After the standardized assessment, Huang moved onto the final phase.
“Now I need you to recall things familiar to you. Imagine your home – the way it looks and smells. Picture people close to you – your family, your husband, your friends. Imagine your workplace, the local grocery store, your car. Recall some things that are relatively new to your life, such as your current job, and also think of old memories, like things and people you’ve known since childhood. And please describe each to me as I measure your brain activity.”
Janet did as she was instructed, and finally the monitors and probes were removed.
“Alright,” said Huang. Now I will need to process the data.”
“How long will it take?” asked Roth.
“A couple of hours.”
“Mind if I take a nap while we’re waiting?” asked Janet.
“You should remain awake,” said Huang. “I may require additional data.”
Janet sighed heavily. “Then get me another one of those energy drinks, please.”
#
To keep Janet awake, Roth took her for a stroll around the building in the early morning sunshine. The air was crisp, and their voices hung in little dissipating clouds as they spoke. Most of the trees that surrounded Northwest Research Park had lost their leaves, but a few still clung in vain to the wispy branches.
“So, I’ve told you about Charles,” said Janet. “Are you married, Leo?”
“Not anymore. A long time ago, when I was fresh out of law school, I got married. But after about two years she ran away with the local district attorney. It was quite the little scandal back in Indianapolis. So, I packed up, moved out here to Washington and never looked back.”
“People can be so selfish,” said Janet. They walked a little further before she spoke again. “And nobody ever took her place?”
“Oh, I dated on and off, but I never got serious with anyone. I prefer to just do my job, read, and run marathons.”
“Well, I feel like I’ve run a marathon in the last day and a half,” said Janet. “Only, I’m not trained for it.”
Roth’s cell phone rang.
“It’s Huang,” he said to Janet.
Mr. Roth, I have pieced together some answers, but I need more data. One thing I know for sure, the real Seattle Strangler is someone Mrs. Stevens knows personally. Someone she has known for a long time.
“Are you sure?” said Roth.
Positive. Her reconstructed association datapoints prove it beyond any doubt. If I can just –
Silence.
“Huang? Mr. Huang, are you there?”
“What is it?” asked Janet.
“The call was dropped,” Roth said in frustration, slipping his cell phone back in his pocket. “We need to get back to the lab. Come on.”
Roth and Janet walked into the large laboratory room. It seemed even quieter than it had earlier. Roth spied the computer at which Huang had been working, but there was nobody there. As he stepped closer, he heard a quiet splattering under his shoes. He looked down at a pool of deep crimson. He followed the still-oozing puddle, and it led to Huang. The scientist’s smashed eyeglasses lay beside his body - his throat sliced from ear to ear.
“Janet, stay back, don’t look!”
“What, what is it?” asked Janet.
“Huang’s dead. We need to leave here, now.”
Roth ran toward the frozen Janet and grabbed her by the hand. “Now!”
Roth tugged at her arm and broke through the shock and fear gripping Janet. She ran hand in hand with him through the lab, and they burst through the lab door into the hallway. Their footfalls echoed down the corridor as they sprinted for the exit.
The door was locked.
“That can’t be! We just came in this way,” said Roth.
They turned and ran back the way they came, then turned down another hallway, heading for a door at the end with an exit sign over it. The door opened into a concrete stairwell that only led up.
“Let’s go back,” said Janet, panting.
“The killer is back there somewhere,” said Roth. “We need to find a way out. This building is on a hill – the second floor opens at ground level at the back. Let’s try to get out there.”
Janet’s weary muscles ached as they climbed the stairs. They finally emerged on the second floor and headed toward the back of the building. As they smashed through the back door, they spotted the killer running to a vehicle, jumping in, and speeding off.
“Did you get a look at him?” asked Roth, quickly catching his breath.
“I couldn’t see his face,” said Janet, still struggling for oxygen. “But - but there was something familiar about him – it was the way he ran. I – I can’t put my finger on it.”
They went back inside to the lab and called the police. Then they tried to dig clues out of what was on Huang’s computer.
“The files have been deleted,” said Roth. “We’re back at square one!”
“Maybe not,” said Janet. She reached down to Huang’s lifeless hand and pulled a small device from his stiffening grip.
“A flash drive – he must have saved his work when he heard someone coming into the lab,” said Roth.
“If we wait around for the cops, we’re going to miss an opportunity to see this data and get this figured out before I pass out,” said Janet.
“You’re right. Let’s take the flash drive back to my place and see what’s on it.”
#
Back at Roth’s condo, Janet sipped on a Shock Cola while Roth booted up the computer. He inserted the flash drive and pulled up Huang’s preliminary conclusions.
“The data shows that the real killer is indeed known to you,” Roth said. “He’s someone you’ve known very well for a number of years. Huang’s notes also indicate that neural systems naturally ‘notice’ novelty and ‘ignore’ what is routine. That’s why the false memory was a good fit for your brain – most of the associations were already in place and could be manipulated without you recognizing that anything was wrong.”
Janet read over Roth’s shoulder. “The brain secures memories by transferring them from short-term to long-term storage, through a process called reconsolidation, that occurs during REM sleep. So, that’s why I was knocked out – the false memory had to be loaded into my brain, just like how the Forget Pill works.”
“It’s also why you are alive today. The Seattle Strangler always kills his victims. He left you alive so that you could testify, and unwittingly assist him in his plan to frame my client.”
“Is there anything else in Huang’s data to suggest how I can get the real memory back?”
“Let me see,” said Roth, scrolling through the information. “Just more of that stuff about association. Based on what Huang said, I would recommend we visit places familiar to you, and that you think about the attacker while we’re there – see if any true associations come to mind.”
“Alright, let’s start at my house.”
They crossed the city to Janet’s home. It was now late morning and the rush-hour traffic had mostly cleared up.
Janet roamed from room to room, seeing her attacker in her mind’s eye, and also recalling the back of the man who ran to the car at the lab. She picked up photo albums and leafed through them, and even smelled various artifacts around the house. She went to the hall closet and pulled out Charles’ old sport jacket and breathed in the smell of the cologne he used to wear.
A flash of a violent image tore through her mind.
She felt her throat constrict.
Hard to breathe.
“No!” she screamed.
Her knees buckled and she sank to the floor, as yet another violent image struck her senses. She once again saw Huang’s murderer running to the car. She once again felt like she was pinned to the floor, unable to move, unable to gasp for air.
“It can’t be,” she whispered.
“What – what is it?” asked Roth, stooping to help her up from the floor.
<
br /> Before he could reach her, his head was pounded by a frying pan. Roth collapsed in a heap beside Janet. Behind him stood Charles Stevens.
The Seattle Strangler.
“You’re dead! Charles, how could you? How – why? Charles!” Tears gushed from Janet’s eyes as she struggled in vain to form sentences too disturbing to utter.
Charles just stood there over Janet, breathing heavily. He dropped the frying pan to the floor. “Why didn’t you just go to sleep? That’s all you had to do!” he snarled.
“Charles – I don’t understand!” she whimpered, as fear and confusion gripped her heart like a vice.
“A man has to have a hobby. Something to relieve stress, you know. But you were starting to get in the way of the things I was doing. But I didn’t want to kill you. And I didn’t want anyone to connect me with my hobby. I had the perfect plan. But you ruined it. Now I have no choice but to – ”
Janet reached into the closet and grabbed a shoebox. In it lay the loaded Colt 45 they’d kept there, unused, for years.
She pointed it at her husband.
“You wouldn’t,” said Charles, his deep, gravelly voice betraying no emotion. He took a step toward her.
Janet closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger. Nothing. Just a click. A demented smile turned up one corner of Charles’ mouth as he took another step.
Janet squeezed the trigger again.
BANG
A hole appeared in Charles’ chest as he fell away and landed on his back.
He didn’t move.
#
Roth sat in the booth of the greasy diner, a small bandage on his head to cover the almost-healed gash. Janet sat across from him sipping some hot cocoa.
“I felt like I could’ve slept for days,” she said. “Of course, I only ended up crashing for twelve hours. I guess you can never really get caught up on lost sleep.”
“No, not really. But you look well-rested.”
“Well as can be, I suppose.”
“I heard you decided to keep the traumatic memory of the shooting.”
“Yes. I’ve had more than enough of memory manipulation. I’ll just keep it, and deal with it. I think it’ll do me good, actually.” She placed her mug on the table and dabbed the corner of her mouth with a napkin. “I heard you got your client released.”
“Well, he was innocent. After your husband recovered sufficiently, he confessed to everything. He had framed Ellison because Ellison’s name had been floated as a suspect in the press. In fact, my client had done nothing more than to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, coincidentally on two separate occasions. The cops just couldn’t resist that much of a coincidence. Neither could your husband.”
“Ex-husband. What’s going to become of Charles, now that he’s been convicted?”
“The DA is pushing for a new form of sentencing. He wants the punishment to fit the crime.”
“Really? What is he proposing?”
“He says his idea would have a rehabilitative effect in addition to being punitive. He wants Charles to be implanted with fabricated memories from all of his victims – so he has to relive the attacks over and over from their points of view. They’re calling it the Huang Method.”
Janet pondered a moment and slowly nodded. “You don’t sound like you’re sold on that idea,” she said, noting Roth’s expression as he rubbed at a healing wound atop his scalp. “Personally, I think that sounds perfect.”
“Well, there’s just one thing I think they left out.”
“What’s that?”
“They have no plans of making him relive my memory of getting smashed in the head with a frying pan.”
For the first time in a long time, Janet Stevens laughed.
THE END
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