“I want a guard in there,” Wainwright said.

“Mr Bridges is an ex-Marine,” Slezak said. “Very capable should extra restraint be needed. He’ll stay.”

Bridges puffed out his chest and jutted his jaw, looking tough. Wainwright looked to me for a verdict. I knew Bridges was a contract employee for a firm like Dunham Krull, inhabiting a hard-edged world of bail bondsmen and bodyguards, repo men and bounty hunters. He’d be mean and hard and proud of the fact, since it was his sole selling point.

“We can live with that,” I said.

Wainwright plucked a phone from the table beside her chair. “I’ll have Bobby Lee brought in.”

Crayline shuffled through the door a minute later, grinning as if he’d called the meeting. He was six-two or -three, two hundred ten pounds, wide shouldered but wasp-waisted. His head was shaved, the bright flesh webbed with scars. Some of the healed wounds looked decades old and I wondered how they’d been inflicted. He was wearing an institutional sweatshirt and pants, muscle-crowded arms and chest filling his shirt; his thighs pulsing against the fabric like beating hearts. Crayline radiated so much force that a blind person would have sat up straighter when he entered a room.

Crayline surveyed his surroundings with electric green eyes, as if determining whether accommodations and participants met his standards. He’d obviously been told of the lawyer’s visit – his right – and the wrangling on the subject of hypnosis. He had just as obviously agreed to the procedure, probably to break the monotony of his day.

“Have a seat, Crayline,” Bridges said.

Crayline turned to Bridges as if suddenly noticing him. “You’re a big fella, aincha?”

“Big enough,” Bridges said, putting challenge in his eyes and tapping the chair. “Sit.”

Crayline turned his head away and whispered softly.

“What was that?” Bridges asked, leaning closer. “What did you say?”

Crayline whipped his head back around and snapped his teeth like a pit bull biting a chunk off a roast. Bridges startled backwards into the table, sending it skidding across the carpet. Crayline grinned. Bridges, red-faced with embarrassment, shoved the table back in place.

“Sit,” Bridges repeated, voice taut with anger.

Crayline sauntered to the table and stood beside the chair, flexing his knees. Bridges slid the chair beneath Crayline’s buttocks and he sat. Bridges had, without thinking, moved the chair to accommodate Crayline.

Control.

The guard affixed Crayline’s leg chain to a D-ring beneath the table and retreated to the rear. Dr Neddles placed his open briefcase on the table and took the chair opposing Crayline. The prisoner had a sinus affliction, trails of syrupy yellow mucus draining from his nostrils to his upper lip. Neddles popped a few tissues from his briefcase.

“Would you like for me to wipe your face, Mr Crayline?”

Bobby Crayline drew his lower lip up and over the effluvium, scooping it into his mouth. He swished it between his cheeks as if sampling wine.

“Tastes like fresh oysters,” he grinned, winking and swallowing. “I’m my own seafood restaurant.”

Beside me, Slezak grimaced and whispered Jesus.

Crayline looked at the mirror as though seeing it for the first time. It seemed he was staring directly at me. Then he did something – I don’t know what it was – like he’d directed energy into his eyes.

For a split second Crayline’s eyes were those of a rabid wolf.

I blinked, looked again. His eyes were normal. My heart was beating faster. Bridges backed to the corner as Neddles produced a small musical triangle and its striker. “The sound starts a musical voyage, Mr Crayline. Each ring of the bell helps you float away.”

“What if I ain’t a floatin’ sort, Doc?”

“You promised to let us try, Bobby,” Neddles crooned. “Close your eyes and clear your mind until there’s nothing in it but one clear and pure note …”

Crayline closed his eyes. The psychologist struck the triangle twice.

ting, ting

“Relax, Bobby Lee. Breathe like a series of waves. Warm and gentle waves …” ting “… Foaming and flowing around your legs …”

ting … ting

Triangle tinging rhythmically, Neddles continued his hypno-patter, trying for that peculiar mental seduction called the suggestive state. After several minutes, Crayline’s head lolled to the side, his face softened, his eyes closed.

“My lord,” Doc Wainwright said. “I think it’s working.”

Neddles set the triangle aside and reached in his pocket, snapping open a folded page of questions. Crayline looked as close to benign as someone like that could get. We heard his breathing through the sound system, relaxed and regular. I was beginning to look forward to the show when Slezak stood and strode to the switch beside the mirror. He snapped the speakers off and the room went silent.

Wainwright scowled. “I have to monitor the procedure, Mr Slezak.”

“It’s privileged information,” Slezak said. “I demand privacy with my client.”

“How about I leave the room, Slezak?” I offered. “It’ll be you and the doctor. That work?”

“No. Both of you please leave us until we’re finished.”

Wainwright looked into the adjoining room, saw all was calm. She frowned at Slezak. “We’ll be right outside the door.”

“Whatever makes you happy,” he said.

Wainwright and I stepped outside. “You think he’s really under?” I said. “I can’t figure Crayline being hypnotized.”

“Sometimes people who seem the worst potential subjects go under in a fingersnap. You can’t tell who’s a good candidate until you swing the watch.”

“I assume Slezak never told you who he’s really representing?” I asked.

“He suggested it was Bobby Lee.”

“Bobby Lee wouldn’t know Slezak from Muzak,” I said. “Someone else is paying for all this.”

I sat and read a three-day-old newspaper fetched from the employee lounge. Doc Wainwright busied herself reading case histories. I heard a sound from the room with Crayline, lifted my head and, hearing nothing, resumed reading.

After twenty-five minutes, I set the paper aside. Another sound, like a squeal, issued from the room. Then something louder, a moan. I looked at Wainwright.

“Privacy be damned,” she said, turning toward the observation room. “Something’s going on.”

She entered with me at her heels. Slezak stood, his eyes sizzling with anger. “I want you both out, now!”

We strode past him like he was furniture and went the mirror. Bobby Lee Crayline was rolling his head like it was on gimbals. His mouth opened in a howl but nothing transmitted through the glass.

“Doctor Neddles touched something painful,” Wainwright said.

“You’re risking a lawsuit,” the lawyer barked. “I’ll have your …”

Slezak’s voice tapered off as Crayline howled loud enough to hear. His body began to spasm. His fists were clenching and releasing. “Crayline’s too deep,” Wainwright said. “God knows what he’s re-living.”

Another cold and quivering howl pierced the glass. I slipped my hand to the switch on the wall, snapped the speakers on.

“I KILLED THEM WRONG!” Bobby Lee howled. “THEY’RE STUCK THERE FOREVER!”

Neddles looked confused; the words made no sense. Bobby Lee began leaping as if to touch the ceiling with his head. Great pumping leaps in time with his howls, like the floor was on fire. He’d compact himself, leap, repeat. Bridges was beside Crayline, trying to get an arm around the man’s neck.

One of Crayline’s arms flew wide, chain whipping through the air. My heart froze. Crayline had summoned a demonic reserve of strength and torn the ring from the floor.

“He’s loose,” I yelled.

I watched in horror as the madman head-butted Neddles, who collapsed like deflated skin. Bridges aimed a kick at Crayline’s groin. He took it on his thigh, ducked, and shoulder-rammed Bridges into the wall, dropping him. Bobby Lee turned and stared into the mirror, his eyes radiating the rabid-wolf look I’d seen before.