"No, no, I understand what you're saying, Doctor Ling. I just find it a little bit hard to believe that hypnosis can really do all the things you're saying it can." That was a lie, but technically speaking the courts had ruled that police were allowed to lie to suspects in order to get a confession. And whether she wrote it down in her case file or not, Detective Erica Chou thought of Michael Ling as a suspect. She didn't know exactly what she was going to charge him yet, but she'd figure it out once she tricked him into admitting to what he'd done to Annie Ginsburg.
Annie was sitting in a holding cell right now, and it seemed unlikely that her improbable claim that she simply didn't remember trying to drug and kidnap teenage girls off of the UC Hastings campus would hold up in court. She was probably looking at twenty years to life if Erica couldn't find something that would explain why a forty year old pharmaceutical executive with no criminal record illicitly manufactured rohypnol and tried to slip it to female college students at a networking event. And right now, Erica's only lead was a perfectly innocuous-sounding phone call that Annie made from prison to her hypnotherapist.
Who was sitting across from her, smiling blandly at her from the other side of his desk behind a pair of chunky academic glasses and a goatee that made him look a little bit like a cartoon shrink. "Many people have formed incorrect beliefs about hypnosis over the years, Detective," he said politely-so politely that Erica was almost certain that she'd touched a nerve. "For most, it's an irrational fear of putting oneself under the control of a hypnotist, but there are also some who have underestimated the degree of influence hypnosis can have on a sufficiently... well-trained mind."
Erica tried to arrange her features into a skeptical expression, but inside, she was practically pumping her fist in excitement. Doctor Ling clearly had an ego, not just about his own skills but his profession in general. All she needed to do was keep him talking, keep expressing doubt and disdain that anyone could hypnotize someone into committing a crime, and he would walk himself right over the line into a recorded confession. It was always the same with controlling, arrogant men like Ling. They could never stand being challenged by a woman.
Erica pushed a little further. "But I thought that you couldn't make someone do anything with hypnosis against their will," she said, quirking a skeptical eyebrow. "Are you saying that Annie had secret criminal tendencies or something? Like, she'd always wanted to get into the sex trafficking business, deep down, and... uhh, this hypnotist just gave her permission to do it?" Erica forced herself to calm down, just a little-she was still conducting the interview under the pretext that she was asking Doctor Ling for his expert advice, and she couldn't afford to slip up and accuse him directly. He probably knew that she suspected him, but the longer she could present this as an abstract discussion, the more he would give away.
If he noticed her hesitation, though, he didn't show it. "No, not at all," he replied affably, leaning forward a little as he began to warm up to the topic. "The belief that you can't be hypnotized against your will is one of those common misconceptions I spoke about earlier. Whoever this hypnotist was, they didn't have to encourage any kind of latent interest in kidnapping young women. They simply had to disengage Annie's conscious mind from the reality of her actions, and reward her unconscious for following instructions. Most of what we think of as 'morality' is a construct of the waking self."
That fit pretty well with the phone call Annie made just after her arrest. She sounded genuinely confused about the footage they showed her of the loading dock cameras-not indignant, just lost and bewildered. There was an almost broken quality to her voice, as though she was pleading with Michael to tell her something that would reconcile the evidence of her senses with her memories of a bland, pleasant luncheon... and even though he repeated innocuous, calming phrases, Erica could tell from the way Annie responded that Michael gave her exactly what she needed.
But of course, she couldn't say that. "I'm sorry, Doc," she said, leaning back in her chair as if to disengage from the conversation. "I just don't buy it. Some part of her had to know she was renting the warehouse space and the van, some part of her had to know she was manufacturing the roofies. You can't just, just erase a person's moral center like that with a snap of your fingers and a pocket watch. It's crazy."
Doctor Ling's smile hardened just a little. "Please. We don't like that word in our profession."
Erica allowed her expression to become a tiny bit contrite. "Sorry, doc." She knew that giving him a little bit of respect and letting him think that he was the one in charge would keep him talking. She couldn't afford to let him shut down now, not when he was finally opening up.
Sure enough, his expression became warm and affable again as he took a pocket watch out of his desk drawer. "It's not a problem," he said cheerfully, letting the burnished metal disc hang down from his fingers on its chain. "Oh, don't be surprised," he chuckled, seeing Erica's bemused reaction. "You'd be amazed how many of my clients want 'the real thing'."
He began to swing it lazily from side to side as he went on, giving it just the slightest amount of momentum with his wrist. "And no, you almost certainly couldn't use this to reshape someone's entire mind and personality in just one session. Hypnosis has its limits, I'm not about to argue otherwise. But it also has more power than most people realize, and that power only grows stronger with time. The longer Annie spent under the influence of this hypnotist, the easier it would have been to control her." It was as good as a confession, but Doctor Ling apparently didn't realize it.
Erica frowned, drawing herself up a little in her chair as if she suddenly felt uncomfortable with the line of conversation. (Doctor Ling wasn't the only person who studied body language.) "But, I mean... surely she would have noticed something, right? Even if, um." She paused, biting back the 'you' that was already on the tip of her tongue. "Even if this guy was leading her step by step over the line from 'watch the watch' to 'kidnap an eighteen year old law student', there would have to be a point where she rebelled."
"There very probably was," Doctor Ling agreed, accidentally sending the watch in a wide arc as he shrugged nonchalantly. "But another misconception-indeed, one of the most dangerous misconceptions for the layperson-is the idea that the hypnotist has no methods for overcoming active resistance. If you think you're immune to hypnosis simply because you're on your guard, Detective Chou, you've made a very real mistake."
It didn't exactly take a lot of thespian skill for Erica to burst out laughing at his comment. "Me?" she said after recovering her composure, secretly reveling in the momentary flash of anger that he no doubt thought she'd missed. "Nah, Doc, you're barking up the wrong tree if you think you can get me to go under. Your pocket watch doesn't do anything to me at all." She shook her head dismissively, leveling a confident stare directly into his deep brown eyes.
She was surprised to more than a little anger swelling up behind her words-clearly, he'd taken out the watch thinking that he was going to somehow hypnotize her into forgetting about her investigation and traipsing along on her merry way. Erica made a mental note to look into the activities of Doctor Ling's other clients-if he'd done this with Annie, maybe he'd done it with other people who hadn't gotten caught. In the meanwhile, all she had to do was keep him talking, and get all of his hypnosis attempts on tape.
"It's not necessarily the pocket watch that does it, Miss Chou," Doctor Ling said, his voice suddenly stern and authoritarian. "A good hypnotist has any number of ways to induce a deep trance in his subject. You might decide to look away from the pocket watch; that's a normal reaction to a potent symbol of hypnotic power, and it's not surprising that you immediately associated it with an irresistible hypnotic focus. But it doesn't really matter where you look. No matter what your eyes come to rest on, they still come to rest sooner or later."
Stung, Erica flicked her gaze away from Doctor Ling's eyes, looking over first at his diploma, then at a spot on the wall. But Doctor Ling only smiled, as if he was indulging the antics of a sleepy toddler in the last few minutes before they slumped into unconsciousness. "It's fine if you want to keep your eyes moving, Erica," he said, his voice strong and confident. "That only tires them out quicker, makes them burn with exhaustion and ache with the desire to close, but if you're worried that you might slip away into a deep hypnotic trance if you keep staring at any one object for too long, then by all means. Stare up, stare down, stare left, stare right. It makes no difference to me."
Erica's dark brown eyes flitted from side to side involuntarily, the words prompting her to glance in every direction for just a moment before she once again fixed her gaze on Doctor Ling's eyes. "That's a nice trick for the rubes, Doc," she said, a tiny hint of a snarl creeping into her voice. "But it's not going to work on me. I'm going to look at whatever I want to, and I'm not going into any kind of 'hypnotic trance'. Okay?"
Doctor Ling smirked mirthlessly. "Are you really asking for permission to stay awake, Detective? Because if hypnosis really worked the way you think it does, you wouldn't have to. You wouldn't feel your eyelids getting heavier and heavier as you gaze into my bottomless, dark eyes, and you wouldn't feel a slow wave of exhaustion wash through your body, keeping you pinned to your chair. That deep, dreamy lethargy creeping over you, Detective, making you want to close those sleepy eyes and rest for a moment? That's hypnosis. And it's real."
