Make Me

by BETH KERY

  He closed his eyes and stopped pacing. “I know. I know that.”

  “With your head, you do. I know you’re still working on believing it in your heart.”

  Jacob began pacing again, determined not to go down the familiar path with the psychiatrist again. He’d made a lot of progress in accepting his limits in regard to helping Regina. And in point of fact, he hadn’t called Dr. Fielding primarily to ask about Regina. Elizabeth had already filled him in on her status yesterday when they returned to shore. And he hadn’t even experienced a slight urge to call about Regina when he’d been spending those idyllic hours with Harper on the yacht.

  “There’s something else I want to speak with you about,” he told Dr. Fielding. He’d been increasingly anxious about Harper ever since she’d awakened him the night before on the yacht with tears on her cheeks saying she’d dreamed of a boy . . . ever since she’d been so urgent to have him make her forget that dream. “Remember how I asked you about a person who had a trauma, and then underwent hypnosis for treatment?”

  “Yes, I recall you asking me some questions. You wanted to know if it was possible for hypnosis to make someone completely forget their trauma, if I recall.”

  “And you said that someone could be distanced from a trauma, but that it was unlikely it would be completely erased from their mind? Under what conditions would a person like that, a person who had been free of any anxiety about their trauma for years, start to have nightmares again . . . maybe even start to remember the trauma in more detail and think about it more?”

  “Jacob, it’s hard for me to say without knowing the specifics and the individual in question—”

  “I realize that. But just give me an example of why a person who’s been cured of anxiety and phobias might start to have bad dreams about their original trauma again.”

  Dr. Fielding sighed at his persistence. “Well, nightmares are associated with rising anxiety, of course.”

  “That’s what I assumed,” Jacob said, frowning as he thought about Harper.

  “It could be any number of reasons why the person is starting to re-experience memories and anxiety. Perhaps he or she is going through a particularly stressful time, either psychologically or physically. Perhaps a trigger enters their life that wasn’t there before.”

  Jacob halted his pacing and stared out the window unseeingly. “A trigger?”

  “Yes. Something that calls to mind the original trauma.”

  “Like a person, for instance? Another person involved in the original event?”

  “Yes, possibly a person.”

  “But what if this person looked completely different than the one associated with the trauma, and the person I’m asking about didn’t even recognize him.”

  The psychiatrist made an exacerbated sound. “You’re asking me to make wild speculations based on very vague information.”

  “Please, Larry.”

  Fielding groaned. “Okay. So, you want to know if a subject who suffered a trauma might show signs of relapse when they come into contact with a person who had originally been part of the traumatic event, even if they don’t recognize said person? Am I getting all this straight?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I suppose it’s possible, theoretically speaking. There are qualities to a person beyond their physical appearance that might signal the unconscious mind.”

  “Like what?” Jacob asked tensely.

  “Many things . . . anything that promotes a feeling of familiarity. A mannerism, a tone of voice, background information, ways of relating. A feeling of knowing someone is a very subtle phenomenon. It’s not just about physical appearance.”

  “But the person I’m referring to is completely different than he was.”

  Dr. Fielding gave harsh laugh. “No one can become completely different, Jacob. I’m sorry if you think I’m being annoyingly intellectual, but I’ve based my life’s work on that belief. We all carry some kind of trace or some kind of scar of our past. Our histories echo into our future. And if we accept that to be true: then whomever you’re referring to might have a response to that trace. The question is, to what degree? And will it be a positive or negative response to that echo?”

  thirty-six

  The first thing that greeted Harper upon returning to work Tuesday morning wasn’t a rabidly curious Ruth Dannen or a persistent Burt Chavis or a bewildered, condemning Sangar. Instead, a huge bouquet of stunning purple hydrangeas and white lilies sat on her desk. Harper set down her briefcase and hurried to find the card.

  See? Not all bad. Now nothing can stop me from spoiling you at work, too.

  —J

  Movement caught her eye. She looked up to see Ruth Dannen standing in her office doorway. Harper realized belatedly she was smiling widely after reading Jacob’s card. In a fit of rebellion, she refused to disguise her happiness . . . even when she noticed what Ruth held in her hand: a copy of Sunday’s Chronicle.

  “Morning, Ruth. Have a good holiday?” she asked, putting the card back in the envelope and walking around her desk.

  “Not as good as you, it would seem,” Ruth replied, flicking the newspaper against her skirt for emphasis. Refusing to rise to the bait, Harper calmly picked up the vase of flowers and placed it carefully on a nearby credenza. She admired them for a moment, only to turn and see Burt crowding behind Ruth. “Move it, Ruth. I work for Harper. I get first dibs on an interview.”

  “I’m the one who told you about Harper and Latimer,” Ruth said scathingly, glaring at Burt. “Go to the back of the line, junior.”

  “Cut it out, both of you,” Harper said, going back behind her desk. “There’s not going to be any interviews. There’s not going to be anything, except for business as usual.”

  “Business as usual?” Ruth asked, blond eyebrows arching sardonically. She flicked the Chronicle in Harper’s direction. “Do you mean you sitting on top the biggest story in town—no pun intended—and keeping it all to yourself?”

  “There is no story,” Harper said, exacerbated. “Okay, so I’m seeing Jacob Latimer. That’s hardly a story, unless you’re in Charlie Nelson’s league.”

  “Nelson is a photographer for the society and entertainment section of the Chronicle. I’m the society and entertainment editor for the Gazette. Are you putting down my beat?” Ruth demanded.

  “No, I just—”

  “Give it a rest, Ruth,” Burt said disparagingly. He squeezed past the other woman and plunged into Harper’s office. “We’re not talking about society gossip. We’re talking about real news,” he said, his pale eyes shining with excitement. “I did what you said, Harper. I dug for a story. I think I found something that might be worth pursuing. Can we talk?”

  His obvious eagerness and excitement alarmed Harper. But what could she say, really? If Burt was working on a story, and it was newsworthy, it was her job to hear him out and guide him.

  “Okay. Ruth, can you give us some privacy please?”

  “I’m not going anywhere. I’ve been digging around for something on Latimer for years. I at least deserve to—”

  “Ruth, please?” Harper interrupted. “Let me do my job?”

  “You’ve been doing more than your job, McFadden,” Ruth snapped. She looked at Burt. “If I were you, and if I really had a story, I’d take the lead to Sangar. At least you’d know it’s not going to be quashed in Latimer’s bed tonight.”

  “Get out, Ruth,” Harper insisted angrily.

  “I want to talk to you when you’re finished,” Ruth told Burt pointedly before she exited with a dramatic slam of Harper’s door.

  Harper plunged into her chair with an annoyed sigh. She waved wearily at a chair in front of her desk.

  “What have you got, Burt?”

  Burt looked a little sheepish once he’d sat. “You’re not mad at me, are you? For attacking the Latimer stor
y? I was gobsmacked when Ruth told me about the photo in the Chronicle this morning. It’d suck if my timing on this was all wrong.”

  “Don’t worry about that stupid photo or your timing. If you have something solid, spill it.”

  “Well, Ruth is right about one thing. Latimer does put Tahoe Shores on the map, just by living here. But I didn’t know that you and he were—” He gestured with his hand. Harper rolled her eyes.

  “Do you want to go to Sangar with this instead?” she demanded.

  “No. Sangar will shut me down.”

  “You’re not boosting my confidence much, if you’re saying Sangar wouldn’t give you the time of day for whatever you’ve got.”

  “No . . . no, I still want you to hear this. Of course I do. You’re my editor, right?” He leaned forward eagerly. She experienced a mixed sense of dread and curiosity. As a reporter, she recognized that look on his face. Burt really thought he was onto something.

  “Simply put, I got lucky. You know how there was that big blowout with the Clint Jefferies insider trading scandal, and how Latimer made his first millions off it, how the SEC investigated, but found no hard evidence to prosecute Jefferies? And how ever since then, Latimer refuses to associate with Jefferies?”

  She thought of the barely contained fury on Jacob’s face when he’d seen Jefferies at the opera. “Yes,” she said, her curiosity growing despite her discomfort at Burt’s excitement . . . at this topic in general.

  “Well, part of the problem with investigating Latimer is that he seems to just pop up out of nowhere. The earliest reports of him are when he first went to college at MIT. By the time he went to MIT, his name was Jacob Latimer. That’s the name that was used in the official records for the SEC’s insider trading investigation against Jefferies—although his previous name was listed there, as well. Local legend has it that Latimer was a sort of protégé to Jefferies, and that Jefferies favored him, treated him like a son, even. But the local records don’t show a Jacob Latimer living or attending grade school or high school anywhere near Jefferies’s vacation property. There are rumors that Latimer was adopted and lived in proximity to Jefferies, but adoption records are closed. Shut tight, actually. That’s the brick wall that most reporters run into when trying to find out more about his past.”

  “So Latimer wasn’t his adoptive parents’ name?” Harper asked quietly.

  “No. Latimer’s former name is listed in the SEC investigation, even if it is buried pretty deep in the details. It’s Sinclair. And there is a Jacob Sinclair listed as attending school at a Charleston High School. I’m assuming that was his adoptive family’s name, even though like I said . . . the official adoption records are sealed tight.”

  “So Latimer changed his name from Sinclair to Latimer?” Harper said, puzzling it out in her head. He’d said he loved his adoptive parents, even if their advanced years and medical issues had prevented Jacob and them from getting as close as they might have. Why had he wanted to change his name after they’d passed away? Why was he so intent upon denying his past . . . upon remaking himself in a new image?

  “Yeah, the name Sinclair isn’t breaking news. A select few reporters have mentioned that in stories before and drew the connection between Jacob Sinclair and Jacob Latimer. It’s not a huge secret, just one of the many snags and barriers in Latimer’s history that throws a lot of reporters off the mark. Who he was before he was Jacob Sinclair . . . that remains under wraps.”

  “Why does it matter what his name was before he was adopted?”

  Burt shrugged. “Why does he seem interested in people not putting the microscope on his origins? Maybe he’s got something to hide . . . either about himself or his biological parents?”

  “And you think Latimer is responsible for erecting these barriers, don’t you?”

  Burt shrugged, giving her a sly look. “Actually, I suspect there might be a government agency or key contact or two who is helping him obscure his history, but yeah . . . if they are helping him in that little magic act, it’s under Latimer’s direct request.”

  “You’re suggesting that government officials are helping to bury Latimer’s history in exchange for . . . what?”

  Burt shrugged. “The guy’s a computer genius. Word has it he still works for the Department of Defense. He pats their back, the DOD pats his.”

  “Do have any proof of that?” Harper asked.

  “No, but—”

  “This is all speculation,” she interrupted dismissively. “And by your own account, it’s not even fresh news about him going by a different name at one time. So Latimer has a murky history and has been known by at least two, but probably three, different names. So what?”

  “Wait a second,” Burt said, holding up his hand. “I figured that since most reporters have hit a brick wall by trying to uncover anything about Latimer himself, why not delve into the next best thing? The time period when Jefferies supposedly mentored Latimer? Why not see if I could uncover any unusual incidents involving Jefferies or his property during the time when Jefferies and Latimer were supposedly thick as thieves?”

  She gave him a sardonic look when he twitched his eyebrows while saying thieves. She may be enduring this, because it was her job, but the very act of talking behind Jacob’s back was making her a little nauseous, like she was doing the very activity that he’d been suspicious she’d engage in. Still . . . her curiosity pricked at her.

  “Go on,” she told Burt.

  “I have a good friend that I’ve known since grade school who ended up moving out east when we were in college. She just became a detective for the Charleston PD. So we got to talking the other night, and I told her about my interest in Latimer and Jefferies. She agreed to do a little digging, just between the two of us.”

  “And now just between the three of us,” Harper added dryly. “Is your friend willing to go on the record about whatever she uncovered?”

  “Of course not. She’d probably get fired. You know that. She’s an anonymous insider source; what’s wrong with that? The information she gave me was solid.”

  “Go on.”

  “So I asked Trish to look for any incident reports or arrests associated with Jefferies and his property in the time period of interest before the insider trading investigation was announced . . . say fifteen, sixteen years ago?—in that general vicinity. Well, as it turns out, there was something that happened on Jefferies’s property in the summer before Jacob Latimer officially showed up for his first semester of college at MIT, flush with cash from a certain recent windfall sale of Markham Pharmaceutical stock.”

  “What was it?”

  Burt opened his notebook and began to read.

  “On August second, a 9-1-1 call was made by a Jacob Sinclair, age eighteen, in regard to an emergency involving the drug overdose of a twenty-year-old female by the name of Gina Morrow.” Burt glanced up when Harper’s hand jerked involuntarily on the desk, but she smoothed her face into impassivity. He continued. “The woman was reportedly found at Clint Jefferies’s summer lake house. When EMTs arrived, she was unconscious and was pretty bruised up—the report said it was from a fall while she was intoxicated. A cruiser was sent out to Jefferies’s property, as well. Jefferies himself was interviewed in the police report, although notably, Jacob Sinclair wasn’t. Jefferies claimed Sinclair had gone home, but that Sinclair didn’t really know Morrow anyway, so the police weren’t missing anything crucial. Sinclair had just found her unconscious and called 9-1-1.

  “According to the police report, there was a huge party going on at the Jefferies estate that night. Despite all these people at Jefferies’s house, it seems like the police were having trouble getting anyone to give testimony about what had happened to Gina Morrow. Jefferies said that Morrow was a family friend from Charlotte, and that she had a history of drug abuse. But three other women that were interviewed said Morrow was from Charleston.”
>
  “Okay,” Harper said slowly, her mind buzzing with the information. Gina Morrow and Regina Morrow had to be the same person. “He hurt her. He took advantage of her when anyone could see how vulnerable she was.” She recalled the barely repressed anger in Jacob’s voice when he’d said that about Jefferies and Regina. Had Jacob discovered Regina Morrow being abused in some way at this specific party, and rebelled against his mentor because of it? “What’s all this got to do with the insider trading scandal?” she prodded Burt.

  “You sort of have to read between the lines of the police report,” Burt told her. “I don’t think this was any ordinary summer party at Jefferies’s estate. First of all, the cop noted that a lot of the guests were intoxicated, and a lot of the women were ‘young in appearance’ and ‘barely dressed.’ They put in the report that they couldn’t identify any concrete evidence of drug use at the scene.”

  “But just the fact that they mention it in the report indicates they suspected it.”

  “Right. Also, there’s the ages of the three women who did go on the record about this Gina Morrow.” He glanced down at his notebook. “Ages eighteen, nineteen, twenty-one . . . and Morrow was twenty.” Burt gave her a knowing glance. “Jefferies was forty-two at the time.”

  “So you think Jefferies was throwing a big party involving drugs and hookers,” Harper said.

  “Possibly underage ones. No working girl is going to give her age as anything but eighteen or up. But Jefferies has a big influence in that area, so the incident was kept pretty quiet, it sounds like.”

  “I feel like I’m missing something. Why do you think this relates to Latimer and his purchase and sale of Markham stock?”

  “Because this incident report was filed less than two weeks before Latimer bought and then sold Markham stock just as it skyrocketed on announcement of FDA approval for Zefcor, a breakthrough Markham drug for diabetes.”

  Harper just stared at Burt for a moment, listening to her heart beat in her ears.