The Unforgivable Fix: A Justice Novel

by T. E. Woods

  Her body grew heavy. The room pulsed with the throbbing drumbeat of her own self-hatred. She’d closed her eyes and willed herself to disappear. A small murmur struggled against the odious din.

  Get out of here. Move. Go. She’d opened her eyes and acted before her loathsome thoughts could ambush the small voice of hope. She went to the entry closet, pulled out a pair of running shoes covered with two years of dust, and put them on. She busied herself downloading the remaining sessions of Zach and Heather onto her MP3 player, pushed buds into her ears, and took off running in the cold November rain.

  She trotted through the morning streets of Olympia, dodging shoppers looking for early Christmas bargains and business people darting to meetings. She pulled herself out of her body, letting her arms and legs function on their own as she attended to what she was hearing. She had run the length of Capitol Boulevard, down to the docks, and past the farmer’s market by the time the second session was finished. She pressed Pause and leaned forward, hands on knees, and panted. I’ve got to fix this. When her breath had settled, she straightened, taking a moment to watch the comings and goings of busy Olympians going about their day. You all look so normal. She’d nodded to the man delivering fish to the restaurant across the street. He shook his head at the sight of a woman wearing a soaked brown tweed skirt, silk blouse, and running shoes. Lydia clicked her player back on and resumed her run as soon as she heard Zach’s voice welcoming Heather to their third session, the final one before Heather had shown the good sense to stop coming.

  And now she was back, soaked to the skin, hair plastered to her head, and exhausted. But the damning voices were gone. In their place was a determination to fix the situation she’d created. This wasn’t Zach’s fault. She was his supervisor. Had she taken the time to listen to his tapes completely, she’d have caught his errors.

  She pulled off her wet shoes and went to her desk. Her message light was blinking. Lydia pressed the button and listened to Will Sorens’s voice as she tried to wring water out of her skirt.

  “Dr. Corriger, Emma’s bad. She’s just back from her mother’s and she’s not talking. No matter how much I try to coax her, she just sits there, staring at me with these eyes…these accusing eyes…like she’s telling me she expected me to save her and I didn’t. Help me. Tell me what I can do for my girl.” He left his number and hung up.

  Lydia immediately returned the call. Will’s voice mail kicked in after one ring. She wondered if he was on another line, trying desperately to gather any and all resources he could to protect his daughter from her stepfather. Lydia left her message assuring him she’d be waiting for his call. She hung up and on impulse dialed Sharon Luther’s personal number. After a few pleasantries, Lydia got to the reason for the call.

  “Tell me what you think about Zach Edwards. I want to know your real assessment of him.”

  “Oh, shit. What’s the guy done?”

  Lydia didn’t feel the need to share Zach’s stumblings in the Heather Blankenship case. It was her job to train him clinically and she’d do it. She needed Zach to change his ways; fast and permanently.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Lydia lied. “I have some pretty direct feedback I need to deliver. I’m hoping you can give me some tips as to how best to approach him. You know, without wasting a lot of time dealing with defensive posturing.”

  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 thi
ng 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.”

  Chapter 44

  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 th
at 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?”