Bone

by George C. Chesbro

  Finally, Bone shared with Dr. Ali Hakim his abiding fear that his thoughts and dream-images might mean that he was indeed the killer. Through it all, Ali Hakim's expression had not changed; in fact, he did not seem all that interested—and Bone told him so.

  The Pakistani psychiatrist sat in a straight-backed chair facing Bone, who sat on the edge of his bed. Ali Hakim closed the small memo pad in which he had occasionally been making notes, closed the cap on his fountain pen and put it in the plastic-shielded pocket of his gray shirt. He leaned back and casually crossed his legs.

  "What you say is only logical," Ali said, a slight shrug in his singsong voice. "You dream of bones under the ground, and it is only natural that you connect these images to the possibility that there have been other murders under the streets. You are an intelligent man, and you seem absolutely sincere in your desire to know the truth about yourself, no matter what the cost. Any intelligent person experiencing your dreams would conjecture as you have. But not everyone would have the courage to voice those conjectures. I'm certain the police have already considered the possibility you mentioned—but even if more decapitated corpses are found, it doesn't mean that you committed the murders."

  "Thank you, Doctor."

  "For what?"

  "I'm not sure . . . I guess for giving me the benefit of the doubt. For making me feel better."

  The psychiatrist looked genuinely surprised. "Is that what you think I'm trying to do?"

  "It's what you've done."

  Ali Hakim grunted noncommittally, opened his pad, took out his pen and made a note.

  "I see your point," Bone continued wryly. "It's also possible that the dreams and thoughts do mean that I'm a murderer."

  "You still remember absolutely nothing before waking up and finding us standing in front of you in Central Park?"

  Once again, Bone took time to think, to probe, trying to see past the dark curtain that had risen only to the sound of Anne Winchell's voice. "No," he said at last.

  "The aftereffects of your physical illness aside, you are in remarkably good physical condition for a man who's lived on the streets for a year. Your medical workup indicates no parasitic infections, no lung problems not associated with your pneumonia, outstanding muscle tone, few cavities in your teeth and no gum disease. Yet your hands and the scars on your body strongly suggest very rugged physical stress, suffered over a long period of time. It's very interesting."

  Bone suppressed a bitter laugh. "Aside from the fact that I don't know who I am or where I came from, and aside from the fact that I can't remember a damn thing prior to eight days ago, and aside from the fact that I may have cut off the heads of twenty-eight people, I'm in great shape and doing just fine. Is that what you're saying, Doctor?"

  "Yes," Ali replied evenly, with no change of expression. "That is what I'm saying."

  "Do you believe me when I tell you I can't remember anything?"

  "Why shouldn't I believe you?"

  "I got an indication from Anne that a number of psychiatrists had examined my story, and presumably watched a videotape of my conversation with Lieutenant Lightning, and you're a minority of one who thinks I may be telling the truth. Apparently, I don't fit some pattern."

  "What would be your motive for lying, Bone?" Ali asked in the same easy tone. "To escape punishment? You certainly haven't managed to do that, have you?"

  "To escape responsibility."

  "Ah." The psychiatrist made a note on his memo pad, looked up. "A conscious desire to be stopped, yet evade responsibility? But if you planned to do that, it clearly implies a conscious decision to lie about your loss of memory, and it seems to me that you're sufficiently clever to have done a bit of research on the symptomology of various kinds of amnesia so as to make your act more convincing to skeptics."

  "That would be the behavior of a sane man, not a lunatic—which I may well be."

  Ali made a very slight derisive gesture with his right hand. "Describing someone as insane explains nothing."

  "That seems like an odd remark for a psychiatrist to make."

  "Only laymen believe that so-called insane people aren't responsible in some way for their behavior. 'Insanity' is a legal term, not a medical one."

  "What's happened to me, Doctor?"

  "Now, that's a very good question," Ali replied. For the first time, what could have been a note of excitement had crept into his voice.

  "You and the other doctors must have some idea."

  "As you pointed out, most of the other doctors don't believe that anything 'happened' to you in the sense that you mean."

  "But you have some idea."

  "Much of it is only speculation."

  Bone sighed, fighting back a growing sense of impatience and frustration. "Well, would you mind sharing your speculation with me?"

  "Approximately one year ago, you suffered a grave injury to your head. The most massive trauma occurred on the right side, but there are also indications of trauma suffered on the left—and your symptoms indicate that there was damage to both sides of the brain. There are no signs—or records that anyone can find—of medical attention, and so it seems that you somehow managed to survive without medical treatment; it's most remarkable that you're alive at all, Bone, and so I don't find it unreasonable to speculate that there may be other remarkable aspects to your case.

  "It seems incontrovertible, judging from your subsequent behavior, that the blow, or blows, to your head caused global retrograde amnesia, which is the inability to remember events that occurred before the trauma. I believe—and most of the other doctors concur here—that once you had physically recovered from your concussion, you began an entirely new existence on the streets of New York.

  "Research indicates that global retrograde amnesia results from damage to what we neurologists call the limbic system, specifically two structures in the brain called the hippocampus and the amygdala. Now, we have no way of knowing what your memory pattern was on the street, since you're unable to tell us. However, since you apparently survived quite easily, it is safe to assume that you were able to form new memories, both short and long term, and made use of them in your daily life. That is not inconsistent with retrograde amnesia. Also, clearly, the cause of the retrograde amnesia was—is—organic, as evidenced by the signs of injury to your head."

  "Dr. Hakim," Bone said in a flat voice, "could such injuries also have caused me to start decapitating people?"

  "Possibly," the psychiatrist replied evenly. "Some serial killers—which is what this murderer is—display organic brain damage; that can be one characteristic of a serial killer."

  Bone swallowed, found that his mouth was suddenly very dry. "Do I display any other characteristics of a serial killer?"

  "It's too early to tell," Ali replied softly. "Neither of us knows all that much about you yet, do we?"

  "What are the other characteristics of serial killers?"

  "I'm not sure it would be appropriate for me to discuss that with you, Bone."

  Bone nodded. "I understand. Go ahead."

  "For approximately a year you managed to survive on the streets, despite the fact that you were suffering global retrograde amnesia. Then, eight days ago, I think we can assume that you suffered another severe trauma. Since there is no evidence of recent physical injury, we may reasonably conclude that this shock was psychological in nature."

  "Why did it have to be a shock? Why couldn't I have just 'come around'?"

  Ali responded with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Possible, but unlikely."

  "Why? My head injuries had healed."

  "But not the damage to your brain," Ali said, his tone flat. "Nerve cells are not capable of repairing themselves."

  "Then my brain damage is permanent?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I may never—?" He stopped speaking when the neuropsychiatrist held up his hand.

  "Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Bone," Ali said not unkindly. "Before we concern ourselves with what's not g
oing to happen, let's continue to try to draw a picture, however blurred, of what has happened to you.

  "During the year you spent on the street, you suffered not only global retrograde amnesia, but global aphasia as well—the loss of all forms of communication. Then, suddenly, you awakened. Obviously, you are no longer aphasic; but you still cannot recall anything that happened before the original trauma, and in addition can't recall anything that happened after the original trauma—up to the point where you found us with you in the Sheep Meadow. This is called global anterograde amnesia. It is the combination of the two kinds of amnesia, along with your spontaneous recovery from aphasia with your intellectual abilities remarkably intact, that my colleagues—and, of course, the police—find extremely difficult to accept."

  "But not you?"

  "I have neither accepted nor rejected anything; at the moment, I am observing. Perhaps you are the serial killer the police say you are, perhaps not; that question must remain open for now. But since I have difficulty understanding what your motive would be for concocting such a complex and improbable condition as yours, I must lean toward the hypothesis that your syndrome is exactly as you describe it."

  Bone suddenly felt slightly dizzy. He let out a long sigh. "Thank you, Doctor."

  "Please," Ali said abruptly. "Don't thank me. We are in a rather unusual situation here, and my personal and professional ethics compel me to tell you certain things at the outset. It did not take me long after becoming a psychiatrist to realize that I was only a so-so therapist; now my time with patients is limited to volunteer work of the sort that brought me to you, and counseling HRA employees who may benefit from short-term therapy of one sort or another. What I am very good at is research, and my particular area of expertise happens to be memory function. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "You're telling me that your mouth waters at the prospect of having me as a research subject."

  "Precisely."

  "And you're being very candid in telling me that you're more interested in what you can learn from me about memory function than you are in healing me."

  "Not more interested—but as interested. It is essential that you understand this, because I propose that we spend a good deal of time together—as much as the police will allow—testing you and trying out certain techniques I have developed. I want you to understand completely that I have a very personal interest in this."

  "Could these techniques help to restore my memory?"

  "Perhaps; perhaps not. I cannot guarantee anything. I am saying that your syndrome interests me more than the question of your guilt or innocence."

  "Okay," Bone said evenly.

  "You can accept these conditions?"

  "First of all, Doctor, I think you paint too harsh a picture of yourself. If you cared so much more about research than people, you wouldn't give as much time as you do to helping the homeless and counseling city workers."

  "I'm asking if the professional posture I've adopted bothers you."

  "No. In fact, I think I like it. I don't need a sympathetic therapist or friend; I need someone to help me get my memory back. You help me search for my memory, and I'll look for friends elsewhere."

  Ali, his face impassive, studied Bone for some time with his limpid, dark eyes, then hurriedly made a series of notes in his pad. "The fact of the matter is that we really know precious little about how long- and short-term memories are formed, or how they are maintained," he said evenly as he closed his notebook and set it aside. "It seems indisputable that it is a biological process, one which can be disturbed by drugs or injury, and we can map certain areas of the brain that are identified with that process. But beyond that . . ." He paused and shrugged.

  "Beyond that?"

  "Beyond that is where you and I will attempt to go. I have mentioned to you the limbic system, and how damage to your amygdala and hippocampus has resulted in your loss of memory. Current mainstream theory in neurology would predict that these memories can never be recovered—but current mainstream theory cannot account for your spontaneous recovery from aphasia, and it would dictate that you should be suffering from a host of related symptoms, such as acalculia, agnosia and a lot of other ailments which I won't bother describing since you don't suffer from them.

  "There is a second theory—of which I am considered a primary proponent, by the way—which speculates that there is a supplementary system of memory formation and retention which is outside the limbic system, and which, in evolutionary terms, is very ancient. This system, if it exists, is almost certainly in the striatum—a complex of nerve structures in the forebrain. According to your CAT scans, your forebrain is undamaged.

  "In this system, memory formation occurs as a result of stimulus-response, below a conscious level or will to 'learn something.' In this system, learning is noncognitive—based not on knowledge or other memories in the usual sense, but on subconscious connections between a stimulus and a response. In short, the basis of this secondary system is habit."

  "Doctor, I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about."

  "Your brain knows more than you think it does, Bone, and the key to recapturing your memories may be a kind of reverse stimulation. You must begin paying close attention to the things you find yourself doing automatically. For example, pay particular attention to what you find yourself doing with those hands of yours, or what you may want to do. Pay close attention to your emotions. Emotion is what plants and secures long-term memory in both systems. What are the things you want? The things you don't want? Whenever you find yourself behaving in some particular way, catch yourself; take note. But these are not things that you try to do. At once you must be conscious of what you are doing, while at the same time—as paradoxical as it may seem—being free enough to allow yourself to do these things unconsciously. Since your body, controlled by the undamaged parts of your brain, may automatically respond to certain things the same way it has in the past, it is your body that may lead you back to conscious memory of just who you were in the past; at least, it will indicate to you the things you did. The emotion connected to movement, behavior, sights, sounds, touches, smells, tastes; these are the things to which you must pay close attention. For you, the immediate present may present the key to your past. Now, do you understand?"

  Bone looked down at his gnarled hands, then around him at the pale walls, the mesh-covered windows. The stranger's past was not here, he thought; and since he was powerless to leave, he felt smothered by the difficulty of using this room to recapture the past. The stranger's past—a year of it, at least—was outside on the streets, and perhaps under the streets, of this behemoth of a city. But he could not—and perhaps should not—get there, and so he saw no value in brooding over it.

  "I think so," he said at last. "Yes."

  Ali abruptly leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. "Up to now, you have been trying to remember anything, Bone," he said, his voice suddenly taking on a new intensity. "Now let's try something different; let's try to remember something. One thing. Can you?"

  Bone tried, but the curtain remained intact. "No," he said quietly.

  "It is not necessary to try so hard, Bone. It is enough simply to try. If there is no response at first, simply let it go. Since waking up in the park, have you experienced anything that reminds you of anything else?"

  "I . . . no.

  "A smell?"

  ". . . No."

  "A sound?"

  ". . . No."

  "A sight?"

  "I'm . . . not sure.

  "Explain, please."

  "When I woke up and first looked at the buildings ringing the park, I thought they were something else."

  "What did you think they were?"

  "I don't know. I've thought about it a lot, but it just won't come to me."

  "You say you dream of being underground, of being buried alive; you dream of bones, and a strange orange figure."

  "Yes."

  "Buildings are n
ot under the ground."

  "No."

  "Underground and graves are low; buildings are high."

  Peel off.

  Bone felt his breath catch in his throat. Wide-eyed, he stared at Ali as he tried to capture the fleeting image that had just raced through his mind, but it was gone.

  "You felt something?" Ali continued.

  "Yes."

  "What?"

  "Fear . . . but also exhilaration; tremendous excitement."

  "Are the fear and exhilaration still there?"

  "No."

  "What do you feel now?"

  Bone shrugged. "The obvious."

  "Nothing should be obvious to a personality that was born only eight days ago."

  "All of the feelings that I can identify are associated, as far as I can tell, with my present situation. Tremendous anxiety—"

  "About what?"

  "About the possibility that I may have hurt—killed—people; fear that I may never find out who I am, or remember the things I've done; fear that I may never go up again."

  "Go up again?"

  Bone was silent for a long time. "I don't know what I meant by that, Doctor," he said at last.

  "When you said it, was there any emotion that might be identified with a past experience?"

  "I don't know."

  "What about touch? Since you woke up in the park, have you touched any object or surface that brought about a sense of familiarity?"

  ". . . No. But I haven't been thinking about it."

  Ali leaned back in his chair and once again crossed his legs. If he was disappointed, he didn't show it. "But now you will think about these things, won't you?"