by Nic Joseph
“I know,” I said. “And it’s time for us to do just that.”
A loud breath escaped her, and then she turned, rushing for the other door, but I was right behind her. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her down with me. We fell backward, and she kicked and pushed, struggling to get free. I pinned her on her back, her arms on either side.
“What the hell is going on here?” I screamed into her face, and we both breathed heavily as we stared angrily into each other’s eyes. “Tell me, Christine, or I’ll go to Delroy, and we’ll turn this place upside down. You know we’ll find out anyway.”
She’d stopped struggling, and she shook her head from side to side. Tears were forming in her eyes, and they began to creep down her cheeks, pooling along her chin.
“It’s not my fault, Francis, please,” she said, and she closed her eyes for a moment. There was a loud banging noise as Scarface tried to open the office door. Christine took a long, slow breath and then opened her eyes again. “It’s not my fault.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What’s not your fault?”
“I…” She let her head fall back against the floor, and I could see the resolve leaving her. The banging continued, but we ignored it. Christine stared at me, and her next words were as heartfelt as they were chilling.
“Nothing was supposed to happen to the boy.”
In that instant, everything stopped.
“What?” I asked, leaning closer to her face. “Christine, what are you talking about?”
The expression on her face was one of resignation and defeat.
Then the words began to spill out of her.
“Nothing was supposed to happen to Matthew, I promise. We were going after Sam Farr. He was the one we were supposed to take, not Matthew! We never meant to hurt anyone.” Her voice broke, and a sob escaped her. “I don’t know what happened, Francis. I don’t know what your father did, I swear. But we have to find that boy right now—before something really bad happens to him.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I scrambled off her in shock, and we sat there for a moment in complete silence.
“What are you talking about?” I finally asked. “What did you do?”
She didn’t move, but I could see her swallow. “We weren’t going after the kid,” she whispered. “I would never, ever be a part of that.”
“But you would take part in the abduction of an adult?” I was spiraling, and as much as I pretended to be calm, I could barely think straight.
Sam Farr had been the target?
Dr. Christine and Alex had planned to…
“Look,” she said. “When I told you I’ve known your father for a long time, and said it was about a year, well…it’s more like five years. We’re very close. He’s more than my patient,” she said, looking down. “We met at a conference called Fit Minds, a mental awareness and hypnosis conference that’s focused on the works of some ostracized scientists, some who deserve to see the light of day, but for whatever reason, they haven’t been allowed to.”
“When was this? Exactly.”
“I told you, five years ago. In San Francisco. We were both living there at the time.”
I tried to hide my surprise, but she caught it right away.
“You didn’t know your father moved to San Francisco for three months, did you?” she asked. “He lived in the Haight. We met at that conference, and something just clicked. When he told me he was moving home to Illinois, I came with him.”
She looked at me, and when I didn’t respond, she sighed and kept talking. “I don’t know who came up with the idea, really. I guess it was him, but I was there, right from the beginning, and looking back on it, it all seems so ridiculous, but when you’re in the moment… It was one of those things somebody said and nobody disagreed with, and I guess it was a joke at first, but then we were doing it, and nobody stopped it, and—”
“Planning an abduction isn’t something you just ‘fall into,’” I said, cutting her off. I waved my free hand around the room. “What exactly are you doing here?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Christine.”
She sighed again and turned from me, training her eyes on a painting on the wall. “We’re testing some of the theories of the late D. B. James,” she said. “He’s—”
“D. B. James?”
She turned back to me. “Yes. You’ve heard of him?”
The books.
All over my father’s cabin.
“Sort of. Go on.”
“He has theories on repressed-memory therapy—theories that were quickly shot down by the major medical associations and said to be another quack theory. But it’s not true. It really works.”
“Repressed-memory theory?” I asked. “Sounds like a fancy name for ‘follow the shiny pocket watch until you feel sleepy.’”
She frowned. “You’ve been watching too much television,” she said. “Tell me, what do you know about hypnosis?”
I shrugged. “I know you make people stare at an object until they pretend to fall asleep. And then they get up and do crazy things.”
She laughed, but there was no humor there. “It’s surprising to me how much misinformation still exists about my profession,” she said. “Hypnosis is not just fodder for bad Wisconsin Dells’s stage shows. It’s used around the world for a variety of clinical practice. Thousands of people have any number of ailments cured each year by it.”
“Like what?”
“What isn’t it used for? Hypnosis can help with weight loss, smoking, fear of public speaking, fear of flying, even gastrointestinal issues.”
“How is that possible?” I asked. “You can hypnotize yourself to go to the gym?”
“Look, if you’re going to make fun of it, I’m not going to—”
“No, continue,” I said. “Really.”
She took a deep breath. “Hypnotherapy is as clinical a science as any other. The goal of it is complete focus, and the elimination of distractions that keep patients from concentrating on their problems. When you’re able to focus your attention like that, you can begin to uncover problems and find solutions. Hypnosis isn’t something that’s done to you. I think that’s the biggest misconception. You do it to yourself, with the help of an experienced, licensed professional.”
“Unless you’re in Vegas.”
“Francis…”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But if hypnosis is used to treat all of these conditions, then why are you guys being so secretive? What was all of the outrage over D. B. James?”
“Hypnosis is generally approved for therapeutic purposes, like those I mentioned. But one of the more”—she paused to think about her word choice—“cutting-edge areas has always been, and remains, repressed-memory therapy.”
“And that’s…?”
“Using hypnosis not to treat a current condition, but to bring to the surface past memories that may be buried deep in the psyche, and that are otherwise unreachable.”
“Shit,” I said. “That’s what you’re trying to do to Sam Farr.”
“Yes,” she said softly. She cleared her throat. “The major psychological organizations say that the biggest threat is false memory retrieval. The idea that instead of bringing buried memories to the surface, repressed-memory therapy creates false ones, which can obviously have terrible effects on a vulnerable patient.”
“Of course,” I said. “Convincing little Carrie that she was abused as a child.”
“That doesn’t always happen.”
“Always? So you admit it’s possible?”
“Well, there are always risks with any medical procedure,” she said.
“But, Christine, there’s got to be a better way to do this. How come you’re not going through the proper channels, and risking your career—not to mention the he
alth of these men—if you’re so sure you’re on to something.”
“Because that’s what happens with cutting-edge research. Nobody wants to admit it, but do you think that they haven’t been tested by the time these studies get full review-board approval and are signed off by some idiot in a suit in Washington? Do you think hardworking researchers would go through all of that effort without some proof, some evidence to know they’re on the right track?”
“Yes, I think people wait and do things the right way all the time,” I said.
“You’d be surprised, Francis,” she said. “Were you doing things the right way by coming here tonight?”
I flinched but didn’t respond to her question. “What about the rest of your team? Do they know exactly what they’ve gotten into?”
“Only Eric and Giselle,” she said, motioning to the office door, which had gone silent. I wondered if he could hear us. “You met Giselle earlier tonight. Alex and I hired them both about a year ago to do basic research, but then I realized I could trust them, and I filled them in. Neither knew anything about Sam Farr before they got here, but they were willing to help, for Alex’s sake. And you have to understand who comes here for our studies. These are people at points in their lives where they are willing to put up with the risks for the benefits, and the possible rewards for science and mankind.”
“You mean, these people are so desperate for a buck they are willing to sign whatever consent form you put in front of them and promise never to talk about what you did to them? Don’t try to romanticize what you’re doing here.”
“You act like we’re cutting out a body part,” she said. “Our work involves therapies to help retrieve buried memories that are lost in the recesses of the mind. We pay them for a psychiatric session that they couldn’t afford anyway.”
She shook her head and stared at me, her eyes pleading. “You have to believe me when I say I had no idea Alex was going to take the child instead of Sam,” she said. “I can’t believe he did this.”
“What exactly was the plan?”
“About a year ago, Alex told me he wanted to try to use one of D. B.’s therapies on Sam Farr—to access his memories from the night your brother died.”
“He’s fucking crazy.”
“I thought the same thing at first. There was no guarantee it would work, first of all, and there was no way we could get him to do it.”
“So you decided to abduct him?” I said, staring at her in disbelief. “Of all the options, of course that’s where Alex would land.”
“Well, it wasn’t that simple, Francis,” she said, moving even closer to me. “Your father tried everything else. He even talked to Sam about it, told him he knew of a technique that might help.”
“When was this?”
“A couple of months ago, Alex went to Sam’s job. At the gas station. He told him he just wanted to get to the truth, and if Sam didn’t have anything to hide, he should be open to it.”
“And let me guess, Sam Farr blew him off.”
“Of course—”
“I would have too,” I said.
“Yes, of course,” she said again. “I wasn’t that surprised by it, but Alex was. He couldn’t understand it. He thought if Sam was truly innocent, then why wouldn’t he want to know exactly what happened? Why wouldn’t Sam do that for him? He told Sam he could end it all right then, just by agreeing to give it a try.”
“Could he, though?” I asked. “Let’s say Sam Farr had agreed to undergo your…repressed hypnosis—”
“Repressed-memory retrieval.”
“Whatever. And let’s say it showed he didn’t know any more than he’s ever said he did. Would my father have let it go? Would he have been satisfied?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly.
We sat there silently for a few moments before she continued.
“So, Alex told me there was really only one other option. That was to make Sam do it. He said he would do all the work. He just needed a couple of us on the scene to help out.”
“What was the plan?”
She closed her eyes, shook her head. “It was staged perfectly.”
“Not perfectly enough.”
“No,” she said, opening them again, and a tear rolled down her face. “Giselle, Eric, and I were there. We’d been following Sam and Matthew every Wednesday for weeks. Giselle and Eric were supposed to make sure that the two were separated. I was supposed to take the kid and help him get home. That was my role. He was going to be scared, because his father was missing. I was just going to get him to the main path, where the police could find him and take him home. We talked about that. But when I came around the bend, there was only Sam Farr there—no child. And your father was nowhere to be found.” She straightened her shoulders. “I swear to you, I had no idea he was going to do that. If I did, I would never have agreed to help.”
The story seemed believable, and yet I still wasn’t sure I could fully trust her.
She’d done a pretty impressive job of lying to my face the other day. Maybe she’d had more to do with what had happened to Matthew than she wanted to admit. “How would it have worked anyway, even if you were able to get Sam Farr?” I asked. “I mean, you’d need him to buy in, to agree to do it, right?”
“Well, the sedative you have to take is very strong. That would have gotten him settled and ready. And then we would have begun the procedure right away. And your father and I can access the results from secure systems, from anywhere. We would have been long gone by the time he woke up.”
“But even if it worked, wouldn’t Sam Farr remember it after the fact? He’d know what you did to him.”
“Some patients remember the therapy; others don’t,” she said. “That’s a chance we were willing to take.”
“He would have definitely remembered the kidnapping though.”
“Again, a chance we were willing to take.”
“Why were you so eager to help my father do something so horrible?”
She paused and looked at her hands. “You probably think I’m some dumb woman in love, right? A lovesick puppy? I’ll admit I am in love with your father, but that’s not why I helped him. I helped him because I understand what it feels like to be a parent with questions. I lost a child once, a long time ago, and I have a lot of unanswered questions about it. If this therapy could help another parent, well… I was willing to do what it took. Especially since we had no plans to hurt Farr.”
“Besides the kidnapping.”
She looked away and shrugged. “We weren’t going to hurt him.”
“Can you think of a reason Alex would take Matthew instead?” I asked. “I mean, he wouldn’t want to try the procedure on him, right?”
“No, of course not. It wouldn’t make sense. He wasn’t there that night, obviously. Besides, D. B.’s techniques have never been tried on children. Only adults.” She sighed. “I should have known something was going on.”
“What do you mean?”
“That morning…there was something wrong with Alex, and he wouldn’t tell me what it was. I should have pushed him more,” she said, shaking her head. “I should have said something sooner, but I was so scared, both for the boy and for Alex. I know he won’t hurt Matthew, not intentionally. You must know that, Francis. Your father is not a bad man. But if something happens to that little boy…I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
She looked up at me, and I could tell she was waiting for something from me, some kind of reassurance.
“You’re right,” I said. “If something happens to him…I doubt you ever will.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Tuesday, 6:00 a.m.
The light that slithered through the cracks of my blinds the next morning prodded the corners of my eyes. I cringed as I woke up, and the flood of memories from the previous day washed over me.
When I’d gotten home, Amy had been sound asleep in bed, and I’d hit my own only a few minutes later, too exhausted to do anything else.
And, maybe, hopeful that all of it would just go away.
But when I opened my eyes, it wasn’t gone, and the pain in my head was so severe that I rocked from side to side for a few minutes before I could summon the energy to sit up.
The news I’d learned the previous day was enough to make me want to give up all together—to leave the investigation in the hands of Delroy and the other cops. To head to the Lansing News today and do my job and let Alex figure it out on his own.
But it wasn’t just about Alex.
It was about a nine-year-old boy.
Everything I’d learned convinced me that my father was responsible for Matthew’s disappearance.
I dropped my feet over the side of the bed and leaned forward, struggling to push past the pain that throbbed between my temples. I massaged my eyes.
What did my father want with Matthew Farr?
Did he have it in him to kidnap a child?
Or hell, an adult?
And maybe the biggest question of all: What went wrong that day in the park?
I checked my messages and groaned when I heard the first one.
“Hello, Mr. Scroll. This is Principal Erin Murray. I got your message about wanting to meet. I’ll be at home for most of the morning, so feel free to come by. Though I’m not sure what this could be about.”
She left her address and hung up.
The meeting seemed pointless now after what Christine had told me, and yet I couldn’t just ignore what I’d learned from Matthew’s teacher. Pulling myself out of bed, I headed to the bathroom to shower and change. I owed it to the Farrs to go check it out.
Amy walked out of her room as I stepped out of the bathroom.
“Hey,” I said, squaring my shoulders. I’d missed her yesterday, and now here she was, right in front of me.
I could do it.
I had to do it.
“Hey.”
