more he wanted to forget, though forgetting seemed beyond him. He relived it, reviewed it, and obsessed about it constantly, hating that night but unable to leave it.
Scott glanced at the time, saw they only had ten minutes remaining, and stood.
“Let’s bag it for today, okay? I want to think about this.”
Goodman made no move to close his notebook. He cleared his throat, instead, which was his way of changing the subject.
“We still have a few minutes. I want to check in with you about a few things.”
Check in. Shrink jargon for asking more questions about things Scott didn’t want to talk about.
“Sure. About what?”
“Whether the regressions are helping.”
“I remembered the sideburns. You just told me they’re helping.”
“Not in what you remember, but in helping you cope. Are you having fewer nightmares?”
Nightmares had shattered his sleep four or five times a week since his fourth day in the hospital. Most were like short clips cut from a longer film of that night’s events—the big man shooting at him, the big man raising his rifle, Scott slipping in Stephanie’s blood, and the impact of bullets punching into his body. But more and more were paranoid nightmares where the masked men were hunting him. They jumped from his closet or hid under his bed or appeared in the back seat of his car. His most recent nightmare had been last night.
Scott said, “A lot less. I haven’t had a nightmare in two or three weeks.”
Goodman made a note in his book.
“You attribute this to the regressions?”
“What else?”
Goodman made a satisfied nod, along with another note.
“How’s your social life?”
“Social life is fine if you mean grabbing a beer with the guys. I’m not seeing anyone.”
“Are you looking?”
“Is mindless small talk a requirement for mental health?”
“No. Not at all.”
“I just want someone I can relate to, you know? Someone who understands what it’s like to be me.”
Goodman made an encouraging smile.
“In the fullness of time, you’ll meet someone. Few things are more healing than falling in love.”
Few things would be more healing than forgetting, or catching the bastards who did this, but neither seemed to be in the cards.
Scott glanced at the clock, and was irritated to see they still had six minutes.
“Can we bag it for today? I’m tapped out, and I have to get to work.”
“One more thing. Let’s touch base about the new job.”
Scott glanced at the time again, and his impatience increased.
“What about it?”
“Have you gotten your dog? Last session, you said the dogs were on their way.”
“Got here last week. The chief trainer checks them out before he accepts them. He finished yesterday, and says we’re good to go. I get my dog this afternoon.”
“And then you’re back on the street.”
Scott knew where this was going and didn’t like it. They had been through this before.
