by E. G. Scott
Dr. Russell blinks at me with her enormous green eyes, hardly eclipsed by her stylish Warby Parkers. They blink quickly and look doll-like, as though they are made out of glass and paint. I gather from her blank stare that she has no idea about or appreciation for my Mommy Dearest reference.
“Sorry. I’m just kidding. She never hit me with or without coat hangers,” I tell her, slightly ashamed of myself.
“Okay, let’s move on to an area that will hopefully be a bit easier, Charlotte. Let’s discuss your education history.”
“Bring it on.”
“What degrees have you been awarded?”
“I have a bachelor’s in biology; an MD, specializing in neurosurgery; and a master’s of science in acupuncture.”
“What type of grades did you receive?”
“I had a 4.0 in high school, college, and medical school. I graduated top of my class.”
“For which levels of schooling?”
“All of them.”
She looks at me with a little more respect than when I first joined her at the table. I feel a small but smoldering sense of superiority.
“Were you ever held back a grade or promoted an extra grade?”
“I skipped second and third grades.” She’s right. This line of questioning is much easier.
“Were you ever diagnosed with a learning disability or ADHD?”
“No.” I say this with confidence, although keeping my attention on one thing currently is a challenge and part of me wonders.
“Please detail any suspensions, detentions, or expulsions you may have received.”
“I never got in trouble.”
“Okay. Well, then, let’s delve into your counseling history.”
“Okay.”
“Have you ever been in counseling or psychotherapy?”
“Yes.”
“How did you make the decision to seek counseling or therapy?”
“It was made for me.”
“Are you currently on any medications for a mental disorder?”
“No.”
“Have you taken medication for a psychological problem or mental disorder in the past?”
“Sure.”
“What medications?”
“It might be easier if you have a one-sheet of medicine names that I can put check marks by.”
She doesn’t look amused and slides a blank page over, where I write down my greatest pharmacological hits and their dosages.
“When did you start taking medication, and how old were you?”
“Six years ago. Age thirty-four.”
“And when did you stop taking them?”
“Age thirty-five.”
She looks at her notes. “About the same time you ceased therapy and were living at home with your mom, is that correct?”
“That is correct.”
“What was it prescribed for?”
“Depression. Anxiety.”
“Have you ever been hospitalized for psychological problems?” She looks down as she asks this and I’m positive that she knows the answer. She seems unsteady with this new topic. She should be.
“Now we are getting into the fun stuff.”
“Is that a yes to the question, Charlotte?”
“That is a resounding yes.”
“When was your first hospitalization?”
“First and only. Six years ago.”
“Where?”
“New York City. Bellevue Hospital. Inpatient for two months.”
“Please explain what brought you to the hospital.”
“Don’t you have all of this in your file? I know Detectives Wolcott and Silvestri must.” I let my irritability leech into my words. She looks up from her file.
“If you want to take a break, we can do that. How about some water?” she asks with just a little too much condescending perkiness in her tone.
I’m losing my grip on any remaining affability I have reserved. “No, I’m fine.”
“Great, let’s continue, then.” She assumes an empathetic and eager pose.
“Six and a half years ago, I was a surgical resident at the Greater New York Medical Center, in their psychosurgical unit. I was chief resident. It was my first surgery as lead on a relatively new surgical approach that I’d assisted on a number of times before. The patient was a young woman named Michelle Harmon.”
“Michelle Harmon, as in the victim Brooke Harmon’s older sister?”
“She was.” I’m as annoyed with her interruption as I am with her habit of asking questions she knows the answer to already.
“Right. Was. Okay, please go ahead.”
“Michelle had been beaten badly and left for dead when she was in high school four years earlier. She survived the attack and had miraculously come out of a three-month coma but developed severe and rapid-onset symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. She became a threat to herself and everyone around her, with episodes of violence and delusional behavior that were escalating quickly.” I pause and see that Dr. Russell is rapt with attention. “Her family was close to having her permanently institutionalized but then heard about the success we’d had with a number of patients using psychosurgical approaches, namely, a high-profile NFL player who’d sustained multiple head injuries in his career and was arrested for domestic abuse multiple times, and a jockey who’d been thrown into a concrete pylon at the speed of fifty-five miles per hour and begun to self-harm following his trauma.”
I stop again and reach for the unopened bottle of water in front of me.
Dr. Russell sits patiently, her hands folded in front of her. She has a triumphant look, and I gather it is due to my first serious, more-than-five-word response. I need to give this woman a break and let her do her job. I have a flash of the patronizing treatment I received as a young and eager resident.
“Whenever you are ready, Charlotte. Please continue.”
“The surgery was going along as planned and I successfully removed the section of Michelle’s hippocampus where we believed the concentration of trauma was residing and causing her most extreme problems . . .” Dr. Russell looks expectant and taps her pen on the table lightly. She encourages me with a nod. I take a deep breath and have trouble finding the space in my lungs for any air.
“Michelle coded and never regained consciousness. She had an adverse reaction to the anesthesia.”
I am whispering at this point, and looking down at the table. Tears are falling from my face and onto the surface in a small puddle.
“Sorry. This is hard.” I put my face in my hands.
Through my fingers, I see Dr. Russell press the red circle on her smartphone and pause the recording. When I lift my head, she looks at me compassionately and reaches her hand across the table and gently pats the top of mine. “Let’s take a break. This is a lot.”
I put my head down on the table and cry into the absent space of my joined arms. We sit in silence for a few minutes. I pull myself together and sit up.
“So have you?” I ask her.
“Have I what?” She looks tense.
“Determined my ‘state of mind.’”
“Yes, I believe I have,” she responds evenly.
“Great. That makes one of us.”
FIFTY
SILVESTRI
“Oh, there we are.”
He points to the light blue Honda Civic parked on the far side of the lot. We cross to the car and peer inside. The interior is clean and bare, nothing visible in the way of personal possessions. I try the door, to no avail. “Hmm. No wonder the APB didn’t turn it up. She’s tucked way over in the corner here. Guess it was a busy night?”
“Or she wanted to keep a low profile,” he offers. “Maybe she was nervous that someone had eyes on her? In any case, it looks like she got a ride out of here.”
<
br /> I consider the thought as I call in a tow truck to come down and impound the vehicle. We cross the lot and enter the diner, which is bustling with the lunch rush. A server whisks by us. “Two? You guys want a booth or counter?”
I pull out my shield. “Just a chat, thanks.”
She skids to a stop and huffs. “Brenda,” she calls over her shoulder. “Cover my tables, hon?” She looks between the two of us. “What can I do for you, Officers?”
“Any chance you were working the night of October first? Tuesday before last?”
“Yeah, I’m always here Tuesday nights. What’s up?”
I pull out my phone and bring up a photo of Brooke Harmon. She studies the image and a vague look of recollection sinks in. “Yeah, I remember her. She came in right around the end of my shift. Sat in a booth over there,” she says, pointing.
“Do you remember if she came in with anyone? Met anyone? How she seemed?”
“Seemed tense, maybe? Came in alone and sat alone. She was looking around the room, like maybe she was expecting someone. But I took off shortly after that, and I don’t remember seeing anyone in the booth with her when I left.”
“And what time was that?”
“Twelve-thirty a.m.”
“Could you tell us who took over your tables that night?”
She rolls her eyes and snorts. “Uh, that would be Christina. She ran off with one of the line cooks a few nights ago, and no one’s heard from either of them since.” She pulls her phone from her pocket, scrolls through, and finds a number, which she writes on a cocktail napkin and hands to me. “Here you go. Maybe you’ll have better luck turning her up.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Would we be able to get a look at your security footage from that night?” I nod toward the camera in the corner.
“Not that far back. The system archives the footage for a week; then it gets scrubbed.” She looks around anxiously. “Sorry, guys. I’m kind of in the weeds here.”
“Quite all right.” Wolcott hands her a card. “If you remember anything else, during a quiet moment, would you please be in touch?”
“No problem, guys.” She offers us a smile before gliding off to the coffee station.
* * *
I’m driving us back to the station house. No sooner has my partner hung up with Christina’s voicemail than his phone rings. “Wolcott . . . Oh, hey, Clarence . . . Okay . . . Right, right . . . Really?” The change in tone catches my attention. I see his eyes widen in my peripheral. “Damn, that’s . . . Okay, appreciate the call.” He hangs up and turns to me. I glance in his direction and catch a look of surprise on his face.
“What’s up?”
“Clarence just ran down the IP addresses of the other members in Brooke Harmon’s chat room.”
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Silvestri, you’re not going to believe this shit.”
FIFTY-ONE
CHARLOTTE
Rachel sits across from me, her legs in lotus position, beaming as brightly as the sunlight cascading down around her.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” I say, as I have many times before.
“Ask me anything,” she replies brightly.
Even though we’ve had this conversation before, this time feels different.
“If you could change one thing about your past, what would it be?” She appears to take this in very thoughtfully, even though I always ask the same question.
She pulls her hands together and puts them up to her heart while she closes her eyes. “Hmm.”
I know what she’ll say; she always answers the same way.
And I always say, “Really, nothing?”
“I wouldn’t change a thing,” she’ll repeat.
“Really? Even his death?” I always press.
“Even the worst things I’ve ever done. I wouldn’t change a thing. Because it all led me here,” she will answer. And every time this comforts me.
But now she doesn’t say anything; she just watches me waiting for her to answer. I begin to fidget while we sit in silence, the air around us growing thick with the smell of something burning.
She smiles oddly, like she has something sharp in her mouth. There’s a darkening mischief in her gaze. I suddenly feel afraid.
“I know what I would change,” she says, her voice deepening as she reaches her hand up to her neck and tugs at her throat like she’s removing a necklace. I try to reach out to her and pull her fingers from her throat, but she’s suddenly very far away from me. She rolls the skin upward and pulls her face up and away and there is only dark nothingness underneath.
“I would have killed you sooner,” says a voice.
But the voice is not Rachel’s. It is Peter’s.
* * *
“Rise and shine, Ms. Knopfler. You’ve got a visitor.”
I’m grateful for the sound of Officer Roberts’s voice and keys rescuing me.
Although the multiple horrors of my new reality upon waking aren’t any less horrifying than my vivid dreams. There is no safe consciousness left. My bed is not my own; it is state issued and what I imagine sleeping on a pommel horse would feel like. Rachel is dead anew each time I wake up, and the brief sublime moment before the remembering is savagely ripped away again and again. I’m locked in a cage, both inside and outside my head.
I sit up too quickly and floaters dance in my peripheral vision. I’ve been dizzy and nauseous since I got here. The food not only tastes awful but is comprised of only two ingredients: sugar and salt in multiple variations. I’m lethargic and sinking into total slothdom. I can’t fathom what I’m going to feel like after a week or a month.
“Up and at ’em. You don’t want to keep your mother waiting, do you?”
“My mother?” Heart palpitations and dry mouth join the list of jail-flu symptoms.
“Yep. She was first in line for visiting hours. She’s quite a character, isn’t she? I met her on the way in.”
“Do I have to?” I’ve put my head in my hands.
Officer Roberts shrugs. “Technically, you don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to unless it’s the cops. But why not? You’ve got something better to do?”
“I don’t feel like seeing anybody right now.” I smooth my hair down and gather it into a bun.
“Some people don’t have any visitors or mothers. You should consider yourself lucky,” he preaches.
“Easy for you to say. You weren’t raised by her.” He frowns.
Officer Roberts is the tall, dark, and judgmental type. He keeps telling me that I should consider myself lucky. I am lucky for having a cell to myself and I’m lucky I’m not getting hassled by the other inmates. I’m lucky that I’m healthy and I’m lucky I’m not in a different county jail where the guards aren’t as friendly as he is. I know he’s right, but it’s hard for me to see my many blessings from my six-by-eight vantage point.
“I can tell them you don’t want visitation today.” His disapproval is apparent. I have to wonder how the quality of his life is, working in a place like this.
“No, I’ll see her. I might as well talk to someone other than myself. I’m starting to feel a little crazy in here with the lack of conversation.”
He shoots me a surprisingly wounded look that I’m immediately shamed by.
“No offense.”
* * *
“Honey, you look terrible.” Her “What’s that bad smell?” expression is comical despite the grimness of our surroundings. “I barely recognize you.”
“Coming in strong, Mom. Thanks.” I sigh.
“What are they doing to you in here?” She looks from side to side.
I’m focusing on the chartreuse jumpsuit she’s wearing. Other inmates and their visitors keep looking over at us.
“Mom, I’ve only been here for two days. I can’t look that different.
And it’s jail, not summer camp. They are keeping me contained and feeding me. That’s about the extent of it.”
Her lip trembles a little bit, which makes me deeply uncomfortable. “You don’t look like yourself.”
“Well, I don’t feel like myself either.” I hop to the next subject. “Interesting outfit choice, Mother.” I try to keep my delivery as light as possible to evade any real emotional exchange here.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” She looks down at herself proudly, ignoring my sarcastic tone. “Vintage Halston. Older than you are! I had to dig it up, but I thought for solidarity, it was worth going deep into my vault for.”
I sweep a hand up and down my government-issued tan ensemble. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but they don’t actually have us in jumpsuits.”
“I see.” She gives my outfit a once-over. “More like scrubs, aren’t they? Well, at least it’s something you are familiar with wearing.”
I groan.
“How are they treating you?” she asks in a stage whisper.
“Fine.”
“Why aren’t you accepting the public defender?”
“How did you know that I didn’t?” I reply.
She leans in conspiratorially. “The guard I was chatting with earlier told me.”
“Because I didn’t do it, Mom,” I answer in a normal volume. “And because the last lawyer I had screwed me. I’m not interested in a plea bargain. I talked to the well-meaning but extremely inexperienced person they sent for five minutes and realized I would be better off not having anyone at all. I don’t need to become the subject of a millennial-hosted true-crime podcast.”
“Are you sure that is wise?” She picks at a cuticle.
“Yes. Actually, I am. Going with someone who is only focusing on pleading me down to a lesser sentence for something I didn’t do is not the right path.” My voice cracks. “I refuse to even go through the motions of that.”
“You seem angry,” she says.
“Wouldn’t you be, if you were in my position?” I shrug and look away from her.
