by Linda Ladd
“We found a cell phone at Mikey’s crime scene, too. What kind of drugs are you talking about?”
“Sodium pentothal or sodium amytal. Maybe even a posthypnotic suggestion is a viable option, but like I said, all that’s pretty tricky stuff to pull off. But it’s been documented that highly experienced hypnotherapists have made their patients do things they wouldn’t normally do.”
“You’re talking about a truth serum type thing?”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever done anything like that?”
“On occasion I’ve used hypnotherapy and found it useful, but I don’t like doing it. It’s playing around with people’s subconscious minds and I think that’s dangerous.”
“Is that why I’m always hanging around with you? You gave me some kinda posthypnotic suggestion to make me do whatever you want?”
He gave a little laugh. “I doubt if you’re exactly highly suggestible material, because unfortunately, you don’t always do what I want. But who knows? Some people are very much so. Others nobody could hypnotize if they tried for a year. I think you’re probably in the latter.”
“Do you really use hypnotherapy in your practice?”
“Like I said, I don’t like to and I’m not expert at it, but there are instances where it has worked with a patient when nothing else has.”
While I was thinking about that and the ramifications of what Black was suggesting, my cell phone played its catchy little Latin tune. Bud calling. His voice was all hurried and excited, which instantly sent a chill through me.
“Where the hell are you, Claire? You gotta get back here fast! Where are you?”
Now I was the one frowning. “I’m on my way home with Black. What’s going on?”
“The fire chief just called the station and said some girl’s threatenin’ to commit suicide at Bagnell Dam. They said she’s standin’ in one of those kiddie swimmin’ pools filled up with gasoline and holdin’ a cigarette lighter. She’s threatenin’ to burn herself up. They’ve cleared the traffic and are tryin’ to talk her down, but it’s a standoff. She says it’s gotta be you she talks to, so you’ve gotta get here before she gets tired of waitin’.”
“Oh, crap, who is it?”
“Nobody knows yet. How soon can you get here?”
I turned to Black. “How long till we get home?”
“Ten minutes, I guess. Why?”
“Bud, it’s gonna be at least ten minutes. Can they hold her off that long?”
“Hurry, Claire, this is serious shit. Charlie says the KY3 news cameras were here to film a story on that houseboat accident that happened the other day and are already down there and set up to catch it all for the six o’clock news. Even Steve Grant’s down there.”
Steve Grant was the most famous newscaster in Springfield, a handsome, silver-haired man and a real seasoned pro. I felt a little better. He wasn’t going to do or say anything stupid, that much was for sure. “Is there someplace we can put down around there?”
“I guess we’ll have to clear a parkin’ lot. I’m almost there now. Look for me, and I’ll wave you in. I just hope to God we can stop this thing.”
“You sure nobody knows who she is?”
“All I know is that she’s young. Tell Black to open up on it or we’re gonna have another dead body on our hands.”
I hung up and said, “How fast will this thing go?”
“Now you’re talking, baby,” Black answered.
As it turned out, Black’s helicopter could go pretty damn fast. Black so liked speed in his toys. We flew home in record time, and I explained the situation to him along the way, but time was running out when we finally reached Bagnell Dam in under ten minutes and took a quick circle overhead, looking for the landing zone. I picked out a small blue car on the shoulder at the intersection just before the dam and saw the girl standing at the rear of it. The scene was surrounded by police cars, officers shielded behind open doors. A fire truck was just pulling in. One KY3 satellite truck was there, eagerly filming everything. Not good, not good at all
A second later, I saw Bud in the center of an empty parking lot about half a block away. He was waving both arms at us, so I pointed him out to Black and said through the headset. “Take us down over there. Can you see Bud?”
“Yeah. Here goes. Looks like we made it in time.”
Black took us down like he was maneuvering a compact car into a parking space. He was a helluva good pilot, and he should be. He had piloted choppers in the Special Services. He’d let that slip out once when he was half asleep, and I suspect he had put down in some zones hotter than this one, and more than once.
As soon as we touched down, I opened my door and jumped out, not waiting for Black to switch off the rotors. Bud met me at the edge of the parking lot and we both sprinted toward the standoff. Charlie was hunkered behind his white SUV where it was parked sideways in the street. He had a bullhorn in his hand.
“Thank God you’re here,” he snapped at me. “Who the hell is this kid? Nobody can get an damned ID on her. Do you think she’s got a weapon? And why the hell does she want to talk to you?”
“I don’t know. Let me see if I recognize her.” Peering over the top of the car, I recognized her, all right. It was Cleo, the sweet young girl I had interviewed at Oak Haven. What the hell was going on?
I hunkered down beside Charlie. “Her name’s Cleo. I interviewed her up at Oak Haven clinic on the Murphy case.”
“Why’s she doing this?”
“I don’t know. She was all right when I talked to her. I doubt if she’s got any kind of weapon, other than that cigarette lighter.”
“Well, that’s one too many. Get on this horn and talk her outta burning herself to a fuckin’ crisp.”
Reluctantly, I took the horn. Sucking in a deep breath, I tried to calm my racing heart, then stood up and said, “Hey, Cleo. It’s me, Claire Morgan. What’s up with all this?”
Silence. Then the girl looked in my direction. She called out, “Is that really you, Detective Morgan?”
“Yeah. I’m right here. What’s the problem? I can help you, whatever it is. You don’t have to do this.”
Cleo was standing in a small blue plastic kiddie swimming pool, all right, one with little swimming goldfish painted all over it. I’d seen the exact one at Wal-Mart, out front with the baskets of blooming summer flowers. Now I could see the gasoline sloshing around her ankles when she moved. Three red metal gas cans sat on the back of her raised hatch. She had a Bic lighter in her right hand. It was yellow. In her other hand, she held a cell phone to her ear. It was yellow, too. She was talking to somebody. Oh, God, this was not gonna turn out good. I could feel it in my bones. I could feel it, and I didn’t want to feel it. But I knew, I knew, and it showed in my voice.
“Cleo, come on over here and talk to me. Nobody’s gonna hurt you. Nobody’s gonna put you in jail, or anything like that. I promise you. You don’t wanna do this. Let me help you. I can help you, if you’ll let me.”
My words echoed a little through the horn, video cameras rolled, everybody held their breaths. Cleo didn’t say anything for a while, but seemed to be listening to the person at the other end of the line. I sure hoped it was somebody who loved her and could talk her down. A moment later, while we all watched in frozen fear, Cleo suddenly threw the cell phone into the gasoline sloshing around her feet. She bent quickly and held the lighter down next to the gasoline.
“No, Cleo, no, don’t do it!” I yelled but she did it anyway.
The lighter flared orange, and then there was a huge whoosh and roar as the gasoline ignited, and then her terrible shrieks as the fire engulfed her alive. The firefighters were ready, and they got their hoses on her almost at once but not before the flame reached the car’s gas tank. The following explosion rocked us all off our feet. I fell to the ground on my knees and shut my eyes, not wanting to see what was left of poor little, friendly, likable, freckle-faced Cleo. God help us, we were living in a nightmare.
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br /> Here Comes Trouble
The next experiment Tee tried was something called a false memory implant. He’d read about it in some books and decided that he’d try it on his other girlfriend, Orchid. She was always teasing him with sex and stuff. She’d be a good candidate. Their session went along much the same way Blossom’s did. She was easily hypnotized, too, and it didn’t take long to put her under. He decided to use the same technique that he’d read about in his research.
“Orchid, I want you to go back, far back, when you were a little girl, just six years old. Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
He was getting better at this every time he tried it, and it was turning out to be fairly easy. He was going to have to try something more challenging in the future.
“Tell me where you are.”
“I’m in my house. In my bedroom with my sister.”
“What are you doing?”
“Daddy’s reading us a bedtime story.”
“What story?”
“Cinderella.”
He smiled to himself. Now to wreak havoc in her little head. “Do you remember what happened next? When Daddy took you out to the shed?”
“No. He’s just reading the book. Then he’ll kiss us good night and go up to his bedroom.”
“No, he takes you to the shed and does terrible things to you. Don’t you remember that?”
“No.”
“Think about it. That’s where he beats you with his big black belt and touches you in private places. Try to see it.”
“I don’t see it.”
“You are lying in bed listening to his story. Your sister goes to sleep, and then he takes your hand and helps you stand up, and then he picks you up and carries you outside. You must remember it now. He carries you out to the shed and that’s where he molests you.”
“He molests me.”
“That’s right. That’s where he touches you and beats you with his belt. You can see it now, if you try. He is sliding his belt out of his belt loops and then he makes you lean over this old rickety green card table. You can see it happening now, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Always, remember, Orchid, bad things happen in sheds. Always. Repeat after me, bad things happen in sheds.”
“Bad things happen in sheds.”
“Whenever you hear that phrase, bad things happen in sheds, you will remember how your father took you out there and beat and molested you. You will remember the pain of the strap biting into your flesh and the way he touched you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Three days later, he decided to test out his very first false memory implant during a regular group session. The doctor was listening to everybody tell how their day was going. Tee decided to get things fired up a bit. What they needed was some excitement around this place.
When it was his turn to speak, he said, “I remember there was this old shed in our backyard. I was really afraid to go down there because it was in the edge of the woods and had a bunch of spiderwebs and grapevines growing up all over it. Our handyman always worked there, repairing furniture and stuff.”
“Why do you think you were afraid, Tee?” the doctor asked.
“Bad things happen in sheds,” Tee answered, not looking at Orchid.
He didn’t have long to wait for the fireworks to start. Orchid let out a little surprised groan, and then her face crumpled with pain and fear, and then she burst into tears. Everybody looked at her as if she’d gone nuts, but she wept inconsolably into her palms and kept saying, “Daddy molested me in the shed, he did, he did, I just remembered it. He hurt me.”
The doctor stood up, very alarmed, but said quietly, “Orchid, try to calm down. There’s no need to be so upset.”
Orchid wasn’t listening to his platitudes. “Yes, he did it, yes, he did it, I remember it now, I can see it. I can see his big black belt and feel his hands on me.” Her tears increased to near hysteria until the doctor had to call a nurse to take her back to her room and give her a sedative.
Somehow Tee kept a straight face, but inside, he was laughing his head off. Triumphant, too. He had done it; he had actually done it. He’d gotten inside her head and changed things all around. He was God Almighty. He really was.
SIXTEEN
On the day Dr. Boyce Collins and I agreed to have our interview at Oak Haven Clinic, I arrived thirty minutes early and solo, hoping to get a shot at snooping around inside his office before he got out of his therapy session. Bud was back home, unhappily handling the press morons for the sheriff, who were all insanely obsessed with Cleo’s terrible suicide at the dam and demanding answers and now digging up facts on Mikey, too, but luckily not the girl in the oven, at least, not yet. I had tried, but unsuccessfully, to block out that picture of Cleo holding that lighter to the gas each time it rose up in its leaping flames and agonized screams inside my head. So I did that again now, and concentrated on why I was here at Oak Haven Clinic, armed and ready for battle. Mary, the contrary receptionist, remembered me and trusted me not to snoop, I guess, because she directed me down to Collins’s office and went back to her detective novel. Wrong move. A snooper I am, and from way back, too. Trained in the art, even.
So all by my lonesome and free to roam wild, I made my way down the quiet corridor to the designated office, taking a gander into the door window of every therapy room I passed along the way. To me, they looked a lot like advanced college classes, with kids sitting at individual desks, drinking sodas or bottles of water and doodling on five-section notebooks while their teachers droned on. It was hard to imagine they were all emotionally challenged in one way or another. They looked so normal. But so had Cleo. I shut that down again and proceeded on.
Collins’s office was unlocked, lucky, lucky me, and deserted, at that. I went in like I had every right to, which I actually did, shut the door, checked my watch, and dug in with relish and gusto. But first, I checked all the bookshelves for the obligatory hidden cameras and found several tucked away, here and there around the room. Filming private therapy sessions seemed quite in vogue, but I couldn’t completely condemn them, not after hearing Black agree the films were both necessary and helpful to most shrinks.
So I moseyed to my heart’s content, trying to look innocuous and slightly bored by having to wait, just in case there was a camera running that I didn’t locate or a two-way mirror and/or picture frame disguised as something else. Yes, I am getting big-time paranoid. I just had this itchy hunch about Boycie Boy that would not go away.
Along one wall, there was this big glass case filled with lots of trophies and awards. Some went as far back as high school and college, track meets and swim team awards. There were several MVP player awards, not a few Student Athlete plaques, but mostly there were tall gold statues with either a swimmer, golfer, or baseball player swinging a shiny gold bat perched on the top. The guy was proud of his athleticism, proud of his body, too. And he should be, the guy was buff, not that I usually noticed things like that.
Truth is, I hate guys who are too girly-man in the way they strut around and thrust out their molded pecs, especially the ones who wear those thin wife-beater shirts just to show off their bod. Black is the exception to that rule, of course, not that he’d be caught dead in a wife-beater undershirt. Actually, I like his chest in anything he wears, or doesn’t wear. I had stuck a small tape recorder in my jeans pocket, just to see if Boycie would object to being taped for an eventual court trial, I hoped. Maybe if he did agree, Black could listen to it and verify Collins was a well-educated, psychiatric but psychopathic, fruitcake.
Strolling nonchalantly around behind his desk, I quickly checked for the on-off button, and, of course, found it. I guess all the offices were set up the same way, a fact to file away. The desk was quite orderly, paper stacked in neat piles or in stacked wire baskets to the right of a telephone with three lines, none blinking. Nobody ever seemed to be calling Oak Haven. I picked up the receiver and punched through the caller
ID list of incoming calls. There was one from me, but I had blocked my number out. There was a couple to the Murphy residence in Jefferson City, which I found more than interesting. I’d have to pump my man Collins for details about that connection.
On the other side of the room was a very large, rectangular fish aquarium with two chairs sitting directly in front of it. Odd decorating touch but no doubt a Collins-inspired relaxation technique. There was some kind of strobe effect flashing periodically behind the fish, very slowly and in various colors, and I wondered if it gave his black mollies and the single red Chinese fighting fish some headaches or nervous gills. I checked to see if they were swimming sideways or around in circles in need of therapy. They all were bobbing near the top and looking bored. So was I. Maybe they were just waiting to get fed.
Sitting down in one of the deep swivel armchairs covered in navy velour, I stared at the flashing lights a while, analyzing if I felt all goofy and hypnotized, and whatnot. I didn’t. Hypnotism intrigued me, however, always had, and Boyce Collins had delineated some pretty far-out ideas of mind control in that book of his. I’d skimmed through it briefly and found it interesting as all get-out, I had to admit. I was mainly curious about just what could or could not be done while a patient was in a trance.
The LAPD departmental shrink had wanted to put me under and examine my subconscious after the incident that had taken Zach’s life and injured Harve, but I had refused, resigned, and left LA instead. For some reason, I’d always had this penchant for being in command of my senses. I’d toyed with the idea of letting Black hypnotize me, now that I knew he did that sort of thing, thinking he might be able to clear out some of the grief I’ve got hiding out so deep inside my gray matter. Then it occurred to me he might make me into a Stepford Wife who followed his commands twenty-four/ seven. Probably not, he obviously didn’t like compliant women, but who knows? Sometimes he got very frustrated with my independent streak and desire to do my own thing and live in my own house.
There were several sections of the room that I definitely felt were hypnotic-inducing booths, areas, mind twisters, or what have you. One was hidden behind a screen, a movable, padded wall, the operative word being padded. I walked around behind it and discovered a rather big rectangular light box attached to the wall. It was not turned on. The chair sitting right in front of it had a taller back than the fish tank ones, and was a deeply cushioned, dark brown suede rocker. On a low white table in front of the chair was a eighteen-inch laptop computer with a set of lightweight earphones plugged into it. Okay, I am bad, too curious, all that rot. I know that well.