“A week after he made his revelations he was found dead in Central Park of a massive drug overdose. Naturally, the official line was that there was no secret directorate and no experiments, and Marschalk’s claims were the unfortunate ravings of a paranoid drug addict.
“So that’s the story, David. If by any chance you’re crossing swords with those same folks . . . God help you. Call when you can. Let me know that you’re alive. No joke.”
Gurney went to his laptop and typed ‘Sylvan Marschalk’ into his search site. The New York Times article popped up first. Actually, a pair of articles. The first focused on “the allegations of a former CIA analyst.” The second, dated a week later, focused on the drug overdose. He read both carefully and found nothing in either Rebecca hadn’t already mentioned. He checked the other news items that came up in the search, all briefer than the ones in the Times. There were no follow-ups.
The story was jarring—not only because of the way it ended, but because the leaker’s accusations regarding “induced suicide” research gave more credibility to the concept.
He was still sitting on the couch pondering the implications when Madeleine emerged from the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.
“Can you transfer that email for my sister from your computer to mine?”
“You don’t want to send it from mine?”
“No, because when she replies to it, I’d like the reply to come to my own tablet.”
He went to the saved email document, entered Madeleine’s email address at the top, and hit “Send.” Once he saw that the process was completed, he closed down his laptop.
That’s when it hit him.
He sat motionless, almost breathless, for several long seconds, considering a startling possibility.
If someone had found the unaddressed document while it was still in his unsent email file, wouldn’t they have assumed that he was writing about himself, his own emotional turmoil?
Suppose that was the same incorrect assumption being made about Ethan Gall’s handwritten document? Might it not be, in fact, a description of someone else’s nightmare—someone who, for reasons yet unknown, dictated their experience in the form of a letter they planned to send to a third party—exactly as Madeleine had done?
This hypothetical scenario took hold of Gurney’s mind. Soon he became convinced it was the truth. Someone had gone to Ethan and asked him to write out a letter for him—a letter to the therapist with whom he’d had the “session” that began his series of nightmares. He dictated what he wanted written, and Ethan wrote it down for him.
Ironically, Gurney was so certain that this was the way it must have happened that he began to suspect his own objectivity. He’d learned on a number of occasions that the best way to test an idea he might be loving too much was to expose it to Hardwick’s skepticism.
But that was a call he’d want to make with more privacy than the bugged suite permitted. The option of using Madeleine’s tablet to drown out his conversation with music—at the same time as she was using it to review the emotionally fraught email she’d be sending to her sister—did not seem feasible. And the speaker volume in his own aging laptop simply wasn’t adequate.
He went over to the alcove.
Madeleine was siting on the edge of the bed, studying the wording of her email on her tablet screen, her mouth a tight line of anxiety.
“Maddie?”
“What?”
“I have to go downstairs.”
She nodded vaguely.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She didn’t reply. He took the key, went out, and locked the door behind him.
The Hearth Room still had the cold, empty feeling it had earlier. He settled into a leather armchair against the far wall, a spot from which he could keep an eye on the reception area. Hoping Hardwick would be within range of a cell tower, he made the call.
The man answered immediately, apparently eager to complain.
“Road out of the Wolf Lake estate was a horror. Right now I’m creeping along on the county route behind a monster plow-sander-salter. Impossible to get past him. What’s up with you?”
“I wanted to get your opinion on a certain aspect of the case.”
“You mean like the totally fucked-up impossibility of the whole thing?”
“Just Ethan’s handwritten dream narrative.”
There was a pause. Gurney could hear through the phone the heavy rumbling of the plow. When Hardwick spoke again his tone was calmer. “Definitely an odd little item. What are you thinking?”
Gurney explained his new theory of how the written nightmare description could have come to be, and how Madeleine’s email dictation had led him to that conclusion.
Hardwick cleared his throat. “It’s . . . possible.”
Gurney wasn’t put off by his apparent lack of enthusiasm. He interpreted it as a sign that he was giving the idea serious thought.
“It’s possible,” Hardwick repeated. “But if Ethan wasn’t writing down his own dream, then whose dream was it? And why were the details later reflected in the way he died?”
“Like the wolf dagger Fenton claims he cut his wrists with? I don’t know. I’m not saying the dictation hypothesis is the final answer, but it fits with the idea that Ethan’s part in the affair was different from that of the other three victims. He always struck me as the odd man out.”
“You’re saying we’ve got three people who had nightmares and ended up dead, and one person who transcribed someone’s else’s nightmare and ended up dead. But I’m still stuck at the basic question. Could a hypnotist—Richard or anyone else—have caused those nightmares and suicides?”
“Interesting you should bring that up. I just listened to a message from Rebecca Holdenfield about a CIA leaker who claimed that the agency was actively researching that very subject—obviously in the belief that it could be done.”
“Of course, they denied it?”
“Of course. But I have to say that all the hints of national security interest in this case could be connected to that kind of program.”
Hardwick sighed impatiently. “The problem I have with the fatal-hypnosis thing is that it turns the whole thing back on Hammond and makes Fenton right. As I said before, that is not an acceptable outcome. Hold on a second, ace. Let me put down the phone. I have a chance here to get around the monster plow.”
When Hardwick came back on the phone half a minute later, Gurney could hear the rumble of the plow fading into the distance. “So what do you think we actually know, Sherlock?”
“Taking Ethan out of the equation for the moment, we know that three gay-hating men were offered some kind of financial incentive to visit a gay hypnotherapist. We know they all later reported having nightmares, and shortly afterward each one was found dead. And we know that the investigating officer has zeroed in on Richard Hammond as the orchestrator of all this.”
“A decision about which we have our doubts?”
“Correct.”