Faith and Justice

by Peter O'Mahoney

  “How far did you walk?”

  “I walked around a few blocks, sort of aimlessly, but then I was coming back to the Congress Hotel, and that’s when I passed the entrance to the alley.”

  “Did you see Lucas again?”

  “Just past the entrance to the alley. We talked; he’d calmed down. We agreed that he wouldn’t take action until a business plan was drawn up. I was calm by then too.”

  “The biggest problem we have at the moment, Amos, is that your blood was found on Green’s sleeve, and your DNA under his fingernails.”

  “Inside the Congress Hotel, he grabbed me by the throat and slammed me against the wall. His fingernails cut my neck, and that’s how my blood got on his shirt.”

  “He must’ve been holding you hard to cut your skin.”

  “He was.” Anderson leaned forward, trying to calm his nerves, trying to deaden the grumbling in his stomach.

  Hunter could sense that Anderson was holding information back, but Anderson’s determination to fight the case, to take the charge to trial despite the risk of a longer sentence, meant that he was either innocent, disillusioned, or thought he could beat the system.

  “You come across as very intelligent, Amos.” Hunter tapped his fingers on the edge of the desk for a few moments. “You’re lucky that your reputation precedes you. We may be able to get away with saying that you were ‘cooling your jets.’ The jury may buy into that.”

  “Buy into that? Mr. Hunter, you should be aware that I’m not part of the typical urban existence. I’m not the usual defendant that you represent in court.” There was now strength in Anderson’s voice. “I’m one of the different ones. One of those people who never fits in anywhere. A loner. Eccentric. Peculiar. Strange. Call me what you will, but I do things differently. I don’t do things because they’ve always been done a particular way; I do things because they’ve never been done that way. I try new ideas. Push boundaries. Think outside the box. And I do that because often the ones who are crazy enough to try something new are the ones who find something that works.”

  “We will need to present you to the court as normal.”

  “But that’s not me.”

  “What matters isn’t who you are.” It was Hunter’s turn to lay down the law. “What matters is how much we’re able to convince the jury of our version of the truth. And to convince them of the truth, their perception of you matters immensely. If you were a six-foot-eight biker with tattoos all over your body, the jury wouldn’t believe that you were walking the streets to ‘cool your jets’. But if your reputation is one of a normal, calm person then that’s a story they may believe. How the jury members see you is very important. We need to convince them of your story, and that means that everything must fit. If one thing is out of place, whether it’s appearance, your personal story, or the likelihood of an event, then they won’t believe the whole puzzle. It all must fit together. Every aspect of it.”

  “I don’t see how appearance matters. None of that should matter. None of that is important. I didn’t do it. That’s the truth, and that’s all that should matter. The courtroom has to be about the truth.”

  “I’m afraid not, Amos. If the truth were all that mattered, then I wouldn’t have a job.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Esther Wright scrolled through the files on her computer, her eyes scanning over report after report, article after article, stating that there was no scientific evidence that Amos Anderson’s skills were legitimate.

  She was fascinated by the Faith Healing Project. The fact that Anderson claimed he could simply wave his hands around a person, feel their energy and life force, adjust it, and change their condition, completely went against everything she was ever taught.

  Her father was an accountant, and her mother was a school teacher. They were always doing things by the book, doing everything expected of them. They never did anything outlandish, never anything outside of the box. Their world was straight and narrow.

  But there was always something inside of Esther that felt different.

  Faith healing made sense to her. Although there was no scientific proof that any of it worked, the proof was in the results. People were falling over backward to tell others how much Amos Anderson had changed their lives.

  While researching the case, she found out that Tex Hunter’s nephew, Max Hunter, was one of those people. He was on a Facebook page dedicated to Anderson, telling the viewer how much Anderson had changed his life by curing his drug addiction, by getting him off the drugs for good. He had kicked his three-year heroin addiction overnight thanks to the powers of Anderson’s hands. His voice was convincing, so passionate.

  There was video after video of testimonial evidence from others stating that Anderson had changed their lives.

  It was almost cult-like.

  That amount of faith in a single person had caused discomfort, and sometimes outright disgust, in church communities. They felt threatened by what some called the Devil’s work. In particular, Reverend Green of the Baptist church in Grand Crossing took a stand against what he saw as evil, deceiving, and an outright falsehood.

  Esther watched a YouTube video of Reverend Green preaching about how much evil Amos Anderson was spreading. It was brainwashing, he said; a mind trick.

  Under Hunter’s direction, she had spent the morning going through the comments on the YouTube videos by Reverend Green, particularly the ones where Anderson was mentioned. Although some comments supported Amos Anderson, most were in favor of Reverend Green and in support of his disgust directed at new-age healing.

  She could hear Hunter and Anderson discussing the case in the office behind her, and when the door opened, she sat up straighter.

  Anderson walked out of Hunter’s office looking more confident than when he had walked in. Hunter followed him out and placed three files on the edge of Esther’s desk. It was a long reception desk with two monitors on the left-hand side, but Hunter still found a way to fill the rest of it with paper files. Esther constantly argued that he should be saving trees by printing fewer documents, but he never listened. She had even placed two tall indoor plants by the door of the office to force him into thinking about the trees that were being cut down for paper printing.

  It didn’t work.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Anderson.” She smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about your work with faith healing. One of my friends was healed of her alcohol addiction with your assistance.”

  “Thank you.” Anderson drew a long breath. “In these times of stress, that means a lot.”

  “I’m interested, Amos.” Hunter leaned against Esther’s desk. “Can anyone learn the skill of faith healing? Or is it something you’re born with?”

  “You asked me to be honest…” Anderson sighed as he stood near the door. “It doesn’t work.”

  Hunter squinted. “What doesn’t work?”

  “The faith healing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My hands don’t cure anything,” Anderson said with an air of complete tranquility, showing them his hands, turning them over to look at his palms. “At least, by itself, it doesn’t work. My hands aren’t magical.”

  “You know that your hands don’t work?” Hunter asked. “So what you’re doing is a complete fraud? You’re tricking people. We can’t let that come out in court. You can’t be seen as a fraud or the jury will convict you on the spot.”

  “I’m not a fraud.”

  “What about all the people in your advertisements that claim the faith healing works? Are they paid actors? And Tex’s nephew? He claims that you cured his drug addiction? Is that fake or is he being paid as well?” Esther asked.

  “They’re not paid actors.”

  “Those people claim you’ve cured them of their depression, addiction, or physical ailments. They claim they’re happier and more complete than they have ever felt. Are you saying they’ve been brainwashed? Is that what you do?” The anger grew in Hunter.

  “Have you
ever heard of the placebo effect?” Anderson was calm as he placed his hands in his pockets.

  “Of course.”

  “The placebo effect is reported to have a success rate between twenty-one to forty percent in any standard clinical trial for pain management. The rate has been steady since it was first discovered in 1955. The first study theorized that it had a thirty-two percent effect.”

  “What’s this got to do with the Faith Healing Project?” Hunter asked.

  “While I was in Bali meditating, I had a vision. I had been meditating for three days, and this moment of clarity was special. It washed over me like a deeper understanding of human behavior. I was able to see how the world was pieced together and understand that we were missing parts of the puzzle. While Western society is developing drugs to do wonderful and amazing things, we are not developing our minds. I was deep in meditation when I realized that if any drug had the effectiveness of forty percent, it would be sent off to labs to be further developed. So much money would be poured into that drug to find a way for it to become more effective, but we have ignored the greatest drug we have.”

  “Our brains?”

  “Exactly,” Anderson responded with enthusiasm. “And the reason we’re not developing it is because Big Pharma, the drug companies, wouldn’t be able to make money out of it. So, I decided to develop the placebo effect. I decided to make it more effective. I’m a scientist at heart, that’s what I’ve studied my whole life, and I knew that I could develop this further. But to do it, I needed a convincing story. I needed people to believe in what they were being told, and if I could do that, I knew that I could be convincing enough to persuade the public of its effectiveness.”

  Hunter scoffed. “And, of course, you’ve made money doing it.”

  Esther turned back to scrolling through the information on the computer in front of her; there were so many testimonials of its effectiveness, so many people convinced by the “show”. She considered typing something to them, letting them know about the conversation she was having, but she wisely decided against it.

  Having information was one thing; using it was another.

  “I didn’t make money from it at first—I gave the treatments for free when I started. I gave the treatment to around a hundred people and asked them to come back to me after a month to report on the change. But the effectiveness only seemed to be around ten to fifteen percent, less than the standard placebo effect. And that was despite my convincing tales of its quality.”

  “So, what happened?” Esther was intrigued.

  “I met with Lucas Bauer and discussed the idea. The high cost was all Lucas’ idea. He said that if you didn’t charge ridiculous prices for the product, then people wouldn’t be invested in it. To me, that made sense. The more you spend, the more you’re personally invested in the effectiveness of the outcome. People had to make a sacrifice to have this product, and it was only then that they would truly believe in its effectiveness. That sacrifice was money. And by charging a lot, we also only got clients who were willing to do anything to change their current state. They wanted to change, and they believed in the product. Our effectiveness was suddenly close to ninety percent.”

  “You knowingly advertise a product that doesn’t work.”

  Hunter was scammed by a conman when he was eighteen years old; the man had played on Hunter’s need to prove his father’s innocence. Hunter lost a lot of money trying to buy evidence that proved his father wasn’t guilty, and he had hated cons ever since.

  “The Faith Healing Project does work; the practice doesn’t.”

  “Your customers are sold a lie.” Hunter took a step forward as a show of dominance over the man.

  He highly disapproved of Anderson’s methodology.

  A scam was a scam. Plain and simple.

  “If the treatment works for them, is it a lie? The treatment is effective in relieving the client of their clinical depression or reliving them of their addiction or healing their physical pain. We have clinical diagnoses that prove that. The results are our evidence.”

  “If it was effective, why would every scientific trial state that the product doesn’t work?” Esther shook her head, stunned by the revelation.

  She opened a webpage dedicated to stating how much of a fraud Anderson was. There were statements of abuse from evangelical Christians, statements of disbelief from scientists, and words of distrust from the general public. The keyboard warriors expressed their hatred for the next fad, said that it was a complete rip-off, or that Anderson himself was just another con man.

  But not one of the people quoted on the webpage had ever been treated by Anderson. Their disbelief was built on distrust of his methods, not the results.

  “It doesn’t work in scientific trials because the people in the trial don’t believe it works. They don’t believe in the effects of the treatment. The treatment itself has no effect, but the mind’s power is the secret.” Anderson tapped his temple. “It didn’t have to be my hands that cured them; it could have been anything. I could have told the clients that rubbing mud on their arms made them smarter. It was about believing in an outcome.”

  “You’re saying that addiction and depression are fake?” Esther shook her head in disapproval.

  “No. Not at all. No way. Please don’t interpret my evidence as that. My mother suffered depression, and it was a harrowing way to grow up. There was nothing fake about what she went through. It was horrible. The effect on me as a child was devastating. Depression is a chemical imbalance in the mind. That’s a fact. That’s not to be disputed. Drugs can affect the chemicals in the mind, and that’s why they’re effective. What I do is convince the mind to create those chemicals itself. I empower the mind to do the work of the drugs, so that the mind can heal itself.”

  “So, people should be able to cure their depression by thinking about it?” Esther asked.

  “It’s not that simple. There must be a belief that is so strong that a person’s subconscious accepts it. You cannot do that yourself. I remind you that twenty-one to forty percent of all clinical trials have a placebo effect. That means that at least twenty-one percent of everyone that volunteers for a scientific trial are convinced by their own subconscious. It doesn’t matter what the trial is testing; our minds trick us into believing the effects.”

  “But the treatment you sell isn’t effective.” Esther was almost pleading with him.

  “The treatment gets results. That is effective.”

  Hunter stared at him for a long time.

  Deception was fraud, no matter how the results came about, and there was absolutely no way that he could let that come out in court.

  That would destroy any creditability that Anderson had.

  “I’m all for justice, Amos. I’ll do my best to defend you in the courtroom. That’s justice.” Hunter stood tall. “It’s also justice that people aren’t being ripped off. It doesn’t do our case any good to expose the facts now, but once this case is finished, the real information about this treatment needs to become public.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a con, and I won’t be any part of that. People are spending their life savings on a treatment that doesn’t work. That’s not right. Your hands don’t work.”

  “The treatment works.”

  “I won’t move forward with this case unless we agree that the real information about this treatment becomes public once the case is finished. After this case is finished, you will make a statement acknowledging this treatment doesn’t work.”

  “But why?”

  “Because it’s a scam. People have spent a fortune on a product that doesn’t work, and I won’t let that continue. I won’t allow people to lose their life savings for a fake treatment.”

  “That’s a very old-fashioned view, Mr. Hunter.” The thoughts ricocheted through Anderson’s head. He had already lost two lawyers; he didn’t want to lose the only one that had agreed to take the case to trial. “But if you get me off this murder charge, t
hen I’ll agree to that deal.”

  “When we’re in court, they will ask Lucas if the product is effective. What do you think his answer will be?”

  “He’ll say it’s effective. It gets better results than any drug on the market. Of course he’ll say that it’s effective.”

  “Except that it’s not.”

  Anderson nodded. “Except that it’s not.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Tex Hunter studied the painting titled Nighthawks hanging in the American gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago. The room was dim, and there were barely any people around on a Tuesday morning. The odd tourist wandered past, but none interrupted his view of Edward Hooper’s 1942 classic.

  He loved this painting—a still moment in time of people in a downtown diner late at night almost snapped like a picture. He had such an affinity with the painting as if it was a snapshot into moments of his life. The three patrons in the painting, seated around the diner’s bar, all seemed to be lost in their own thoughts, focused on their worries. For Hunter, the painting perfectly represented the isolation of life in a large city.

  Private Investigator Ray Jones came up beside him and ran his gaze over the artwork. He never really understood art, but this he could appreciate. This was something that had emotion, despite the lack of it, and vibrancy, despite the lack of bright colors.

  The men shook hands firmly, and Jones patted Hunter on the arm. Standing at six-foot-four, the African American man, dressed in a tight black t-shirt and old jeans, looked out of place next to Hunter, dressed in a fitted Italian suit.

  “Good to see you, Ray.”

  “Always good to see you, Tex. Is the shoulder okay?”

  “Getting better. The bullet only grazed it—it’s nothing serious. I’m only missing a small chunk of muscle. I’m sure it’ll grow back.”

  The men chatted about their lives as they walked down the stairs to the foyer of the art institute. When they arrived at the café, Hunter ordered coffees for both of them. First, they chatted about the Cubs, then the weather, and lastly, the Bears.