Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “She called Phyllis Misteen several times in between, didn’t she?”

  He glanced back at the file. “Yes. And that’s all I’m going to say. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Sometime today I want you to go through Ms. Renzel’s treatment files, and anything else she might have written on the day she died, and see if she indicated what the calls to Lonborg were about. I also want you to see if there’s any indication that she saw Ronald Nifton that morning, at any time before 1:15.”

  Richards shook his head. “He is a client, more or less. His records will not be revealed.”

  “He’s dead, Richards. He killed himself last night.”

  Richards’ jaw dropped. He reached for the file cabinet to steady himself. “I didn’t know. What a … tragedy, is all I can think of. That boy’s entire life was a tragedy, inflicted on him and others by his mental illness. Do they know why he did it?”

  “A man named Grunig pushed him toward the edge. I guess he decided to jump off.”

  “But why?”

  “Nifton screwed up Grunig’s son a few years back.”

  “More than one parent could say that about the Maniac, I’m afraid,” Richards said sadly. “Dianne was very upset that her husband and Dr. Lonborg had acted to put Nifton back on the street and away from custodial therapy. They had a quarrel about it, at least once.”

  “Probably more often that that,” I said. “The police will be here later, probably, to see those phone records and whatever else you have on Lonborg and the Maniac for the day Ms. Renzel died. Do everyone a favor and don’t make trouble about disclosing them.”

  “I’ll have to think about it. I’ll—”

  “While you’re thinking, think about how much longer you want Dianne Renzel’s killer to go without being caught and punished.”

  “But who did it?” Richards said, frowning, “The Maniac? How can he be punished if he’s dead?”

  It didn’t seem the time to bring up Dante. “I’ll talk to you later,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment in Epidaurus.”

  “Where?”

  “It’s a Greek city. There’s a theater there. I was paraphrasing John O’Hara.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “It’s all right. At this point there’s nothing to understand except that I haven’t had enough sleep.”

  I left the crisis center, climbed in my car and drove up the hill to Piedmont Avenue, then left onto Gayley Road. The Greek Theater was just north of the football stadium and the intramural fields, a gray stone and concrete amphitheater sheltered in a eucalyptus grove, donated to the school in 1903 by William Randolph Hearst, a forum for everything from graduation exercises to rock concerts. The last time I’d been there it was to see Miles Davis and Gil Evans. The time before that—Bobby Kennedy, a few months before he died.

  I parked my car in a shaded lot just to the south of the theater and walked up the steps to the side entrance. An iron gate was partially open, and there were no signs forbidding entrance. I felt slightly cheered when I saw a maintenance truck parked beside the gate. But there was no one in sight, and no sounds beyond the wafting breeze that rustled the eucalyptus leaves, and the unbroken rumble from the traffic that streamed past on the road below. I went through the gate and entered the theater and looked around.

  It was larger than I remembered, perhaps seeming so because it was empty. A semicircle of concrete risers had been built into the hillside, tier upon tier of simple slabs of seats, the legacy of a plan first formed three hundred years before the birth of Christ. At the foot of the seats was an orchestra area of perhaps thirty yards across, complete with a stone altar that mimicked those the Greeks had dedicated to Dionysus. Ten feet above the orchestra stretched a rectangular slab that was bordered on each end by high stone blockhouses and at the back by a sounding board ornamented with a line of Doric columns, their spare square capitals rising thirty feet above the stage on which three people stood talking. From where I stood they looked too small to be real, insignificant in all but voice. By some magic of acoustics, I was able to hear every word they said.

  The one in the middle was Lonborg. He was flanked by two women and he was asking them how they felt, what they’d been doing, if they were ready to begin. Lonborg wore his usual jogging suit, rust this time, with navy trim, but though he labored to be fashionably compelling, the women were far more intriguing.

  One was tall, so thin and stiff her body seemed possessed of only five bones—four limbs attached to a slightly thicker torso. The other woman was her opposite—obese, an alarming heap of flesh encased in the plastic, elastic slacks such women always wore, slacks that promoted the world’s aversion. Above her slacks was a middy blouse that must have come from a maternity shop.

  Other opposites prevailed as well. The thin one was blond, the other brown. The large one was voluble and animated, the other still and silent, a Giacometti statue. The portly woman seemed gay and eager, the other morose and mournful. Lonborg stood between them, as though to moderate their vast extremes.

  As I started down the stairway to the orchestra area the fat one cried out, “My turn, my turn!” Lonborg patted her on the shoulder, handed her a book, then stepped out from between the women. The large one began to read, her voice clear and surprisingly skilled, her eyes skipping from the page to the other girl, then back again.

  “Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

  Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;

  But you shall shine more bright in these contents

  Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.

  When wasteful war shall statues overturn,

  And broils root out the work of masonry,

  Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn

  The living record of your memory.

  ’Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity

  Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room,

  Even in the eyes of all posterity

  That wear this world out to the ending doom.

  So, till the judgment that yourself arise,

  You live in this, and dwell in lovers’ eyes.”

  By the time she was finished I was standing in the orchestra pit, looking up at the stage that spread across the amphitheater some ten feet above me. “Can I do another? Please? Cassie wants another.”

  The large girl trembled from head to toe with the fervor of her request. Lonborg glanced around the theater as if to judge the mood of the invisible audience. When he noticed me he frowned, then nodded to the girl. She turned a page and began a second sonnet. As she had been doing since I arrived, the thin girl stood stock still.

  Lonborg hopped down to where I was and motioned for me to join him on the row of marble chairs just beyond the pit. We became an audience of two as Shakespeare’s miracles soared above us, to the back row of seats and into the oblivious world beyond.

  I gestured toward the girls. “Who are they?”

  Lonborg smiled. “Cassandra and Leandra. Thin and fat, respectively.”

  “Are they twins?”

  “Very perceptive. They are former Siamese twins, severed shortly after birth, and shortly after their parents disappeared and left behind the ignominy they believed the event entailed.”

  “How old are they?”

  “Nineteen. They live in a foster home that caters to children with mental disturbances. They are, unfortunately, quite mad, though in entirely different ways. As you can see, their genetic codes have gone spectacularly awry. Cassandra has never uttered a word. Leandra is talking all the time and usually repeats everything she says, as though she speaks for two. Cassandra is capable of violent emotional swings—laughter to despair in seconds. She has attempted suicide at least three times. Leandra, on the other hand, is invariably euphoric. If I slit your throat this minute, she would continue to babbly merrily away, as happy as a lark, just the way she is now.” Lonborg unzipped his Dior jacket and turned to look at me. “The subj
ect of murder brings us, I believe, to the reason for our meeting. You mentioned Tarasoff.”

  I nodded. “I’ve been over here for almost a week, Doctor, poking around in the Renzel case. It’s been a frustrating experience, because in all that time I didn’t come up with anything resembling a motive for Dianne Renzel’s murder. But fortunately, with what I learned this morning, that’s no longer true. Tarasoff gives you a motive that will stand up in court just fine.”

  “Please explain. If you can.”

  I matched his glacial grin. “I think you know what I’m getting at, Doctor, but I’ll lay it out for you anyway. A couple of months ago, Lisa Usser suddenly had reason to be very angry at two people—her father and a neighbor girl named Sherry Misteen, who had up to that point been Lisa’s best friend. Do I need to tell you why Lisa was mad at them?”

  Lonborg shook his head. “Lawrence and the girl had a brief but devastating affair. Lawrence is … ungovernable when it comes to matters of the flesh. Lisa told me initially, then Lawrence came to me shortly afterward, confessed all, and asked what he should do. But by then Lisa had allied herself with a man named Nifton, and wasn’t at home much, so Lawrence could do nothing very effective in terms of repairing the psychological damage he’d inflicted.”

  “When Usser came to you, he asked you to go out in the streets and look for Lisa, didn’t he? To convince her to come back home and stay.”

  “Something like that.”

  “And one night you found her, didn’t you? Down at Hell House. Because you’d treated her before, you were able to convince Lisa to talk to you. Away from the Maniac and the other street people she was living with. And when you talked to her you learned something.”

  “Learned what?”

  “That her pal the Maniac was telling Lisa he was going to kill Sherry Misteen, as a favor to Lisa, because Sherry had slept with her father and Lisa hated her for doing it. You’d treated the Maniac, too, at least before his trial a year ago, maybe even after that. You knew or should have known what he was capable of. You knew or should have known that Sherry Misteen was in a great deal of danger. And that brings us right to Tarasoff, doesn’t it?”

  Lonborg stayed silent, so I continued.

  “In Tarasoff versus The Regents, the Supreme Court of this state ruled that a psychotherapist has a duty to warn anyone he has reason to believe is in danger from one of his patients. If the psychotherapist doesn’t give such a warning he can be held civilly liable for whatever damages his patient ultimately causes. Even wrongful death, if the victim dies.”

  “Go on,” Lonborg said softly.

  “Dianne Renzel learned that you had known before it happened that the Maniac was going to kill Sherry. I think the Maniac dropped by the crisis center on the day she died and told Dianne that he had killed Sherry and that you knew beforehand that he was going to. He might even have told Lisa to tell you what he planned, to test you, maybe even to set you up for a Tarasoff suit, maybe just to see if you’d have the guts to try to recommit him to Napa after you and Usser had worked so hard after his trial to convince the authorities he could be let out. My guess is he was bragging to Dianne Renzel that even you couldn’t stop him from realizing his destiny or some such rot, his ‘death before life’ routine. Anyway, after she learned that, Dianne called you up and told you she was going to inform Phyllis Misteen that her daughter was dead and also tell her that she had a cause of action against you for not acting to prevent it. She was already irritated at you and Usser for turning mental cases out into the streets and causing problems for other people, problems she saw every day at the crisis center. This was the last straw. Unfortunately, before she could reach Phyllis Misteen and tell her what she knew, you killed her.”

  Lonborg still seemed unaffected by my essay. “You’re mad,” he said calmly. “Quite obviously mad.”

  “What did you do, climb up the back trellis, the way Lisa told you she used to do when she was running around with Cal? Did you surprise Dianne in bed? Did you kill her before she even knew why she was dying?”

  Lonborg didn’t answer.

  “You got a bad break, didn’t you?” I went on. “After you killed Dianne, you tried to frame the Maniac for the murder. He’d done it once before, after all, so he was a perfect candidate. So you cut Dianne to pieces, scrawled a bunch of nonsense on the walls and mirror, trashed the bedroom, masturbated on her, and left the book Lisa had left behind in your office as a specific piece of evidence pointing straight to the Maniac. Unluckily for you, a kid named Cal was the first to find the body. He erased the traces of insanity you’d so carefully manufactured, because he was afraid that if they led the cops to the Maniac they’d also lead them to Lisa Usser, and Cal was in love with Lisa and had been for a long time. Then Usser himself came along, and took the book you’d planted because he was afraid it implicated his daughter.”

  “This is too bizarre for words, Tanner. I’m shocked, to tell you the truth.”

  “What shocked you was that your attempt to frame Nifton evaporated. So you came up with another plan. At some point Usser told you he was afraid his daughter had done it. My guess is you convinced Usser that he could protect Lisa best by confessing himself, then pleading insanity, and in effect get away with murder. You may have even found Lisa again and persuaded her to tell the cops that her father killed her mother, just to make sure Usser was arrested before the police could look into the case too closely. Then, last night, you tried to kill Lisa and me to shut us up. You probably went looking for the Maniac, too, but someone beat you to it.”

  Lonborg looked puzzled for the first time. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “I was in Palo Alto last night, and I can prove it.”

  I shrugged and tried not to show how much that bothered me. “You’ll get your chance to prove anything you want. I recommend you hire Jake Hattie to defend you.”

  “That’s ridiculous. You haven’t thought this out very well at all, Mr. Tanner. For instance, why would I refrain from warning the Misteen girl she was in danger?”

  “Because to warn her you’d have to warn her mother, and in the process she would find out that Usser had had sex with Sherry. If she made a stink, it might ruin Usser’s reputation, and tarnish yours as well. Also, if it came out that Nifton was threatening another murder, you’d be damaged when it came out that you were one of the ones who claimed he could be released because he wasn’t a danger to anyone. I imagine what you did, instead of warning Sherry and her mother, was try to stop Nifton from committing the crime. But you were too late.”

  “If Nifton’s second murder would tarnish me so much, then why would I try to frame him?”

  “Because by then he’d already killed again. You couldn’t do anything about that, and you had to assume it would come out sometime. At least by framing him for Dianne Renzel’s murder you’d stay out of jail yourself.”

  Lonborg fell silent. After a moment he put his hand on my arm. In the environment in which we sat, his next question took on an unreal aura, the stuff of magic and melodrama: “Is there anything I can do to keep you from taking your insane delusions to the police?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “I see.”

  Above us, the steady stream of verse fell silent, leaving Lonborg and me alone with a lyric echo tarnished by my prosaic allegations.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Lonborg seemed lost in thought, more wistful than unnerved at my disclosures. Since I wasn’t certain how to nudge him toward confession, I gestured toward the stage. “Why the Shakespeare?”

  Lonborg started, then looked away from the treetops and focused on the two performers. “The human mind is a peculiar contraption, as you know. Among its oddities is an often startling combination of ability and disability coexisting within a single brain. The two-year-old Mozart hears a pig squeal and calls out ‘G-sharp.’ An autistic child masters Rubik’s Cube in minutes. A chess grand master is virtually a sociopath in other areas of his li
fe.

  “Twins are particularly prone to stunning feats. In one renowned set, each twin has an IQ of sixty, yet they are calendar calculators who, by performing an unconscious algorithm, are able to tell you the date on which Easter will fall for the next eighty thousand years. Their memory of their own personal history is so precise they can tell you what the weather was for any day since the age of two. They can also calculate prime numbers to twenty places. It’s incredible, literally.” Lonborg shook his head, then looked to see if I was with him.

  “You mean the girls are geniuses of some kind?”

  He shook his head. “No, not at all. But in Cassandra, up there, you have a person who reacts to almost no spoken words, who seems to understand almost nothing that is said to her. She reacts, when she does react, almost exclusively to visual stimuli. But by accident one day, the BBC production of As You Like It was running in the background while I was conducting a session with her, and I gradually realized that somehow—because of the sounds, the rhythms, perhaps even through a miracle of reincarnation—the language of the Bard was instantly comprehensible to Cassandra. She reacted to every nuance, laughed and cried on cue, the perfect audience. As part of her therapy I began to read Shakespeare to her. Then I recruited other readers. Her sister, in particular, reads love sonnets. They have a symbiotic relationship, needless to say. Their foster parents suspect a sexual component as well. I doubt that, but if it exists, frankly, I see no harm. No harm at all.”

  We looked up to the stage. The girls were smiling and holding hands, gazing fondly at each other. “I got into psychiatry because I wanted everyone to be like me,” Lonborg said suddenly, chuckling at the childish candor of his statement. “It sounds pitifully narcissistic to put it that way, I know, but it’s true. I always knew I was special, that I could do anything I put my mind to, that I lacked the complexes and neuroses that seemed to shackle so many of my peers. I saw myself as a liberator, a savior. And I believe I have done a lot of good over the years. I really do. Of course I must believe that or it would be impossible to go on. And of course I must go on. So many people need my help.”