Thief In The Mind Pt 02

To: Lindsey

From: Jen

Subject: Serial hypnotist?

Sent: March 15th 20XX 7:52PM

I think I may have stumbled on to one of the weirdest things in N.C.P.D. history. Remember how I said that that one woman a few days ago... what was her name? Swansong. Miss Swansong, how her necklace went missing, but along with it went, apparently, any memory she ever had of owning it? Well today we had another rather strange case come across my desk.

Remember the "Hall of Gems" on the top floor of the Field Museum? You know the one I'm talking about; small room, several diamonds inside with sparkling lights on them? Well, one of the largest diamonds was reported missing this morning, as well as several of the smaller diamonds. All in all they are putting the value of the stolen gems at over 5 million to the right buyer.

So I headed over the museum to look around. Of course the first place I went was to view the security footage. Which is in a sealed room that requires special access codes to get into; and the footage was, of course, erased. I figured this would make it easier to ID the perpetrators, or at the very least a suspect or two. Of the employees that were on duty yesterday only three of them have access to both the security closet and the Hall of Gems.

I interviewed all three of the employees to figure out what might have happened. The first two, both male, described a really hectic day. Apparently a fight had broken out in the dinosaur exhibit. Something involving a pigmy T-Rex, I didn't understand that part. But more of the employees were involved in the break up of that fight, including all three that had access to the security room. BUT, and this is where things get weird again, one of them, a young woman named Katheryn, didn't remember the fight. In fact when asked about her day she just kept saying the same thing over and over again. "It was a normal day, nothing out of the ordinary happened." It was like she was a broken record. Any questions we asked her about any other day, or any questions about her life, she answered just fine and with a very excited attitude, but all questions about yesterday were answered with the same word for word reply, in a rather bored, almost relaxed, tone. It was kind of creepy, to be honest.

So on a hunch I dragged her down to the precinct to have the head shrinker there take a look at her. He wanted to try hypnotizing her to see what she remembered. I have to admit I am not a big fan of hypnotism, in general, especially not for police investigations. But he made a strong argument so I let him do it if the witness agreed, which she did.

Watching a person get hypnotized is an odd experience, it's kinda like what you see in the movies but also totally different. He didn't use a pocket watch or anything like that, he just kind of talked to her and as he did she just got more and more sleepy until her head just fell to her chest. It was kinda scary, honestly, to think someone could do that to a person. What was even more scary was that the young woman's memory was completely missing. He tried several regression techniques and memory retrieval thingies and nothing worked. The best he could determine was that she had a hypnotic block in her mind that suppressed her memory and implanted a new one in its place. That's actually pretty scary don't you think?

Given this information and the similarities between this case and the one involving Miss Swansong I think we may have some kind of... I don't even know what to call him? Thief Hypnotist? Evil Svengali? Was the original Svengali evil? I don't remember the movie, sorry. But yeah this is getting really weird. I don't mean to sound sappy or anything but I'm glad you're away at the academy and not here. I don't want anyone messing with my sister's head!

Anyways, I'm sure we'll get a lead in a few days, we are combing the scene for fingerprints and keeping the young woman in protective custody until the head shrinker is convinced that she doesn't have any kind of...what did he call it... post-hypnotic suggestions? I don't know something like that.

Stay safe Sis! And study hard! I love you!

Jenny

P.S. No booze!

To: Thief's Apprentice

From: Thief In The Mind

Subject: A little Gem.

Sent: March 15th 20XX 10:05 AM

Greetings Pupil

In our line of work you will often find that it is the things that most people consider to be completely off limits that are the easiest to posses. This past evening I encountered two of them, one in the form of several lovely diamonds on display, and another in the form of an equally rare red headed beauty.

You see, the Field Museum, named after a person not after the location the items were gathered in, is a rather large natural history museum in New Chicago. One of the smaller rooms on the third floor is a room about six meters by six meters square filled with rare gemstones and diamonds. All on display using rotating lights to make all of the gems sparkle as brightly as they can. And all under the careful guard of about twenty five security cameras. You would think that location would be completely impenetrable.

The other gem that I found was a lovely young woman named Katheryn, a short, fiery redhead with curly hair who worked at the museum. She was one of those women that you see at these places, so smart, so confident, beautiful in any situation but even more so when you take into account the entire location. Most men would be completely terrified to approach this woman. They would view her as off limits. Impenetrable.

So the dilemma was how to, shall we say for politeness, open both of these impenetrable barriers. Well I decided the best way to open one was with the other, I would use the girl to open the gem, and the gem, to open the girl. Do follow along here pupil as this is rather brilliant work on my part.

Given the young woman's passion for her job I simply asked her if she could answer a few questions for me about the gems in their gem room. It had a name, something gaudy like "hall of gems" or something equally as tacky. She was all too eager to answer any and all of my questions, even going into long memorized speeches about the various gems. And this is where I had her. You see, any time a person is reciting something from pure memory, they have to go into a hypnotic trance, which is exactly where I wanted her to be. So I would ask her one question, then ask her something off the wall like "what do you think of that person's shoes?" This is called fractionation, when you take a person from a state of trance and then wake them, then put them back into trance. Each time they go down they go deeper into trance then they were before. It's a very common trick used among stage hypnotists. After about six or seven questions I could see her eyes dilating when she recited the information. Yet her lovely face never once showed anything but excited enthusiasm. She was right where I wanted her.

For your education here is the pattern I used to induce her into a deeper, more compliant, state of hypnosis. We shall call this the crystal trance induction.

"Have you ever noticed, how the light, just seems to sparkle more along the inside of the diamond, then it does around the outside? That if you were to look deeply, really deeply, into the diamond now, how you could see a spot in the middle, where there was even more color, even more sparkle than around the outside. It's like the light just seems to all bend around the center. And as you look deeply into the crystal now. You can feel that light. You can see it. Splitting into millions of separate colors, and lights. And as the lights around the crystal continue to move, continue to spin slowly. Gently. Easily. It becomes so easy to simply... let go, and find that you can just sink, deeper and deeper, into the heart of the crystal. Nothing else seems to matter now. Just the crystal, and my voice. Everything else seems to fade away. All you see is the lights, and all you hear is my voice. As everything drifts further and further away. All you see is the light. The light that fills your mind, and whites out your thoughts. The light that leaves you focused. Blank. And relaxed. Staring at the crystal now. Just staring. And listening to my words now."

The set up in that room is literally perfect for this kind of induction. And now that the gem had helped me to open the girl, I needed to only use the girl to open the gem. Now of course I wasn't stupid enough to have her do this during the day. No I took her to a rather uninteresting part of the museum, a place that of course has no cameras, and whispered some suggestions into her mind. And of course stole a kiss. Always careful to be discrete, anyone who would have happened upon us would have merely thought I was her boyfriend, despite the age difference, come to see her at work. No one was the wiser.

Around 11pm my suggestions paid off in full, as my doorbell heralded the arrival of my fire haired beauty. A few suggestions from earlier had her arrive in the perfect attire. A trench coat hid the fact that she was wearing her sexiest bra and panties. A dark forest green. I don't know what it is about green but it compliments a redhead's skin and hair so much. I kept the bra of course. But her attire was merely the bonus. She came baring the two prizes that I had desired most. A bag full of the most expensive diamonds from the display, and a mind loaded with suggestions. From her perspective she was meeting her boyfriend, a boyfriend who had surprised her at work and whom she eagerly wished to thank for that surprise. True to form she was as excited and eager as ever.

Well Pupil, I trust this has been an educational email for you. As always you should memorize and destroy any digital evidence of its existence. Now if you will excuse me, my little redheaded gem wore me out completely, and I wish to retire.

Regards, Pupil.

Thief In The Mind