grass. Breath rasping, I watched a miniature rainbow shimmer in the spray of a lawn sprinkler. Success. My mind was blank.
When my pulse and breathing had slowed, I returned to the locker room, showered, and dressed in fresh clothes. Feeling better, I climbed the hill to the Colvard Building.
The sensation was short-lived.
My phone was flashing. I punched in the code and waited.
Damn!
I’d missed Kathryn again. As before, she’d left no information, only a statement that she’d called. I rewound the message and listened a second time. She sounded breathless, her words tense and clipped.
I played the message again and again, but could make nothing of the background noise. Kathryn’s voice was muffled, as though she were speaking from inside a small space. I imagined her cupping the receiver, whispering, furtively checking her surroundings.
Was I being paranoid? Had last night’s incident sent my imagination into overdrive? Or was Kathryn in real danger?
The sun through the venetian blinds threw bright stripes across my desk. Down the hall, a door slammed. Slowly, an idea took shape.
I reached for the phone.
22
“THANKS FOR MAKING TIME FOR ME THIS LATE IN THE DAY. I’M surprised you’re still on campus.”
“Are you implying that anthropologists work harder than sociologists?”
“Never,” I laughed, settling into the black plastic chair he indicated. “Red, I’d like to pick your brain. What can you tell me about local cults?”
“What do you mean by cult?”
Red Skyler slouched sideways behind his desk. Though his hair had gone gray, the russet beard explained the origin of the nickname. He squinted at me through steel-rimmed glasses.
“Fringe groups. Doomsday sects. Satanic circles.”
He smiled and gave me a “carry on” gesture.
“The Manson Family. Hare Krishna. MOVE. The People’s Temple. Synanon. You know. Cults.”
“You’re using a very loaded term. What you call a cult someone else may see as a religion. Or family. Or political party.”
I had a flashback to Daisy Jeannotte. She, too, had objected to the word, but there the similarity ended. In that interview I sat across from a tiny woman in a huge office. Now I faced a large man in a space so small and crowded I felt claustrophobic.
“All right. What’s a cult?”
“Cults are not just groups of crazies who follow weird leaders. At least the way I use the term, they are organizations with a set of common features.”
“Yes.” I leaned back in my chair.
“A cult forms around a charismatic individual who promises something. This individual professes some special knowledge. Sometimes the claim is access to ancient secrets, sometimes it’s an entirely new discovery to which he or she alone is privy. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. The leader offers to share the information with those who follow. Some leaders offer utopia. Or a way out. Just come along, follow me. I’ll make the decisions. All will be fine.”
“How does that differ from a priest or rabbi?”
“In a cult it’s this charismatic leader who eventually becomes the object of devotion; in some cases he’s actually deified. And as that happens, the leader comes to hold extraordinary control over the lives of his followers.”
He removed his glasses and rubbed each lens with a square of green material he took from his pocket. Then he replaced them, wrapping each bow behind an ear.
“Cults are totalistic, authoritarian. The leader is supreme and delegates power to very few. The leader’s morality becomes the only acceptable theology. The only acceptable behavior. And, as I said, veneration is eventually centered on him, not on supreme beings or on abstract principles.”
I waited.
“And often there is a double set of ethics. Members are urged to be honest and loving to each other but to deceive and shun outsiders. Established religions tend to follow one set of rules for everybody.”
“How does a leader gain such control?”
“That’s another important element. Thought reform. Cult leaders use a variety of psychological processes to manipulate their members. Some leaders are fairly benign, but others are not and really exploit the idealism of their followers.”
Again I waited for him to go on.
“The way I see it, there are two broad types of cults, both of which use thought reform. The commercially packaged ‘awareness programs’”—he gestured quotation marks—”use very intense persuasion techniques. These groups keep members by getting them to buy more and more courses.
