Brian Freeman - The Night Bird

There was no one. She realized that her hand was trembling, and she could barely hold her phone.

Across the table, Pam sat down again, her face tight with anger. She wouldn’t look at Frankie.

“I’m sorry,” Frankie murmured.

Pam said nothing.

“Really, I mean it, Pam. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to run your life. I know sometimes I act like I do.”

“You’re just like Dad,” Pam retorted, knowing it was a low blow.

Frankie held her tongue, despite the temptation to start the argument all over again. “Okay, you’re right, Dad was always on your case, and I don’t want to be like that. He drove me crazy, too, just not in the same way. He was difficult.”

“Difficult?” Pam said, as if the word didn’t begin to describe him. Which was true.

“The thing is, Dad and I made some progress when we were at Point Reyes. Before the accident.”

“How nice for you, but you didn’t want me there, remember? You said all I’d do is get in the way.”

Frankie hesitated. “Of course. I just mean — I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It is what it is.”

Virgil leaned between them. His smirk, as always, was plastered on his face. He knew they were arguing. It wasn’t the first time. He’d seen worse in the year they’d been coming here. The server carried a glass of pinot noir in his hand, and Pam frowned when she saw it.

“I wanted another martini, V.”

“Don’t worry, Bellini number two is on the way,” he told Pam. “This drink is for Frankie. Courtesy of a gentleman at the bar.”

Frankie looked up. I see you.

“Who?” she asked. Customers lined up three deep at the bar, and she couldn’t pick out any familiar faces.

“Slicked-back brown hair. Beard. Very tasty.”

Frankie studied the faces again, and this time, she spotted a man staring back at her. Virgil was right. He was attractive. He was younger than she was, but he had a weak-in-the-knees smile that was like a secret weapon. His bearded chin was squared, and his nose made a sharp V, with a pronounced ridge above his lip. He was smart, too. She could always see intelligence in the eyes.

“Take the drink back,” she told Virgil, but then she grabbed the server’s wrist. “Wait, no, I’ll do it myself.”

Frankie stood up. In her heels, she was taller than the man at the bar. She let her coldness soak into her face. She approached him, and he watched her with an amused confidence. As if women always wanted him to buy them a drink. He didn’t look scary, but stalkers knew how to wear a mask. He was whistling, but he stopped as she came closer.

She stood in front of him and drilled into his face with her stare.

“Who are you, and why are you sending me e-mails? How did you get my personal address?”

His blue eyes blinked with surprise. They were attractive eyes, and they latched on to her and didn’t let go. “I’m sorry, I think you have me confused with someone else. My name is Frost Easton, Dr. Stein. I’m with the San Francisco Police. I’d like to talk to you.”

Frost sized up Francesca Stein. He’d met plenty of psychiatrists in his investigations, and they hadn’t impressed him. They were happy to pretend they had all the answers, but if one of their patients shot up a movie theater, the finger of blame pointed everywhere except at themselves. He thought of them as gray little Freuds, probing for weaknesses like a child poking the stomach of a fat uncle.

Stein didn’t convey arrogance, but her brown eyes were cool. She had a classy grace about her that kept people at a distance. Her body was paper thin, but she didn’t look fragile. Her sister at the other table — they were obviously sisters — was the bombshell, but Frost found Frankie more interesting. She looked as if you could dig down a long way and never hit bottom.

The server with the wild white hair, Virgil, found an empty window table for them. Outside, the pedestrian traffic filled the sidewalk. It was Friday night, and despite a cool mist off the ocean, the Tenderloin regulars were out in force on Post Street in the wildest of fashions. Frost’s Suburban was parked in a red zone in front of the restaurant. Shack slept on top of the steering wheel, and the drunk girls who passed the SUV stopped to coo at him through the window.

“So what did you want to talk about, Inspector?” she asked. Her voice had a surprising softness.

“Brynn Lansing,” he said. “She was one of your patients.”

“I’m sure you know I can’t say anything about my patients,” Stein replied. And then, with a flicker of concern, she said, “Was?”

“Brynn’s dead.”

Stein’s dismay flew onto her face. It looked sincere. “I’m so sorry to hear that. What happened?”

“She tried to climb the Bay Bridge. She didn’t make it.”

“What?”

He explained the incident in detail, and he watched Stein’s face for a reaction. He saw only confusion.

“That’s a terrible thing,” she said when he was done. “And baffling.”

“Well, I was hoping you could unbaffle it for me,” Frost said. “After all, you were her therapist.”

“Even if I could, I wouldn’t be able to tell you anything. The patient privilege isn’t automatically canceled by death.”

“I thought you might say that,” Frost replied, sliding a folded piece of paper from inside his coat pocket. “That’s why I had Brynn’s parents sign a release form. Upon her death, they took over her power of attorney.”

Stein read the form. “Fair enough. I want to help if I can. Unfortunately, in this case, I don’t think there’s anything useful I can share with you. I hadn’t seen Brynn in several weeks. The treatment we conducted was for a fairly minor problem. She was almost embarrassed to ask me about it.”

“Her fear of cats,” Frost said.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And you helped her forget about it?” Frost asked. “Is that how your treatment works?”

He’d done his homework on Francesca Stein over the course of the afternoon. He tried to keep the cynicism out of his voice, but he failed. What he’d read made him think that Lucy was right. As pretty as she was to look at, this woman was a little like Dr. Frankenstein.

“In simple terms, it’s something like that,” Stein told him. “The process is called memory reconsolidation.”

“And how exactly do you do that?”

Stein took her phone from her purse. It was connected to a portable battery charger. She pushed a few buttons, then extended her arm and gave the phone to Frost. “This is a video I show people at conferences. Take a look. It only lasts a few seconds.”

Frost pushed the play button on the phone screen. He expected a dry academic lecture in a classroom, but instead, he saw a video of an urban street somewhere in San Francisco. There were cars parked on the opposite curb. The street was lined with retail shops. Pedestrians walked back and forth in groups on both sides. As he watched, puzzled, a dark car drove into the frame and went without stopping through the intersection, where it T-boned another car with a sharp bang. Steam erupted. Voices shouted. And then the video cut off.

“I don’t understand,” Frost said.

“Let’s say you witnessed this actual incident,” Stein said, taking back her phone. “That ten seconds would be your reality. You can’t reexperience it, you can’t watch it again. All you can do is remember it.”

“Okay.”

“In other words, reality happens once, but memory happens over and over,” Stein told him. “Every time I ask you to think about the blue car that zipped through the stop sign and had an accident, your brain goes back and retrieves the memory, like a file from a cabinet. However, memories — unlike reality — aren’t fixed. With every recollection, we reshape what we saw. Our memories of an event are influenced by how we want a situation to be, how we perceive our role in it, what people tell us, and even by what we hear or read about what took place. After a while, our brains can’t distinguish between reality and our reconstruction of reality.”