Wolf Lake. John Verdon

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       CHAPTER 3

      “You know about the Adirondack Great Camps, right? Thousand-acre compounds, giant lodges, plenty of room for guests and servants, built about a hundred years ago by the richer-than-God robber barons—Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, et cetera. One of the lower-profile fat cats who built a place up there was a guy named Dalton Gall, a nasty bastard who’d made a fortune in tin mining. There’s a peculiar legend involving his untimely death, which I’ll come back to.”

      He paused, as if to give “untimely death” extra emphasis. “Some of the Great Camps, with their huge upkeep costs, started collapsing with the stock market crash. Some became museums celebrating the lives of the greedy scumbags who built them. Some got converted into educational centers where nature fanatics could study the ecology of the frilly-frond fern.”

      This jab at outdoorsiness provoked a narrow-eyed glance from Madeleine, who was preparing a pot of coffee at the sink island.

      Hardwick went on, “Some of the camps continued to be maintained by the descendants of the original owners, usually by turning them into conference centers or upscale inns. Ethan Gall, great-grandson of Dalton, embraced the fancy-inn concept and added a few extras for the bored and restless wealthy. Learn while you’re being pampered—that kind of horseshit. French-Vietnamese cooking secrets. Nepalese serenity secrets. Secrets are always in demand. And since even the most privileged have bad habits they’d rather not have, Ethan hired world-renowned psychologist Richard Hammond to provide unique hypnotic solutions. So the place wasn’t just any old thousand-dollar-a-day Adirondack inn. It was the one where you got to have a therapeutic chat with none other than Richard Hammond—a chat you could regale your friends with at your next dinner party.”

      Jane Hammond had been anxiously squeezing her used tissue into a tighter and tighter ball. “I have to say something here. I don’t want Mr. Gurney to get the wrong impression of my brother. I can’t comment on Ethan Gall’s motives. But I can assure you that Richard’s motives were pure. His life is his work, and he takes it very seriously. Which is another reason why these accusations are so . . . so offensive!” She looked down with dismay at the crushed tissue in her hand.

      Hardwick resumed his narration. “So. Whatever Ethan Gall’s motives might have been, he gave Dr. Hammond a generous two-year contract, which, among other perks, included the use of a private chalet on the property. All went well until one evening approximately two months ago when Dr. Hammond got a call from a detective in Palm Beach.”

      “Florida,” added Jane.

      “Right. A twenty-seven-year-old male by the name of Christopher Wenzel had committed suicide a few days earlier. Cut his wrists sitting in his million-dollar condo on the Intracoastal. No indication of anything requiring special police attention. However, after the suicide was reported in the local news, a minister showed up at Palm Beach PD with an interesting story. Wenzel had come to see him a couple of days before he offed himself, complaining he hadn’t been able to sleep right for a whole week. Whenever he’d doze off he’d have this terrible nightmare—same nightmare every time. Said it was making him want to die.”

      Hardwick paused, as if to let the implications of this sink in.

      Gurney felt he was missing something—beyond the question of why this conversation with Jack Hardwick and Jane Hammond was occurring at all. “This information about the suicide was passed along to Dr. Hammond in a phone call by a Palm Beach detective?”

      “Right.”

      “Why?”

      “Because Wenzel told the minister that his nightmares had started after he’d been hypnotized by Dr. Richard Hammond to help him stop smoking. So the detective called Hammond, asked if he’d treated the deceased. Richard said that was confidential, HIPAA regulations, blah-blah-blah, but what was the problem? The detective explained the situation, asked if suicides or nightmares were ever side effects of hypnosis. Richard said he’d never heard of such a reaction. And that was pretty much the end of that . . . until a week later. That’s when he got another call—this one from a detective in Teaneck, New Jersey.”

      Gurney said nothing, just waited.

      Madeleine’s eyes widened.

      Hardwick went on. “Another wrist-cutting suicide. Leo Balzac, age twenty-eight. When the Teaneck detective checked the deceased’s smartphone calendar, he saw that he’d had an appointment with a local therapist two days before he killed himself. So the detective paid a visit to the therapist, more dancing around the HIPAA bullshit, but eventually he found out Balzac had come to the therapist for a problem he’d been having with nightmares—ever since a certain Dr. Hammond had hypnotized him to help him stop smoking.”

      Gurney was intrigued. “This second detective got in touch with Hammond to ask about the hypnosis session, the same as the first one did?”

      “Right. And Hammond gave him the same answer.”

      Jane looked up from the table. “It wasn’t exactly the same. In addition to insisting that his therapy sessions couldn’t cause nightmares, Richard told the second detective about the call he’d gotten from the first detective. It was clear to him that something strange was going on, and he wanted both detectives to have the whole picture. You see how important that is?”

      When neither Gurney nor Hardwick responded, she explained. “If Richard hadn’t done that—if he hadn’t been as helpful as he was—the police in Florida and the police in New Jersey never would have connected the two suicides. It was Richard who innocently volunteered that information. Which proves he had nothing to hide.”

      Gurney and Hardwick exchanged skeptical glances.

      “But,” interjected Madeleine, “if I remember the news reports, there was more to the story, wasn’t there?”

      “A shitload more,” said Hardwick. “The really god-awful mess was yet to come.”

      Before Hardwick could proceed, Madeleine went to the sink island and brought back four mugs of coffee on a tray with spoons, milk, and sugar.

      Jane took the mug nearest her and thanked Madeleine for it, then looked her over frankly, as if evaluating her slim, athletic figure—still elegantly sexy at forty-seven—concluding with a smile, “You’re so much younger than I’d been picturing on the drive here.”

      “Younger?”

      “Jack told me that Dave was retired from the police department. The word ‘retired’ conjured up the image of a gray-haired couple puttering in the garden. And you turn out to be . . . well . . . like this. You look about thirty-five, and your husband looks like Daniel Craig.”

      Madeleine uttered a small laugh. “He may look a bit like Daniel Craig, but it’s quite a few years since I was anything close to thirty-five. You’re very kind.”

      Gurney explained, “Most cops qualify for their pensions after twenty-five years on the job. So it’s a natural time to get out, you know . . . and . . . and move on to something else.” His words trailed off with a descending energy that revealed more about his general feeling of indecision than he’d intended.

      “So,” said Hardwick, the short syllable functioning like the tap of a gavel to bring them back to the subject at hand. “After Teaneck PD got talking to Palm Beach PD, it was obvious the next step was СКАЧАТЬ