“Why not?”
“Because you’re the key to it all. Somehow, you’re at the heart of what’s been happening. You may not be at the heart of it the way Gilbert Fenton says you are. But in some way, you’ve been pulled into the center of it. It would be foolish for me to get involved without your cooperation.”
Jane’s eyes widened in alarm. This was plainly not the casual approach she wanted him to take.
A silence ensued during which Richard appeared to be imagining dark possibilities.
Gurney decided to take a risk. “Remember, Richard, at the end of the day . . . there was no dead body in the trunk.”
If Hammond was shocked that Gurney was aware of the incident, he concealed it well. His only reaction came after a delay of several seconds.
It was an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment.
THE RELEVANCE OF THE TRUNK EPISODE SEEMED TO CREATE A SHIFT in Hammond’s perspective. It also brought the edgy momentum of the gathering to a kind of resting place.
At Jane’s suggestion, they moved from the table to a half circle of armchairs facing the hearth. The glowing coals created a soothing focal point that made the lull in the conversation feel comfortable. Jane served coffee and brought them each a slice of blueberry tart from the sideboard.
The relaxed mood, however, was fragile.
Gurney sensed it ebbing away as they were finishing their coffee and Hammond asked him if he’d read the statement he’d issued to the press.
“I did.”
“Then you know that I was absolutely clear on certain points?”
“Yes.”
“I said that I would hire no defenders or representatives of any kind.”
“True.”
“I didn’t mean that I myself would hire no defenders, but I’d have my sister do it for me. I wasn’t being devious. I meant what I said.”
“I’m sure you did.”
“But now you want me to reverse that position and bless your employment by my sister.”
“Your agreeing to my involvement won’t reverse anything. I have no intention of being your defender or representative.”
Hammond appeared bewildered, Jane alarmed.
Gurney continued. “The only purpose of my involvement—if I choose to get involved at all—would be to discover how and why those four people died.”
“So you’re not interested in proving my innocence?”
“Only to the extent that the truth itself proves your innocence. My job is uncovering the facts. I’m a detective, not a lawyer. If I were to get involved in this case, I wouldn’t be representing you or your sister. I’d be representing Ethan Gall, Christopher Wenzel, Leo Balzac, and Steven Pardosa. Discovering the truth behind their deaths is something I’d be doing for them. If the truth should end up benefiting you, that would be fine with me. But I’d be representing their interests, not yours.”
Throughout this speech Jane looked like she was in a panic to jump in.
Richard’s only hint of emotion was a flicker of sadness at the mention of Ethan Gall.
He regarded Gurney for a long moment before asking, “What do you want from me?”
“Any thoughts or suspicions you may have about the four deaths. Anything that could help me make sense of a case that right now makes no sense at all.”
“It makes sense to Gilbert Fenton.”
“And to Reverend Bowman Cox,” Gurney added, wondering what impact the name might have on Hammond.
Judging from his blank look, it had none.
Gurney explained, “Bowman Cox is the Florida minister Wenzel confided his nightmare to. I was curious about the nightmare, so I got in touch with him. He can recite it by heart.”
“Why would he do that?”
“He says the nightmare is the key to understanding Wenzel’s death, and your role in it.”
“My role being . . .?”
“He told me your therapeutic specialty is the manufacture of homosexuals.”
“Not that old nonsense all over again! Did he mention how I do it?”
“You put people in a deep trance. You go through some lurid mumbo jumbo to convince them that they’re really homosexual. And when they emerge from the trance, they either dive headfirst into their new lifestyle or become suicidal at the very thought of it.”
“That must be a hell of a trance I’m putting them in.”
“Yes. Literally. A hell of a trance. Cox claims that your power to destroy people’s lives comes from a secret partnership with Satan.”
Hammond sighed. “Isn’t it remarkable that here in America we treat the mentally ill like dirt—except when they make a religion out of their craziness and hatred, and claim it’s Christianity? Then we flock to their churches.”
A valid enough observation, thought Gurney, but he didn’t want to get off on a tangent. “Let me ask you a clinical question. Could a hypnotherapist implant the details of a dream in a patient’s mind and actually cause him to have that dream?”
“Absolutely not. It’s a neurological impossibility.”
“Okay. Could a hypnotherapist talk a client into committing suicide?”
“Not unless the client was already suffering from a depression severe enough to incline him that way to begin with.”
“Did you note that kind of depression in any of the four men who ended up dead?”
“No. They all had positive feelings about the future. That’s not a suicidal state of mind.”
“Does that lead you to any conclusion?”
“My conclusion is that they were victims of murders staged to resemble suicides.”
“Yet Fenton is ignoring that possibility. He’s claiming that the unlikelihood of their committing suicide indicates that you caused it. Do you have any idea why he’d take such a strange position?”
Jane broke in, “Because he’s a dishonest, lying bastard!” Her fragile china plate with its half-eaten slice of blueberry tart slipped from her lap and shattered on the floor. She stared down at it, muttered a frustrated “Shit!” and began cleaning it up. Madeleine got a sponge and some paper towels from the sink to help.
Hammond answered Gurney’s question. “There are two puzzling things about Fenton’s position. First, it’s based on a clinical impossibility. Secondly, he believes what he’s saying.”
“How do you know that?”
“That’s what I’m good at. Nine times out of ten, I can hear in a person’s voice the sound of the truth, the sound of a lie. The way I practice therapy is based a little on technique and a lot on insight into what people really believe and want, regardless of what they tell me.”
“And you’re convinced that Fenton believes the wild scenario he’s hyping to the press?”
“He has no doubt about it. It’s in his voice, his eyes, his body language.”
“Just when I thought I couldn’t be more confused, you’ve added another twist. A homicide investigator might briefly consider the possibility that a hypnotist was behind a string of suicides. But to embrace it as the only possible answer seems crazy.” He glanced over at Madeleine to see if she had any reaction; but her eyes were on the dying red coals, her mind plainly somewhere else.
Another question occurred to him. “You said you were good at sensing what a person really wants. What do you think Fenton wants?”
“He wants me to confess my involvement in the four deaths. He told me that it’s the only way out, and if I don’t confess, my life will be over.”
“And if you do confess to some yet unnamed felony, what then?”
“He said if I confessed to my part in causing all four suicides, then everything would be all right.”