Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy (11 page)

“I know. Just see if you can spot anything.” He sat back in his chair to wait while she read, trying not to fidget.

Snooks scanned the report quickly once and then went back for a slower read. Horace W. Bogert had been born fifty-two years ago in Pittsburgh's West End district. Snooks smiled; it had been years since she'd come across anyone named Horace. Bogert's wife had taken off ten years ago, leaving him with a twelve-year-old son. The boy had left home as soon as he was of legal age and had never come back. Snooks thought she'd like to know a little more about why both wife and son ran away from this man.

Gus's detective had spent only six days in dogging Bogert's footsteps, so what he'd come up with was only a sampling of the security chief's life, not a thorough study. But those six days had shown a man who lived for his job. Bogert went home only to sleep and change clothes. No sexual partner had appeared during those six days, and no friends. A great deal of Bogert's time was spent driving between Pittsburgh and Bethel Park, his two charges—Glickman's corporate headquarters and the lab. The detective said Bogert kept three guns in his home and one in his car. Snooks grunted. He didn't find
that
out by asking.

Bogert had started at Glickman as a lowly guard and worked his way up. Last year he'd been given a twenty-year service medal, an automatic honor bestowed on everyone who stayed around long enough to warrant it. But he'd also received substantial raises periodically, presumably in concert with increased authority and responsibility. The security chief was in good standing with his employer.

“It's not much to go on, Gus,” Snooks sighed. “He looks to me like a man who's put all his eggs in one basket.”

Gus stared at her. “That's your scientific conclusion?”

“I told you not to expect much. Look. His instincts are conservative in the most literal meaning of the word—he wants to conserve, to protect, to make secure. A defensive man. His personal life collapsed when first his wife and then his son both turned their backs on him. He didn't do such a hot job of ‘conserving' his marriage, so he channeled all his energies into his work. He didn't try to build a new marriage and he doesn't put his trust in friends. He puts his trust in guns. He's a man who's suffered loss and he's going to fight tooth and nail to preserve what he's got left. And what he's got left is Glickman Pharmaceuticals. The company is his family.”

“So you're saying it's not likely he could be bought?”

“On the face of it, no.”

Gus looked skeptical. “I dunno. Isn't it always the oldest, most trusted bank employees who do the most embezzling? Then everybody's always so shocked.”

“Long-time employees who embezzle aren't after
just
the money, you know. They're hitting back at their employers. They all have some kind of grudge—sometimes they just feel they haven't been properly appreciated all those years. If Bogert had been passed over regularly for promotion—then yes, he could very easily turn against Glickman in frustration. But the company has consistently supported him and rewarded him. Therefore Glickman is to be defended, not betrayed.”

“But Megan is part of Glickman. Why would he be hounding her if—”

“No, that's not the way it works. Bogert is the guardian at the gate, Megan's the upstart newcomer who in his eyes poses a threat to what he's trying to preserve. And she's a woman, Gus—women don't seem to be a part of his life, not since his wife left. Her sex makes her an outsider in Bogert's tight little world. I'd say he's a man who's found a line of work he's eminently suited for.”

“So he'd definitely not be open to bribery.”

“I can't say ‘definitely.' The evidence is too skimpy. I'm just saying it isn't likely Bogert's on the take. Unless, of course, Bogert does have a grudge against Glickman that he's managed to hide from everybody, including your detective. But it doesn't seem likely, Gus.”

“Damn.” Gus scowled. “So he probably didn't have anything to do with Megan's missing weekend after all.”

“Doesn't look like it,” Snooks agreed. “You wanted him to be in on that, didn't you? Why, Gus?”

He shrugged. “He was the only lead we had. Now that seems to have fizzled out, we're back to where we started. Which is nowhere. Well—thanks, Snooks. We did sort of semi-eliminate him as a suspect.”

“For all the good it does us.”

Gus stood up to go and gave a quick glance around. “Nice office,” he said, and left.

Snooks placed her foot on her desk drawer and propelled herself backward to the window. In a few minutes Gus came bobbing along the sidewalk, moving in a jerky scarecrow motion that suggested he had more energy than he knew what to do with. He was enjoying playing detective, working at unraveling the mystery of Megan's missing weekend. No, Snooks told herself, there was more to it than that. Gus wasn't too proud to call in outside help when he thought he was in over his head. He wanted to help Megan more than he wanted to indulge his puzzle-solving proclivities.

Snooks smiled. Having a friend like Gus Bilinski spoke well for Megan. She made good choices.

Gus and Snooks sat at a small table in Megan's kitchen devouring a pizza Gus had sent out for.

Megan stood in the doorway watching them. She was in a touchy mood and said something she was usually able to restrain herself from saying: “How can you eat that junk?”

“With our mouths,” Snooks said with complacency, and took a big bite.

Megan looked at the stringy cheese and the greasy pepperoni and the cardboardlike crust and felt her stomach turn over. “All that fat and grease and starch—it'll kill you. And you a doctor, Snooks!”

“Doctors are notoriously neglectful of their own health,” Gus said with equal complacency, and licked a finger.

Megan threw up her hands in surrender. “I can't bear to watch. I have to go to the bathroom anyway.” She left them in peace.

When she came out of the bathroom, the phone was ringing. She moved to the extension by her bed. “Hello?”

“Full fathom five thy father lies,” the voice said.

“Yes.”

“Of his bones are coral made.”

“No.”

There was a click on the line; Megan replaced the receiver. “Wrong number,” she told the bed.

She went back to the kitchen: nobody there. They were in the living room, standing by the desk, both looking as if they'd just been told Armageddon was scheduled to begin in one hour. Snooks replaced the telephone receiver.

“What is it?” Megan asked them, not knowing whether to laugh or be alarmed. “What's the matter?”

Snooks said, “Tell us about the phone call, Megan.”

Megan was confused. She gestured toward the desk. “You were the one on the phone, not me.”

“We were just listening in. You took the call, on the bedroom extension.”

“Snooks, what are you talking about? I didn't take any phone call!”

Gus said, “Yes, you did, Megan. You answered the phone in the bedroom, we listened in here. We heard the conversation, if you can call it that. Don't you remember any of it?”

Megan looked at the two of them as if she suspected them of conspiring against her—and then suddenly realized what it meant. “The reinforcement? The hypnotist just called me on the phone and … oh, my god.” She half collapsed against the wall, her face a picture of revulsion.

Snooks moved rapidly to her side and wrapped a beefy arm around Megan in an uncharacteristic gesture of affection. “I think you'd better sit down. Come on, Megan.” She led her to the armchair. Megan sat down and started shuddering. “That's right—yield to it. Get it over with.”

Gus fluttered around helplessly until Snooks told him to sit down too; he took his usual place on the edge of the sofa. Eventually Megan's shudders eased off. “This is hard for me to accept,” she said. “That someone would do such a
vile
thing to me. And why? I feel like a ticking bomb. What did he say to me on the phone?”

“I don't think I'd better repeat it,” Snooks said. “That might provide additional reinforcement, you see. It was very brief—just two lines of poetry.”

“From
The Tempest,”
Gus inserted, and started to recite the rest of Ariel's song.

“Don't do that,” Snooks said sharply. “That might be the recall trigger.”

Gus's bug-eyes grew even larger. “Of course—
stupid
. I'm sorry.”

Snooks turned back to Megan. “You say ‘yes' to the first line, ‘no' to the second line. Gus says you say ‘wrong number' after you've hung up.” She sank down on the sofa and lit a cigarette. “There's one encouraging thing about that phone call, though. It means you haven't yet followed out the posthypnotic command. Otherwise he wouldn't still be calling you to reinforce the suggestion.”

“Still
be calling me? You mean there have been more of those phone calls?”

“Quite a few, Megan,” Gus said. “Always the same thing—yes, no, wrong number. Then you don't remember getting the call. I asked you about it once, but you didn't know what I was talking about.”

“I remember
that,”
she said shortly. “I thought
you
were a little bit crazy. Do you have any idea how frightening this is? To think that somebody I don't even know could just … walk into my mind and control my behavior. My god.”

“Yeah, how about that, Snooks?” Gus asked. “I've always heard it's impossible to force someone to do something under hypnosis that's opposed to his, er, moral principles or something.”

Snooks gave a big sigh. “The only people who say that with any certainty are lawyers. The medical profession isn't so sure. The law needs yes or no answers, you see. And there are enough experimental studies available to confirm the hypothesis saying you can't be forced by hypnosis to do something against your will that the courts are satisfied. Laws vary, of course, but the courts generally take the view that a plea of innocence on the grounds that the accused was forced to commit a crime under hypnosis is just so much hogwash.”

“That seems pretty definite,” Megan said.

“Not really. It's all very tidy as far as the legal profession is concerned—but there are
other
experimental studies that tend to demonstrate just the opposite. The results are just too inconsistent to provide an absolute answer one way or the other. Personally, I'm inclined to agree hypnosis can't force you to do something against your will—but that phrase ‘against one's will' is so vague and nondefinitive. A modest woman can be made to disrobe in public—
if she thinks she's in the privacy of her own home
. Technically she's not doing anything against her will—she's just getting ready for bed. But she's been deceived. Something like that could have happened to Megan.”

Gus had been thinking. “If he used a drug on her …”

Snooks shook her head. “The drug would increase her suggestibility but it wouldn't alter her personality. That can be done—‘brainwashing.' But brainwashing depends on physical abuse to wear the subject down, and Megan wasn't hurt physically. Also, brainwashing involves the incessant repetition of the same suggestion over a long period of time—months of it. Thirty-eight hours just isn't long enough to brainwash someone.”

Megan had been listening carefully. “So what does it come down to, Snooks? If I've been programmed to, to assassinate the President of the United States—will I go through with it?”

“I don't know,” Snooks said regretfully. “I'd like to give you an answer, Megan. But I simply don't know. The thing that puzzles me is the amount of time that has elapsed. Do you realize it's been well over a month since that missing weekend? That's an awfully long time to let pass between the planting of the suggestion and triggering its recall.”

“Maybe he wanted to allow time to repeat the hypnosis if it didn't take the first time,” Gus suggested. “He'd have no way of knowing Megan would turn out to be as receptive as she is.”

“Possibly,” Snooks mused. “Yes, that might be it. But that implies a target date of some kind, doesn't it? Getting her ready to do something by the time a specific day arrives. Any big days looming in your immediate future, Megan?”

Megan lifted her hands, palms up.

“I think we ought to concentrate on the question of why,” Snooks said. “Anybody in your personal life out to get you, Megan? What about Rich?”

Megan dismissed Rich with a wave of her hand. “Rich doesn't have the energy for an elaborate venture like this one. He prefers simple, dramatic showdown scenes, with lots of accusations and poignant suffering. Besides, we just don't hate each other enough to bother. Rich isn't behind it.”

“Anybody else who might have done it?”

“Can't think of anyone.”

“Then it must be your work. Megan, what is it
specifically
that you do at Glickman?”

“Mostly I direct product distribution on the national level. I decide how much each branch gets, based on past sales records and certain special considerations.”

“What kind of considerations?”

“Oh, recession, for one. Say a couple of mills or factories shut down somewhere. The branch in that area won't be selling as much. Or say one branch shows a marked rise in its number of reorders—I simply increase its initial quarterly allotment. Economic conditions are always changing.”

“What else?”

“What else do I do? Well, whenever there's a new product, like Lipan, I arrange direct shipments to the distributors. Normally the branches make all their own shipping arrangements, but new products are the exception. I also take care of the nuts-and-bolts details of local deliveries from the Bethel Park lab.”

“These shipments—do they include hard drugs?”