The Memory Thief

by Don Donaldson

  “Are you menstruating?” Odessa asked. “Because I think I can smell it.”

  “Was that meant to shock me?”

  “Did it?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a doctor. I’m accustomed to talking about bodily functions.”

  “But not your own.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Did you know the average vagina is three inches longer than the average penis? I’ve always thought that was such a waste of pussy.”

  His information on this was quite wrong, but rather than correct him and get baited into a discussion about it, she ignored the comment. “You must like it here.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “According to your records, when you were in California, you were a constant behavioral problem. But since you’ve come here, except for one incident, you’ve behaved yourself. Why the change?”

  This question obviously caught him off guard because his expression changed from smug to uncertain. “I didn’t like the people at the other place.”

  “What’s different about these?”

  His face twisted into a scowl. “You know, you’re a helluva lot like a detective. You just keep picking and picking at things.”

  “It’s only because I want to understand you.”

  “I don’t want to be understood. I just want to be left alone.”

  “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you happier here?”

  “Happy? That’s an odd choice of words.”

  “Perhaps I should have said less discontented.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t have any choice?” He bit his lip and looked away.

  “What do you mean?”

  He folded his hands on the table in front of him. “I like Quinn. He’s a straight guy. Okay? Let’s move on, or, better yet, quit.”

  “Where did you get the scar on your neck?”

  He looked at her hard for a beat, then said, “Fell off our garage roof onto some trash when I was a kid.”

  “Are you sure it wasn’t more recently?”

  “Which of us is most likely to know when I got it?”

  Though his explanation of the scar clearly wasn’t the truth, Marti decided to let it pass. “How do you feel about what you’ve done?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  “The women you killed.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t think about it. What’s the point?”

  “Are you sorry?”

  He shook his head and looked at her like she was someone to be pitied. “You need to hear that, don’t you? If I’m sorry, then your tidy little world makes sense. Okay, I’m sorry. Feel better now?”

  “Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me the truth.”

  His expression hardened. “All right. The truth is, there are only two kinds of people: predator and prey. You’re either one or the other. Those women were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “So what happened was their fault?”

  “What difference does it make? Their fault, mine, yours . . . dead is dead.”

  “Did you get sexual satisfaction out of what you did?”

  “Do you like to watch men masturbate?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You don’t see the connection with your question?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re not smart enough to be a psychiatrist.”

  At this point Marti decided to take a big risk. “A few years after you were institutionalized in California, you escaped.”

  “One of the fondest moments of my youth.”

  “Before you were caught, another woman was murdered at the beach in the same manner as your other victims. Did you do that one too?”

  Odessa’s eyes rolled up in their sockets and shifted from side to side as if he was searching his memory. “I don’t recall.”

  Marti wasn’t surprised at his answer, for he had never admitted to killing Lee. And he apparently was smart enough to know he never should. But soon, it wouldn’t matter what he said about it.

  As much as she needed to keep him off guard, her loathing of him led her into even more dangerous territory.

  “You said people are either predator or prey. Don’t you think that’s being too simplistic?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Sometimes the roles can be reversed.”

  “I don’t think so. The quail never eats the fox.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

  “What are you saying? You think you’re that quail?”

  Damn it. She’d gone too far . . . said too much.

  “Because I can assure you,” Odessa said, “if I was free, you’d see what the fox can do.”

  A chill ran from the top of her head down to her toes. He’d just threatened her.

  “And quite frankly,” Odessa added. “I’d enjoy that very much. But I don’t think you would.”

  Marti was caught without a response. She’d pushed too hard, drawn too much attention to herself. Idiot. She combed her mind for a reply that would defuse the situation. But before she could speak, Ada Metz leaned into the room.

  “Dr. Segerson, here’s your key, and Dr. Quinn wants to see you in his office ASAP.”

  From the tone of Metz’s voice, it sounded like Quinn was upset. Oh no, Marti thought. He knows why I’m here.

  Chapter 7

  HE COULDN’T know, Marti thought, heading for Quinn’s office. But what she really meant was, He can’t know. It simply wouldn’t be fair after all my preparation, all the years waiting for this. No, it’s about something else. It has to be.

  The possibility that she’d been unmasked still loomed large in her mind as she opened the door to Quinn’s outer office a minute later.

  She identified herself to his receptionist, a heavy woman with small features set in the center of a large face, and the woman said, “I’m sorry, he’s not here. He must have wanted you to meet him in his office upstairs in his lab.”

  “He has a lab?”

  “Fourth floor, west wing of the patient section. They remodeled one of the unused wards.”

  THE WEST wing of the building was a mirror image of the east, and as Marti trekked up the old wooden staircase to the fourth floor, she longed for an elevator. Passing the third floor, she heard a muffled scream coming from one of the other wards.

  The trip was long enough that she had time to push her fear of the coming conversation with Quinn aside so she could reflect on her interview with Odessa. She’d made a big mistake by goading him into threatening her. Now he’d be watching her more carefully, thinking too much about her.

  But something good had also come from their talk; he’d revealed a weakness—his liking for Quinn. She could use that, providing Quinn wasn’t about to throw her out of the hospital.

  The only sound as she stepped into the fourth floor was the creak of her weight on the hardwood. The walls here were even dingier than on Two East, and there was the usual metal security door halfway down the hall, just like all the other patient wings. And her key opened it, as it did the others.

  The receptionist hadn’t said which of the wards was remodeled, and the door to Four West A gave no indication any work had been done there. Moving down to Four B, she saw that it looked the same. Thinking that the receptionist had sent her to the wrong place, Marti reached out to try the door, expecting that it would be locked.

  It wasn’t.

  Inside was a huge, modern laboratory with lots of wall cabinets, extensive work surfaces, and bright fluorescent lighting. Glancing around, Marti saw shiny new floor-model centrifuges, fraction collectors, power supplies, computers, and
banks of impressive-looking devices whose function was a mystery.

  On her left, near the far wall, a slim, dark-haired woman in a white lab coat was working around a large, circular metal tank on a big table. Seeing no sign of Quinn, Marti walked over to the woman and announced herself.

  “Hello, I’m Dr. Segerson.”

  The woman, who had just picked up a white mouse from a cage beside the tank, turned and smiled. “And you’re just in time to see something quite remarkable.”

  “I’m intrigued, but I’m actually here to see Dr. Quinn. Is he in his office?”

  “Haven’t seen him for an hour. He’ll probably be along shortly.”

  Marti didn’t want to keep Quinn waiting, but since no one knew where he was, she couldn’t do anything about that. “Guess all I can do then is wait. What did you want to show me?”

  The woman had frizzy black hair that contrasted sharply with her almost white skin. She’d chosen to go with a deep red lipstick. The red stitching above the left pocket on her coat identified her as Nadine Simpson.

  “Watch this,” she said.

  She put the mouse into the tank, which was filled almost to the top with murky water that was impossible to see through. The mouse started swimming as though it knew just where it wanted to go. In seconds it found its destination; a platform just below the water’s surface, where the mouse could rest. Marti recognized this as the Morris water maze, a classical test to demonstrate learning and memory. The mouse had obviously learned where the platform was through prior training. If he hadn’t, he would have wandered all over the tank before finding the platform.

  “Are you familiar with this test?” Nadine asked.

  “Yes.”

  “That mouse was trained in this test a month ago, long enough for his training to be consolidated into long-term memory.”

  Nadine was referring to the well-known phenomenon in which memories exist for a short time in a fragile state where any disturbance such as a severe bump on the head can cause them to be lost. But as time passes, they become fixed, so they’re stored in a form immune to interference.

  Nadine put the test mouse back in his cage and reached for a second mouse in a different cage.

  “This guy received the same training as the first mouse,” she said, dangling the second one by his tail. “Both of them were tested in the tank two days ago to prove that they remembered their training, and both showed they did. But—” Nadine raised her index finger for emphasis “—immediately after the refresher test, we gave this guy an injection to block all manufacture of protein in his body. And look at the result.”

  She put the mouse in the water. Instead of swimming directly for the platform as he apparently had done two days ago, he began swimming aimlessly around the tank, demonstrating no knowledge whatever of his previous training.

  This made no sense to Marti. Blocking the shift of short-term memories to long-term by suppressing the manufacture of protein by nerve cells was an old experiment. But once that shift occurred, the drug shouldn’t have any effect. “I don’t get it. Memories in long-term storage can’t be affected by what you did.”

  “Unless the refresher test made those memories fragile again,” Nadine replied.

  “You’re saying the act of recalling a memory converts it back into the short-term form that once again needs to be consolidated?”

  “Can you think of any other explanation?”

  Marti couldn’t. Then she realized this phenomenon explained why in the sixties, doctors noted that electro convulsive shock treatments in mental patients produced amnesia for recently recalled memories, but not dormant ones.

  “My God,” Marti said. “This is a major discovery.”

  “Nadine.” The stern voice came from the doorway to the hall.

  Turning, Marti saw Oren Quinn hustling toward them. Talking to Nadine had temporarily diverted Marti’s attention from worrying about what Quinn wanted. Now, seeing the stormy look on his face, her concern came back in a rush.

  “I’m sure Dr. Segerson doesn’t have time for extraneous conversation,” Quinn said.

  “Actually, what she was telling me is fascinating.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Quinn,” Nadine said, cowering like a scolded puppy. “I was just so excited by our results I wanted to share them with someone.”

  “This is not the time or the place. Get back to work.” He turned to Marti. “Dr. Segerson, I expected to meet with you in my administrative office.”

  “I went there first, but your receptionist sent me up here.”

  Marti was immediately sorry she’d phrased it like that. The way he’d jumped all over Nadine for nothing meant he’d probably do the same to his receptionist for this mix-up.

  “Well, you’re here, so let’s make the best of it,” Quinn said. “I’ve got another office up front.”

  He took her to a room with an Oriental carpet in vivid shades of blue, and a huge old oak desk with carved gargoyles at each corner. The walls were decorated with slightly water-stained prints of the brain in plain black frames. His bookshelves sagged under the weight of leather-bound anatomy and psychology texts.

  “Sit,” Quinn said, motioning to the only visitor’s chair, a high-backed oak monster carved to match the desk.

  Sitting down, Marti discovered that the chair was as uncomfortable as it looked. When Quinn was settled in his own chair behind his oak fortress, Marti pointed to the human brain displayed on his desk in a jar of crystal-clear preservative. “Who did that belong to?”

  “Ed Gein.”

  “The psychopath who was the model for Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs?”

  “The very same.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I rescued it from some misguided scientists who wanted to slice it up in the mistaken belief there would be some obvious gross anatomical correlates to his aberrant behavior. Stupid men. The explanations they seek won’t be found that easily. But we’re not here to discuss Ed Gein.”

  Here it comes, Marti thought. She braced for the worst.

  “Dr. Segerson, you’ve been here only one day, and I’ve already had to deal with two things related to your presence—your orders that Letha Taylor be checked for diabetes and your e-mail requesting that the locks on all the wards be changed.”

  Letha Taylor and locks. That’s all he wanted.

  “Both important issues,” Marti said, hiding the relief she felt.

  “How would you describe life as a patient here?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  ‘Would you want your mother or father to live like that?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s a poor existence.”

  “That’s a fair statement.”

  “Why then would you want to prolong it? Letha Taylor is profoundly disturbed. She’ll never get better.”

  Marti couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You think we should do nothing about her diabetes because she’d be better off dead?”

  “Wouldn’t she?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You said that very quickly.”

  “It’s an obvious conclusion.”

  “I disagree. Without the ability to think and reason, we’re already dead.”

  “This is a hospital. We’re supposed to care for the sick.”

  “But not blindly. Some judgment has to be exercised in expenditure of resources.”

  “I can’t think that way.”

  “Because you don’t have to. I do. Take the locks you want changed on all the wards. Do you know what that would cost?”

  “How could I?”

  “Too much. And it’s an overreaction.”

  “A patient escaped.”

  “A former locksmith with special abilities
and knowledge. If we had a locksmith in every ward, it might be necessary to change the locks, but we don’t. So we’ll change them only in the ward with the locksmith. That not only makes perfect sense, it’s fiscally responsible.”

  “What about Letha Taylor?”

  “We’ll come back to that in a moment. You probably aren’t aware of this, but I’ve always been interested in the phenomenon of close-proximity mind reading, one person thinks of something, another, seated no more than a few feet away, receives the thought. I know it sounds like science fiction, but I think there’s something to it. In a way, it’s just an extension of the wireless EEG technique I developed, but in this case, the receiver is another brain, which, theoretically, should be a far better receiver than any ever built. We have wireless connections to the Internet, why can’t two brains communicate? It’s all electromagnetic radiation.”

  The thought that Quinn might be able to read her mind made Marti extremely uncomfortable. But obviously, he couldn’t. Or he’d never have hired her. As much as she didn’t like him, she had to admit he was a visionary who was always on the cutting edge of things. So maybe he’d make a major contribution in this area, too. But why was he telling her all this?

  “With your academic record,” Quinn said. “I think you’d make an excellent test subject.”

  Marti was shocked at his suggestion. “I can assure you I’ve never read anyone’s mind.”

  “Maybe that’s because the situation was never optimal. I’d like to test you under controlled, very specific conditions.”

  “I don’t know . . .”

  During their conversation, Quinn’s manner had gradually warmed until it had lost the sharp edge he’d shown during her interview in Washington, and again when he’d come through the lab door a few minutes earlier. In an instant, he reverted. “I thought you were interested in getting Letha Taylor’s diabetes treated.”

  For a moment, Marti didn’t get it. Then she saw what he meant, and it repulsed her. He wanted to arrange a trade—her cooperation for treating Letha Taylor. It was such a monstrous bargain she didn’t know how to respond. Finally, she said the only thing she could. “Where and when would this test take place?”