False Memory

despair—to appear authentic.
    Martie identified the handwriting as Susan’s. Comparisons with an unmailed letter from Susan to her mother and with samples from her address book all but eliminated any possibility of forgery. If the investigation raised any suspicion of homicide, a handwriting expert would provide an analysis.
    Martie was also singularly qualified to confirm, as claimed in the suicide note, that Susan Jagger had been suffering from severe agoraphobia for sixteen months, that her career had been destroyed, that her marriage had fallen apart, and that she was enduring bouts of depression. Her protests that Susan was nevertheless far from suicidal sounded, even to Dusty, like nothing more than sad attempts to protect a good friend’s reputation and to prevent Susan's memory from being tarnished.
    Besides, Martie’s emotional self-reproach, voiced not so much to the police or to Dusty as to herself, made it clear that she was convinced this was suicide. She blamed herself for not being here when Susan needed her, for not calling Susan the previous evening and, perhaps, interrupting her with the razor blade in hand.
    Before the authorities arrived, Dusty and Martie had agreed not to mention Susan’s story of a ghostly night visitor who left behind a very unghostly tablespoon or two of biological evidence. Martie thought this tale would only convince the police that Susan was unstable, even flaky; further damaging her reputation.
    She also worried that broaching this sensitive subject would lead to questions requiring the revelation of her autophobia. She was loath to expose herself to their gimlet-eyed interrogation and cold psychologizing. She hadn’t harmed Susan, but if she began to expound on her conviction that she had an exceptional potential for violence, the detectives would put a pin in their determination of suicide and would bulldog her for hours until they were certain that her fear of self was as irrational as it seemed to be. And if the stress of all this brought on another panic attack while they were present to witness it, the cops might even decide that she was a danger to herself and to others, committing her against her will to a psychiatric ward for seventy-two hours, which was within their authority.
    “I couldn’t tolerate being in a place like that,” Martie had told Dusty before the first police arrived. “Locked up. Watched. I couldn’t handle it.”
    “Won’t happen,” he had promised.
    He shared her reasons for wanting to keep quiet about Susan’s phantom rapist, but he had another reason, too, which he hadn’t yet disclosed to her. He was convinced, as Martie only wished she were, that Susan had not killed herself, at least not with volition or with awareness of what she was doing. If he revealed this to the police, however, and even made a failed attempt to convince them that here was an extraordinary case involving faceless conspirators and wildly effective techniques of mind control, then he and Martie would be dead, one way or another, before the week was out.
    And this was already Wednesday.
    Since discovering Dr. Yen Lo in that novel, and especially since discovering the paperback magically returned to his shaky hands after it fell onto the waiting-room floor, Dusty had been burdened by a rapidly growing sense of danger. A clock was ticking. He couldn’t see the clock, couldn’t hear it, but he could feel the reverberation of each hard tick in his bones. Time was running out for him and for Martie. Indeed, with the weight of his fear now grown so great, he was concerned that the cops would detect his anxiety, misunderstand it, and grow suspicious.
    Susan’s mother, who lived in Arizona with a new husband, was notified by telephone, as was her father, who lived in Santa Barbara with a new wife. Both were on their way. After the case detective, Lieutenant Bizmet, had quizzed Martie as to the seriousness of the estrangement between Susan and her husband, he called Eric, too, got an answering machine, and left his name, rank, and number, but not any news.
    Bizmet, a formidable bulk with buzz-cut blond hair and a stare as direct as a drill bit, was telling Dusty that they were no longer needed here, when Martie was hit by a spasm of autophobia.
    Dusty recognized the signs of the seizure. The sudden alarm in her eyes. The pinched expression. Her face a whiter shade of pale.
    She dropped to the sofa from which she had just risen, bent forward, hugging herself and rocking, as she