85

Before I called Bill Masterson, I needed to get some things lined up. Energized, I went inside and changed into my running shorts and a sports bra. I put Justice on a leash and took off over the hills in the neighborhood, working my legs and lungs for the first time in nearly two weeks. The heat was almost unbearable, and I circled around after the first five minutes to let a panting Justice back into the air-conditioning. I told him that Mom would be back and headed out for round two.

I ran until I was completely exhausted and then walked for another two miles. I was in lawyer mode again, processing everything that Mace James had just told me. I played out several different scenarios in my mind, and by the time I returned to the house, I knew what I needed to do.

While I was waiting to cool off enough to take a shower, I called Dr. Gillespie and asked him some general questions about polygraphs, suggestive memory creation, and hypnosis. For the most part, he confirmed what Mace James had told me.

“Why are you asking?”

I took a deep breath and told him about my conversation with Mace. I tried to be careful, knowing that if I could talk Masterson into letting Caleb Tate’s case go forward, Gillespie would be taking the stand next week. I couldn’t tell him how our case had imploded on Friday. But I did explain, in general terms, that unless we came up with some convincing new evidence we would probably drop the case.

I was on the phone with Gillespie for nearly fifty minutes, discussing various scenarios. Eventually he had an idea. “Before you cut a plea bargain, don’t you sometimes make the defendants proffer their evidence?”

“Sure. We usually get full disclosure before we confirm the deal.”

“Then why don’t you do that with Rashad Reed? Find out whether you can get into his subconscious and figure out what he knows before you agree to any deals.”

The suggestion made me chuckle. “When we get a proffer, it’s usually the attorney giving me a carefully worded explanation of what his client will say as a cooperating witness. I don’t know of any lawyers—and especially not Mace James—who are just going to say, ‘Sure, put my client under hypnosis, ask him whatever you want, and then we’ll deal.’”

“You’re right,” Gillespie said. “I should probably stick to the expert-witness side of the law practice.”

But then it hit me. “Wait a minute,” I said. “Mace can’t let us do that with Reed. But what about his other client? The guy who’s already served his time. We could put him under hypnosis. We could make that a condition of even considering a plea for Reed. If the hypnosis doesn’t work, we haven’t lost anything.”

“Wouldn’t that put James in a conflict of interest?” Gillespie asked. “Having to get one client to do something so the other can get a deal?”

“Yeah, it would. Which makes me even more intent on doing it.”

I was only half-serious, though it would serve Mace right to squirm a little. In reality, Mace said the client who had served his time wanted to help nail Caleb Tate. This would be one way to do it.

“Can you do the hypnosis?” I asked Gillespie. “Or do you know somebody who can?”

“All psychiatrists know the basic techniques. It’s really just a question of getting the patient to lower his defenses enough to let me into the subconscious. I would need some time alone with this guy. And I can’t guarantee that I can make it happen during the first meeting.”

Things were coming together fast. We didn’t have time for multiple meetings. “What if we tell Mace we want to meet with his guy right away? Could you do it tonight?”

There was a pause on the other end. “Let me get to my Outlook calendar.” After a few seconds, he said, “I might have to move some things around, but I could probably make it happen. But we need to think through this a bit.” He sounded tentative now. “If I’m going to testify next week, we’ve got to be careful about how we do this. First of all, who else knows about this?”

“Right now, it’s just Mace James and me.”

“Okay, let’s keep it that way for now. Of course, you’ve probably got to clear it with Masterson. Why don’t you call James and see if he can get the green light from his client. If we need to, we can have a follow-up session on Sunday.”

After hanging up with Gillespie, I put in a call to Bill Masterson. Not surprisingly, I got his voice mail and left an urgent message.

Then I called Mace James and gave him my ultimatum. He didn’t like my suggestion, but I was in no mood to negotiate.

“The guy’s name is David Brewster,” Mace eventually said. “Served five years for armed robbery of a convenience store.”

“Have Mr. Brewster at Dr. Gillespie’s office at 8 p.m., and let’s hope this works,” I said.

After I showered, I wrote a long e-mail to Bill Masterson, explaining everything. I also sent him a text message telling him to check his e-mail. Next, I started doing my own research about hypnosis and polygraphs.

I skimmed through a few articles listed on the first two Google pages and got more comfortable with what Mace James had been explaining. Just as Mace had suggested, I learned that the CIA had done experiments with agents whom they had put under hypnosis and given polygraph tests. The agency had been able to create false memories in their agents and cause amnesia for events that actually occurred. The scientific advances surprised me, but not nearly as much as what I found on the third page of my Google search.

There was a long article published in Psychiatry Today about the power of hypnosis to create and erase memories. Like the other articles, this one confirmed that hypnosis could cause people to forget things that happened and remember things that never occurred. But this article went further, analyzing the suggestive effects that took hold when someone was under hypnosis. Under the right conditions, subjects prone to hypnosis could not only have their memories changed but could also have their futures influenced by suggestions that the subjects embraced as their own thoughts and ideas. The author then illustrated these principles through various legal cases where hypnosis had been used to make subjects “recall” childhood abuse that had never happened. It was the suggestive nature of the questioning under hypnosis and the way these suggestions were embedded into the subconscious that made the subject think abuse had taken place.

The author showed how persons who experienced deep-trance hypnosis could also have their future likes and dislikes affected by the hypnotist. Sometimes the subjects could be instructed to do things totally contrary to their normal natures. As proof, the author detailed three instances where a hypnotist had lured three different women into sexual relationships while the women were in a hypnotic trance. The whole disgusting scheme might have never come to light except for the fact that the perverted hypnotist videotaped the encounters.

All of this was disturbing and shocking new information to me, and I started rethinking everything I knew about Caleb Tate and Antoine Marshall in light of it. But the most shocking revelation of all was the person who had authored the article. Her name was Dr. Laura Brock. And the article had been published just eight months prior to her death.