He raised his palm. “Acknowledge it. In movies, sure, fictional cops are immune. Viewers are increasingly inured to violence. But this is real life. Real people. We’re not built to deal with an incessant onslaught of the kinds of things that you deal with in sex crimes—certainly not without continual debriefing, without proper mental health care, without early recognition of post-traumatic stress symptoms.” He paused. “That incident in July where you lost your partner, Hash, I did read about it, too. I saw the newspaper photos of you carrying that dead child, all covered in blood—the anguish on your face.” A sad smile curved his lips. “I’ve followed your career.”
Her guilt at not having visited Alex deepened. She bent down, picked up her bag, and hooked it over her shoulder. “I really should go. You’re right. I wanted a way out.”
“Sit, Angie. Put your things down. This might be more simple than you thought.” She looked down at him, then slowly reseated herself.
He leaned forward. “With the caveat that this isnota therapy session, and from everything you have told me so far, and given the major stressor events in your life over the last six months—the joint impact of it all could be triggering suppressed childhood memories.”
She sucked in a deep breath. “That’s what my friend suggested. And maybe I am recalling some things—there are some discrepancies I’ve found around the car accident in Italy that nearly took my life and that scarred my face, and I think some of those memories could be rearing their heads from a four-year-old’s perspective. But honestly, I had a pretty vanilla childhood, Alex.”
He got up, reached for the fire poker, stoked the coals in the hearth, and added a log.
Returning to his chair, he said, “The classic ‘possessions’ view of memory has changed. There’s a newer school of thinking that sees memories not as fixed, unchanging possessions that are stored like files in a filing cabinet and that can be retrieved, viewed, and replaced when needed,” he said. “But rather, each time that we try to recall something, we create the narrative anew. When asked to remember an event, we take those key elements from our past, and we use those elements to reconstruct our experience.” He leaned forward, held her eyes. “And sometimes, Angie, in this process of reconstructing our autobiographical narratives, we add things. Like feelings, beliefs, or even knowledge that has been acquired long after the event. We braid this new material into the narrative around the historic event, and we call this newly built story amemory.” He reached for his cup and took another sip before replacing it in its saucer.
“And in trying to reconcile the stories of our pasts with the new demands of the present, errors, distortions can creep in. Whole false narratives can be implanted—all just part of the complex ways in which we humans try to make sense of our own existence. But—” He paused. “This process can also generate psychological dissonance if the narrative you are trying to tell yourself is greatly at odds with what really happened. Your subconscious, Angie, might be trying very hard to tell you something.”
“You mean in the form of a little girl in pink.”
“With long red hair?” He smiled. “Yes, of course I do, and I think you know it. Part of that dissonance I mentioned—when memories don’t make sense with your perception of reality—the psyche can get very, very creative and illogical in its manners of avoidance.”
He finished the last of his tea. “I’d like to try some hypnosis techniques, if you’re open to it. Nothing heavy, just relaxation exercises where I will try to walk you back a little deeper into those scenarios with the little girl, go under the conscious layer a bit. Like taking a peek under the hood of a car, so to speak, to see what kind of engine is running things down there.”
Angie felt a fresh clutch of anxiety. She pressed her hands down firmly on the armrests of the chair. “And you can bring me out anytime, right? I won’t—”
“Get lost in there, trapped?” He grinned. “No. It’ll be fine. I’ll give you clear cues that will resurface you, should you start showing distress at any point.”
CHAPTER 56
“Mind if I smoke?”
“Chew the gum,” Maddocks said.
It was late afternoon and already darkening. He and Holgersen were parked under leafless cherry boughs, watching the law faculty entrance on the UVic campus. Rain spattered the windows. Maddocks wondered where Ginny was right now, if she might happen across that lawn with its dead leaves. He’d decided Angie might be right. He was being overprotective. His plan going forward was to let Ginn be for a few days and then start over again with trying to be a better dad.
Holgersen crackled his gum wrapper, fiddling to get the green chiclet out of its childproof packaging, and Maddocks wished to hell that Norton-Wells would show up. He’d about had enough of being cloistered with Holgersen after all these hours. Because they’d not wanted to tip their hands to Norton-Wells’s parents, they’d waited outside AKASHA this morning, until they got lucky and saw the little red Porsche exiting the estate. They’d followed it here.
“He could have gone out another entrance hours ago,” Holgersen said, still crackling the packaging.
“But his vehicle is still parked down there.”
“Maybe he left without it, made us.”
“Betting he didn’t,” said Maddocks.
More crinkling of plastic sounded. Irritation spat through Maddocks.
“Thing about sex,” Holgersen said, dropping his packet, then groping about for it on the passenger side floor. Maddocks’s hands tightened where he was resting them on the wheel—this was it, where Holgersen was going to mention seeing him and Angie kissing and almost getting it off in the parking lot. Holgersen found his gum and recommenced fiddling with the packaging. “Messes with your head. Clarity and all that. You start cutting deals with the devil.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sex. I was saying—”
“Okay, Holgersen, whatever it is that you’re trying to tell me, spit it out. You were outside the Pig in the dark. You saw Leo leaving—”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“I ams spitting it out. See? That’s exactly what I mean—Pallorino ... oooh, now she’s a hot and dangerous one. Can’t figure her out. But you want. You touch. You get burned. One taste messes you up. You want more. You can’t get more. You end up doing deals with a Fitz-devil ... and wham, you’re smacked with a boom across your face in storm winds.”
