“Khetzel?”
“You can’t talk about it,” Khetzel said. “That’s why we didn’t want you to record us.”
“Why?” Dani asked. “What happens if you talk about it?”
“You die,” Khetzel said.
Dani knew the girl was serious. She looked pale, her breathing shallow.
“And I’m sorry, but I really don’t feel good. I think I’m going to throw up. Oh God. It’s happening . . .”
“Khetzel . . .”
“Oh no . . .”
“Khetzel, listen to me,” Dani said, moving directly in front of the terrified girl and grasping her by the shoulders. “Look me right in the eyes. Okay? Nothing is going to happen to you. I won’t let anything happen to you. Look at me and keep looking at me. Khetzel, I need you to listen. You’re having a panic attack.”
“I feel so strange,” Khetzel said. “Everything is . . .”
“Tingling . . . ,” Dani said. “It feels like your hand is falling asleep, right? Just hold on.”
Quickly Dani found a plastic laundry bag in the closet and handed it to Khetzel.
“Breathe into this,” she said. “You’re hyperventilating. You’re exhaling too much CO2, and it’s elevating the pH levels in your blood. It’s called hyperalkalosis. That’s why things are tingling. If you rebreathe your own exhalations, you’re going to feel better.”
She watched as the bag inflated and deflated.
“Okay? You’re feeling better already, aren’t you?”
Khetzel nodded, breathing into the bag.
“Good,” Dani said. “Just breathe slowly. Good. Now take the bag away. Okay?”
Dani leaned back and smiled.
“Never underestimate the power of a therapeutic smile,”
her clinical psychology professor had been fond of saying.
“That was scary,” Rayne said.
“Listen to me,” Dani told Khetzel, who grew calmer with each deep breath she took. “The power of the mind to heal the body, or do the reverse and harm the body, is profound. It’s something science doesn’t really understand. You’ve heard of the placebo effect.”
“You mean sugar pills?”
“Exactly,” Dani said. “Sometimes half of the patients given the placebo show improvement. They think they’re going to get better, so they do. Or you can make yourself sick. But it’s you, making yourself sick. Because you’re suggestible.”
“Like those hypnotists in night clubs who make people cluck like chickens,” Khetzel said.
“Something like that,” Dani agreed. “Nothing is going to kill you if you talk about what happened at the passage party. Magic works because you believe magic works. Every time a magician pulls someone from the audience to help with a trick and asks, ‘Have we ever met before?’ and the person says, ‘No’—the person is lying. Magicians put plants in the audience all the time. That’s how it works. The only trick is making you believe they’re not plants.”
“That is so disappointing,” Rayne said.
“I might add,” Dani said, “psychoactive drugs called hypnotics can make you even more suggestible. Sodium-penthathol, for one. Did Julie drink the zombie juice?”
“Everybody did. It was sort of like truth or dare,” Khetzel said. “Nobody wanted to look like they were afraid to drink it. Except Liam.”
“Did Logan supply the zombie juice?”
“I don’t know. It was just sort of there,” Rayne said.
“Okay,” Dani said. “One more question—have you ever seen this symbol?”
She showed them a drawing she’d made of the symbol the crime scene guys had found written on Julie Leonard’s body in blood. Each girl looked closely at the drawing.
“I haven’t,” Rayne said.
“Me neither,” Khetzel said.
“One more question and I’ll let you go. Do you have any idea who might have wanted to hurt Julie Leonard?”
“We have no idea,” Rayne said.
“Okay then,” Dani said, standing up. “I think we’re done, but let me ask Detective Casey.”
“Can I just ask you something?” Khetzel asked before Dani opened the door. “What would have happened if you hadn’t given me that bag to breathe into?”
“Nothing too serious,” Dani said. “You would have felt increasingly light-headed until you fainted, and then your breathing would slow down and your pH levels would return to normal and you’d feel fine. The worst that could happen would be if you fainted and hit your head on something.”
“Or if I was driving and passed out,” Khetzel said. “Or if I was hiking and fell off a cliff.”
“Sure,” Dani said. “I suppose.”
“So talking about it really could have killed me,” Khetzel said. “Right?”
“In that sense, I guess you’re right,” Dani said.
“Can I ask you another question?”
Dani nodded.
“Would it be possible for somebody to hypnotize you into killing somebody?”
Dani’s first thought was to say no, it wasn’t possible, but she hesitated. She recalled the famous Stanford Prison Scandal, a 1971 experiment where a Stanford University psychology professor had twenty-five student volunteers act as prisoners in a mock jail while twenty-five other volunteers—good, educated kids from stable homes—were told to act as guards. The experiment was designed to last thirty days but had to be called off after six when the guards displayed levels of sadism and cruelty the professor hadn’t expected, simply because they’d been given permission.
She also thought of the notorious Milgram experiment, where Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram asked volunteer “teachers” to inflict electric shocks on “learners” in the next room. The shocks weren’t real, but the “teachers” didn’t know that; they were told that the shocks increased in voltage each time the learner answered a question wrong. The “teachers” continued to administer shocks even after hearing (faked) screams of pain from the adjacent room, simply because Milgram, the authority figure, said in a very calm and measured voice, “Please continue.”
Good “normal” people could, under the right conditions, slip the bonds of morality and conscience.
“No, Khetzel, that’s not possible,” Dani said.
Nevertheless, she wondered . . . Had somebody drugged and hypnotized the kids at the party, then persuaded them to kill Julie? Was it possible to turn a normal person, against his or her will, into a monster?
In her opinion, it was.
17
.
Tommy listened again to the voice mail Dani had forwarded to him—“This is the Westchester Ripper—I’m going to kill you next, Dani”
—
accompanied by a note:
My day is going just swell—how’s yers? Dani
When he texted her back, telling her he had information and asking her where she was, she said she was at the Peter Keeler Inn, about to conduct the last interview of the day, and invited him to join her.
Ten minutes later he knocked on the door to the Empire Suite. Stuart let him in.
Dani was bent over a laptop but looked up when Tommy entered. When Casey, standing next to her, cleared his throat to get her attention, Dani made the introductions.
“Detective Phillip Casey,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my . . . assistant, Tommy Gunderson. Tommy, Detective Casey. He’s been dying to meet you.”
“Dani and I go way back,” Tommy told Casey. “She says all good things about you.”
“Tommy Gunderson,” Casey said, shaking Tommy’s hand. “I was actually at the game in Green Bay when you intercepted three passes for touchdowns. My in-laws have a place near Sturgeon Bay. I was so cold I half expected to see polar bears chasing penguins across the field.”
“Polar bears don’t chase penguins,” Tommy said.
“They don’t?” Casey said.
“They probably would if they could,” Tommy said, “but penguins live at the South Pole. Polar bears live at the North.”
“Learn something new every day,” Casey said, nodding in the direction of the sitting room adjacent. “One more to go.”
“That’s not exactly new,” Tommy said to Dani, once Casey was out of earshot. “What’s Vivian Ross doing in the lobby? And did you figure out what Rayne didn’t want Liam to talk about?”
“We did. It’s not her,” Dani said. “I’ll fill you in. We just finished talking to Vivian’s daughter. I didn’t expect you here so soon. Can you wait until we’re done, and then maybe we can get some coffee and compare notes?”
“Whatever you need,” Tommy told her. “Anything you want me to do in the meantime?”
Casey stuck his head back in the room and gestured to Dani that he was ready.
“Just observe,” Dani said. “And give me your impressions later.”
As they watched on the monitor while Detective Casey laid out the ground rules to Blair Weeks and her attorney, Stuart explained to Tommy the gist of what they’d learned so far, including the confusing serology reports. Blair was, in Tommy’s opinion, an extraordinarily pretty girl, with straight silky blond hair down to the middle of her back, smooth skin, blue eyes, and full lips.
“Why do pretty girls travel in packs?” Stuart asked. “I could never figure that out.”
“You probably never will, either,” Tommy said.
Detective Casey told Blair that Dr. Harris would be asking the questions.
Tommy listened. No, Blair didn’t know what she was drinking. Yes, she agreed it’s a bad idea to drink something if you don’t know what’s in it. She couldn’t remember much about what happened. She barely knew Julie. She’d woken up around the time Rayne and Khetzel had, but she wasn’t sure of the hour. She’d gotten a ride home from them. No one said anything on the ride home.
When Dani asked her what she was hoping to get out of attending a passage party, Blair looked startled.
“Rayne and Khetzel told me all about it,” Dani said. “And I’m quite certain nothing bad has happened to them. Just as I’m certain nothing bad is going to happen to you. Rayne said you wanted to talk to your grandfather. When did he die?”
“Two years ago.”
“Were you close to him?”
“Really close. Closer than I am to my parents.”
“You live with your mom?”
“I do, but I’m moving in with my dad next week.”
“Do they get along with each other? Your parents?”
Blair laughed. “She blamed him for everything that was wrong when they were married,” she said, “and now that he’s moved out, she blames him for everything that’s wrong now. She was the one who wanted the divorce.”
“Love is complicated,” Dani said. “Your grandfather is your mom’s dad?”
“My dad’s.”
“What did you want to say to him?”
“I’m not sure. I just wanted to talk to him.”
“Did you see him? After you drank the zombie juice?”
“I don’t know. I think so. It’s kind of blurry.”
“What do you remember?”
“He was mad at me. For wanting to join him.”
“What do you mean by ‘join him’?”
“I wanted to make sure he was there waiting for me,” Blair said. “In heaven. Because if he was, I was going to join him.”
“Do you mean take your own life?”
Blair nodded, fighting back tears. Dani handed her a box of tissues and waited for the girl to regain her composure.
“People look at me and they think everything must be so perfect,” Blair said.
“Are you seeing somebody about these suicidal thoughts?” Dani asked.
Blair nodded. “Please don’t tell my mom or dad. I just . . . I can’t do this anymore. I can’t stand having to choose between them. It’s not my job to be their go-between.”
“It’s not. Definitely,” Dani said. “It gets better, Blair. It really does. You’ll come out of it stronger, but right now it hurts.”
“My grandpa understood,” Blair said. “Without him to talk to . . .”
“So he was angry with you for wanting to join him?”
Blair nodded.
“Do you have any idea why Julie was at the party? What she wanted to get out of it?”
“I think she wanted to find out if her father was on the other side,” Blair said.