by John Decure
I gestured to Mindy Loberg to split the space between counsel tables and head right up to the witness stand, which she did without hesitation, lifting her right hand to take the oath the instant she got there. Heidegger studied her as if trying to place her in his memory, then frowned and passed a note to Fallon when he did. I imagined the note to say “WE’RE HOSED!” I savored the moment so much my head hurt worse.
My eyes were stuck again on Donald Fallon. By the way he dug in, burrowing under Heidegger’s wing with a blast of whispering even I could hear—can’t be testifying… the terms of the agreement you wrote, Terrence… of course she’s unstable, but—it seemed a solid bet that Mindy Loberg would be as good as advertised. Right now, Rue Loberg and Dr. Don were more or less in a standoff. If anyone could tilt things back toward the real and the true and break that Spell of the Lie, it was Mindy. She was there when the shit got heavy between Fallon and his victim.
Heidegger was quick to insist that the judge bar her testimony. Prejudicial. Unfair surprise. Whatever else he could think of, he let it fly.
The defense will have a full and fair opportunity to cross-examine, the judge pointed out, rubbing his short gray beard. Shelby Drummond was a tall man already, but in my overworked mind’s eye, he grew another foot as he made his latest ruling.
“Overruled.”
After another round of hush-hush strategizing, Heidegger piped up with another objection, claiming that Mindy was part of a civil settlement that, in exchange for the money damages she’d received, barred her from testifying.
“You see, this has already been decided, Your Honor.”
Please. Not this again.
I was ready for that bogus sidestep; it’s a self-important ploy civil litigators pull all the time, an arrogant fiction that once the money changes hands in a stipulated settlement, none of the parties to the lawsuit can ever speak of the facts and circumstances of the case again—even in a criminal, administrative, or disciplinary case involving separate allegations of legal violations, breaches of different laws than those at issue in the settled civil matter. They work their grubby little deal, the filthy lucre changes hands; then later, when someone is subpoenaed in another case, they proclaim the witness out of bounds. It’s a bit like telling the IRS you won’t pay taxes because you had a formal agreement via a stipulated settlement with your next-door neighbor not to pay.
But the law doesn’t recognize or uphold private pacts of silence, bargained for as part of a final dollar settlement. Good civil lawyers know what these gag-order deals are worth down the line.
Shits and giggles.
“Pardon me, Ms. Aames?” I heard the judge say.
Whoa—I may have muttered that last thought aloud without knowing it.
With an innocent shrug, I apologized for sneezing. Then I asked the judge if I might respond to the objection. He cast a fatherly gaze on me, as if he knew there was a battle being fought between my ears and there was little he could do to assist, except to make his rulings fairly.
“Please do.”
I cited the Rules of Professional Conduct for California attorneys, in particular the rule prohibiting lawyers from entering into agreements that would serve to gag future witnesses in other proceedings.
“That rule applies here, Your Honor. Mr. Heidegger was legal counsel on that civil case. Therefore, with this objection, he’s effectively admitting now to having committed unprofessional conduct when he made that deal. Is that what he proposes to do now?”
I tilted my head to the left, a fistful of needles pricking the base of my neck. My body was so bumpy and bruised it seemed there were whole new vistas of pain I was stumbling upon moment by moment, and with each different movement or gesture or response, I paid a price I hadn’t expected. But oh, to look square upon the schoolboy row of grimacing, agog faces lining the left-side table, the poison-pills poised on the tips of their tongues! A sight to savor, and it made me think, pray, meditate on one singular sentiment.
Thank you, God; how lucky I am to be a public servant whose job is to protect the public from the vipers and exploiters and phonies and rip-offs and slap-dash incompetents.
The Dr. Dons.
Even sitting down, I felt a wobble.
Come down from your soapbox, a voice in my head told me. Your sweet melon will split wide open should you become overly emotional.
Hearing no further protest from Heidegger, the judge tuned in on the witness, thanking her again for coming.
The way I dress, I should be the last to judge another female’s attire, but Mindy’s choice of outfit was a bit unusual for court: black spandex pants tucked into cute calf-high leather boots with chrome buckles on the sides, a cool-mint silky blouse through which her bra straps were faintly showing, and two streaks of eyeliner in the same shade of green as the blouse. A touch of cleavage, and resting above her breasts was a gold necklace with a charm that stated her given name in fancy calligraphy. She’d taken some time to put herself together, probably thinking she needed to look more adult, somehow, but the effect was like a girl playing dress-up.
Damn. This girl would be less effective if she came off as too eager to impress. I decided to go slow-lane with her, just put her at ease and let the facts roll along naturally. We’d had all of ten minutes together down the hall before the judge took the bench. I only knew the most basic outline of her narrative. Mindy would have to fill in the rest as we proceeded.
I got her talking about how she’d seen Dr. Fallon for two years for individual therapy.
“Starting when?”
“My junior year at Loma Vista high.”
“What did you see him for?”
She paused and gave me a girl-to-girl look, as if to say: you gotta ask me about that? I ignored the protest, my fist balling beneath the table and my head pounding above it.
“I was having some problems in my classes,” Mindy said.
“Tell us, what kind of problems?”
“Well, um, I guess the first, uh, problem was getting to class. I got caught cutting. Smoking cloves. I mean, cigarettes. Me and one of my girlfriends that got caught, uh, she also had stash. It was in her purse.”
“Stash?”
Mindy gave me the stare again. Then she pinched two fingers together.
“Crack. A teeny little bit. And a roach.”
“Marijuana?” the judge asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“You have to answer yes or no.”
“Oh, sorry! Yes.”
So far, I liked her demeanor, and so did the judge. But all the discomfort for my witness lay ahead. I had no other choice.
Jesus, I thought. I’m sensing the emotions of others, buying into their experiences. The chemicals inside my head are an unpredictable, unreliable mix, but—can it be? Is it possible that when I’m not mixing in booze and pharma, I’m becoming more capable of not just doing my work, but showing up to be counted in the human race?
Fine—long as I don’t walk in front of a fucking bus while reflecting deeply on the Meaning of Life…
“Were you two under the influence?”
“That’s what they said, but I hardly had any, and that was hours earlier, at Janelle’s—I mean, at my friend’s house that morning, before we were gonna walk to school. It was stupid. I never did anything like that again.”
“What else did you come to see Doctor Fallon about?” I asked.
“I, uh, wouldn’t go out on weekends anymore with my dad, the people from his church. You know. To ‘fish for souls.’ As in, bothering total strangers.”
“You mean to proselytize?”
She seemed nicked by my intrusion. Then she glared at her mother, who was seated behind me in the gallery.
“I prefer to call it bothering people, ’cause that’s all it is. Nobody wanted to see us parked on their porch uninvited.”
“Why did you stop proselytizing?”
She looked sideways, like she was searching for a hidden camera. “Are you kidding? Sorry, I
didn’t mean that.”
“You may answer the question,” the judge reminded her.
“Well, I had my reasons. Like, always missing birthday parties, Girl Scouts. My troop kicked me out ’cause of bad attendance. I dunno, I just got sick of it, got to the point where it was like, that’s it. I’m done, I can’t take this shit—” Mindy’s hand shot up to cover her mouth. “Oops. I’m sorry, judge! I meant stuff.”
The judge was stern, playing the authoritarian with a law-and-order face to match the flowing black robe, but he gave a small nod, I think, to take the pressure off her.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll strike the witness’s last sentence from the record, following the words ‘I’m done, I can’t take this,’ but please, keep it clean.”
Mindy played with her hands in her lap and adjusted her necklace.
“Well, I… anyway, I’d just had it. So I was talking to Doctor Don about all that stuff. And we had sessions, a few, where he had my parents come in so I could tell ’em what was bugging me, and we could talk about the problems as a…”
Her eyes got teary, and we all waited.
“Family.”
“How did that conjoint therapy go, in your view, Mindy?”
“OK, I guess. They were mad about a lot of the—the, uh, bad stuff I pulled. I don’t really blame ’em for that. But they listened. I tried to hear their side of it, too.”
Briefly she gazed at Fallon.
“Are you puzzled about something?” I asked.
“Well, um. Yeah. One thing’s always bugged me. I just… just, what I couldn’t understand, was how Doctor Don could use things I’d told him when we were talking in private, tell my parents during the conjoint.”
“You mean your secrets?”
“Yeah. I mean, yes. He told ’em about me and Ian, a few things I definitely didn’t want them to know, not yet, but he came right out with it. I was pretty shocked.”
“Like what other issues?”
“Well, this time me and Ian got into an argument at a ballgame. Angel game, traffic was bad getting there, on the radio the game was already in the second inning. Ian locked himself out of the car, with his cap and wallet still inside. Said it was my fault, I distracted him. He got mad, then I got mad, we started shoving each other. Got outta control.”
“Ian hit you?”
She nodded. “Not with a fist or anything, but he slapped me once across the face and tried to hold my arms. I lost it and hit him back. Someone called stadium security. They ended up holding us till the fifth inning. Whole day was kind’ve lost at that point, ’cause we were both still mad.”
“Did that make you feel you could trust Doctor Don with your secrets?”
“No, it made me feel like I couldn’t say stuff to him I didn’t want my parents to know, ’cause he might use it behind my back. It’s one of the reasons I stopped going to him.”
“But you came back.”
“I did.”
“When?”
“About six months or so after I moved out of my parents’ house and in with Ian. His family has this place, big two-story corner house, with a guest house out back, next to the garage. That’s where me and Ian lived when I first moved in. We got a one-room apartment now, it’s really nice.”
“So, what was going on in your life that made you want to go back to Doctor Fallon for counseling?”
“Well, when I moved in, there were all these relatives, some of ’em living there, others would stop by. Aunts and uncles, a cousin here or there. Ian’s mom, she’s really, um, outspoken, doesn’t beat around the bush. Has her opinions, and once I started living with Ian, I heard just about all of ‘em, too, whether I wanted to or not.”
Mindy seemed to falter. My instinct told me she could use a little empathy.
“His mother was critical of you.”
Mindy’s eyes were leaking. In a minute her mascara would turn to mud.
“She doesn’t like me much. Thinks Ian… can do better.”
“She told you that.”
“No, ma’am. I heard her say it when she thought I wasn’t listening.”
“So, you wanted to sort out these problems with Ian and his family, you living situation, when you returned to Doctor Fallon’s care?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why go back to him? Couldn’t you have found another therapist, someone who might keep your secrets?”
“I was hoping my dad’s insurance was still in their system. But I got a lot of, I dunno, history. Stuff I’ve done that I regret. And honestly, I didn’t much feel like plowing through all that stuff again, you know, which I would’ve had to do if I started over with someone else. At least Doctor Don knew most of my problems already. I thought it’d be faster, too, I guess. And since the things that were bugging me were about Ian and his family, and not mine, I figured at least I wouldn’t have to worry about him spilling secrets. Unless he decided to bring Ian’s mother in, but that wasn’t ever gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t take me seriously. I mean, as a person.”
“So, you came in to talk about you and Ian, and living with him and his family.”
Mindy straightened up, her shoulders clicking back. “Yeah, and here’s the crazy part. You wanna know what Doctor Don says? He says, ‘Your mother’s gotta come in, Mindy, for me to be able to help you at all.’ I said, ‘What? What’s my mother got to do with it? I mean, things weren’t exactly great between Mom and me either, but she had nothing to do with Ian and me living together.’ I told him that, what I just said, told him it made no sense. What was the point?”
“How did he respond?”
“He wouldn’t hear it. He just kept on insisting, ‘This won’t work without you mother, gotta involve her.’ I kept asking why, but he wouldn’t budge. So I felt I had no choice but to ask her to do it.”
“Did she agree?”
Mindy met her mother’s eyes in the back of the gallery. “Honestly… you know? I forgot this part.” She paused to cry a little. The judge handed her a tissue box. We waited. “Mom thought it sounded nuts, too. I could tell she didn’t want to see him again, so I asked her why. She said—”
“Objection, hearsay!” Heidegger shouted.
“Sustained,” the judge said.
The judge was right. I had to take a different approach, to have Mindy do more of the talking and not rely on what her mother once said.
“Mindy, did your mother agree to come back in when you asked her?” I said.
“No. Not at first.”
“Did you say anything to finally persuade her?”
“Objection, calls for hearsay!”
“I asked the witness what she said. Whatever she testifies to now is not inherently unreliable, because Mr. Heidegger can cross-examine.”
“Overruled,” the judge said. “The witness may answer.”
“I told my mom it would mean a lot to me. And it did, ’cause I knew she didn’t want to go back.”
“Objection, hearsay!”
“Overruled.”
It seemed the judge was tiring of Heidegger’s efforts to obscure the Loberg family history with Dr. Don.
“Mindy, back when your mom was seeing Doctor Don for individual therapy, or coming in for conjoint sessions with you and your brother and dad, did you ever observe how Doctor Fallon behaved around her?”
She glared at Dr. Don, who was locked in a bad impression of Bartleby the Scrivener, too busy and bent over his laptop—and too chickenshit by a mile—to even look up at the witness.
“Truth is, he was like a puppy dog. A boy with a crush. You know, feeding her all these compliments on how nice she looked, super smiley, jumping up to get the door for her, hustling around like she was a little queen or something. Made me uncomfortable.”
“How about your mom? Did you ever observe how she’d react to his attentions?”
“Objection, calls for hearsay!”
The judge was calm of demeanor, but
I could tell he was really chafing at Heidegger’s tactics. All Heidegger was doing now was trying to break my stride, and distract the witness. His desperation fueled me with a cautious sense of encouragement.
Maybe this isn’t another Bradlee Aames delusion. Maybe this case is actually coming together.
“The question calls for her observations, not Mrs. Loberg’s statements. Overruled. You may answer.”
“Thank you,” the witness said, regarding counsel table for the defense with a tired, wish-you’d-stop-screwing-with-me face. “She always looked embarrassed. But… it kind of bothered me that she took it without complaining, or telling him to back off.”
“That upset you.”
Mindy rubbed her eyes and tried not to look into the gallery. “Yeah, I mean yes. Typical Mom. Always the victim. It made a lot of sense, now that I look back.”
“What did?” I asked.
“Why she stopped seeing him back then. You should’ve seen the way he acted when I got her to come back in for my latest therapy. The next week, before our next session, he must’ve called me five or six times. ‘Is she coming, is she coming?’ Then, the day of our session, my mom’s not there when we were supposed to start, and Doctor Don, he’s like, pacing around, freaking out. ‘Where is she? Do you think something happened? Can you call her?’”
“What did you do?”
“I was paying for the session out of my pocket, so I started talking.” She threw a deadpan stare at Dr. Don, who continued to hide his face in his note-taking.
“What about?” I asked her.
“About me. You know, my issues, things, you know, that were on my mind. But what he did? He kept peeking back over his shoulder, through the blinds in that big office window. Like he was obsessed.”
“What happened next?”
“Oh, I’m still talking away, even though he didn’t even seem to be listening, but I’m giving it my best anyway, feelin’ like an idiot, and he says ‘Oh, oh, there, there she is!’ Like it was Madonna or the pope out there.”
“So, she came into the session while it was in progress?”
