“Hypnotist,” Worthington said. “Not psychic. This guy has all the right credentials, is fully trained. Even has a DCH.”
“What’s a DCH?”
“Doctor of Clinical Hypnotherapy.”
Royer snorted again. “Sounds like a complete load of crap to me.”
Anna had to admit she shared Royer’s skepticism. The bureau was no stranger to clinical and forensic hypnosis, but the hypnotherapists they utilized were either psychologists or highly trained agents.
Bringing in some Vegas phony to work with Evan seemed like a complete waste of time. But then who was she to judge anyone at this juncture in her life?
Worthington must have read her expression. “Look,” he said. “I know it sounds iffy, but the stage gig is only a recent development. He’s had some tough breaks the last couple years.”
Anna shook her head. “We’re talking about a child who’s extremely fragile right now. There are specific guidelines we have to-”
“I don’t give a damn about guidelines,” Worthington said. “We’ve got three people dead and a missing girl and time is our enemy. I know this sounds unconventional, but like I said, we’re talking about somebody who was once the go-to guy in Nevada law enforcement circles.”
“So why did he stop?”
“You more than likely already know.”
Royer’s eyebrows raised. “What’s that supposed to mean? Who the hell is this guy?”
Worthington hesitated, and Anna was suddenly struck by the notion that there was something more going on here, something deeper. That the man Worthington was recommending might be more than just a colleague. They were connected somehow.
“His name is Pope. Daniel Pope.”
Anna felt a sudden prickle on the back of her neck. Had she heard him right?
“ The Daniel Pope? The same Daniel Pope whose wife-”
“That’s the one,” Worthington said. “But when you meet him, you might not want to bring that up.”
6
It was still dark when Pope got back to his room.
The crisis with Anderson Troy, as petty as it was, had been artfully averted. While most practitioners of his craft were loath to admit it, it’s often possible for a skilled hypnotist to manipulate a subject’s thought processes through visualization and guided imagery.
After putting Troy under again, Pope managed to feed him just enough details to get him to believe that the Nigel Fromme he’d Googled was an entirely different person. That Troy’s Nigel Fromme-whom Troy himself had eagerly conjured up-was a bad-ass London gangster whose untimely death had been the result of a hail of bullets fired almost point-blank as he was bedding a beautiful blond Sunday School teacher.
With very large breasts. And no surprises, dangling or otherwise.
Recall and imagination. A 10/90 mix.
Pope walked away from this adolescent fantasy session feeling like a fraud, knowing he had broken nearly every tenet of his profession, but secure in the belief that Arturo wouldn’t be shoving a knife into his rib cage anytime soon, thus maintaining the sanctity of Troy’s plush white carpet.
The things we do to stay alive.
Not that Pope really had much of a life these days. But he did like being alive.
Standing at his window now, he looked out at the desert darkness and at the distant cluster of squat gray buildings that had kept him company nearly every morning in recent memory:
The Nevada Women’s Correctional Facility.
Who in his right mind, he wondered, would think to build a hotel-casino so close to a prison compound?
Then again, he couldn’t be sure which had come first. And it was almost as if the marriage had been arranged just for him, so that he could stand here on dark mornings, stare at those distant buildings, and wallow in his misery.
He wondered if Susan was awake in her cell, thinking about what she’d become and how she’d gotten there.
Thinking about Ben.
Thinking about Pope.
H E WAS JUST coming out of the shower, finally ready to crawl into bed, when his cell phone rang again.
Hoping to Christ it wasn’t Sharkey, he snatched it up off his nightstand and checked the screen, surprised by the name he saw.
J. T. Worthington.
Cousin Jake.
The two hadn’t spoken in months. Pope had halfheartedly invited Jake and Veronica out to the casino when the show first opened, but they’d never been able to make it. And in that last call, Pope had sensed a trace of disappointment in Jake’s voice. As if he thought Pope could do better. That the show was a frivolous enterprise. A waste of Pope’s time and talent.
All of which were probably true.
But then Pope wasn’t much interested in Jake’s opinion. He had little use for friends and family these days.
After the tragedy hit the news, followed by the trial, the sentence, and all the nastiness that accompanied them, the people in his life had slowly begun to drift away.
Thanks to the skewed logic of the many graceless TV pundits who chimed in, uninvited, with an opinion about Pope’s life (not to mention the lurid sensationalism of the tabloid press), some of his so-called friends had actually blamed him for the events that had started it all.
And, who knows, maybe they were right.
But he suspected that for those who really knew him, there was no ill will behind this gradual abandonment. After a while, trying to console the inconsolable simply becomes too much of a burden. And in the aftermath of that terrible ordeal, Pope had not exactly been the easiest guy to get along with.
He was scarred. Tainted. A man addicted to distrust and personal failure.
And as much as he’d like to blame it all on Susan, on what she’d done, he knew that a better man would have faced up to this particular challenge rather than to try to bury it with dope and cards and women.
He was as much a prisoner as Susan was. A prisoner by choice, who had turned this room, this hotel, into his own private cell.
He hadn’t been outside its doors in over a year.
The phone kept ringing, reminding Pope that he had a call to answer.
He clicked it on, said, “This must be serious; you’re calling me at three in the morning. Is Ronnie okay?”
“She’s fine. How are you, Danny?”
“You know how many times I’ve been asked that question in the last two years? The answer never changes.”
“You staying sober?”
“I don’t drink.”
“You know what I mean,” Jake said.
The two of them had spent half their childhood in Ludlow County, California, smoking dope and experimenting with various recreational drugs. There’s not much else to do in the desert. But both had eventually lost interest in the stuff as life became more complicated. Careers and family will do that to you.
When Pope lost both, however, the first woman whose company he sought was the blessed White Widow.
