Rizzoli & Isles 8-Book Set

of the other detectives in the unit. They considered hypnosis a lounge act, the purview of Vegas entertainers and parlor magicians. At one time, Moore had agreed with them.
    The Meghan Florence case had changed his mind.
    On October 31, 1998, ten-year-old Meghan had been walking home from school when a car pulled up beside her. She was never again seen alive.
    The only witness to the abduction was a twelve-year-old boy standing nearby. Although the car was in plain view and he could recount its shape and color, he could not remember the license plate. Weeks later, with no new developments in the case, the girl’s parents had insisted on hiring a hypnotherapist to interview the boy. With every avenue of investigation exhausted, the police reluctantly agreed.
    Moore was present during the session. He watched Alex Polochek gently ease the boy into a hypnotic state and listened in amazement as the boy quietly recited the license number.
    Meghan Florence’s body was recovered two days later, buried in the abductor’s backyard.
    Moore hoped that the magic Polochek had worked on that boy’s memory could now be repeated on Catherine Cordell’s.
    The two men now stood outside the interview room, looking through the one-way mirror at Catherine and Rizzoli, seated on the other side of the window. Catherine appeared uneasy. She shifted in her chair and glanced at the window, as though aware she was being watched. A cup of tea sat untouched on the small table beside her.
    “This is going to be a painful memory to retrieve,” said Moore. “She may
want
to cooperate, but it won’t be pleasant for her. At the time of the attack, she was still under the influence of Rohypnol.”
    “A drugged memory from two years ago? Plus you said it’s not pure.”
    “A detective in Savannah may have planted a few suggestions through questioning.”
    “You know I can’t work miracles. And nothing we get from this session is going to be admissible as evidence. This will invalidate any future testimony she gives in court.”
    “I know.”
    “And you still want to proceed?”
    “Yes.”
    Moore opened the door and the two men stepped into the interview room. “Catherine,” said Moore, “this is the man I told you about, Alex Polochek. He’s a forensic hypnotist for the Boston PD.”
    As she and Polochek shook hands, she gave a nervous laugh.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
    “You thought I’d have a black cape and a magician’s wand,” said Polochek.
    “It’s a ridiculous image, but yes.”
    “And instead you get a chubby little bald guy.”
    Again she laughed, her posture relaxing a bit.
    “You’ve never been hypnotized?” he asked.
    “No. Frankly, I don’t think I can be.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “Because I don’t really believe in it.”
    “Yet you’ve agreed to let me try.”
    “Detective Moore thought I should.”
    Polochek sat down in a chair facing her. “Dr. Cordell, you don’t have to believe in hypnosis for this session to be useful. But you have to
want
it to work. You have to trust me. And you have to be willing to relax and let go. To let me guide you into an altered state. It’s a lot like the phase you go through just before you fall asleep at night. You won’t
be
asleep. I promise, you’ll be aware of what’s happening around you. But you’ll be so relaxed you’ll be able to reach into parts of your memory you don’t normally have access to. It’s like unlocking a filing cabinet that’s there, in your brain, and finally being able to open the drawers and take out the files.”
    “That’s the part I don’t believe. That hypnosis can make me remember.”
    “Not make you remember. Allow you to.”
    “All right,
allow
me to remember. It strikes me as unlikely that this can help me pull out a memory I can’t reach on my own.”
    Polochek nodded. “Yes, you’re right to be skeptical. It doesn’t seem likely, does it? But here’s an example of how memories can be blocked. It’s called the Law of Reversed Effect. The harder you try to remember something, the less likely it is you’ll be able to recall it. I’m sure you’ve experienced it yourself. We all have. For instance, you see a famous actress on the TV screen, and you
know
her name. But you just can’t retrieve it. It drives you crazy. You spend an hour wracking your brain for her name. You wonder if you’ve got early Alzheimer’s. Tell me it’s happened to