Enter Evil

by Linda Ladd

  Collins then looked taken aback but didn’t show it long. “You’ve a tendency to be rather blunt, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. Blunt’s my middle name.”

  “Okay, want to know the truth? I’d ask you out for a cup of tea, if I didn’t respect Nicholas Black so much.”

  Wanna know the truth, I thought, I wouldn’t go out with you for all the cups of tea in China. Then I stopped a moment and considered why I was reacting to him so strongly and negatively. Then I remembered he was an obnoxious prick.

  “Well, I’m very flattered by your attentions, doctor. Now, can you tell me what kind of therapy you practiced on Mikey? Did you happen to use that newfangled gadget of yours sitting over there behind that screen with all the whistles and bells?”

  His narrow lips turned up on the edges, which might’ve been a smile, but this time his eyes didn’t follow suit. Oh, no, he probably didn’t want to take me out for a cup of tea anymore. Boo hoo, I’m crushed.

  “Actually, I did. He was a very good subject for both sound therapy and hypnotherapy. Easily induced into a trance. About thirty percent of subjects are very susceptible to hypnosis, you know.”

  “And what did you tell him once he was helpless and under your spell?”

  “He wasn’t exactly helpless and under my spell, but to answer your question, I asked him what was troubling him. In fact, it was a bit of a group effort. Mikey was one of the first patients we used my experimental techniques on. Dr. Young and I usually worked together, and Pete works with us most of the time, as well.”

  “I see.” So Happy Pete was involved, too, huh? I jotted down something to that effect on my notepad, then asked Collins, “Tell me how it works on a patient. Can you, you know, in plain layman’s English?”

  “Of course. Once Mikey was relaxed and in trance, we would ask him questions about his fears. We mentioned Sharon and left suggestions that she was happy where she was and that he should be happy for her and move on with his life, just as she was doing. It seemed to work. He acted fairly quickly and began dating other people.”

  “I see. Who did he date? Can you give me a name?”

  “Not really. I know he dated several Asian girls who worked in some theater over in Branson. He liked women of the Orient, thought they were beautiful. Can’t tell you anything about them, though. Maybe some of his friends here can tell you more.”

  “How many patients have agreed to talk with me?”

  “Just about all of them. Dr. Young and I both actively encouraged them to cooperate with you in any way they could. They were all very fond of Mikey. He was quite popular with his peers.”

  “Did he have any other friends that might be relevant to my case?”

  “Yes, actually, there is a woman in Branson that goes by the name Khur-Vay. She sold him those bracelets he liked to wear. He said he liked her, that she was a good friend, I do recall that.”

  That checked out with Khur-Vay’s story, but she was factoring in this case more and more. I played dumb. “Khur-Vay, you say. That’s an unusual name. What can you tell me about her?”

  “She was here for a time because she lost custody of a young child and couldn’t cope with it, but that was before I came aboard.”

  His words hit me like a plummeting brick, and I stared at him, making sure my expression didn’t change. Again, I was thinking how I’d lost a child, too, not in custody but forever, and so I’d had lots of practice burying those memories, had it down to a science, in fact.

  Collins paused briefly, then continued, “She was a different sort of woman than Mikey was usually interested in, a little older and wiser than Mikey, perhaps, but they really seemed to hit it off. She got on drugs, and the court gave full custody of her daughter to her husband and his new wife. She has no contact at all, and she blamed herself, refused to eat, almost perished from starvation before we got her here and in treatment. She was one of the best subjects on our light/sound wave therapy.” Looking at me, he went on, “Your little boy died, if I recall from the news accounts, so I’m sure you’ll understand how it can tear a person apart.”

  I stiffened but tried not to show it. People usually didn’t come right out and dredge up my broken heart, then thud a pickax into the center of it. I felt the ghost of Zachary coming in hard at me and this time I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to ask the next question. Collins just sat there, as if he knew what I was going through. As if he’d brought it up on purpose to distress me.

  “You’re telling me Khur-Vay’s therapy was successful?”

  “Oh, yes, she responded beautifully. She’s living a normal life and happily, I believe.”

  “She’s coping now with the absence of her child?”

  “Yes, for the last year, or so. She’s like a different woman.”

  “Can you explain how her therapy worked?”

  “Well, we gave her helpful suggestions to overcome her despair at not being able to see her daughter, you know, encouraged her to look at the child’s pictures and even set them out around the house, touch her belongings, talk about her to people who’d listen and understand. Most mothers find that extremely hard to do, you know. She responded beautifully to Pete. He’s a very caring individual.”

  Inside, I felt a quiver of fear at the mere thought of doing those things with Zach’s baby things. I tried to shake off the effect of where this conversation was going, but without much luck.

  Collins was still elaborating. “Basically, she needed to just face the facts and accept the loss. Of course, we have our own techniques to help her achieve those goals without undue suffering.” He stopped there, and I was glad he did. “Is Khur-Vay also involved in this case?”

  “I really can’t divulge the facts of our case, doctor. I can say she sold Mikey the bracelets he was wearing on the day he died.”

  “You are talking about the blue and white beads? I did notice that he began to wear lots of those things after he was here a while. There’s some kind of cultural tale behind all that, I believe. I’m sure Khur-Vay could tell you. Do you know where to find her? I think I have her address and could pave the way for your interview.”

  I wondered then why he wanted to know all that. Almost as if he wanted me to interview Khur-Vay. Very interesting and suspicious, but then again, I thrive on suspicions, that’s why I’m a detective. “I can find her if I need to.”

  Collins examined me with seemingly new interest. “It appears to me that you are doing an unnecessarily extensive investigation for a suicidal death. Is there more to this case than I know about?”

  As if I’d tell him something like that. “That seems to be the primary question, Dr. Collins.”

  “So we’re back to formal titles, I see.”

  “We were never anywhere else, Doctor.”

  “Again, I hope I haven’t made you angry.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good.”

  I didn’t really want to bring up the next subject, think about it, either, but I had to. “What about Cleo? Did you treat her?”

  For the first time, Collins looked sad, oh, so sad and morose. “That was horrible. I still can’t believe she did something so drastic.”

  “Not only did she do it, but she did it on live TV.”

  “I know. I had no forewarning that she was about to snap. She was doing very well.”

  “Not that well, it seems. Did you use your new techniques on her?”

  “No,” he said, but his slight hesitation before speaking alerted me that he was probably lying.

  “You sure about that?” I said.

  “Of course.”

  I still didn’t believe him. “A warrant will include her records, you understand that, don’t you? In case you decide to release them of your own cognizance because she’s now deceased, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “Would you mind to check and see if Dr. Young has a list of the patients willing to talk to me? My partner will come up later and interview them.”

  �
�Of course. I’ll have Mary give him the list when he arrives.”

  I stood up. Collins stood up.

  I said, “Thank you for your time, Doctor.”

  He said, “It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I wish I could be of more help.”

  “Well, you can, Doctor, now that you mention it. You can make me a copy of your office notes and any other information about your treatment of Mikey, including videotaped sessions and therapy files. Especially the light/sound therapy. That would be of great help.”

  He didn’t even look alarmed. “All right. I’ll see to it.”

  “Maybe I could take it with me when I leave. And Dr. Young’s files on Mikey as well?”

  “It’ll take more time than that to get these things together. As for Dr. Young’s files, I’ll have to check with him.”

  “I happen to have a warrant right here for all these things. Would you like to see it?”

  He gazed at me a moment. “Yes, I would.”

  I handed it over, and he glanced through it a second or two, then said, “I’ll have them faxed to your office or sent by FedEx as soon as they can be gathered and copied. Is that acceptable?”

  “That’ll be fine. Again, thanks for seeing me.”

  His phone rang, which gave me an opportunity to steal my bottle of Ozarka and ease myself outta there without further ado. The man had brought up Zach, and he had no right to do that. I didn’t want to think about that right now, couldn’t. And he’d called me Black’s latest squeeze. The guy ticked me off, all right.

  Here Comes Trouble

  His next project was a guy named Jeff. Jeff was using his real name, and he was a little bit of a smartass. Everybody liked him, though. Even Tee liked him. He was funny, made you laugh, in spite of yourself. Especially in group, but the doctor’s file on him said that he hid his pain behind laughter. His major problem was depression, maybe some kind of bipolar disorder. Jeff did have his high moments, that was for sure.

  Tee had chosen him because Jeff just loved to smoke weed. Even better, Jeff had a supplier out of the nearby university town of Columbia. Jeff and his supplier would meet out by the tennis courts in the dead of night and make their deals. More important, Tee had found out on the Net and in some of his reading, that cannabis helped intensify the suggestibility in willing subjects. And all Tee’s subjects were willing. Dying to be experimented on, even. They were getting mad because he didn’t choose them fast enough. Life was so good.

  At the moment, Jeff was lying on Tee’s bed, holding a roach clip and sucking in the pot with one long drag. He held it in as long as he could, then coughed. He had smoking dope down to an art, all right. It didn’t take him long to get high. Tee had his little exhaust fan in the window on reverse and it was drawing out the smell of the marijuana very nicely. The hall nurses rarely checked on him anymore, anyway, since he was such a model patient. He had most of them snowed.

  “Okay, Jeff, you ready to start?”

  “Yep. I’m feelin’ pretty fine.”

  Tee walked to the door. It was already locked and all was quiet outside, so he turned off the overhead lights. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. He picked up the strobe light he’d ordered after he’d read about it on the Internet. The World Wide Web was turning out to be just about the best thing that had ever happened to him. Some of the sites he visited were bogus, wannabe psychiatrists and such, sure, but lots of them weren’t. Lots of them were based on scientific theory. He’d even found training videotapes and DVDs about how to put people under hypnosis.

  His dad had given him a credit card in his own name for his last birthday, and even better, kept paying the bills because he still felt so guilty that his poor son had witnessed so many family tragedies. Like clockwork, his dad brought the whole bunch of siblings out every Sunday to visit Tee, but Tee found he had no desire to return home and live with them. He had his own personal little playground here with his own personal little playmates. Just like he’d seen on the latest DVD he’d watched, Tee said, “Okay, Jeff, I want you to focus your eyes on this strobe light after I turn out the lights.”

  “You got it, Tee.”

  Jeff’s file said he was quite suggestible, so Tee had some pretty high hopes for the guy. Jeff just might be the breakthrough he’d been waiting for. Tee was disappointed in his experiments with posthypnotic suggestions, and all four of his attempts had failed. But now, with Jeff, and with the addition of the marijuana, he just might get lucky.

  “Lie back and relax, Jeff.”

  “I can’t get more relaxed than this, man.” Jeff giggled like a girl.

  “All right, here we go. Remember, watch the light. Keep your eyes on it. Don’t blink and don’t close your eyes.”

  “Gotcha, man.”

  The bedside lamp was beside Tee, and he reached over and switched it off, then hit the button on the strobe. He watched Jeff’s face in the blinking illumination and the way his pupils were dilated. Jeff was stoned, anybody could tell that, so Tee just sat there and waited. In a little while, Jeff really zonked out and then his eyes suddenly closed.

  Waiting a minute or so, Tee turned off the strobe and sat there in total darkness, hoping everything would go down right, for once. He finally said, “Jeff, can you hear me?”

  “Mm hum.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Good.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Look around, find a place to go. Someplace that means something to you.”

  Jeff lay still and did not answer.

  Tee frowned. “Where are you now?”

  “I’m in the barn.”

  “What barn?”

  “The barn.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  “Because it’s safe in here.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Nine.”

  Tee sat straighter. Excitement started welling up inside him, then rushed into his head and almost made him dizzy. He had regressed this kid, by God. Without even trying. Wow, this was gonna be a real breakthrough.

  “What are you doing in the barn?”

  “Just kneeling down and hiding behind a hay bale.”

  “You alone in there?”

  “Yeah. The others are up at the house.”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Smoking pot.”

  So that’s where Jeff got his love of drugs, Tee thought, not to mention his capacity to use them. “You don’t like that, I bet.”

  “No. They make me smoke it, make me do stuff I don’t wanna do.”

  “Who does?”

  “My mom and her boyfriend, Jazz.”

  “What’d they make you do?”

  “Touch them, get in bed with them. I don’t like it.”

  God, what a sick world this is, thought Tee. Even poor Jeff was sexually abused. Was that kind of perversion this prevalent? Good God, it made his house and friggin’ family look like the Brady Bunch.

  “Do they ever come looking for you?”

  “No. I hide too well. And they’re too stoned to remember me, after a while.”

  “Tell me about your mom.”

  “She’s a junkie and shoots whiskey all day. She brings men home and they go to bed, then they give her money and she buys more dope.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  “It makes me feel like I hate her guts.”

  Tee leaned back in his chair and thought about the situation for a while. He knew by reading Jeff’s file that his mother had died one night while Jeff was with her in the house. He knew by looking at Jeff’s wrists once when they were eating together in the cafeteria that Jeff had scars on the inside of his wrists. That seemed to be the favorite suicide method around this place. Nobody was creative anymore.

  “Did you try to kill yourself?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I took my mom’s razor and slit my wrists.”

  “But you didn’t d
ie?”

  “That’s right. But she did.”

  “Who did?”

  “My mom.”

  “How did she die?”

  “I killed her.”

  Tee’s jaw actually dropped. Damn, he had not expected that one. He could barely contain his excitement. His voice almost shook with it.

  “You killed your mom?”

  “That’s right. I cut her wrists down to the bone right before I cut my own. She didn’t deserve to live after what she put me through.”

  “How come you didn’t die?”

  “The DFS lady happened to show up because the neighbor lady called and said they were beating me again. I told her that mom had cut me and then herself.”

  “You’re pretty clever.”

  “Yeah. Nobody believes I have it in me, but I do.”

  “What do you have in you?”

  “Evil. Pure evil. I like it. I liked killing her. I’d like to kill some more people.”

  Whoa, man alive, was this ever getting good. Maybe Jeff would turn out to be an assassin. Maybe he’d be Jeff the Impaler. Better yet, maybe he’d be Tee’s own personal assassin. He thought about that a minute, then said, “Do you really like to kill people?”

  “Oh, yeah. It gets me off.”

  “Then I want you to kill somebody for me. Will you do that?”

  “Sure.”

  A little chill ripped up Tee’s spine. Jeff’s response to the idea of murder was as cold as ice. Who would’ve known? Good old friendly Jeff was a killer. But who around here could Tee have him kill? Who was expendable?

  It came to him then, and he smiled. “I want you to kill that nurse named Maggie, who’s always on my case. You know the one with bleached-blond hair in a ponytail. The one who wears the bifocals with the red frames. She hates my guts, and vice versa. I want you to wait until she goes to the break room at the back of the dormitory building after her shift and picks up her purse and coat. I want you to wait until she comes out of the break room onto that balcony, then I want you to shove her down those steep steps leading to the parking lot. Then it will look like an accident, like she tripped and fell.”

  “Okay.”

  And that was that. Leaning back in his chair, he thought about what might go wrong. His studies had alerted him that the experts believed that people really wouldn’t do anything under hypnosis that they didn’t want to do or was against their moral fiber. This was a real lucky break for Tee. Jeff was obviously a natural-born killer. Jeff wanted to kill, liked it. But would the posthypnotic suggestion work? He decided to give it a trigger, then lay back and see what happened.