Bound by Suggestion
| Bound by Suggestion |
| Jeff Resnick [4] |
| LL Bartlett |
| USA (2011) |
woman, psychiatrist Dr. Krista Marsh promises to cure Jeff Resnick's
recurring headaches via hypnotism. Things start out rocky and quickly
get worse when both the young girl and the doctor begin to manipulate
Jeff. Soon he's experiencing the young woman's emotions and can't tell
where hers leave off and his begin, and Krista has other reasons for
ingratiating herself into Jeff's life. Meanwhile, Jeff's brother Richard
is vying for a chairman seat on the hospital's fundraising board. When
these seemingly unrelated events suddenly converge, the results are
deadly.
In exchange for helping her unlock the emotions of a disturbed young woman, psychiatrist Dr. Krista Marsh promises to cure Jeff Resnick's recurring headaches via hypnotism. Things start out rocky and quickly get worse when both the young girl and the doctor begin to manipulate Jeff. Soon he's experiencing the young woman's emotions and can't tell where hers leave off and his begin, and Krista has other reasons for ingratiating herself into Jeff's life. Meanwhile, Jeff’s brother Richard is vying for a chairman seat on the hospital’s fundraising board. Two seemingly unrelated events that suddenly converge with deadly results.
BOUND BY SUGGESTION
A Jeff Resnick Mystery
By L.L. Bartlett
Copyright © 2011 by L.L. Bartlett.
All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.
Chapter 1 of Bound of Suggested originally published as the short story, Cold Case. Copyright
© 2002 by L.L. Bartlett and appeared in the anthology Mystery In Mind: A Collections of Stories of the Paranormal.
The Jeff Resnick Mysteries
Murder On The Mind
Dead In Red
Room At The inn
Cheated By Death
Bound By Suggestion
A Leap of Faith
Short Stories
When The Spirit Moves You
Bah! Humbug
Cold Case (the inspiration for Bound By Suggestion)
Abused: A Daughter’s Story
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Bound by Suggestion started off as a short story, COLD CASE, and was originally published in the Mystery In Mind anthology. The story stayed with me for a long time and I knew I would one day tell the tale of Jeff Resnick and his encounter with Dr. Krista Marsh.
My thanks to Kat Henry Dorin for sharing her medical expertise and other giving wonderful feedback. Kathy Grimes also gave me feedback, and Carolyn Thomas gave me golf pointers, with additional input from Jennifer Stanley and Dru-Ann Love. My thanks must also go to (author) Patricia Ryan of Pat Ryan Graphics for her marvelous cover.
Thank you, too, to Frank Solomon for his proofreading and formatting skills for the Trade Paperback edition of this book.
For more information on the Jeff Resnick Mysteries, please check out my website:
“You’re not the first psychic to come through Paula’s apartment, Mr. Resnick.”
Hands on hips, Dr. Krista Marsh stood before me. Her heels gave her an inch or more on me. Blonde and lithe, and clad in a turquoise dress with jet beads resting on her ample breasts, she was the best looking thing in that lower middle-class apartment.
“I don’t use that term. Con-artists, liars and frauds take advantage of people with problems. I’m just someone who sometimes knows more than I’m comfortable knowing.”
Truth was, I hadn’t wanted to be there at all, giving my impressions on the fate of four-year-old Eric Devlin. He’d gone missing on an early-autumn evening some eight months before. One minute he’d been there—riding his blue-and-red trike in front of the apartment building—the next he was gone. Like every other good citizen, I’d read all the stories in the newspapers and seen the kid’s picture on posters and on TV. The only place I hadn’t seen it was on the back of a milk carton.
I was there as a favor to my brother—actually, my older half brother—Dr. Richard Alpert, who’d joined me on that cold gray evening in early May. Richard was Paula Devlin’s internist at the university’s low-income clinic. He liked Paula and hated how not knowing her son’s fate was tearing her apart. He hoped I could shed some light on the kid’s disappearance.
I’m not sure why Dr. Marsh was there. Maybe as Paula’s therapist she thought she could protect her patient from someone like me.
So there I stood in the middle of Paula’s modestly furnished living room, trying to soak up vibes that might tell me the little boy’s fate.
Paula waited in the doorway, looking fearful as I examined the heart of her home, which she’d transformed into a cottage industry distributing posters, pins and flyers in the search for the boy—all to no avail. Vacuum cleaner tracks on the carpet showed her hasty clean-up prior to our arrival. Too thin, and looking older than her thirty-two years, Paula’s spirit and her determination to find her missing son had sustained her over the long months she’d been alone. The paper had never mentioned a Mr. Devlin.
“I don’t know if I can help you,” I told Paula.
She flashed an anxious look at Richard, then back to me. “Where would you like to start, Mr. Resnick?”
“Call me Jeff. How about Eric’s room?”
A sixty-watt bulb illuminated the gloom as the four of us trudged down a narrow hallway. Paula opened the door to a small bedroom, flipped a light switch, and ushered us in. “It’s just the way he left it.”
I doubted that, since the bed was made and all the toys and games were neatly stacked on shelves under the room’s only window—not a speck of dust marred any surface. A racecar bedspread and matching drapes gave a clue to the boy’s chief interest—so did the scores of dented, paint-scraped cars and trucks. I picked up a purple-and-black dune buggy, sensing a trace of the boy’s aura. He’d been a rambunctious kid, with the beginnings of a smart mouth.
“He was a very lively child.”
“He’s all boy, that’s for sure,” his mother said proudly.
She hadn’t noticed I’d used the past tense. Either that or she was in deep denial. I’d known little Eric was dead the moment I entered the apartment.
I gave her a half-hearted smile and replaced the toy on the shelf. There wasn’t much else to see. I shouldered my way past the others and wandered back to the living room. They tried not to bump into each other as they followed.
A four-foot poster of Eric’s smiling face dominated the west wall. He’d been small for his age, cute, with sandy hair and a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of his nose.
An image flashed through my mind: a child’s hand reaching for a glass.
I hitched in a breath, grateful my back was to Dr. Marsh. A mix of powerful emotions erupted—as though my presence had ignited an emotional powder keg. Like repelling magnets, guilt and relief waged a war, practically raining from the walls and ceiling.
Composing myself, I turned, a disquieting depression settling over me.
“Ms. Devlin—”
She stepped forward. “Call me Paula.”
“Paula, did Dr. Alpert tell you how this works?”
“He said you absorb emotions, interpret them, and that sometimes you get knowledge.”
“That’s right.” More or less. “There’s a lot of background emotion here. May I hold your hand for a moment? I need to see if it’s coming from you or if it’s resident in the building.”
Without hesitation, she held out her hand, her expression full of hope. And that’s what I got from her: Hope, desperation, and deep despair. She loved that little boy heart and soul. And there was suspicion, too, but not of me.
I released her hand and let out the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
“Paula, have you ever heard the expression about a person taking up all the air in the room?” Her brows puckered in confusion. “You’re broadcasting so many emotions I can’t sort them out. I know you want to stay, but I can’t do what I have to if you’re here.”
“But he’s my son,” she protested.
Dr. Marsh stepped closer, placed a comforting hand on Paula’s shoulder. “If you want Mr. Resnick to give you a
true
reading, you’d better do as he says.”
I turned on the psychiatrist. “I’m not a fortune teller, Dr. Marsh.”
“I didn’t mean to offend,” she said without sincerity.
“I’ll go if you say so, Krista.” Paula grabbed her windbreaker from the closet and headed for the door. Once she was gone, my anxiety eased and I no longer needed to play diplomat.
“What’re you getting?” Richard asked.
“The kid’s dead—he’s been dead since day one. He wasn’t frightened either, not until the very last minute.”
“You’re talking murder,” Richard said. “Not Paula.”
“No. I’m sure of that.”
Dr. Marsh eyed me critically, her brows arched, and when she spoke her voice was coolly professional. “Are you well acquainted with sensing death, Mr. Resnick?”
“More than I’d like.” I glanced Richard. “What’s this about a pervert in the neighborhood?”
His eyes narrowed. “It hasn’t been reported in the media, but Paula told me about the cops’ prime suspect. A convicted pedophile lived three units down at the time the boy disappeared. They’ve had him in for questioning five or six times but haven’t been able to wring a confession out of him. How’d you know?”
“From Paula—just now. She’s afraid he took her kid.”
Dr. Marsh frowned. She probably figured I was just some shyster running a con. I can’t say I was sorry to disappoint her.
“You got something else,” Richard said. He knew me well.
“I saw something, but it doesn’t make sense.” I told them about the vision.
“Close your eyes. Focus on it,” he directed.
I shot a look at Dr. Marsh and saw the contempt in her gaze. Skepticism came with the territory.
My eyes slid shut and I allowed myself to relax, trying to relive that fleeting moment.
“What do you see?” Richard said.
“A kid’s hand reach for a glass.”
“Is it Eric?”
“I don’t know.”
“Describe the glass.”
I squeezed my eyes tighter, trying to replay the image. “A clear tumbler.”
“What’s inside?”
“Liquid. Brown. Chocolate milk?”
“Look up the child’s arm,” Richard directed. “Can you see his clothes?”
The cuff of a sleeve came into focus. “Yeah.”
“The color?”
I exhaled a breath. Like a camera pulling back, the vision expanded to include the child’s chest. “Blue . . . a decal of—” The image winked out. “Damn!”