Along Came a Spider

Hopkins. I was dancing fast on the high wire. I believed the entire Soneji/ Murphy investigation was at stake, right here in this room. “I want to try regressive hypnosis on him. There’s no risk, but there’s a chance for high reward,” I announced to the group. “I’m certain Soneji/Murphy will be a good subject, that we’ll find out something we can use. Maybe we’ll learn what happened to the missing girl. Certainly something about Gary Murphy.”
    Several complex jurisdictional questions had already been raised by the case. One lawyer had told me the issues would make for an excellent bar-exam question. Since state lines had been crossed, the kidnapping and murder of Michael Goldberg had fallen under federal jurisdiction and would be tried in federal court. The killings in McDonald’s would be tried in a Westmoreland court. Soneji/Murphy could also be tried in Washington for one or more of the killings he had apparently committed in Southeast.
    “What would you ultimately hope to accomplish?” Dr. Campbell wanted to know. He’d been supportive, and was continuing to be so. Like me, he read skepticism on several faces, especially Walsh’s. I could see why Gary didn’t care for Walsh. He seemed mean-spirited, petty, and proud of it. “A lot of what he’s told us so far suggests a severe dissociative reaction. He appears to have suffered a pretty horrible childhood. There was physical abuse, maybe sexual abuse as well. He may have begun to split off his psyche to avoid pain and fear back then. I’m not saying that he’s a multiple, but it’s a possibility. He had the kind of childhood that could produce such a rare psychosis.”
    Dr. Campbell picked up. “Dr. Cross and I have talked about the possibility that Soneji/Murphy undergoes ’fugue states.’ Psychotic episodes that relate to both amnesia and hysteria… He talks about ’lost days,’ ’lost weekends,’ even ’lost weeks.’ In such a fugue state, a patient can wake in a strange place and have no idea how he got there, or what he had been doing for a prolonged period. In some cases, the patients have two separate personalities, often antithetical personalities. This can also happen in temporal lobe epilepsy.”
    “What are you guys, a tag team?” Walsh grumped from his seat. “Lobe epilepsy. Give me a break, Marion. The more you fool around like this, the better his chance of getting off in a courtroom,” Walsh warned.
    “I’m not fooling around,” I said to Walsh. “Not my style.”
    The D.A. spoke up, intervening between Walsh and me. James Dowd was a serious man in his late thirties or early forties. If Dowd got to try the case of Soneji/ Murphy, he would soon be an extremely famous attorney.
    “Isn’t there a possibility that he’s created this apparently psychotic condition for our benefit?” Dowd asked. “That he’s a psychopath, and nothing more than that?”
    I glanced around the table before answering his questions. Dowd clearly wanted to hear our answers; he wanted to learn the truth. The representative from the governor’s office seemed skeptical and unconvinced, but open-minded. The attorney general’s group was neutral so far. Dr. Walsh had already heard enough from me and Campbell.
    “That’s a definite possibility,” I said. “It’s one of the reasons I’d like to try the regressive hypnosis. For one thing, we can see if his stories remain consistent.”
    “
If
he’s susceptible to hypnosis,” Walsh interjected. “And if. you can tell whether or not he’d been hypnotized.”
    “I suspect that he is susceptible,” I answered quickly.
    “And I have my doubts that he is. Frankly, I have my doubts about you, Cross. I don’t care that he likes to talk to you. Psychiatry isn’t about liking your doctor.”
    “What he likes is that I
listen
.” I glared across the table at Walsh. It took a lot of self-control not to jump on the officious bastard.
    “What are the other reasons for hypnotizing the prisoner?” the governor’s representative spoke up.
    “Frankly, we don’t know enough about what he’s done during these fugue states,” Dr. Campbell said. “Neither does he. Neither do his wife and family, whom I’ve interviewed several times now.”
    I added, “We’re also not sure how many personalities might be operating… The other reason for hypnosis” — I paused to let what I was about to say sink in — “is that I do want to ask him about Maggie Rose Dunne. I want to try