"I can't believe it's so fragile that if one person stops believing in it, it falls apart.”
"No, that's not it. If the group itself stops believing in the collective quality of it, then it breaks down. If they all give up belief, it falls apart. Or if they believe it's no longer collective—that one person controls it.”
"Do they all have to believe that? Or just one of them?”
"I'm not sure. The collective has to break down, though. That's the key.”
"What if the poltergeist didn't break down?”
"Theoretically impossible. But you know more about the impossible than most people, so what do you think?”
"I think I shouldn't say. But I'm not a psychologist and I noticed this, so… I can't imagine what Tuckman is thinking he can get away with here.”
"Probably that's all he's thinking. It's almost grant-review time, so he may just be trying to cover himself. He never had a high opinion of PNU—I was surprised he took the job—so maybe he thinks he can get away with something if he has other things to distract the committee with. He's the kind of guy who doesn't do the right thing because it's the right thing. He does the right thing because he can't find a way to get away with not doing it. He's been skirting the edges of professional censure for a while and if he gets caught with his hands dirty, he'll be out on his butt this time.”
"I see." I ground my teeth on my anger and cursed Tuckman in silence.
"Harper?”
"What?”
"Are you OK?”
"Yeah. Thanks, Ben. I have to go.”
"Um… all right. Hey. We really enjoyed having you to dinner.”
"It was nice.”
"Except for the flying pudding part, right at the end.”
I laughed. "Well, he is just a kid.”
"I blame the company he keeps. God knows he doesn't learn that stuff from us. I hope you won't stay away because of Albert and Brian's bad behavior.”
"Don't worry. I'll be around, I'm sure. Now I really have to get back to work. Thanks for the help, Ben." I hung up before I lost my temper.
Damn Tuckman. I had to think that when he'd asked Ben for the name of an open-minded investigator, what he'd meant was someone gullible. I'd thought it when he hired me, but I'd let my own knowledge—and smugness—get in front of better judgment. I was as angry with myself as with him. He appeared to be setting me and Quinton up for his misdeeds and that made me furious. He'd abused my professional trust, lied to his committees, probably defrauded PNU of money on the equipment swap, and engineered an experiment that had gotten someone killed. That was far more important than my pride.
As attractive as ruining the arrogant shrink was, it wouldn't do anything to solve Mark Lupoldi's murder or stop Celia, no matter how much I'd like to see Tuckman hoisted by his own petard. But perhaps I could use all that as leverage. . If he shut the project down, Celia might dissipate before more damage was done, though I didn't have much hope on that score; this poltergeist defied so many of the Philip experiment's conclusions and theories and I wasn't certain what would happen, but I was sure that the project had to end. Now I just had to find Tuckman and push him to do it.
I poked about some more, made more calls, and checked a lot of papers; then I went looking for Gartner Tuckman in earnest.
It took several hours to track Tuckman to a regional psychological association dinner in a downtown hotel. They were still in the cocktails and chitchat phase of the meal, so I had some chance of getting Tuckman—who had turned off his cell phone—into a discreet corner for our conversation. I had a little trouble with the dining room staff, but I raised a ruckus until one of the organizers deigned to take my card in to Tuckman and ask him to see me. I cooled my heels in the lobby for about fifteen minutes before Tuckman came out.
He was wearing a suit and looking spiffy and a little pissed off. I made him come to me. When he stopped and glared at me I flicked up the folder full of reports I'd typed, holding it between us where he couldn't ignore it. He gave it a disdainful glance, then transferred the look to me.
"What did you call me out here for?" he demanded.
I felt cold with my disgust. "The sooner I give you this, the sooner I'm shut of you," I replied. "You lied to me, Tuckman. I thought I'd been pretty clear about the fact that I don't like to be made a scapegoat or played for a sucker.”
"I have no idea what—”
"Save it. You don't have a saboteur, you never did, and you know it. You used the heightened phenomena as an excuse to call me in and create cover for your financial misconduct and the way you've lied about your experimental goals.”
"We do have a saboteur!”
I was very calm on the outside. If I bit off my words a little, it was only to stop myself from screaming at him. "No, you don't. The people with the opportunity don't have the skills or the motive. Those with the skills and motive don't have the opportunity. Your own protocols guaranteed that and your recordings prove it. I have checked and double-checked every physical possibility and there is none. Your phenomena are real. What's faked is your books, so you don't want the grant committee breathing down your neck and checking the financial statements too closely. Reviews are, what, next month?”
He tried to brazen it out. "Ms. Blaine, you seem to have a prejudice that is making you unable to complete your assignment as required. I'm afraid I'll have to fire you.”
"Go ahead. I'll march in that room and tell your professional colleagues all about your current experiment, the manipulations, the inadequate screening of participants, the equipment swaps and sell-offs. Your reputation can't stand another hit and enough of your associates know about your previous experiments and your interesting bookkeeping to take the accusation seriously. I doubt there are many people in that room who don't know the real reasons you were laid off from the University of Washington. Tell me—what happens to a psychologist who falls from professional grace? Do they disbar you? Tar and feather you? Or do they send you to jail?”
I fixed his gaze in mine, unblinking, and let him stew. He was uncomfortable but tough and stared back at me.
"You pushed things too far this time, Tuckman. One of your incipient psychos bloomed into a full-blown killer.”
"No," he answered, but his voice was soft and unsure, his eyes shifting.
"Yes. You've created a breeding ground for psychopaths with your permission and empowerment scenario—you selected them personally. You told them they could make ghosts and move things with the power of their minds and then you proved it to them and let them see what they could do. One of them made a ghost, all right. You never thought one of them was going to go that far, did you? Or maybe it was you. You came pretty close once before. A couple of years ago you put a subject in the hospital—”
"It wasn't me! It was one of them." The ghostly green snakes that seemed to dance around Tuckman's head in the Grey had turned inward, squeezing around him like tentacles and turning a sickening yellow green. Was that panic? I pushed on.
"So you said last time. And I suppose you'll say the same thing this time when one of your current subjects gets arrested for murder and says the ghost did it. You are an accomplice to that. You made a little pressure cooker with your handpicked group of unhappy, messed-up people, and one of them turned out to be a psychopath just waiting to happen. And you introduced him or her to a whole pool of potential victims with a handy excuse for whatever he or she wanted to do to them. I've been hip-deep in these people's lives for ten days—closer than you, I'd bet—and everything I see tells me one of them killed Mark Lupoldi. And used your damned poltergeist to do it.”