Chapter 15
“SO YOU KNOW THERE ARE cameras in every room,” Kaya said as they sat around in a huddle, she and Dr. Bishop still on the bed, and Graham on the floor. “I don’t know if they look at them all the time, but they can at any time. So I have to keep looking like I’m distressed.” She put her hands over her face to demonstrate. “I’m pretty sure they don’t have sound, so we’re okay. But yeah, make sure to keep looking like you’re concerned about me so no one gets suspicious.”
She grabbed a tissue out of a box on the windowsill and dabbed at her dry eyes.
“So what do you think I should do?”
Dr. Blake thought about it. “I’m not too sure. Somehow you need to get Dr. Franklin thinking about his fraud. You have to make him concerned enough to think about the details. Then you have to get enough details so that we can use them against him later. We have to decide what we want to do with the information. We can’t pursue anything without solid evidence, and mind reading doesn’t hold up in court, just as Dr. Franklin told Graham and your mother. But even so, if you put the idea of fraud out there to the world, people will start thinking about it, and maybe they already suspected it. Then maybe someone investigates. But then there’s the other issue. It’s possible, and likely, that Dr. Franklin is keeping Kaya in the hospital until he can discredit her enough so he feels safe. We could use the information that Kaya gets for leverage to get her discharged, and to avoid the whole commitment process. But if we do that, we might not be able to get him investigated.”
Graham shook his head. “I wish there was a way to do both. It’s not fair to Kaya to be in here. I mean, a psychiatric hospital is the right place to be if someone really needs it, don’t get me wrong. But there’s nothing wrong with Kaya.”
He grinned at her like only a brother can grin at a sister.
“At least not when it comes to hearing voices!”
Kaya sneered. “There’s a time and a place, Graham,” she said. “And I know you are, but what am I?” She covered her face again and laughed.
Anyone looking at the surveillance at that moment could have mistaken it for sobbing.
Graham put his hand on her knee in a gesture that could represent support. Then he thought I’m rubber and you’re glue, and Kaya laughed again.
Dr. Blake rolled his eyes. “Just because we know what Kaya can do now doesn’t mean you can use it secretly when there are others in the room. That’s a bit rude.”
Graham kept himself from smiling for the camera. For the past half hour, he felt like four years of heavy weights had been lifted from his shoulders. He had his sister back. She was going to be okay. He didn’t understand what was going on with her, and how she was able to hear thoughts, but he didn’t care. She wasn’t sick, and she wouldn’t be getting worse as he and his mother had feared.
Mrs. Reed was back at her hotel at the moment, doing whatever she could to distract herself while her son and Dr. Blake talked to Kaya. She hadn’t been sure what to believe, but she was trying to keep an open mind. She wanted more than anything to believe that Kaya would be okay, even if it meant that she had to suspend disbelief for it to be true. He was looking forward to getting back to her to let her know what they had learned, but he wished that he would be able to bring Kaya with him for that conversation. It seemed appropriate for her to be there. And aside from that, he had some other questions for her. Questions about their father.
“So I’m supposed to meet with Dr. Franklin this afternoon,” Kaya went on. “It’s our regular meeting to discuss how things are going with my medication.”
“Are you taking them?” Graham asked.
Kaya nodded. “I have no choice,” she said. “They check your mouth after they give them to you. If you’re on a hold or committed, they can decide to give you a shot if you refuse your medication. It’s not so bad. Obviously, it doesn’t stop my voices. It makes me tired, and my mouth is always dry. But as soon as I get out of here, I’m done with them. I just hope I never end up back in a place like this. If I do, I’ll probably have to take them again.”
“You’re not gonna end up back in a place like this,” Graham promised. “What happened was a fluke. You were terrified. But you know more now. If God forbid something like that happens again, you’ll just keep your mouth shut, and then when it passes, you’ll do what you can to follow up on it. I mean, this thing with Ted Stratton isn’t over, Kaya. The guy is dangerous. If he thought that stuff about you in a split second like that, chances are he’s thought it before, and maybe even acted on it.”
Kaya shivered, not having to act for the camera. “I have to figure out how to take what I know from the thoughts I hear and then maybe find evidence to support it. If I go to the police with some story about hearing thoughts, I’ll be back through this door before I say another word.”
“Which brings us back to Dr. Franklin,” Dr. Blake said, trying to refocus their attention. “So you’ll meet with him this afternoon, and somehow you’ll bring up the fraud issue again. And then you have to find a way to make physical contact with him.”
Kaya grimaced. “Gross,” she murmured.
Graham shook his head. “Why do I feel like I’m in the Scooby Doo gang all of the sudden?” he asked. “At the end of all this, are we gonna pull off Dr. Franklin’s mask to reveal who he really is?”
“The devil,” Kaya said. “I mean, who else would take advantage of a bunch of vulnerable people suffering from mental illnesses? He’s a piece of shit, and he deserves to lose his license, and even go to prison.”
Dr. Blake nodded. “He’s the worst kind of criminal,” he agreed. “The kind that gains your trust and makes you think they’re helping you. So let’s think of how you can make contact.”
Kaya thought about it. “I could thank him for all of his help. I could play grateful for him trying to help me get better, and looking out for me. I could shake his hand, and then hold on, and put my other hand over his while I lay on the crap about him bringing me to the light. I was so buried in denial before I came to the hospital, and now I have awareness, blah blah blah. I could probably keep that up for a good thirty seconds. That might be enough.”
“Do you think you could say all that without barfing?” Graham asked.
Kaya side-eyed him. “I’m a cheerleader, Graham,” she explained. “Do you really think I believe the team is going to come back and win after being down forty-seven points? No. I know how to bullshit. It’s part of the job.”
“Okay,” Dr. Blake said. “So you’ll meet with him, get him talking about your voices telling you about his fraud, and how you realize now that they were just voices and not true. Then you’ll thank him, and maintain contact for as long as you can to read his thoughts. Then you’ll get out of there.”
Kaya nodded. “But then what?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Dr. Blake said. “Then, I request a meeting with Dr. Franklin. Colleague to colleague. And he and I will have a talk. It would be even better if Graham were there as a witness. Yes. I think that’s what we’ll do. I can even say it’s part of his psych training. He’s my research assistant. Yes. I’ll tell him about the times I’ve met with Kaya, and that maybe I can offer some insight. And then, when his guard is down, I’ll tell him what we know.”
“But will that work?” Graham asked. “Like we’ve been saying, it’s all conjecture. It’s all from the brain of someone who is known to have a psychotic disorder.” He looked at Kaya. “At least allegedly. How can we make this work?”
Dr. Blake gave a small smile. “No one gets away with Medicare fraud for long periods of time. Somehow, they mess up and get caught. Now, our Dr. Franklin knows that Kaya knows something, but he doesn’t understand how she knows. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve heard rumors before, and hearing Kaya spout delusions about him made me think about what I heard. He has no idea what I’ve heard. He has a lot to lose, our doctor friend does. So he’s likely to feel the pressure. Remember, I’m a tenured professor, and well known for my work. I may have never heard of Dr. Franklin, but I would bet dollars to donuts that he’s heard of me. He might have even read my textbook in Intro to Psychology as an undergrad. I’m well respected, my dear children. He won’t want to take the risk.”
Graham felt hope growing within him. “So we tell him that he needs to discharge Kaya. Or what?”
Dr. Blake shrugged. “Or nothing. He just needs to discharge the girl. I make no promises. Let him think whatever he chooses.”
Graham tried to hide his smile. He lowered his head and raised his hand to his face to block it from the camera. The plan was brilliant. They could have their cake and eat it too.
“I’m in,” he said with confidence. He looked at Kaya.
“I’m totally in,” she said. “I want to be home cuddling in bed with my Grayson by tomorrow night.”
Graham grimaced. “Gross,” he said. Then a thought hit him. “Oh my God. The things you must hear him think.”
Kaya laughed. And she couldn’t stop laughing. Anyone watching her monitor would have thought that she had become delirious.
“It’s done,” Kaya told Graham on the phone later that evening.
“What did he say?” Graham asked.
“I can’t say,” Kaya said, her voice low.
“Oh,” Graham said. “You’re in public. I get it. Did he implicate himself?”
“Oh, yeah,” Kaya said. Graham could almost hear her smile. “And then some.”
“Great. So we have to regroup and get the details. Dr. Blake will call in the morning to set up the appointment with Dr. Franklin. The only thing that worries me is that he won’t have time tomorrow, and it’s Friday. If you have to stay the weekend, Kaya—”
“I’ll do what I have to do,” Kaya said, but Graham could hear the strain in her voice. “We just have to do this. So have Dr. Blake ask to meet with me before the meeting, to check in on me, and tell them that you’ll be there, too, and I’ll give you the details. Then, you can go spring it on him.”
“That’s the idea,” Graham said.
When he hung up the phone, he turned to his mother, who was sitting on the other bed in her hotel room with Gina and Grayson.
“The eagle has landed,” he said.
Mrs. Reed shook her head. “I’m nervous about this. What if it backfires?”
“How?” Graham asked. “Dr. Franklin declares both me and Dr. Blake insane, and puts psychiatric holds on both of us? Mom, I think that would make people suspicious.”
“People like Dr. Franklin don’t have a conscience,” Mrs. Reed went on. “You don’t know how he’ll react. What if he has a gun? What if he shoots both of you, and then says that he was defending himself?”
“You could let him know that other people know,” Gina suggested. “That way, if he threatens you, he’d have to threaten them, too, and he doesn’t know who they are.”
“You could tell him that you have a letter written to the police,” Grayson put in. “And if you don’t survive the meeting, someone’s been instructed to send it.”
Graham laughed. “I really think that our society is inundated with police procedural series on TV,” he said. “Those are classic moves. But they might work. I don’t think Dr. Franklin will become violent. From what I’ve seen of him, he’s a coward. He commits his crimes behind the scenes. Fraud is a coward’s robbery. I’m not glorifying bank robbery, but his are true white-collar crimes.”
“I’m starting a list,” Mrs. Reed said quietly.
Gina turned around to look at her. “What kind of a list?”
“A list of people that I need to get back at for hurting my daughter,” she said. “There’s that Jill girl, and then this Ted Stratton, and Dr. Franklin. Anyone else I need to know about?”
Graham hesitated before speaking. “Dad,” he said softly.
Mrs. Reed darted her head in his direction. “Dad? What did Dad do? Besides leaving? I mean, he left all of us, not Kaya specifically.”
“I don’t know about that,” Graham said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what Kaya said Dad was thinking that day when he hugged her. She thought it was the first voice she ever heard. She said that when she questioned him, he didn’t ask her how she knew what he was thinking. He gave her a look like he was scared. He had been thinking that he wished he had control over it. What is ‘it’? If I had heard all of this before, it wouldn’t have made any sense. But now, with everything we know . . .” He paused. “Mom, is it possible that Dad’s like Kaya?”
Mrs. Reed’s eyes went wide. “Like Kaya?” she asked. “You mean, that he can hear people’s thoughts? I—no, he couldn’t. At least, I don’t think so. . .” Her voice trailed off.
“He said he couldn’t control it,” Graham said. “What couldn’t he control? And it seems like he suspected something was going on with Kaya, and he couldn’t help her. I wonder if it’s possible that that wasn’t the first time Kaya read his thoughts. He was aware that something was happening to her. He was scared. He wanted to help her, but he couldn’t.”
A deafening silence filled the room for a long time. Then Mrs. Reed spoke. “He said he needed to get away,” she said softly. “He needed to go where he could be alone, away from everyone. ‘Off the grid’ was how he put it.”
Graham nodded. “He wanted to be somewhere that he wouldn’t have to hear them anymore.”
He touched his mother’s hand. For a moment, he wondered if somehow he would be able to read her thoughts, but he couldn’t.
“Kaya has the same abilities he had. It was too much for him. He had to get away. He couldn’t watch her go through what he went through when it happened to him. He panicked. And once he left . . .”
“He couldn’t come back,” Mrs. Reed whispered. “Graham, I need some time with this. I need to think about this. I was with this man for twenty years. How could he have been going through something like this for so long, and have never told me?” Her face went pale. “What if he could read my thoughts? What did he hear? What was I thinking?”
Tears rose to her eyes.
“Graham, when he left . . . it was during a period of time when things were hard. Kaya had just turned fourteen. She wasn’t the easiest child during that time. You were about to be a senior, and I was having a lot of worries about paying for a good college for you. There was a lot of turnover at work, and so much more was being expected from me. I was very stressed. I had less time for him. What could I have been thinking back then? Could there have been a night when we were in bed, and he reached out for me, and I thought—I thought that I wanted him to leave me alone and give me space? I could see thinking something like that, but it would just be in the moment. Not that I would want him to go away and leave me alone forever.”
She bent over, and although she wasn’t shaking with sobs, Graham could tell she was lost in her tears. He looked up. Grayson was staring at them both in disbelief, and Gina had tears in her own eyes.
He reached over and put his arm around his mother.
“Mom,” he said. “Mom. There’s no way you could have known.”
She looked up. “Maybe I should have,” she said. “I loved him. I still love him. That will never go away. I should have known that something was going on. How can you love someone and not know? Kaya . . . and your father.” Her head went back down. “I let them down,” she whispered.
Graham pulled his mother into an embrace and held her tight.
“We let them both down,” he said, circling his hand on her back. “But it’s not our fault. It’s no one’s fault. This—this is beyond anything we could have known, or expected. We have to figure this out, Mom. You, and me, and Kaya.”
“And me,” Gina said, placing her hand on Graham’s arm.
“And me,” Grayson said, grasping Mrs. Reed’s shoulder.
They sat that way for quite some time, until finally they all pulled away and composed themselves. Then Graham picked up the hotel phone and dialed Dr. Blake’s number to make a plan for the next day.