Brooklyn Gothic, page 23
He picked a notepad off the oval glass table in front of him. “All the signs of false memory syndrome are there. Samuel has brain trauma and the victims he’s focused on are all high profile. The information he has about their murders could have easily been deduced from news reports.”
“You figured all this out this morning?” she asked.
“Oh, no. We had a double session yesterday, as this was an emergency. Samuel, you didn’t say much yesterday, but now you’re not sure?”
“Excuse me,” Casey interrupted. “I don’t have my phone because somebody stole it.” She looked pointedly at Sharon, then back at the doctor. “Can I use yours?”
“My phone?”
“I’d like to verify your identity.”
“Of course.” He reached over to his desk, tapped his phone, and handed it to her. “Alan P-U-T-”
“I’ve got it, thanks,” she said, pulling up a Wikipedia entry and examining the accompanying photo. “So you went to Harvard too.”
“Yes, I have a memory lab there, though I’m mostly in private practice these days and volunteering with the Innocence Project, advising those convicted on false and coerced confessions.” His lively brown eyes crinkled at her. “My daughter is an alumnus as well, and that’s how Sharon learned of me.”
“And you were saying?” Casey asked, handing back his phone.
“Let me try to explain better,” the doctor said. “At some point after his aneurysm, which likely caused frontal lobe damage, Samuel became fixated on murder victims and this became twisted around in his mind. He seems to have auto-suggested he was the serial perpetrator.”
The doctor’s attention shifted to Mr. Foster, who had head down and was focused on the carpet.
“From what Samuel tells me,” the doctor continued, drawing out his words deliberately, “he has a history of immoral and high risk behavior. It’s not unlikely he was on the antisocial personality disorder spectrum.”
Casey wondered if Mr. Foster had told the doctor about the circumstances surrounding his father’s death, but didn’t ask. Right now she wasn’t even sure that was true either.
“But the vast majority of people with antisocial tendencies aren’t violent,” the doctor said. He placed the notebook on his lap and folded his hands. “In fact, some would say they’re overrepresented in public office and on Wall Street.” He smiled at his little joke.
“Many neurologists believe psychopathy is neuroanatomical, that those with antisocial tendencies are born that way,” he went on. “This could explain why Samuel feels he became empathetic for the first time in his life after his brain trauma, which may have rewired his brain. So these memories could be his way of working through guilt about his former self. He developed a compulsive ideation with victims who’d performed some act of heroism.”
“Casey,” Sharon interrupted. “This isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with this with Sam.”
“We had a session two years ago,” the doctor explained. “Sharon came to me with what she thought was a false memory Samuel had of his attacking a woman in Connecticut.” He looked down at his notepad, then flipped back a page. “Natalie Marshall?”
Casey turned to gape at him. “Two years ago?”
“Yes,” he mumbled. “When I was in the hospital in Greece, I told Sharon what I thought I knew about myself and the teacher. She insisted it couldn’t have happened.”
“Sam and I were together the night of that woman’s attack, at his apartment in the Baccarat, all night,” Sharon filled in. “I remember clearly because Natalie’s attack was in the news in the morning. It was the same day that plane disappeared over the Atlantic. A few months later, in the hospital, he’s telling me he did it. That he is the one who attacked her.” Her brows flew up in astonishment. “I knew that couldn’t be true. I had been with him that night. But I was married and my husband is an IT expert who can get into anything, so Sam and I only discussed our affair in person. I had nothing I could show him to prove he’d been with me, no emails, no texts. I talked to his doorman to see if I could retrieve Sam’s private entrance surveillance camera footage, but it’s deleted after a few weeks.”
She sighed as if this was all an unbelievable bother, and then looked towards the doctor.
“I’d heard of Dr. Putterman through his daughter, Melissa, when we took contracts law together, and convinced him to visit Sam in rehab. Sam agreed the attack was all in his mind, and I forgot about the whole thing. But then along comes this foundation.” She tossed one hand up. “He kept Natalie Marshall out of the list of recipients, so I couldn’t put two and two together. But I suspected he’d expanded his list of imaginary victims.”
She gave the smirk of hers Casey had come to loathe. The problem was Sharon’s smirk signaled she was about to say something outrageous that also made sense.
“When I came to the mansion,” Sharon continued, “that time I met you, I was there to figure out what was happening. But he threatened to fire me if I didn’t do what he wanted. I had a new baby and a husband whose company had gone under. I felt trapped.”
Casey didn’t know what to think about any of this. She felt Sharon would say anything to protect him. But the tiny chink in her mind that had appeared when Sharon first pronounced him delusional in the car split open further, beckoning, promising refuge from the unthinkable.
“This type of thing isn’t uncommon,” the doctor said. “I’ve counseled several people who believe they were in the World Trade Center on 9/11, despite all evidence to the contrary. People can confabulate highly disturbing non-real events. There was a study done last year in the UK in which seventy percent of respondents were led to believe they’d committed a crime, going so far as to enact a crime that hadn’t happened.”
He smiled, somewhat condescendingly, Casey thought.
“These are all Googleable,” he added.
“I understand people can say anything,” Casey said. “But he had a belt buckle and wedding rings missing from a couple who were killed.”
“Were they definitely the same items?” the doctor asked.
“I don’t know because the same person who stole my phone stole them too.” She glared at Sharon.
“I told you,” Sharon said. “He must have bought them. He carries them around with him, convincing himself because he had them, he committed those crimes.”
“We could have tried to have them checked for DNA of the victims. But you stole them. Do you still have them? We could bring them to the police now, clear everything up.” She realized she sounded confrontational, daring Sharon—and him—to prove his innocence.
“Don’t be stupid, Casey,” Sharon spat, pointing at her. “Even if there was no DNA, and there wouldn’t be, a confession like that will be enough to convict him.”
“And what about the… ” Casey said, swallowing what felt like a jutting rock in her throat. “He… he looks like…”
“She thinks he looks like the police sketch,” Sharon butted in. “I showed you yesterday.”
“Oh, yes,” the doctor remembered, rubbing the tip of his nose. “There was a slight resemblance. So hard to tell with that—”
“A ski mask,” Sharon filled in.
Casey made eye contact with Sharon’s unnerving blue eyes. “Why’d you try to throw me off with the Mr. A from Brazil story if you thought false memory was the problem?”
Sharon’s persistent coolness downshifted, and she crossed and uncrossed her legs, as if they were itchy. “What was I going to tell you? That Sam has false memories of killing a bunch of people? What if you thought those memories weren’t false? And that’s exactly what happened.”
“Mind if I ask who Mr. A is?” Mr. Foster startled everyone with the sound of his voice.
“Sharon tried to make me think you had something called Pathological Generosity. She can’t make up her mind what affliction you have,” Casey drawled.
“Casey, you seem resistant to the idea of false memory,” the doctor said, judgmentally, she thought. “Do you doubt this field of study? Perhaps if you read some of my books…” He waved at the enormous bookshelves behind him.
For the first time, Casey began to feel shaken out of her conviction. “I don’t doubt it can happen, Dr. Putterman. I’d feel better if some investigating was done. Wouldn’t we all?”
“What would you do if the investigating was surface level, and he went to prison because of his confession, as has happened to clients of mine, as well as many others?”
“I—I don’t know.” Suddenly, she was unable to look at anyone, so she focused on one of the garbled abstract paintings on a sidewall: blue, black, and red confetti-squiggles. Something a fifth grader could have done. Why was this considered art?
“Do you realize how difficult, almost impossible, it is to get a conviction overturned?” the doctor asked.
Casey rummaged through her memories of the victims, but was struggling mightily, as if her neurons were too dry and lumpy to pass information to each other. She hadn’t succeeded in throwing off the acute exhaustion she’d had since last night. Then it came to her—one of these things was not like the others.
“Why would he choose Natalie?” she asked. “She’s alive. If he’s pretending—or falsely remembering—he’s killed people, why bring her into it?”
“It’s possible—” the doctor started.
“Let him answer.” Casey thrust her arm at the doctor to silence him, and turned to Mr. Foster.
Despite her tone, he looked so pathetic and alone, she had the urge to place her hand consolingly on his caved in shoulders.
“I saw being there. Attacking her.” He tapped his finger against his throat. “She pushed her fingers into my windpipe. She bit me and kicked me.”
“This is nonsense,” Sharon said. “Every single thing he just said is in the interview Natalie gave to you, Casey. Odd how he knew none of these details when he told me he’d attacked her. When did you remember all of this, Sam? After your aneurysm or recently?”
“I knew I did it but when Casey sent me her article, I remembered everything.”
“Ha!” Sharon exclaimed, proud of her deduction. “See that?”
“Her attack was high profile because of her history,” added the doctor. “Samuel broke the general pattern with her, but it’s possible her attack felt egregious enough for him to add it to his narrative when he saw the police sketch and noted a resemblance.”
“And those reports of yours, Casey. Those gave him more details he could pretend he knew about.” Sharon said this as if it was somehow Casey’s fault.
“Then if everything he says is in the news or my reports, we can bring his confession to the police and cross compare,” Casey said. “They can investigate, he can be cleared.”
“We can’t,” Sharon insisted. “Aren’t you listening? People get put away for false confessions. Even if everything in his confession matches up to a news story or a report, it won’t matter. Dr. Putterman, tell her about the guy in Sweden.”
“Have you heard about a man named Thomas Quick, Casey? There’s a documentary about him.”
Casey shook her head.
“He lived in a mental institution in 1991. During therapy sessions, he began to confess to murders, over thirty of them. He managed to provide details to the police only they knew, a combination of leading questions and excellent guessing on his part. An airtight alibi in at least one of the murders was discovered, but still he was convicted on eight murders in six different trials. It took several years for him to be exonerated. The outdated norm in law enforcement circles is that no one would confess to a murder he or she didn’t commit. If Samuel confessed to these murders, even if an alibi was later introduced, he’d be in a very precarious position.”
Casey’s leg kept up a nervous rocking, and she instinctively clasped her stomach, suddenly and horribly remembering that she had someone beside herself she had to think about now. And whether or not the man sitting next to her was truly a serial killer would decide not only the fate of everyone who knew the victims, but the being she was carrying.
“These victims lived all over the country,” the doctor said. “Different weapons were used. I’m not an expert, but it doesn’t fit the profile of any serial killer I can think of.”
“Yeah,” Casey grumbled. “He bragged about that.” She furiously turned to him, but when she saw him looking so helpless, like a little boy who been beaten by a parent he trusted, the fireball of fury in her gut unexpectedly flickered down.
“They must be under tremendous pressure to close these cases,” Sharon added. “If Sam waltzes in and says, ‘Put me away,’ they’ll be thrilled to. All it would take is one person saying, ‘I saw a guy who looked like him running from the scene,’ or Natalie Marshall saying, ‘That’s the guy,’ even though eyewitness accounts are the most unreliable evidence in trials. Combine that with a man who resembles the sketch and who thinks he did it? He won’t stand a chance.”
“Samuel is fortunate he has Sharon to advocate for him before it got to that point,” the doctor said.
Sharon, his advocate. And what was Casey? The one trying to bulldoze a mentally ill man into prison? Had she made up her mind to be his enemy even though he had never shown a violent side and had, in fact, shown nothing but the opposite, not only to her, but strangers?
“At least the police could look into his travel schedule,” Casey said, sounding hesitant.
Sharon sighed, reached to her side, and brought her flap-over leather briefcase to her knees. She opened it, got up, and handed Casey a sheaf of paper.
She stared at a printout of an e-ticket for All That Jazz, a jazz festival. As the city for the festival began to register in her mind, Albuquerque, her hands started to tremble.
“He flew there two days before the murders,” Sharon said, matter-of-factly. “The jazz festival ticket and flight confirmation were sent to his old email account, which he’s since stopped using. After the Natalie confession, I figured I better do some investigating, though I knew he was with me that night. I thought it might help me understand things. I found that.”
Casey’s mouth had dropped open, and she gaped over at Sharon.
“So he was in Albuquerque at the time the Nonezes were killed and you still don’t think he’s involved?”
“Casey, the murders were all over the news the day he left. He was probably sitting in the airport, watching the news of their deaths.”
“Do you remember this festival?” Casey asked Mr. Foster as she slid farther away from him on the couch, until she was pressed up against its cushy arm.
“Yes, I remember it,” he said, rubbing at his eyes. “I remember the other thing too. Or at least some of it.”
“Sure, Sam,” Sharon called. “You’d go to a jazz festival and on your way home take the time to murder two people for no reason?”
He wiped his mouth and retreated to his semi-catatonic state.
“Now what, Casey?” Sharon asked. “There’s proof he was in the area at the time of two of the murders. Think the police are going to spend their time trying to prove he’s delusional?” She snorted and crossed her arms defiantly. “Wouldn’t a diabolically clever serial killer delete an email proving he was in Albuquerque when two of his victims were killed?”
“Not if he wanted an alibi,” Casey said. “A jazz festival would be a good one in case he’d been caught on any surveillance cameras in the area.”
She remembered something else he’d told her—that his laptop had been stolen while he was in the hospital in Greece. He could have gotten rid of it himself; tossed it into the sea. Goodbye any chance of running computer forensics on it. A history of searches on the victims before his aneurysm could have gone a long way to proving he’d picked them out beforehand.
The four of them were silent for several moments.
“Let’s say this is all true and he has false memory syndrome,” Casey finally said. “Shouldn’t he be in an institution?” She kept her eyes on the doctor, not wanting to see Mr. Foster’s reaction. Somehow, in this moment, it seemed worse to suggest he be committed to a mental hospital than that he should go to prison.
“False memory syndrome isn’t a recognized mental illness,” Dr. Putterman explained. “He needs to work with a psychologist who is experienced in this area, who can help him let go of the false memories and strengthen his real ones. An antipsychotic may be effective as well. But he may always feel—even strongly—that he committed these crimes. Often, it’s something the patient has to learn to live with.”
The drone of clinical talk began to lull Casey into a state of near calmness. She forced herself to shove off the complacency threatening to take over. “Have you seen anyone like him before?” she asked.
“His is an unusual case to be sure. Ordinarily, suggestive memory retrieval techniques are involved. Samuel seems to have induced his without being guided. People with these issues wouldn’t generally be known about, because they wouldn’t even know their own memories are false.”
He smiled, a touch self-satisfied, and went on to tell her about a British man who’d been hit by a van so hard his brain rattled out of place in his skull. When he awoke out of an induced coma, he had memories of having a girlfriend pregnant with their twins and of owning a small Cessna plane. “In reality, he had no pregnant girlfriend,” said the doctor. “Though several friends were having children and twins ran in his family. He’d also recently seen a film that contained the same type of plane he thought he owned but didn’t. Incredibly, he continued to believe his false memories, even though no twins were ever born and there was no plane in the place he believed it was parked.”
Dr. Putterman tapped at his phone and handed it to Casey. The article was on the man in question, Alpha Kabeja. As she skimmed it, a memory came to her: In college, she’d told several people she’d been a cheerleader in middle school. It wasn’t until she’d run across pictures of herself in a marching band uniform that she realized she used to twirl baton, not shake pompoms.
Still, it was a long way from imagined cheerleader to imagined serial killer.
