Wolf Lake

by John Verdon

  When the waitress had gone, he leaned toward Gurney. “I thank our Lord for this opportunity to share our thoughts—regarding what I have come to believe is a case of extraordinary evil. May I ask how far you’ve progressed in your own understanding of it?”

  “Well, Reverend, as you—”

  “Please, David, no formal titles. Call me Bowman.”

  “Okay, Bowman. As I see it, the problem in understanding the case is that a number of different jurisdictions are involved due to the location of the suicides. Gilbert Fenton up in the Adirondack region of New York seems to have the closest thing to an overall approach.” He was watching the man’s expression for hints of how to proceed to trigger the greatest cooperation. He continued, shifting his vocabulary. “But it’s the evil dimension of these events that really interests me, the presence of certain inexplicable forces.”

  “Exactly!”

  “The nightmares, for example.”

  “Exactly!”

  “That’s an area, Bowman, where I’d love to get your personal perspective. Because of the fragmented way the case is being handled, I know about the nightmares. But I don’t know the content of them. The sharing of information among our departments leaves a lot to be desired.”

  Cox’s eyes widened. “But the nightmare is the solution to everything! From the very start, I told them that. I told them the answer was in the nightmare! They have eyes, yet they refuse to see!”

  “Perhaps you can explain it to me?”

  “Of course.” He leaned forward again and spoke with a fevered intensity, his perfect teeth and the surgically tightened skin of his face creating a not-quite-human impression.

  “Are you familiar, David, with the phenomenon of men who, having once heard a musical passage, can replay it note for note? Well, I have a similar ability with the spoken word, particularly as it relates to the word of God and man. Do you grasp my meaning?”

  “I’m not sure I do.”

  Cox leaned closer, his reptilian eyes fixed on Gurney’s. “In matters of Good and Evil, what I hear is imprinted on my memory—note for note, as it were. I regard this as a gift. So, when I say that I am about to repeat Christopher Wenzel’s narration of his nightmare, I mean precisely that. His narration. Note for note. Word for word.”

  “Would you mind if I recorded this?”

  A flicker of something in those eyes came and went too quickly to read. “I have been prevailed upon by law enforcement authorities not to share this with the press or the public. But you, as a detective, are obviously in a different category.”

  Gurney took out his phone, activated the “record” function, and laid it on the table. Cox stared at it for a few seconds as though weighing risks and rewards. Then with the tiniest nod—the gesture of a blackjack player opting to proceed—he closed his eyes and began speaking. His voice was sharper now, presumably imitating the diction of Christopher Wenzel.

  “I’m lying in bed. Starting to fall asleep. But it doesn’t feel that good. It doesn’t have that easy, letting-go feeling of falling asleep. I’m partly conscious, but I can’t move or speak. I know that someone, or something, is in the room with me. I hear a deep, rough breathing—like some kind of animal. Like a low growling. I can’t see it, but it’s getting closer. Creeping up on me. Now it’s pressing me down on the bed. I want to scream but I can’t. Then I see hot red eyes. Then I see the animal’s teeth, pointed fangs.” Cox’s own shiny teeth were bared.

  “Saliva is dripping from the fangs. Now I know it’s a wolf, a wolf as big as a man. The burning red eyes are just inches away from me now. The saliva from the fangs is dripping on my mouth. I want to scream, but nothing will come out. The body of the wolf is hovering over me, getting longer, stretching into the shape of a dagger. I feel the dagger going into me, burning and piercing, again and again. I’m covered with blood. The wolf’s growl changes into the voice of a man. I see that the wolf has the hands of a man. Then I know that he is a man, but all I can see are his hands. In one hand he has a dagger with a silver wolf’s head on the handle, a wolf’s head with red eyes. In the other hand he has colored pills. He says, ‘Sit up and take these. There’s nothing to fear, nothing to remember.’ I wake up sweating and shivering. My body aches. I sit on the edge of the bed, too exhausted to stand. I bend over and vomit. That’s how it ends. That’s what happens. Every night. The idea that it will happen again makes me want to die.”

  Cox opened his eyes, leaned back in his chair, and looked around the room a little strangely—as if, rather than simply reciting another man’s story, he’d been channeling the dead man’s spirit.

  “So, there you have it, David—the revolting experience related to me by that poor young man on the very eve of his demise.” He paused, clearly waiting for a reaction that Gurney was not providing. “Do you not find Christopher’s experience utterly appalling?”

  “It’s certainly strange. But tell me—other than his dream, what else do you know about him?”

  Cox looked surprised. “Forgive me, David, but it is plain to me that Christopher’s dream is precisely the revelation we need to focus on. The dream that dictated the manner of his death. The dream that exposed the role played by the devil Hammond. Look ye, saith the Lord, at the Truth that is shown to thee in these events. The Truth of evil is placed before thine eyes.”

  “When you refer to Dr. Hammond as a devil—”

  “That term is not idly chosen. I know all about Doctor Hammond, with his Ivy League psychology degree.”

  Gurney wondered if Cox’s animus toward Hammond was a routine product of the culture wars, or if there might be more to it. But he had another question to pursue first. “Did you know Wenzel in any context outside of the conversation he had with you regarding his dream?”

  Cox shook his head impatiently. “I did not.”

  “Your ministry is located in Coral Dunes?”

  “Yes. But our broadcast and Internet outreach is unlimited.”

  “And Coral Dunes is about an hour’s drive from Palm Beach?”

  “What is your point?”

  “I was wondering why—”

  “Why Christopher came all the way to Coral Dunes to unburden his tortured soul? Have you considered the simplest answer of all—that the Lord led him to me?” A beatific smile pulled his tight lips back to reveal that row of perfect white teeth.

  “Can you think of any other reason?”

  “Perhaps he’d had the opportunity to hear one of our webcast sermons. It is the mission of our ministry to stand with the Lord in the great war consuming our world.”

  “That war being . . .?”

  Cox looked surprised at the need for such a question. “The war being waged on the divinely ordained order of things. The war waged on the essence of man, woman, marriage, and family. The war waged with all the devil’s cunning by the homosexual armies of Satan.”

  “Are you telling me that Christopher Wenzel drove down to Coral Dunes to tell you about his dream because of your opposition to gay marriage?”

  Cox stared at Gurney, his eyes burning with an emotion that might have been fury or a kind of wild excitement. But there was something else in those eyes as well—that special gleam that signals an unshakable belief in a patent absurdity.

  His voice rose as he spoke. “What I’m telling you is that he came to me because he was hypnotized, spiritually violated, and about to be murdered by Doctor Richard Hammond. Doctor of degeneracy and debasement.”

  AFTER SPENDING ANOTHER FIFTEEN MINUTES LISTENING TO BOWMAN Cox—with absolutely no desire to have anything to eat—Gurney left the diner with more questions than he’d arrived with. Questions about Richard Hammond’s background, Jane Hammond’s honesty and openness, the significance of Wenzel’s elaborate dream, and Cox’s own fierce hatred of Hammond.

  Gurney spent most of the Route 17 segment of his homeward drive arranging in his mind the content and sequence of the phone calls he intended to make: to Hardwick, to Jane, and to Rebecca Holdenfield�
��a brilliant forensic psychologist with whom he had a complicated history of attraction, alliance, and conflict.

  Before he called any of them, however, he decided to email them copies of the audio file. He also wanted to listen to it himself—not so much the dream segment, whose details were vivid in his mind, but the portion of his dialogue with Cox that followed the claim of murder. Regarding that exchange, he wanted to be sure his recollection was precise before discussing it with anyone, especially Rebecca.

  After pulling off onto the shoulder, he sent the emails—with brief introductions for Hardwick and Jane and a longer explanation for Rebecca. Then he opened the audio file from the diner, found the point where he wanted to begin, and tapped “Play.”

  Listening with care to Cox’s every word, he pulled back onto the highway and headed into the rolling foothills.

  Cox: What I’m telling you is that he came to me because he was hypnotized, spiritually violated, and about to be murdered by Doctor Richard Hammond. Doctor of degeneracy and debasement.

  Gurney: Is that what Wenzel told you? That he expected to be murdered?

  Cox: He related his nightmare, and his nightmare revealed what he was unable to say.

  (Brief silence)

  Gurney: You believe that Hammond murdered Wenzel?

  Cox: With all my heart and soul.

  Gurney: Let me be sure I have the sequence right. You’re saying that Hammond hypnotized Wenzel—under the guise of a therapy session that was supposed to help him stop smoking. Then a week later . . . what? Hammond flew down to Palm Beach, hypnotized Wenzel in his condo, and cut the arteries in his wrists—causing him to bleed to death, creating the appearance of a suicide? Is that what you’re saying happened?

  Cox: You have a blind and dismissive attitude, sir.

  Gurney: I want to understand the facts as you see them.

  Cox: I see the presence and power of Satan—a reality to which your mind appears closed.

  Gurney: My mind can be opened. Just tell me what you believe Richard Hammond actually did to Christopher Wenzel—the specifics, the logistics. Are you saying that Hammond personally traveled to Florida to kill him?

  Cox: No, sir, that is not what I’m saying happened. That would be little more than the routine viciousness of mankind, a crime that could have been perpetrated by any common criminal. What actually happened was infinitely worse.

  Gurney: I’m confused.

  Cox: Hammond had no need to resort to any purely physical action.

  Gurney: You’re saying now that Hammond did not murder anyone? You’re losing me.

  Cox: We are dealin’ here, sir, with the power of Evil itself.

  Gurney: Meaning what, exactly?

  Cox: How much do you know about Hammond’s background?

  Gurney: Not a great deal. I was told that he was famous in his field and that he helped a lot of people stop smoking.

  Cox: (Harsh, humorless laugh) Hammond’s agenda has nothing to do with smoking or not smoking. That’s mere window dressing. Examine his background—his books, his articles. It won’t take you long to discover his true agenda, the agenda that was there from the beginning, plain as the fire of hell in the eyes of that wolf. Hammond’s agenda, sir, is the twisting of natural minds and the creation of homosexuals.

  Gurney: The creation of homosexuals? How does he do that?

  Cox: How? The only way it could be done. With the help of the devil.

  Gurney: What does the devil actually help him do?

  Cox: The answer to that is known only to Hammond and to Satan himself. But my personal opinion is that the man sold his soul in exchange for a terrible power over others—the power to enter their minds and to warp their thinking—to give them dreams of perversion, dreams that drive them either to lives of degenerate behavior or to self-destruction because they cannot endure the curse of such dreams.

  Gurney: So, when you say that Hammond “murdered” Wenzel, what you mean is—

  Cox: What I mean is that he murdered him in the most evil way imaginable—by planting in his mind a nightmare of perversion he could not bear to live with. A nightmare that drove him to his death. Think of it, Detective. What crueler and more wicked way could you kill a man than make him kill himself?

  Gurney ended the audio playback as he was exiting the highway and turning onto the road that would take him through a series of hills and valleys to Walnut Crossing.

  Apart from sharpening his memory of Cox’s exact words, replaying the conversation hadn’t helped. The man’s unhinged vision of Wenzel’s suicide was more a lightning storm than a source of useful light.

  Could Cox be as crazy as he sounded?

  Or, if the homophobic ranting was a performance, what was its purpose?

  Despite the explanation Cox gave for Wenzel coming to him, Gurney was left wondering if there might have been another reason for that unfortunate man’s long drive to Coral Dunes.

  CHAPTER 10

  When Gurney reached the west end of the Pepacton Reservoir he pulled off onto a gravel turnaround. In an area of spotty cell reception, it was one place where his phone always worked.

  He was hoping to find some thread of coherence in the inconsistent pictures of the case presented by Gilbert Fenton, Bowman Cox, and Jane Hammond.

  His first call was to Jane.

  “I’ve got a question. Did Richard ever do any work in the area of sexual orientation?”

  She hesitated. “Briefly. At the beginning of his career. Why do you ask?”

  “I just spoke with a minister who met with one of the young men who committed suicide. He told me your brother provided therapy designed to alter a person’s sexual orientation.”

  “That’s ludicrous! It had nothing to do with altering anything.” She paused, as if reluctant to say more.

  Gurney waited.

  She sighed. “When he was starting out, Richard saw a number of patients who were conflicted over the fact that they were gay but afraid to let their families know. He helped them face reality, helped them embrace their identities. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes. Well . . . there was some controversy—a hate-mail campaign aimed at Richard, generated by a network of fundamentalist ministers. But that was nearly ten years ago. Why is this an issue now?”

  “Some people have long memories.”

  “Some people are just bigots, looking for someone to hate.”

  Gurney couldn’t disagree. On the other hand, he wasn’t ready to ascribe Reverend Cox’s demonic interpretation of the case to something as simple as plain old bigotry.

  His second call, to Hardwick, went to voicemail. He left a message, suggesting that he check his email and listen to the attached audio file. And maybe he could try to get a lead on the missing girlfriend of Steven Pardosa, the suicide case in Floral Park.

  His third call was to Rebecca Holdenfield. She picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello, David. It’s been a long time. What can I do for you?” Her voice, even over the phone, projected a subtle sexuality he’d always found both enticing and cautionary.

  “Tell me about Richard Hammond.”

  “The Richard Hammond who’s currently at the center of a tornado?”

  “Correct.”

  “Tremendously bright. Moody. Creative. Likes to work on the cutting edge. You have some specific questions?”

  “How much do you know about the tornado?”

  “As much as anyone else who listens to the news on their way to work. Four patient suicides in one month.”

  “You heard the police theory that he caused the suicides through hypnotic suggestion?”

  “Yes, I heard that.”

  “You think it’s possible?”

  She uttered a derisive little laugh. “Hammond is exceptional, but there are limits.”

  “Tell me about the limits.”

  “Hypnosis can’t induce behavior that’s inconsistent with an individual’s core values.”

  “
So hypnotically induced suicide is just flat-out impossible?”

  She hesitated before answering. “A hypnotherapist might move a suicidal person closer to suicide, through incompetence or reckless malpractice. But he couldn’t create an irresistible urge to die in a person who wanted to live. Nothing remotely like that has ever been documented.”

  Now it was Gurney’s turn to pause for a moment’s reflection. “I keep hearing people say that Hammond is unique in his field. And you mentioned a minute ago that he likes to work on the ‘cutting edge.’ What’s that all about?”

  “He pushes the boundaries. I saw an abstract of a paper he presented at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association—all about breaking down the separation between neuropsychology and motivational hypnotherapy. He claimed that intensive hypnotherapy can form new neural pathways, enabling new behavior that was previously difficult or impossible.”

  Gurney said nothing. He was waiting for her to catch the dissonance between that statement and what she’d said about hypnotherapy’s limits.

  “But don’t get me wrong,” she added quickly. “There’s no evidence that even the most intensive hypnotherapy could turn a desire to live into a desire to die. And, by the way, there’s a whole other aspect to this question of what people are capable or incapable of doing.”

  Again Gurney waited for her to go on.

  “The aspect of character. Character and personality. From what I’ve seen and heard of Hammond, I’d have to say that morally and temperamentally he’s an unlikely candidate for masterminding suicides. He’s a perpetual wunderkind, he’s neurotic, maybe a bit too much of the tortured genius. But a monster? No.”

  “That word reminds me, did you get my email?”

  “Not if you sent it in the past hour. Been too busy to check. Why?”

  “I just met with a Florida preacher who believes that Hammond is very much a monster. I sent you a recording of our conversation.”