Bonus Chapter: I Used Six Degrees Murder to Kill a Sex Offender — Part 1
Heal You, Kill You: The Psychiatrist's Hypnotic Murder Case
His own daughter was living a fate worse than death, while that old beast lay at home enjoying his twilight years. In the end, my senior officer took matters into his own hands and killed the rapist who had violated his daughter. No one else knew about this except me.
In the cramped file room, Zack Reilly was sorting through case archives when a yellow manila envelope slid off the shelf, its papers scattering across the floor.
He bent down, gathering them one by one, until his eyes caught a single sentence and his hands froze mid-motion.
The perpetrator stated: I possess an eye that can see the despair of others.
Just months ago, this killer had used psychological suggestion to drive a psychiatrist skilled in hypnosis to commit suicide.
Zack thought his eyes were playing tricks on him. He read it over and over.
The file also contained a detailed account of the killer's method—using psychological suggestion to murder. The process was a blueprint for the perfect crime, one that the killer had named "Six Degrees Murder."
Zack sealed the envelope and, after some hesitation, dialed his senior officer's number.
It took a long time for the call to connect. Marcus Cole's voice was hoarse on the other end.
Zack didn't pay it much attention, pressing instead for the source of the case file.
Marcus thought about it and confirmed the case was genuine, but said he hadn't had time to review it before his resignation.
He was about to hang up when Zack stopped him.
His voice trembled: Marcus, I think... I want to kill someone with you.
01
Zack and his senior officer had something in common—they were both auxiliary police officers.
Zack was in line for a civil service position this year, but Marcus was already middle-aged, having spent many years in the same role without advancement.
He never seemed to mind. His catchphrase was: We auxiliary officers are still police. He'd say it with a whistle, cheerfully handling one petty case after another.
Marcus looked out for the younger man. Most of the time, he let Zack handle the paperwork—sorting archives, filing reports.
It was right before Marcus resigned that they had their one and only argument, over a case file.
An elderly man living alone had used candy and toys to lure a little girl on her way home from kindergarten.
The old man was in perfectly good health, but because of his advanced age, the police could only give him a stern lecture before letting him go.
Zack knew there was an uglier truth hidden beneath the surface of that file:
The old man's methods were practiced—he had timed his approach to match the end of the school day, deliberately targeted girls walking alone, and come prepared with candy and toys.
In other words, he'd done this before. This was just the one that got caught.
Zack also knew that even if they dug up those old cases, the system would still have no real way of punishing the old man.
He couldn't swallow it. He found out where the old man lived, grabbed a wrench, and went to teach that old beast a lesson.
Marcus caught wind of his plan and chewed him out. Are you out of your mind? We're auxiliary officers—that still makes us police, he said, trotting out his familiar line.
Zack refused to back down. That little girl's life is ruined, and that old bastard gets to lie at home living out his golden years? There's no justice in that.
Marcus asked him: If you hurt him, does that make the damage go away?
He said: You've got a life to live. You lash out now, and you'll only throw your own life away.
Zack knew Marcus was right. Procedural justice didn't just protect the public—it protected them too.
A lot of time passed after that. He tried hard not to think about the little girl in that file.
But he knew he was running. Running from his own powerlessness.
02
That morning, Zack saw a familiar face at the precinct—same old man.
Zack clenched his fists, praying this time he was back for something else entirely.
But the next instant, Marcus came charging out and knocked the old man flat with a single punch.
Veins bulged on his forehead. He looked ready to beat the old man to death with his bare hands.
Zack had never seen Marcus this furious. He had also never seen a person look so utterly destroyed.
Something clicked in Zack's mind, and tears came instantly.
Marcus had a daughter. She was in the hospital now.
03
As before, the old man was held for a few days, then released. Nothing came of it.
The bitter irony: Marcus was the one who ended up paying compensation after the old man's family filed charges for the minor injuries caused by the assault.
Marcus resigned. Zack stayed.
Marcus had been right. Zack still had a life ahead of him. He had Elena. Hot blood fades—and then what?
He truly believed that Marcus would have killed the old man that day.
But his daughter was still in the hospital. If Marcus went to prison, the family would be destroyed completely.
Zack sank into a long depression, until the day his supervisor called him in and reminded him to finish the case filings Marcus had assigned before he left.
That had been the day before Marcus's daughter was attacked—the task Marcus had given him.
That night, after Zack finished his call with Marcus, he stared at the words "Six Degrees Murder" for a long, long time.
04
Zack secretly made two copies of the case file—one for himself, one for Marcus.
In a dingy motel that didn't require ID, Zack walked Marcus through the Six Degrees Murder method, step by step:
The murdered psychiatrist had been sexually abused by his older brother as a child, and the killer had exploited precisely that vulnerability.
On the night of the crime, the killer sat across from the psychiatrist and, through words and imperceptible psychological suggestions, drew him back into those memories.
He magnified the agony of that abuse until the despair became all-consuming—making the victim believe that death was the only way out, the only escape.
It so happened that Zack had looked into the old man's past. There was an incident from his younger years.
His wife had an affair. The old man had walked in on them, only to be humiliated by the lover.
Not long after, his wife left with the lover and never came back.
Zack had reason to believe that decades later, the old man targeted little girls because he couldn't face who he'd once been.
That intense despair, twisted over the years, had curdled into something grotesque—a malignant form of substitution psychology.
Just like the murdered psychiatrist: if they could drag the old man back to that memory, force him to relive his wife's betrayal, the lover's humiliation, her abandonment of their entire household—then his despair could be pushed to its absolute limit.
And then—hand him death as the only exit.
This revenge would reach its perfect conclusion.
He didn't care about procedural justice. This was the most perfect procedure there was.
Besides, the old man would have killed himself. There'd be no way to trace it back to them. They could still walk through life with their heads held high.
05
Marcus was nothing like his former self anymore. His eyes were bloodshot, his face stubbled and gaunt. What had happened to his daughter had broken him completely.
But some shred of reason remained. Through their long silence, the only sound in that little motel room was the blaring TV from next door.
Zack knew Marcus was still clinging to those bullshit lines—Kill him, and the abuse vanishes into thin air?
Zack asked him: What if the old man does it again? Whose daughter will be next?
Marcus said nothing. He closed his eyes and waved Zack away.
Zack stepped out without another word.
He lit a cigarette at the door. From inside, he could hear Marcus's muffled sobs.
When Zack came back into the room, Marcus had agreed.
06
The truth was, both Zack and Marcus understood there was a flaw in Six Degrees Murder.
It had already been investigated and documented in an official case file.
If they simply copied the method to kill the old man, no matter how difficult the investigation, there would always be a risk of being found out.
In their line of work, they knew: any risk, no matter the percentage, eventually becomes a certainty.
Marcus voiced this concern.
Zack just smiled, flipping the papers in his hand.
He said: I can improve it.
07
The original Six Degrees Murder was actually a combination of the Six Degrees of Separation theory and psychological suggestion killing.
The so-called Six Degrees of Separation theory was a social theory:
Through six people, you can connect to anyone in the world. If every person on Earth knows 160 others, then 160 to the sixth power equals 16.7 trillion—covering the entire global population.
The case file had overlooked this point, but Zack had noticed it.
If this were a true Six Degrees Murder, the psychological suggestions shouldn't have been delivered face-to-face the way the case file described—the killer sitting across from the victim, directly implanting the suggestions.
Those suggestions needed to pass through an entire chain of transmission before finally, completely piercing the victim's mind.
Only then would the police, upon review, find absolutely no traceable source.
Because as long as the transmission followed the Six Degrees model, the number of people who passed along those suggestions would be massive—potentially reaching 16.7 trillion in theory.
16.7 trillion—everyone is a killer.
Of course, that was only a theoretical model.
Information degrades as it's transmitted. A complex system of psychological suggestions would, in all likelihood, reach the old man's ears as nothing more than a string of meaningless words, stripped of any suggestive power.
But the inspiration was more than enough for Zack.
In that tiny motel room, Zack mapped out a more perfect version of Six Degrees Murder:
What if, using psychological techniques, they could manipulate the old man's own family members—making them, without even realizing it, deliver a complete, lethal set of psychological suggestions to the old man?
Family members knew the old man best. Any deadly words would be dismissed as careless, unintentional remarks.
And nobody would ever trace it back to them.
Marcus could hold back no longer: Even if psychological suggestion killing is as easy as that file makes it look. Manipulating people—how is that simple?
Zack shook his head: Do you remember what the file said about the victim?
Marcus looked uncertain.
Zack said: A psychiatrist who specialized in hypnosis.
08
Marcus had himself to thank for this. Because he'd always looked out for Zack, most of Zack's duties had been administrative—back-office work.
As a result, Zack had long since figured out which routes through the precinct could avoid the security cameras.
Zack had his own doubts. He'd looked up the doctor's credentials online—legitimately ranked among the top hypnosis specialists in the country.
But whether this stuff actually worked the way it claimed, he had zero confidence.
And the operation was dangerous. If they were caught, forget revenge—they'd both be behind bars by the next morning.
In the evidence room, Zack found the murdered psychiatrist's personal effects: academic papers, clothing, a crushed cigarette... most still stained with blood. Sure enough, inside one of the papers, Zack found records of hypnosis experiments and detailed notes.
But before he could read further, the door behind him creaked open.
Zack turned around. The night-shift duty officer was standing behind them. Zack's cold sweat soaked through his uniform in an instant.
09
The duty officer was now calling the supervisor. Zack and Marcus sat handcuffed in the evidence room.
The signal must have been poor—the officer dialed several times without getting through.
He turned and ordered Zack and Marcus to stay put, then stepped out with the phone.
Zack knew it was over. Everything was over.
Nearby, Marcus—still cuffed—inched the paper he'd tucked inside his shirt out with his teeth, revealing the research paper he'd grabbed.
Bent at an impossibly uncomfortable angle, he spread the paper across his lap with his mouth and turned the pages with his lips, reading the sections on hypnosis with fierce, almost obsessive intensity.
The look in Marcus's eyes was terrifying.
After a while, the duty officer finished his call and came back in. He snatched the paper off Marcus's lap and swore at him.
The supervisor was on the way. He was taking Marcus to give a statement first.
Zack watched Marcus being led away. He kept his eyes closed. He had a sense of what Marcus was rehearsing in his mind.
The hypnosis methods documented in that paper.
Zack sat alone in the evidence room. The silence was absolute. All around him lay bloodstained evidence scattered across the floor from their struggle with the duty officer.
Time seemed frozen. Or perhaps an eternity had passed.
The evidence room door opened again. It was the same duty officer, face still expressionless. Marcus followed behind, still wearing handcuffs.
Zack's heart plummeted.
But then the duty officer walked over without a word and unlocked Zack's cuffs.
Zack's shock turned to elation. He looked at Marcus. The officer had already removed Marcus's cuffs too.
Marcus flexed his wrists. Look at you—thought you were going to die of fright. Let you go first.
10
Zack spliced together all the surveillance footage that had captured them tonight, creating a seamless fake—tonight at the precinct, nothing had happened at all.
Meanwhile, the duty officer was on a video call with the supervisor.