Assassination Authorized Read online

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  Mecca dialed the phone number she had always called when she needed information on her special clients. The same voice she had heard for the past five years answered. “I need a copy of the police files on Tom Reynolds,” she said.

  “You will have it tomorrow,” the voice replied.

  “Please, don’t hang up,” Mecca pleaded, but Jericho knew the dangers of engaging in conversation with her. The line went dead.

  Mecca watched a sailboat on the Hudson and slowly lowered the phone from her ear. She had made every search imaginable to find the owner of the number she called when she needed information. As far as the phone company knew, the number did not exist. More than anything, she wished whoever it was would talk to her. She needed someone to talk to when she was sent these patients. She recorded every brief conversation she had with her unknown contact. She couldn’t tell if the whispered voice was male or female, but she knew that if she ever heard that voice—even in a crowd—she would recognize it. It had a definite cadence, a rhythm all its own.

  The information on Tom Reynolds arrived at her office before noon. The courier had strict instructions to release the manila envelope containing a flash drive to Dr. Storm and no one else.

  Mecca instructed her secretary to hold her calls for an hour and spent her lunchtime reading the Reynolds file and viewing the bank’s videos.

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  Mariam Devon Reynolds was a beautiful woman. Her daughters were equally as stunning. They looked like money—the right clothes, the right haircuts, the same bright, wide smiles and long blonde hair. Mariam Devon was the sole heir of one of the wealthiest oil families in Texas. Like so many who grow up with great wealth, she had no idea what it meant to earn a living but was certain she could help run America. Armed with a law degree and Daddy’s money, she had easily won the race for US Representative in her state. She spoke Arabic, Spanish, and French. Her second year in Washington she’d met and married Senator Tom Reynolds, a rising star in the political world. With Mariam’s money behind him, the party soon began grooming the charismatic senator for the presidency.

  Mariam had given up her political aspirations to raise a family. She and Tom had three daughters, ages eight, ten, and twelve. When Tom wasn’t working, he was with his family. He doted on his wife and daughters. It was no secret that Mariam desperately wanted to get her family out of Washington politics and return to Texas. “Washington is no place to raise children,” she often said.

  It was also no secret that Tom Reynolds wanted to be president.

  While a massive manhunt was underway, the police were scrutinizing Tom and his whereabouts when his family disappeared. His alibi was solid, and the police had no leads at all on Mariam and her daughters.

  Everyone connected with the case wanted to know why Tom had waited so long to report his family missing. He insisted he thought Mariam and the girls were sleeping in their home. He had gone to his home office to finish reading the briefing documents his aides had provided him on a complicated piece of legislation and fell asleep at his desk. When he awoke late the next morning, he discovered his wife and daughters had never made it home the night before.

  He called the chauffeur and learned his family had spent the night in the city. He called the hotel where Mariam always stayed. After a check of her room and a thorough search of the hotel, the manager reported that Mrs. Reynolds and her daughters had not returned the night before.

  Tom then called the police and reported them missing. He told the police that he and his wife had been arguing for months over living in Washington, but it was nothing they couldn’t work out. He hoped Mariam had simply packed up the girls and gone to Texas, but calls to Mariam’s family there turned up no trace of her or the girls. Still, there was no evidence of foul play.

  Daniel Devon, the administrator of Mariam’s family trust, had arrived in Washington within six hours of learning of his daughter’s disappearance. He had immediately demanded the arrest of Reynolds. According to Devon, a divorce was imminent. Mariam had told Reynolds she was leaving him and taking the children. The shopping trip had been to purchase items for the trip to Texas. Devon had drafted the prenuptial agreement himself, so Reynolds would never get a cent of the family fortune if Mariam divorced him.

  Prior to his family’s disappearance, Tom Reynolds had been the top contender for president. Wildly popular with most Americans, the charismatic senator had won his own senate reelection by a landslide. He consistently polled as the most popular member of Congress.

  Reynolds had swept the primary, winning 1,580 delegates. The National Convention was just fanfare to solidify national support for the candidate.

  Party Committee Chairman Mark Thornton had scheduled a press conference following the national convention to celebrate the party’s nomination of Reynolds.

  Mecca closed the file. She wondered why Reynolds had been sent to her. Certainly he had a motive, but there was no evidence of foul play. Reynolds had agreed to take a polygraph. By the time of their next appointment, she would know the results of the test.

  Chapter 5

  Mecca stayed an hour after her secretary left. She meticulously filed her cases of the day and cleared the top of her desk. She jumped when her phone rang. A quick glance at the caller ID told her it was Teagan. “I was about to give up on you,” she said, smiling as she looked at her sister’s beautiful iPhone photo.

  Teagan sighed. “What a day. I can’t wait to sit down and have some handsome young waiter pour me a glass of wine. Can we go to that Italian restaurant? You know, the one that opens the sliding glass doors, so it feels as if we’re sitting right on the sidewalk.”

  “Of course,” Mecca said. “I can be there in thirty minutes.”

  “Great. We can people-watch while we catch up,” Teagan said.

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  Jericho took an obscure table next to the wall so she could observe the sisters. They whispered and giggled like two schoolgirls. No one would ever think them two of the best medical minds in the country. Teagan was a top neurosurgeon and Mecca a groundbreaking psychiatrist. Both were graduates of Harvard Medical School. Mecca had been awarded the DuPont-Warren Fellowship for advanced study and research in psychiatry and had proven her theories that had been previously shunned by the psychiatric community. Both chose Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland, for their residency because the hospital was ranked number one in the country in both their fields. Teagan had settled at New York’s Presbyterian Hospital, and Mecca opted for research and then private practice.

  “I need your help with a patient,” Teagan said, finally moving their conversation toward work. “She was brought into the hospital last week with TBI and is in a coma. Poor thing was suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. No telling how long she’d been in that condition. She was literally starving to death. She’s coming around but still has serious trauma.”

  “Traumatic brain injury?” Mecca shook her head. “That’s really more your specialty, Sis.”

  “The injury part is going to be okay,” Teagan said. “But she was badly beaten, and I had to remove some bone fragments from her skull. Dr. Davis had to work on her cheekbones and nose, so she could breathe comfortably. She is regaining consciousness but doesn’t know her name or where she is. Her trauma is now more mental.”

  “Oh, one of your famous penniless patients,” Mecca said with a chuckle, trying to lift the somber mood that had fallen over them.

  Teagan laughed. “No, her perfect teeth and manicured everything tells me she isn’t destitute. The hospital reported her to the police, but she doesn’t match any missing persons’ reports. I’m just hoping we can get her to remember something—anything.”

  “You know I’ll be happy to help in any way I can.” Mecca patted her sister’s hand.

  “Nikki said she’s going to require more facial surgery. Someone really did a number on her, but that must wait until she heals more. In the meantime, I need your magic.” Teagan tipped her wine glass as if
toasting Mecca.

  Dr. Nikki Davis was one of the best facial reconstruction surgeons Mecca had ever encountered. She was excited about working with two doctors she highly respected. “Just tell me where and what time. I’ll clear my calendar and be there,” Mecca reassured her sister.

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  Back in her apartment, Mecca called the number. The phone was picked up, but no one spoke. “I need the results of the polygraph Reynolds takes tomorrow,” she said.

  “You’ll have them tomorrow evening.” The dial tone signaled the end to the conservation.

  Mecca pushed the remote to turn on the TV. Tom Reynolds’s handsome face flashed across the screen as the CNN News commentator rehashed the situation regarding his missing family. The liberal news media had opened its airwaves to Daniel Devon, who was all too happy to try Reynolds on public television. He blamed his son-in-law for Mariam’s disappearance.

  Mecca wondered what would happen to Mariam’s fortune if she and her daughters were dead and Tom was found guilty of their murder. Who else stood to benefit from the deaths of the Reynolds heirs?

  Mecca’s thoughts turned to her sister. As teenagers, Teagan had teased her about her fascination with hypnosis. Their mother had taken them to a medical conference when Mecca was fourteen. One of the seminars had been devoted to psychiatry and hypnosis. Teagan and Mecca had convinced their mother to let them go to the presentation while she attended her seminar on internal medicine.

  When the girls arrived in the seminar, they’d been surprised to find forty mats with pillows, neatly arranged ten to a row. The speaker had discussed various forms of hypnosis, ending with mass hypnosis. Mecca and Teagan had scoffed at the idea. The speaker had asked everyone to ascertain the time and then turn off all cell phones. He’d explained the dangers of a hypnotized subject hearing a loud noise or ringing. He’d asked everyone to lie down on the mats. “You don’t have to close your eyes,” he’d said, “just relax and get comfortable. If you do happen to fall asleep, you will awaken when I clap my hands.”

  He had continued in an even, comforting tone. “When I arrived here today, I was delighted to find so many signed up for the seminar. It is always nice when one’s subject is received favorably. I hope you have found my research interesting and relaxing. If your eyes are feeling heavy, it’s okay to close them. Just relax and . . . .”

  Mecca and Teagan had wakened at the same time. Looking around them, they had discovered that everyone in the room was just awakening from a deep, restful sleep.

  The speaker had told them to look at their watch to verify that they had been asleep for forty-five minutes. “What you have just experienced is mass hypnosis on a small scale,” he’d said, smiling.

  Mecca’s passion was born.

  As her fascination with hypnosis grew, so did her determination to become a psychiatrist. She devoured every book ever written about hypnosis. She found that she could hypnotize a subject quickly, with or without their cooperation.

  The American Medical Association had allowed doctors to use hypnosis since the early 1950s. Mecca studied mass hypnosis and was fascinated by the thought of controlling hundreds of people with the technique.

  She became convinced that the 1978 mass suicide of 909 members of the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, had been the result of mass hypnosis perpetrated on his followers by Jim Jones.

  An avowed Communist, Jones had been a leader in the Democratic Party in California, where he was appointed Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission as a reward for the important role he played in the mayoral election victory of George Moscone.

  First Lady Rosalynn Carter personally had met with Jones on multiple occasions and corresponded with him about Cuba. She’d spoken with him at the grand opening of the San Francisco Democratic Party Headquarters, where Jones received louder applause than she did.

  Jones had enjoyed the protection of his Democratic Party friends in high places until the IRS began looking into his Peoples Temple. To get away from the media scrutiny and the IRS investigation, he’d moved his followers to Guyana and established Jonestown.

  His drug addiction and indulgence in sex with young girls in his congregation had caused the unraveling of his self-proclaimed deity.

  In November 1978, US Congressman Leo Ryan had butted heads with the local Democratic establishment and the Carter administration’s State Department in order to investigate allegations of human rights abuses of US citizens in Jonestown. Ryan’s delegation had included relatives of Temple members, an NBC news crew, and reporters for various newspapers.

  Ryan’s visit to Jonestown had been cut short when a Temple member attacked Ryan with a knife. Congressman Ryan and his people quickly left, taking fifteen Peoples Temple members, who had asked to leave, with them. Jones did not attempt to prevent their departure.

  As Ryan’s delegation had boarded planes to depart, they’d been gunned down by Temple members

  The next morning, the Guyanese army had cut through the jungle to Jonestown. They’d discovered 909 inhabitants dead from ingesting poisoned Kool-Aid. The individuals had died in what was declared a “mass suicide/murder ritual.”

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  At Harvard, Mecca had set the psychiatric world on fire and made history when she gave the last speech of the commencement ceremony. She’d hypnotized everyone in the room: graduates, faculty, staff, parents, relatives—all 3,000 of them.

  In an experiment prearranged through the research department, small cups of grape Kool-Aid had been passed out to everyone in the hall. At Mecca’s suggestion, everyone had downed the Kool-Aid. Mecca had then told her audience that when she blew a whistle, they would be fully awake, and the graduates were to leave the auditorium as practiced and then others could follow. She’d suggested that no one involved with her experiment would ever sue anyone associated with it. “Remember to put the cups in the trash cans on your way out, and tell your friends what an awesome speaker I am,” she’d said, unable to resist adding the last statement just for the fun of it.

  She’d blown the whistle, and the procession had moved out as practiced, with proud parents following to find their graduates.

  Every single cup had been placed in the trash receptacles, and there had never been a single complaint from anyone about being hypnotized. Mecca was still plagued with phone calls from every imaginable source wanting her to give speeches.

  Mecca had gotten the attention of every psychiatric research facility in the world and the unwanted attention of the United States government. Mecca had made them drink the Kool-Aid.

  The phone ringing yanked Mecca back to the present. It was Teagan.

  “How does your calendar look for Friday?” Teagan asked.

  “Great,” Mecca replied. “I have one patient, but I can reschedule her.”

  “Good, bring your appetite. I’ll cook, and the three of us can discuss our patient. Nikki has already pulled x-rays, so you can get some idea of the physical trauma the woman has experienced.” Teagan added, “I want you to evaluate her, and then you can give us some idea of the mental trauma we’re battling.”

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  Mecca walked her last patient out of the office. “Someone is holding for you,” Julie said, nodding toward the phone.

  Julie had been her secretary from day one, and Mecca knew she was largely responsible for the smooth way her office ran.

  “Were you able to reschedule Mrs. Lewis?” Mecca asked over her shoulder.

  “Monday at three,” Julie answered as Mecca closed the door.

  “Dr. Storm,” she said when she picked up the receiver.

  “The information you requested is in your apartment,” the familiar voice said.

  “Why don’t we go over it together?” Mecca tried to engage her informant. “I suspect you know more about the situation than I.”

  “No, I am really puzzled over this one,” the voice replied. “But your clients are your business.”

  “Please talk to me a moment.” Mecca wanted a
commitment to stay on the phone.

  “Okay.”

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  To her surprise, she received an answer. “A flunky in the police department. I’m just an information source for you. Good night, Dr. Storm.”

  The voice mystified Mecca. She didn’t know if she was speaking with a man or a woman. One thing she did know was that the voice always stressed the “t” in words like little or kitten. The “t” was heavily enunciated.

  Mecca got home late from the office to find the results of the polygraph had been slipped under her door as promised. She locked the door behind her, set her briefcase and purse on the entry hall table, and bent down to pick up the envelope. The hallway light cast a shadow under her door, and she paused for a second. The shadow hesitated, and then it was gone.

  Mecca laid the envelope on her bed as she slipped into something more comfortable. Her sheepskin slippers felt good after wearing heels all day. She carried the envelope to the kitchen and let it sit unopened as she made a chicken salad sandwich. She curled up on her sofa, eyeing the envelope as she ate her dinner.

  She looked around her apartment. It was spartan compared to her sister’s apartment. She considered it a place to sleep and eat. She hadn’t put forth much effort to decorate it.

  She knew she was putting off opening the envelope because she was afraid of what she might find. She wanted Tom Reynolds to be innocent, but she knew that might not be the case.

  She studied the polygraph results. It appeared Tom was telling the truth. He had no knowledge of what had happened to his family. If Tom didn’t know, then where were they?