“Oh, yes, it is.” Logan leaned closer, so close Billy Ray felt his breath on his face, saw the glitter of fury in his determined gaze. “You’re playing a very dangerous game with my wife and my life. If you think I’m going to stand back and let you destroy what I have, you’re in for a very nasty surprise.”
“That’s the thing, Abbott. Nothing you could do would surprise me. Not anymore.” Billy Ray smiled. “Excuse me, I’ve got a neurologist to talk to.”
Luckily, the neurologist had just finished evening rounds when Billy Ray caught him. “Dr. Bauer? Chief Williams, Wholesome P.D. Could I have a moment of your time?”
The doctor checked his watch, then nodded. “This must be about Bailey Abbott.”
“How did you know that?”
“You were standing outside her door earlier.”
“Of course.” Billy Ray cleared his throat, feeling foolish. “I understand you diagnosed Mrs. Abbott with amnesia.”
“Yes.” He motioned to the nearly empty seating area behind them. “Why don’t we sit down?”
They did and Bauer picked up where they’d left off. “Mrs. Abbott is suffering from an amnesia associated with a traumatic brain injury.”
“Basically a bump on the head.”
“Basically.” The neurologist’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Times a hundred. People die from these kinds of ‘bumps’ on the head.”
“I get it, they’re serious.”
Bauer hesitated a moment, as if irritated, then continued. “It’s called TML—”
“Which is?”
“Traumatic memory loss. There are two types. Retrograde and anterograde. With retrograde amnesia, the patient loses a portion of memory of events before the injury, with anterograde, events after the injury.”
“And Mrs. Abbott is suffering from retrograde amnesia?”
“That’s my diagnosis.”
“And how did you come to that diagnosis?”
The neurologist smiled slightly. “She took a serious blow to the head. She was unconscious for seventy-two or so hours and she doesn’t remember the events leading up to the accident. It’s pretty simple, Chief Williams.”
Condescending. Typical doctor. But what Dr. High-and-Mighty didn’t understand was that it was never simple. Not when Logan Abbott was involved.
“Will her memory come back?”
“In her case, almost certainly. Her TBI was mild, which doesn’t negate the seriousness of it, but speaks to long-term prognosis. And how quickly her memory will be retrieved.”
Billy Ray made a note. “The milder the trauma, the more quickly she will retrieve those lost memories?”
“Yes. In Mrs. Abbott’s case it will be relatively quickly. A day. Maybe a week.”
“So, how does it happen? Does she just wake up one morning and remember?”
“Maybe in the movies. In real life, the memory loss becomes shorter and shorter and typically returns in bits and pieces, jogged by some sort of memory key.”
“Such as?”
“A word or phrase. A sight or sound. And actually, Chief Williams, the memories don’t ‘come back.’ They’re there the whole time. The patient is simply unable to access them.”
Billy Ray digested that. “Could Bailey Abbott be faking it?”
“Pardon me?”
“Mrs. Abbott, could she simply be pretending not to remember?”
His eyebrows shot up. “And why would she want to do that?”
“It’s just a simple question, Doctor. Could you be fooled?”
The doctor’s expression went from patient to irritated. “Chief Williams, I have over twenty years of experience in the field of memory loss. And in that time, no one has faked a case of amnesia.”
“As far as you know.”
His face reddened. “Why would she pretend not to remember?”
“This is a police investigation, Dr. Bauer. A man is dead. You tell me.”
“I suppose someone could. But it would be difficult to pull off.”
“Why?”
“Let me ask you a question, Chief Williams. You’re a professional lawman, correct?” Billy Ray nodded and Bauer went on. “As such, how easy is it for a criminal to fool you?”
“Difficult.”
“You see my point then.” He glanced at his watch. “If there’s nothing else, it’s my wife’s birthday and we have reservations.”
“Just a couple more questions. A few moments ago, you said Bailey Abbott’s amnesia was brought on by her fall. Can this kind of memory loss be caused by anything else?”
“Absolutely. It can be brought on by highly emotional, stressful or traumatic events. We see it a lot in soldiers with PTSD. Victims of crimes, horrific accidents, things like that.”
Billy Ray gazed at the man, the information reverberating through him. As if plucking a chord. “And it’s called the same thing?”
“It is. Although that type of TML falls to treatment by a psychiatric clinician.”
“Because it’s emotional, not physical.”
“Exactly. The loss of memory is a form of self-protection. The event, whatever it was, is simply too painful for the conscious self to deal with. So the psyche hides it.”
“But it’s still there.”
“Yes.”
Choosing not to remember, Billy Ray thought. Conscious or not, he could see Bailey Abbott doing that.
After all, how did you admit you married a monster?
“Is there a chance Mrs. Abbott’s amnesia is stress induced rather than injury induced?”
Bauer looked surprised. “Certainly. However, my professional opinion is that it’s not.”
“Why?”
“Because the pieces all fit. The accident. The force and location of her injury. The amount of time she was unconscious, her responses on the Glasgow coma scale, the fact that although she has bruising of the brain tissue, there’s neither bleeding nor swelling.” The neurologist stood and held out his hand. “Good luck with your investigation.”
Billy Ray took it. “Thank you for your time.”
The doctor started toward the elevator, Billy Ray stopped him. “One last thing, have you ever had an amnesia patient who’s also the suspect in a criminal case?”
“I can’t see how that’s pertinent.”
“You don’t have to, Dr. Bauer.”
The man’s expression hardened with dislike. Billy Ray didn’t care if the man hated his guts, he had a job to do.
“No,” Bauer said. “Not to my knowledge.”
“What about a witness to a crime?”
“Again, not to my knowledge.”
“Thank you, Dr. Bauer.”
“Chief Williams?”
Now it was Billy Ray’s turn to stop and look back.