by Mark Schorr
“You’ve lost a little weight,” she said enviously. “Working out?”
“Yeah. Every day.” Which was true. He was sore, but pleasantly tighter.
“Good for you. I wish I could do it,” Pearlman said.
He smiled and they got down to clinical supervision. They met once a week for an hour to discuss his cases—were there issues he had missed, liabilities to share, possible ethical concerns? Pearlman would often have a slightly different view on a case, which gave him a broader perspective. By being one step removed, she could be more objective, provide a counterbalance. He usually looked forward to the session as a chance for reflection and challenge.
His renewed vigor showed in his therapeutic work, and Betty commented on it. He was more confrontational, less willing to just sit and listen. He recounted some of his interventions, concerned that he was becoming too directive.
“I hear you saying that you know he’s no good; what are you going to do in the next week to improve your situation?” he had asked one woman.
To another one, he had said, “You say you’ll try and get to group. Every time I heard the word ‘try,’ I figure it’s never going to happen. What obstacles are there to your saying you will do it?”
To a third, he had said, “Denial of your problems seems to work for you. That’s fine, but what’s the point of coming in if you’re not ready to change?”
His blunt but compassionate manner had worked. He had seen more progress among clients in the past two weeks than he had in months beforehand.
“I’m trying things a little differently,” he told Betty. “More active.”
“Whatever you’re doing, let’s bottle it,” Pearlman said. “Is there a framework you could pass on to staff at our next group consult?”
“I don’t think so. Not really empirically grounded, more of a personal paradigm shift. I’m looking at the behavioral than the cognitive.”
“What do you think is causing this shift?”
“Not sure.”
“I can speculate,” she said.
He cocked his head, indicating he was listening.
“Tammy’s death. The idea that life is a time-limited experience.”
“It’s possible.”
“Make sure you’re spending enough time on engagement. Not jumping into action too quickly. You know the old bromide ‘Before I care that you know, I have to know that you care.’”
“Like all the 12-step-isms. They become a cliché because of their wisdom.”
“We’re getting into an intellectual sidetrack. Usually that happens when there’s something you don’t want to talk about.”
She knew him too well. Everyone’s imminent mortality may have been a factor in his more directive therapy approach, but it was wanting action on Tammy’s case that was pushing the shift, Hanson knew. He didn’t want to tell Betty that, and shrugged.
“That reminds me, I’d like to take tomorrow morning off.”
She shrugged back at him, but didn’t push further. “You know mornings tend to be light. You’ll be in by…?”
“Before noon.”
“You’re going to kick back?”
“Sort of.”
NINE
Hanson guessed that once again a surprise morning visit would be best. As he drove the Sunset Highway into Beaverton, the unique architecture of the city began to give way to the bland familiarity of the suburbs. Named for the once prolific state animal, the area was now Anytown, USA, a landscape of strip malls, franchise-infested four-lane boulevards, sprawling shopping centers, occasional swatches of artificial-looking greenery, and housing developments with pretentiously poetic names. Garden View Acres, Golden Creek Estates, Palace Vistas.
The former deputy police chief lived on a cul-de-sac in Arboreal Meadows. Based on the unmanned guard booth at the entrance, the amount of green space between the houses, and the various efforts at creating similar but not quite identical trimmings, Hanson estimated prices well into the half-million-dollar range.
He parked at the foot of the respectably long, curving driveway and walked to the ten-foot-high maple wood door. The bell chimed the “Da, da, da, dum. Da, da, da, dum” theme from Dragnet. Either Grundig had a sense of humor or he was obsessed with his years on the force.
No answer, though there appeared to be lights on inside when Hanson peered in through the large window near the door. He had the impression of showroom-perfect furnishings, perhaps coordinated by an interior decorator. Dark wood cabinets and subdued pattern upholsteries.
Off to the side was a gated, six-foot-high rounded-top cedar fence. There was a simple latch on the gate and Hanson opened it. He froze, staring at a stunningly beautiful garden.
“You like what you see?” Walter Grundig was a big man who had gotten smaller, a high school football player plus sixty years. He had closed-cropped gray hair and rheumy but piercing blue eyes. He held a large, silvered .45 revolver in his right hand, pointed casually at Hanson. “You’ve got a few seconds to explain yourself. Hands in plain view and not moving so fast that you’d startle an old man.” There was a breathless quality to his words, and Hanson recognized symptoms of chronic lung disease.
“This is a beautiful garden.”
“That it is.” Grundig lifted the shiny gun. “Skip the chatter about my daffodils. Very, very slowly pull your shirt out of your pants, unbuckle your belt, then roll down the top of the pants all around. Good. Now turn three hundred sixty degrees, slowly.”
Hanson did as directed as the ex-cop watched carefully.
“Good, now pull your pants legs up at least six inches.” Hanson was about to readjust his belt when Grundig barked, “No, no. Keep the pants loose.”
Hanson felt awkward with his pants drooping, barely hanging on his hips. “Slowly take your wallet out of your pocket, using your fingertips. Keep the other hand up and out to the side. Then toss the wallet to me.”
Hanson did as he was told. The ex-chief caught the wallet and glanced at the driver’s license, never looking away from Hanson for more than a fraction of a second. “Ugly picture,” Grundig said. “At least you didn’t lie about your height and weight like most do.”
Using a thumb and forefinger, and still keeping a wary eye on Hanson, he pulled out one of Hanson’s business cards. “Ah, you’re a counselor. You’ve come here to counsel me about my roses having a rust problem?”
“No, sir. I wanted to talk.”
“That ‘sir’ shit doesn’t count much with me. The politest guys I know were just out of prison or the military. Your hair’s too long for both of those. Only other ones who use ‘sir’ nowadays are salesman. I got respect for a military man, the others I’d just as soon shoot.”
“I use ‘sir’ with anyone holding a gun on me.”
Grundig nodded, and lowered the gun a few notches. “You have many dealings with people holding guns on you?”
“Until recently, no.”
“You work at the downtown psych center,” Grundig said, fingering the business card. “That was a wild place, even back when I was a desk sergeant in central. Everyone hated calls from there. Never knew if you’d get stuck with an arm-swinging mental who hadn’t bathed since Roosevelt was president.” He chuckled. “Of course if we found someone like that on the street and couldn’t get him into an ER, we’d dump ’im at your place.”
“More humane than leaving him on the street. And it cuts your paperwork.”
“Ah, the ultimate goal, less paperwork. Until I became a paper pusher at headquarters and spent my time developing new forms and procedures. Mr. Hanson, I still have many enemies in this town, and you may be one of them. You might still have a flat knife taped to your body or an accomplice watching and waiting. You look like you might be able to kill an old coot like me barehanded.”
“You’d put up too much of a fight,” Hanson said, knowing that the flattery both admitted a violence potential and was a compliment to the old man.
Grundig coughed. “You can fix
yourself.” As Hanson adjusted his pants the retired cop said, “You’d be Vietnam era. You serve your country?”
“Pleiku and a few other places.”
“I was a grunt in World War Two. Did get to vacation on the beaches at Normandy. Nazis had their beach blankets set up and we had to take it from them.” The hand holding the gun lowered. “Probably an old man’s vanity that there’s people around who’d be out to get me still.”
“You can’t be too careful.”
Grundig coughed again. “Let’s go in. This is the most talking I’ve done in a long time.”
Inside, the smell of cigarette smoke was strong. As was the feeling it was a man’s house, a giant den.
“Wondering why I’m suddenly not ready to shoot?” Grundig asked as he set the gun down on a counter.
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“I recognized your name. Wasn’t sure if you were in law enforcement or maybe been arrested. Hard to place out of context. Ah, I used to have such a great memory for names and faces. The chief told me I could’ve been an old ward heeler politician.” He gestured for Hanson to follow and they walked to the living room. Grundig eased into a black leather recliner and gestured for Hanson to sit in the twin. Grundig grabbed a pack of Marlboros and lit up.
“Thirty years a smoker, then I got diagnosed with emphysema. Gave it up. Two years ago got the diagnosis of the big C. So much for being good.” He lit a cigarette, inhaled with passion, then coughed as he exhaled. He didn’t seem to care. “That was right after my wife died. Not a good year.” Another cough. “Suzie told me about you.”
“Suzie?”
“Susan Tammy Grundig was the name her mother and I agreed on when she was born. I don’t know where that LaFleur crap came from. But I don’t know where a lot came from with her.” After another deep drag on the cigarette, he said, “Ah, maybe I do have some ideas. Who was it said that it is a pity life has to be lived looking forward but can only be understood looking backward?”
“I don’t know.”
“The guys who knew me on the job would laugh. I’m getting philosophical. I’ve read Shakespeare, hadn’t done that since high school. The Bible. Facing death does that. You ever find that in people?”
“Sometimes.” Some people did things they had never done; others fell back on comfortable routines. Some became quiet and others couldn’t stop talking.
“But you’re not here to hear an old man babble. You want to know about Suzie.”
Hanson nodded, attentive.
“She was second born, with three brothers. But I guess she told you that.”
“I can’t go into what she might have said, but I am eager to hear whatever you have to say.”
“She’s dead. So what’s with confidentiality doubletalk?”
“Confidentiality survives death,” Hanson said.
“Nice to hear that something does. Like the man said, the good is often interred with their bones.” He smiled tightly and coughed. “I probably wouldn’t want to hear what she said anyway.” He gazed at Hanson questioningly, hopefully.
The counselor kept a sympathetic but impassive face.
“Okay, maybe before I talk to you, you’ll tell me a little something that’s been bothering me,” Grundig said gruffly. “One of the head-shrinkers said she was a borderline. What does that mean?”
“We try not to call people that anymore. She’d be called a person with borderline personality disorder, if that was her diagnosis. Reducing someone to just their diagnosis is dehumanizing.”
“I never did well with that political correctness crap.”
“Borderline personality disorder comes from way back, when psychodynamic therapists talked of clients on the border between normal neurotic and psychotic. More modern times we look at nature and nurture, how someone can be a bad fit for their family, and it leads to emotional dysregulation. Then troubling secondary behaviors. Drugs, prostitution, unhealthy relationships, shoplifting. Anger problems, uncertain of who she was, sometimes dissociating.”
“Huh?”
“Zoning out. Black and white thinking, extreme moodiness. A lot of times it is linked to childhood traumas. Not everyone with BPD was abused, but the vast majority have been.”
“Well, I doted on the boys. It was a different time. I regret it. When she got withdrawn around the time she was ten, I didn’t pay attention. My wife didn’t either. The boys were playing softball, basketball, school functions, and she just got mopier. I even yelled at her about it. A little drama queen. Trauma, yeah, trauma.
“Finally it came out that one of the coaches was molesting her. She didn’t want to press charges, said she loved him. He was thirty, she was then twelve. I nearly killed him, but I didn’t feel much better. He moved away after he got out of the hospital. The damage was done. You probably know the details but I want you to hear my side. I know I screwed up. Of all the things in my life, my neglecting her is what I regret most.” He coughed, ground out the cigarette, then lit another. “And that includes starting smoking.
“Of course she got back at me. At the whole family. I can’t count how many times I got a call from a police department somewhere in the area, that they had picked her up for prostitution, with drugs, possessing stolen property. And if I came and got her, there would be no record. Yeah, she got her revenge.”
“It sounds painful,” Hanson said when Grundig paused.
The former deputy chief puffed slowly, lost in his melancholy. “I got her in to drug rehab a couple of times. It seemed she was getting better then she’d disappear and I’d get those late night calls. My wife died of a heart attack shortly after one of them. I don’t think it was a coincidence.” He coughed again, and angrily ground out the cigarette. “That’s my wife’s garden. She was cremated, had asked for her ashes to be spread there. I tend the garden. It’s like my time with her.”
Hanson nodded slowly, honored by Grundig’s trust and disclosure.
“I was a good man. Locked up bad people. Ask anyone who served with me. Yet as I try and make peace with my Maker, this comes up. There doesn’t seem to be a clear answer anywhere.”
“The answer to what?”
“Why? Just that, why?”
Having been with so many people holding secrets, Hanson sensed that there was more, that the deputy chief was holding back, and ready to talk. The counselor waited.
“Suzie spoke highly of you. Felt you’d been helpful, that you cared. Was she right?”
Hanson nodded.
Grundig looked even older as he sat silently. In the quiet of the house, Hanson could hear his gentle wheeze.
“Do you think she killed herself?” the ex-cop asked.
“No.”
“She didn’t. That girl was a fighter. She had bad taste in men but she never gave up. Do you believe me?”
Hanson nodded.
The old man’s eyes misted and he roughly wiped them with a sleeve, then glared at Hanson as if to dare him to say something.
“Your daughter was a fighter,” Hanson said.
“Damn straight. When I saw that girl and her troubles and how she kept bulldozing through, I knew she was my daughter.” He smiled and coughed. “I remember her as a little kid, falling down and getting up, falling down and getting up.”
Hanson could feel the old man’s energy winding down and was concerned that he would get stalled in reminiscence. “But if it wasn’t suicide, what then? And why?”
“She was murdered, I have little doubt.” Grundig paused and lit another cigarette. “You’ve got me smoking like a chimney. Not that it matters much.” After a few slow puffs, he said, “A couple days after her death, a cop named Quimby came around.”
“The chief’s cleanup man.”
Grundig smiled tightly. “Exactly. He made it clear that they didn’t want me making a fuss. He was his usual smooth self, hinting that my pension could be screwed up, my family’s reputation sullied, even my life in jeopardy, if I dug around. Of course I snooped. M
y daughter wasn’t the only one with a stubborn streak. I got a couple more warnings, then gave up.” He looked off. “That’s why I’m telling you. I want someone else to have the memory of her the way she was, not the way they want it to seem. If you can find out anything, great. Me, I’m ready to spread my ashes in the flowers.”
“Do you have a theory about who killed her?”
“She called me a few weeks before she was killed. Told me she was getting her life together. Again. I was skeptical, had heard it before. You know how it is with an addict.”
Hanson nodded.
“She told me she was involved with a legit guy, not a crook. Had hopes he would straighten things out as far as getting her kid back. She said she’d been straight for a month and he was going to help her.”
“Any idea who?”
“Someone well connected. Political or maybe a celebrity. But I never could tell how much of her stories were addict b.s. She also had crazy talk about a conspiracy. Made it sound as if she knew about a big deal that she wasn’t supposed to know about.”
“Did she give details?”
Grundig shook his head.
“I thought at one point she might have been the victim of a serial killer.”
“I worked a half dozen serial-killer cases. 1-5 killer, Green River killer, Molalla Forest, Ted Bundy.” Grundig coughed. “It doesn’t have the same feel. There’s a feeling you get with a serial killer, like the scene is arranged to be seen, experienced.”
Hanson was tempted to tell him that Louise Parker had said something similar but decided to keep drawing Grundig out. “What would you recommend I do?”
“The smart thing to do would be forget her. That’s what my sons have decided to do. They were always embarrassed by Suzie. But if you were doing that you wouldn’t be here, right?”
Hanson nodded again.
“I’d find out what was going on in her last week. Someone must have seen her with someone unusual. Maybe she talked to a friend. But you’re going to be stepping on toes.”
“Won’t be the first time,” Hanson said.
