Greg Iles - Blood Memory

Alone in the corridor, I exhale as though I’ve been holding in a single breath for fifteen minutes. I don’t need to pee, but I walk down the hall anyway, certain that Malik would notice a lack of footsteps. As I pass an open door on my left, I see a man covered in black body armor kneeling in the doorway with a stubby submachine gun. His eyes track me as I pass, but he doesn’t move.

When I pull open the bathroom door, I find John Kaiser standing inside. He quickly motions for me to enter the tiny cubicle.

“Do you really have to pee?” he asks.

“No. I just had to get out of there. He jumped up from his desk, and it scared me.”

The FBI agent squeezes my upper arm, his hazel eyes reassuring. “Do you feel you’re in danger?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t really threaten me. It just felt scary.”

“You’re doing great, Cat. Can you handle going back in?”

I turn the taps on the little sink and splash cold water on my neck. “Is it really doing any good?”

“Are you kidding? This conversation is the only window we have into this guy’s head.”

I lean back against the wall and dry my neck with a paper towel. “Okay.”

“Do you feel confident enough to try to provoke him a little?”

“Jesus. How do you suggest I do that?”

Kaiser gives me a smile that tells me he knows me better than I thought. “I don’t think you need any suggestions in that area. Do you?”

“I guess not.”

“If you feel threatened, don’t hesitate to pull the plug. We’ll have him facedown on the floor in five seconds.”

“Alive or dead?”

“That’s his choice.” Kaiser’s eyes almost glitter in their hardness.

“Is it?”

The FBI agent reaches behind him and flushes the toilet. “You’re right where you like to be, Cat. On the edge. Go nail this guy.”

Nathan Malik is standing at the sideboard, lighting a cone of incense on a burner before the Buddha. A tendril of gray smoke spirals upward, and the aroma of sandalwood reaches me. When he returns to his desk and takes his seat, the aura of threat that surrounded him before is gone. With his shaved head, spare frame, and black clothing, he looks almost like a choreographer from a Broadway show. But that’s an illusion, I remind myself. This man has killed people in combat, if not in the city outside this office.

“Do you believe that traumatic memories can be lost, Catherine?”

In my mind I see the flashing blue lights on the night my father died, and feel the terrible blankness of the hours before that. “I don’t reject the idea out of hand. I suppose I’m a little suspicious of it.”

“Most people are. The word repression itself is freighted with all sorts of Freudian overtones. We should drop it altogether. Memories are lost by a sophisticated neurological trick called dissociation. Dissociation is a well-documented human defense mechanism. I’m sure you recall it from your med school days.”

“Refresh my memory.”

“Daydreaming is a common example of dissociation. You’re sitting in a classroom, but your mind is a thousand miles away. Your body’s in one place, your mind in another. When the professor calls your name, you might as well have been asleep. We’ve all experienced that.”

“Sure.”

“How about driving your car while totally focused on something inside it? The CD player. A child. Programming your cell phone. Your body and brain are performing the task of driving, of keeping the car on the road, while your conscious mind is entirely occupied elsewhere. I’ve actually driven quite a distance without consciously looking at the road.”

“So have I. But I don’t have amnesia for whatever I was doing at the time.”

“You weren’t in a traumatic situation.” Malik gives me a paternal smile. “When used as a coping mechanism against trauma, dissociation has far more profound effects. When human beings are placed under such severe stress that fight or flight are the only sane responses, they must do one or the other. If they’re in a position where neither response is possible, the brain-the mind, rather-will attempt to flee on its own. The body endures the trauma, but the mind, in effect, is not present. It may well watch the trauma occur, but it will not process it. Not conventionally, anyway.” Malik has not moved a muscle apart from those that control his mouth and jaw. “Do you find this concept difficult to accept?”

“It makes sense. In theory.”

“Then let’s get down to cases. Imagine a three-year-old girl suffering repeated rape. Several nights a week-she never knows which-a man ten times her weight and strength slips into her room and does things to her body. Initially she may be flattered. She feels pleasure and participates. But eventually the secret nature of the activity comes home to her. She begs him to stop. He doesn’t. Threats are made. Threats of violence, abandonment, murder. A tremendous amount of negative anticipation is set up inside her mind. She endures unimaginable levels of fear. Which night will he come? Does going to sleep make him come? But no matter what she does to prevent it, he still comes. This huge and terrifying man-usually a man who is supposed to love and protect her-climbs on top of her and begins to hurt her. Maybe she’s four or five now, but she can’t fight or run from him. So, what happens? Just as in combat situations, the brain attempts to cope with the unbearable as best it can. Massive defense mechanisms are set in motion. And dissociation is the most powerful of those mechanisms. The girl’s mind simply vacates the premises, and only her body suffers the rape. In the most extreme cases, these kids develop DID.”

“DID?”

“Dissociative identity disorder. What we used to call multiple personalty disorder. The mind becomes so adept at splitting off from reality that separate psyches come into being. Prolonged sexual abuse is the only known cause of multiple personality disorder.”

“These traumatic memories,” I say, trying to find my way back to the main thread of the conversation. “They remain intact? Even though the person isn’t conscious of them? Intact and accessible at a later date? Years later?”

Malik nods. “The degree of recall varies, of course, but not the veracity. The actual memory is indelible. It’s simply located in another part of the brain. This idea, of course, is at the root of the repressed memory debate.”

“Well, how do you help patients access these lost memories?”

“In some ways, they’re not really lost. If an adult woman finds herself in a situation similar to that in which the abuse took place-say normal sex with her husband, and he tries something new, like oral or rear-entry sex-she may suddenly experience panic, pain, heart palpitations, anything. A smell can trigger the same responses. A hair cream the abuser wore, say. Bathrooms can do it. This phenomenon is called body memory. The sensory part of the brain recalls the trauma, but the conscious mind does not.”

“But how do you bring these memories to the conscious level? Talk therapy? Hypnosis? What?”

“Hypnosis has been largely discredited as a tool of memory recovery. Inexperienced clinicians have implanted too many false memories with it. Which is a pity. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I think.”

“Do you use drugs?”

Malik looks impatient. “I use whatever approach I think best for a particular patient. Drugs, talk therapy, EMDR, hypnosis-I could run clinical jargon past you for hours, precise but pointless. I find it useful to use symbolism when discussing my work. Mythology, most of all. The Greeks knew a thing or two about psychology. Incest, especially.”

Malik’s gaze wanders to my legs again. I pull my skirt down over my knees. “I’m all ears.”