I don’t know why. I don’t remember, but I’d never hurt her. I, I, I—

EVAN

I know, son. I just don’t understand why—

DANNY

It’s horrible in here.

EVAN

I need you to stay strong, buddy. I’m getting you a lawyer. We’ll get this straightened out. But I need to know: Did those cops threaten you? Did they hurt you?

DANNY

I can’t explain why I said it. They just got in my head.

CHAPTER 41

DANNY PINE

Some people remember vividly where they were when Kennedy was assassinated. Or when the space shuttle Challenger blew up. Or when Princess Diana’s car crashed. Or when the planes struck the Twin Towers. Memories formed under intense emotions are seared into our thoughts, branded by the hot iron of trauma. Danny Pine had thought a lot about memory over the past seven years.

Everyone always wanted to know Why can’t you remember? At first it had been the police, though they thought he was lying. Then his parents. Then Dave, his ponytailed criminal defense lawyer. Then those filmmakers. Hell, even the generally uncurious felons at Fishkill. One of them, a psychiatrist convicted of manipulating patients into blowing him, even offered to hypnotize Danny. Ah, no thanks.

Nearly everyone was convinced that the truth—what really happened to Charlotte—was packed away in the deep recesses of his brain, and if they could just unlock the memories …

It wasn’t like his mind was a complete blank. Initially all Danny remembered were flashes of the party at what’s-his-name’s house. Fragments. Running out the back door when someone yelled Cops! A bonfire in a cornfield. The dented metal kegs of beer. Then waking up in his bed, a jackhammer pounding his skull, his little sister standing there with a concerned look on her face. The police are at the door. Where’s Mommy?

But slowly other things came back to him. The ponytailed lawyer said those memories—Charlotte at the party, her face twisted in anguish, I need to talk to you—weren’t helpful, so he might best keep them to himself.

One thing Danny Pine wished he could forget was his first day inside after his conviction. Them stripping him down, delousing him, shoving a folded stack of prison blues into his arms. Entering the gallery. The rapists and murderers and other scum in the rafters calling down to him and the parade of newbies.

Fresh meat! Fresh meat! Fresh meat!

The sound of his cell door clanging shut on the sweltering top floor, where all the horrid smells of the prison found a home. Looking back, as traumatic as it was, the experience was hardly unique. Every month Danny saw it play out again and again.