Blood of Cain

81

Max barked, her hound dog ears following movement on the dock. Nick looked out the starboard side of Gibraltar. “A news cameraman is walking toward your boat, Sean. The guy decided to go around the locked gate and the no trespassing signs. I see another one following him.”

Dave said, “It’s the tip of the iceberg, and right now Gibraltar is beginning to feel a bit like Titanic. As long as you stay sequestered aboard, Sean, we should avoid a collision with a media mob. I’ll call security and the sheriff’s office. Turn up the sound on the TV, Nick. Looks like they have reason to call what I’m seeing as breaking news.”

The scenes were of a Louisiana parish sheriff and two FBI agents holding a news conference in front of the sheriff’s headquarters. The voice-over came from a news anchorman who said, “That was the scene minutes ago when the results of forensics tests were announced by Sheriff Ralph Perry and special agents with the FBI. Let’s go to Peter Zimmer live at the crime scene where the girl’s body was found. Peter …”

The camera shot cut to the field reporter, a square-jawed, dark-haired man wearing an open sports coat, standing next to an airboat. “That’s right, Larry, police and FBI say they have made a positive identification in the tragic death of a young woman found here in Barateria Swamp by a tour boat operator. Investigators are saying the body is that of nineteen-year-old Gina Boudreaux, reported missing more than a week ago. Two remaining teeth in the girl’s body matched with dental records. Then police got a DNA sample from the Boudreaux family in St. James Parish. Also, we’re told there was an apparent match of a small tattoo, a sunflower, on the girl’s left shoulder. Her distraught parents say the last time they saw their daughter was last Saturday when she came into New Orleans to visit the area voodoo shops. Gina Boudreaux’s car was found abandoned three blocks from the French Quarter. Police and federal agents have few leads and apparently no suspects in this grisly murder. Reporting live from Barateria Swamp, this is Peter Zimmer, now back to you in the studio.”

The image cut to a blonde news anchorwoman who said, “Thanks, Peter. On a national scale, the news of the murdered girl’s identification means that the whereabouts of Courtney Burke, wanted in connection with the deaths of three carnival workers, and the young woman who may be the daughter of Andrea Logan and her college boyfriend, Sean O’Brien, is still unknown. Andrea Logan’s husband, the presumed Republican presidential nominee, Senator Lloyd Logan, says he stands by his wife, and says that their long-time relationship and marriage has no bearing on what happened in the past, after Andrea Logan gave a baby up for adoption twenty years ago. More on this breaking story tonight at eleven.”

Nick hit the mute button and turned toward me. “Wow, what the hell are you gonna do now?”

“Find Courtney.”

“Nobody can find her, and everybody is looking.”

“But they’re not looking in the right place. I don’t know why she went to New Orleans, but I know where she’s going. She’s trying to find her uncle, my brother, Dillon.”

“Why?” Dave asked, turning his head from the television to me.

“Retribution, among other things. He killed her mother, his sister — our sister, and raped Courtney when she was a young woman. I have a feeling in my gut that he killed the three carny workers.”

Nick’s dark eyebrows lifted. “What? You said Miami cops just picked up a guy who left a thumbprint on the ice pick.”

“They did. His print along with Courtney’s print is on the same ice pick. No eyewitnesses. No security camera video. The suspect says he wasn’t there and didn’t do it. But he was there, at least working for the carnival as a motorcycle stunt rider. He’d been hypnotized to become fearless to drive a motorcycle in the Cage of Death. If hypnosis, with a guy like that, can remove his fear of death, could it eliminate his fear of capture or guilt in a killing?”

Dave said, “Killing as in murder, of course. Not self-defense.”

“Exactly. What if a master hypnotist could plant a post-hypnotic suggestion, or a command, to have someone killed? Maybe that order is triggered from a cell phone call or some other remote way to prompt whatever psychological tripwire that’s needed to send this person into a robotic kill mode and not recall anything after it’s done. The killer could beat any polygraph because he has absolutely no connection to the act. Courtney said Dillon Flanagan is a master hypnotist. He knew Courtney was going to cause trouble for him, bring in murder and rape charges. He killed her mother and father. He’d have no hesitation to kill her, or frame her for murder … especially if he could hypnotize someone else to do it.”

Nick said, “This kind of brainwashing sounds like the Manchurian Candidate movie.”

Dave nodded. “It’s mind control. The CIA experimented with it for years. Began in the 1950’s as something call MK-Ultra, or code name Artichoke. Candidates, if you will, most susceptible to it, are subjects with what’s called a dissociative mental state, in other words, those who’ve been hurt or abused, even those with PTS … people who found detachment in creating more than one personality.”

Nick popped the cap off a Corona. “But for the average Joe, you can’t manipulate his personality to assassinate another human if that truly goes against the person’s conscience.”

Dave said, “We’re talking subconscious, Nick, which means a much altered state-of-mind. To engage an unconscious action that doesn’t have the rational parameters found in the conscious mind. And that, for most of us, comes with a guilty conscience if we cross the line — the scruples and morality factors found in our knowledge of right and wrong. So in mind control, to bypass that, the hypnotized person might answer his or her cell phone and hear the words yellow-dog, and then become an assassin, following a preprogramed post-hypnotic command.”

I said, “And, in theory, they have no memory of how they were hypnotized, or who did it. This creates the ultimate mole or spy because, even under torture, they can’t break since they have no source memory of the connection — the orders and who gave them.”

Dave stirred his drink. “And you think Dillon, your biological brother, might be capable of this level of hypnosis?”

“I do.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s beginning to look like that’s how he functions.”

“There’s no expiration date for a post-hypnotic suggestion, or in this case, command. If he’s that good at entering the human subconscious and essentially derailing the ethics of the conscience, then what if he has a band of followers he’s recruited. People he’s met, mesmerized, and hypnotized to do his bidding at his will? Would they be his subservient drones — each person fundamentally two people in one body?”

Nick ran his fingers through his hair, glanced out the window and said, “This is getting crazier by the hour. You have a mastermind psychotic brother, with a Cain complex, and a politician with a littler pecker personality, and both of ‘em have a hard on to screw you to the floor. More news types are shooting video of your boat, Sean. We got to get you the hell outta here. Someplace safe. Someplace where you aren’t bothered by what amounts to a bunch of paparazzi.”

Dave stood and looked out the tinted window. “Nick’s right. Looks like the paparazzi bus just hit Ponce Marina. You could always just step out there on the dock and tell the media that Courtney is your niece not the daughter of you and Andrea Logan. But with all members of your family dead, none of the Irish travelers the type to go on camera to corroborate or even say they knew or knew of Courtney in Murphy Village, you will literally have to produce Courtney in person to disprove what the news media have been hammering — this forbidden love child, serial killer scenario. The question is … how can you find Courtney Burke before they do, before Logan’s special ops guys find her … or God forbid, before your brother locates her?”

“I fly to Ireland.”

“Ireland? You think she’s there?”

“No, but the man who is my brother’s biological father is there. He stays in contact with Dillon. If I find him, I’ll find my brother. And just maybe before Courtney can get to Dillon … or before he can get to her.”