False Witness

by Uhnak, Dorothy

“Very typical type of case and the most likely to respond to medication therapy. An almost casebook demonstration of clinical depression.”

  “And what about the other side of the syndrome, Dr. Calendar? What was Mrs. Cohen like when she entered the manic period?”

  Dr. Calendar moved around in his chair. He studied his fingertips as they made contact with each other, gently tapping. “Mrs. Cohen was not a manic-depressive. She was a flat-out depressive. Her high cycle was well within normal bounds. To the best of my knowledge, she never experienced a manic state.”

  I quickly scanned the minutes of the inquest, which Bobby Jones had given me an hour before Dr. Calendar arrived.

  “I’m quoting from the inquest into the death of Mrs. Cohen. Question: Would ‘dancing around exuberantly on a balcony, despite rain, and seating oneself precariously on the edge of a metal railing and waving her arms up in the air without regard for consequences while in a state of great hilarity’—would that kind of behavior be fairly typical of a person during a ‘manic state’? That question was put to you, Dr. Calendar, and your response was ‘That just about sums up the kinds of activities of a person in a manic state.’ Question: If during this surge of manic behavior, a person toppled over backward from a great height, how would you categorize her death? Your answer: Accidental.”

  Dr. Calendar nodded and contemplated his fingertips.

  “Dr. Calendar, if you never treated Mrs. Cohen for manic behavior, if her case was clinical depression, how do you explain this alleged outburst of mania during which she was so careless of her own safety that she inadvertently toppled off the railing of her balcony, ten stories from the sidewalk?”

  “I never said that she was manic. I never said that it was my opinion that Mrs. Cohen, in particular, had behaved the way you just described. I never said, in so many words, that her behavior caused her to die an accidental death.”

  “That was the finding of the inquest: death by accident. Based largely on your opinion.” I came around my desk and leaned against the arm of my couch. I was elevated a good six inches from his face. My heart was thumping. Jesus. Maybe.

  “How would you characterize Mrs. Cohen’s death?”

  Say murder. Say murder-most-foul. At the hands of her schizo husband who every now and then, in between performing surgical miracles, killed women. Say murder.

  “Suicide,” Dr. Calendar said. “No question in the world about that. Melissa Cohen killed herself. Committed suicide.”

  I lifted the minutes of the inquest and flipped the pages at him. “There is not one single word about suicide in these minutes. You never even suggested suicide.”

  “I know. I was in a bit of a bind.”

  He had bright, round, clear monkey eyes: light brown and jumpy, hopping from side to side, never seeming to stay on any one object for very long. The minute you made eye contact with him, you lost it: the eyes slid away. Nutty. The psychiatrist began to look very nutty with jumping monkey eyes that seemed to be trying to steal a look at my forehead but blinked rapidly when caught trying to focus. This guy was suddenly very agitated. He tickled the back of his neck, then locked his hand on the armrest and pulled himself up in his chair.

  “This was five years ago. Yes, five years ago. My program was still being funded by a government grant. We weren’t exactly experimental, yet we were in a transition period. A period of trying out new drug therapies. At government expense.”

  “Doesn’t that constitute ‘experimental’?” Bobby Jones asked. “Trying out new drug therapies sounds experimental.”

  The round eyes darted to Bobby, then found something interesting on the wall and seemed to be reading words very quickly. Then he spoke. “Semantics. Actually, every time you tell a patient to take an aspirin, in a sense, it’s experimental. Will the aspirin help? Will it harm? Will it cause some previously unsuspected reaction, some totally new freak of chemical combinations?”

  Bobby and I looked at each other. This guy might be a loon but there had to be a reason for what he had done and it was self-serving. No wonder he hadn’t wanted it known that people from the D.A.’s office were questioning him.

  “Dr. Calendar, return to Melissa Cohen. What kind of medication was she taking? At the time of her death?”

  He gave us a rundown of Melissa Cohen’s experience with anti-depression medication. For a period of some nine months, when she entered the program, she had done very well on one particular medication. Then she developed unpleasant side effects: dry mouth, sore chapped lips, sore throat, sweats, trembling hands. Dr. Calendar checked all this information in his coded little notebook labeled “Melissa Cohen,” which he had thoughtfully brought along with him.

  “We switched medications for about the same period of time, a little longer, perhaps a year, with similar results. The depression was controlled but she developed side effects after a while: insomnia, blurred vision, nausea.” His eyes darted from Bobby to me to Bobby to me to the wall to his fingers to me to Bobby. “These are very esoteric drugs we’re talking about. These are not pills that give a high of any kind. The depressive who is doing well on the recommended dosage has no inclination to escalate. There is no high. There is actually no particular mental-emotional response. Not even a feeling of well-being. Just a feeling of being able, capable of handling whatever comes along in a normal, intelligent manner.

  “Now, Melissa Cohen seems to have had difficulty with all the various medications we tried after a period of time, after having first used them successfully without side effects. This happens. On an individual basis, this happens. The last medication I gave her was lithium. It was part of a test program that she agreed to enter. It was a testing of the uses of lithium.”

  “Isn’t lithium used, basically, for manic-depressives?”

  He blinked approval at me for my small bit of knowledge. It was gleaned from a reading of an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine.

  “Exactly. That has been its initial use. It has had a great success. Now, we are trying it for patients with just the depressive symptoms.”

  “Which meant,” Bobby said—he had read the same article—“that in effect, Mrs. Cohen was receiving a medication that she actually didn’t need.”

  Dr. Calendar nodded brusquely at our wisdom.

  “So that,” I continued, “when it was determined at the inquest that she had been on lithium for a time, it was assumed that she was manic-depressive because that was the drug being used for that illness at the time. And no one bothered to explain why she was getting lithium?”

  “You got it.”

  “Why not? Why wasn’t this explained?”

  It was quite simple, actually. Dr. Calendar’s program was government-funded and was coming up for review. How the hell would it look if it was officially recorded that one of his depressives, on lithium, had had an uncontrolled depressive cycle and killed herself? It would be easier to accept the theory of a careless moment during a modified high. Accidents do happen to people, even to those not on medication.

  “And where did Dr. Cohen fit into all this? What did he tell you about that night?”

  “That his wife was despondent. She had been off her medication for nearly two months. She ...”

  “Why? Why was she off medication?”

  “Ms. Jacobi, we have been noticing there are patients, in some numbers, who come to resent their therapy. We’ve heard of diabetics who refuse insulin; patients with high blood pressure who won’t take their medication. Ulcer patients who don’t follow preventive instructions. Some people are very high-strung, very independent, very resentful of having to take medication on a regular basis for the rest of their lives. Mrs. Cohen, as far as I could determine, rebelled against taking medication. She hadn’t come to see me for nearly two months. Apparently she was fully into the depressive cycle that night; too deep even to want to seek help. That’s when it happens with depressives: the suicides.”

  “Why was she still carried as being on your program? If she’d
been off the medication, how could her suicide affect your funding?”

  His eyes raced back and forth. If you ever look a monkey dead in the eye, you will notice he immediately gets a shifty, guilty look. That’s how Dr. Calendar looked.

  “Well, you see, statistically, she was carried on my program. We work with computer readouts. It’s the numbers that count.”

  “Uh. And did Dr. Cohen ask you to go along with his story of accidental death—caused by his wife’s unbridled hilarity?”

  Ah. He had us there. He steadied himself. “I in no way perjured myself. You can read over the transcript very carefully, line for line. I never flatly stated, because I was never flatly asked, what I thought happened to Mrs. Cohen. The questions were always framed hypothetically.”

  He was right, they were.

  “What was Dr. Cohen’s purpose in telling this story about her manic behavior and accidental falling off the balcony? Why didn’t he just tell what happened?”

  “You’d have to ask Dr. Cohen that. My guess would be, to save face perhaps. Doesn’t sound too good: doctor’s wife kills herself. My God, we’re accused of enough things as it is, what with all this damned malpractice litigation they seem to be teaching all the new young lawyers. A regular separate profession.”

  Bobby Jones and I fish-eyed him. He became very fidgety and began to talk rapidly. Nothing like a good, double-barreled fish-stare to unnerve a witness.

  “Well, you know what I mean. It’s an age of litigation, isn’t it? Anyway, perhaps Dr. Cohen wanted to protect Mrs. Cohen’s family, her parents. It’s hard enough to lose a child without bearing the burden of suicide. Accidental death is more acceptable. There, perhaps his motive was altruistic as well as self-serving. Ask him. He’ll probably tell you.”

  “Dr. Calendar,” Bobby asked, “at any time did Mrs. Cohen tell you that she was having marital difficulties? That she and her husband ...”

  He held up his nice pink hands and stopped Bobby Jones right there. “Oh, hold on now. Remember what I told you. This is not talk therapy. I never inquire into my patients’ private lives. That has nothing to do with me. All I ask about is their reaction to medication. I do not get drawn into those tangled webs anymore.” He sighed deeply, a very happy man. “Thank God.”

  Part Three

  THE CASE

  CHAPTER 25

  FROM THE OUTSIDE, THE pseudo-Tudor attached house in Forest Hills was deceptive. You’d guess the rooms inside would be tiny and claustrophobic, but the Wise home was cheerful and bright and spacious. It was the meticulous home of people whose children have grown and gone. There were collections of family photographs on the mantel of the corner fireplace, in modern plastic frames on end tables and cocktail tables: wherever a picture could be placed, there were family faces.

  Mrs. Rita Wise was what is called a handsome woman: large-boned, broad intelligent forehead, cleancut features, strong wide mouth, head held high, penetrating amber eyes. She had thick, wiry hair cut short and touching her cheeks in silver and black curls. She introduced us to her husband, who was a tall, thin, bland and nervous man, and when we settled on their couch, he deferred to her.

  She had prepared tea, but offered coffee if we’d prefer. She had set out a plate of homemade coffee cake, and seed cake, and prune cake. We commented on the wonderful tastes and asked if these were sold in their shop or if they were special for their own home. They were from the shop; all baking done on premises.

  Mrs. Wise watched us closely. We had hardly come to drink her tea and devour her cake.

  “So, you are from the District Attorney’s office,” she said, the question implicit in her remark.

  Bobby Jones, who had made the initial contact with them, took the lead. “Yes, Mrs. Wise. As I told you in our phone conversation, there is a matter we wanted to discuss with you, in the strictest confidence.”

  She shrugged and gestured about the room. “There is no one here but Martin and me.” The amber eyes narrowed. “So? What is this about?”

  “About David Cohen,” Bobby Jones said.

  Mrs. Wise inhaled; her breath caught momentarily and then she coughed. Mr. Wise reached for her hand; squeezed it. As he did so, her arm turned slightly and I caught a glimpse of the blue numbers tattooed on her arm. It accounted for some of the terrible sadness in her eyes.

  “But all that, it was years ago,” Mr. Wise said. “It was finished with a long time ago.”

  “This is about something else,” I said cautiously. “But what we wanted to know from you was what your experience had been with David Cohen. I read the minutes of the inquest into your daughter’s death. You weren’t given an opportunity to say anything. There is ... a matter ... a current matter pending, and it would be helpful to us if we could hear from you. Can you tell us, confidentially, it will go no further, one way or the other, what you know of David Cohen’s character, personality, whatever you can tell us.”

  Mrs. Wise stood up and went to the fireplace and carefully lifted a framed photograph, which she handed to me without looking at it.

  “That is a picture of our daughter Melissa. It was taken when she graduated from Mount Sinai. She was a wonderful girl; bright, intelligent, she loved being a nurse. She loved helping people. She was not a great beauty, but she was a good girl. A fine girl.”

  The picture showed a strong, determined young woman: pride; confidence; strong resemblance to her mother. I admired the picture, showed it to Bobby and then handed it back to Mrs. Wise, who took it without looking at it.

  “Dr. David Cohen murdered my daughter in cold blood. He beat her and then threw her from their balcony and then said she ‘fell’ from happiness or whatever he said at the time. That she was ‘hilarious,’ I think was what he said. And fell accidentally, when she was discussing their trip to Mexico. They planned no trip to Mexico. She did not dance to their balcony and fall over. She was planning to leave him. And so he beat her and then threw her over the balcony.”

  It was said in a dead-flat tone of voice: a voice of certainty, not open to question as to its accuracy. I glanced at her husband; he met my eye and nodded. It was knowledge they had shared between them for years: it was indisputable.

  Of course there was no proof. How could there be proof? They had been alone in their apartment. David was a doctor; he would be sure to come up with a clever explanation.

  “He seemed to be so wonderful a husband for our daughter, this doctor,” Mrs. Wise said; monotone; emotionless. “But you see, there was something wrong with David; something not quite right. Something ... missing. I ... know things about people. I have had experience of people. It is something in the eyes. David Cohen had that something, but what could you tell a young girl? ‘I don’t like his eyes, they frighten me’?”

  I picked up a large hunk of cake and took a big bite. I had the excited feeling of hearing something terrible; something true.

  “Did your daughter ever tell you anything disturbing about her husband, Mrs. Wise?” Bobby asked.

  She shrugged. “She was not a complainer. She knew life is not perfect; that sometimes things are difficult. Melissa was a fine girl; she did not want to ... burden us. My son had been in an accident with an automobile and he was in the hospital for a year. Thank God he recovered and is fine, but she would not tell us things were wrong. But I knew Melissa. And David had a ‘look.’ ”

  “What kind of look?” I asked.

  Again, the shrug. A strange look; a look you could see if you knew about people; a look that disturbed both the father and the mother.

  Mrs. Wise stared down at her large hands and twisted her fingers around her wrist and stared at the blue number and did not look at anyone as she spoke.

  “He had the look of cruelty. A kind of coldness, a remoteness—is that the word? Remote from feeling.” She dropped her hand and her light, beautiful amber eyes, filled with knowledge, with awful knowledge, fixed steadily on me. “Just once, when she came alone, she was stiff.” Mrs. Wise’s shoulders stiffened
in illustration, and she shuddered. “Stiff and I asked her what? What is it? There are times when it is good to talk of things, it is not to be disloyal. She was a very loyal girl, Melissa; we taught her that, that family must stick together, must care for each other, that is all there is, yes, Martin?”

  Martin Wise nodded; he kept his face down; he clenched his hands and nodded.

  “So this one time she said to me, ‘Mama, there is something about David that frightens me.’ And she told me that sometimes, when she wakes at night from her sleep, David is standing there by the side of the bed and looking down at her. Just staring at her and that she jumps up and says, What? What is it? What is wrong? And she says he doesn’t answer. She puts on the light and he just watches her and she said his face ... his face ...”

  She stopped speaking and unexpectedly, Mr. Wise said, “She said his face is the face of a stranger; of a man I do not know and he frightens me.”

  Mrs. Wise nodded and reached for her husband’s hand. “Yes. That was what she told me. And she said that in the morning, when she spoke to David about it, he said she must have dreamed it, that it had never happened. That she was being foolish.”

  “Did he ever strike her, that you know about?” I asked, almost knowing the answer.

  “Yes,” the mother told me. “Yes. During the night; during one of those strange times when she woke up and found him there. It was like a stranger, she said. Punched her; punched her. And she didn’t go to work in the morning, she was black and blue and sore and he told her again, no, that she dreamed it, that she walked in her sleep and did it to herself.”

  “You said she planned to leave him. Tell us about that.”

  Mrs. Wise nodded and slowly, twisting her narrow gold wedding ring, reaching back for the memory, she began telling us.

  “Shortly before Melissa ... died. A week maybe before, I’m not sure. David came late from the hospital; hours later than he had said and she was worried. Usually he would call and say he was detained, something had come up. But this night, he did not call and she was worried and she called to find out if he was there. Maybe there had been an accident. Her brother had had an accident and we didn’t know for hours. Not for hours.” She turned her face away from us and was silent for a moment. Her husband reached and held her hand, pressed it. Mrs. Wise looked up and her face was painfully sad with remembering awful things.