“At that point I entered on a promotional system where the next person to be promoted to the division level would be the one that displayed the greatest ability, and not necessarily the most seniority or organizational skills. I told my employees that if the disruption they were causing didn’t stop, I would close down the company. I told them in no uncertain language that I am rich enough that I didn’t need the money, and I certainly didn’t need this type of headache. That seemed to eliminate the problem.
“Then one day not long ago, I was in my office reading over our profit and loss statement, when I felt that a door had been opened and somebody or something had just come in. I looked up and no one was there. Suddenly I realized it was not a physical door that had been opened; it seemed to be a door to my mind.”
“I don’t understand,” said Fred.
“Fred, I don’t fully understand it either but once it occurs you know it. I knew it! Well, we all revert to that which we are most familiar with to create our defenses; in my case it was physical things. I must admit that I was frightened. So I put extra sets of locks on the office door including three interior locks. I directed the installation of remote video cameras; and I hired the best security guard that money could buy.
“But, of course, none of that would keep out a mental invader. Nevertheless, I have always been a bit of a control freak and I couldn’t accept the fact that someone was gaining control of my mind. So I tried to fight it. But not long after it, or him, had entered my mind, it exited. It was almost if something was sending me a message, telling me that it could enter and exit whenever and wherever it wanted to. It was a personal message to me, much stronger than a threatening phone call or note. And, of course, totally anonymous.”
“So you had no idea who was doing this to you?”
“Frankly, it could have been any of my employees, except for those in the Science Division. They have purely formal academic skills. At one time I tried to think it through as to who it could possibly be. But then all of a sudden something entered my mind again. Fred, I then experienced the greatest headache I ever had in my entire life.”
Fred said, “I know that you received some form of treatment from Mr. Ford. He also met with two of your division heads who have since been killed. Why do you think he met with your division heads?”
“I have no idea, except that hypnotism can sometimes enhance native abilities. Maybe they were trying to strengthen the talents that they had. Beyond that I don’t have a clue. In my case, I was having trouble sleeping at night after my experience with the damn mental invader. Ford really helped me.”
Fred decided to ask his question head on. “Do you think Ford might have murdered your division heads?”
“Anything is possible, but I don’t see what his motive could have been.”
“Join the crowd, I have to admit neither do I,” said Fred. “He seems to be totally motivated by money; so the most logical reason might have been that somehow he had them change their wills to make him their beneficiary. I checked that out, but it was a blind alley.
“Now that three of your division heads are gone,” Fred continued, “how will you replace them?”
Schultz thought for a moment. “My normal technique would be to replace them from someone in operations that is multi-talented. The more talent an individual has in multiple fields, the fewer people I have to hire.”
“Do you have any idea who you are going to promote?”
“Not yet, I’m going to have to give that a lot of thought; but I just can’t seem to get to it, I’m afraid—”
“—George, you haven’t been in to work for a quite some time now. Are you considering retiring in the near term; and if you do, would you sell your company?”
“Yes, and no; I’m obviously not well. I’m not recovering as quickly as I would have liked; and going back to work would be a tremendous grind at this stage in my life.”
After a long pause Schultz added, “I don’t know if you knew this, but my wife Julia, holds half interest in the company. We both worked in the agency at one time and she bankrolled me to start up the business. She received a healthy inheritance when her parents passed away. Julia has recently decided that she would like to get involved in the day to day operations if I left the company. She would, of course, have an executive assistant to help her. My major mission in life would transition to retirement and golfing. I have never had time to enjoy the sport during my working life.”
“Interesting. And how would her assistant be selected?”
“I guess she would hire the person from within my company. Everyone who works for me knows that would be her tendency.”
“Do you know of anyone in your employ who uses the perfume Chanel Number 5?”
“I would have no idea; to me all perfumes are just alike; they all smell like a really sweet brand of men’s after shave lotion.”
“Do you know if any of your employees drives a gray Buick sedan?”
“Sorry, I never paid any attention to that type of detail. I’m too wrapped up in running the company, to pay attention to that sort of thing. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed anyone’s car.”
“How many females do you have working for you?” Fred asked.
“Right now a total of four: Louise Jones, a division head; Ann Darby, Melissa Moore and Debra Black. And, oh, yes, my secretary, Miss Lang. Of course, if my wife takes over the organization, there will probably be a lot more women in the company. My wife may even have invented the concept of women’s liberation.”
As Fred left the room, he noted Mrs. Schultz was close to the door. He sensed a familiar smell.
“Mrs. Schultz, I like your perfume. What is it?”
Without hesitation she responded, “Why, thank you. It’s Chanel Number 5.”
Chapter 63
Roberta Smutters and Hank Jeffery jogged briskly along the rock laden trail leading to the Crystal Quarry. Jan and Hank were both thirteen years old, and each had been sternly warned against swimming in the deep waters at the quarry site.
Roberta and Hank were next door neighbors who had become the closest of friends over the past year. Their houses were within a couple hundred yards of each other, no other nearby home was in the area. The proximity of the homes and their isolation from their peer groups, contributed to the accelerated speed in which their friendship had developed.
Both were avid swimmers and enjoyed the sport more than anything else in the world. The coolness of the quarry water, added to the potential danger it represented, drew the two of them to the area like a great magnet. The quarry became their own secret area which they loved equally. Their parents would be asleep for at least another hour, which would give them plenty of time to get in a half hour’s swimming before they had to start to head back home.
They wore their swimming suits under their jeans; the moment they reached the quarry they quickly removed their outer clothes, putting them on the rock laden bank. Sunday was a perfect day for swimming. The quarry workmen had the day off and no one would be there to bother them.
A couple of weeks ago Roberta had asked her father how deep the quarry was. Her father said he had no idea but he was told it went down at least 200 feet. He said if one drowned there it could be decades before their body would be found. He took the moment to warn her again about not swimming in the quarry.
Both Roberta and Hank hit the water at the same moment. As was their standard routine, they started racing to the opposite side. Hank was the superior swimmer; but lately as Roberta started to develop into womanhood, her strength had increased and her swimming was becoming more and more competitive. At the halfway point, Roberta was only a couple of body lengths behind him and holding her own. As Hank continued on to the 3/4 mark, suddenly he realized that he no longer heard the splashing sounds of Roberta behind him. He looked back realizing that the race was over. Roberta looked terrified; she was treading water with no discernible forward movement. Hank yelled to her but she didn’t respond.
/> The first thing that came into Hank’s mind was alligators. He never heard of an alligator entering the quarry, but anything in Florida is possible, he thought. As fast as he could, he swam toward Roberta until he reached her side.
Her expression had been frozen since he had first noticed she was no longer swimming in his direction. Roberta was a good swimmer, but he realized she now was having trouble just staying afloat. Fearful that she had experienced a cramp he cried out, “What’s wrong, Roberta?” She didn’t speak but pointed to her right.
Floating right next to her was a badly decomposed human body.
*
Sergeant John Vignola was on his way out the door to smoke his first morning cigarette. His break had been interrupted several times by a series of routine police calls and now he could hear the phone ringing again. He realized that the longer he went without a smoke, the better his chances would be to stop forever. He had earnestly promised his wife that he would definitely do it this week, but he now realized that the habit was overpowering; he really needed that last cigarette.
“Damn,” he muttered, realizing that as a good officer he had to answer the phone and defer his overwhelming nicotine fit for another few minutes.
“Sergeant Vignola,” he answered briskly. Make it fast, is what he wanted to say next; but he remained silent hoping that the caller would not stutter, be verbose or not quickly get to the point. Damn, he wanted that smoke and he wanted it now!
“John, this is Pete Smutters.”
Vignola knew Pete well, in fact he had been expecting a call from Pete to set up one of their deep sea fishing trips.
“Hi Pete, what’s happening?” He hoped the open-ended social amenity would not prolong the conversation.
“A lot, John. My kid just discovered a body in the old quarry lake.”
“Ok, Pete, I’ll check it out later today, most likely it’s some large animal that drowned. You know that’s not an uncommon experience in that lake, they get in and can’t make it back to the shore.”
“No, John, I checked it out myself from the shore. It sure looked like a human body to me, even from a distance.”
“Thanks, Pete, I’ll check it out right away and we can arrange for our fishing trip after I get back.”
Not taking time for his cigarette break, Vignola hooked the police boat trailer on to his patrol car. In the trailer was an aging wooden Bass boat owned by the department. Vignola had a rookie patrolman drive him to the lake, so that, as a passenger, he would finally be able to light up a cigarette.
*
Less than an hour later, Vignola got his first look at the body floating face down in the lake. Vignola had seen far too many dead bodies during his experience with the police force, but he never got used to it. To calm his nerves he lit up again.
He contacted the medical unit who subsequently recovered the body, loaded it into the ambulance and brought it directly to the medical examiner’s office. Sergeant Vignola followed closely behind, smoking one cigarette after another in the patrol car.
Vignola waited outside the coroner’s office, enjoying still another cigarette. When he entered, he asked the coroner if the unlucky individual could be identified.
“I’m afraid it won’t be easy in this case.”
“What do you mean, Antonio? You’ve always been able to identify stiffs based on their fingerprints or dental X-rays.”
“Well that’s normally true, Pete, but have you taken a good look at the body yet?”
Actually, Sergeant Vignola had never taken a close look at the body. Once he realized that it was a human floating in the lake, he had immediately called medical personnel.
The body was lying face down on the examining table. The coroner turned it over.
Vignola gasped, “My God, I’ve seen plenty of assaults and automobile accidents, but this takes the cake!”
Sergeant Vignola was staring into a mound of fleshy pulp. No part of what was at one time a human face could be recognized. There was no way this poor soul could be identified by fingerprints either; all of his fingers had been surgically removed.
Vignola asked the coroner, “What about the teeth? Can we trace his identity that way?”
The coroner shook his head no, while concurrently opening the corpse’s jaw. All the teeth had been pulled.
“What a bastard to have done this!” Vignola cried out. “He had to be a sadist of the worst type.”
The coroner responded, “He may well have been a bastard but he wasn’t a sadist. Note the sparse amount of blood in the mouth. If the teeth had been pulled while he was still alive, we would see a lot of residual blood. This man was killed first, teeth and finger removal took place after death.
The coroner continued, “The killer didn’t want anyone to recognize the victim. It wasn’t a murder of brutality in the broad sense. The victim was killed by a knife to the heart. If you look closely, you can see a small puncture wound in his chest. As far as I can determine, it was a single insertion, well aimed. Death would have been instantaneous with virtually no suffering.”
“Well,” Vignola replied, “we know he is a male, at least that part of him remained intact. Can you determine his age?”
“I can only estimate that, based on his muscle mass, he’s between 30 and 45. After I complete my autopsy, I may be able to make a better estimate.”
“I’ll check with missing persons; but I don’t expect to get a hit there,” said Vignola. The victim’s face had been crushed; it appeared that every bone had been shattered. No way to post a photo of this poor guy, Vignola thought.
After Vignola left the autopsy room, he immediately lit up another cigarette. Fifteen minutes later he lit up again. After what he had just seen, he would need all the nicotine he could get.
Chapter 64
Fred found his meeting with Schultz informative, but he was still nowhere close to determining the brains beyond the rash of killings. He decided not to return to his office; instead he invited Jim over to his house for some brainstorming without incurring the interruptions of the station. Jim was finally convinced that neither the killings at the bank or at the theater were what they originally seemed to be.
Fred said, “‘Jim, let’s look over what we have up to now. We have those directly responsible for the murders in custody. Neither one of the two is acknowledging that they were responsible for the crimes; but certainly that in itself is not unusual. However, I have never in my life witnessed such a strong emotional denial. We took lie detector tests on both of them, basically to convince them that they should plead guilty. Both tests indicated they were telling the truth when they stated that they did not commit the crimes. Either that would mean they somehow knew how to fool the machine; or in their own minds they really believed they were not involved.”
Jim said, “So that’s where you believe Ford might have somehow hypnotized them into committing the crime without knowing what they were doing? Under such a condition they would be able to fool the machine.”
“Yes, there’s just too much coincidence to believe that Ford was not involved. He had prior contact with some of the victims, as well as the president of the company where two of the division heads were murdered. We now know, based on Ford’s involvement with jewelry robberies, that he has used his hypnotic powers to commit crimes, so the precedent is certainly there.”
“I understand, Fred, but he seems to be a competent and well known hypnotist, isn’t it just possible that some of those connections were just happenstance? This is a relatively small town, and the yellow pages don’t show that many hypnotists in the area. Maybe he was just recommended based on word of mouth from past satisfied customers.”
“Certainly that’s a possibility; but until we find Ford and get a chance to talk to him, he remains my number one suspect.”
“Ok, but what about the hanging of one the division heads from Schultz’s company? In that case you noted a perfume smell. Unless Ford is some type of cross-dresser, you can’t link him to
that murder.”
“I understand your point, Jim, but Ford is very clever, it wouldn’t be a total escape from logic to believe that he planted that perfume smell to mislead us. Also, the paper boy saw a male on the steps of Flynn’s house the early morning of his death.”
“Fred, at some point you just have to look at the facts that you have and move on from there, otherwise it will be like the Ramsey murder where the police focused so much on the wrong suspect that they lost precious time and let the real killer get away.
“Besides, what possible reason would Ford have to commit the murders? Up to now, the only thing we have on Ford is that he commits burglaries. Hell, none of his victims were even injured.”
Fred said, “I still need to interview a few more people at Schultz’ company. I have to determine if any of the female employees use Chanel Number 5. Meanwhile, check with Motor Vehicles, and determine if any of Schultz’s employees own a gray Buick sedan.”
“Ok, Fred; I know you are frustrated with the case but it seems to me that we are generally heading in the right direction. By the way, you had asked me to check into the actions of Paul at the time of the murders. I had no luck. I know he was not in the office during those periods, and he wasn’t playing his daily round of tennis. To check further, I would have to talk to his wife and I know you don’t want me to do that. Beyond that, and other than his being a royal pain in the ass, and one that is seeking your job day and night, I couldn’t find any wrongdoing.”
“Thanks Jim, I deeply appreciate your helping take some of the fog out of my brain.”
“No problem boss, anything I can do, you know that!”
Fred thought, thank God for Jim. He is the only one in the department I can place total reliance on.
As Jim was leaving the house he looked back at Fred and thought, it’s too bad I didn’t get the lieutenant’s slot; I need money badly, and that promotion would have been a welcome present. Well, who knows, it still can happen with the right combination of events.
*
Mind Switch Page 28
