Nothing Can Hurt You by Nicola Maye Goldberg

Author:Nicola Maye Goldberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

According to the psychiatrist, Campbell’s psychosis was severely exacerbated by his use of LSD. If you’re already schizophrenic, Tracy thinks, irritably, shouldn’t you not do drugs that make you even crazier?

If Tracy wanted to, she could take some of Erin’s sleeping pills, but they might make it hard to wake up tomorrow. Instead, she allows herself a single Xanax. Erin, if she notices, will understand.

Because she takes pills so rarely, the Xanax hits Tracy hard, and she falls asleep with her clothes still on, the files next to her on the bed. She wakes up to Erin looming over her.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” says Erin, and laughs a little. “I came to check on you. I thought you were dead.”

“Why would you think that?” snaps Tracy.

Erin shrugs. “Worked yourself to death, maybe?”

“Did you have a bad dream?”

“Yes. But not that bad.”

“Do you need anything?”

“Nope. Just wanted to say hi.”

Tracy rubs her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Can I sleep here?” Erin asks.

“If you want.” Tracy gathers her files and puts them in a pile on her desk. “I haven’t showered, though.”

“I can tell.” Erin curls up next to her. Tracy strokes her soft hair. When they were kids, their mother let them watch TV in her bed whenever they were sick. It was such a treat then. “Is everything OK with you?”

For a moment she considers lying: I can’t sleep, I’m afraid, I see dead girls out the corner of my eye. Let Erin know that she’s not the only person who suffers. But she decides against it.

“Work is just fucking exhausting.”

“I bet. It’s a lot to deal with. For anyone. Even you.”

Even you. She means this as a compliment, Tracy thinks. Even someone as tough and smart and strong as you would be shaken by a serial killer.

“It’s not Logan that’s getting to me,” she admits. “It’s this other case. The Crawford kids.” Out loud, “Crawford kids” sounds so silly, like a series of books about orphans who solve mysteries.

“Oh yeah? I’m not sure you told me about that.”

“College girl’s boyfriend slit her throat, left her in the woods to die. He’s a diagnosed schizophrenic. Defense is saying he was having a psychotic episode, didn’t know what he was doing.”

“Do you believe them?”

“I don’t want to. I want to believe that this guy is another spoiled brat who thinks he can do whatever he wants to women, and then I want to put him away for the rest of his life. But shit, what if he really …” Tracy’s cheeks are getting warm.

“What if he really didn’t mean to hurt her?”

“Yeah. Either he did know what he was doing, and now he’s pretending, in which case he’s an evil motherfucker. Or he really didn’t know what he was doing, in which case he’s …” Tracy gnaws on her thumbnail. “There isn’t even a word for it. Imagine it’s true. Imagine you really lost your mind, and then you come back to reality and your girlfriend’s dead and you’re the one who killed her.

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