by Erin Wade
Mecca instructed her secretary to hold her calls for an hour and spent her lunchtime reading the Reynolds’ file and viewing the bank’s videos.
Miriam Devon Reynolds was a beautiful woman. Her daughters were equally beautiful. They looked like money; the right clothes, the right haircuts, the same bright, wide smiles and long blonde hair. Miriam Devon was the sole heir of one of the wealthiest oil families in Texas. Like so many who grow up with great wealth, she had no idea what it meant to earn a living but was certain she could help run America. Running on the Republican ticket, armed with a law degree and Daddy’s money she had easily won the race for U.S. Representative in her state. She spoke Arabic, Spanish and French. Her second year in Washington she had met and married Senator Tom Reynolds, a rising star in the Republican Party. With Miriam’s money behind him, the party soon began grooming the charismatic senator for the presidency.
Miriam and Tom had three daughters: 8, 10, and 12. When Tom wasn’t working, he was with his family. He doted on his wife and daughters. It was no secret, Miriam desperately wanted to get her family out of Washington politics and return to Texas to raise her daughters. “Washington is no place to raise children,” she said often.
It was also no secret; Tom Reynolds wanted to be president.
While a massive manhunt was underway, the police were scrutinizing Tom and his whereabouts when his family had disappeared. His alibi was solid, and the police had no leads at all on Miriam and her daughters.
Everyone connected with the case wanted to know why Tom had waited so long to report his family missing. He insisted he thought Miriam had taken the girls and gone to Texas. He had gone to his home office to finish reading a house bill and fallen asleep at his desk. When he awoke the next day, he had discovered his wife and daughters had never made it home the night before.
He tried Miriam’s cell phone and left messages. He finally called her father and learned that Miriam was not in Texas.
He had called the chauffer and learned his wife and children had taken the train home from the city. He then called the police and reported them missing. Tom told the police he and his wife had been arguing for months over their lives in Washington, but it was nothing they couldn’t work out. He hoped that Miriam had simply packed up the girls and gone to Texas but calls to Miriam’s family turned up no trace of Miriam or the girls.
There was no evidence of foul play, and there was no trace of the Reynolds women. Daniel Devon, the administrator of Miriam’s family trust, had arrived in Washington within six hours of learning of his daughter’s disappearance. He had immediately demanded the arrest of Tom Reynolds. According to Devon, a divorce was imminent. Miriam had told Reynolds she was leaving him and taking the children. The shopping trip had been to purchase items for the trip to Texas. Devon had drafted the prenuptial himself, so Reynolds would never get a cent of the family fortune if Miriam divorced him.
Prior to his family’s disappearance, Reynolds had been the top contender for president. Wildly popular with most Americans, the charismatic senator had won his own senate re-election by a landslide. He consistently polled as the most popular member of congress.
Reynolds had swept the Republican primary, winning 1580 delegates. The Republican National Convention was just a fanfare to solidify national support for the candidate.
Republican Committee Chairman Mark Thornton had scheduled a press conference following the national convention Wednesday to celebrate the committee’s nomination of Reynolds.
Mecca closed the file. She wondered why Reynolds had been sent to her. Certainly, he had a motive, but there was no evidence of foul play. Reynolds had agreed to take a polygraph to rule him out as a suspect. By the time of their next appointment, she would know the results of the test.
##
Chapter 3
Mecca stayed an hour after her secretary left. She meticulously filed her cases of the day and cleared the top of her desk. She jumped when her phone rang. A quick glance at the caller ID told her it was Teagan. “I was about to give up on you,” she answered.
“What a day,” sighed Teagan. “I can’t wait to sit down and have some handsome young waiter pour me a glass of wine. Can we go to that Italian restaurant? You know the one that opens the sliding glass doors, and it feels as if we are sitting right on the sidewalk.”
“Of course,” laughed Mecca. “I can be there in thirty minutes.”
“Great, we can people watch, while we catch up,” Teagan said.
##
Jericho took an obscure table next to the wall, so she could observe the sisters. They laughed and giggled like two schoolgirls. No one would ever think them two of the best medical minds in the country. Teagan was a top neurosurgeon and Mecca a groundbreaking psychiatrist. Both were graduates of the Harvard Medical School, Mecca had been awarded the DuPont-Warren Fellowship for advanced study and research in psychiatry and had proven her theories that had been previously shunned by the psychiatric community. Both chose Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD for their residency because the hospital was ranked number one in the U.S. in both their fields. Teagan had settled at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital and Mecca opted for private practice.
“I need your help with a patient,” Teagan finally moved their conversation toward work. “She was brought into the hospital last week with TBI and is in a coma. Poor thing she was suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. No telling how long she has been in that condition. She was literally starving to death. She’s coming around, but still has serious trauma.”
“Traumatic Brain Injury,” Mecca shook her head. “That’s really more your specialty, Sis.”
“The injury part is going to be okay,” Teagan nodded, “but she was badly beaten, and I had to remove some bone fragments from her skull. Dr. Davis had to work on her cheekbones and nose, so she could breathe comfortably. She is regaining consciousness but doesn’t know her name or where she is. Her trauma is now more mental.”
“Oh, one of your famous penniless patients,” Mecca tried to lift the somber mood that had fallen over them.
Teagan laughed. “No, her perfect teeth and manicured everything tells me she isn’t destitute. The hospital reported her to the police, but she doesn’t match any missing person’s reports. I am just hoping we can get her to remember something—anything.”
“You know I’ll be happy to help in any way I can,” Mecca patted her sister’s hand.
“She is going to require more facial surgery. Nikki said some one really did a number on her face, but that must wait until she heals more. In the meantime, I need your magic.” Teagan tipped her wine glass as if toasting Mecca.
Dr. Nikki Davis was one of the best facial reconstruction surgeons Mecca had ever encountered.
She was excited about working with two doctors she highly respected. “Just tell me where and what time. I’ll clear my calendar and be there,” Mecca reassured her sister.
##
Back in her apartment, Mecca called the number. The phone was picked up, but no one answered. “I need the results of the polygraph Reynolds takes tomorrow,” she said.
“You’ll have them tomorrow evening.” The dial tone signaled the end to the conservation.
Mecca pushed the remote to turn on the TV. Tom Reynolds’ handsome face flashed across the screen of CNN News as the commentator rehashed the situation with his missing family. The liberal news media had opened its airwaves to Daniel Devon who was all too happy to try Reynolds on public television. He blamed his son-in-law for Miriam’s disappearance.
Mecca wondered what would happen to Miriam’s fortune if she and her daughters were dead and Tom was found guilty of their murder. Who else stood to benefit from the deaths of the Reynolds women?
Mecca’s thoughts turned to her sister. As teenagers, Teagan had teased her about her fascination with hypnosis.
Their mother had taken them to a medical conference when Mecca was 14. One of the seminars was devoted to psychiatry and hypnosis. Teagan and M
ecca convinced their mother to let them go to the seminar while she attended her seminar on internal medicine.
When the girls arrived in the seminar, they were surprised to find 40 mats with pillows neatly arranged 10 to a row. The speaker had discussed various forms of hypnosis ending with mass hypnosis. Mecca and Teagan scoffed at the idea. The speaker asked everyone to ascertain the time. He then asked everyone to turn off all cell phones. He explained the dangers of a hypnotized subject hearing a loud noise or ringing. He asked everyone to lie down on the mats. “You don’t have to close your eyes,” he said, “just relax and get comfortable. If you do happen to fall asleep, you will awaken when I clap my hands.”
He had continued in an even, comforting tone, “When I arrived here today, I was delighted to find so many signed up for the seminar. It is always nice when one’s subject is received favorably. I hope you have found my research interesting and relaxing. If your eyes are feeling heavy, it is okay to close them. Just relax and...”
Mecca and Teagan awoke at the same time. Looking around them, they had discovered that everyone in the room was just awakening from a deep, restful sleep.
The speaker told them to look at their watch to verify that they had been asleep for forty-five minutes. “What you have just experienced is mass hypnosis on a small scale,” he smiled.
Mecca’s passion was born.
As her fascination with hypnosis grew, so did her determination to become a psychiatrist. She devoured every book ever written about hypnosis. She found that she could hypnotize a subject very quickly with or without their cooperation.
She became convinced that the 1978, mass suicide of 909 members of the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana had been the result of mass hypnosis perpetrated on his followers by Jim Jones.
An avowed communist Jones had been a leader in the Democratic Party in California where he was appointed Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission as a reward for the important role he played in the mayoral election victory of George Moscone.
First Lady Rosalynn Carter personally met with Jones on multiple occasions and corresponded with him about Cuba. She spoke with him at the grand opening of the San Francisco Democratic Party Headquarters where Jones received louder applause than she did.
Jones enjoyed the protection of his Democratic Party friends in high places until the IRS began looking into his Peoples Temple. To get away from the media scrutiny and the IRS investigation he moved his followers to Guyana and established Jonestown.
His drug addiction and indulgence in sex with young girls in his congregation caused the unraveling of his self-proclaimed deity.
In November 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan butted heads with the local Democratic establishment and the Jimmy Carter administration's State Department in order to investigate allegations of human rights abuses of U.S. citizens in Jonestown. Ryan's delegation included relatives of Temple members, an NBC news crew and reporters from various newspapers.
Ryan’s visit to Jonestown was cut short when a Temple member attacked Ryan with a knife. Congressman Ryan and his people quickly left taking fifteen People's Temple members, who had asked to leave, with them. Jones did not attempt to prevent their departure.
As Ryan’s delegation began boarding planes to depart, they were gunned down by Temple members
The next morning the Guyanese army cut through the jungle to Jonestown. They discovered 909 inhabitants, dead from ingesting poisoned Kool-Aid. The individuals died in what was declared a "mass suicide/murder ritual"
##
At Harvard, Mecca had set the psychiatric world on fire and made headlines when she gave the last speech of the commencement ceremony. She hypnotized everyone in the room: graduates, faculty, staff, parents, relatives, etc.; all 3,000 of them.
In an experiment prearranged through the research department, small cups of grape Kool-Aid were passed out to everyone in the hall. At Mecca’s suggestion, everyone drank the Kool-Aid. Mecca then told her audience that when she blew a whistle they would be fully awake. That the graduates were to leave the auditorium as practiced and then others could follow. She suggested that no one involved with her experiment would ever sue anyone associated with it. “Remember to put the cups in the trash cans on the way out and tell your friends what an awesome speaker I am.” She couldn’t resist the last statement just for the fun of it.
She blew the whistle and the procession proceeded as practiced, with proud parents following to find their graduates.
Every single cup was placed in the trash receptacles. Not even a scrap was dropped in the auditorium. There was never a single complaint from anyone over being hypnotized. Mecca had made them drink the Kool-Aid.
Mecca had gotten the attention of every psychiatric research facility in the world and the unwanted attention of the United States government.
The phone ringing yanked Mecca back to the present. It was Teagan.
“How does your calendar look for Friday?” Teagan asked.
“Great,” Mecca replied, “I have one patient, but I can reschedule her.”
“Good, bring your appetite. I’ll cook and the three of us can discuss our patient. Nikki has already pulled x-rays, so you can get some idea of the physical trauma the girl has experienced.” Teagan added. “I want you to visit with her, and then you can give us some idea of the mental trauma we’re battling.”
##
Mecca walked her last patient out of the office. “There is a gentleman holding for you,” Julie nodded toward the phone.
Julie had been her secretary from day one and Mecca knew she was largely responsible for the smooth way her office ran.
“Were you able to reschedule Mrs. Lewis?” Mecca asked over her shoulder.
“Monday at three,” Julie answered as Mecca closed the door.
“Dr. Storm,” she announced herself into the phone receiver.
“The information you requested is in your apartment,” the familiar voice said.
“Why don’t we go over it together?” Mecca tried to engage her informant. “I suspect you know more about the situation than I.”
“No, I’m really puzzled over this one,” the voice replied, “But your clients are your business.”
“Please talk to me a moment,” Mecca wanted a commitment to stay on the phone.
“Okay.”
“Who are you?” she whispered.
To her surprise, she received an answer. “A flunky in the police department,” the voice lied. “I’m just an information source for you. Good night, Dr. Storm.”
The voice mystified Mecca. She could tell from the mechanical sound the person she called used a voice altering app on their phone. She didn’t know if she was speaking with a man or a woman.
As promised, the results of the polygraph had been slipped under her door. Mecca came home late from the office. Closing the door behind her, she sat down her brief case and purse on the entry hall table and bent down to pick up the envelope. The hallway light cast a shadow under her door. The shadow hesitated and then it was gone.
Mecca placed the envelope on her bed as she slipped into something more comfortable. Her sheepskin house shoes felt good after wearing heels all day. She carried the envelope to the kitchen and let it sit unopened as she made a chicken salad sandwich. She curled up on her sofa eyeing the envelope as she ate her dinner.
She looked around her apartment. She knew it was Spartan compared to her sister’s apartment. She considered it a place to sleep and eat. She hadn’t put forth much effort to decorate it.
She knew she was putting off opening the envelope because she was afraid of what she might find. She wanted Tom Reynolds to be innocent, but she was afraid he wasn’t.
She studied the polygraph results. It appeared Tom was telling the truth. He had no knowledge of what had happened to his family. If Tom didn’t know, then where were they?
Before going to bed, Mecca located her Presbyterian Hospital nametag and pulled out her white Johns Hopkins issue
d coat.
##
“The Storm sisters,” Kadence Pride grabbed her heart feigning an attack. “It would make me the happiest woman in the world if either one of you would marry me,” she laughed.
Mecca greeted her friend with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “How is the world’s most gorgeous surgeon,” she smiled.
“Better, now that you’re here. To what do we owe the honor?”
“Collaborating,” Teagan answered. “Remember the Jane Doe that came in last week? Mecca is helping me with her.”
“Good luck,” Kadence shook her head. “She really took a beating; poor thing. Dr. Marcus had to remove her spleen, and she had multiple cracked ribs. He had to stop the internal hemorrhaging before he could turn her over to your gifted sister. Honestly, Teagan, I didn’t think she would live through the brain surgery.”
“She is coming out of her coma,” Teagan said, “but she is completely uncommunicative. I’m hoping Mecca can help her.”
“You know where I am if you need me,” Kadence grinned mischievously, “for anything at all.”
Kadence had been their self-appointed protector in college. Although the truth was, they had carried her home drunk from many parties and put her to bed. Fortunately, she had outgrown her wild ways. She was an outstanding plastic surgeon. She jokingly referred to herself as the doctor to the stars and royalty.
The elevator stopped on the trauma floor and the two sisters picked up Jane Doe’s chart. She’d had a quiet night with no change in her condition.
Mecca watched as Teagan checked her patient. Jane Doe was bandaged from the top of her head to her hips. Both arms were incased in casts.
Dr. Nikki Davis joined them,
“Not a very pretty sight,” Dr. Davis, side-hugged Mecca and gently touched Teagan’s arm. “She’ll be okay. There is nothing the two of you can’t fix.”
“Who would do such a thing to another human being,” Teagan closed her eyes to block out the bloody mess Jane Doe had been in the emergency room.