That was the way some investigators talked mentally challenged suspects into confessing, often to crimes they hadn’t committed. If you keep denying it, we’ll get mad, and then you’ll really be in trouble. Just admit you did it, then everything will be cleared up, and everyone can go home.
That’s the way crimes were hung on people with IQs of eighty.
Why on earth was Fenton taking that approach with a brilliant psychologist?
What goddamn twilight zone was this happening in?
CHAPTER 17
As they sat around the hearth nursing their coffees, Gurney took the opportunity to ask a very basic question. “Richard, I may be assuming I understand hypnosis better than I actually do. Can you give me a simple definition of it?”
Hammond lowered his coffee to the arm of his chair. “A quick story might make it clearer than a definition. When I was in high school in Mill Valley, I played some baseball. I wasn’t very good, barely good enough to stay on the team. Then one day I came up to bat five times, and I hit five home runs. I’d never hit a home run before that day. The most remarkable thing was how it felt. The effortlessness of it. I wasn’t even swinging that hard. I wasn’t trying to concentrate. I wasn’t trying to hit a home run. I wasn’t trying to do anything. I was completely relaxed. It seemed that the bat just kept finding the ball and striking it at the perfect angle. Five times in a row.”
“And the connection between that and hypnosis is . . .?”
“Achieving a goal depends less on overcoming external obstacles than on removing internal ones—dysfunctional beliefs, emotional static. Hypnotherapy, as I practice it, is devoted to clearing that internal path.”
“How?” That single, sharp word came from Madeleine—who, up to that point, had said almost nothing.
“By uncovering what’s in the way. Freeing you from it. Letting you move toward what you really want without being stuck in the underbrush of guilt, confusion, and self-sabotage.”
“Isn’t that overly dramatic?” she asked.
“I don’t think so. We really do get tangled up in some nasty internal thornbushes.”
“I thought hypnosis was about concentration.”
“Concentrated focus is the aim, but trying to concentrate is the worst way to get there. That’s like trying to levitate by pulling up on your ankles. Or like chasing happiness. You can’t catch it by chasing it.”
She looked unconvinced.
Gurney pursued the issue. “What sort of internal obstacles do you need to clear away with people who want to stop smoking?”
Hammond continued to observe Madeleine for a moment before turning to Gurney. “Two big ones—memories of anxiety being relieved by smoking, and a faulty risk calculation.”
“I understand the first. What’s the second?”
“The rational individual tends to avoid activities whose costs outweigh their pleasures. The addict tends to avoid activities whose costs precede their pleasures. In a clearly operating mind, the ultimate balance decides the matter. Immediate and future effects are both seen as real. In a mind warped by addiction, sequence is the crucial factor. Immediate effects are seen as real; future effects are seen as hypothetical.”
“So you bring some clarity to that?” asked Gurney.
“I don’t bring anything. I simply help the person see what they know in their heart to be true. I help them focus on what they really want.”
“You believe you have a reliable instinct for sensing what people want?”
“Yes.”
“Did all four of the victims want to stop smoking?”
Hammond blinked noticeably for the first time. “The desire was strong in Ethan, moderate in Wenzel. In Balzac and Pardosa it was between weak and nonexistent.”
“Why would you bother treating someone like that?”
“The truth about the nature and depth of a person’s desire becomes clear to me only during the course of the session. They all claimed to have a strong desire at the start.”
Gurney looked perplexed.
Hammond went on. “People frequently come at the urging of someone else. Their real desire is to get someone off their back by being compliant. And some people come in the belief that hypnosis will create a desire to stop, even though they have no such desire themselves. Pardosa was the worst—anxious, unfocused, completely scattered—the one who most obviously was doing it at someone else’s request. But he wouldn’t admit it.”
“What about their other desires?”
“Meaning?”
“Did your instinct for sensing people’s motives lead you to any other conclusions?”
“Some general ones.”
“About Ethan?”
Hammond hesitated, as though considering confidentiality issues. “Ethan wanted everyone in the world to behave better. He wanted to find a proper role for each person and put them in it. A place for everyone, and everyone in their place. He was certain that he knew best. He didn’t want recognition. Just obedience.”
“I assume he didn’t always get the kind of obedience he wanted?”
“He had his successes and his failures.”
“How about your sense of Christopher Wenzel? What did he want out of life?”
“Christopher wanted to win. In the worst way, literally. He saw life as a zero-sum game. Not only did he want to win, he wanted someone else to lose.”
“What about Leo Balzac?”
“Angry God of the Old Testament. He wanted all the bad guys to be punished. He would have enjoyed standing at a porthole in Noah’s ark, watching the sinners drowning.”
“And Steven Pardosa?”
“He was the one who lived in his parents’ basement. He was desperate for respect. More than anything else, he wanted to be seen as an adult—which is, of course, the universal desire of people who never grow up.”
“How about Peyton Gall?”
“Ah, Peyton. Peyton wants to feel good all the time, regardless of the cost to himself or others. Like most drug addicts, he has infantile ideas of happiness. He wants to do whatever he feels like doing, whenever he feels like doing it. He’s the prisoner of his own concept of freedom. The enormous inheritance he receives from Ethan’s estate will probably kill him.”
“How?”
“Unlimited financial resources will remove whatever slight restraint may have been modifying his behavior till now. His disregard of future consequences will take over completely. In Freudian terms, Peyton is pure, 100 percent rampaging id.”
All Gurney could think of was the car flying past him on the narrow dirt road and the wild shrieks of laughter. “How did he get along with his brother?”
“There was no ‘getting along’ at all. They lived in separate wings of the house and had as little to do with each other as possible, apart from Ethan’s sporadic efforts to apply whatever pressure he could. If Austen was Ethan’s greatest success, Peyton was his greatest failure.”
“Do you think Peyton would have been capable of killing Ethan?”
“Morally, yes. Emotionally, yes. Practically, no. I can’t see Peyton handling anything that would demand complex thinking, precise logistics, or steadiness under pressure.”
“Those are the qualities you believe were required to . . . to engineer the four deaths?”
“They may not have been the only ones, but they’re definitely the ones Peyton lacks.”
Another question came to mind—a bit of a wild tangent. “Getting back to your ability to sense what people want . . . what about me? What do you think I really want?”