Power of Suggestion (13 page)

“Parker, did you shoot Wayne?” Dr. Cohen asked.

“No. I couldn't. I pointed the gun at him, but I couldn't pull the trigger, even though the voice kept telling me to do it.”

Nancy exchanged triumphant looks with Ned and Bess. Parker
hadn't
pulled the trigger!

“So what happened when you refused to kill Wayne?” Dr. Cohen asked next.

“He came out of his room.”

“ ‘He'?”

Parker appeared not to have heard Dr. Cohen's question. “And then he and Wayne argued, and he took the gun away from me,” Parker went on.

“Who is this ‘he'?” Bess spoke up softly.

“And then he shot him!” Parker cried, leaping to his feet. “He pulled the trigger, and Wayne fell.”

“Who, Parker?
Who
pulled the trigger?” Ned demanded, unable to restrain himself.

But Nancy knew. “You guys, think of who had a room to come out of in that lab?” she asked, her heart pounding with excitement. “Who was watching all the time, through the two-way mirror in the lab? Who had a microphone in that little room and knew how to use it to speak softly into Parker's ears through the headphones, while Parker sat listening to tapes? Who knew how to hypnotize him, had probably done it over and over again until he knew that Parker was under his complete control?”

Her friends and Dr. Cohen were looking at her as if she had lost her mind, but Nancy couldn't stop her line of reasoning.

“Who knew Parker so well that he felt certain he could order him to commit murder and be obeyed?” she said. “Who else, but Dr. Edberg!”

Suddenly Parker was no longer in his trance. He was wide awake and in complete control. “Nancy is right,” he said calmly. “It
was
Edberg!”

• • •

“How do you feel, Parker?” Dr. Cohen asked later that afternoon.

“Like I just finished competing in the Nationals,” Parker answered. “I feel emotionally and physically drained. But I feel relieved, too. I know I'm not a murderer.”

For the last several hours, Parker had recalled everything Dr. Edberg had ordered him to do Thursday night in the psychology lab. Then, when Parker was ready, Dr. Cohen hypnotized
him one last time and cancelled out any posthypnotic suggestions Edberg had given him.

“You see,” the doctor explained to Ned, Nancy, and Bess, “that's how Edberg got Parker to take the gun. A posthypnotic suggestion is a command lodged in the subject's subconscious mind. So Parker was unaware of pocketing the gun, and he probably carried it around in his coat pocket for several days without recognizing that it was there.”

“That's amazing!” Bess exclaimed. “Wouldn't he have felt it when he put his hands in his pockets?”

“Sure,” Dr. Cohen replied. “But his conscious mind had been commanded not to register it as a gun.”

“Edberg must have come back to the lab while Wayne was looking for me Thursday night,” Parker said. “Wayne never checked the control room. He had set everything up for me beforehand, and when I put on the headphones, he just flipped the play switch on the alternate control panel in the lab.”

Nancy recalled seeing the small panel of controls in the lab room. “But Edberg must have been listening to your tape on his own headphones in the control room,” she added. “When he heard Johnny Lightning come on, he knew you'd fall into a trance, and he began to talk to you.”

“And of course he was able to watch everything through the mirror,” Ned put in.

Parker stood up and started pacing back and forth in front of Dr. Cohen's desk, too excited to sit still any longer. “I remember now,” he said, raking a hand through his red hair. “Edberg had been hypnotizing me for a couple of weeks. Wayne was usually in the lab with me, while Edberg was in the control room. So Wayne didn't know that Edberg was actually talking to me through the headphones—he must have assumed that Edberg was just observing me through the one-way glass. Edberg talked to me only during that one song. Since I didn't know if I was one of the participants hearing the subliminal tape or not, I assumed that Edberg's talking to me was another part of the experiment. Now I realize he was getting me used to being hypnotized.”

“You're right,” Dr. Cohen said. “Finally, the song alone was enough to put you under.” The doctor sat with his elbows on his desk, the fingers of both hands entwined, with his chin resting on his thumbs. “But how did he know to choose you instead of one of the other students?”

“I think I remember now,” Parker responded. He stopped pacing. “Early in the study I had an interview alone with Edberg. During part of it he told me to watch his finger, and he moved it slowly in front of my eyes while he talked and talked. I felt dizzy, and later I glanced at his notes. He'd written, ‘highly suggestible.' So I guess he knew I was easy to hypnotize.”

Nancy and Ned sat together on the couch,
holding hands. Now Nancy spoke. “The rest is easy. Edberg was going to use Parker to kill Wayne.” She turned her attention to Parker. “He knew you had a grudge against Wayne, and he knew you had a temper. He just assumed you'd be willing to kill him. But when you resisted, Edberg had to come out and do it himself. He must have been wearing gloves, so only your prints were on the gun, Parker.”

“That's right. He told me to forget everything. Then he ran out of the room—and the next thing I knew, I was outside, stumbling into the snow.”

Ned let out a low whistle. “He was probably still in the building when we found the body!” he exclaimed. “Then he slipped out before the police arrived.”

“There are still some things I don't get,” Bess said. “First, there's Edberg's alibi. Did his wife lie for him?”

“That's the most obvious explanation,” Nancy agreed, “but it may not be the right one. We'll just have to find out when we catch Edberg.” Bess crinkled up her nose. “The other thing is—well, why? Why did Professor Edberg want to kill his research assistant?”

Nancy told the others what Maury and Diana had discovered on Wayne Perkins's computer disks. “We knew the results of the study had been falsified, but the one thing we couldn't figure out was
who
had done it. It must have been Edberg. Something must have made Wayne suspicious enough to copy Edberg's records and then reanalyze
them. That's how he learned that Edberg had doctored the results,” she concluded.

Bess still didn't look convinced. “But why was he lying? I mean, wouldn't that put his whole career in jeopardy?”

“I bet that's where Larry Boyd fits in,” Nancy said. “We still need to find out why he was on campus that night. But I'll bet it has something to do with all those government contracts Boyd kept talking about. There's a lot of money at stake here. Edberg himself told us that whoever can prove that these tapes really work stands to make huge profits. Maybe he convinced Edberg to falsify the study's results.”

Bess's face lit up with understanding. “If Diana's right about how honorable Wayne was, he must have threatened to expose Dr. Edberg's fraud. Maybe Edberg tried to bribe Wayne and was rebuffed. So Edberg had only one choice left.”

“Murder!” Parker said.

A moment of silence filled the office as they all considered the story they had pieced together. Then Ned spoke up. “So now what do we do?” He turned to Nancy. “From what you've told me about Easterling, he's never going to buy this story.”

“It
is
pretty farfetched,” Dr. Cohen agreed. “And we've just destroyed some of the proof. Parker isn't hypnotized anymore, so we can't demonstrate the effect of the song on him.”

“We've got a problem here,” Nancy agreed.
“We have no hard and fast evidence, and it's a very tangled case. Lieutenant Easterling is not going to be a friendly audience, that's for sure.” She sighed. “We've still got some heavy-duty thinking to do, guys.”

Glancing at the clock, Nancy saw that it was already late afternoon. “Is anybody else hungry?” she asked. “I say we figure out what to do over a pizza.”

• • •

“Nan, could you pass me a slice with pepperoni?” Ned asked.

He, Nancy, Bess, and Parker were sitting together in Lorenzo's, a popular student hangout near the Emerson campus. None of them had eaten since that morning, and only a few slices were left of the two large pizzas they had ordered.

“So what do we do?” Parker wondered aloud, as he finished his third slice of sausage and mushroom pizza. He turned to Nancy. “Are you really going to go to the police like you promised Dr. Cohen?” he asked.

Dr. Cohen had declined their invitation to join them. As they'd left his office he had tried to persuade them to go to the police, or at least to Captain Backman. They had promised to do that first thing in the morning. In turn, he had promised to wait until morning to contact the authorities himself.

“I don't see how we can avoid it,” Nancy said, answering Parker's question. “We've got to bring Easterling into the case.”

“But you said yourself that he'll never believe us,” Bess protested. She took a sip of soda, then crunched down on some small ice cubes.

“That's right,” Nancy said. “The only way he'll believe us is if he hears Professor Edberg himself make a confession.” She paused for effect and then said, “And I have a plan that will get the professor to do just that!”

T
HAT
'
S RIGHT,
Professor Edberg, midnight tonight, in the psych lab.” Nancy paused while Professor Edberg said something. “Yes, that will be fine.” Nancy hung up the pay phone in the back of Lorenzo's and turned to Ned, Bess, and Parker, who were clustered around her. “He bought it,” she told them.

“This could be very dangerous, Nan,” Bess said, biting her lip. “Edberg could be capable of anything.”

Nancy looped one arm each around Ned and Parker's shoulders and gave them both a quick squeeze. “That's why I'm taking these two heroes along as backup,” she said.

Ned ducked his head like a cowboy hero from
an old movie and said, “Aw, shucks, ma'am, ah appreciate the confidence y'all have in me an' mah pardner.”

They all laughed nervously. Nancy knew that Bess was right. Her plan was a risky one. They just had to hope that it would work.

When she'd called Edberg, she'd told him who she was and said that she had important information about Wayne's death. This information was very sensitive, she'd said. She only felt safe sharing it with him face-to-face. Now that he'd agreed to meet her, the plan was in motion.

Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was six
P.M.
That gave them plenty of time to prepare for their rendezvous.

• • •

Five hours later, Nancy carefully picked the lock to the back door of the psychology building. She entered cautiously, followed by Ned and Parker. They tiptoed through the building and up the stairs to the second-floor lab where Wayne had been killed. They slipped under the crisscrossed police tape in front of the door.

“You guys had better get ready in the observation booth,” Nancy said, nodding toward the door next to the mirrored wall.

“What's the hurry?” Parker asked. “Edberg's not going to be here for another hour.”

Nancy shook her head. “I wouldn't count on him waiting that long. I know he's going to arrive early. He thinks I can't get into the building
without him unlocking the door. He told me he'd leave the front door open. He'll be here within twenty minutes—I guarantee it.”

While the boys entered the observation booth, closing the door behind them, Nancy examined her surroundings. She shivered when she saw the big reddish brown stain on the carpet next to the black leather recliner. Stepping carefully around it, she walked over to the control panel against the wall. She played with a few switches, checking everything out. From what Parker had said, these duplicated some of the controls on the more complex control panel inside the observation booth.

Edberg had taken a chance when he assumed that Wayne would start the tape from out there instead of entering the booth. But then, Nancy thought, he must have known Wayne's habits.

Nancy flicked on the microphone built into the control panel. “Can you guys hear me?” she asked.

“Loud and clear, Nan.” Ned's voice boomed out from the two stereo speakers mounted high up in the corners on either side of the mirrored wall.

“How's the recording equipment working?” she asked.

There was no answer for a moment, and she worried that there was a problem. Then the speakers crackled, and her own voice came over them, saying, “How's the recording equipment working?”

“Very cute, guys,” she muttered. “Okay—quiet on your end from now on, got it?”

While she waited for Professor Edberg, Nancy sat in the recliner, thinking over their plan. She glanced at her watch. It was almost eleven-thirty. She hoped Bess was taking care of her part of the plan. Dr. Edberg should be here right about—