Final Justice

by W. E. B Griffin

  “We make a lot of money for other people?” Matt asked, innocently, after a moment.

  Stein laughed.

  “You don’t know when to stop. You don’t understand that you have limits like ordinary horses and other human beings,” he said.

  He turned to Dr. Payne.

  “He’s all right,” he said. “I’ll talk to him now. I’ll page you when we’re through. And on your way out, have them send two breakfasts in here.” He turned back to Matt. “I’ve never known you not to be hungry. What would you like? Take advantage of my presence. I get whatever I want.”

  “I am a little hungry,” Matt said.

  “Send in the ward nurse,” Dr. Stein said. “She’s getting a little too big for her britches, and it will do her good to take our breakfast order.”

  “Okay,” Matt said. “Amy’s gone. That was a very nice breakfast, thank you very much. And now, I hope, you’re going to tell me what’s wrong with me?”

  “I already told you what I know is wrong with you. Do you want to hear what your sister thinks is wrong with you?”

  “I’m afraid to ask.”

  “She’s been really worried for some time about you, and she’s been coming to me for some time to tell me why she’s worried.”

  “Is that ethical?”

  “Ethical, schmethical. She loves you. She’s a pretty good doctor. We’re friends. She came to me. It’s done—she can’t undo telling me. You want to hear what she thinks?”

  “Okay.”

  “She has developed quite a theory—basically that you don’t know who you really are.”

  “Who does she think I really am?”

  “Essentially, the psychological heir of your mother.”

  “I don’t know what she can mean by that.”

  “That your psychological makeup is gentle, kind, even intellectual, maybe. Anyway, the antithesis of warrior.”

  Matt threw his hands up to indicate he had no idea what Amy was driving at.

  “She thinks you have been conditioned all your life by your role models to believe you were destined to be a warrior, ” Stein said.

  “What role models?”

  “Commissioner Coughlin for one, the cop’s cop,” Stein said. “But primarily, the legend of your biological father, who died heroically in the line of duty. Your uncle, the cop captain, what was his name?”

  “Dutch,” Matt said. “Captain Dutch Moffitt.”

  “Who similarly died heroically in the line of duty, right?”

  “He had just finished telling some kid to put the gun down, he didn’t want to have to kill him, and some goddamn junkie shot him with a .22, of all goddamn weapons.”

  “But heroically, right?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And he died heroically right at the time when the Marine Corps told you, ‘No, thanks, you don’t measure up to our standards,’ right?”

  “They found something wrong with my ear,” Matt said.

  “All of these things combining, in the Dr. Amy Payne theory of what’s wrong with Little Brother, to compel you to join the police force to prove your manhood, that you’re a warrior.”

  “Jesus!”

  “And then you met another man, who became your mentor, Inspector Peter Wohl. Another warrior role model.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, being as intelligent as you are, you could not have been unaware, in Amy’s theory, that Role Model One, Commissioner Coughlin, had arranged for a job for you that was not really police work. You weren’t walking around dark streets in a uniform with a gun and a nightstick, in other words. And you subconsciously understood this to mean that Coughlin and Wohl, Role Model Two, didn’t think of you as a fellow warrior, but rather as sort of a wimp who had to be protected.”

  “She told you all of this?” Matt asked.

  “And then you shot the Northwest serial rapist, trying to prove that you were indeed a warrior and a man.”

  “I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I shot that sonofabitch because he was trying to run me over with a van.”

  “But still, even after this warrior act, neither Coughlin nor Wohl was convinced that you were a warrior. The proof of this, your subconscious believed, came on the memorable day when the real cops, the real warriors, were about to face down the bad people and they sent you a block away to safety, allegedly to protect a journalist.”

  “I must be crazy, I’m starting to think she may be onto something.”

  “I’m not finished. She’s given this a lot of thought.”

  “Go on.”

  “And again you risked your life to prove you were a man, a warrior, when a bad guy appeared in the alley and you faced up to him.”

  “He was shooting at us! What was I supposed to do?”

  “You’re an intelligent young man. You should have ducked, run away. You were driven by the need to prove your masculinity.”

  “My God!”

  “And going off at somewhat of a tangent, Dr. Payne feels that your interest in so many members of the opposite sex is really a manifestation of your need to prove your manhood, carnally. And that, of course, is another proof, she feels, that you doubt your own manhood.”

  “And all this time, I thought she was my friend.”

  “She spoke to me as one physician to another. Give her that much, Matt. This was not idle gossip.”

  “What else did she have to say?”

  “You next began to prove your manhood by becoming a detective, and then a sergeant, in the latter case studying obsessively because it was obsessively so important to you that you do well—preferably better than anyone else— on the examination.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You told her, I think, that you were having nightmares about what happened in Doylestown?”

  “And ten seconds after I did, I realized it was a mistake.”

  “You ever have them about the other shootings, Matt?”

  “What the hell, the cow’s out of the barn. Yeah. Most of them are about Doylestown, but every once in a while I have one about the guy who tried to run me down in the van, and now I suppose I’ll have them about the guy I just shot outside La Famiglia.”

  “You said, ‘The guy in the van, the guy I just shot.’ But ‘Doylestown’?”

  “I didn’t shoot anybody in Doylestown,” Matt said. “The guy we were after shot the girl who took us to him.”

  “That’s all she was to you?”

  Matt thought that over, then shrugged.

  “No. I thought I was in love with her. I had to prove my manhood, I guess.”

  Dr. Stein grunted.

  “Amy thinks that your weeping over the girl in Doylestown was the first manifestation of your impending, uncontrollable psychological problems, and she feels the nightmares tend to confirm that theory.”

  Matt looked at him but didn’t reply.

  “You then were promoted to sergeant, and given your choice of assignment, and chose Homicide, primarily because Homicide is considered the ne plus ultra of warrior assignments in the police department.”

  Matt shook his head.

  “The warriors—Amy’s term—are Highway, the Bomb Squad . . .not Homicide,” he said.

  Dr. Stein shrugged but did not respond directly.

  “Where you were immediately plunged into things beyond your capacity to deal with,” he went on, “and to which you applied all of your best efforts. That, she believes, would have, so to speak, pushed you over the edge in and of itself, but then you became involved in this last incident, two nights ago, and that finally produced the inevitable result. You experienced an emotional meltdown, so to speak.”

  “Well, I guess she’s got my number, doesn’t she?”

  “She believes she has correctly assessed the situation.”

  “And what does my all-wise sister think I should do about it?”

  “That’s pretty clear to her too. She thinks you should face who you really are, and that done, take the appropriate actio
n, which would be for you to resign from the police force, go back to law school, and assume a more suitable life for someone with your psychological makeup.”

  “And you agree, right?”

  “I didn’t say that. Are you interested in what I think?”

  “Yes, of course I am.”

  “I don’t want you quoting me to her, Matt. I’d like your word on that.”

  “Sure.”

  “Your sister is a fine psychiatrist and a fine teacher. Perhaps for that reason I was terribly disappointed in just about everything she had to say, and certainly with her theories. They weren’t at all professional—although she is so good that some details were valid—but rather the near maternal musings of a loving sister. Furthermore, she should have known that, and that you should not even think about treating someone you deeply care for. It clouds the judgment. In this case, spectacularly.”

  “You’re saying she’s wrong about everything?”

  “Just about everything.”

  “She makes a lot of sense to me,” Matt said. “So what do you think is wrong with me?”

  “I told you when I first came in here. You’re like a thoroughbred racehorse. You think you have a bottomless pit of energy from which to draw strength, physical and emotional, and that you’re unstoppable. You don’t and you are.”

  “I’ve found out that I’m stoppable, Dr. Stein. Did she tell you how I came apart?”

  Matt mimed the rising of his trembling hand and slapping it down.

  “In detail. Including how you wept and allowed yourself to be comforted as she held you like a mother. In short, Superman, you showed typical symptoms of emotional exhaustion. The treatment is basically rest and the admonition ‘Don’t push yourself so hard from now on.’ ”

  “That’s all?”

  “I think you ought to see Dr. Michaels a couple of times. He said he’d be happy to, and you won’t be the first cop he’s talked to about something like this, because you are by no means the first cop something like this has happened to.”

  [SIX]

  “Come in, Doctor,” Aaron Stein said to Amy Payne. “We have to discuss the patient in 1411, and your relationship with the patient.”

  “What did Keyes Michaels have to say?” Amy asked.

  “Dr. Michaels and I agree the patient was suffering from understandable emotional exhaustion, from which he—being of sound mind and body, so to speak—will recover rapidly with no lasting ill effects.”

  “Well, I don’t agree with that, Aaron.”

  “As his attending physician, and after consultation with Dr. Michaels, I have decided that further hospitalization is not indicated, and I have ordered his release.”

  “Without consulting me?”

  “That brings us to that, Doctor,” Stein said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re Matt’s sister, Amy, not his physician. You seem to have forgotten that. It’s unethical—not to mention stupid— for a physician to treat anyone with whom the physician has a familial or other emotional connection. It clouds the judgment. You know that. Or at least knew it. You seem to have forgotten.”

  “All right,” she said after a moment. “I was wrong. Sorry.”

  “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Physician, heal thyself,’ Doctor?”

  “Of course I have.”

  “Would you be interested in my advice in how you can do that, Doctor?”

  “I’d be interested to know what you think it is that needs healing, Doctor,” Amy said, growing angry.

  “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll give you the formulation I would recommend, and from that, if you’re half the intelligent, dedicated psychiatrist I think you are, you’ll be able to deduce what I think is wrong with you.”

  “Please do, Doctor.”

  “Marry the cop, Amy. Have a baby. Have several babies.”

  She looked at him in genuine shock.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “You’re a young woman of childbearing age. Do what nature intended for you to do. Apply your very healthy, very normal maternal instincts to your own child, not your brother.” He paused. “In my judgment, that would make you even a better psychiatrist than you already are.”

  She met his eyes but didn’t reply.

  “The formulation you developed for your brother applies to you. You’re the overachiever workaholic, refusing to believe your well of strength can ever go dry. And the first symptom of your inevitable—unless you do something about it— emotional meltdown has been your delusionary relationship with your brother. You’re not his mother, and you’re not his doctor.”

  “Marry the cop? Have babies?”

  He nodded again. After a moment, he added:

  “I’d like your word, Doctor, that insofar as the patient in 1411 is concerned, you will from this moment regard yourself as his sister, not his physician.”

  “Jesus!”

  “I will interpret that as meaning ‘Of course.’ Now, take your brother home, and see if you can get him to take it easy.”

  [SEVEN]

  “You free, Denny?” Police Commissioner Ralph J. Mariani asked from First Deputy Commissioner Coughlin’s door.

  “Of course.”

  “What do you hear about Matt?”

  “His sister just called. They’re about to let him out of the hospital. She’s going to take him out to his parents’ place in Wallingford.”

  “That was quick, wasn’t it?”

  “They say he’s all right—that he was emotionally exhausted, is all.”

  " ’They say’? His sister, you mean?”

  “No. He was examined by both our psychiatrist, Dr. Michaels . . . You know him?”

  “Sure. Keyes Michaels. Good man. Comes from a whole family of cops.”

  “And Dr. Aaron Stein, who’s the head shrink at UP Medical Center.”

  “I’m getting the feeling, Denny, that you don’t like—”

  “Between us?”

  Mariani nodded.

  “Dr. Michaels is really proud he took his psychiatrist residency under Dr. Aaron Stein. I would be very surprised if Michaels disagreed with Stein about anything. Even if he did.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You weren’t at Internal Affairs when Matty came apart,” Coughlin said. “I was. I wanted to cry. I have trouble believing he’s all right so soon.”

  “They’re psychiatrists and you’re not, Denny,” Mariani said.

  Coughlin shrugged.

  "You asked, Ralph.”

  “Well, it was a good shooting,” Mariani asked. He laid a folder on Coughlin’s desk. “That’s Mike Weisbach’s initial report. Payne did everything by the book. One of the victims—the wife of the guy that got pistol-whipped— even wants to apologize for what she said to him—‘Where the hell were you when we needed you?’—when he walked up on it. She said she was upset, and wants to apologize. The only thing that wasn’t done by the book was when the Dignitary Protection Lieutenant . . . What’s his name?”

  “McGuire.”

  “. . . took Payne’s weapon as evidence.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  “Payne’s got a legitimate beef about that.”

  “He won’t say anything,” Coughlin said. “He’s a good cop.”

  “But you’re worried about him, right?”

  “I’m worried about him. He needs a rest. A long one.”

  “That poses a problem. If Dr. Michaels has pronounced him fit for duty, that means . . .”

  Coughlin nodded, and finished the sentence:

  “. . . he’s supposed to come to work tomorrow.”

  “You don’t know if he’s got any vacation coming?”

  “Something over four hundred hours. I just checked his jacket.”

  “See that he takes thirty days of that, Denny. Make it an order.”

  Coughlin nodded.

  [EIGHT]

  Patricia Payne held both of her son’s arm
s and looked intently up at him.

  “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  “Amy says I have to wear the straitjacket only when I leave the property,” Matt said. “She has it in her truck.”

  “Don’t be such an ass, Matt,” Amy said. “You heard what Dr. Stein said.”

  “Which was?” Patricia Payne asked.

  “That what Matt and a jackass have in common is that they don’t know they have limits, and Matt reached his. All he needs is rest.”

  “He said ‘thoroughbred racehorse,’ ” Matt said.

  “And all he needs is rest?” Patricia Payne asked.

  “That’s it, Mom,” Amy said. “Really.”

  “Can you get some time off?” Patricia Payne asked.

  “I’m sure I can,” Matt said.

  “Well, go tell your father. He’s pacing back and forth on the patio, waiting to know what’s up.”

  Matt walked toward the patio, and Patricia Payne led her daughter into the house, where she sought—and got— confirmation that all that was wrong with her son was that he had been pushed, or had pushed himself, beyond his limits, and that all he needed was rest.

  Matt had just finished telling his father this, and was about to tell him that Amy had another medical theory that he thought had a lot of merit, despite what Drs. Stein and Michaels said, when Deputy Commissioner Dennis V. Coughlin, trailed by Captain Frank Hollaran, came onto the patio.

  Coughlin was carrying in his hand what looked like a briefcase but was the size of a woman’s purse. Matt wondered what it was.

  “I just had a talk with Dr. Keyes Michaels, the department psychiatrist, Brewster,” Coughlin said. “Good man. Comes from a family of cops. Knows cops. Says the only thing wrong with Matty is exhaustion, and all he needs is some rest.”

  He turned to Matt.

  “By order of the commissioner, you are now on vacation. Thirty days.”

  “Great,” Matt said.

  Coughlin handed him the purse-size leather briefcase. “This is yours,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Your pistol. You forgot it at IAD.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Matt said. “Thank you.”

  He laid the purselike thing on the fieldstone wall of the patio.