“What are you thinking, Mr. Novak? You’ve grown very quiet. What’s on your mind?”
“You own me now,” he said.
“I don’t like that term.”
“But it’s the truth. You distribute that recording, and you can blow my life up. You know that and so do I. So what do you want? What in the hell do you want from me?”
“I want you to put Ridley Barnes in prison.”
He stared at her. “What? I thought you were working with him.”
“So does he,” Julianne Grossman said. “That’s why I had to go to the regrettable lengths that I did with you, in fact. Ridley does not trust easily. You have to prove yourself in the most severe ways to reach his inner circle. I’ve done that, I’ve broken my own ethical code to reach that point of trust with him, and I won’t waste that now.”
“Why do you care so much about Ridley Barnes?”
“Because I listened to him confess to the murder of Sarah Martin, Mr. Novak. Is that reason good enough for you?”
37
For a long time there was no sound but a ticking clock in some other room of the house. Julianne Grossman sat and waited and finally Mark said, “When did this happen?”
“During a trance session with Ridley last month. I make my living by using hypnosis to help people through their difficulties. Most of the time, that involves addictions or fears. I help people quit smoking, lose weight, gain the confidence to handle public speaking. Ridley came to me with a different problem; he said that he didn’t remember whether he’d killed a child, and he wanted to know.”
“You believed him.”
“At the time, yes.”
“And now?”
“Now I believe that Ridley Barnes is a wickedly smart sociopath. I believe that he killed that poor, sweet girl and got away with it and that too much time has passed and he’s grown bored. It’s important to me to keep him occupied. Do you understand why?”
“You think he’ll kill again if he’s not.”
“I fear it’s a very real possibility.”
“That’s a determination a good psychiatrist might be able to make,” Mark said. “Not a hypnotist. And if you’d had true concerns about Ridley and any conscience at all, you’d have spoken to police about this. They’re not aware of any confession, so I don’t think that you’ve told anyone about it.”
“No, I haven’t spoken with police.”
“So you’re full of shit,” Mark said. “If you’d heard it, and believed it, and cared as much as you claim, you’d have gone to them. Anything else is a lie.”
“You’re an experienced investigator. You should understand just how much value a confession given under hypnosis means. It’s all but useless in the courts now, which is a true shame. One of the most valuable tools for witnesses has been removed due to ignorance and a few dishonest practitioners.”
She wasn’t lying about this. At one time, police departments in Los Angeles and New York had maintained dedicated hypnosis units. There had been a brief flash point of excitement about the technique, but that had been all but obliterated in appellate courts. Arguments of implanted memory and coercion, along with scathing questions over the expertise of the hypnotists, had created an environment in which neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys saw much gain in introducing anything procured through hypnosis. It carried all the legal problems of the polygraph multiplied by the potential for human error and human fraud. The once-booming study of forensic hypnosis was not a popular approach anymore.
“I tend to agree with the courts,” Mark said. “You realize the recording you played for me does absolutely nothing but prove that point? If you could convince me you were Sarah’s mother, what’s to stop you from convincing Ridley to confess?”
“You’re part of the game now,” she said, “and I played a role in bringing you in. For that, I don’t apologize. I need the help. I apologize for the methods, because I realize they were hurtful. But I need the help.”
In the silence, all Mark could hear was the ticking of that unseen clock.
“Can you turn that thing down?”
“The clock?”
“Yeah.”
“It bothers you?” She smiled, and he felt a surge of annoyance, because she seemed to understand why it bothered him — a childish, irrational fear that she was somehow going to be able to claim his mind against his will, use the ticking of the clock to lull him into a trance.
“It bothers me because it’s all I can hear,” he said. “And you’re supposed to be talking.”
“I’ve done my talking, Mr. Novak. You can run screaming to the police or to the media all you’d like, but I promise you this: the moment you do, Ridley’s belief that he has me as an ally — and right now he believes that firmly — is gone. And the best chance at seeing him answer for his crimes goes with it.”
“So you’re going to extort me into helping you?” He gestured at the recorder that was still in her hand. “I’m supposed to trust someone who’d rather blackmail me than approach honestly?”
“I’ve already told you that this was about gaining Ridley’s trust, not yours. I understand why it would be counterproductive for our relationship.”
He almost laughed. “Yes, it could be viewed as counterproductive. I’m hanging on to my career by a thread, and you’re the reason!”
“The purpose our meeting served is already paying dividends. I filmed my early sessions with Ridley until he decided he didn’t like that. This morning, he returned one of those videos to me. Because of you. Because of what he feels your presence means to the cave.”
“Means to the cave?”
“You’ll understand that soon enough. Now I’ll make you an offer. You feel blackmailed, you feel taken advantage of, all of these negative things. You fear the recording in my hand, don’t you?”
Mark didn’t say anything. She already knew he did.
“I’ll turn it over to you,” she said. “You can destroy it or do whatever you’d like with it, provided you give me twenty minutes of your time. If after those twenty minutes your concern is still with the recording, you may take it and go. I hope that won’t be the case.”
“What are we going to achieve in twenty minutes?”
“You’re going to watch a video.”
She had no television in the living room, so he followed her down a narrow hallway and into a small bedroom that had been converted into an office of sorts. Bookshelves filled three walls — most of the titles had to do with hypnosis, mindfulness, or spiritualist topics — and the other wall was occupied by an ancient oak desk with a high-end Mac computer. The computer felt out of place in the room, the lone intruder. Julianne sat at the desk and fed a DVD into the disk drive. Then she turned to Mark.
“You’re the first person other than me to see this. That’s all I’m going to say about it.”
For a few seconds the screen was a bright, empty blue, and then it filled with an image of Ridley Barnes sitting alone in a straight-backed chair with a small pillow tucked behind his head. His eyes were closed. Mark recognized the room as Julianne’s living room. She advanced the frames until she reached a place that satisfied her and then she stood up, stepped back, folded her arms, and let the video play.
The first voice that came, off-camera and soft, was Julianne’s. Mark recognized the familiar, lulling cadence.
“Tell me more about Trapdoor. You’ve been there for a while, haven’t you?”