Ready for a change of pace?
"This isn't working," Gillian mumbled, shaking her head, and Cal looked at her with a pained expression. "Cal, we're not going anywhere with this."
He hated to but he had to agree, that wasn't going to work at all.
The young woman inside the cube was terrified, and not in the way they needed people to be in there. Perhaps because they usually had suspects between those walls, people who may have been responsible for crimes or hiding something: but the young woman in there was nothing of the sort.
She had been brought to them by the Great Falls Park Rangers, literally, flown there by helicopter with her hair still wet, the fresh bandages around her head and a ranger's jacket way too big to be providing any real comfort. Her name was Tracy Wendell and she had been mountain biking in the park with her boyfriend, Stuart Loomis. He had blown a tire on a steep downhill and fell in a deep ditch: Stuart had been badly injured, left with a broken leg and barely conscious, not to mention exposed to the elements and animals without a way to get himself out of trouble. Tracy had tried to call for help but her phone didn't have any reception inside the closed valley, so she had tried to bike uphill and find a better spot to improve her chances and call help. Whatever bad luck the young pair had had it wasn't over. Frantic and panicking, worried for her boyfriend's life, Tracy had lost control of her bike on a wet rock when crossing a small water stream, slipped and hit her head hard despite the helmet.
She had lost consciousness, impossible to tell for how long when she had been found by a family hiking up the trail. The head injury wasn't life threatening, but seemed to have caused a short memory loss: Tracy didn't remember where Stuart had fallen and couldn't tell rescuers how to get to him.
"We need this, Dr Foster," Ranger Sawyer protested, not for the first time. "We don't have much time. If the boy is injured as we think he won't last long without food or water, not to mention the temperature drop at night."
"We understand the situation Mr Sawyer, and the urgency. But this is not going to work, not this way."
"Why? I know technically she's not lying but we figured you could try something-"
"You're not listening to her, are ya?" Cal grumbled, hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed on the girl. "She's not saying we can't help."
Then he turned around and nodded at Gillian, who smiled briefly and then addressed the ranger with her best 'let me explain it in layman terms' voice.
"There are a few things we can try, but nothing will work if we do it here. Not like this." She explained, pointing at the cube. "She's scared, she's confused. The last thing she remembers is her boyfriend falling to possible death, and all she knows is that if she doesn't remember where that happened soon he's not going to make it."
"Why did you insist we talk to her here?" Cal asked then, advancing menacingly towards him. "Do you suspect that this wasn't an accident? Or that she's faking the memory loss?"
"What, no! Accidents like this happen all the time on biking trails, we don't think there was any foul play here." He shook his head. "Listen, she's 21 and Loomis is 22. If we don't find him I'll have a boy's life on my conscience and I want to know I've tried everything. My men are doing what they know, but I'm open to anything. The doctors who checked her out said that she'll probably regain the short term memory on her own but there's no way to know when, and it would be too late then anyway. Is there anything you can try?"
Gillian and Cal looked at each other, glad that their double act had clarified the ranger's priorities and motives, then she went back to him.
"If she's not a suspect we won't treat her as one. She's in shock and afraid, she needs to calm down first of all." Gillian then looked at Cal and he nodded. "We need to make her comfortable."
The ranger agreed and so they decided to move Tracy out of the daunting and claustrophobic cube and instead move her to the small terrace. Sawyer was a man of action and not exactly versed in investigation practices, but he knew that those people knew their way around it. Cal felt the same, especially about watching Gillian taking the lead: she was the psychologist, she was looking at things from a different perspective and she would have known better. His educated guess was that being outside would have eased the tension on Tracy, that it would have helped her not to feel like she had done something wrong and she wasn't trapped.
It was a small start and it did wonders for the young woman. Once out in the open, breathing fresh air and feeling less like a caged animal under observation, Tracy shed some of the fear. The main problem remained however: she did not remember. They had dealt with pretend memory loss before, with multiple personalities, PTSD and shock, with really good liars and psychopaths and other factors that could make their work a lot more complicated, but that case was different. Tracy truly did not remember, and what they hadn't had the heart to tell Sawyer yet was that they weren't entirely sure they could pull it off.
One thing they knew was that despite being on a deadly clock they needed to take one step at the time.
Gillian was right, make her comfortable first. Once she was settled, the oversized jacket replaced by the soft throw blanket Gillian kept in her office, Torres brought food and something warm to drink, to which Cal added just a touch of his favourite liquor for a kick of confidence. Then, once there was more colour on her cheeks and she stopped fliching at every sound, they got to work.
Cal was first, conversing with her out there in the balcony as if they were old friends. The first thing they needed to do was to establish a baseline and that was easy enough: Tracy's memory was not entirely gone, on the contrary she was very aware of who she was, about her own life and pretty much everything else. She remembered Stuart, how they had met and other details of their relationship, and she could recount their biking day pretty much until the point of the incident.
That was where things started to get foggy, and at times painful to watch. Tracy knew what was at stake, not because she remembered it but because she had been told, and was trying her best to remember despite what must have been the mother of all headaches.
They took a break after a couple of hours, recognising that her brain needed to rest. Ranger Sawyer insisted that they kept trying, it was getting dark and there was a chance Stuart would not survive the night, but Gillian explained that there was no use in badgering her until she could get some rest. So she and Torres brought her to a hotel where she could take a bath, put on clean clothes and rest for a couple of hours, while Sawyer kept liaising with his team searching the park for Stuart.
Gillian left Torres at the hotel once Tracy fell asleep and went back to the office, where she found Cal on the upper level of his library, going through books and journals looking for ideas. He had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and kicked off his shoes, there were volumes tossed on the floor as if he was just throwing them in the air when he realised they were not good to him, and she noticed that the bottle of scotch he had cracked open to adjust Tracy's hot chocolate was its way to be half empty.
"Cal-"
"How is she doing?" He asked, barely acknowledging her presence as he tossed another book on the side. "Is she sleeping?"
"She was when I left. Torres is still there."
"We need to think of something, Gill," he stated the obvious with a painful moan. "I could ask her if she used to sneak cigarettes out of her mom's purse when she was 13 and I would know if she lies about it but I can't tell truth or lie about something that she doesn't remember."
"I know, we need a different approach."
He didn't look like he had actually heard her but she wasn't surprised. She knew that state he was in, she had seen it before: it was the panicked determination he had whenever a case involving suicide came his way. That she knew how to handle, how to help, but it was the first time she saw him like that with a different kind of case and she wasn't too sure how to proceed. At the end of the day, the best thing she could do was probably to just work the case with him and find a solution.
The first step, as small as it was, was to get the situation under control and she started to pick up some of the things he had thrown all over the place, not so much tidying up but trying to clean up the mess a bit hoping it would help the thinking process.
"Don't do that, love." His voice was hard, a bit irritated. "Leave it."
"I'm just-"
"I'll fix it later, ok? We don't have time for that."
Gillian sighed and put what she had collected so far on the table, then looked up at him. As it often happened, Cal must have felt her eyes on him and slouched his shoulders down as he released a frustrated exhale. Not that he really relaxed, but at least he stopped for a second and turned around, meeting her imploring gaze. He would have been able to ignore it in the past, to see it and understand it but still carry on as he pleased, but he couldn't do that anymore. So he closed his eyes for a moment and squeezed his hands around the book he was holding, then slowly sat on the edge of the ladder and watched as she cleared the armchair of items so that she could sit down too.
"I don't know what to do, love." His confession was as heartfelt and honest as it was useless, Gillian had already figured it out and he knew she had. Then he waved at the walls of knowledge around him and shook his head. "All of this, and I can't come up with a way to get through. And the more I think about it, the more I think you should give it a go."
"I don't think she would respond better to me, she seemed very much at ease with you."
"I mean you should try, with hypnosis," he suggested instead. "The information we need is there, perhaps the way to get to them is to force them out."
"I'm not sure how much that would help," Gillian confessed. "Hypnosis can help with suppressed memories because of shock or psychological trauma, here we are talking about a sudden external medical condition. When hypnotised some people feel confident that their memories are accurate, contributing to the persistence of false memories."
"Can't hurt to try, can it?"
He wasn't wrong, but Gillian knew she wasn't either, which put her in a very bad situation. Cal didn't like to be patronised, and even less he liked to be exposed when he couldn't figure something out. Not that it was a matter of pride, not in that situation: it was simply hard for him to accept that with all his sciences he couldn't be of more help. So she could either agree with him, agree with his Hail Mary strategy even though she didn't have much confidence in it, or bring out the fact that what he was suggesting was a desperate move and he knew it.
"I think we should try something different first."
The words came out steady but her voice was low and, she hoped he wouldn't notice, cracking with the pain of not agreeing with him. She looked up at him, for once glad that he struggled to read her sometimes as he claimed, but she also had a hard time understanding his expression. There was too much going on on his face before she had gotten there to get a good reading, at least a couple of hours worth of frustration and self-deprecation, and even though it wasn't the moment to think about it Gillian realised that was probably the first big professional test of their relationship. They had disagreed on strategies and approaches in the past, going behind each other's back opting to ask for forgiveness rather than permission on controversial moves, but nothing like that had happened since they had gotten together, not at that level. The question was, of course, had it not happened because there had been no need for it or simply because they had decided to ignore the signs? As friends they happened to disagree, be mad at each other for a bit and then patch things up; as business partners they could find a halfway for the company's benefit: as romantically involved companions agreeing if they didn't believe it would not be healthy nor beneficial, and denying each other might create personal resentment seated in professional reasons.
"You have an idea, don't you love?"
When Cal asked that, when he looked at her with a small spark of hope back in his eyes, Gillian had to restrain herself from letting out a long sigh of relief.
"Yes, but I'm not sure it would work," she explained, deciding to take the opening he was offering. "And we would need Sawyer's help."
"I'm sure he won't mind," Cal nodded slowly, then stood up and climbed down the ladder, again sitting on a lower step to level with her. "What's the idea?"
"We do what we know, we ask the right questions and we look for microexpressions."
"We tried that Gill. She doesn't remember, we can't tell what's true or not because she doesn't know."
"But her brain does, on a subconscious level." Cal was about to point out that hypnosis was precisely the tool for that, but she prevented him from saying so and shook her head. "Even with memory loss bigger than what Tracy has, some functions remain wired in no matter what. You could ask someone with full amnesia to sign a document and they will do it even if they don't remember their own name."
"You've got to help me out here love, what are you suggesting?" He was honestly pleading, desperate to see the path she was tracing. "That we get her back on a bike out there and hope her brain kicks in?"
"No, I'm saying we stop interrogating her and we start feeding her information instead." Gillian stood up and started pacing the room, looking down at her own hands as she randomly waved them in the air. "We have some information. We know where their bike ride started, we know what she was wearing when she was found and where she was found. We have the pictures from the camera they found on her so we know Stuart was wearing, what colour was his bike and that he wasn't wearing a helmet. We know why she didn't stay with him, that she tried to call for help but had to try a different spot for better reception." She stopped, vaguely aware of how much confidence her outburst had injected into Cal but deciding to ignore that and instead take her train of thoughts to the station. "There's no point asking her to confirm or expand on the things we already know. But if we give her false input, systematically, even on things we know to be true-"
"That might trigger an automatic response," Cal cut her off, absently nodding to himself, slowly at first and then more convincingly. "We can stimulate her memory, it would be like a fight or flight response."
"It could," Gillian carefully stepped back, honestly not sure if that would work and not wanting either of them to get their hopes up. "But I've never done this before and I'm afraid it could get ugly-"
"But it's our best shot," Cal finished for her, understanding her doubts but also blinded by the ray of hope she had just shined on the situation. Then he forced a smile, impressed and proud, and took her hand as he started to make his way out of the room dragging her along. "We need to talk to Sawyer, we need everything they have found or established so far."
Gillian followed him, sharing his thoughts and sense of urgency. She thought briefly about pointing out that he looked terrible and was still shoeless, but the truth was that they didn't have time for that. Stuart Loomis was lost somewhere in a ditch, possibly bleeding and seriously injured: he was alone, it was getting dark and there were about a million things that could go from bad to worse for him, and compared to that nothing else mattered.
Gillian was right, it did work. And she was also right about the fact that it wasn't pretty.
As delicate as they tried to be, they stressed Tracy's weakened mind to a nearly dangerous extent. None of the questions they lined up was accusatory, hinting that it was her fault or her intention that Stuart had been hurt, but they did put that entire day of her life into question. They would get her boyfriend's name wrong, throwing random names at her as if it wasn't important, and she would correct them all the time. They would say that they had been hiking and she countered that they had been biking; they would show her a random picture of a green mountain bike knowing that hers and Stuart's had been blue and black; they would ask why they had decided to go to First Landing State Park even though she had been found in Great Falls Park.
It was like chipping away at a brick wall, one bit at the time, except that the wall was the young woman's brain and overall soul. Things got better when the strategy actually started to work. The first time Tracy corrected them on something they didn't know already, mentioning that she had biked east and not west after Stuart's incident, Cal and Gillian exchanged a quick celebratory look but just as quickly moved on. They could celebrate later, but now that they had found an opening they needed to keep hammering at it to breach as fast as possible.
It worked, as Gillian had hoped against her own better judgement. Something eventually kicked in and Tracy was able to give them the location of the accident.
Too bad it was too late to do anything with it.