by Ray Rhamey
“We also need to do something about your convictions regarding your right to a gun. Or, to be more specific to Oregon law, to a lethal firearm.”
A sinking hit his stomach. Here it came, the part where they fucked with his mind. “What I believe is not uncommon. There are a lot of folks like me. Hell, it’s the Constitution of the United States. You’re not going to get me to go against that.”
She nodded. “I won’t ask you to. But that doesn’t excuse you from breaking the law. The solution that will get you released from here is to change those beliefs and, perhaps, open your mind to the legality of the gun control Oregon has implemented. And I know where the core belief comes from.”
Dr. Moore sat back and gazed at him. “Your pro-gun programming is profound, going back to your childhood, and strongly associated with your family.”
That was no surprise. “Yeah. They taught me. So what?”
She nodded. “I see it as more or less benign, not rabid like so many others, but it still limits your thinking. However, we—you—can get rid of it.”
That didn’t sound like something he wanted to do.
She said, “I’ll show you later. I think we can take care of the stone killer part of you at the same time.” She made a note in her file and looked back up at him. “That part will be tougher.”
“But first . . .” Dr. Moore put the folder on the coffee table and moved to the stool beside his chair. “Let’s work on the deaths of your wife and child. It’ll strengthen you for handling the other issues.”
His gut tightened. His old shrink had been right; he was afraid. “Okay.”
“Good. Relax now . . .”
Minutes later, his mind waited, open and ready. The doctor’s gentle voice said, “We’re going back to the day your wife and daughter died, the twelfth of September. You were working—where were you?”
“In my car, in Chicago.”
“What were you doing?”
“Watching a building.”
“Why?”
“A suspected murderer lived there, and I was detailed to surveillance.”
She said, “You’re going to relive what happened now.”
Memory became reality.
Hank stretched and stared out his car window at the house across the street. He imagined the suspect charging out, spewing bullets from an assault rifle. Anything to break up the boredom—in Hank’s business, drowsy equaled dead.
His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He flicked it open—damn, Amy’s nanny. She wasn’t supposed to call him on the job except in case of— “What’s wrong?”
Gretchen’s whisper shook. “Your wife—she’s here.”
Impossible. “How?”
“I don’t know. The doorbell rang, and there she was.”
Dear God. “Does she have Amy?”
“I tried to stop her, Mr. Soldado, I tried.”
He started his car. “I’m coming. Call 911 now!” He disconnected, slammed into gear, and floored the gas. How could Marcie be out of the hospital? With her postpartum psychosis still raging five years after she’d beaten their baby girl, he couldn’t even mention Amy’s name to her.
As he raced south on Lake Shore Drive, he called home. “How . . . how is Amy?”
Gretchen said, “I tried to grab her away, but your wife screamed she would kill her if I came closer. Amy was crying. They went upstairs, and I don’t . . . I don’t hear her anymore.”
“Stay away from them.” He rounded a corner and screeched to a stop in front of his brownstone. The afternoon sun dappled its walls with the shade of trees lining the street. It couldn’t have seemed more peaceful.
He yanked out his gun and raced for the front door. It swung open before he got to it.
Gretchen pointed. “Upstairs!”
He ran up the stairs and into Amy’s bedroom. Toys and books cluttered the floor. Her window stood open; a breeze stirred the chintz curtains. His wife’s laugh came from outside. He scrambled through the window and thundered up the iron fire escape.
At the edge of the flat roof, Marcie, as slender as ever, her long brown hair swirling in the breeze, held Amy over the parapet. Amy hung like a rag doll, her eyes closed, her body sagging, limp. Marcie laughed as she swung Amy back and forth. Amy’s head lolled with the motion. Her butterfly necklace glittered at her neck.
When she’d asked to wear her necklace that morning, he’d said it was just for special days. And Amy had said, “Maybe today is special, and we just don’t know it yet.”
He had smiled and helped her put it on.
Hank’s steps crunched on the roof’s graveled surface and Marcie looked around.
She smiled. “Hi, honey, I’m home.”
His heart ached at the madness in her eyes. “Please put Amy down, Marcie.”
She frowned. “You like her better than me.”
“No, honey, no way. You’re the best. Just put her down.”
Marcie brightened. “But she won’t hurt me anymore.” She hugged Amy’s limp form to her. “I fixed that.”
He prayed that Amy was only unconscious. “Lay her down, Marcie, and step away from her.”
She scowled at him. “No.” She swung Amy back out over the parapet. “We’re playing.”
He aimed his gun. “Put her down.”
She laughed and lifted Amy high in the air and smiled up at her. “Isn’t this fun, honey?”
She brought Amy back inside the parapet, safe from the long fall—he pulled the trigger. The bullet took Marcie below the ribs. Blood reddened an air-conditioning tower behind her, and she staggered back against it.
Marcie screamed at him, “Fuck you!” She threw Amy over the edge of the roof.
Too late, he pulled the trigger again.
The bullet spun Marcie to face him. Her expression softened. Her eyes cleared, and the woman he loved looked out at him. “I’m so sorry.”
She staggered to the edge and then dived over.
Hank ran to the parapet. Their bodies lay side by side in the alley. It looked as if they were holding hands.
His heart locked up.
Dr. Moore’s voice said, “Three . . . two . . . one . . . wake.”
He opened his eyes; the shift from Marcie and Amy lying broken in an alley to the doctor’s caring eyes disoriented him. She said, “That’s what really happened, Hank. Amy was already dead by the time you reached the roof.” She placed her hand over his. “You’re not to blame.”
Sorrow filled him like water pouring into an empty glass. Tears welled in his eyes.
“Go ahead,” Dr. Moore said. “I’m here if you need me.”
His chest seized as if a giant fist squeezed it. He couldn’t breathe. Pain coiled in his lungs, and he tried to gasp. Then it smashed out in a long moan. He turned his face away from Dr. Moore, crossed his arms over his chest, and fought to hold the pain back. But he couldn’t. He lay his head back onto the recliner and wept.
Can’t get there from here
It was almost noon when Jewel poked her head into Noah Stone’s office—it had taken most of the morning to work up the gumption to do this. Franklin was right, she was never gonna have a life here until she worked out her problems with Stone’s way of doing things. He stood at a window, coffee cup in hand, gazing at the valley.
Damn, she didn’t want to do this. But she had to. “Excuse me, Noah . . . ” she said.
He turned to her and smiled. “Jewel! Come in, please. Coffee?”
Coffee on this stomach was begging for heartburn. “No, thanks. I, uh, need to talk?”
“About the Hank Soldado thing?”
“How did you—”
“I’ve seen you frowning for days now, and Benson has told me about your feelings. Have a seat.”
Feeling that he was somehow an opponent, she said, “No thanks.”
His smile faded. “So what’s on your mind?”
She blurted, “Why didn’t you do something to save him?”
“I tried to persuade him to
go through therapy. He could have saved himself.”
“You could have stopped him from being sent to the Keep.”
“I couldn’t.”
Who was he trying to kid? “I don’t believe that. You’ve got the power.”
He gazed at her. At last he sighed. “I guess, from your way of thinking, I could have ‘arranged’ something.” He shook his head. “But I have a promise to keep.”
“That’s keeping your promise? How can anybody trust you to help if you turn your back on a man who saved your life?!”
“Because you can trust me to keep my promise.”
“Trust you? How? You promised to help, and you didn’t do shit.”
His eyes saddened, and he looked older. As though suddenly fragile, he eased into a chair by the coffee table. “Jewel, you don’t know how tempted I was to help him.” He looked up at her. His face looked like something hurt inside. “I wanted desperately to save Hank from the Keep. I thought there was so much we could do together . . .”
His emotion cooled her anger. He seemed sincere, but . . . “Why didn’t you do anything?”
He gazed at the mountains outside, and then turned to her. His eyes were brighter, determined. “To use my influence to circumvent the court’s ruling would have corrupted the system I’ve worked so hard to see become a reality.”
His voice took on an edge. “Think it through. If I’d gotten Hank off, that would say it’s okay to break the gun law if you think you have a good-enough reason. So somebody else would, I guarantee you, think they can get away with the same thing. Corrupted, the system would break down.”
She thought he was probably right about that. Still, Soldado had saved his life. “But—”
He held up his hand and she waited for the rest. He said, “To undermine the system that holds the capacity for real justice would be breaking my promise to all, including Hank Soldado. And you. He got justice, and so did you when that awful man from Illinois came after you.”
She shook her head. “That’s all theory. This is a man’s life.”
His gaze became as hard as his last name. “They are the same.”
She didn’t know what to think. You could trust Noah Stone to keep to the rules. But you couldn’t trust him to do everything he could for you. Defeated, she said, “I guess maybe I’ll never understand.”
His expression softened. “I’m sorry.”
“I am, too.”
Going Under the Knife
After the morning session with Dr. Moore, Hank had a lunch of hardly anything—it was difficult to look at a plate of food when your mind was filled with a slide show of a dead life. Blocked memories poured in. Marcie in her wedding gown, him a grinning idiot beside her. An April stroll along Lake Michigan with Marcie, so into each other that the chill spring wind could have saved its breath. Him when he first held Amy in the delivery room.
And then Marcie throwing Amy’s body off the roof. All the good memories turned to ashes. Hoping for relief, Hank arrived at Dr. Moore’s office early.
She said, “How’re you doing?”
He shrugged.
“Memories, right?”
He nodded and knew he hadn’t kept his grief from his expression.
She said, “The good ones will get stronger and stronger and the bad ones will fade. I promise. Take a seat and let’s get started on your other problems. We’re going to revisit some things I found in our first session. One is pleasant, the other—” She shook her head. “Isn’t.”
He reclined, and her voice soon stilled his thoughts. Into his mental quiet, she said, “Go back in time, back to when you were ten years old. You’re standing with your uncle Walt in the backyard of the farm you lived on and you’ve been playing cowboys and Indians with your toy gun.”
His mind’s eye looked up from a ten-year-old height at his uncle, a husky man with a handlebar mustache and a twinkle in his eyes that Little Hank loved. His uncle pointed at him. “Mighty nice six-shooter you’ve got there, cowboy.”
Little Hank settled his hand on the butt of the cap gun holstered on his hip. He smiled. It was a gift from his mom. He said, “Yep. It shoots straight, too.”
“What do you shoot?”
“Bad guys.”
His uncle leaned forward. “You know, I think I’d like to have a gun like that. Maybe I’ll just take it.”
Hank backed away a step. “No, you won’t.”
“Oh yeah? I’m a lot bigger than you.”
Hank drew and aimed at his uncle. “You better not.”
“You’re going to shoot me?”
“That’s what you do to bad guys.”
His uncle grabbed for the gun, and Hank pulled the trigger. A cap banged, and his uncle grabbed his chest and fell to the ground. And then started the deep belly laugh that was so funny. “Got me!”
Little Hank holstered his gun and leaped onto his uncle, and was wrapped in a mighty hug.
Dr. Moore’s voice intruded. “Now you’re fifteen. It’s your birthday, and your uncle has a present for you.”
His birthday cake waiting on the dining room table, his Uncle Walt came up to him, one hand behind his back, and said, “Got somethin’ for you. It’s the most valuable thing there is.” He held out a gleaming new .22 rifle.
A rush of pleasure zoomed through Hank as he took the weapon. He brought it to his shoulder and sighted out a window, imagining drawing a bead on the rabbit that kept invading the truck garden. “Oh, man! Wow, Uncle Walt.”
Hank lowered the barrel to point at the floor. Walt said, “This gift might look like a gun to you, but it’s a lot more than that.”
Hank studied the rifle and saw nothing extra about it. “I don’t get it.”
His uncle said, “It’s freedom. Your freedom.” He tapped Hank’s chest. “Hold on to it, son. It’s your God-given right, handed down to us by our forefathers to defend ourselves from tyranny.” He gave Hank a hearty clap on the shoulder and said, “Now I gotta find me a cold beer.”
Hank cradled the rifle to his chest and felt a surge of pride.
Dr. Moore’s voice came softly. “Okay, Hank, you will now return to the present. You will remember what happened. Three. Two. One. Wake.”
Hank opened his eyes and stared at the memories that replayed in his head. They felt warm and good. He smiled.
The doctor nodded at his reaction. “The incident with the cap gun became your core ‘teaching’ about guns. Add to that many years of very positive events with your uncle Walt. Your feelings about guns run deep.”
She was attacking his very roots. “So? I feel what I feel, and I can’t help that.”
Her smile eased his mind. “Oh, there are many good things that stem from your relationship with your uncle—I think he’s where your strong sense of honor comes from.”
“So what’s the point?”
“Those feelings fuel your conviction that all Americans have the right to own guns, all kinds of guns. But it doesn’t have to be that way, if you agree to change.”
His gut tightened. Was this what his fear had warned him about? “Change how?”
“Let us isolate that belief in your brain and eliminate it so you can consider the issues without being mentally handcuffed.”
This was what Benson Spencer had let them do. And he was out of the Keep. He had a life. And he seemed just fine.
But there was more, wasn’t there? “And the other part? You said I was a ‘stone killer,’ but I don’t think I am.”
“How did you feel about killing that man who attacked Noah Stone?”
He shrugged. “It was . . . necessary.”
“But what did you feel?”
“Nothing much.”
“What about the two men who attacked Ms. Washington in Chicago?”
“You know about that?”
She smiled. “I told you I was going to rummage around in your mind.”
He shrugged again. “It was necessary.”
“No regret? No remorse?”
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br /> “Why?”
She leaned forward. “That’s what I’m getting at. Those people were human beings.”
He scowled. “They were animals out to hurt people. Like rabid dogs. You put them down.”
“Animals. That fits with what I learned from your memories.”
He flashed on carrying Nick from the top of the Keep. “But it’s not always that way. I didn’t kill a man in the Keep who was pretty much an animal. And he attacked me. I could have killed him, but I didn’t.”
She nodded. “There’s conflict between two models of right and wrong in your mind. One is rational and humane, but there’s a deeper, antisocial model that trumps it.” She gazed at him. “It is profound. Do you remember much of your childhood experiences with your father?”
He never thought about his father. Never. Then he understood. “He did this to me?”
“Sadly, he did. I found many incidents of . . . well, let’s call it deep programming. To defeat it will, I’m afraid, take more than psychotherapy.”
“What’s ‘more than psychotherapy’?”
“The same technique we’d use to eliminate your conviction about guns. Neurosurgery.”
Now they were into the scary part. “You carve up my brain?”
She laughed. “Hardly. For one thing, we don’t cut at all—we do stereotactic radiosurgery using a CyberKnife to ablate a tiny spot in your brain that we identify by using MEG, MRI, and fMRI.”
“When did we stop speaking English?”
She laughed again. “Sorry. Stereotactic is a way to locate a precise point within your brain, and radiosurgery projects radiation into that location from outside—the CyberKnife is a robotic surgical instrument that’s accurate to half a millimeter. Because it’s noninvasive, you’re ready to go the next day.
“MEG is magnetoencephalography, which identifies neural pathways and locations inside your brain. And fMRI is functional magnetic resonance imaging that also locates neural activity. Before surgery, we use hypnosis to stimulate the activity we want to locate and then we create a precise picture of its location. We use radiosurgery to eliminate it.”