"Don't be offended, doctor," Kara said. "Would you allow yourself to be hypnotized by a person you had never met before yesterday and never heard of until the day before?"
Rob thought that sounded pretty damn logical, but Gates' expression was grim as he thought about it. Then he smiled. The effect was startling—it was the first time he had done it all afternoon.
"Touche, Miss Wade. Your policeman friend can stay."
▼
The actual hypnotism procedure was nowhere near as dramatic as Rob had expected. No watch swinging back and forth on a chain, no spinning spiral to gaze into. As Kara sat there not four feet from Rob, Gates dimmed the lights and pulled out a metronome. He started it ticking, then told Kara to close her eyes and listen to the tick. He spoke to her in a soothing voice, telling her to relax different parts of he body, and that was it.
"Kara Wade," he said, "I want you to think back, back to your childhood. Do you remember when you were six years old?"
"Yes," Kara said in a dreamy voice. Her eyes were closed and she appeared totally relaxed.
"Do you remember being alone with your father at any time?"
"Yes."
"Do you remember him undressing you and touching you in places he didn't usually touch you?"
"No," she said, as if the question were the most natural thing in the world.
Rob was convinced then that Kara was in a trance. He knew how she felt about her family. If she were awake she'd be on her feet and raging after a question like that.
"Is anyone else listening?" Gates said. "Is there anyone named Janine listening? If she is, I'd like to speak to her."
Janine. Rob had heard Kara mention someone named Janine. He held his breath, half expecting to hear a voice like the one that had come out of that little girl in The Exorcist. But Kara kept quiet, thank God.
Gates sat there twirling a key ring. Twirl-twirl-stop. Twirl-twirl-stop. It was getting on Rob's nerves.
"Janine!" Gates said in a sharp tone. "Are you there? Speak to me if you can hear me! Don't play games! Speak to me now!"
Still no answer. Rob exhaled.
Gates scribbled on a memo pad and handed Rob the sheet.
I'm going to my files for more past history. Watch her.
Rob nodded and Gates slipped out through the flush door behind his desk. He watched Kara as she sat with her eyes closed, looking like she was asleep but sitting upright. If he didn't know better he'd have said she was stoned out of her gourd. He let his eyes roam about the room, taking in the antique furniture and the hundreds of books lining the walls.
Something drew his attention back to Kara.
Her eyes were open.
They blinked once, twice, then her head turned toward him, slowly, smoothly, like a gun turret rotating atop a tank. Her eyes fixed on him, vacantly at first, then they seemed to focus.
Then she smiled.
Rob nearly jumped out of his seat. He had never seen a smile like that before, at least not on Kara. It was little more than a pulling back of the lips. There was no warmth, no humor in it. In fact there was nothing in the eyes to confirm that it really was a smile at all. Maybe it was just a baring of the teeth. Whatever it was, it drove a spike of icy fear through Rob's gut.
Whatever it was, it wasn't Kara's smile.
And then, still smiling fixedly, her head rotated back the other way. When it reached its previous position, the rictus faded and Kara's eyes closed again. She made no further movement.
Gates returned a few minutes later with a folder in his hands. He took one look at Rob and stopped in his tracks.
"What's wrong? Did something happen?"
Kara answered first. "No."
Rob started at the sound of her voice and tried to gather his thoughts. His reflex was to tell Gates nothing. He went with it.
"No," he said, half choking as he waved a dismissing hand. "Everything's fine."
Rob had no intention of giving Gates any ammunition. If there was something there, let Gates find it and confirm it on his own.
But as the time dragged on, Gates' best efforts turned up nothing. He asked Kara all sorts of bizarre questions about intimacies with her father—some of them pretty foul-sounding—which she denied one after the other.
After a full hour of this garbage, Rob had had enough.
"I think it's time to call it quits, don't you?" he said.
Gates looked at him, leaned back in his chair, and nodded. He looked disappointed.
"I believe you're right." He turned to Kara. "Kara Wade, when I count to three and clap, you will awaken feeling alert, relaxed, and refreshed, with no memory of the past hour."
He counted, clapped, and Kara opened her eyes.
"Well?" she said, looking back and forth between the two of them. "Did anything happen?"
Gates shook his head. "Nothing."
She turned to Rob, smiling hesitantly, hopefully. "Really?"
Rob rose slowly to his feet, as much to stretch his cramped muscles as to give himself a second or two to listen to his racing mind. What to say? Tell her how she'd looked at him with that vulpine grin, an expression that was as much at home on her face as swastikas on a synagogue? Tell her and snuff out the relief glowing so brightly in her eyes now as she looked up at him, make her spend the rest of her life under a cloud of doubt? Or let it ride and see what happened?
Rob smiled back at her. "Really."
She leaped from the chair and embraced him, laughing.
"Oh, God! Thank God!"
And then she was crying, gripping his lapels and sobbing against his shirt. He slipped his arms around her and gently held her for a little while.
Too soon she straightened up and back away.
"I'm sorry," she said, taking a deep breath and wiping her eyes. "It's just that I've been so worried! So frightened!"
Dr. Gates said, "I do not feel we should rest too easy, Miss Wade. We have not completely ruled out the existence of a second personality."
"Maybe you haven't," she said, "but I have." She stepped forward and thrust out her hand. "Thank you, Dr. Gates. Please send me your bill."
Gates rose and shook it once. "Please be careful, Miss Wade. There remains the possibility that this experience may have awakened something. If you suffer any unusual experiences, black-outs, memory lapses, please do not hesitate to call me."
"Don't worry," she said smiling brightly. "You'll be the first to know."
And then she had her arm crooked around Rob's and was leading him from the consultation room. "Let's celebrate!"
▼
7:20 P.M.
This was not exactly what Kara had meant by celebrate.
She had been thinking of a bar or a restaurant, someplace with lots of people and laughter, even if it was desperate laughter. Instead, Rob had called in her promise to allow him to cook her a meal. He had insisted too that Jill and Ellen join them.
Kara had said absolutely not, but he had gone ahead and called Ellen's place. Ellen had demurred, but Jill had been thrilled, leaving Kara with little choice but to agree. She had been briefly furious, but then remembered what a good friend Rob had been these past two days, and the anger evaporated. Leaving only anxiety about putting those two together for so long. But Rob hadn't noticed any resemblance between Jill and himself two days ago, so there was a good chance everything would work out tonight.
So far, so good.
She was sitting now in the tiny living room of Rob's one-bedroom apartment, sipping wine and watching him as he stood in the even tinier kitchen and showed Jill how to slice scallions. The air was redolent of garlic and oil heating in the wok; laughter from Jill and Rob mixed with the sounds of the St. John's basketball game on the TV.