False Memory

to understand fully the strategies of opposing players.
    Both volumes held galleries of Death's dark art. The forensic-pathology textbook featured more examples and a greater variety of soul-shriveling grisliness, but the volume on homicide investigation offered more shots of victims in situ, which had a charm not always to be found in photographs taken at the morgue, as any slaughterhouse is visually more arresting than any butcher-shop display. Guggenheims of blood, Louvres of violence, museums of human evil and misery bound with tables of contents and indexes for easy reference.
    Docile, she waited. Lips parted. Eyes wide. A vessel ready to be filled.
    “You’re quite lovely,” the doctor told her. “Martie, I must admit, blinded by Susan’s light, I had too little appreciation for your beauty. Until now.”
    Seasoned by more suffering, she would be exquisitely erotic.
    He began, then, with the homicide-investigation textbook. He opened to a page marked with a pink Post-it.
    Holding the volume in front of Martie, Ahriman directed her attention to a photograph of a dead man lying supine on a hardwood floor. Naked, he was, and ravaged by thirty-six stab wounds. The doctor made sure that Martie noted, in particular, the imaginative use to which the killer had put the victim’s genitals.
    “And there, the railroad spike in the forehead,” Ahriman said. “Steel, ten inches in length, with a one-inch diameter nailhead, but you can’t see much of the length. It pins him to the oak flooring. A crucifixion reference, no doubt—the nail through the hand and the crown of thorns combined in one efficient symbol. Absorb it, Martie. Every glorious detail.”
    She stared intensely, as instructed, gaze traveling wound to wound across the photograph.
    “The victim was a priest,” the doctor informed her. “The killer most likely found the oak flooring regrettable, but no manufacturer of home-improvement products has had the panache to market dogwood tongue and groove.”
    Blue jiggle. Blue stillness. A blink. The image captured now and stored away.
    Ahriman turned the page.

     
     
    As worried as he had been about Martie, Dusty had not expected to be able to concentrate on the novel. The peace of mind that had settled upon him when he entered Dr. Ahriman’s office did not fade, however, and he found himself more easily captured by the story than he expected to be.
    The Manchurian Candidate offered an entertaining plot peopled with colorful characters, just as Martie had promised in her curious wooden tone and phrases. Considering the high quality of the novel, her failure to finish it—or even to read a significant portion of it— during the months she had carried it to Susan’s sessions was more inexplicable than ever.
    In Chapter 2, Dusty came to a paragraph that began with the name Dr. Yen Lo.
    Shock triggered a reflex action that nearly sent the book flying out of his hands. He held on to it, but lost his place.
    Flipping through the text in search of his page. he was sure that his eyes had tricked him. Some phrase containing four syllables similar to those in that Asian name must have made the connection for him, causing him to misread.
    Dusty located the second chapter, the page. the paragraph, and there indisputably was the name in clear black type, spelled just as Skeet had spelled it over and over again on the pages of the notepad:
    Dr. Yen Lo. The type jittered up and down as his hands shook.
    The name had caused the kid to drop instantly into that strange dissociate state, as though he were hypnotized, and now it gave Dusty a case of the whim—whams that left the nape of his neck more corrugated than corduroy. Even the singularly calming influence of the waiting-room decor could not raise any warmth along his spine, which was as cold as a thermometer in a meat locker.
    Using one finger as a bookmark, he got to his feet and paced the small room, trying to work off sufficient nervous energy to be able to hold the book still enough to read.
    Why was Skeet so tormented and so affected by a name that was nothing more than that of a character in a work of fiction?
    Considering the kid’s taste in literature, the groaning shelves of fantasy novels in his apartment, he probably hadn’t even read this thriller. There was nary a dragon in it, neither elf nor wizard.
    After several circuits of the room, beginning to understand the frustration of a zoo-kept panther, Dusty returned to his chair, even though he still felt as if all the