by Nancy Gideon
Rather like the Calvins, in that regard.
“What’s that son of a bitch doing in my house?”
Retirement had done nothing to soften Judge Joe Calvin, nor had time mellowed his opinion of the man his daughter once wanted to date.
“I see you remember me, too.” No smile accompanied that mild remark, nor did Tag extend his hand to offer a truce. Not just to have it bitten off. “You haven’t changed a bit, sir.” Still the same unpleasant, narrow-minded bastard he’d been thirty years ago.
And Barbara was still Daddy’s little girl.
She stepped between them and into her father’s reluctant embrace.
“We need your help or we wouldn’t be here.”
“You shouldn’t be here at all. Not with him,” the judge growled. His glare over the top of his daughter’s head was eviscerating. “It’s on the news. What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Barbara? Didn’t I always tell you he was no good?”
“Judge, please,” she begged so miserably the old man relented enough to pat her on the back.
“Would anyone like coffee? I just put some on. Let’s sit down. There’s no reason we can’t have a conversation like reasonable adults.”
Smooth, cool and condescending. Claudia was the perfect manipulator. De-escalate the tension first, then go right for the throat.
“I don’t want him here,” Calvin snarled.
“No more than I want to be here, sir.”
The two men locked stares. McGee was no longer a young man easily reduced by the distaste of his elders. He’d been in a war. He’d killed for his country. And he’d be damned if he was going to back down before the other’s rudeness and hostility. But it was the man’s house. And he was past the front door, farther than he’d gotten the first time.
Ordinarily he would have just walked away. However, Barbara was looking up at him through beseeching eyes and even if he didn’t owe the old bigot an ounce of respect, he did value her feelings enough to stay, as he should have so many years ago.
“Right this way,” Claudia urged with the sincerity of a tour guide at a popular attraction. She led them into the sunken living room with its breathtaking ocean view. The judge went to stand at the stone fireplace, while his wife poured from an imported porcelain service.
Tag sat uneasily on one of the white cushioned bamboo sofas and was surprised when Barbara settled at his side. She didn’t sit close enough to actually touch him but the link of proximity was unmistakable.
Judge Calvin’s brow lowered like hurricane clouds. “So, what do you expect me to do, Barbara? I’m not on the bench any more so I don’t have any legal pull to get your friend here out of whatever trouble he’s made for himself.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to try, Judge.” Was there just a pinch of resentment in that calm statement of fact? Barbara shifted her focus to her other parent. “Actually, I’m here for Mother’s help.”
She went on to lay out the events of the past few days with all the detachment of someone describing an interesting case study rather than a situation that directly affected their futures. Barbara knew her parents would react half as well to an emotional appeal as they would an impersonal puzzle.
“What do you know about the use of hypnosis in the military, Mother?”
Claudia gave a delicate shrug. “I know various levels of mind control were tested during the Korean conflict and, of course, in Vietnam, using hypnosis with and without the reenforcement of narcotics. I’m not talking about Manchurian Candidate-type control, but just minor tampering with the human psyche in hopes of gaining positive results.”
“Like psychotic behavior? Paranoia? Memory loss? To turn a soldier into a killer? Just how is that seen as positive?”
Claudia exhibited no visual response to Tag’s cool attack on her profession. “These things don’t manifest themselves without an underlying weakness in the subject. Hypnosis is still just suggestion. It can’t force a man a behave contrary to his nature. It would only sharpen those attributes in his personality.”
“To erase the conscience in a criminal mind,” Calvin interjected. His steely stare never left McGee.
“Or,” Barbara extrapolated from a different side of the spectrum, “if you have a decent man with high moral character and you insert the idea that what they’re to do is right and justified, then they would not think they were doing wrong. Isn’t that the way it works, Mother?”
“Theoretically, yes. All hypothetically speaking. And, of course, it would depend upon the susceptibility of the subject involved, of how open they are to taking subconscious suggestion.”
“And if drugs were used, that would lower that vulnerability?”
As she spoke in a detached tone, Tag felt Barbara’s knuckles graze his thigh. It might have been by accident. Then her fingers spread over the top of his hand to curl and hold tight to create a united, if silent, front. A gesture not missed by either parent. Tag was careful not to respond beneath their microscopic glares but inwardly, his pulse kicked into high gear at the gentle press of support.
“This really isn’t my area, Barbara,” Claudia protested modestly. “I practiced regression therapy working with troubled children, not traumatized adults.”
“But the mind still works the same way.”
“Within different ranges of experience and personality development, yes. What is it you want me to do, Barbara? Psychoanalyze your friend?” She said the word friend as if it implied the most unsavory and unacceptable traits imaginable.
“No. I want you to hypnotize him. I want you to try to unlock what he can’t remember.”
Protest came instantaneously from all three corners.
“Nonsense.”
“That’s not possible.”
“No way.”
Barbara was adamant. “There is no other way,” she said to McGee. “Frye is dead. Whatever he put in or took out of your memory is out of reach. Don’t you see? We have to get into those secrets Chet was warning of and Frye was trying to bury. Don’t you want to know what he did?”
Tag stared at her, numb and horrified all at once because suddenly he wasn’t sure he did want to know. How could he handle finding out that he was just like Chet? That he’d been a tool of indiscriminate murder? That, perhaps to keep his fractured personality safe, he’d killed the one man who could expose him?
Hadn’t he been hiding from the truth all these years? Tunneling into the quiet forest where there’d be no triggers of memory, no reason to wonder, no need to find out just what kind of man Frye had turned him into?
The kind of man Barbara D’Angelo would regard with fear and loathing.
Then her fingers squeezed ever so lightly about his.
What good would he ever be to this woman if he, again, abandoned her because of his own weaknesses?
“If you think it might help.”
“Barbara, hypnosis isn’t an exact science under the most ideal control circumstances, and what you’re asking is hardly ideal.”
Barbara looked to her mother. “Are you saying you won’t try? To save a man’s life? My life and Tessa’s?”
“I think we should just call the police,” Calvin muttered.
But Claudia was already fingering one of the baubles she wore around her neck and studying Tag as if he were some new species she’d be able to slap her name and reputation on in some professional journal.
“If experimental drugs were used, I might not be able to do any good,” she was saying more to herself than them. “I suppose I could start with a simple regression technique and go from there.”
“Claudia, you’re making us accomplices here. Hypnosis isn’t admissible in court.”
She barely acknowledged her husband. “My office is quiet and the light is muted. Mr. McGee, come this way.”
Following Claudia Calvin was one of the hardest things he could ever remember doing. But not so hard as leaving her daughter behind three decades ago. The thought of giving this coolly clinical woman any power over him sa
t uneasily in his soul. That she would be stripping his mind to its most vulnerable state and tampering where she had no right to be made him break into a sweat. Then he considered the courage and faith of Barbara D’Angelo hopping into that Buick with him, trusting that he wasn’t everything the news portrayed him to be, and his fear diminished.
Maybe just a peek inside wouldn’t do any harm….
Claudia took him into a claustrophobic little room lined with books and oriental knickknacks. The scent of green tea, candles and incense brought an instant ache to his temples. The room was furnished with a desk on the point of collapse beneath a weight of papers, several beanbag-type chairs and a squishy leather sofa. Framed certificates vied for wall space next to inspirational posters. Chaos and calm.
“On the couch, I suppose?”
“Wherever you’re comfortable.”
Isle Royale came to mind. Cautiously, he settled into one of the beanbag chairs and was immediately enveloped by its loose contours. Smiling at his choice, Claudia angled a second chair so they were face-to-face. They regarded each other for a long moment.
“Don’t you trust me, Mr. McGee?”
“No.”
His honesty made her smile again, more naturally this time. “Then the feeling’s mutual. Let’s go treasure hunting, shall we? How did you start your sessions with your other doctor?”
“He usually took me dancing and bought dinner.”
Her laugh was surprisingly warm, gentle. Like her daughter’s. Tag relaxed a notch and took a deep breath.
“Good.” Claudia removed one of her necklaces. Its pendant was made of prismed glass, shooting out dazzling color with every turn or twist. “I want you to continue to breathe deep, let your shoulders slump, let your arms, your hands get heavy, heavier, too heavy to lift. Watch the glass and try not to focus on anything but the light. You can hear my voice and you can respond to my questions, but everything else is very, very far away. Let your thoughts empty. Let them drain away like the sands in an hourglass. Watch the sand trickle down. The weight of the sand is pulling your eye lids down, down, down. Now, you can only hear my voice. Can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Taggert McGee.”
“And can you tell me where you are?”
“The last place I want to be.”
Again the soft chuckle. The sound moved over and around his thoughts where they rested peacefully in the dark haven she’d made for him. His body seemed disconnected from those lazy ruminations. Until her next suggestion.
“I want you to go back with me just in your mind, back to a place not as peaceful as this one, to another country, another time. It’s the early seventies. Can you tell me what you see?”
He sucked in a sudden breath and all his muscles stiffened. Again, her voice was a soothing balm.
“Nothing you see can hurt you. You’re just watching. Like television. What are you watching?”
“Chet.”
“Where are you?”
“Sniper school. He’s got cigarette butts in his ears for ear plugs. We were there for four weeks, practicing every day. Chet could shoot the balls off a mosquito with the Redfield. I liked the Starlight. Sometimes I’d dream in the shades of green and black I saw through that scope.”
“How did you feel about what you did?”
“Feel?”
“Pride? Satisfaction? Pleasure?”
“I didn’t feel anything. It was against the rules.”
“And you always played by the rules?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Whose rules, Sergeant McGee? Who made those rules?”
His breathing hitched and began to hurry. His head rolled back and forth against the back of the chair in sudden agitation. “I don’t know. I can’t see them. I don’t know. I can only hear what they tell me to do.”
“What do they tell you?”
“I don’t remember. I’m not supposed to remember.”
“Today you can. Today it’s alright to remember.”
And he could hear his own voice describing the horror that had been Vietnam as if he were doing a feature on the Travel Channel. The pictures were so clear, so real, yet part of someone else’s impressions. He’d never been to the places he described, had never done the things he started to name. Villages, cities, sometimes with Chet Allen, sometimes with Robert D’Angelo, sometimes alone, so alone. The feeling of isolation crept up from the soles of his feet, freezing like ice water, like death, until he was struggling against it.
He couldn’t hear the words she was speaking even though he was aware of the sound of her voice droning behind the sudden hard and loud pounding in his head. His heartbeats.
Then another sound. Weeping. Awful, anguished weeping. A woman wailing, begging, pleading for the lives of her family. He recoiled from the image, denying it, refusing to acknowledge it.
But the sound of those heartrending sobs drew him back, forcing him to leave the safety of detached observer to step into that ugly scene. To confront the demons from his dreams.
His eyes snapped open and he could see her face, the woman who’d been with Patrick Kelly. There was blood on the floor. He could smell its thick, metallic odor. There was blood on his boots.
He stepped back and her hands kept reaching for him, beseeching, grasping. He felt her touch on his knee, so real and warm and firm and the shock of it zapped through him like an electric current. Panic, horror, dismay surged up, drowning him in sensation.
He had to get away. He started to retreat, physically, mentally, and that’s when he heard it. The two words crisply spoken as if the speaker were kneeling beside him.
Kingdom come.
And everything went dark, like a light switching off inside his head.
Then Claudia Calvin’s soft, intense instruction.
“Listen to me. Hear only my voice. You’re leaving that time, that place behind. As you come back toward the sound of my voice, you’ll bring those things you saw with you but they won’t be able to harm you. Just like a movie that you’ve been watching. Not real. Not able to touch you. Bring them back with you. Back to the sound of my voice. Where are you now, Mr. McGee?”
“Miami.”
“Good. Just a few more questions. Did you kill Dr. Frye?”
“No.”
A moment’s pause. “Tell me what you do remember.”
“That’s against the rules.”
“What were you thinking, bringing him here?”
Faced with her father’s disapproving anger, Barbara felt like a little child again, the one who cringed beneath his censure, the one who tried desperately to win his approval. Doubts and insecurities scratched their way back to the surface. A proper young lady doesn’t argue with her elders. You disappoint me, Barbara, me and your mother. What an ungrateful child you’ve become. You should be ashamed.
And she was. How could she bring distress to these two individuals who had sacrificed so much for her? She was ungrateful. She was selfish. She was thinking of only her own needs. A humbling apology was already shaping on her lips when she stopped herself cold in sudden recognition.
She saw Tessa in the slump of her own shoulders, in the meek lowering of her eyes, in the hollow shrinking of her self-esteem. She was reminded of her own daughter suffering similarly through her growing-up years, struggling to earn affection from a man who was a father in name only. A man who withheld approval and suppressed the spirit as a means of control.
The repetition of that demeaning pattern was a wake-up slap. Her posture straightened, her tone cooled.
“I thought you might love me enough to want to help me. Was I wrong?”
Joseph Calvin sighed in aggravation, annoyed that she’d play the emotion card to trump him. “This has nothing to do with you. It’s that boy.”
“He’s not a boy, Judge. He hasn’t been that boy for a long time.”
“And what kind of man has he become? Someone who would dra
g you into danger like…”
“Like Robert did?”
“That was different,” he blustered. “Robert was a victim. He was innocent.”
“And Tag isn’t? Why would you assume that? Just because of who his family was? Where’s the fairness in that?”
That got the reaction she’d hoped for. A man who prided himself on being impartial, he recoiled from her suggestion that he’d been anything but. Before he could make a statement in his own defense, she continued, recklessly, to pursue her case.
“You were wrong to pronounce sentence on him without any proof. You never even took the time to get to know him. You saw only what you wanted to see. And you were wrong. I loved him, Daddy. I loved him more than my very life.”
The judge reared back with shock and dismay. And ultimately disgust. “You were just a child. You didn’t know what was best.”
“And you did? You thought it would be better for me to spend thirty loveless years with Robert D’Angelo rather than take a chance on finding happiness with someone whose pedigree didn’t match your expectations? Robert was your choice and you made sure he was the only one left to me. You couldn’t have made your wishes any clearer if you’d held a shotgun to our heads. It wasn’t about what was best for me. It was about what was best for you and your image.”
“Robert was a good provider for you and your children. You can’t deny that.”
“And I don’t. Robert gave us everything we needed or wanted. Things, Dad. He gave us things.”
He snorted. “Don’t tell me. You would have rather lived on love. Barbara, you’re fifty years old and I still have to tell you to grow up.”
“I am grown up, Dad. And I’ve grown old and alone, and I’ve missed my only chance to be truly happy.”
“Since when is it a crime to want the best for your child? That McGee boy couldn’t give it to you. All he could give you was heartache. Do you think you fooled us, sneaking out to meet with him? He made you into a liar, Barbara, to cover up what you knew was wrong for you.”
“Wrong for you, Dad. You pushed us into doing what we had to do to see one another. You wouldn’t let us have a decent relationship. You wouldn’t give us a chance.”
