“And that works how? Those degrees of separation?” Hella asked me. She asked it skeptically.
It was a fair question. I offered examples. “I don’t provide clinical care to the guy who cuts my hair. Or to his family. I don’t provide clinical services to my neighbors, or to their families. But I would provide clinical care to someone who gets his hair cut at the same shop I do. Or to someone who is a friend . . . of my neighbor.”
“This was like that?” she asked. “My patient was a friend of your new neighbor?” Still skeptical, I thought, but a little less so.
“Later on? Yes. That’s what she was. At the very beginning? I didn’t think I knew anyone involved in your patient’s life. When it became clear that your patient was a friend of a new neighbor, someone I had just met, I considered the implications. I decided it did not pose an ethical conflict. Not . . . even close.”
“She’s also a friend of your partner, though. Diane Estevez? You must have learned that fact about the same time. What about that?”
“You’re right. I learned that only recently, as well. You had not identified Diane and her husband among your patient’s circle of friends until after Burning Man. Regardless, that relationship created no ethical dilemma for me. Diane sometimes refers her friends directly to me for psychotherapy. It’s not a conflict; far from it. Boulder is a small town, Hella. The psychotherapy community? A little village. Lives intersect constantly in the work we do. You have to be prepared for that.”
I could tell that my arguments weren’t being persuasive.
Hella pulled out her best ammunition. “Okay, what about when you learned that my patient considered that new neighbor of yours to be a rapist?”
I chose to be vague. “I learned a long time ago that if I want a career with bright ethical lines, I shouldn’t choose clinical psychology. From the moment I surmised that your patient was accusing my neighbor of rape, I intentionally did nothing to advance my relationship with him. I’ve been successful in that endeavor.”
Hella got quiet for a few moments before she said, “I have to be honest. Going forward with this supervision? I am going to wonder whether your insistence that I remain open-minded—even skeptical—about my patient’s version of events might have been influenced by the fact that the man in question was your neighbor.”
“That is understandable.”
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
“It’s understandable, Hella. Not accurate, but understandable. I’m comfortable with my role. I would have provided you the same professional counsel in this case whether or not he ever moved into my neighborhood.”
“I am going to have to think about this. I may end up deciding to seek a new supervisor.”
I said, “And that could be a valid response to your concerns about my behavior. When we meet later, we can talk about it.”
“I need to get going,” she said.
I said, “One thing to throw into the mix? The fact that you are considering changing supervisors right now may also be a way of avoiding the next big issue in your growth as a therapist.”
“What’s that? What are you saying?”
“The issues you were avoiding when we met at your apartment? At the end? That is what I’m talking about. But I would prefer not to do this on the phone. Can we talk about it when we meet?”
“No,” she said. “We can’t.”
Okay.
Hella knew what she was avoiding. Her retort, when it came, was at once meek and defiant. “I could do that work with my next supervisor,” she said.
“Or . . . not. You know as well as I do that you’re already licensed. You are not even required to choose a next supervisor. And I should remind you that you didn’t exactly choose to explore whatever those influences are with me, in this supervision. Your resistance is . . . not insignificant.”
“I really have to go.”
I said, “You have a great rationale for leaving supervision. The courageous thing may be to stay.” Hella killed the call.
Therapists, and supervisors, point out walls. We can’t keep our patients, or our supervisees, from walking into them. Over and over again.
SHE E-MAILED AGAIN TWO HOURS LATER. She asked me to call her mobile number as soon as I was free. I did. She was in Denver, walking to her car. She had just left her patient in the psych unit. Barring any changes, discharge would be in two days. But that’s not what she wanted to discuss.
The lawyers had been busy. Casey Sparrow and Cozier Maitlin. That is what she wanted to discuss.
Hella’s patient’s lawyer had met with his client for half an hour that morning.
Which attorney had offered what first wasn’t exactly clear to Hella—who was not consulted about the decision—but there seemed to be agreement among all parties that Hella’s patient was in no shape to testify at a hearing, let alone a trial. Without her participation as a witness, of course, proceeding with the criminal complaint against Mattin Snow would be most difficult. No criminal charges were likely to be filed.
I, of course, heard echoes of Cordillera. Sam the sage.
The tall lawyer, Hella said, was preparing a civil suit. The accused’s attorney was preparing a confidential settlement offer. The attorneys were planning to meet in Boulder the next day to discuss the details.
Hella said, “She feels vindicated, Alan. Her mood has changed one hundred and eighty degrees. The fact that he is now eager to settle? She feels it validates everything she’s said from the start.”
“That’s great,” I said. But I was thinking about Kobe Bryant, and Sam’s arguments about the way the criminal justice system gets hijacked by wealthy and prominent defendants, cooperating victims, and their choreographer lawyers.
Hella said, “You don’t sound surprised. By the sudden settlement offer. I expected you to be . . . surprised.”
“Surprised? Or chastened?”
“Chastened?”
“Remember, I’m the one who kept encouraging you to allow room for doubt about your patient’s memories of those events.”
“Okay,” she said. “Maybe chastened, too. You can be chastened. I’m okay with that.”
“You do sound surprised, Hella,” I said.
“The DNA test the guy ran himself didn’t match, remember? That gave me plenty of doubt, Alan. Why would he settle now? It seemed to me like this whole thing was turning his way. I am surprised.”
“Maybe,” I said, “he’s just decided to do the right thing. Thanks for the news. I truly hope your patient can begin to heal now.”
“I’ll see you later in the week,” Hella said.
DIANE STOPPED INTO MY OFFICE MIDAFTERNOON. She was packed up to head home.
She said, “Hake has taken a leave of absence from the network. Don’t know if you heard.”
That’s the right thing, too, I thought. I said, “Given the extent of the family . . . tragedy, I’m sure he needs some time.”
Diane said, “He announced on his website that half the proceeds from his new book will be donated to the Women & Justice Project at the CU law school. That could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe millions, if the book takes off. His publisher thinks it will. Take off. All the publicity right now?”
Half? I thought. Is half of the right thing to do still the right thing to do? I would ponder that equation another time. “That’s a nice gesture. Sit, please,” I said to Diane. “How are you? This has to be hard.”
She sat beside me. She said, “I can’t believe all this. I thought I knew Mimi.”
Diane and I talked about her friend for a while. About all she’d been through. The chronic emotional abuse she’d suffered in her first marriage. Her first husband’s multiple affairs. Their ugly divorce. His remarriage to a thirty-two-year-old Pilates instructor from Santa Barbara. Her kids leaving home for school. Her kids and her new husband not getting along at all.
“And now this,” Diane said. “Losing her son? Murder, Alan?”
I said some
thing about mothers protecting their own. But Diane, it turned out, wasn’t having as much trouble digesting the homicidal part of Mimi’s behavior. What she was having trouble with was her suspicion that Mimi had been an accomplice, either before or after the fact, in her son’s rape of their mutual friend. That, she said, she couldn’t comprehend. She used the word fathom.
She didn’t say it, but I suspected it was also something Diane feared she couldn’t forgive.
I said, “After all these years doing this work? The things that a desperate woman will do to save a diseased marriage can’t really surprise you. We see some awful examples in our practices every month. Every week.”
Diane’s shoulders dropped. “You’re right, you’re right.” She exhaled until her lungs had to be empty. “There are women who allow their children to be abused. To be sexually abused, even. So, why not a friend? And a rape? That’s what you’re saying?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
Diane leaned into me. I put an arm around her. “Hake told Raoul that if Mimi is sent to prison, he thought he’d move out of Boulder. Sell what’s left in Spanish Hills. He didn’t think he could live there.”
“Talk about bad memories,” I said. Diane had no way to know that the memories I was musing about weren’t Hake’s.
They were Jonas’s.
“You could buy it, you know,” Diane said. “Build something new, special, for your family.”
“Don’t think it’s for us,” I said. “Any decision we make will be based on what’s best for the kids.”
“Jonas,” Diane said.
“Yes,” I said.
ON THE WAY HOME FROM THE OFFICE, I ran two errands. I picked up food for Rafa’s family and dropped it at the house. Then I stopped at a framing shop on Pearl and made a special frame for Jonas’s wood carving of the interlocking hearts. When I got back home, I hung his treasure at the foot of his bed, where he could see it during those times he was having trouble sleeping.
46
Raoul’s real estate decision deadline was looming, so Lauren and I went out to dinner Sunday night to discuss selling Walnut. It was a conversation we didn’t want to risk having with the kids in the house.
Okay, with Grace in the house.
Once we reached a grown-up decision, we’d bring the kids in.
My breath caught in my throat the moment I saw Lauren walk out of the closet after she’d dressed for our night out. Suddenly it felt like a date, not a business meeting. Her outfit was sexy. Her hair was sexy. Her eyes were sexy.
Sexy hadn’t happened for us in a while.
I was off balance, in a good way, a way I hadn’t felt in many years.
WE RETURNED TO SALT. Lauren’s idea. But first we stopped at The Bitter Bar, near my office, for cocktails. My idea.
I marveled as Lauren walked the two blocks between the bar and the restaurant. She set down her menu with certainty. She was going to have the chorizo clams and the lamb shank. She asked what looked good to me.
I said, “Besides you?” She smiled. “You look gorgeous.”
“Thank you,” she said, doing a good facsimile of demure.
I said, “I think a condo across the street looks pretty good, too.”
Instantly, her violet eyes sparkled. Her lips parted just far enough that she could breathe through them. She wet her upper lip with her tongue while she waited for me to say more.
I told her I thought we should sell Walnut.
“Really?” she said. “And buy . . . ?”
“And sell Spanish Hills.”
“Both?”
“And I think we should buy a new home for our family in Raoul’s new palace across the street.” Across the street was the Daily Camera site. “It’s time for some changes. For us. For the kids. Certainly for Jonas.”
Lauren was speechless. I felt that she was waiting for a qualifier. Something to poison the well. To disappoint.
I said, “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. It’s a hard choice, but I prefer the northwest corner, not the southwest corner. I want the mountain view, but I don’t want to deal with the southern sun all year long anymore. North is better light, easier to manage, don’t you think?”
A solitary tear escaped Lauren’s left eye and migrated down her cheek. “Can we get it? Can we do that? What we want? Can we really afford it?” she asked.
“We’ll have to see,” I said. “I’m thinking we may have some leverage with the developers.”
WE MADE LOVE LATER WITH THE LIGHTS ON AND OUR EYES OPEN.
Afterward, her head was resting on my chest. Her weak leg was bent over mine. It was heavy.
I said, “You know, I haven’t spent a solitary moment tonight with the deputy district attorney.”
“Yeah. That’s been nice,” she said. “Though I hear she’s pretty good in bed.”
I kissed the end of her nose. “She’s still elsewhere?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” Lauren said. Her voice often took on a sandpaper-and-honey tone after sex. It had it then.
I sat up beside her. She remained on her side. I held her free hand in both of mine.
“Get her, please. I need to speak with the DA, now.”
Lauren immediately sat up. Every cell in her body was suspicious. She said, “Okay. But you’re beginning to make me nervous.”
I handed her a pillow. “To cover your breasts?” I said. “I find them kind of distracting when I’m talking to the deputy DA.” She blew me a kiss before she hugged the pillow to her chest.
I said, “I try, always, not to tell you how to do your job. You do the same with me.”
She nodded. “That’s true. We don’t interfere. One of our strengths.”
“But I need”—I stressed the word need with my voice and my expression—“to give you some work advice. Advice I hope you will consider seriously, no matter how wrong it may sound at first.”
She frowned. “Is this a good idea? For us to—”
“Please. My counsel? No matter how good a case you think you have against her, you need to plea bargain with Mimi Snow about the murder of Preston Georges. You need”—I stressed the word the second time—“to offer her a deal, a reduced charge—or something—in order to get her to testify against her husband.”
“Against Hake?”
“Yes.”
“Why would I do that? Why would Mimi . . . do that?” She reached forward and placed a palm on my cheek, almost dropping the pillow from her chest in the process. “Alan, Hake is innocent. Just between us, we have . . . initial forensic results that clearly implicate Mimi’s son in the rape. Reliable evidence. Trust me, the DNA results, when they come back, will clear Hake. I know you don’t like him, but—”
I took her hand from my face and held it. “We don’t need to argue facts. And I’ve said all I need to say to the deputy district attorney. For now.”
Lauren said, “All right, but before you go on, you know that the homicide at Devil’s Thumb is not my case anymore? I’m still on administrative leave, and I won’t be returning to that case no matter what happens. You understand all that, right? I shot the accused’s son. I . . . killed her son. I won’t be involved.”
“I know. But I also know how your office works. I know you have influence,” I said. “You know you will have influence. This isn’t the time for us to argue. I have more to say.”
Lauren opened her mouth. She’s a lawyer. About some things, she could always find time to argue. I touched a fingertip to the soft cushion of her lower lip. I said, “Shhhh . . . Next I need to say something to our son’s mother. As our son’s father. My wife can listen in. The deputy DA? She’s not welcome in this conversation. Not even a little.”
She literally pulled away. “Alan, I don’t like where—”
“I preface this with a promise that I will never—never—repeat any of what I am about to say with anyone from law enforcement. Relative or not.”
Lauren’s eyes darkened. Her irises turned almost as black as her
hair. She was imagining the walls that I was building. The divisions I was creating between her roles as prosecutor, mother, and wife. The stark boundaries I was insisting upon at that moment in the marital bed.
She took a deep breath. “This is big,” she said. “Isn’t it? What you’re about to say. You know exactly what you’re asking of me, don’t you?”
“This is big,” I agreed. “Huge. So big that if you decide what I’m asking isn’t possible for you—if the role definition is something you can’t live with—I will, reluctantly, stop right here, where I am. I will keep what I know to myself. I will live with a burden that I would much prefer to share with my wife, and with the mother of my children. For the good of our family, this knowledge should not be mine alone.”
She shifted her weight, extending her weak leg out to the side. “I won’t guess this, will I? What this is about?”
“No. You won’t.” She exhaled audibly before she climbed out of bed and walked, without her cane, to the closet. The steps she took were the least hobbled, and most determined, I’d seen from her since she left for Holland. She came back wearing pajamas. She tossed me a pair of sweatpants.
“Let’s talk then,” she said. “As parents of our children. As mother and father of our son.”
I mouthed thank you. I pulled on the sweats. Then I reached behind me into the drawer of my bedside table and retrieved Jonas’s old mobile phone.
Lauren recognized it. “That’s Jonas’s. I thought it was—”
I nodded. “Jonas’s mom should see some pictures he took.”
“When?”
“The night of the damn housewarming.”
47
Lauren was the only person to whom I showed all eight photographs.
The Last Lie Page 36
