Chapter 1—The First Session
Agent Sims wasn’t comfortable with this procedure. Nor was he comfortable with the level of exposure he and the team were under right now.
Sims was most worried about the windows—they extended from floor to ceiling and overlooked O’Fallon’s quaint downtown. Across the street sat several other small buildings that looked right into the room. FBI agents had immediately closed the blinds upon entering the doctor’s office, but Sims was still worried. He hoped this procedure wouldn’t take long. It sounded like science fiction, anyway.
Beside, the O’Tooles should be locked away, not trotting about in town where people might see them.
But the decision wasn’t Sims’ to make—his higher-ups were eager to see the prosecution finished, and they’d ordered this procedure to move things along.
The doctor’s office was large, taking up a good portion of the second floor, and nicely decorated. A desk and chair sat to one side of the room, and a couch and coffee table were grouped in the center. Bookshelves lined the walls. To Sims, it looked more like someone’s living room than a psychiatrist’s office.
He glanced at a wall calendar filled with Rorschach drawings. The splotches of paint for July 1987 looked like braying hounds.
Three other Witness Protection agents were in the office. Hanson stood by one of the windows, his hand resting on the butt of the gun peeking from beneath his suit coat. The other two agents moved restlessly around the room.
Gloria, the primary witness’s wife, had been killed by a car bomb less than twenty-four hours ago. Her son had been walking to the car when it exploded outside the FBI safe house. The bomb had been meant for his father, John O’Toole.
And if they couldn’t get the kid under control quickly, the whole case might get blown.
Witness relocation was always a tricky business, and the team really couldn’t afford this wasted time, especially here in town, but the boy’s father had insisted. In the last few hours, the man had made his testimony contingent on this early morning visit to the doctor’s office.
Sims glanced at his watch again. They’d already been here almost five minutes, and John O’Toole, his son, and the doctor were just sitting on the couches, talking.
Gino Luciano owned this town—it had always been that way here in O’Fallon, Illinois, with the Lucianos and their money, for as long as anyone could remember. The Bureau had known about the family for a long time, had known about their activities and their influences, and had been trying to make a case against them for almost as long.
John O’Toole was the most important witness they had found so far. And instead of holing him up safely on the other side of St. Louis, far away from this little town, they were here, right in the lion’s den, wasting time talking.
And Agent Sims felt like a sitting duck.
The boy had dropped his baseball cap and gone back to pick it up, or he would’ve been in the car, too.
Now the kid and his dad needed to get the testimony over and get moved—the FBI already had a location picked out for them, but the boy didn’t want to leave O’Fallon.
No one, not even his father, could convince him how necessary it was. After the car bomb had gone off, the boy had confessed that he’d called his girlfriend the day before—the line must’ve been tapped, explaining how the safe house was exposed. And even the death of his mother hadn’t convinced the kid, so now John O’Toole was taking drastic steps to ensure that the boy would go with him to Sacramento.
The doctor, the boy’s uncle, was a respected psychiatrist and seemed to be dealing well with the grief of losing his sister. But still, Sims didn’t think this would work—the whole plan sounded like hocus-pocus to him. But the boy would have to say good-bye to his girlfriend once and for all, and if this was the only way to do it, then so be it.
It came down to the fact that the boy was only 17, and his father was still making the decisions in his life, even the drastic ones.
Sims had never seen anyone hypnotized before. He’d always had a layman’s interest in psychology—you had to if you were going to be a good cop or federal agent. He wondered if anyone really understood what happened when someone was hypnotized.
“Is he under?” the father asked anxiously, his attention turning from his son’s face to Dr. Martin.
Dr. Frank Martin nodded, his eyes on the boy. There was the gradual fluttering of the eyelids and a general relaxed posture that indicated a very shallow relaxation pattern, the first stage of any hypnosis. The boy had been fighting it all along, and now the doctor would need to deepen the relaxation.
“Yes, he is relaxing, finally. But you see how long it took to get him to this stage, so he’s obviously resisting it, consciously or subconsciously.”
Frank shook his head again. “I still don’t like this, John—hypnosis isn’t a carnival act. It’s a serious, clinical tool, and must be carefully used. This ludicrous request of yours—it can only lead to failure.”
John O’Toole looked at his brother-in-law, and Frank could tell he was collecting his thoughts. “Look, Frank. I know you blame me for Gloria’s death, but there was nothing I could do about it. The men I used to work for are bad men, very bad, but I didn’t think they would go after Gloria or Chris. Even the Bureau didn’t think it would get this bad this quick.”
Frank saw the tears coming.
“I was in the living room when the car blew up, Frank.” John said quietly. “The explosion was huge—it blew the front windows of the house in. And I thought for a moment that this couldn’t be happening. Now Gloria is gone, and I almost lost Chris . . . ”
Frank saw his brother-in-law look around the room slowly, then he continued. “Frank, we have to go away—I have to testify, and then Chris and I have to get away or this will all be for nothing. But Chris . . . he just won’t listen to me. He doesn’t understand what’s at stake.”
Dr. Martin glanced at the framed picture of Gloria and himself on one of his shelves—he had just graduated from medical school, and Gloria had come down to Carbondale to watch the ceremony. She had been his little sister, so full of life. Now she was gone.
He glanced away and his eyes again came to rest, this time on his diploma and medical license. Was this ethical, what he was about to do? Or was he saving this patient’s life by blocking out some of his memories, allowing him to start a new life somewhere else, out of harm’s way? If you looked at it that way, then not performing the memory suppression could actually kill his patient. But was it right?
He didn’t know. But time was growing short, and the FBI agents were clearly nervous. That was what finally convinced Frank. This was a dangerous situation, and it was his responsibility as a doctor to do whatever he could to see that his nephew got out of this situation safely. And after all this settled down, after the trial and after the boy was out of danger, Dr. Martin would remove the block and let the boy get back to his normal life.
The lead agent was looking at the doctor.
“Sir, if this is going to be a problem, let me know now,” Agent Sims said. “We are risking exposure being here, and if necessary, we can take the boy here to a different doctor. But Mr. O’Toole has requested that you carry out this procedure.”
Frank shook his head, glancing at the boy.
“It’s OK. I just wanted to explain to John again how dangerous this could be, and allow him to reconsider.”
Frank glanced at John, who nodded at him, and then Frank realized that this was out of his hands anyway. If he didn’t do the procedure, John O’Toole was desperate enough to find another doctor. And Frank wouldn’t have that.
He turned back to his patient.
“Chris, can you hear me?”
The boy answered sluggishly, as though he were half asleep. “Yes, Uncle Frank, I can hear you.”
Sessions like this, with a reluctant or openly combative patient, were usually carried out in a different fashion. Patients who came into his office with preconceived notions about hypnosis, usually gleaned from TV or the movies, had to be slowly drawn into the hypnotic state. Usually, this was done with the progressive and laborious “transferral of power” process, whereby a patient slowly gives up conscious control over his or her situation and allows the doctor to gradually deepen a relaxed, suggestive state into a more formal hypnotic state.
For those patients that were the most difficult to hypnotize, creative methods had to be employed that allowed the patients to be hypnotized while still hanging on to some semblance of control. Often, those patients were put under using the “choice” progression technique—that is, giving the patient various choices of how the therapy session would proceed. All of the choices offered the patient would eventually lead to a suggestive state, but by giving the patient choices, the most stubborn conscious mind could concede power and yet still stay in control. The patient was choosing to be hypnotized—but they were being hypnotized, nonetheless. Either way, it would usually take three or four two-hour sessions to even reach a hypnotic state in the most resistant patients.
And once the doctor was comfortable with the deepness of the state, a post-hypnotic suggestion could be implanted that would make subsequent inducement of hypnotic states much easier and much quicker.
But Frank didn’t have time to do that here—Chris needed to be under for a very short amount of time.
“Chris, remember, you are relaxing comfortably. You are safe and happy, and nothing can harm you here. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Chris said.
“Good,” Frank continued. “Now, I would like you to imagine that you see a long staircase, with you standing on the top step, and the stairs leading down away from you. Can you see it?”
The boy nodded.
“Okay, Chris, I need you to answer me out loud when I ask you a question. Can you see the staircase in front of you?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Now, as you take a step down onto the top stair, you’ll notice that you feel a little more relaxed. I want you to imagine walking slowly down these steps, and with each step, you’re descending into a more relaxed state, a state where you feel more at ease.”
The boy was silent, but as Frank watched closely, he could pick out the signs. The body posture was becoming more relaxed, and the hands that had been fists on the boy’s chest relaxed, drifting down to rest on the couch on either side of him.
“Okay, Chris, you continue to descend, feeling more and more relaxed, until you reach the bottom step. There’s a landing there, and a large door. This door doesn’t frighten you or make you anxious. Instead, you feel calm and relaxed as you open the door and step into a large, beautiful room. Do you see the room?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me about the room, Chris.”
“There’s a lot of nice furniture, and a big window with light coming in. Very bright light, like summertime, when it’s really warm outside. It looks like a nice place, maybe like a mansion, and it looks like they’re getting ready to have a party or something. There are trays of food and drinks on the tables.”
Frank always marveled at what the mind constructed when posed with an imaginary image. For some people, a beautiful room would look like a palace, or a sunroom filled with plants, or even a brothel with a score of scantily clad women. The “comfortable room” technique was Frank’s favorite, allowing the patient to construct his or her own mental image of a completely comfortable place. Residing even temporarily in this relaxing environment would free the conscious mind.
“That’s good, Chris. It sounds like a beautiful room.”
“Yes, Uncle Frank. Mom would love it.”
Frank glanced up, and John was just reacting to the boy’s words. He stood suddenly and walked to the other side of the office, pulling a cigarette from his jacket and lighting up, taking a few quick puffs.
“Good, Chris. Can you see your Mom?”
“No, Doctor. She’s dead. She died in the car and I was walking to it and I flew through the air like Superman and landed on my head. She isn’t in the room because she’s dead . . . and I could be . . . dead too, but I’d dropped my hat and went back to get it and I wasn’t in the car when . . .”
Too much anxiety. “Chris, that’s okay. Remember, this room is calm and soothing and relaxing. You’re feeling very relaxed and not upset at all.”
The boy seemed to calm almost instantly, and that was when Frank heard the father whispering in his ear. “Do it, Frank. Hurry. And say something about his mother, too, so he won’t be upset.”
Frank looked at his brother-in-law, suddenly angry, and he stood, walking John over to the wall, pushing him up against it. Out of the corner of his eye he saw an agent step toward him, but the lead agent held him back.
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