“Oh no. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Frankie crossed to the door that led to the therapy room and gestured for Lucy to join her. After a moment’s hesitation, Lucy did. Frankie held the door open for her, and Lucy went in first. The young woman’s eyes widened at the high ceiling, the huge 4K screen, the bookshelves, the watercolor paintings, and the comfortable chaise in the center of the room. The carpet was so lush that you wanted to take off your shoes and dance on it.
“Wow,” Lucy said.
Frankie laughed. “Yes, it’s almost like a little getaway, isn’t it? I love it here. I use it myself to relax. Some patients want to vacation here.”
She went to the console and programmed the screen to play high-definition video of snow falling on a flat Midwestern field. She chose a Helen Jane Long album for background music. Lucy sat on the side of the chaise and soaked up the feel of the space.
“I want people to feel that this is the safest place they’ve ever been,” Frankie told her. “There’s no fear in here. There are definitely no bridges.”
“Wow,” Lucy said again. “I love it.”
“Good.”
“You’re right, by the way,” Lucy went on. “I do feel like I’m at some kind of turning point. I’m not sure I can describe it.”
“Just go ahead and talk. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Well, these past few days, a lot of things have happened. I lost someone. A friend of mine died. And then at the same time, I met someone. I like him. So I just feel like—I don’t know, like a girl who’s scared to death of bridges isn’t the person I want to be. That must sound crazy.”
“Not at all, Lucy.”
“Bridges make me feel like I’m going to freak out and throw myself off. I don’t want to feel that way anymore.”
“I understand,” Frankie said.
Lucy’s voice was low. “Can you tell me how it works? I mean, I know that you erase people’s memories. Would you try to make me forget that I’m afraid of bridges?”
“No, it’s not quite like that. For some people, their trauma began with a triggering event—some crisis in their past. Is there anything like that with you and bridges? Did you have a bad experience?”
“Not that I remember. They just scare the crap out of me.”
“Okay. Well, if you decide to become a patient in the future, what we would do is talk a lot about your fears—and about everything else in your life, too. The more I know about you, the more I can help you find a way forward. And then we might decide to help you remember better things about bridges. Not scary things. Good things. Maybe one time you were staring over the edge of a high bridge, and then a butterfly came and landed on your hand. It was the most amazing thing. You felt as if the butterfly had chosen you. That it saw something special in you. It was liberating.”
“I could really remember something like that?”
“Maybe it already happened, and you forgot,” Frankie said, smiling.
“Would I be hypnotized?”
“Yes. Have you ever been hypnotized before?”
“In a college class once. The professor said I was very susceptible, whatever that means.”
“It means you respond well to hypnotic suggestion. That’s good. It helps the treatment work.”
“What about drugs?” Lucy asked.
“There are drugs that can help facilitate what we do, but you’re the one who says yes or no.”
Lucy was quiet. She stared around the room again. “And could something go wrong? I mean, could I wind up like those other women—”
Frankie wanted to say no. It wasn’t me! It wasn’t my fault!
But she couldn’t say that. She wasn’t even sure if she believed it anymore. They were all inside her head. Monica. Brynn. Christie. Their fears were her own now. Somehow, she’d failed them.
“The mind is a powerful thing, Lucy,” she said quietly. “A surgeon can’t give you any guarantees, and neither can I. But I can promise you one thing. If you want to take the first step—if you want to cross the bridge—you won’t be alone. I’ll be with you the whole way.”
Frost waited near the doors of Saks Fifth Avenue while Lucy went inside Francesca Stein’s office building. Behind his sunglasses, his eyes went from face to face in the Union Square crowd to see if anyone was watching Lucy. When he was satisfied that no one was, he crossed the street and did a circuit of the street performers and the homeless who haunted the plaza. He’d learned over the years that they made the best spies.
He’d found a photograph online that was similar to the mask he’d seen overnight. Half a dozen people recognized it. The mask was hard to forget. Even so, no one had seen the man behind the mask, and no one had seen him come or go in the square. The Night Bird was careful.
His forensic team hadn’t given him good news. The compact disc that Frost had found in the parking garage had been wiped clean of fingerprints. The same was true of the Cutlass that had been left outside his building. The car had been stolen a week earlier, and the license plates had been swapped. The electronic tracing on the man’s texts, e-mails, and online posts had ended in an anonymous account.
Every clue turned out to be a dead end.
Frost bought a hot dog and waited for Lucy. The cable cars came and went on Powell Street. It was a sunny Monday afternoon, warm and still. He checked his watch over and over, because he was impatient for Lucy to be out of Francesca Stein’s office. He didn’t want her in there at all.
An hour passed before he saw Lucy emerge from the building lobby. He waved to her, and she waved back. She cut across the street traffic to meet him, and she was a little breathless.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah! Fine!” She saw his worried face and said, “Really, Frost, I’m fine.”
“How’d it go?”
“I like her. I think I might go ahead with it.”
“Lucy, let me solve this case first,” he said. “Give it some time.”
“I will. She wanted me to wait, too. Are you worried about me?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” she said. “Are you busy? Do you want to go somewhere? You can debrief me. Isn’t that what secret agents do?”
“I’ve got to talk to Dr. Stein myself,” Frost said. “How about we meet up a little later?”
“Yeah, definitely.” She was in a very good mood.
“Alembic? Ten o’clock?”
“Perfect.”
Lucy turned away, but Frost stopped her with a gentle hand on her wrist. “Lucy? Be careful, okay? I asked you to keep your eyes open, and I mean it. If you see anything that looks suspicious, call me.”
“If I spot any creepy masks, I will scream.”
“I’m serious,” he told her.
“I know you are. I like that you want to protect me.”
25
Ten minutes later, Frost showed the photograph of the mask that the Night Bird had been wearing to Dr. Stein.
“Do you recognize it? Have you seen a mask like this before? Or does it have any special meaning for you?”
The psychiatrist stared at it and couldn’t seem to look away. He could see that the mask struck a chord in her memory. She knew it from somewhere.
“Dr. Stein?”
She broke out of her trance and handed him the photo. “No. I’ve never seen it.”
“Are you sure? You reacted as if you had.”
“No, I’m sorry. Why are you showing me this?”
“A witness spotted a man in a mask like this at the scene where Brynn Lansing went off the bridge. I saw him, too.”
Stein looked surprised. “You did? You saw him yourself?”
“Yes, I saw a man wearing this mask in Union Square, and I saw him again last night outside my house.”
She frowned. “I don’t like that at all.”
“Why?”
“He’s making you part of his game, Inspector. It’s personal now. If I were you, I’d be very careful. Are you any closer to finding him?”
Frost shook his head. “Not so far. As you say, he’s playing games with us. He’s leaving clues, but the clues haven’t led us anywhere. We don’t have any DNA or fingerprints. He hasn’t shown up on any surveillance cameras. Whoever is doing this is tech savvy, too.”