by Chaz McGee
“He always was a smart boy,” Noni told the room before anyone else could react. “Wanted to be a lawyer all the way back in sixth grade. I knew he would go far.”
Gonzales looked at his watch. Time was ticking away. The feds would be taking over in an hour and a half. “Handle it,” he told Maggie while Calvano stifled his outrage at being overlooked.
Maggie left the room to confer with Martin’s lawyer.
“She’s quite a competent detective, isn’t she?” Noni asked after she had left, winning a weak smile from Gonzales and a lingering glare from Calvano.
When Maggie told Martin he had passed the polygraph, the poor bastard turned into a different man. He visibly relaxed, let out a long sigh, and unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt.
“Look at that. He’s hiding something,” Calvano announced in the adjoining room. “See how relieved he is that he got away with it?”
This did not sit well with Noni. She lit into Calvano. “Young man, you remind me of a bully I taught back in 1978. He was a smart young man who could have gone far, but he was so busy trying to cut others down that he missed the attempts at friendship that came his way. My guess is that his insecurity ensured he would be a bully his entire life. Last I heard, he was a tow truck operator, despite the fact that he had an IQ of one hundred and forty. I suggest if you intend to remain a detective that you learn to listen more to what others are saying and point fingers a little bit less.”
She turned back around, having said her piece, and left a stunned Calvano to stare at the back of her head. I could feel him beginning to wonder who the hell she was and if they had met before. But then his self-preservation kicked in and he glanced at Gonzales, seeking his reaction. Gonzales was too smart for that. The moment the tirade began he had pulled out a cell phone and feigned a call. I knew he was faking it but admired his restraint. A cornered dog is a dangerous one—he would let Calvano save face and delude himself that no one had overheard the upbraiding.
He would not, however, let Calvano embarrass the department in front of the FBI. Maggie had accepted a piece of paper from Martin’s lawyer after confirming his client had passed the polygraph, and she was looking it over intently. Gonzales knew what it was.
“Calvano,” he barked. “Gunn’s got the list of the license plate numbers Martin took down over the past couple days. These are cars that were parked near the playground. I want you to run them. Look for patterns, check out the owners, you know the drill—who doesn’t belong near a park on a weekday? I want the list narrowed down by the time the feds get here. We need something solid to show them.”
“Yes, sir,” Calvano said smartly, as if he had just been handed a vital undercover assignment instead of grunt work that any clerk could do. Noni made him nervous and, like all bullies, he was anxious to leave the battlefield when others started fighting back.
Chapter 14
Calvano made the most of taking the list of license plate numbers from Maggie, emphasizing that Gonzales had asked him to handle it personally. She couldn’t have cared less. The specialist trained in the forensic application of hypnosis had arrived to conduct her session with Martin, and that was what Maggie was most interested in—not just because she wanted to find the little boy, but because she hoped Martin might have seen something that would help solve Fiona Harker’s murder.
The specialist was also a certified therapist, a fortunate skill considering Martin’s mental state. She did not look at all like what I had expected. She was in her forties, small and blonde, with the lithe body and turned-out feet of a dancer. She also had kind eyes, a reassuring smile, and such a sweet voice that Martin was relaxed enough to start the session within moments. Although she had a PhD, she insisted Martin call her Miranda and asked if she might call him Robert. The poor guy was so unused to female attention, I suspect he would have consented to anything she asked, but then again, I would have, too.
When the therapist began to make small talk in preparation for relaxing Martin and putting him under, Maggie returned to the observation room. She nodded politely to Noni, who was still there as a condition of Robert Michael Martin’s cooperation, then sat beside Gonzales. “You sure you want to stay for this?” she asked him.
“I wouldn’t miss it,” he said grimly. We both knew he was more likely ducking the press, but he was the commander, and who was I to second-guess his judgment?
While the specialist made small talk with Martin, I amused myself by fantasizing about combining polygraph and hypnosis techniques into one awesome witness-screening process, conducted exclusively by me. I would guide people through all they had seen surrounding a crime—but buzz them to a halt whenever they tried to embellish the truth. Oh, to be alive again.
Robert Michael Martin was ready.
“Robert, I want you to hold both hands out, as if you were playing the piano,” the therapist told Martin. Okay, Miranda, I thought, you can’t see me, but today you’re going to do a doubleheader and I will be glad to play along.
With a goofy grin half caused by the fact that he was already a bit besotted with her, Martin complied, and I copied him, holding both palms open toward the floor.
“Good.” Miranda smiled. “Now move each finger in turn as if you were pressing down on piano keys, one by one. Go all the way through both hands and reverse directions, again pressing each finger down in turn.” She demonstrated the rapid finger movement technique and Martin and I imitated her, making it look like we were running up and down imaginary scales on a piano keyboard.
“Keep moving your fingers like that while I take you back three days to Monday morning. Just keep doing that and listen to my voice.”
I had no idea why she was asking Martin to do it, but the effect was quite literally mesmerizing. As Martin continued to move his fingers and listened to her soothing voice take him back in time, I could feel his mind move further and further away from the present. Barriers between the conscious and unconscious areas of his brain began to fade as Miranda’s hushed voice led us into the twilight of his thoughts. Part of him knew he was still in the interrogation room, but his consciousness was elsewhere, brought back to the days just passed.
“I want you to imagine a clock turning backward, backward, still backward,” Miranda intoned. “Taking you back beyond breakfast this morning and the night before and another day and another night’s sleep and yet another day and night to Monday morning.”
I was right there with Martin. These were not my memories, but, as his mind opened, I entered and took a step closer to being one with him.
“You are standing at the front door to a very big house,” Miranda told him. “I want you to go inside, where you will see a long hallway lined with many doors.” She waited, and I saw the hallway come alive in his mind. “What do you see?” she asked Martin.
“Red carpet on the floors. Wallpaper. It looks like a hotel my mom and I once stayed in when we visited Denver.”
“Very good,” Miranda said. “Now behind each door, you will find a day. I want you to go to the door for this past Monday. It will be the second door on the right side of the hallway. Do you remember what happened leading up to Monday morning?”
Martin nodded. “Someone left the door to the walk-in open and my tiramisu was ruined. I had to make a new pan because Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler order it every Monday and they are very disappointed when we run out.”
“Okay,” Miranda said. “Let’s keep that memory behind the door for Sunday. I want you to walk to the next door, the one for Monday. Open that door and go inside.”
I could feel Martin reaching a hand out in his mind; it was a sensation as physical as if it were really happening. I saw the flash of a brass doorknob, a heavy oak door pushing open, and then, there it was: the sidewalk outside the restaurant where he worked, as he emerged from the solitude of his night shift into the early morning.
“Tell me where you are now,” Miranda said.
I could have explained that we were standing outside the
Italian restaurant, a night’s worth of cooking and baking behind and a sunny day stretching out before us. It was a little cool, not like the fine day that would dawn later in the week. This was a still-crisp, slightly wintry day that teased of spring, just enough to ensure that Robert Michael Martin would want to take the long way home. As he walked, I walked beside him, inhaling the odors of baking bread followed by the starch and steam smells of the corner Laundromat.
Miranda talked Martin farther down the sidewalk, asking him questions about how he felt, what he smelled, if there was a wind, why he had decided to walk toward the park. Martin gave his answers dutifully and honestly, that much I could tell, as he had somehow gone back to that day in his mind completely, as if there were two Robert Michael Martins: the one sitting in a chair in the interrogation room and the one who had left work three days before and decided to check on the children in the park.
“It’s really nice,” Martin said to no one in particular. “I think maybe spring is not far away. I want to see what the park looks like.”
Somewhere in that last block between restaurant and park, I ceased walking beside Martin and became a part of him, as if our beings had merged. I now saw the world through his eyes. There was no pain, no disharmony—he had invited me inside when he opened his mind through hypnotism. I felt as he felt leaving work: heavy, weary, my lungs choked with flour dust. I breathed deeply of the fresh air and was grateful for it.
We grew nearer to the playground and began to pass cars parked along the street that led to it. Martin slowed to note the license plate of each, jotting the numbers down in a small notebook he kept in his pocket. I memorized each one as he wrote, filing it away for future reference. Then he turned into the park and followed the brick path to the sandbox area, rimmed by benches. We sat and he tilted his head back to feel the sun; I could feel the warmth spreading through me as he did so. Children laughed and shrieked in the background while mothers chatted about their lives nearby.
Martin stiffened. He’d felt something, so I felt it, too. Someone was staring at us. He opened his eyes and scanned the playground area, noting the regulars: two stout Dutch nannies on a bench, chatting away in their language while their wards played nearby. An old man feeding pigeons from the crumbs of toast he had saved from his breakfast. A sanitation worker resting his feet before he headed back for a second shift. An old lady sitting alone, hands folded in her lap, watching the children and wondering how it was that her own had grown up so quickly and disappeared. And then, at the very end of one long row of benches, a man reading a newspaper—or pretending to. He held it at eye level, and every now and then would raise his head slightly and peer at the children playing, his eyes lingering on each as if he were hungry and intended to choose the plumpest to take home and eat. He wore sunglasses and a baseball hat pulled low over his face. All you could really see of him were his ears sticking out below the hat. He was the one who had been staring at Martin. I was sure of it.
I felt such danger—and longing—coming from the man that I lost my place for the briefest of moments. Martin and I parted, and I had to will my way back to him. I could not afford to lose the connection. I needed to see and feel everything he was feeling, yet find a way to tap into my own abilities at the same time.
“What does this man look like?” Miranda asked Martin.
“He is about my height but very thin,” Martin answered, confirming what I was seeing in his mind’s eye. “He looks awkward, like he doesn’t quite know what to do with his arms and legs. His hands are long and elegant, like a girl’s.”
“What else?” the hypnotist prodded gently. “Look at his face. Tell me what you see.”
“I can’t,” Martin explained, his voice distant. “The newspaper is in the way, and he’s wearing a baseball hat and sunglasses. That’s creepy. But his hair is brown and cut a little crazy. You can see wisps of it sticking out below the hat. He’s wearing jeans that are too short for him. And sandals, even though the day is cool.”
“Sandals?” Miranda asked. “Can you describe them?”
“The thick, ugly kind that are good for your feet,” Martin said. “With socks. He wears white socks with them. I would never in a million years do that.”
I could have told her even more. The newspaper did not disguise the fact that the man was, indeed, only pretending to read while he watched the children. I could feel him cataloging them in turn: a girl, a girl, a boy, then another girl. Yellow-haired, red-haired, that one’s too dark. Too old. I need a boy, a brown-haired boy, maybe four or five. Skinny, with big eyes. There must be one here somewhere.
“Is this the man you told the police about?” Miranda asked.
“Yes,” Martin said. “But maybe his kid is playing somewhere nearby, or maybe he’s just lonely and likes the sound of the children at play. I think he lives alone in a big house with no one to talk to. Maybe that was what it was like even when he was a child. I think maybe he needs the company of sitting here in the park.”
Whoa, buddy, I thought to myself as feelings of loneliness and despair overwhelmed Robert Michael Martin, leaking from him as if a dam had just burst and years of isolation had come pouring forth.
The therapist felt him veer from what she needed him to do. “Let’s leave the park on Monday morning now,” she suggested gently. “Let’s go back into the hallway and close the door on Monday. Are you there? Good. Take a step down to the next door. Let’s open it and take you to Tuesday morning. Work is over. You are leaving the restaurant again. Tell me what you see.”
Martin complied, and she led him through Tuesday morning. It was very much like the day before, except that Martin was in the mood to admire cars and stopped to examine a red Lamborghini parked on a side street near the park. When he finally got to the park, the man was not there, at least not that Martin saw, nor did he see Tyler Matthews. Miranda quickly led him forward twenty-four more hours to Wednesday, the next door down in her hallway of memories.
This time, when Martin stepped through the door, the morning was cloudy and the day smelled of rain. Rain and urine. Martin sounded indignant when he spoke. “A bum slept inside the back stoop again,” he complained. “I don’t know why the cops can’t keep him away. He stinks the whole place up.”
And you, buddy, don’t smell too good yourself after a night sweating in the kitchen, I thought as we once again left the restaurant and walked down the sidewalk. I was still wholly in his mind, seeing the world exactly as he saw it.
“It’s very overcast,” he told Miranda. “I think it might rain. That would be good. I’m too tired to water the flowers, but if they die it’ll be because I’m lazy and I promised my mother I’d take care of them. She would like this day. She loved rainy days.”
Sadness welled in him, and I felt sorry for the man. His mother had been all he had.
“Where are you now?” the therapist asked. “Are you taking the same route to the park as yesterday?”
“No,” he confessed. “I want to go home. I’m really very tired and kind of hungry.” He hesitated and I felt an inner voice rise inside him, as if someone were chiding him. “I better not, though,” he said out loud. “I heard on the news last night that a man took a little girl out in California, right from her front yard. But her friend across the street got a partial license plate number. They caught the guy and now she’s a hero. I better take down some license plate numbers before I go home. The colonel says I am very thorough, the best volunteer he has. He says he depends on me and I must keep bringing him information and I must be his eyes, as he cannot get around the way I can.” I saw it all as he took the notebook from his pocket and began jotting down numbers, just as he had the day before.
“What do they look like?” the hypnotist asked him. “Can you tell me the color and make of the cars as well? You did a good job of that yesterday.”
As he recited a litany of minivans and sedans, along with their colors and approximate years and makes, I knew Maggie was taking notes, ready to test
the accuracy of Martin’s memory against whatever information the Department of Motor Vehicles would provide. Not only would it give her an idea of how valuable the hypnotism session had been, if the DMV records helped identify a car whose make and model did not match the official data, it might indicate stolen plates—and lead her to the abductor.
As Martin spoke, I realized for the first time that I could see far more than just what he was describing for Miranda. I was there every bit as much as he was. He was describing the cars to the hypnotist, but I was actually seeing the cars, along with the park or yard behind each car, the housewife walking her dog on the sidewalk, the mailman pushing his cart full of mail past them all. The details Martin was leaving out were visible to me, and I looked hungrily around, seeking clues only I could be privy to. I checked out the cottage across the street, where the nurse had lived, and saw a woman dressed in a raincoat leaving the house and getting into a car and driving away. I realized with a start that it had been Fiona Harker, that she was still alive, but that within hours death would visit her and, a day after that, she would be found murdered on the floor.
“That’s about it,” Martin declared, talking to himself as he relived stowing his notebook and pen back in a pocket. “Let’s see what the kids are up to today. There’s this one kid in the sandbox who bullies the little ones. I’m going to keep an eye on him. I don’t like the way he pushes other kids around. I may have to say something to his nanny.”
“Do you know the children by name?” Miranda asked, to remind him she was there. I knew she was hoping to find information on Tyler Matthews, including whether he had followed any patterns that might help the police.
“I have names for them,” Martin explained. “I make them up. And sometimes if they get called enough by their mothers I even know their real names.”
“What about Tyler Matthews?” Miranda asked. “You know him by name, right?”
