A DAUGHTER'S LOVE
CHAPTER THREE - MAKING MORE PROGRESS THAN EXPECTED
Becky's second day in the year where the Berlin wall was torn down, The Simpsons debuted on TV and New Kids on the Block were the hottest of the hot in music, had begun with a quick shower followed by a hearty breakfast in the hotel restaurant and after she was done, using the old-fashioned phone in her hotel room to call the number for Dr. Jacoby that the sheriff had given her the day before. It was the doctor himself, who answered and told her that she could come down to his office right away if she wanted to. After thanking him, another problem presented it itself to her, though. Even if she was well fed and taken care of when it came to having a roof over her head, she was also as broke as your standard garden mouse and while she could call the Sheriff's Station and ask them for a ride, it felt like a very small reason to pull them away from what could be more pressing duties. That and she didn't exactly have the best memories of riding in the back of police cars!
After a few minutes of thinking about it, she made up her mind that she could try asking at the front desk and see if that got her anywhere. As she stood there waiting by the counter, a man with a cigar in his mouth, who seemed somewhat familiar to her, came up to stand next to her. In any case, he seemed extremely annoyed as he banged the clock on the table to get the staff's attention.
"Who the hell do I have to talk to in order to get some service at my own hotel?" he asked himself loudly, before turning his attention to her and flashing her a million-dollar smile that brought back memories of every sleezy movie villain that she'd seen in the past.
"My apologies for my language, Miss! Aren't you the daughter of that real-estate mogul from Las Vegas, who's rented half of the top floor for himself and his entourage?" he slickly asked her, clearly hoping that he could score some cheap points with whoever this millionaire or billionaire was that he was talking about, by sucking up to his daughter.
"Sorry, you have me confused with someone else" she answered him and could immediately see the dollar smile begin to fade, now that she was just another of his regular customers and not someone, he felt was worthy of his time. "Sheriff Truman put me up here".
"Ah, the girl with no memory! My brother Jerry told me about you. The Horne family has always assisted the police force any way that we can and sometimes, even beyond that! In fact, it's something that we've all put a lot of pride into, going back to my great grandfather, who was the first in our family to settle here in Twin Peaks, back when all there was here was a sawmill with a handful of crudely built houses surrounding it!" he smilingly stated to her, not unlike if he was a crooked politician, trying to sell his pre-memorized election promises to unsuspecting voters. "If there's any other way, we can be of assistance to the sheriff, who does such a wonderful job for all of our benefits, it goes without saying that we gladly will!"
"Does getting a ride down to Dr. Jacoby's office and back count?" she asked him and it didn't take many moments for him to see that here was a chance to score cheap points with one of the few people around town, he actually gave two shakes of a rat's behind about.
"That, we can handle! I'll have my chauffeur drive you down there right away" he told her, right before the receptionist came out from one of the back rooms.
"Yes, Mr. Horne?" the receptionist, a shy looking girl, who looked to be in her twenties, asked him, also looking a little scared of what could be coming.
If this guy wasn't the biggest obvious con-man, she'd ever met (and she'd met her share already), she didn't know who it could have been but at the same time, she had to give him how much of an imposing presence that he also could be as he stared her down to where she must have felt five inches tall, at the most.
"What's your name?" Ben Horne menacingly asked the receptionist, who wasn't looking all to comfortable with the situation.
"Mary Williams, Mr. Horne" she quietly replied.
"And how long have you worked here?" Ben continued, sounding like he didn't really care what she would answer to any of his question.
"Four months, Sir".
"Do you like working here?"
"Yes, Sir. I'd wanted to work here for a long time before I got the job"
"Miss WIlliams, let me offer you a piece of advice. When the boss to your boss's boss is trying in vain for the better part of hour to call the front desk, it's in your best interest to pick up the phone! Are we clear?"
"Yes, Sir! It won't happen again, I promise!" the receptionist, who apparently was named Mary answered him, a little relieved that it looked like she was getting off this easy.
"You're right, it won't! We wish you the best of luck with your future endeavors, Miss Williams. You're no longer needed here. Do I need to have to escorted out or can you leave on your own?" Ben coldly and calmly told the poor girl, who was in tears at how ice-cold that he was being about firing her.
Becky couldn't help being a little disgusted at his honestly demeaning treatment of this girl, but at the same time she could also guess that if he was this quick to make an example out of any of his employees, it also meant that the rest of them only very rarely, if ever, considered straying away from the company line.
On the ride down to Dr. Jacoby's "office" (which also served as his house), it struck her how little and how much Twin Peaks would change over the next twenty-seven years and change. The day before when Truman had driven her up to the hotel, they'd taken a route that didn't pass through the heart of the town, so this was her first chance to get a proper look around at it. The Double R diner, where her mom worked, had clearly gotten a new sign since then and they'd expanded the parking lot out in front of it as well. The Roadhouse, the town's oldest and in years past also roughest bar, still looked more or less the same from the outside as it did back in her time, although she couldn't imagine that the music being played in there would be the anywhere near the same sounding as it was in "her time". The biggest change was that the trailer park was barely more than a quarter of the size that it would become in the future, where it would be housing almost half of the town's population (in by far the most cases also the poorest of them, if they weren't migrant workers, who needed a cheap temporary place to stay while they worked on some sort of project in the surrounding area). The driver seemed glad to have someone to chat to as well and he promised her that he would wait until she was finished for her, just so he could also drive her back again.
Dr. Jacoby was already holding the door open for her, when she reached it. Stepping inside of his home, it was almost like you were stepping into another dimension where everything you're surrounded by is either from Hawaii or some kind of homage to it!
"Have you ever been to Hawaii?" was the first thing he asked her, after politely asking her to sit down on his couch.
"I can't say that I have. I'm guessing that you have, though!"
"Fifty-six times. So far. I was expecting your call. Doc Hayward called me yesterday and we discussed your case. He told me that all you can remember is your name?" Jacoby asked her before firing up an incense stick that couldn't do much to hide what other kinds of "Plants from the Island", he was also clearly a huge fan of!
"I also remembered that I'm seventeen. It came to me yesterday during dinner".
"It's a positive sign. Here's the thing, Becky. Amnesia in real life doesn't work like it does on TV where someone gets banged on the head and loses all of their memory and then, when they get another knock on the nogging, they suddenly regain all of their memories in an instant" Jacoby began calmly explaining to her.
"I can't say that I'm too surprised! It doesn't make any sense when you think about it, does it?" Becky asked him back and it got a big smile out of him.
"I can see that we're speaking the same language here! Becky, there are several forms of amnesia, over a dozen of them, but we've limited it down to three that it could be in your case. The first is post-traumatic amnesia, the kind you hear about people getting after a heavy blow to the head. You don't have any visible bruises however, so that's a positive sign. Have you been feeling light-headed at any point since you woke up?"
"Not that I can recall".
"If only for that reason alone, I wouldn't call it likely that you have PTA. Any symptoms of head trauma would have shown themselves by now".
"What are the other two kinds of amnesia, you think I could have?"
"The most likely cause in my opinion, is what us psychiatrists call "Dissociative Amnesia", or said in a more easily understandable way, "Repressed Memory Amnesia". This almost always occurs when a patient has gone through some kind of experience that was so traumatic for their brain, that like a computer that gets overloaded with too much information, it quite simply shuts down and needs to be restarted, so to speak. If that's the case like I highly suspect it is, then the good news is that even though a near-complete memory loss like what you have is a rarity, it's still treatable and most patients make if not a full, then a near-full recovery".
"That's comforting to know. I guess that my only question now, is what's behind door number three?"
"The final option that we're looking at, in both mine and Doctor Heyward's professional opinions, is "Drug Induced Amnesia". I'm well aware that it has to be nearly impossible for you to know, but have you been feeling any withdrawal symptoms since you "came to" in the hospital yesterday?" Jacoby inquired and for a few moments, it sent her memories back to some of her darkest days a few months earlier, during the first weeks of her court ordered stay in rehab. Days, where she sometimes wasn't sure that she'd make it through, and only by pure willpower alone managed to avoid falling off the wagon again. Knowing that she was likely to get sent to jail if she did run away, helped too of course, but those first weeks were still the hardest times that she'd ever had to go through in her so far twenty-six years on earth.
"I haven't felt any out of the ordinary. Of course, I can't be sure but I don't think, I do drugs!"
"You don't look like the type either. I just wanted to make sure. How many skills do you remember? Can you read, for example?" he asked her before pulling a book out from his bookcase and handing it to her. "Read out loud what it says on the front cover".
"It's called "The Truth About Penis Envy and Lots of Other Psychological Mumbo Jumbo, that isn't remotely True Either". It was written by you. Don't you think that the title is a little on the long side?"
"Funnily enough, that's exactly what my publicist asked me too! You clearly have some skills that you haven't forgotten, which leads me to a suggestion. What do you say that we enroll you in our local high school? Even if it won't be a replica your "real school" back home, I would consider being back in familiar surroundings just about the best cure, you can find right now. Becky, what you have to understand is that your memories won't come back to you in an instant, and the reality of it is that there's a chance that some of them won't ever return to you. All you can do is work your hardest at it and continue working hard at it for years to come, even after most of your memories have returned" he suggested, making her think that at least there had to be some kind of method behind this eccentric's madness!
"What do I do? Just show up down there and ask if I can enroll in their school?"
"Or I can do it for you. I would only take me a minute. The principal has been one of my most loyal "customers", practically since he started in that job!" he told her bluntly while reaching for his phone, in a way that almost made her laugh out loud.
"Just tell me when and where and I'll be there!" she cheerfully answered him with a wide smile, seeing as this was much more than she'd expected to get out of this visit.
Becky wasn't sure what to expect, when she turned up at Donna's family's house that evening. She'd spent the rest of the afternoon talking a walk in the surrounding forest where she'd spend so many untold hours playing as a kid, back when the world seemed simple to her and there were practically no worries for her to fill her head with. Those hadn't started to come along until after her parents got divorced and for a few years afterwards, it had been like a security blanket to her that she had the forest to be a place where she could still pretend that everything was Honky Dory at home. That was a long time ago however, and this time she used her time there to make up a gameplan for the coming weeks, even if there were sure to be "variables" that would get in the way of whatever plans, she'd made in advance. Even before she'd left Jacoby's "office", it had already been set in stone that she'd be starting school the day after, at which time she would have to begin stepping up the pace if she was to save Laura from getting murdered a little under a month from then.
On her way back to the hotel, she'd had an unexpected run-in with Jerry Horne, the other Horne brother, who looked suspiciously like he'd "taken a time-out from work to have a little herbal refreshment" away from the gazes of the guests at the hotel and in his "altered state", had managed to get slightly lost on his way back there. As she talked to him, she could see that her dad (who'd had close relations for years with the Horne family through his job as a cop) hadn't been wrong or underexaggerating, when he'd called Jerry "The Eccentric One" out of the two brothers. To Becky, the Horne brothers couldn't have appeared more different to her if they'd tried, although she could also tell from the way that Jerry talked about things that if there was one thing the brothers clearly had in common, it was an intense love of money and especially all of the wonderful things, it could buy you. And food! By God, could that man spend a long time talking in the smallest detail about food of the most expensive kind, most of which included ingredients that she'd never heard of before! In any case, he seemed very thankful that she'd helped him with finding his way home again and as a token of his appreciation, he also gave her a very generous two hundred dollar tip, both for her trouble and just as much for not making fun of him for getting lost (again) so close to the place where he'd lived nearly his entire life!
Seeing as she now had a little spending money, she started out by spending the first few bucks of it on a taxi down to Donna's house. Even if Ben Horne had told her that they would help her how they could, something in the way he'd said it gave her the Willies and made her think to herself that at some point that sleaze-ball would probably start wanting some kind of payback for it, most likely in ways that she didn't want to picture in her head!
When she got there though, she was greeted with a pair of big smiles from Doctor Hayward and his wife, plus their thirteen-year-old younger daughter Harriet, who had just about the worst 80's haircut that Becky could ever remember having seen, if we weren't including the band members from "A Flock of Seagulls" on her list! Her main impression of them though, was that they seemed to her like a very friendly sort of family, and it wasn't many seconds later until she was introduced to Donna as well. What exactly Becky had pictured when she'd tried to come up with what a BFF of Laura's might look like, wasn't all that clear but it certainly hadn't been a girl, who looked like she would be every mother-in-law's wet dream for a daughter-in-law, like Donna clearly was. Then again, herself and her own best friend growing up, Vicki, had also been mirror opposites in some ways too and whereas Becky had pretty much gone straight from the high school benches into a life of hardcore drug addiction, Vicki had wisely stayed far away from all of that stuff and gone straight onto to college, where she'd finished with a 4.0 GPA and been the valedictorian at her own graduation. Probably for this reason, they hadn't talked to one another since the day that high school ended and it was one of the main parts of her former life that Becky had become the most eager to repair, now that she had begun to slowly get her life back in order again.
Laura was running a little late (which from what she could tell was on par for her), giving Becky a little alone time with Donna to try to see if she could get some clues as to who in Laura's social circle might be inclined to take things to the utmost extremes, like for example taking someone's life.
"Have you and Laura been friends for a long time?" she asked Donna, as they slumped down on Donna's very comfy bed.
"Since we were around eight or nine years old. Ever since, you could say that we've been inseparable" Donna answered her, although Becky could tell from the way she'd said it, that there was more between heaven and earth going on than what Donna wanted her to know about.
"Do you have a friend like that? I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking, asking you that!" Donna continued in a flustered way, once she'd realized her mistake.
"I'd like to think that I do!" Becky replied jokingly, and it got a rather cute and very innocent smile out of Donna that she'd been so nice about reacting to it.
"I can't even imagine what it would be like, not knowing any of what has happened in your past or where you're from! You're in good hands with Sheriff Truman, my dad and Dr. Jacoby, though. I know that Jacoby is ... not entirely like everyone else is ..."
"You can say that again!" Becky had to chirp in with!
"From what my dad tells me, his sometimes-unconventional methods actually work and he really does help a lot of people, in cases where my dad can't help them. You'll just have to put your faith in them and hope for the best, I'm afraid".
"It's my only plan so far! Dr. Jacoby has already helped me with signing up for high school here, so I guess you'll have a new schoolmate tomorrow! He seems to think that getting back into familiar surroundings is what's best for me, so I trust him on it" she cheerily told Donna, who seemed glad to hear it.
"I'm sure that it will help you, too. My dad explained what having amnesia really is like to myself and my sister, after I told him and my mom that you were coming tonight, just so we wouldn't make complete fools of ourselves. From what he's told me, it sounds like the right move to make at this time".
"I don't suppose that I could ... no, it's too much to ask for!" Becky began, knowing from having pulled this trick on both friends and family many times that it was sure to get the other party in the conversation talking.
"What is it?" Donna asked kindly and already Becky knew that she had her, exactly where she wanted her.
"It's just that I'll be starting there not knowing anything about anything, and I'm not only talking about the classes either! It would just be nice, if I had some guidelines to go by, when it comes to who to talk to and who to stay away from and so on".
"Oh, of course!" Donna said with a wide smile, that made it clear that she was ready to help, any way that she could. "I won't lie and pretend that I know everyone at our school, but I can give it a try. I guess, the ones we mostly hang out with are Bobby, who's Laura's boyfriend and Mike, who's my boyfriend. They're ... okay, I won't lie to you, they're both kind of immature, but they don't mean anything by it!" Donna explained and it once again made her curious, when it came to how her first meeting with the rebellious boy, who would one day become her almost overly responsible dad, would end up turning out.
"What about the other girls? Aren't you friends with any of them?"
"The only one that we sometimes hang out with is Audrey Horne, but it's mostly because Laura feels sorry for her that she doesn't have any friends of her own and has to live an older brother, who's severely mentally disabled. I don't know if Laura told you about Johnny".
"The poor guy! I can only imagine what it has to be like for his immediate family, to see him that way every day of the year. It doesn't explain why she doesn't have any friends of her own, though?"
"Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of great things to be said about our little neck of the woods, but when it comes to jealousy against those better off than you, I have to think that we're in some kind of top ten somewhere! As far as I can tell and I've known Audrey since we were little, the only reason why practically no one at school talks to her is because of which family she comes from and nothing else. She can actually be very sweet when you get to know her. Even if you can definitely call her a dreamer! Then again, if it was myself having to grow up with a guy like Ben Horne for a father, I'm sure that I'd be dreaming myself as far away from here as I could, too!"
"I can guess then that I'm not the only one, who gets sort of a con-man vibe off of him?" Becky slyly asked and got a nod in agreement from Donna.
"Just between us, it's no major secret around town that the Horne family, going back to long before the two brothers, who run their business empire now, haven't always made their money in the most legal of ways. I've heard stories about their family running illegal casinos and brothels and who knows what kinds of other shady operations, but if you ask them, I'm sure that all they'll do is remind you of how they've never been convicted of anything. Some even claim that they have the law in the pockets, but my dad tells me that Sheriff Truman is too honorable of a man to allow that to happen".
"That's sort of the vibe that I got off him too. I feel bad for Audrey, though. It isn't her fault that she was born into a family that seemingly no one in town likes".
"Maybe, you could try to make friends with her, then?" Donna suggested, just as the door to her room opened. Looking over there, they'd expected it to be Laura or one of Donna's parents. In their stead, it was Sheriff Truman, followed by a very well-kempt man in a stylish dark trench coat with a finely pressed black suit underneath to match it.
"What brings you here, Sheriff?" Donna asked, looking a little confused as to who this other man with him could be.
"Actually, we're here to talk to Becky. This man ..." Sheriff Truman began before the other man, in the politest way possible, interrupted him.
"Harry, if you don't mind, I'd like to introduce myself to these young women. It helps to establish trust, as I'm sure that you're aware of" the man, whom Becky now recognized, said. Although when she'd seen him last, he'd been at least twenty-five years older than this.
"Go ahead" Truman said before stepping aside to let his compatriot have the floor.
"Becky, Donna" the man began, before removing his trench coat and after neatly folding it, placing it on a chair. He then quickly tidied the very few tiny crinkles on his suit before continuing talking. "My name is Special Agent Dale Cooper, and I work for the FBI. Donna, I'd hate to ask this of you, seeing as it's your room, we're in. I don't suppose, you could offer us a little privacy, just for five minutes?" Cooper asked, while addressing Donna, who didn't seem to have any complaints and soon the left the three of them alone in there. Even after she'd left though, Cooper made sure to check outside of the door, that no one was listening in before he continued.
"What I'm about to tell you two, stays solely between us. Are we all understood on this?" he told them, getting a nod in unison in reply from the two others.
"Almost precisely a year ago, the murder case of a troubled young girl named Teresa Banks, only a few towns over from here, was called to our attention thanks the mystical details the surrounded it. While I'm not at liberty to disclose all of the facts of the case, evidence was found that pointed to a possible serial killer, who could have been operating in this area going as far back as the 1960's" he explained before taking a moment to gauge their reactions to this.
"As fascinating as that is, Cooper, I fail to see how it connects to Becky here" Truman dryly asked and in doing so, was also asking the main question that was filling her own head as well.
"The investigation was headed up by an agent named Chester Desmond. Chester and I trained together at the bureau training academy and during our first years in the service of our country, we also solved several cases together. He was one of the finest agents, we had. That was until he disappeared without a trace".
"Do you think that he was murdered?" Becky asked quietly.
"It's definitely possible. Especially considered that another agent, Philip Jeffries, who was working on a different case that we thought could have connections to the one, Agent Desmond was working on, disappeared in almost the precise same manner and at close to the exact same time as agent Desmond disappeared. For almost this entire past year and in spite of our very best efforts to locate them, we haven't been able to find even the smallest speck of evidence as to what happened or where they could be, should they still be alive. That was until last night when I was visited in my dreams by a nearly bald-headed giant, who spoke in short, slowly spoken phrases" Cooper explained and as he did, she could already see that this was going far beyond what Sheriff Truman saw as sound law enforcement. "He told me distinctly to "Go to the town of Twin Peaks and find the girl, who's just arrived there. Find her and she will help find the missing agents". As far as I can tell, you're the newest of the new around here, Becky".
"And you believed him?" Truman asked, sounding a little in disbelief that a guy like Cooper would believe so strongly in something, he'd heard in a strange dream.
"Harry, there are two kinds of dreams, as I see it. One is the classic sorting of the day's events by the brain and the other ... well, that's what even we in the Federal Bureau of Investigations have to file as being unexplainable. All we know is that this is the closest thing to a lead, we've had in all of this time and that as corny as it sounds, dreams do actually come true sometimes. We'll help you to find out who you really are, Becky" Cooper said before looking into her eyes. "And when we do, I'm absolutely positive that you'll have a tale that's nothing short of out of this world to tell us all!" he finished off with, leaving her with even more questions, that she already had more than enough of before this. What could the friendly giant possibly have to do with FBI agents disappearing into thin air, and why did he send Agent Cooper here to help her?
All of those were pressing questions that she couldn't wait to get an answer to!
END OF CHAPTER THREE