Unidentified (3 page)

Tim looked up to Diego. “She really should rest. We appreciate you coming out, but I think she should sleep now.”

“Of course,” Diego relented. “Maybe we could pray for her first?

Dorothy glanced at her husband with expectant eyes. It was Tim’s turn to relent. He nodded.

CHAPTER THREE

Squinting in the blinding light, he wondered just why the hell had bothered with this? Right about now he could have been sitting in his condo in Cambridge sipping coffee and reading while the Red Sox game was on in the background. Instead, here he was. But he knew the answer: His book wasn’t about to promote itself. He clicked the tiny remote that advanced his Keynote presentation to the next slide. He moved to the side so he wasn’t looking so directly into the projector’s beam and immediately regretted this. It didn’t matter how many times he looked out at the chairs set up in this local bookstore, the sting of disappointment didn’t lessen. The chairs among the bookshelves could easily have sat forty or more people. Currently only nine people sat scattered about. At least half of them were buried in their smart phones or tablets. One or one hundred, he told himself. Just do your thing and go home.

“This subject,” Dr. Alan Evans continued his presentation, gesturing to the picture of a severely bruised woman in a hospital gown now on the screen. “Had long periods in a catatonic state, had seizures, and inflicted injuries on herself.”

With the room so empty and quiet, he couldn’t help but notice a newcomer in the back approach and stop, standing at a distance. But he reminded himself to remain focused on his material. If nothing else, this would serve as more practice until he could land a conference. That is, if book sales picked up.

“Medication and therapy over four months reversed her condition.” He clicked the remote again and a new picture of the same woman appeared. But now she was smiling, unbruised, and wearing dress pants and a cardigan. “This is the patient today. We were able to determine that both chemical imbalances in her brain and repressed childhood abuses had contributed to her illness. In spite of claims that her house was haunted, since her treatment there have been no recurrences of the events that led to her condition.”

A hand in the audience shot up. A little taken a back, Evans squinted out at the man whose hand had broken his train of thought. “Yes?”

“You suggest in your book that the first step to helping such patients is to approach such problems on their own terms,” The male audience member said. “Isn’t this essentially pandering to their delusions that such paranormal hocus-pocus is real?”

Evans smiled. This question. Always this fucking question.

“First of all, thanks for reading my book. If you’ll recall, I explained in my book that there is no use in initiating therapy from an attacking position if the patient sincerely believes what they are experiencing is paranormal. But the objective is to move them towards the recognition that such things are products of the subconscious mind in its effort to cope with painful memories or manifestations of complicated medical conditions.”

Evans could read the unconvinced face of the man. But before he could continue, a second hand shot up on the other side of the room. Well, I guess it’s Q&A time already, he thought. Fine, let’s just get on with it then.

“Uh, yes?” Evans turned to the new questioner.

This time it was a middle-aged woman. “But, Dr. Evans,” she began, unable or uninterested in hiding her combative tone. “Is there any room in your thinking for the remote possibility that some paranormal events may in fact be legitimate? Or is every supernatural or spiritual occurrence to be explained away as just happening in the patient’s head?”

The man who’d asked the first question emitted a groan. It was a loaded question. No doubt she’d been waiting for an opportunity to ask it. He wondered if she’d heard anything he had presented so far. He doubted that she’d ever read his book. She probably had just read a few witty customer reviews on Amazon and felt informed enough to relegate him to a particular category in her mind. Well, okay, thought Evans. He had not expected this question, but this might be good. This just might allow him to reinforce his commitment to empirical science that seemed so increasingly hard for many readers and critics of his book to grasp. Even some fellow psychiatrists and psychologists had begun to question his methods as he didn’t immediately throw out the profound shaping power of the subjective experience of his patients when it came to the “paranormal.” One day he’d write a book about American pop culture’s unhealthy fixation with insisting everything be seen as a system of hard facts with no mystery. But of course, even he thought most “paranormal” experiences were ludicrous. It wasn’t that science couldn’t explain such things. It was simply a matter that current science might not always be fully equipped to understand such things in the moment. After all, the pop-empirical crowd who loved to spout off facts in arguments about nutrition, vaccination, and even evolution seemed to constantly forget that the history of science is one of constant revisions and refinements as new evidence overturns old ideas.

“My work in neuroscience and therapy are based on evidence and empirical data,” he said calmly. “I don’t think we help our patients by entertaining ideas of ghosts, or demons, or past lives, or little grey men from outer space.”

“Then why not immediately address this with the patient?” the first questioner piped up again.

Shit. Back to this question. Evans forced a grin and moved out from behind the podium so he could get further away from the projector’s beam. Why was it so hard to exist in the middle? His mind raced as he sought out the most casual and composed manner for responding to this question in a way that might satisfy both concerns.

“This is where I believe I need to be sensitive to my patients’ needs. While ultimately I believe there is a logical and scientific explanation for every paranormal event a patient claims to have experienced, to them in the moment of experiencing such things, the paranormal is very real, and they are experiencing these things for a reason. I just want to get to that reason without forcing my own ideas upon them.

“You see, we are the product of our perceptions. For better or worse, how we see the world fundamentally shapes us. So if my patient truly believes they are the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, there is a sense in which to them in that moment, it is true. So first I need to peel back the layers of what brings about this false perception. Then, and only then, I can help them deal with the source of this false perception.”

“Or simply introduce them to a new false perception,” the second questioner jumped in now.

Evans sighed. He knew her type. She was a pseudo-scientific new ager who spewed feel good bullshit to any moron willing to listen while she jumped from one new idea to the next. Down the road her type inevitably found that their lives were still hopelessly depressing compared to the unrealistically rosy picture they had in their minds of what their affluent first world lives informed by hipster materialism, horoscopes, meditation, and hippy therapists should be. An interesting breed for sure, but Evans wasn’t about to try to deconstruct that right now for these nine people.

“My goal is to help people,” he stood his ground, half hoping the woman caught the implications of what that statement inferred about her goals. “I don’t see how entertaining superstitions and delusions of grandeur brings healing to anyone.”

He could see the anger in the woman’s eyes. He glanced down at his watch and checked the time. “Well, I’ve already gone over my time,” he lied—but it wasn’t like he was about to sell any books today anyway. “Thank you all for being here this morning.”

Without any protest or complaint, everyone got up.

***

She’d snuck in to the bookstore and waited while Dr. Evans completed his talk. Nicole, now in a sleek black suit, her long light hair flowing past her shoulders, felt relieved to be back in the familiarity of her life as an agent. She wondered how much Anthony had picked up on her state of sheer boredom. There was only so much TV she could watch, only so long she could read a novel before becoming restless and actually missing reading case files, and there were only so many runs she could go on. It wasn’t that she longed for the tedious aspects of bureaucratic law enforcement. It was the frustrating sense of being stuck, unproductive. She could have visited her mother more. But she couldn’t stand the constant kind eyes of her mother watching her every move, wondering how she was, always seeking to talk over things again and again when all that Nicole really wanted was for life to get back to normal. 

This felt more like it! A reason to put on a bit of makeup, a suit she hadn't worn in a month, and having something to investigate. She was, however, surprised to see Dr. Evans’s book signing so sparsely attended. She listened to the exchange between a couple of the audience members and Evans, smiling at Evans’s poise while being hassled from two sides. This was exactly why she was here.

Evans concluded the presentation. Mitchell watched as the nine scattered people got up. Some stretched, others headed off to peruse the shelves. She overhead one man say to another he was walking out with, “We should have just gone to brunch like usual.” The man he was with just laughed in reply.

Evans gathered his things from the podium and headed back to a table set up at the back of the room where several copies of his book sat out. Setting his messenger bag down, Evans began to pack up his books into a larger duffle bag that waited under the table. Mitchell approached him.

“Aren’t you packing up too soon? Might want to sell a few copies to your adoring fans,” she said as she stopped before the table.

Evans looked up, amused. His expression changed to surprise. Then a genuine smile. “Agent Mitchell. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Mitchell asked. “Or maybe a couple of shots, after that reception.”

Evans laughed, then shook his head, “As appealing as either coffee or hard liquor sound right now—and they do—I really can’t. Not kosher for me to fraternize with former patients. Especially one I only just cleared for duty.”

“And if I told you it was official FBI business?” Mitchell countered.

Evans grew serious, considering her words. Light jazz music sprinkled out of the overhead speakers in the bookstore. The room was empty now, except for them.

***

The smell of espresso and freshly brewed coffee filled the small place. A grinder kicked on, reducing more espresso beans to a fine powder. Evans stared out the coffee shop’s large windows from where he sat at a small table. People walked by, soaking in the warm summer day in Boston. The tourists with guidebooks and recently purchased Boston paraphernalia moved at their slow pace—presumably following the Freedom Trail—while the locals maintained a faster speed, Sunday or not. Alan thought about being back at his condo with the paper out and the game on. Guess that’s not happening now.

Agent Mitchell approached, bearing two cups of coffee. She set one before Alan and took a seat across from him.

“Thanks for the coffee,” Evans said. “So how have you been since our last appointment?”

Mitchell looked out the window as well. “Fine,” she said. But Evans read in her tone a desire to avoid such a conversation.

“Sleeping better?” He pushed just a little.

Mitchell looked back and forced a crooked smile. “Getting there.”

Okay, he was done pushing. And he wasn’t on the clock anyway. He sensed Mitchell’s longing to dive into whatever she really was there to talk about. But he suspected she was also too polite to barge into the matter so quickly. And of course, he was curious himself.

“So, official FBI business, huh?” he opened the door for her.

She leaned forward slightly, squaring her shoulders up to him. “Yeah. I need your help with a case. And I think it’s something you might be uniquely able to help me with.”

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“I’ve got a girl—a young woman, really—in New Hampshire who claims she was abducted by aliens last night.”

Evans nodded slowly. Well, she’s done her homework on me. “She believes what exactly?”

“She went missing from her home last night around 3:00 AM. This morning, a woman driving down a country road eleven miles from the girl’s house nearly hit her. The girl was just walking down the middle of the road. According to the case file I was given, she claims to have been abducted in the past as well. She also claims to have an implant in her neck.”

Evans took all of this in. It sounded similar to cases he had studied and a couple he had personally encountered in his work as a therapist. Agent Mitchell reached down to her bag and produced a file folder. Laying it down on the table, she opened it and flipped through its papers until she found a picture of a young woman with dark hair and a pale complexion.

“This is Stephanie Clark,” she said, turning the photo so he could see her better. “She just finished her freshman year at Wellesley College. She’s only nineteen. She lives with her mother and father in North Woodstock, New Hampshire. That’s close to Lincoln, or an hour north of Concord. Her mother is a retired elementary school teacher. Her father works at the bank in Lincoln. They have been a part of the community for almost their whole lives. This is the first time the police have been called because of her … experiences.”

“She never called the police before this?” Evans looked up form the photo.

“She was never returned anywhere other than home. And never gone for more than a few hours during the night. In those other cases, her parents didn’t even know she was gone until she said something to them the next day. But in this case, the woman who found her called 911. And her parents woke up to find she was not in her bed.”