CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

As she followed Officer Michaelson into the room, Janice tried to keep her primary goal in mind. She was here to determine if Ash Pierce really had amnesia or if this was all an elaborate ruse.

She did her best to set aside the elephant that would be in the room with her and Pierce: Kat Gentry. She was well aware of just how desperate Kat was to know the truth. That was why Janice had ultimately agreed to do this interview at all.

But she also feared, despite Kat's protestations to the contrary, what might happen if she came to any conclusion other than that Pierce was playing everyone. Kat was in a delicate place right now, still deep in mourning over the murder of her fiancé. She seemed to have developed a fixation on Pierce as a way to take her mind off the pain she was feeling. That didn't mean that her suspicions weren't credible. But her passion didn't make those suspicions more credible. In fact, it threatened to blind her.

Janice couldn't let that happen, so as she passed the threshold into Pierce's hospital room, she allowed her concern for Kat to melt away like a lone ice cube on asphalt during a summer day. The room was nondescript, that is, apart from the bars on the window, which looked to be permanently locked.

She shuffled over to her chair, using her cane. The item was useful for two purposes. First, she legitimately needed it as she slowly recovered from a herniated disc that had incapacitated her for several weeks last year. But it was also an asset, which could be used to make her seem more frail and less of a threat to someone as wily and dangerous as Pierce. Lemmon wasn't above using anything that could offer her a tactical advantage.

Pierce was lying in her bed wearing a loose-fitting, floral hospital gown. She had short black hair, an arched nose, and pale skin. Despite the flowing gown, her diminutive frame was clearly evident. Janice guessed that Pierce was no taller than she was, and probably weighed as little. For a woman in her mid-thirties who had been through war zones, hand-to-hand combat, a stabbing to the neck, and a coma, she looked surprisingly fresh-faced. Her left wrist and right ankle were both attached to the hospital bed by handcuffs.

Pierce pushed a button on the bed, and it lifted her to a forty-five degree angle. To Janice, it almost felt like this was the woman's way of making an entrance. Once the bed was upright, she re-adjusted her head to face Janice and fixed her clear brown eyes on her. Even if she hadn't known about Pierce's history, that look alone would have told Janice that this woman was formidable.

"Dr. Lemmon, I presume?" she asked playfully in a voice still raspy from her neck injury, before adding, "sorry, I couldn't help myself."

"Good guess," Janice said as she maneuvered over to the chair Gaston had mentioned, making sure to keep her cane prominently displayed.

"Not really a guess," Pierce conceded. "I knew you were coming."

"And you didn't object," Janice noted as she slowly settled into the chair.

"What happened?" Pierce asked. "It looks like you could use more than a hard hospital chair."

"Thank you, but I'll muddle through," Janice replied, before deciding that there was no point in being secretive about her ailments. "As to what happened, what can I say? Old age has taken its toll, I guess. That, along with back issues, and a young man who recently tried to murder me in my own office at the behest of a serial killer."

"I feel like I should ask more about that, but I don't want to invade your privacy," Pierce said.

"A conversation for another time, perhaps," Janice suggested before following up on her prior comment. "Let's stick with you for now. Like I said, I really am surprised to be here. I assumed you would say no to meeting with me."

"To be honest, my lawyers did at first," she said. "They shared your qualifications and reputation and warned me that you were more cunning and perceptive than you might appear."

"That's very flattering for someone of my advanced years," Janice replied.

"But then I reminded them that your powers of perception would only be a concern for me if I was being deceptive about my condition. You see," she said in a loud whisper as she leaned forward slightly, "I'm not sure that they totally believe me."

"Hard to imagine," Janice said, her voice betraying no sarcasm .

"Right?" Pierce replied. "Anyway, I said that a chat with you might actually be beneficial to me, because based on that reputation of yours, a seal of approval from you would carry a lot of weight."

"That's taking a big risk," Janice noted. "You're here, without your attorneys present. What if I conclude that you're not being straight with everyone?"

Pierce smiled wanly, as if mildly, exhaustedly amused that Janice would come to any other conclusion.

"First of all, I didn't want a bunch of lawyers to sully our chat, what with their constant objections. I think that it would make it hard to really connect," Pierce said. "And as to the possibility of you not finding me credible, then I'm no worse off than I was before you came in. Everyone already assumes I'm lying. You agreeing with them would just reinforce their existing doubts."

Janice smiled at that. "It seems that's not entirely the case. Your guards here are apparently very deferential to you and I hear that prosecutors are concerned that your condition might play well with a jury. You seem to have made inroads."

Pierce shook her head dismissively.

"While I wish that were the case, I wouldn't put too much stock in that kind of talk," she said. "Of course I'd like to think that the security team here has somehow sensed that I'm being genuine, but my guess is that they've just decided that being polite to me requires less effort than being constantly confrontational. And as to a jury, I think we both know that no matter how sympathetic I may come across, none of that will matter when my crimes are laid out before them."

"Why not just plead guilty then?" Janice asked.

Pierce adjusted herself in the bed slightly, and Janice noticed a small grimace. She considered asking if the younger woman was all right but wanted an answer to her question.

"I'll be honest," Pierce said. "Whatever conclusion you draw about me, I don't remember doing the things I'm accused of. And some part of me doesn't feel like I should have to pay the price for something done by a person who is, to me, a stranger. I feel like, on the whole, I'm a good person. What I still remember about my life is the work I did in the military, taking out threats to our country. I'm not saying I deserve a free pass. Obviously, that's not possible and not justifiable. There should be consequences. But for now, I feel like my only pathway to finding some fair outcome is to plead not guilty. Is that a reasonable position, in your opinion? "

"I suppose it depends on your perspective, Ash. May I call you Ash?"

"I'd prefer it," Pierce said.

"Ash, giving you the benefit of the doubt for the moment that you really have lost all memory of your crimes, you still committed them. Should a killer who becomes a person of faith in prison avoid punishment for their crime, even if their conversion is sincere?"

Pierce sat quietly, appearing to honestly ponder the question. After a good ten seconds of silence, she responded.

"I don't know that the analogy works perfectly," she said. "In one instance, the perpetrator is aware of their crimes and is trying to become a better, more faithful person. In the other, the person who committed the crimes has no recollection of having committing them, so there is no visceral sense of guilt to work through, only the ‘official' one that comes from seeing the evidence of what they've done."

Janice was about to reply when Pierce continued.

"But I take your point," she said. "A drunk driver who hits and kills someone isn't absolved of what they've done just because they can't remember having done it. Their victim is still dead, whether the drunk driver had some temporary blackout in the moment or just passed out at the wheel."

Janice was impressed at the concession, which she hadn't anticipated.

"Do you ever wonder if that's what is happening to you?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"That all this might be just a temporary blackout, and that you'll start to have flashes of recollection at some point?"

"The thought terrifies me," Pierce said.

"Why?"

"Because if I start to remember what I did—these brutal acts that ‘I' committed, then I worry I won't have a leg to stand on anymore. What if the only thing that lets me sleep at night is the fact that I can't remember these vile crimes, that I have no connection to the person responsible for them? But that's not the worst part."

"What is?" Janice asked, leaning in.

"It's one thing to remember the crimes," Pierce said. "It would be awful, but I suspect it would be like seeing a video of what I did instead of reading a transcript. But if I remember my crimes, does that mean I'll also remember who I was when I did those things? I don't think I want to meet that person, to look in the mirror and know that we're one and the same."

"But you are one in the same, Ash" Janice reminded her.

"Not to me," she said softly.