Ridley’s eyes opened on ten with an unseeing stare that focused quickly. His chest rose and fell in long, deep breaths. His hands were motionless against his legs; his body was still. For a moment, the screen held on his eyes, which were looking directly into the camera, and then the picture went black.
38
Mark let out a breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. Julianne was still standing just as she had been, a few steps behind him, her eyes locked on the now blank computer screen, her arms folded.
“That was in December,” she said. “I’ve continued working with him, but we’ve never gotten back to that place. Never so far. He’s very guarded now. As I said, I have had to prove myself as an ally. I couldn’t go to the police. You might disagree, but I know what would have happened. They would have dismissed me, then they would have been too aggressive with him, and the bond of trust I was forming with Ridley would have shattered.”
“But there’s been no gain to it,” Mark said. He was still shaken by what he’d seen. He’d never watched anyone speaking under hypnosis before, let alone confessing to a murder. “Your trust hasn’t led to anything good.”
She turned from the screen to face him. “It’s led to you.”
He didn’t answer right away. The clock ticked somewhere down the hall, and the wind drove rain against the windows, and Julianne Grossman stared at him as if she were waiting for an answer to a question that hadn’t been voiced.
“What am I supposed to do?” Mark said finally. “What do you think I can do that the police can’t?”
“Engage him in the way he wants to be engaged,” she said. “That’s the secret. He chooses who gets to play the game, don’t you see that? He gave the police nothing. Ever. He gave me something, and once he realized that he had, he came back around. I had no idea how to handle it, nor did I have the skills. It’s why I convinced him that we needed help to get his truth. When we found you…well, it was easier then. Because of your wife, you fit the role quite nicely.”
Mark ran a hand over his face and it came back damp with sweat. He was dizzy and wanted to sit.
“Was Ridley playing with you, or was that legit?”
“Do you mean was he really in trance? Yes. I’m certain of that. I’ve been a practicing hypnotist for twenty-two years. I know when someone is faking, and I know when it is real. Ridley was in trance.”
“And you’ve put him back in trance.”
“Yes. But he no longer shows interest in recall or trapped memories. He speaks of the dark man, he speaks of the cave as if it is a person. He speaks of what the cave wants him to do.”
“What do you make of the dark man?”
“He’s a part of Ridley. A part he wants to deny.”
“But that portion in which he talks about Sarah being someone else’s responsibility suggests that she wasn’t alone, doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily. I suppose he could be blaming Evan Borders for losing her, but I think he’s blaming himself throughout. You just watched a chess match, and Ridley Barnes lost. To his own subconscious. I don’t think it happens often, though. I think he usually wins.”
“Even if I agree with everything you said, I don’t see how I can help. This”—he pointed at the computer monitor—“is not what I do. A forensic psychiatrist might have a shot with him. I wouldn’t.”
“I disagree. He has a vision for your role. If you play it, I think we can have some success.”
“What’s his vision for me?”
“You’re supposed to get him access to the cave. He’s certain of this. The fact that you already went into the cave—”
“I was forced into the cave!”
“Fine. Either way, it has validated his vision of you. That the cave wants you. He’s convinced that you can get him access to the cave. That the reach and clout of your firm can do that.”
“My firm wants nothing to do with me.”
“Access is controlled by Danielle MacAlister. She’s more likely to listen to someone of your background than someone of mine. If you could gain her cooperation, Ridley would view it as progress.”
“I’m not going back in that cave.”
“Why not?”
“If you’d spent the quality time down there that I did, you wouldn’t need to ask. But there’s also simply no gain to it. Let’s imagine it’s possible for me to get access, which I doubt, but let’s imagine it. What good comes of having Ridley in the cave?”
“For hypnotherapy, none whatsoever. We would ordinarily never expose someone to fear-inducing imagery. In somnambulism—that’s deep trance—the imagery becomes very, very real. Ridley carries powerful beliefs about Trapdoor on both the conscious and subconscious levels. At the level reached in deep trance, he believes that Trapdoor is a source of special power. It’s not that strange when you consider the experience he had there, his closeness with death and violence and questions of his own survival. Over time, however, those experiences have become more deeply associated with Trapdoor in his mind. It has become a mythological sort of place to him, capable of bestowing gifts on people and…and requiring gifts from them.”
“Gifts,” Mark echoed. “Can you elaborate on that?”
She looked at him for a long time before she said, “Lives. Deep in his mind, Ridley believes that the cave can grant them. Or demand them.”
“Fantastic. If no good can come from it, why would you indulge him in the attempt?”
“Because he already knows what happened in that cave. And what other trance sessions have told me—when I’m able to achieve deep trance with Ridley, that is, he can be a challenge—is that he wants to show someone where it happened.” She swallowed, and for the first time she looked afraid. Outside, the wind picked up and grew louder, and the dog began to howl along with it, as if concerned over the changes that were on the way. “In particular, he wants to show me.”
“You truly believe that he would take you to where she was killed? That he would tell you the truth?”
“I can’t say that for certain. But I know that I can’t walk away from what I’ve heard.” She moved to a closet set between the bookshelves and opened the door. On the back of it, carefully taped, were articles with enlarged photographs of Sarah Martin. Old newspaper items covering her disappearance and the discovery of her body.
“I knew her mother,” Julianne said.
“Hey, that’s funny, so did I! I wouldn’t mention that around town, though. Just a bit of friendly advice.”
When she turned back to him, her eyes were dark. “You think you were the only person who was hurt that night, and that’s far from the truth. I’ve told you why I did what I did.”
“Sure. To appease a sociopath.”
“In part,” she said. “But there are many more layers. You need to know all of them to make a judgment. That’s your problem. You’re too comfortable determining the shape of the world from the surface.”
“Of the many problems facing me today, that’s not a high priority.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She looked at the articles again, all those bold headlines announcing no leads, no arrests, and finally a “Ten Years Later, Still No Answers” anniversary piece. Mark thought about Lauren’s case. Sixteen months in, no arrests. What would they write in ten years?
“Diane Martin came to me at the recommendation of a friend,” Julianne said. “It was the year her husband was killed in a car accident. She was struggling with insomnia. She visited four times, and on the last visit reported that she was finally sleeping well. She said that she was dreaming vividly and that most of her dreams involved her daughter, and that in them, her daughter was always happy.”
Julianne closed the door slowly. “I reached out to her when I heard about Sarah. I didn’t hear back, but that wasn’t surprising, because everyone was reaching out to her then. I offered to help her in any way that I could. I never heard from her again. When she died, though, it was from an overdose of sleeping pills.”
“May
be she didn’t think your techniques would work again.”
“Maybe she didn’t know if she’d find any peace in her dreams.” Julianne Grossman stepped away from the closet and looked Mark in the eye. “When Ridley came to me, I considered refusing. I suppose I should have. But my theoretical conflict of interest was dead, and, frankly, I was curious. I wanted to know what he would say. That’s the truth of everyone in this town—we all want to know what he would say if he’d talk. Well, I got to be the lucky one.” She turned away and took a deep breath. “Then I learned what is being done on her case: nothing. Nothing. Investigation has ceased. If he was honest in that confession, and I believe that he was…” She turned back to Mark. “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. I need someone who believes in what you just saw, someone who won’t roll his eyes and say that confession was coerced, someone who understands that you can tell the truth without ever being aware of doing it. I need you.”
“My only concern is my job,” Mark said. “You’ve threatened my career. My life. The rest of this, the story you just told? It doesn’t matter to me, Julianne. As much as I hate to say it, Sarah Martin doesn’t matter to me, either. Let me be absolutely clear: I don’t care. I just want out of this town with my life intact. That’s all.”
She crossed the room and stopped close to him, nearly touching him. The force of her stare seemed to hold his feet to the floor, making movement impossible. He struggled to keep the eye contact.
“Somewhere in the world,” she said, “someone knows the truth about your wife. I wonder if they care.”
He didn’t answer. She pressed the digital recorder into his palm.
“There’s your career,” she said. “There’s the truth you came back to Garrison to find. Do what you’d like with it.”
39
Mark turned the wrong way out of Julianne Grossman’s house and drove through the rain down an unfamiliar road until he reached a dead end and realized his mistake. Instead of turning around, he put the car in park and wiped sweat from his brow with trembling hands and then shook his head, as if he could clear his thoughts from inside it. Turned the AC on and cranked the fan up in hopes the cold air would sharpen his thinking. The digital recorder that Julianne Grossman had used to threaten his career was now in his jacket pocket. He pulled it out and stared at it for a few seconds, considering this supposed goodwill gesture. She could have made copies of the recording. She could be e-mailing them to his board of directors right now, and the sheriff, and anyone else who was interested; she could be burning CDs to distribute far and wide.
He pressed play and turned the volume up so he could hear the conversation clearly, and for the next twenty minutes he didn’t move, just sat there with the air-conditioning blasting on him even though it was thirty-some degrees outside and listened to his own voice telling Julianne all of the things she had wanted to hear. He listened to the way she’d asked him, in a casual but still direct fashion, for his own permission before various points of questioning. The permission was always granted.
There’s the truth you came back to Garrison to find.
He punched the power button and shut the recorder off.
If he shared the recording, people would know the reason he’d lied, supposing that they believed in hypnosis, but if he shared it, people would also know that he’d planned to murder a man. He could pull select clips, but sooner or later someone was going to want to hear the whole thing.
Some gift she’d bestowed upon him. Some peace offering.
He took out his cell phone and called Jeff London.
“Any progress up there, Markus?”
“Some.” Mark had the recorder in his free hand and was looking at it as if it were a snake. “But not all good.”
“I don’t follow.”
“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 yo
u 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.”
Last Words Page 25
