So Like Sleep by Jeremiah Healy

protruding from another piece of apparatus. “Pretty simple, truth to tell.” He crouched to reset the timer, then moved to a leg-lifting machine. Linden sat at the edge of it, wedged his ankles under a pad, and gripped the side of the surface as he had done at the end of the sit-up session. Then he began lifting the pad, and the weights behind him followed on a pulley device. By swinging his feet up, Linden went from lower legs perpendicular to the floor to legs parallel to the floor. He lowered the weights in twice the time it took to raise them, but didn’t continue speaking.
    I said, “When did you first arrive that night?”
    “About seven-fifteen. I don’t have a car, so I usually just bike over so I don’t sweat up the place from running. By that time, Lainie and Don were already there.”
    I thought back to the file. “Lainie Bishop and Donald Ramelli?”
    “Right. But Marek said that he hadn’t heard from Jennifer or William, so we waited for them. Marek hates to wait, he’s a nut on timing, and he was getting pissed. So Marek shoos the three of us—Lainie, Don, and me—into the session room and we start to decide who should substitute for William in the chair, when he, well, sort of bursts in.”
    “William?”
    “Right.”
    “He was agitated?”
    “And then some. Looking around wild-like, sits down, then jumps up, then sits again. No apologies about being late. Doc goes over to him, shoots him up, and we wait for the drug to calm him down. But it doesn’t seem to work. Then the doc begins to hypnotize him anyway—”
    “How?”
    “How?”
    “How does he hypnotize people?”
    “Oh, by a little penlight. He darkens the room some, then moves this little penlight back and forth. It’s really funny, you know. You say to yourself—you’re aware when you’re in the chair, aware of what he’s doing—and you say to yourself, ‘This can’t work,’ but it does. And then it’s so like sleep, you don’t remember a thing, any more than you remember a dream once you wake up. Well, anyway, so then Marek asks him—”
    “Wait a minute. Marek left the lights down low?”
    “No, he turned ’em up again, back at the control panel.”
    I pictured the room. “Where is that?”
    “On the wall, just about at the woodwork. It’s hid by the table with the medical stuff on it.”
    “What’s controlled from there?”
    “Oh, the lights, the TV camera—he tapes a lot of the sessions.”
    “What happened next?”
    “Let’s see. After he brought the lights back up, he started asking William the usual prelim stuff, like William’s name, who was in the room, that we’re all friends here, and so forth.”
    “What then?”
    “Marek asked William where he’d been, and William said …” Linden let the weight down and stopped exercising. The binger hadn’t sounded. “William said, ‘I just shot Jennifer, the fucking slut bitch. I just shot her in the basement.’ ” Linden looked up at me, a sad cast to his eyes.
    “We all started to talk at once, but Marek talked over us and said, ‘What do you mean, you killed her?’ or something like that. And then William just sort of nods and pulls this S and W Detective’s Special out and lays it on his lap.”
    “How did you know it was a Detective’s Special?”
    “Huh? Oh, when I was with the telephone company, I carried one. I was an investigator for them.”
    “Go on.”
    “Well, I got up right away and grabbed the gun. William wasn’t really holding it or anything, but I was still scared. I took it, and Marek walked William to the bathroom. William just sat on the john with the lid down while Don and I watched him. Marek and Lainie went downstairs to check. They were back up pretty quick, and Marek said to call the police, but Don already had.”
    “Where did Ramelli call them from?”
    “From the doctor’s office.”
    “Ramelli left you alone with William?”
    “Sure. I had the gun. ’Til I gave it to Marek.”
    “But it was empty.