“I’m so glad
you’re
still
here,”
I said.
“And
here.
How long you staying?”
“Fly out this afternoon,” she said.
“Y
ou’re
an amazing
man,”
Anna said.
It was late.
We
were finally alone for the first time since we had
woken
up together the morning before.
We
were lying in our bed in the dark, her head on my chest, her thick, beautiful brown hair draped
over
me.
“I
don’t
know anyone who could’ve done what you
did,”
she said.
“You
were so graceful and elegant, yet honest and elegiac.”
I was exhausted, emotionally spent, spiritually depleted. Her kind, overly complimentary
words
were a soothing salve for my soul, her warm bare skin on mine, healing and whole-making.
“Thank
you,”
I said.
“You
can’t
know what that means to
me.”
“I’m showing great restraint in what I’m saying,” she said. “Holding back. Choosing every
word carefully.
Could easily add a hundred for
each.”
“So sweet.”
“I’m not being sweet. I’m in
awe
of you. More now than
ever.
There’s
no
way
what you did could’ve been easy or effortless, but
that’s
the
way
you made it look.”
“You
know what I kept thinking today? It was no different than any other day these
days.
I kept thinking, I get to
go
home with Anna. I’m the lucky man who gets to lie next to her tonight.”
“Every
night,”
she said. “I kept thinkin’ the same
thing.
That amazing man, saying such beautiful and insightful things, that man who I respect and admire more than any other I’ve ever known, is mine. I get to
go
home with him tonight.
Wake
with him
tomorrow.”
She may
have
said more, but those were the last words I heard before I succumbed to the heavy-handed demands of the sandman.
Good night, moon. Good night, Mom. Good night, sweet, beautiful Anna. Good night,
world
for a while.
I
was headed to a crime scene when Hahn called.
“I pulled
Bailey’s
file from Personnel,” she said.
“What?” I asked in shock. “I really wish you
hadn’t
done that.”
“Not when you hear what I found
out.”
I was on the mostly desolate highway that connected Pottersville and
Panama
City,
the early morning light filtering down through the slash pines, shining through the rows onto the road in shafts of bright yellow and orange.
“She’s
not licensed
by
the
state.”
“
What
?” I said.
Up ahead on my right I could see an enormous clear-cut field where just days before there had been a thirty-year-old flatlands pinewood forest.
It looked as if a massive super storm had blown through and leveled the land, leaving a gaping swath of baldness where once had been life and
beauty.
The devastation of deforestation.
Skidders were crawling through the fallen forest, twisting and turning like mechanical animals as they pinched and pulled the felled trees toward waiting log trucks.
Pulling off the
highway,
I turned down a dirt road, where on each side slash pines were being harvested. “She was appointed with the provision she
would
obtain her license within a year, which ends next month. Somebody had to want her to
have
this job very
badly.”
I thought about who that might
be.
“And
she
doesn’t have
a legitimate degree. Her PhD is mail-order. Unaccredited. Which is why
she’s
having trouble getting licensed. And she told me she could supervise me for the hours I need for licensure. Now I’ve got to start
over.”
“Better to know
now,”
I said.
Very
little was left standing for hundreds of acres—the occasional oak tree, a small stand of cypress trees rimming a small patch of wetland, a handful of homemade tree stands, and a small, one-room mobile home cut in half, the
two
pieces separated by a narrow debris field about ten feet
long.
“She’s
had problems at her last
two
places of employment. Left in a
hurry
both times. She claims
she’s
been the victim of sexual harassment, but has never so much as filed a complaint.”
“Where’d she
work?”
“Medical clinic in Pensacola. And get
this.
It’s
the same one Alvarez was fired from.”
I pulled up not far from the last in a line of emergency vehicles and turned off the
car.
“Thank
you,”
I said.
“That’s
very helpful, but please
don’t
ever do anything like that again.”
“Yes
sir.”
“The hypnotherapy demonstration you did for me—was that a pretty normal session?” I asked.
“I
haven’t
done that
many.
But
it’s
pretty standard from what I’ve experienced.
He’s
easier to induct than most people. Why I chose
him.”
“Raising his
arm,
his hand going numb––what all can you get him to do?”
“Well,
they’re
just suggestions.
You
can suggest anything, but his subconscious has to be willing to do it. Hypnosis puts him in a state of less resistance, but he can still resist anything that he normally
would
be uncomfortable with
consciously.
I only use it after several sessions of
therapy,
and then only to deal with what comes up during
therapy.
If he
can’t
remember anything before he was eight . . . I’ll regress him back and see what happened.”
“His subconscious will remember?”
“Every detail.
It’s
amazing.
You’ve
never heard detail like
this.
Our subconscious minds record everything.
We
take him back, let him remember it,
relive
it, then help him bring it up into the conscious so
we
can deal with it. But I do very little regression
therapy.
It takes enormous skill.
You
can do so much damage. Some patients remember things that they and the therapist
aren’t
prepared for, and it devastates them to such an extent they never
recover.”
“So the patient remembers when they come out of it? I mean, what was said or remembered while they were
under.”
“Unless the therapist tells them not
to.”
“
That’s
possible?”
“They’re in a highly suggestible state.
You
can tell them not to remember and they
won’t.”
“You
could suggest that they do something, and tell them not to remember you suggesting it?”
“Yeah.
Everyone’s
different. But you can get some people to do almost anything—as long as they
aren’t
morally opposed to it. Some people believe with continuous suggestion you could get someone to even do something against their will, but I
don’t
know.
You
might get them to do some things, but nothing like . .
.”
“Kill?” I offered.
“Honestly,
I
don’t
know.
I
don’t
think you could most people, but
there’s
a hell of a lot we
don’t
know about the mind. Everybody’s different.
There’s
an exception to every rule. Plus,
there’s
a whole hell of a lot of guys in here who
aren’t
morally opposed to
anything.”
I clicked off the call and sat for a moment, breathing, thinking, enjoying the sun streaming in
my
windows.
Eventually,
Jake
walked up and I got out. “Mornin’,” he said.
“Morning,” I said. “How are you?”
“Sad,” he said.
“You?”
“Same.”
“Don’t
feel like
myself,”
he said.
“It’s
weird.” I nodded and we were silent a moment.
Finally he jerked his head back toward the crime scene and said, “Nothin’ like a little violent death to force us to let life
go
on.”
“Whatcha got?”
“Caucasian male. Early twenties. Shot in the head with a shogun. Looks self-inflicted but . . . ME is looking
now.
He was in that old trailer.
It’d
been dragged out here for hunters to use. Loggers
didn’t
even know it was there until the skidder backed through it.
Guy’s
naked. No clothes or shoes or identification anywhere in or around the trailer. He was just sitting in an old
chair,
the shotgun leaning against
him.”
I nodded and we started walking toward the trailer.
“Oh,”
Jake
said, “I keep forgetting to tell you.
Nobody seems to know anything about the cold-case card deck but
Potter.
He said they were already there from a previous game and we just pulled them out of the drawer when we needed them. Says
there’s
more in the
drawer.”
I nodded.
“Thanks.”
“
Is that something?”
“I thought it might
be,”
I said, “but I
don’t
think it
is.
Just a coincidence. Thanks for
checking.”
“Sure. I can look further if I need
to.”
As we neared the crime scene, I could see that everything was pretty
much
as
Jake
had described except for one crucial
thing.
The guy had not shot himself. He
hadn’t
even been
alive
when it happened.
I looked closer.
The small, nude young man, a
boy
really,
his decaying corpse on display for everyone to gawk at,
was
pale and pathetic, his hairless body narrow and soft.
He was splayed out in an old, large cloth
chair,
his head flopped back on the
top,
his
arms
dangling down beside him, his legs extending out on the partial floor of the torn-asunder trailer.
Dad walked
over
to
us.
“How are you, son?”
“
Okay,”
I said.
“You?”
“You
did a damn fine job on your
mom’s
funeral,”
he said. “I was very proud of
you.”
I nodded the thanks I was unable to utter at the moment.
He turned back to look at the ME examining the
body.
“Sure was hoping this was going to be a hunting accident or even a suicide,” he said.
“It’s
not?”
Jake
said.
I shook my head.
“See how
there’s
no blood or bruising around the gunshot
wound,”
I said. “He was already dead when it happened, and dead men
don’t
bleed.”
“That’s
exactly what the ME said,” Dad added. “But
he’s
got some dried blood on
him,”
Jake
said.
“And
some bruising.”
I nodded. “Happened before he was shot.”
“A
few more miles that
way
and this
would’ve
been in Bay
County,”
Dad said.
“Yeah,”
Jake
said.
“Doesn’t
look like
it’s
going to be quick and
easy,”
Dad added. “Could very well turn into another open unsolved by the time the election gets
here.”
I started to say something but
my
phone
rang.
It was the prison.
I stepped a few feet
away
to take the call and
was
informed that Brent Allen had been found dead, hanging from his bunk in the exact same manner as Danny
Jacobs.
D
éjà vu.
The inmate hanging from the top bunk could’ve been Danny
Jacobs.
The body fell forward against the rope the same
way,
the head leaning
over
the noose at an unnatural angle. The
dry,
swollen tongue protruded the same
way.
The lifeless arms dangled like
Danny’s
had.
But it
wasn’t
Danny
Jacobs.
The latest victim of an apparent suicide at
Potter
Correctional Institution was the Suicide King himself, Brent Allen.
The same type of small cord looked to
have
been used on or by Allen. He was in the exact same location and position where
Jacobs
had been found, a suicide king playing card sticking out of his waistband.