CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

The call came in bright and early. But this time, Lennon was already home from her run, had showered, and was drinking a cup of coffee as she stared at the wall, trying to sort through all her mixed and confused emotions from the last few days. She’d tumbled into bed the night before and, miraculously, fallen into a heavy sleep. The run had helped clear her mind enough that she felt she had the wherewithal to deal with the information Ambrose had given her, and the choice that lay in front of her.

But apparently, that choice would have to wait, as another “BB” multiple homicide had occurred the night before and was similar to the last—the items used to murder each other were all accounted for at the scene. But ... there was a survivor.

Lieutenant Byrd called to let her know, and when he did, she didn’t ask—she told him she was heading to the hospital to find out the victim’s status, and attempt to interview her if possible. “I don’t need my gun for that,” she’d said. “And if they ask for my badge, I’ll tell them I left it at home and to call you.”

Lieutenant Byrd had paused, as if considering denying her. But in the end, he’d simply said, “Don’t push it, Lennon. They moved her from the ICU to the psych ward, because physically she’s fine. It’s her mental condition that they’re worried about. If her doctor says she’s unfit to be interviewed, listen. And you’re still not allowed to come in to the station until Friday.”

“Fine. And I won’t push it, I promise.” She’d accused Ambrose of enjoying bending the rules the night before. But the truth was, she’d done plenty of rule bending herself, and perhaps she needed to check herself before casting judgment on anyone else.

It took her fifty minutes in rush hour traffic to make it to Zuckerberg San Francisco General, where she parked and took the elevator to the psychiatric ward. She’d been there many times over the years, and it seemed to get more and more overcrowded. There were patients in the hallways, most of them vacant eyed and drooling, but others crying or even wailing. She walked by a young man sitting on a bench, knees drawn up as he visibly shook, face contorted in pain. Her footsteps slowed, her instinct to stop and help. To ask him what was wrong and what she could do. But, of course, there was nothing she could do. He was where he needed to be, in a treatment facility. So why didn’t it feel that way? And if he was in the right place, then why was he sitting alone, obviously still suffering? It felt like walking into an emergency room and seeing a man on the lobby floor dying of a heart attack.

These people, Lennon, they’re dying on the streets right in front of us. They’re scratching and screaming for help, and we walk right by. They’re begging for mercy, even though they have no earthly idea what mercy is.

She couldn’t bear to hear Ambrose’s voice in her head right now, though. She couldn’t. And so she shut him out, forcing a polite smile to her face as she stopped at the nurses’ station, introduced herself, and asked to see the doctor of the woman who had recently been brought in by the SFPD.

She stood in the waiting room, growing more and more agitated by the sounds of screaming and crying and random crashes from patient rooms. It smelled like the smell of the streets, only not as potent, the underlying stench covered by bleach and pine antiseptic. And something about that almost made it worse. Good God , this place made her feel like jumping out of her skin. This was no environment for someone who was traumatized. It made her heart ache to think about being thrown in here during the darkest days when she’d been lost in grief. It was unthinkable.

She turned and gazed, unseeing, out the window, conjuring the picture of those first few days in the private hospital room after Tanner had died and she’d been pulled from that convenience store. Her mother had climbed into the hospital bed with her and refused to budge. And Lennon knew an entire army couldn’t have dragged that woman away from her side. She’d needed that strength. She’d needed someone to hold on to. She’d needed the warmth of love pressed directly against her.

Later, at home, her mom had read to her, passages and quotes that had given her hope that she still had a life in front of her. That even though it felt like it, the agony she was in wasn’t going to last forever. Her mother had held her as she’d cried, and she’d listened when she was ready to talk. Lennon had even curled up on her mother’s lap a time or two, a nineteen-year-old girl who still couldn’t have managed without the tenderness of a mother’s love.

Her father had been a solid presence, looking on with worried eyes, grief etched into his stoic features. He’d held her, too, but she knew he also held her mother, wiping away his wife’s tears so she could be there for their daughter. Her brother had sat on her bed and held her hand, uncharacteristically silent, his fingers laced with hers. Later, he’d stood beside her at the funeral, arms linked. They had cared for her, even while grieving their own loss.

What if she hadn’t had all that? What if she’d been left to deal with her grief on her own? Even more unthinkable, what if she’d been forced to hide it away? It would have been unbearable. She didn’t think she’d have survived such a thing without losing her mind.

“Inspector Gray?”

She startled, so lost in her own thoughts she’d zoned out for a few minutes. When she turned from the window, there was a middle-aged doctor in a white coat standing near the doorway. “I’m Dr. Sing,” she said, giving her a tired smile. “You’re here about the woman brought in this morning?”

“Yes. What’s her status?”

The doctor sighed. “We had to sedate her. We couldn’t get her to stop screaming. The EMTs who brought her in had used restraints, as she seemed to be attempting to scratch her own eyes out.” Her expression was disturbed, which was probably saying something, considering where the woman worked and what she likely saw day in and day out. “She was also seizing, and her speech was garbled, indicating brain damage. Basically, Inspector Gray, she’s extremely ill. Physically? She has some lacerations, but nothing that won’t heal. Her mental condition is the main concern. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have a bed for her, so we have her in the hallway while we’re attempting to shuffle others around. That usually means sending a few to jail. But that’s the system for now.”

“Jail?” For people hospitalized for a mental condition?

“I wish I had another choice. But it’s either that or spitting them back onto the streets. Often they’re experiencing suicidal ideation, so that’s not an option.”

Wow. “Doctor, do you have any guesses about what happened to her?”

“Without knowing more about what she went through, and without her test results back, I’m not willing to make an official diagnosis.”

“Unofficially?”

A voice came over the loudspeaker, paging Dr. Sing’s name, and the doctor looked behind herself and then back to Lennon. “Unofficially, your victim had a complete mental breakdown. I have to go, but give me your card, and I’ll call you if your victim wakes up and is coherent.”

Lennon made her way down to the parking lot, walking in a fog to her car, trying desperately to shake off the heaviness of that ward. Your victim had a complete mental breakdown. She glanced up at the building behind her, a small shiver going down her spine when she pictured that desolate ward full of society’s castoffs. The fringe. She understood why Jamal Whitaker had named his podcast as such. And there were so many of them, there weren’t enough beds. They spilled out into the halls and onto the streets. She felt so goddamned sad. There was no other way to say it.

She used her key fob to open her door, then got in and sat there for a minute, thinking, her finger smoothing a corner of duct tape that had begun to lift on her window. Her vandalized car seemed so trivial when so many were dealing with catastrophic issues.

She brought her hand to her forehead and attempted to massage away the beginning of a headache. She needed to go into the station and read the case file, get back to work. But suddenly, it all felt so useless , and she couldn’t let it feel that way. She’d seen the overworked doctors rushing through the halls of the psych ward. She saw frustrated first responders every day at her work, who started out wanting to make a difference but were quickly disabused of that dream by red tape and reality. She saw burned-out inspectors who were stretched so thin they had little time for actual investigation. And often the public worked against you, anyway, so it was easy to ask Why bother?

The woman at Dr. Sweeton’s office, hooked up to the wires, a team of people surrounding her, had alarmed Lennon. It had disturbed her. It’d looked like nothing she’d ever seen. Because the treatment being given—if she decided to call it that—was completely unorthodox. Illegal. Unethical. Wasn’t it? There had to be protocols for that type of thing, or people could be hurt. They might regret what they’d agreed to when they were in a vulnerable state of mind.

What else is there?

Not a lot. But that didn’t mean it was right.

She thought back to Dr. Sweeton’s talk and the man who had asked whether those who’ve experienced chronic trauma are brain damaged. Yes, the doctor had answered. The first step in healing must target the brain itself.

But even if that type of treatment were legal, who was going to pay for it? She supposed that right now, San Francisco’s elite, who sought out Dr. Sweeton for psychiatry, were funding it. But on a massive scale? Would it even be possible?

You don’t have to turn us in, Lennon. You can help.

Surprisingly, her fingers began moving on the steering wheel, tapping out a melody she’d thought she’d long ago forgotten, on invisible piano keys. Her mind had held on to it, and for whatever reason, in a moment of deep confusion and overwhelming upset, it’d sprung from the recesses of her memories.

Lennon remembered when she’d first begun learning to play, and even later, when lessons became more complicated. The way she’d dream about her fingers on the keys, the way her brain would go over and over the movements without her permission. Maybe that’s what brains did: learned through intense cerebral repetition. But what if the thing it was learning was a horror being engraved inside? Etched so deep you could never forget. Wouldn’t such a thing drive you mad? How could it not?

How could it not?

The decision not to report Project Bluebird could have serious repercussions on her life and her career. It would mean she’d made the conscious choice not to report illegal activity involving victims.

But are they victims? Or are they being saved? That’s really what this all boiled down to. And if these traumatized human beings were being saved, as Ambrose said they were, then this was far bigger than her, personal repercussions or not.

She needed to get herself back on track. And God, she was desperate to be sure about something once more. Her whole world had been toppled—again—and she had this vague sense that though she wanted order, it shouldn’t be put back the way it was before.

Lennon took out her phone and searched Google for Ambrose DeMarce. The only hits came from seventeen years before. She opened the article from a small-town online newspaper in Kentucky. “Kentucky?” she murmured. He’d told her he was born and raised in San Francisco. Then again, he’d been lying about almost every other personal detail, so why not that one too?

She quickly read through the article and then sat back, tapping that tune again. Ambrose DeMarce had been part of an investigation in Kentucky where he helped solve a cold crime that his grandfather had committed. His grandfather, Waylon DeMarce, had raped and murdered nine-year-old Milo Taft and buried his body on his property. Her fingers faltered. Ambrose had been a child, too, when he witnessed the murder. The traumatic event had been dredged up during a therapy session, and he’d returned to Kentucky to tell authorities what he remembered and give Milo’s family the peace they’d been denied for over a decade. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t see justice delivered to Milo’s killer, as Waylon DeMarce had died years earlier. Ambrose DeMarce had been a twenty-one-year-old young man when Milo’s body was exhumed.

Is that what fueled your desire to hunt down criminals who’d gotten away with murder? And others who are lost? She pictured Ambrose’s intense expression. He’d spent the last seventeen years tracking down killers and victims, but as what? Amends for the trauma he’d locked away in his brain? Secrets that Dr. Sweeton had exposed?

Who did the treatment ultimately benefit? Dr. Sweeton or the patients?

Was it only those with “brain damage” that could undergo the treatment? She didn’t think so. Ambrose had mentioned something about those with less-ingrained trauma going through a shorter protocol. So even if Dr. Sweeton’s focus was on those with debilitating PTSD, he’d obviously treated much less severe cases. She certainly didn’t consider herself to be traumatized, but she’d lived through a traumatizing event. If she was to truly understand Project Bluebird to decide for herself if she felt it was ethical, shouldn’t she ... be treated ? Could it actually be of value to society? Help bridge the gap between those tossed back onto the streets and those put in jail?

She had to understand it fully to know.

With one more glance up at the tinted windows of the psych ward, she pulled up the text from Ambrose and used the number he’d sent it from to call him.

“Lennon.”

She pulled in a deep breath and then let it out. “I want to experience it.”

He was silent for a beat as though he was questioning what she was referring to. “No,” he finally said.

“Why? If it’s safe, then why? I can’t agree not to expose what I know is part of an ongoing multiple-murder investigation involving a serial killer unless I understand what I’m protecting.”

“Because, Lennon, with this type of treatment, you have to weigh the risks and rewards. Your mind isn’t bent. You don’t live with debilitating trauma.”

“In small part I do.” She didn’t pretend to be affected anywhere near the degree others were, but she’d suffered. She’d grieved. But how could she allow others to go through the treatment if she didn’t fully understand it? Ambrose had done it. More than five hundred others had done it, and only one, Dr. Sweeton’s daughter, had died. According to them. But if she was going to trust those numbers, the odds were pretty darn good. “You said Dr. Sweeton had a two-day protocol for people who didn’t require the full seven days, like you did.”

“Dr. Sweeton rarely treats patients like that. He has far too many who are desperately in need, as opposed to those who struggle mildly but live functional lives. Plus, logistically, it’s not possible. He needs weeks to prepare. He requires a full workup, both physical and mental, brain scans—”

“He might not have a choice. And I know exactly what’s in the pills. They’re hallucinogens. I’ll consent to taking them. People have wild weekends in college all the time and come out of it just fine. This is even better because I’ll be continually monitored.”

“Lennon—”

“Those are my terms, DeMarce. I have to know.”

He was quiet for several moments, and she could sense his tension emanating through the phone. “This might take you somewhere you don’t want to go.”

Somewhere she didn’t want to go. Back there. To that convenience store in the middle of the night.

“I can handle it,” she insisted. “Tell Dr. Sweeton my terms. And Ambrose, it needs to be soon, possibly today. I’m off until Friday, and there was another ‘BB’ murder last night. We’re dealing with a serial killer who’s targeting this therapy. And maybe this will help me understand why.”