The Unforgivable Fix (23 page)

Sharon's cigarette-bruised laugh signaled an understanding. “You mean, how can you tell him he needs to shape up without bruising that precious ego, is that it?”

“You've worked with him for a few months, right? What works for you?”

“Sorry, kiddo, can't help you.” Sharon sounded disappointed. “I was being straight up when I first approached you about taking him on. As far as I'm concerned, he's aces. Hell, he's all but running my lab. Thank God for that. I got a travel schedule this semester that's trying to choke me. I'm glad I can walk away from the joint and know it's taken care of.”

Lydia pressed. “Even with all those babies? You've never had to take him aside and talk to him about how he's handling things?”

Sharon's tone shifted. “What's going on, Lydia?”

Lydia thought out loud. “Maybe it's too different, this research and clinical stuff. But he's done a lot of work with patients. And every supervisor he's had offered a glowing letter of recommendation.”

“Are you two having some sort of personality clash? I can understand that. Zach's likeable enough, but he's got a pretty strong sense of how smart he is. He's got the potential to rub folks the wrong way.”

“Have you seen anything like that in your lab?” Lydia persisted.

“Sorry again. Nothing like that's come up. And quite frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't. Zach had to learn a whole new way of thinking when he got here. All new research protocols and designs. But like I said, he's managed it beautifully. Plays well with others, as they say.”

“What do you mean a whole new protocol?” Lydia was confused. “I thought you said he was a crackerjack memory researcher.”

“And he is. He's going to make a big name for himself. But he worked with Anthony Gonzalez and Hazel Tapscott down in Oregon. They work with adults. I work with infants. We test how much babies remember about things that are going on in the here and now. True and actual stuff. Zach's work up here will give him the other side of the coin.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Gonzalez and Tapscott work on the ‘there and then' piece of memory production. Fake and scam, instead of true and actual. Fascinating work, really. I'll send you some articles if you want.”

Lydia was puzzled. “You mean that whole repressed-memory thing? That's what Zach worked on?”

“You got it. The brain's an interesting playground. And as you know, human memory is notorious for its faultiness. That Oregon lab did landmark work documenting how easy it is to implant and encode memories.”

Lydia's fingers tightened around the phone. “And Zach was part of that?”

“Yep,” Sharon answered. “Old Zach spent the past four years getting undergrads to remember things that never actually happened.”

Lydia shut off the speakers and pulled the thumb drive out of the system. She'd spent three hours after hanging up with Sharon Luther listening to Zach's sessions with Heather Blankenship again. This time she listened with the ears of someone who knew about Zach's experience with implanting memories. It was all there. The repetitive shaping of Heather's innocuous words into something else. The praise and assurance whenever the girl would inadvertently say something in a way that could support the story that she'd been abused by her uncle. The ever-so-slight disapproval from Zach whenever Heather dared to challenge her therapist's interpretation of events.

Zach had deliberately tried to maneuver Heather into “remembering” that her uncle had abused her. Was that the reason Zach dragged his heels when Lydia first told him he needed to report Heather's allegations to CPS? Was Heather not yet truly convinced the abuse had happened? Why would he do that? She remembered Sharon saying Zach was going to make a big name for himself one day. Was that it? Ambition?

Was Zach running his own experiment?

Lydia grabbed her notebook, flipped to the section where she'd jotted reminders from her supervisory sessions with Zach, and ran down the list of patients she'd assigned him. Eric Scheull was a depressed guy with a history of marijuana abuse. Lydia recalled Zach's sessions with him. She'd heard nothing to indicate he was doing anything other than excellent therapy, and Eric was responding well.
Was it a gender thing? Was Zach only looking for female subjects?
Cindy Caldwell was the kleptomaniac with the multiple-arrest history. Zach said she was doing well. Lydia had passed her in the waiting room and the patient seemed markedly better. Lydia would review the tapes of Cindy's sessions with Zach in light of what she now knew. Keith Zimmerman was the onetime cop addicted to alcohol. Zach had done the correct thing and referred him to an outpatient facility specializing in addictions.
Was Zach weeding him out of his experiment? Did an addicted brain make someone a poor subject for memory implantation?
Lydia came to the last name on Zach's patient list. Brianna Trow. The twenty-eight-year-old complaining of stomach pains. The one whose father came in saying she was now accusing him of having sexually abused her.
But I know those tapes backward and forward. There's not a word about sex or abuse on them. Zach was as baffled as I was about Hank Trow's statements.

Lydia closed the notebook. The ring of her desk phone startled her. She answered it on reflex.

“Paul Bauer here.” His deep baritone calmed the stinging hum in her brain. “We need to talk, Doc. Now. I'm downtown at Bane and Friends. It's a few blocks west of your office. You know it?”

A vision of hardwood floors, old library tables, and the best lattes in town materialized. An image of Oliver Bane, his unruly hair perpetually in need of a trim, his brown eyes calm and wise, his smile easy and warm fleshed out the recollection.

“I know the place, Detective, but I'm afraid I can't make it. What's your schedule like tomorrow? Perhaps we can meet down at the police station. Or, you can come here if you'd like. I'm free between two and four.”

“My schedule for tomorrow depends entirely upon what I learn from you in the next hour. Come
now,
Lydia.”

She stiffened against his insistence. “I've given you what you need. What is it that can't wait?”

“I've listened to those tapes you gave me of Zach's appointments with Brianna Trow.”

Lydia appreciated his efficiency. “I also provided you with transcripts of the sessions. If you have any questions, perhaps they can help clarify things.”

“Have you ever met Brianna, Lydia?” His voice had a no-nonsense edge.

“No, I haven't. I've only listened to the tapes.”

“Well, I have. Did you know her dad was in the military?”

Lydia recalled Hank Trow telling her about the good insurance he provided for his family.
I'm retired coast guard. I'm on the docks now. Union.
“Yes, I knew that.”

“Brianna was born in Alabama, Lydia. Not far from her mama's hometown. Hank was stationed at Dauphin Island for nearly twenty years. Brianna's a product of the Alabama public schools from kindergarten to high school. Spent a few years in and out of local junior colleges, too. Hank and Brianna moved up here only about four years ago. Hank tells me she had a hard time fitting in up here in the Northwest, what with that Southern accent being thick as maple syrup and all.”

Lydia called up her memories of the tapes Zach provided. She remembered discussions about how to behaviorally manage the pain from her gastric distress. She could hear Brianna praising Zach for his good ideas; how her symptoms were so much better and she was getting on with her life.

All in a voice devoid of any accent whatsoever.

“Whoever is on those tapes isn't Brianna Trow, Lydia.” Bauer was back to his no-nonsense tone. “I'll see you at Bane and Friends in twenty minutes.”

Lydia walked into the familiar space and scanned the faces of the three people behind the counter. She didn't recognize any of the baristas. Oliver had always told her that stabilizing the workforce was his biggest challenge in owning the coffee shop. She looked down the long hallway she knew led to his office and still saw no sign of Oliver. She headed toward the handsome black man in the dark suit standing by a table in the far corner.

“What happened to you?” The detective eyed her up and down with a look of benign bewilderment. “No offense, but you're a mess.”

She pushed a strand of stiff auburn hair, now dry after her run, off her brow. Her silk blouse was also dry, but streaked from the rain she'd jogged through less than an hour ago. She ran a hand over her still-damp tweed skirt. “I decided to go for a run.”

Bauer pulled out a chair for her. “You don't have an umbrella? Raincoat?”

Lydia sat, pulled her shoulders back, and folded her hands in her lap. “Let's talk about these tapes, Detective. I've spent the morning trying to make sense of what's happening. I think I may have some information that could help you in your investigation.”

“You want some coffee, Lydia?” Bauer remained standing. “You look like you could use it.”

She realized at that moment how chilled she was. “Thank you.” She told him her favorite and watched him stride across the room to place her order. A few minutes later, he returned with her latte and honey. She thanked him, took a deep sip, and allowed the steaming concoction to warm her.

Bauer got down to business. “Tell me what you know about Zachary Edwards.” He listened as Lydia told him about Sharon Luther's request that she supervise him for his final clinical rotation. She explained again the nature of their work: Zach would see patients Lydia assigned, she'd listen to tapes of his sessions, and they'd discuss each case one-on-one at twice-weekly meetings.

“And your impression of his work?”

Lydia liked Bauer's focus. She explained that, for the most part, she thought Zach was doing a good job. “There was some…well, what I
thought
was sloppiness in his wording and phrasing. But after what I've learned today, I'm thinking something else might be going on.”

“Tell me about that.” Bauer jotted no notes, but Lydia had no doubt he would remember every word she said. She relayed her morning conversation with Barbie Simons, the social worker who had told her Heather Blankenship reported not only that there had never been any sexual abuse by her uncle, but that it seemed to her that Zach was trying to convince her there was.

“So I put a call in to Sharon Luther.”

Bauer nodded. “Did she have anything new to add?”

“Yes.” Lydia was startled by her reaction to the man seated across from her. Her defenses were down. She paused for a moment to weigh her instinct not to share any information against her sense that Paul Bauer was not there to hurt or harm her in any way. In recent experience, it was only Mort who generated that kind of trust in her.

“Are you going to tell me or what?”

Lydia took a deep breath and gave in to her belief. She told him about Sharon's description of Zach as a model employee. “Sharon said she was impressed with how easily Zach took to the new work, given his four years in a memory lab that studied something entirely different.”

Bauer leaned forward, his eyes intense. “What did he study down in Oregon?”

Lydia explained the work of Gonzalez and Tapscott, the lead researchers at the lab where Zach spent four years. She talked about the structure of human memory, its inherent failings, and various studies that demonstrated just how easy it was to make someone remember something that never happened.

“Sometimes it happens naturally,” she told Bauer. “I remember a study from sometime back that took a look at teenagers who, when they were preschoolers, had been enrolled at a day-care center where a sniper opened fire on the playground. He killed several children and wounded many more. The study showed dozens of children had vivid recollections of that day. Detailed memories of the events.”

Bauer was on it. “Like PTSD. Some experiences are so vivid there's no shaking them. In your line of work I'm sure you see how something bad that happens to a kid can hurt them the rest of their life.”

“That's certainly true. But here's the thing. Those kids who had those vivid memories were never there that day. Some had been home sick. A couple were on vacation with their parents. For whatever reason, they were not at school the day their playground was attacked. Yet they insist they have the memory. They're convinced the rest of the world is wrong. They were there and they experienced it.”

“Their memories are real,” he said. “But the history isn't.”

“Exactly.” Lydia went on to explain how scientists became interested in learning how difficult it might be to actually make someone genuinely recall a fantasy. To implant memories that are real and true to someone despite the fact the event never actually happened.

“It turns out it's quite easy,” she continued. “There have been experiments that make subjects believe they've seen words on a page that weren't really there. Or that they spoke to people at parties who weren't in attendance, or that family members were in photographs years after that person was dead. Our brain wants to accept and make sense of new information. It automatically fills in the blanks and creates a story that fleshes out any scattered pieces. And if someone knows how to access that process of the brain, it's really very simple to make someone truly
know
—beyond simple belief—truly
remember
their own experience of an event that never occurred.”

“Sounds like mind control,” Bauer remarked.

“Not really. Implanted memories don't force someone to act a certain way.” Lydia savored another taste of her coffee. She was relaxed with this man, and it felt good. “Think of your own memories. You have them. To you they're real. But we always have to remember our memories are not gospel.”

“But I make decisions based on my memories. I order a pastrami sandwich because I recall how good the last one was. I never date women who tell me they're separated from their husbands because…” A weary smile crossed his face. “Well, let's just say I remember. And if a person had a memory of being sexually abused, if it was their own memory, to them accurate and true,
that
would urge them to act a certain way. Wouldn't you say?”

Lydia recalled studying the hysteria of the 1990s, when the notion of repressed memories flashed like a wildfire across the country. Poorly trained therapists and counselors, sometimes naively and sometimes not, led troubled patients into “remembering” instances of abuse that never happened. Hundreds of lives were ruined. Court cases splashed across nightly news programs, titillating the American audience with pitiful scenes of children demonstrating on teddy bears where the bad people had touched them. Innocent people's lives were destroyed by jail time. Businesses were bankrupted, and reputations were decimated on nothing more than the assumption that young victims had no reason to lie.

But the children weren't lying. They simply remembered something that hadn't happened.

The repressed-memory mania metastasized to adults. It wasn't long before therapists' offices were filled with worried folks offering some variation of the same theme.
My life's a mess. I can't recall parts of my childhood. I must have been abused.

A bandwagon was created, onto which the media, sloppy therapists, daytime-television gossips, and get-rich-quick self-help authors were only too happy to jump. By the time the scientific community offered evidence debunking the notion of repressed memory, the damage was horrific.

“I think Zach Edwards may be running a rogue experiment of his own. He's an extremely ambitious guy. I think he may be implanting memories in Brianna Trow, or at least he's trying to. I think Zach wanted Heather Blankenship to be another one of his subjects, but she stood her ground.”

Bauer's eyes narrowed as though he had his target and was drawing aim. “You told me you've lived in Olympia about ten years.”

The familiar reaction of fear whenever someone asked about her past flared. “Yes. Why?”

“I've lived here my entire life. Let me tell you a story from Olympia's dark and shady past.” Bauer frowned. “This happened when I was a teenager. It just about tore this town apart. It started in 1988. There was this family, the Ingrams. Solid citizens. Churchgoing, wholesome, community-loving people. The father, Paul, worked for the sheriff's department. He was a detective, like me. One day his young daughters, Ericka and Julie, head off for a church retreat. While they're there, the two girls say the Holy Spirit came to them and told them they'd been abused.”

A vague recollection came to Lydia. “I think we studied this in grad school. Wasn't there a book written about this case?”

Bauer nodded. “Ericka and Julie came home with some strong allegations against their father, Paul. Tales of torture and rape. Satanic rituals and baby killings. At first they said it all happened when they were young. But it wasn't long before they were telling tales of current sexual torture by their father. And ongoing sacrifices of babies to Satan. A few days later they
remembered
their brother was raping them, too. As you can imagine, the town was up in arms to think such goings-on were happening in this beautiful little city.”

“Satanic ritual abuse,” Lydia said. “It was all the rage in the eighties and nineties.”

“Therapists and police interviewed the girls. They interviewed Paul, too. So did his pastor. Next thing you know, Paul's
remembering
stuff as well. It started simply. His pastor asked him something like, could he
imagine
the idea of Satan overcoming him and making him do these things. Well, Paul was a good Christian, so of course he could imagine it. Just like that, the police had a confession. Paul told everybody he suddenly remembered raping his girls and participating in Satanic rituals.” A look of sorrowful pity weighed on Bauer's face. “All this
remembering
the girls and Paul were doing grew and grew. When the cops went digging at the sites where the girls said they'd participated in sacrificial rituals and found no evidence of blood or bones, the detectives investigating the case were named as assailants by the girls, and Paul was recalling
them
worshipping Satan, too. The case made national news. I even think Geraldo may have come to town, but I can't be sure.”

“Sounds like something he'd be into.”

“When the judge in the case was accused by the Ingrams, the whole thing started to unravel. But Paul went to jail. Despite the fact not one shred of physical evidence ever was produced to show that
anything
the girls or Paul supposedly remembered actually happened, Paul had confessed. His family was destroyed.”

“Where's Paul Ingram now?”

Bauer shook his head. “I have no idea. I know he was released from prison in 2003. The man did fifteen years in prison for something that never happened.”

“But he believes it did. That's the eternal tragedy of false memories.” Lydia couldn't imagine what Brianna Trow's life would be like now. If Zach was implanting “memories” of sexual abuse, it wouldn't matter to her that her father had actually never harmed her.
Her
memories would be real. “Paul Ingram, his girls—anyone who's fallen prey to this—they'll believe forever that it happened. It would be like someone telling you that you never actually were a detective with the Olympia Police Department. It was all a faulty memory you had. Imagine how crazy you'd feel.”

Bauer was quiet for a moment. “Zach Edwards picked the wrong town to pull his little stunt. Folks around here are still bleeding inside from the damage done by the Ingram case.” He hesitated. “How long did you say he worked in that memory lab—not the one he's in now with the babies, but the one studying implanted memories.”

“Four years. Down in Oregon, why?” Lydia sensed he was working a theory.

“For four years he's in the field…less than three hundred miles away. He'd
have
to have learned about what happened here. You said you read about it in grad school. Carnegie Mellon, right?”

Lydia flinched at yet another question from him about her past. Again, that promise of trust urged her to answer. “Yes. Undergrad, University of Pennsylvania.”

“You were half a country away and the Ingram case was taught to you. Zach Edwards
had
to know about it.”

“Maybe that's his motive, then.” Lydia worked a theory of her own. “Maybe he wanted to show memories could easily be implanted even in a community that was on guard against them.”

Bauer didn't look like he was buying it. “What would be his win in all this? He went to a lot of trouble to hide his activities from you. I gotta believe no reputable journal would publish any results he wrote up.”

“They wouldn't. But what if he's doing an off-the-record pilot study? Trying out his hypothesis before he takes it to the level of a formalized research project?”

“Folks in your business do things like that?”

Lydia thought back to Fred Bastian, the renowned neuroscientist researching emotions. He'd tortured and killed a silverback gorilla just to test a hunch. All without official approval. “You'd be surprised what people do in the name of science, Detective.”

“Then who's on those tapes?” he demanded. “Zach sure went out of his way to keep you from learning what he was up to. Something more is going on, and someone's helping him.”

“And you're going to make it your mission to find out.”

“That's my job, Lydia. Do me a favor. Don't mention our discussion to Edwards. Give me time to figure this out while he's still operating under the assumption that it's business as usual.”