“You’re not going to like where I go with this.” Mark took a breath and said, “Jeff, do you believe in hypnotism?”
“What do you mean, do I believe in it? As in, does it exist? Of course.”
“I mean...” He wanted to ask whether Jeff believed that someone could be hypnotized and never remember that it had occurred, but he couldn’t bring himself to say the words. “If I told you I put any confidence in a confession a man gave under hypnosis, you’d tell me I was crazy, wouldn’t you?”
“Not at all. I’d tell you that we likely couldn’t get it into court, but I wouldn’t tell you to discount it.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. I’ve got friends who worked with the old units at NYPD and LAPD. Some of those guys swear by them. There was that famous kidnapping case in California, the one where the bus driver accurately recalled most of a license-plate number under hypnosis. Another one, this was crazy, they were interviewing a victim who said she couldn’t recall any information about the car she’d been abducted in, right? All she said, over and over, was that she didn’t know anything about cars, so she couldn’t help. Well, she was an artist. They hypnotized her and asked her to sketch the car. She drew it so accurately they got a make and model, located the car, and then found forensic evidence connecting the car not only to her but to other victims. That story really piqued my interest. You ought to see the sketches compared to what she said in the initial interviews. Her mind recorded so much detail, but somehow, because she didn’t know cars, she had convinced herself that she wasn’t capable of remembering it. Who gave you a hypnotized confession?”
“Ridley Barnes. But I never figured you’d put any credibility in things like that.”
“Hell, I’ve consulted hypnotists,” Jeff said. “Now, I lead with skepticism. Always. But you have to try any tactic in a dead-end case, and I’ll listen to anybody once. If the facts stand up, I’ll keep listening. Most times, with those types, they don’t. But every now and then, something I’m hard-pressed to believe in will bear some fruit. I mean, I didn’t send Lauren to Cassadaga on what I thought was a fool’s errand.”
Mark forgot the question he had been prepared to ask about Julianne Grossman’s techniques. Forgot about Ridley Barnes and the cave and the Indiana rain that was turning to ice. He was on a sidewalk now, standing on concrete baked by a harsh sun, saying, Don’t embarrass me with this shit.
“You sent her?”
“Of course. You knew that. We spoke to the police together.”
“I knew that you understood where she was going. I just thought that it was her idea.”
“What the hell does that matter? It was an assignment. She was on the job.”
“But I thought it was her idea,” Mark repeated, and he wanted Jeff to say that it had been, he wanted that even more desperately than he’d wanted Jeff to believe him about what had happened in Garrison.
“It wasn’t her idea, it was her instruction,” Jeff said. “But I don’t see the difference. She was working for me. You want to blame me, then—”
“No,” Mark said. “You don’t understand. I didn’t want her to go, because I thought you wouldn’t have approved of her consulting a psychic. I thought it would have been... embarrassing. That last day, I was trying to talk her out of it to shield her from that. From your response.”
“She went at my instruction. The only thing I would have had a negative response to was her not doing her job. That day, that was her job. I wish it hadn’t been.”
“She had a chance to tell me that. We argued about that. I was upset that she was giving the story any credibility, I said you wouldn’t support it and she’d hurt her standing with you if she filed the report. Why wouldn’t she have said it was your instruction?”
Jeff’s voice softened. “Sounds like you were a little caught up in trying to protect each other.”
“How so?”
“The original assignment was intended for your desk. She convinced me that was a bad fit for you, and she asked for it.”
“What?”
“She told me that you weren’t equipped to interview the woman. The one who said she was a psychic. The woman had identified a few things, and I thought it was worth the wild-goose chase. As I said, I’ll listen to anybody once. So I was going to send you, but then Lauren heard and said that you wouldn’t do the interview well. I’ve never told you that because... well, because it seemed like an unnecessary addition of pain. I thought telling you that she’d stepped in for you would only hurt worse. But now you’re asking. She told me you wouldn’t do the interview well because you wouldn’t think the woman had any credibility. That you’d scorn her, and if there was anything legitimate, you’d overlook it. She said that was a personal hang-up of yours and that she didn’t want me to put you in that position. It would be hard for you, she said. Unfair, that was the word. She said it would be unfair to you.”
Rain drummed off the hood of the car and ran down the windshield, putting a crystalline buffer between him and the clarity of the world beyond.
“She said it would be unfair for me.” His words tottered out as if they were just learning to walk.
“It doesn’t matter in any ways but good ones,” Jeff said. He sounded as if he regretted having told the story. “She wanted to take care of you. Always. You know that.”
“But I was the one who should have been on that road.”
“Don’t think about it like that. Think about it the way she’d want you to: she was looking after you, Markus.”
“‘Don’t embarrass me with this shit,’” Mark said. “I said that to a woman I was more proud of than anyone I’ve ever known. ‘Don’t embarrass me.’”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, Jeff. Let’s get back to the point of the call.”
What had the point been? Mark didn’t remember, didn’t care. He was glad when Jeff picked up the baton.
“Is anything about this confession, the hypnosis deal, going to help you?” Jeff said. “Because that’s why you’re there, right?”
I can’t be the only one who knows. If he wants to bring me to the place where he killed her and tell me how he did it, I’m willing to take that walk. But I need help.
“Right,” he said. “That’s why I’m here.”
“Well? Can this shit help you, or is it a dead end? You don’t have time for dead ends. The board meets day after tomorrow, and this time you’ll need to be here for it with whatever you have to offer.”
Mark turned the recorder over in his hand. “I’m getting close,” he said, and the drumming became a rattle as the rain turned to ice.
40
In all the time that he’d been working with her, Ridley Barnes had gone to see Julianne Grossman for every session. When her car pulled into his yard, tires skidding in the mix of rain and snow, he felt a black chill spread through his chest. He had carried his secrets to her. If they returned to his doorstep in a rush, he knew it was trouble.
“What’s happened?” he said, opening the door as she jogged through the dampness and up the porch steps.
“He watched it.”
Ridley stood stock-still, oblivious to the cold rain. “Novak? You played him the video?”
“Yes.”
“He came to you?” Ridley said. “Today?”
“Yes.”
“Was he alone, or was he with Blankenship?”
“He was alone.”
Ridley let her in and closed the door and found himself feeling vulnerable and exposed as she looked around his house. That was laughable, considering he had let her probe the blackest places of his unconscious mind, but he felt it all the same.