Have You Seen Me?(53)
I start to toss the phone on the bed, but instead do something I probably shouldn’t and call my father. There’s a decent chance, I realize, particularly considering how low my mood is, that he’ll pick up on my anxiety, but I still long for the comfort of his voice.
“Hey, Button,” he proclaims after I’ve announced myself. “What a lovely surprise.”
There’s an energy in his tone I haven’t heard since before his heart attack.
“I thought I’d do a quick check-in before bed.”
“All good on this end. I’m feeling stronger every day, and Quinn and the family have been spoiling me rotten.”
“That’s what Roger told me.”
“He says you two have spent some time together lately. Glad to hear it.”
“Yes, it’s been fun. But I miss you, Dad.”
Careful, I warn myself. Don’t go all weepy on him.
“I miss you too, honey. By the way, I listened to your podcast today. Excellent as usual. Your mom would be so proud of you.”
He speaks that phrase often enough, but this time it makes me want to start bawling. I take a breath to guarantee my voice won’t crack.
“Thanks. I like to think she would be.”
After we hang up with a pair of “I love you’s,” I don’t know whether to feel relieved or saddened. My dad clearly didn’t detect any cues of distress from me, and I’m glad I haven’t given him a reason to worry, but deep down a part of me wants him to know, wants him to notice the anguish in my voice so he can assuage my fears, especially after Hugh’s deflating response tonight.
But in the end, how helpful could my dad really be? He’s three thousand miles away. And he can’t tell me where I was those two days—or why I felt an urgent, crazy need to leave myself behind.
I strip off my clothes, don a pair of pajamas, and slip into bed with my iPad. After a feeble attempt to engage with the book I’d been reading, I end up replaying my conversation with Hugh from earlier, hoping that if I can see his comments from another angle, they won’t leave me so disquieted. I was praying for understanding and acceptance, and I came away with neither of those.
Maybe Hugh wasn’t passing judgment. It could be instead that his annoyance over being left in the dark shaded his reaction. He might even be worried that I’ve put myself in legal jeopardy.
Or—and this scares me—maybe what I actually saw with him tonight was fear pooling to the surface. Fear that he married a woman who came unhinged not only last week, but at other times during her past. Where will that fear take him?
What if, as Hugh suggested, I was in a dissociative state years ago? One I don’t even know about? And what if there’s more that I don’t remember from that day in the woods?
Clearly the interview with the cops in Millerstown is still weighing on me, especially the one weird question Corbet asked.
I throw off the covers, climb out of bed, and after plopping down at my desk in the alcove, I open my laptop. Then I google “Techniques detectives use in interviews and in interrogations.”
A host of links pop up—to blog posts, descriptions of courses on the subject, even pages from textbooks. I start with the first link and begin scrolling, my eyes racing over the words. Cops, it turns out, use all sorts of cagey strategies to elicit the truth, sometimes pinning people to a psychological wall. Before long I find a reference to a common strategy that makes my skin crawl: offering a suspect an acceptable excuse for committing the crime. It allows—even encourages—the person to confess without losing face.
I realize, staring at the words, that Corbet had used that technique on me, when she mentioned the idea of someone losing their temper and not really meaning to cause any harm. My heart sinks.
Could she possibly believe I was the one who’d killed Jaycee Long?
21
SESSION WITH DR. ERLING
By the time I reach Dr. Erling’s office the next day, I’m nearly jumping out of my skin.
She greets me warmly and ushers me into her inner sanctum. She’s in slim black pants and a cobalt-blue silk blouse, perfectly polished as usual.
“How are you doing today, Ally?” she asks once I’m seated.
“Not good. I guess I don’t feel as fragile as I did on Monday, but so many things seem to be unraveling at the same time. I haven’t remembered anything else, by the way. Which makes it all worse.”
“Why don’t you start with what’s worrying you the most?”
I tell her about going to see the police in New Jersey yesterday, my realization that the body was in rigor when I found it, and the possible ramifications of my deception.
“I feel really guilty,” I say. “If I’d told the truth, it might have allowed the police to pinpoint the time of death—and figure out who the killer was.”
“How did the police respond to the information you shared with them?”
“Oh, they pretended to understand why I wasn’t forthcoming as a nine-year-old. But later, the lead detective asked these weird questions. It was almost like she was trying to trip me up.”
“Trip you up how?”
“She wanted me to repeat certain details, even though she’d taken notes when I was talking. And then—she said this one thing that was really odd, like a trick question. . . . She wanted to know if I thought someone might have lost their temper with Jaycee and hurt her without really meaning to.”