The Last Plea Bargain

by Randy Singer

  I nodded, conceding the point. “Some would call that a pattern.”

  “But think about this,” Mace continued. “I know you’ve done enough work with the insanity defense to realize that people can access memories stored in their subconscious through hypnosis. So let’s say, again hypothetically, that we put my two clients under hypnosis again and help them access information about their original hypnosis sessions. We get the name of the psychiatrist or the place where the session occurred or a description of the person who created the false memories. I’m sure Caleb Tate would have used that same hypnotist in order to help him pass his own polygraph. You get a phone tap. Then you execute a surprise search warrant at that person’s house or office, and they’ll call Caleb Tate in about two seconds. That’s your path to Tate’s conviction. You see what I’m saying? What would that information be worth?”

  I thought about it, connecting the dots, and Mace was smart enough not to interrupt. “What’s your client’s name—the one looking at time?”

  Mace hesitated before answering. We were both finding it difficult to trust. “Rashad Reed.”

  “What are the charges?”

  “Carjackings. Three separate occurrences.”

  “Was anybody hurt?”

  “No. Traumatized a little, but not hurt.”

  “Did you tell him I don’t do plea bargains?”

  “I did. But I also told him there might be an exception.”

  “What does he want?”

  “Five years, all but two suspended. Move him to a prison system in a remote part of the state and give him a private cell. He also wants some recess privileges, but he doesn’t want to be in the general inmate population.”

  “And I want a Ferrari,” I said. “But we don’t always get what we want.”

  Mace frowned and looked down at the porch. “Jamie, I know you find this hard to believe, but I care about justice too. I’m not really that excited about putting Rashad Reed back on the street in two years. But you’ve made no secret of your belief that Caleb Tate is the one behind the events that are terrorizing Milton County right now. And while the ethical rules don’t allow me to breach any confidences from a former client, they also impose on me a duty not to let my clients defraud the court. This is the only way I know to get at the truth, fulfill my ethical duties, and get Milton County’s criminal justice system back on track.”

  He waited as I chewed on it but then apparently ran out of patience. “Listen, Rashad Reed is willing to be the next guinea pig to cut a deal. But he’s got to have solitary confinement and protection. I’m not sanctioning what he did, but he’s my client, and I can’t let him cut a deal if it means I’m signing his death warrant.”

  “I understand that,” I said. “But this is a lot to work through.” My thoughts were racing with everything I needed to do just to process this. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  “That’s all I can ask.” Mace knelt down and rubbed Justice’s head, then stood. I stood as well, and we awkwardly shook hands.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said.

  “Thanks for hearing me out.”

  I watched him walk to his truck and drive away. I sensed that the alliances were somehow shifting under my feet. Mace James and I still weren’t friends. But I was no longer sure that we were sworn enemies.

  85

  Before I called Bill Masterson, I needed to get some things lined up. Energized, I went inside and changed into my running shorts and a sports bra. I put Justice on a leash and took off over the hills in the neighborhood, working my legs and lungs for the first time in nearly two weeks. The heat was almost unbearable, and I circled around after the first five minutes to let a panting Justice back into the air-conditioning. I told him that Mom would be back and headed out for round two.

  I ran until I was completely exhausted and then walked for another two miles. I was in lawyer mode again, processing everything that Mace James had just told me. I played out several different scenarios in my mind, and by the time I returned to the house, I knew what I needed to do.

  While I was waiting to cool off enough to take a shower, I called Dr. Gillespie and asked him some general questions about polygraphs, suggestive memory creation, and hypnosis. For the most part, he confirmed what Mace James had told me.

  “Why are you asking?”

  I took a deep breath and told him about my conversation with Mace. I tried to be careful, knowing that if I could talk Masterson into letting Caleb Tate’s case go forward, Gillespie would be taking the stand next week. I couldn’t tell him how our case had imploded on Friday. But I did explain, in general terms, that unless we came up with some convincing new evidence we would probably drop the case.

  I was on the phone with Gillespie for nearly fifty minutes, discussing various scenarios. Eventually he had an idea. “Before you cut a plea bargain, don’t you sometimes make the defendants proffer their evidence?”

  “Sure. We usually get full disclosure before we confirm the deal.”

  “Then why don’t you do that with Rashad Reed? Find out whether you can get into his subconscious and figure out what he knows before you agree to any deals.”

  The suggestion made me chuckle. “When we get a proffer, it’s usually the attorney giving me a carefully worded explanation of what his client will say as a cooperating witness. I don’t know of any lawyers—and especially not Mace James—who are just going to say, ‘Sure, put my client under hypnosis, ask him whatever you want, and then we’ll deal.’”

  “You’re right,” Gillespie said. “I should probably stick to the expert-witness side of the law practice.”

  But then it hit me. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Mace can’t let us do that with Reed. But what about his other client? The guy who’s already served his time. We could put him under hypnosis. We could make that a condition of even considering a plea for Reed. If the hypnosis doesn’t work, we haven’t lost anything.”

  “Wouldn’t that put James in a conflict of interest?” Gillespie asked. “Having to get one client to do something so the other can get a deal?”

  “Yeah, it would. Which makes me even more intent on doing it.”

  I was only half-serious, though it would serve Mace right to squirm a little. In reality, Mace said the client who had served his time wanted to help nail Caleb Tate. This would be one way to do it.

  “Can you do the hypnosis?” I asked Gillespie. “Or do you know somebody who can?”

  “All psychiatrists know the basic techniques. It’s really just a question of getting the patient to lower his defenses enough to let me into the subconscious. I would need some time alone with this guy. And I can’t guarantee that I can make it happen during the first meeting.”

  Things were coming together fast. We didn’t have time for multiple meetings. “What if we tell Mace we want to meet with his guy right away? Could you do it tonight?”

  There was a pause on the other end. “Let me get to my Outlook calendar.” After a few seconds, he said, “I might have to move some things around, but I could probably make it happen. But we need to think through this a bit.” He sounded tentative now. “If I’m going to testify next week, we’ve got to be careful about how we do this. First of all, who else knows about this?”

  “Right now, it’s just Mace James and me.”

  “Okay, let’s keep it that way for now. Of course, you’ve probably got to clear it with Masterson. Why don’t you call James and see if he can get the green light from his client. If we need to, we can have a follow-up session on Sunday.”

  After hanging up with Gillespie, I put in a call to Bill Masterson. Not surprisingly, I got his voice mail and left an urgent message.

  Then I called Mace James and gave him my ultimatum. He didn’t like my suggestion, but I was in no mood to negotiate.

  “The guy’s name is David Brewster,” Mace eventually said. “Served five years for armed robbery of a convenience store.”

  “Have Mr. Brewster at Dr.
Gillespie’s office at 8 p.m., and let’s hope this works,” I said.

  After I showered, I wrote a long e-mail to Bill Masterson, explaining everything. I also sent him a text message telling him to check his e-mail. Next, I started doing my own research about hypnosis and polygraphs.

  I skimmed through a few articles listed on the first two Google pages and got more comfortable with what Mace James had been explaining. Just as Mace had suggested, I learned that the CIA had done experiments with agents whom they had put under hypnosis and given polygraph tests. The agency had been able to create false memories in their agents and cause amnesia for events that actually occurred. The scientific advances surprised me, but not nearly as much as what I found on the third page of my Google search.

  There was a long article published in Psychiatry Today about the power of hypnosis to create and erase memories. Like the other articles, this one confirmed that hypnosis could cause people to forget things that happened and remember things that never occurred. But this article went further, analyzing the suggestive effects that took hold when someone was under hypnosis. Under the right conditions, subjects prone to hypnosis could not only have their memories changed but could also have their futures influenced by suggestions that the subjects embraced as their own thoughts and ideas. The author then illustrated these principles through various legal cases where hypnosis had been used to make subjects “recall” childhood abuse that had never happened. It was the suggestive nature of the questioning under hypnosis and the way these suggestions were embedded into the subconscious that made the subject think abuse had taken place.

  The author showed how persons who experienced deep-trance hypnosis could also have their future likes and dislikes affected by the hypnotist. Sometimes the subjects could be instructed to do things totally contrary to their normal natures. As proof, the author detailed three instances where a hypnotist had lured three different women into sexual relationships while the women were in a hypnotic trance. The whole disgusting scheme might have never come to light except for the fact that the perverted hypnotist videotaped the encounters.

  All of this was disturbing and shocking new information to me, and I started rethinking everything I knew about Caleb Tate and Antoine Marshall in light of it. But the most shocking revelation of all was the person who had authored the article. Her name was Dr. Laura Brock. And the article had been published just eight months prior to her death.

  86

  I left a second voice mail with Masterson, then called Dr. Gillespie back to tell him about my mother’s article. He suggested that the two of us meet before getting together with Mace James. Maybe my mom’s death wasn’t just a random result of a breaking and entering gone bad. Gillespie believed it was all too coincidental. Caleb Tate used deep-trance hypnosis on his clients, my mother had been researching it, and then she just happened to be murdered by a man defended by Caleb Tate. Neither of us could put the pieces completely together, but we both knew that we were onto something.

  Gillespie wanted to meet at my house so he could take me through the events from the night my mother died. For twelve years, I had tried to avoid thinking about that night. I had blocked out the images of my mother lying on the floor dead and my father covered in blood. But now, Gillespie wanted me to relive the trauma to see if there was something lodged in my subconscious that might help us unlock this puzzle.

  He showed up at five thirty, and even Justice seemed to understand how somber the night had become. He didn’t greet Gillespie with his usual tail-wagging, jumping-around, let’s-play-tug-of-war approach. Instead, he stayed next to me as if sensing my dread at what we were about to do.

  Dr. Gillespie greeted me with a warm hug and told me that he understood how difficult this would be. I thanked him for coming on a Saturday. He said that he had been in the clubhouse when I first called, sharing a few drinks with his trash-talking buddies after a miserable day on the links. “I needed an excuse to leave,” he said graciously. “I owe you one.”

  He said he had been thinking about our call and was convinced that my mother’s death was not an accident. He proposed that we look through her old files, focus on anything having to do with hypnosis, and see what we could find. We both believed that Caleb Tate was somehow behind all this.

  “Do you still have those records?” he asked.

  I told him I thought they were in the attic someplace. It might take an hour to find them and several more to go through them. We agreed it could wait until tomorrow. For tonight, the important thing was to see if there was anything lodged in my memory about the events of my mom’s death, anything I had previously overlooked.

  “Is this one of those focus-on-the-swinging-watch type things?” I asked.

  Gillespie smiled. “You can do that with your local gypsies. I prefer to talk over a cup of coffee.”

  I fixed some coffee for Dr. Gillespie and a glass of water for me. We settled into the chairs in the family room, and he started with the questions. Where was I the night my mom died? How long had I been out? Did I have anything to drink? What was the weather like? Could I remember anything about the food I ate?

  “The food I ate?” I asked.

  “We need to engage all the senses from that night. Re-create as much as we can before I start asking questions about when you came home and found your mom and dad. You’re going to have to work with me, Jamie. We’ve got to walk through this whole series of events and keep it uninterrupted, if possible.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll do the best I can.”

  “Maybe we should put Justice out back,” Gillespie suggested. “That way, when we re-create you walking into the house, he won’t disturb your train of thought.”

  I did as Gillespie suggested, and we talked for several more minutes in the family room. He helped me remember the emotions from that time in my life, and I recalled as many details as I could about the party I went to that night. Then we went outside and got in his car. He backed out of the driveway and drove around the cul-de-sac before pulling back in.

  “Let’s go in the house exactly the way you did that night with Chris. I’m just going to follow along, and I want you to describe what you see and what you feel at every step. I may ask some short questions but only to prod you along.”

  We came in through the garage, and I had a sense of foreboding. “I think Chris was actually ahead of me,” I said. “I think I was kind of sulking because he had come to get me.”

  Gillespie took a step ahead and opened the door that led from the garage into the laundry room. I followed him past the washer and dryer and into the family room. The family room opened to the kitchen eating area, where my mom was killed.

  “I didn’t really know anything was wrong until we got right here and I saw them,” I said, pointing. “There.” Chills ran up my spine, and I started shaking a little. “That’s where they were. I think I stopped here. My hand over my mouth.”

  I closed my eyes again and wanted to scream just at the thought of it.

  “How were they lying?” Gillespie asked. He had stepped off to the side of the kitchen area.

  “My mom was on the floor in an awkward position. Not too far from the table. Her head was back and her mouth was open. She had been shot in the head. But what I really noticed was my dad. He was right over here.”

  I moved to where my dad had been and knelt down. “His shirt was covered in blood, darker here next to his rib cage where he had been shot. Chris started yelling things. I don’t remember what. But it was like ‘Call 911! Get a cold washcloth! Hurry up!’”

  As I described the events, I felt my blood pumping faster, and I started to get a little dizzy. I walked over to the sink, where I had gone that night to grab the washcloth. “It was so stupid—Chris telling me to get a washcloth. My parents were both lying there dead.”

  The night was coming back now in all its gory detail. “Chris put his ear next to my mother’s mouth and checked her pulse. I ran over and knelt down next to my dad.”<
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  As I talked, I acted it out again, kneeling on the carpet next to where my father had been.

  “I tilted his head back and started CPR,” I said. “His eyes were open a little, and it felt like he was breathing, but I didn’t know for sure, and I was just crazy with adrenaline. Chris kind of pushed me aside and told me to press the washcloth against the wound. Chris started doing CPR. and I can’t even remember. . . . I think the washcloth didn’t seem big enough, so I ripped off my shirt and pressed that into my dad’s side. My hands were covered with blood all the way up my wrists.”

  I sat down and stopped for a moment. I had to take a break. I saw Justice sitting at the back door and Gillespie standing next to the island in the middle of the kitchen. But the room had become a blur. I was losing focus. I tilted my head back and took a few deep breaths.

  “Was the back door open or closed?” Gillespie asked.

  I held up my hand. “No more questions for a second,” I said. The words came out a little garbled. I couldn’t think about this right now.

  “Did Chris act surprised? Did he scream when he saw the bodies?”

  I couldn’t deal with Gillespie’s questions anymore. The room was spinning and getting darker. I lay down on my side. Justice started barking on the porch, clawing at the door.

  “Do you remember anybody looking in from the back porch? Do you remember any noises upstairs? Do you remember . . . ?”

  The questions no longer concerned me, mere static that merged into the barks from the porch, my whole thought process spinning out of control. It felt like I was falling into a deep well and couldn’t reach the end of the darkness. I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. Anything to make the room stop spinning. Anything to calm the noises in my head.

  I sensed that perhaps Gillespie was kneeling over me now, his face inches away. So close that I could smell the alcohol on his breath. “Can you hear me?”

  I tried to respond, but nothing came out.

  “Good night, Jamie,” Gillespie said.