Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

  “You used the general word ‘death.’ Are you implying that it wasn’t suicide?”

  “I’m not implying anything. I’m just saying that what we know now leaves the possibility open that his death may not have been ‘suicide’ in the normal sense of the word. But hold on a minute.” He raised his hand in the traffic-cop “stop” gesture. “Let me finish the statement.” He looked back down at the binder.

  “Our investigation of the Gall death has revealed certain significant facts. The fact that he was hypnotized in the recent past by Dr. Richard Hammond . . . the fact that he experienced a particular nightmare repeatedly in the week preceding his death . . . the fact that the fatal weapon found with his body was similar to a weapon he reported seeing in his nightmare . . . and the fact that details of that nightmare, which he committed to writing, would appear to have been acted out in the taking of his life. These facts alone would be sufficient to justify a fuller investigation. But it has now become apparent that the case is even more extensive.”

  He turned over a page in the binder, cleared his throat, and continued. “We’ve learned that three additional individuals took their own lives the same way as Ethan Gall, with a similar pattern of previous experiences. These individuals were also hypnotized by Richard Hammond. They all developed incapacitating nightmares, and all three killed themselves in a manner seemingly consistent with the content of those nightmares.”

  He closed the binder and looked at his audience. “At this time, I’ll take your questions.”

  Several of the attendees spoke at once.

  Again he raised his hand. “One at a time. You, in the first row.”

  A female voice: “What are you accusing Dr. Hammond of doing?”

  “We haven’t made any accusations. We’re seeking Dr. Hammond’s cooperation.” He pointed at another reporter.

  A male voice: “Are you reclassifying the Gall death as a homicide?”

  “It’s being classified simply as a suspicious death.”

  Same male voice: “What possibilities other than suicide are you looking at?”

  “We’re not currently focused on possibilities other than suicide, but on how and why the suicide occurred.”

  A female voice: “What did you mean when you said that it might not have been suicide in the ‘normal sense’ of the term?”

  “Well, let’s say, just hypothetically, that a powerful form of hypnotic suggestion influenced a person to do something they would not have done of their own accord. That would not be a normal action. It would not be done in the ‘normal sense’ of that action.”

  Several voices were raised at once, competing in volume. One astounded male voice predominated: “Are you claiming that Richard Hammond used hypnosis to bring about Gall’s suicide, as well as the suicides of three other patients?”

  Utterances of surprise and skepticism spread around the room.

  Fenton raised his hand. “Let’s keep it orderly, okay? I’m not claiming anything. What I’m sharing with you is one hypothesis. There may be others.”

  His most recent questioner continued, “Are you planning to arrest Dr. Hammond for . . . for what crime?”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We hope to obtain Dr. Hammond’s voluntary cooperation. We need to know what, if anything, happened in those hypnosis sessions that could explain the nightmares his patients later experienced and the ritualistic suicides that ensued.”

  Two female voices at once: “Ritualistic?”

  A male voice: “What ritualistic elements were involved? Are we talking satanic?”

  Another male voice: “Can you give us the identities of the other three victims?”

  A female voice: “Is ‘victims’ the right term for suicides?”

  Fenton raised his voice. “Hey, please, some order here. As for the term ‘victims’—I think that’s a reasonable term under the circumstances. We’ve got four people who all killed themselves in pretty much the same way with a weapon they dreamt about after they’d been hypnotized. This is obviously more than a coincidence. Regarding the ritualistic aspect, all I can divulge is that the weapon used in each case was unusual and, according to experts we’ve consulted, highly significant.”

  A male voice: “If your theory is correct—that these victims were put under some kind of hypnotic spell that resulted in suicide—what would the criminal charge be? Are we talking about some new kind of murder?”

  “The answer to that will be determined as we go along.”

  The questions went on for half an hour. Fenton showed no impatience with this. If anything, he seemed to be urging the reporters on—an unusual behavior, Gurney thought, for a stolid, conservative-looking cop.

  Finally he announced that the briefing was over.

  “Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your cooperation. You can pick up copies of my statement on your way out.”

  Chairs were pushed back, people began standing, and the video ended.

  Gurney sat at his desk for several long minutes, astounded.

  He picked up a pen and began jotting down some questions of his own. When he was halfway down the page he remembered that there was still more material in the file Jane had assembled—Richard Hammond’s own statement to the press, plus examples of the media coverage that Fenton’s briefing had generated.

  Gurney opened the folder again, took out a handful of news website printouts, and riffled through them. There was no need to read the complete text of any of these more recent articles. The insinuating headlines told the story.

  THE DEATH WHISPERER

  DID THIS DOCTOR TALK HIS PATIENTS INTO KILLING THEMSELVES?

  POLICE LINK CONTROVERSIAL THERAPIST TO RITUAL SUICIDES

  COULD A DREAM BE A MURDER WEAPON?

  Before he was halfway through the pile of printouts, Gurney put them aside and leaned back in his chair. He found himself fascinated by the underlying facts and baffled by the aggressively public approach being taken by Gil Fenton—which represented not only the embrace of a wild hypothesis but also a departure from NYSP communications policies.

  There was one final item in the folder, a single typewritten page with a long heading: Notice to the Press: Statement by Dr. Richard Hammond Regarding the Investigation into the Deaths of Christopher Wenzel, Leo Balzac, Steven Pardosa, and Ethan Gall.

  Gurney read with increasing interest:

  Serious allegations were made recently to the news media by a representative of New York State law enforcement concerning the deaths of the four individuals named above. These allegations are reckless and misleading.

  This statement will be my first, final, and only response. I will not be drawn into the charade being staged by incompetent police investigators. I will not cooperate with them in any way until they cease their malicious campaign of character assassination. Nor will I communicate with representatives of the news media whose embrace of the libelous insinuations of the police are proof of their amoral appetite for sensation.

  In short, I will neither participate in, nor publicly debate, nor devote my resources to the obstruction of this farcical investigation and media soap opera. I will hire no attorney, no PR firm, no spokesperson, no defenders of any kind.

  Let me be perfectly clear. Suggestions or insinuations that I contributed in any way to the deaths of four individuals are absolutely false. Let me repeat and underscore the simple truth. The deaths of Christopher Wenzel, Leo Balzac, Steven Pardosa, and Ethan Gall were tragic events in which I have played no role whatsoever. They deserve a full and objective investigation, not this degrading circus initiated by malicious police personnel and propagated by a vile news industry.

  —Richard Hammond, PhD

  Gurney found the statement remarkable for its bravado—especially since it was authored by the same man who had been paralyzed with fear over the highly unlikely possibility of there being a dead body in the trunk of his car.

  CHAPTER 8

  From Gurney’s point of view, the Palm Beach Po
lice Department was just the right size—big enough to have its own detective bureau, small enough to ensure that his contact there would be aware of the key points of any investigation that was underway. Best of all, Lieutenant Bobby Becker owed him a favor. Less than two years earlier, with Gurney’s considerable assistance, Becker had managed to put away a vicious serial murderer.

  Becker took his call immediately, his gentle drawl fully deployed. “Detective Gurney. What a surprise!” The way he inflected that final word made it sound like it wasn’t a surprise at all. “A pleasure to hear from you. I do hope all is well?”

  “I’m good. How about you?”

  “Can’t complain. Or, I should say, I prefer not to complain. Complainin’ is a waste of the time we could be better usin’ to eliminate the causes of our complaints.”

  “Christ, Becker, you sound more good ole boy than ever.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. It is, after all, my native tongue. A Floridian born and bred. We are outnumbered now almost to extinction. Rare birds in our own tree. What can I do for you?”

  Gurney hesitated for a moment, searching for the right words. “I’ve been asked to get involved in a case that has roots in a number of jurisdictions. One of them is Palm Beach.”

  “Let me take a wild guess. Might you be talking about the ‘Deadly Doctor’ case? That’s what they’re calling it down here—when they’re not calling it the ‘Fatal Dreams’ case.

  “That’s the one. You’re not by any chance the CIO on the Wenzel piece of it?”

  “No, sir, I’m not. Young fellow at the next desk caught that one, thought everything was cool when the ME signed off on probable suicide. Course that all went to hell once the Reverend Bowman Cox dropped by to tell us it was murder, and the killer was Satan.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t know about that?”

  “I was told that Wenzel confided to a local minister that he’d been having nightmares ever since he’d seen a Dr. Hammond up in Wolf Lake. And after Wenzel showed up dead, the minister told you guys about it. Then one of you called Hammond, but nothing really came of that conversation, until Hammond called back a week later to tell you he’d just heard from a detective in New Jersey about a second suicide. That’s the way I was told the story—no reference to any murder committed by Satan.”

  “How are you getting your information?”

  “In a roundabout way.”

  “You’re not a trusted confidant of Senior Investigator Gilbert Fenton?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Tell me more about Satan.”

  “Well . . . that’s not an easy thing for me to do. Our chief of detectives has made a request that details not already reported in the press be kept in the house. I did agree to abide by that request, word of honor. However, Reverend Cox is under no such constraint. I understand he can be reached at the Church of Christian Victory down in Coral Dunes. The reverend is a man of strong convictions, with an equally strong desire to share them.”

  “Thanks, Bobby. I appreciate this.”

  “Glad to help. Now, maybe you can answer a question of mine? Actually, it’s a question on the minds of many down here.”

  “Ask it.”

  “What in the name of holy magnolia is that hog’s ass, Fenton, up to?”

  That launched them into a long discussion of the unconventional aspects of Fenton’s approach to the press. Becker was particularly unhappy with what he perceived to be the BCI investigator’s assumption of the role of law enforcement spokesman on all aspects of the case and his grandstanding with the national media, which resulted in the detectives in the other jurisdictions losing control of the flow of information and finding themselves in awkward positions with local reporters.

  And then there was the matter of the criminal hypothesis Fenton was promoting, which Becker considered “unprosecutable and sure-as-hell unprovable.” Which brought Gurney around to a question that troubled him more than Fenton’s actual behavior:

  Who in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation—or elsewhere in the New York State Police hierarchy—had signed off on his approach to the case? And why did they?

  Someone above him had to be on board. Fenton, after all, exuded the essence of career cop. This dour, close-to-retirement law enforcer would be constitutionally incapable of acting outside a chain of command.

  So whose game was this?

  And what was the prize for the victor?

  For now, all Gurney and Becker had were questions. But the fact that they both were bothered by the same questions provided a measure of reassurance.

  Becker ended the call with an afterthought on the Reverend Cox. “To prepare you for any contact you may have with the good minister, I should tell you that he bears a keen resemblance to a large, degenerate bird of prey.”

  GURNEY’S CALL TO THE PHONE NUMBER ON THE WEBSITE OF THE Coral Dunes Church of Christian Victory resulted in a trip through an automated answering system that led him eventually to the voicemail of Bowman Cox himself.

  He left his name and cell number, explaining that he was one of the detectives looking into the quadruple suicide case and was hoping that the reverend might be able to provide some additional insight into Christopher Wenzel’s state of mind and perhaps share his own theory of the case.

  Less than five minutes after he put down his phone, he got a return call. The voice was all Southern-syrupy. “Detective Gurney, this is Bowman Cox. I just received your message. If your area code is any indication, you are located in upstate New York. Am I correct?”

  “Yes, sir, you are. Thank you for calling me back.”

  “I believe that things happen for a reason. I got your message moments after you left it, because I was about to leave my hotel room and I wanted to check my phone mail first. And where do you think my hotel room is?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It’s where you might least expect it. In the belly of the beast.”

  “Sir?”

  “The belly of the beast—New York City. We are here to defend Christmas from those who hate the very idea of it, who object to its very existence.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you a Christian, sir?”

  It wasn’t a question he would normally answer. But this wasn’t a normal situation.

  “I am.” He didn’t add that his own version of Christianity was probably as far from Bowman Cox’s as Walnut Crossing was from Coral Dunes.

  “That’s good to hear. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to talk to you about Christopher Wenzel.”

  “And his nightmare?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how all these deaths have come to be?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where exactly are you, Detective, right now, as we speak?”

  “In my home in Walnut Crossing in upstate New York.”

  For several seconds, Cox said nothing. The only sound Gurney could hear over the phone was the soft tapping of fingers on a keyboard. He waited.

  “Ah, there you are. Convenient things, these instant maps. Well, now, here’s a proposition for you. My feeling is that this conversation is too important for the phone. Why don’t we meet, you and I, face-to-face?”

  “When and where?”

  There was another silence, longer this time, with more keyboard tapping.

  “Looks to me like Middletown would be a perfect middle point between us. There’s a diner on Route 17 called Halfway There. I feel that the Lord is pointing the way for us. What do you say—shall we accept his suggestion?”

  Gurney glanced at his phone screen to check the time. It was 12:13 PM. If he got to the diner at 1:45 and spent an hour with Cox, he could be back home by 4:15. That would leave plenty of time to resolve any open issues regarding the following morning’s trip to Wolf Lake.

  “Fine, sir, I can meet you there at 1:45.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The drive down through the Catskills to Middletown was familiar and uneventful
. The sprawling parking lot of the Halfway There diner was equally familiar. He and Madeleine had pulled in there for coffee many times during the year they’d spent searching for a country house.

  Fewer than a third of the tables in the dining area were taken. As Gurney scanned the room, a hostess approached with a menu and an overly lipsticked smile.

  “I think I see who I’m meeting here,” said Gurney, his eyes on a self-important-looking man sitting by himself in one of the four chairs at a corner table.

  She shrugged, handed him the menu, and walked away.

  By the time Gurney got to the table, the man was standing, well over six feet tall, with his right hand outstretched. He engaged Gurney in an enthusiastic handshake, while raising his other hand to display an iPad. “I have been doing my research, Detective, and I must tell you that I am mightily impressed.” A broad salesman’s smile revealed a row of expensively capped teeth.

  On the screen of the tablet, Gurney’s eye caught part of an old photo of himself next to the word “Supercop”—the pumped-up headline of an article New York magazine had run a number of years earlier, featuring the string of arrests and convictions that by some calculations had made him the most successful homicide detective in the history of the NYPD. He’d found the article embarrassing, but sometimes it served a useful function, and he suspected this might be one of those times.

  Gurney guessed the reverend was sixty and doing everything he could to look forty.

  “I feel privileged to meet you, Detective. Please have a seat.”

  They sat across from each other. A waitress with a weary smile came over. “You gentlemen know what you want, or you need more time?”

  “Maybe just a little time for me to get acquainted with this remarkable man, then we’ll be ready to order. That meet with your approval, David? If I may call you David?”

  “That’s fine.”

  The Reverend Bowman Cox was wearing a navy-blue jogging suit and a stainless steel Rolex—a model Gurney had seen advertised somewhere for $12,000. His skin was a yellowish tan, unnaturally tight and free of any wrinkles, his hair unnaturally brown and free of any gray. A rapacious hawklike nose and a combative glint in the eyes belied the broad smile.