Espinoza would be out very early, for him at least, unless he had made a big score the day before. The day surveillance began he hadn't.
Espinoza was picked up by Chado at about ten-thirty Wednesday morning. Now that both of them were strung out they would remain working together reinforcing each other's drug dependency and steeling themselves for each theft. Contrary to popular myth, junkies were not brave and only brazen when desperation demanded.
The operation was conducted with two unmarked radio cars and the high flying helicopter. Once Chado car was spotted by the ground team the helicopter picked it up allowing the radio cars to remain discreetly out of sight. Killian stayed out of the operation parking at a burger stand following the action on the radio.
After forty-five minutes, some of which had included a little evasive action by the junkies to check for a street tail, the car stopped in the alley of a prosperous residential area in northeast Phoenix. Same old Espinoza, Killian thought. Once the two men left their car, Killian moved closer to the action to be in on the kill.
The helicopter kept the scene in its view. It hovered so high that the pilot-spotter was forced to use binoculars. The pilot and ground teams were in constant contact. Chado and Espinoza made three hits that morning in just under forty minutes. Each time they left a house a ground team went behind them to confirm the burglary. After the third the sergeant in charge of the teams cut in and ordered the bust. They waited until the car came to a stop the fourth time in a reasonably unpopulated area, probably to check their booty when the unmarked police cars, followed quickly by Killian, swept in. Espinoza was already in cuffs before Killian parked his car and reached the arrest scene.
"They give you your rights, Tony?" he asked walking up to the man.
"Yeah," he replied. Killian said nothing further. There was nothing to say. The stolen goods were inventoried and the car searched. Some grass and heroin along with a kit were turned.
Marked police cars arrived and the two men were separated, each placed in back of different vehicles to be transported for booking. Killian made a mental note to reach Worthington right away and have a probation violation hold placed on Espinoza. That would prevent his release on bond. He'd check into Chado situation as well. Espinoza called out as he was stepping into the police car, hands cuffed behind him.
"What?" Killian called back already to his car.
"You were right man," Espinoza shouted. "You really were going to get me."
CHAPTER NINE
Dr. Hendricks found himself anticipating Jared's interview, more alert and with greater anticipation than at any time previously. It was Wednesday, precisely one week since the previous appointment.
Jared arrived twenty-two minutes late, sweating from the summer heat, less reserved than usual. Dr. Hendricks wondered just what he hoped to accomplish with this meeting, based as it was on his patient's odd behavior during their last session. In retrospect there was little cause on which to make a change in appointment but the doctor could not forget the cold feeling that had lingered in the nap of his neck following the last visit.
I'm a professional, he thought, greeting Jared as the boy entered his office. I should have some faith in myself. "How have you been this week, Jared?" he began tentatively, placing his yellow pencil down decisively. He had picked up the most annoying habit lately of playing with it while talking to his patients and was determined to rid himself of it.
"O.K." Jared emitted a slightly detectable body odor.
"Just O.K.?" Hendricks asked after a silence Jared refused to fill.
"Oh, a little better than that, I guess. Pretty good actually." The boy ran his fingers across his brow, wiping the perspiration on his trousers.
The doctor remained silent even though Jared had never been one compelled to fill these silences. Today he spoke.
He spoke of nothing really, his speech was as erratic and confusing as his mind. He jumped from subject to subject, rarely staying on one long enough to identify it and often failing to complete sentences or thoughts. It was the kind of soliloquy that Hendricks had found unendurable during his internship and residency but maturity and experience had been competent teachers and this day he played his part well. Jared spoke without pause for twenty minutes, more words than he had uttered to his psychiatrist in all previous meetings. Hendricks could not put his finger on it, not precisely but some of what he heard troubled him.
"What makes you think you won't stay happy?" Hendricks asked. Jared had been rambling a minute or so about his good feeling going away.
"It won't," Jared said, "it never lasts."
"When hasn't it lasted in the past?"
"All the time. Every time I do it I feel real good for a while but it always goes away."
"Every time you do what?" Hendricks asked. Again, exactly as before Jared snickered, as though some gross, vulgar, obscene thought had crossed his mind.
"Just ‘it’."
"What is ‘it’, Jared?"
Jared sat fidgeting for a moment. "Nothing."
Hendricks tried silence again. A minute passed. Then three. An excruciatingly long time in total silence.
"What is ‘it’, Jared?" Hendricks repeated in precisely the same voice as before. Jared sat now in determined silence. Hendricks decided on a different approach. "Before you were talking about your car, you think it’s running better," Hendricks stated, changing the subject to one his patient had talked about a few minutes before.
"Yeah, it's starting up real good now. I thought it might let me down but it didn't, even in the desert." Jared was more animated now returning to his earlier self.
"When did you take it into the desert? I thought you never took it out of the city," Hendricks asked harmlessly attempting to maintain the interview.
"Oh, last week sometime," Jared replied casually, a little too casually for Hendricks taste.
"Well, that's good isn't it? One thing going well for you,"
Hendricks said recrossing his legs. "Yeah, it's nice for a change but it won't last."
"Why not, Jared?"
“Because it never does," the boy said authoritatively.
~
Worthington sat talking to Freddy. Freddy was crazy, one of three or four crazies on his caseload. Worthington kept the conversation simple since Freddy had difficulty following even basic instructions. In addition to being crazy he was also mildly retarded, a particularly unrewarding combination.
"What did you do today, Freddy?" Worthington asked, not really caring but their conversation was necessary.
"Nothing much. Just come down here is all." Freddy inevitably examined the floor in front of him and clamped his hands between his knees before him whenever he spoke to Worthington.
"How did you get here?"
"By bus. And I walked," came the reply.
"You're able to handle the bus schedule O.K. then?"
"Yeah. I just stand on this certain corner and take the bus. It goes right downtown, then I walk over."
"Any luck on your job?"
"Yeah. Lou says we go back to work tomorrow."
"The same as before?" Worthington asked.
“Uh huh. Only this time I get to burn the stuff."
Freddy cut shrubbery and helped trim palm trees. Now apparently he was going to get to work at a fire. Worthington had mixed feelings. "You be careful Freddy and don't get burned."
"Oh I won't. I don't get burned around fires no more."
"And watch yourself. Don't do anything in the fire, O.K.?" Worthington asked.
"No, I won't. I don't mess around like that no more."
"Well, be careful and stay out of downtown unless you’re coming to see me, O.K.?"
"Uh huh. I'll be good."
"I hope so, Freddy. I'd hate to see you back in jail." Worthington wrote Freddy's next appointment on the back of his business card and handed it over.
Freddy nodded his head and left, smiling his goodbye. Worthington shook his head side to side.
"Is that Freddy the Fireman?" a voice asked. It was Jim, Worthington's office mate who sat directly behind him at his own desk.
"Yeah that's him." Freddy had something of a reputation in the probation department and with the beat cops downtown.
"Will he do it again?" Jim asked. Worthington hesitated only a moment before answering.
"Probably. He means well but he's just too stupid to help himself or to be helped. On top of that he's crazy."
"No kidding?" Jim kidded sarcastically. “I'd never have guessed."
"Go to work or bother someone else," Worthington said leaving the officer heading for the drinking fountain. He liked Jim. Each of them saw enough of the other's caseload every month to get acquainted with the regulars or odd ones. Freddy's almost midget size was memorable, as was his offense.
A few months before he had shocked the downtown merchants and lunching secretaries. Freddy would gather all the combustibles he could locate and throw them into a single garbage can, usually but not always located in an alley. Then he'd light a fire.
This alone made him a hazard since a few times the cans were against walls when he lit them. Fortunately no buildings had caught fire. It had taken several weeks to catch him and it was not for
the fires he was called fireman.
Once the fire reached full force Freddy would expose himself and masturbate and then urinate into the flames, hence the nickname. He'd finally been caught and charged with misdemeanor Arson and
Indecent Exposure. He'd been given credit for two days in jail on the exposure charge and placed on two years’ probation for the Arson. Worthington had no illusions. Freddy would probably return to his old ways.
The P.O. returned to his office and pulled a new file from his desk drawer.
~
Dr. Hendricks was uneasy throughout his next appointment. Jared had disturbed him as much or more than the previous week. The boy had never said anything specific but once or twice he had been cagey when Hendricks could see no reason for him to be.
At two o'clock the doctor had a free hour. He examined Jared's file and turned to the beginning, to the early interviews with Worthington and Jared's parents nearly one year before. Hendricks read, his office in darkness save for the desk lamp.
The doctor found the item in his notes from an interview with the mother, Viola. He had asked her to tell him every unusual thing she could remember Jared doing. She had been defensive at first, unwilling to admit her son had ever done anything unusual but after a while wishing to help her only child and trusting Hendricks’s confidence, she had related to him several experiences the police never knew.
On that day one of those episodes had been of interest to the doctor but not to the degree it was as Hendricks re-read the file. Viola had once caught Jared vivisecting a cat.
Hendricks considered that renewed bit of information in light of what he had heard during his previous two sessions with Jared. He mentally shrugged then a news item from the week before came clearly to mind and on impulse Hendricks dialed Worthington's number "Adult Probation, Chad Worthington."
Hendricks was surprised to hear the P.O. come on the line since from previous contacts with P.O.'s he knew they were rarely immediately available. "Mr. Worthington this is Dr. Hendricks, Jared Pratt's psychiatrist. We hadn't talked in a while and I thought I’d give you a call before leaving on vacation the end of the week."
Worthington was surprised to hear from Dr. Hendricks. They had talked once or twice before but that had been months before. Counselors rarely if ever initiated a call to the P.O. It was always the other way around. Compulsively protective of violating a confidence, they inevitably only confirmed that they were seeing their client and never spoke of treatment.
"So how's Jared doing?" Worthington asked.
"Well, I see him monthly and he keeps his appointments," Hendricks replied already regretting the spontaneous call.
That means he's going nowhere in therapy, Worthington thought or the shrink would have given a different answer. "Well, these things take time," he commented neutrally.
Silence.
Hendricks was sweating profusely under his arms, his mind racing ahead. I'm a doctor, he thought, and Jared is my patient. I shouldn't be making a call like this.
"I...," he started then stopped.
The silence continued. Worthington wondered when the doctor would get to his real reason for calling. Deciding to help the man along, he said, "Doctor, we're both professionals. I've been doing my job a few years and I don't need anything spelled out for me. I appreciate the ethics of your profession and I wouldn't ask you to violate them. If there's something I need to know I won't need much help but I'll need a little."
Silence.
At last Hendricks spoke. "I don't know anything for certain. I'm just guessing really. My patient has said nothing specific but he is behaving in a most unusual manner. I don't know but I think... I think he did something last week, early in the week, something you'd want to know about if you could and I'm guessing, trusting your discretion in this, but I think whatever it was, it..." The doctor stopped on the threshold, unable to cross over.
No, not he said to himself. No, I won't! I'm a doctor. I cannot do this.
Silence again.
Worthington realized that this was a moral, decent person on the line, waging a battle with his conscience, wanting to speak but unable because of his professional code.
"Doctor, I don't want you to say anything you'll regret. Maybe you don't have to. Let me do this. I'll take a good hard look at Jared's file and draw some conclusions of my own based on what I see. Maybe I'll pick up some pattern on my own without you telling me anymore. That way no confidence has been violated. We'll resume this conversation Friday, I'll tell you what I think and what I've done about it and if I'm in left field you can make your decision about talking then. Maybe there will be no need for you to say more."
Hendricks let out his breath unaware that he had been holding it. "I think that would work out."
“Fine doctor. I'll talk to you Friday."
Worthington pulled Jared's file and turned to the bottom section, copied from his juvenile file during the presentencing investigation prepared by another P.O. Reading carefully, he paid close attention to previous acting out behavior. He then moved on to the various psychological and psychiatric reports prepared on Jared over the past six years. He finished by reading all case notes since Jared had gone on probation.
A pattern emerged from the reading, disturbing to Worthington. Not much but something. Each uncovered act had been more violent than the one before. The shrink reports all said the same things
in slightly different ways, "psychotic", "sociopathic", "sexual inadequacies" , "frequent sexual fantasies of violent orientation", "lacking in conscience".
Something Jim had said to him a few days before came to mind. Jim had told him what the Medical Examiner's investigator had said about the girl found in the desert. How her body had been badly mutilated.
"I was just thinking," Jim had said, "about three years ago when that guy was breaking into bedrooms raping those little boys and then smothering them afterwards, remember how they asked us all to check out our caseloads and give the police any names of guys we thought worth checking out."
Worthington had indicated that he remembered.
"I keep thinking," Jim had said. "The guy that did something like that to a girl is pretty sick and has been for a long time. People usually lead up to something like this and the sicker they are the more often they get caught, usually. If they've been caught before, they've got a record and maybe are on probation."
"I see what you mean, Jim," Worthington had replied, "but believe me, I've got nobody on probation for cutting anybody up unless it was in a bar fight."
"Of course not," Jim had said. "Guys like I'm talking about go to prison or the state hospital. They don't get probation. But before that they're just weirder than others until something sets them off like a shark sensing
blood. What I mean is the guy that did it might be on probation for something else. Now he's freaked out and is off and running. If he's on probation it's for a lesser crime probably with sexual overtones and probably with some violence. I know that fits a large minority of our cases but this guy will be different."
"How?" Worthington had asked.
"Shit Chad. Anybody who does something like this is nuts. We're supposed to be the experts on sociopaths or psychotics or whatever name they're giving them this year. We see more genuine psychotics in a year than most shrinks do in a career. They spend all their time with neurotics. We can usually spot the wackos even if we can't help them." Jim had shook his head. "It would be a damn shame if somebody down here had this guy and didn't know he was the one. It's been true before."
The Flower Girl Page 6
