So who hasn’t known somebody pretty unstable, even gotten involved with them? You only really find out when you try and pull away. There’s not too much you can do. Get a restraining order.
But if somebody wants to harass you, make your life miserable, if that somebody is making that his career, even with bodyguards there’s not much to be done. But a restraining order is the only way to start.
That’s why I really wanted to get this particular weasel. She called and said he was calling her from a pay phone. He said that he was watching her, that he could see her from where he was. In between calls she reached the dispatch unit, and I just drove up to that lighted booth, recognized him from a mug shot, threw him on the hood, cuffed him up, and case closed.
This particular woman had great documentation; that’s what I tell them all. Write it down: where it happened, when, what was said, how many times he rang the doorbell, whatever. Few think to do that. First of all you don’t want to believe that this person in your life has turned out to be crazy. Then you just want them to go away. It doesn’t inspire you to play secretary.
So when the 418-DV at Del Mar Drive came up again, I wasn’t happy. I was going to get the cold shoulder and the short stockinged legs all over again. But I didn’t have any choice after the anonymous tip from the neighbor had been received.
After the first visit, such types would usually learn to keep their voices to a provocative growl. But this growl had had quite different consequences.
We walked up the Malibu-lighted path. I rang the bell. This time it wasn’t the husband with the big excuse. It was the wife with a little gun.
It hung off her hand like ripe fruit. The elegant chignon had come apart, and hair was falling off her shoulders, pointing in all directions; a ratty knot was caught behind her left ear. Her stocking had been ripped; on one leg it hung nearly down to her ankle, beige cobwebs covering her foot.
She didn’t turn her head to avoid my glance this time. Her face told of a pummeling that was physically painful to see. And the front of her blouse. I took the gun from her; it was easy-it just fell into my hand.
An acrid whiff of gunpowder was in the air, and we ran into the house. We ran past the chintz L-shaped sofa, past the library (a wing chair was overturned), and into the kitchen. We looked down the stairs. He was lying at the bottom.
I ran down to check his pulse, stepping around a pool of sticky blood surrounding his big back. A knife lay close by his side, a large German meat knife.
Even without a pulse (excluding gray matter, or maggot face as even the coroner calls it, and oh, yes, decapitation) we can’t make a death call. Even paramedics can’t pronounce a 187, death on the scene, without pretty obvious physical decomposition. This guy was going to get an ambulance like every other dead citizen,
I wondered which paramedic would be on duty tonight. Dinner dates had stopped because my social skills apparently weren’t up to snuff (meaning her friends didn’t like me). I didn’t like to think her elitism was so compelling. The payoff was still some great compliments I’d garnered.
I went back upstairs and started cuffing our suspect. She was compliant, but I was still glad when it was over and I didn’t have to sort of hold hands with her. She was talking the whole time too. “He pushed me down the stairs,” she was saying. “He threatened me. I had the gun. He laughed. He said I didn’t have the nerve. And he came closer and closer.”
Kevin wasn’t asking her any questions, and spontaneous statements are admissible in court. Didn’t sound like she was incriminating herself in any event. I sat her down and recited Miranda to her anyway. Self-defense would be the case made for her, no doubt. I wondered when the court date would come up and how sleepy I’d be, having to get up in the middle of the day. I remembered the details of my first visit to Del Mar Drive. I remembered how my social skills were never up to snuff. I didn’t feel good about seeing her months earlier, immune to pain, denying that anything had happened to her. So maybe this was the natural consequence, but why did I have to see it, on my beat, tonight? I could just guess which paramedic would be showing up too.
I called the supervisor on the radio; the sergeant would make notifications. The on-call homicide inspector and the on-call photographer would come, and I’d go to the hospital with her, for a quick checkup before she got booked on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice.
After I’d shot you (it was so easy-you came after me like Attila the Hun, rattling your saber, roaring epithets), I felt so relieved. It was simple to pull that trigger. I aimed for your heart, but I think I ended up shooting you in the head. Your body actually fell on me (I’d run to the bottom of the stairs, “away from you” as I’d explain later). So there you were, staining my silk blouse with your blood and gray matter, pinning me to the floor.
I pushed you off me, keeping hold of the gun. I waited a few minutes, standing over you, looking at your back, not believing that I wouldn’t have to follow your orders anymore, not believing you were actually dead, and knowing that this sort of shock response would be the most believable to the police. Later they’d take me to the hospital (I think I had a broken rib) and then to the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice (I’d done my homework; I knew just what would happen to me).
I would explain to them how the fight started in your study. I would say that I grabbed the gun there, but actually I had already gotten it that afternoon. I wasn’t going to take any chances when I finally had you ready with rage.
But the story began almost a year ago, my dear. When you, the doctor, at my most vulnerable and trusting moment (I had thought I was losing my mind), had sat next to me on the couch and caressed me, talking to me about trust and transference!
Since you were my only reality check at the time, I was pretty disconcerted. I ran out of your office. After a few days I decided that my reality check deserved to be researched.
It was only later that I decided on revenge.
Public records revealed that you had been arrested once on charges of assaulting a woman you were living with; but she dropped charges. I remembered the name of the building receptionist who had left shortly after I started treatment. She was somewhat bitter over sexual misconduct on your part and mentioned that you had gone out with one of your former patients. I got her name and called her.
And then there was your first wife, a woman perhaps even angrier than I was. You’d never abused your doctor-client privilege with her, but I found out after interviewing her personally that she had suffered mental and physical torment before getting out of the marriage with no alimony and the minimum of child support. You were late with the checks too. She didn’t know about the distraught ex-client who had you arrested but later dropped charges. But she did know about the whole life insurance policy you’d taken out at thirty, when your practice was booming, when you were making five, even pushing six digits a year. And I knew that an insurance policy more than two years old was incontestable to the beneficiaries, which at the moment included your son. And could include a new wife.
As we talked it over, your former wife and I, we decided to call your other former patient. The one who had suffered the broken jaw and the cracked ribs when she suggested she’d turn you in to the Board of Medical Quality Assurance. And that’s when we all agreed. We weren’t going to turn you in. We were going to turn you over.
Patrol Officer Laura Deleuse:
I hate going to court. I hate standing up in front of people. And I hated remembering that night.
I had to sit through a bunch of testimony for the defense before my turn came up. Seems the guy had beaten up a woman who was an ex-client, and there was an ex-wife who had some gruesome stories. Locked her in a closet while he beat the kid. Public humiliation, rape, we got to hear it all. And a chorus line of doctors attesting to the multifarious wounds of the defendant. It didn’t make me want to get up and go to work the next day either.
So it was open and shut. With him coming down the stairs at her like that, imminence wasn’t even a remote improbability. But that’s not why I didn’t want to remember that night. It was the paramedic who strolled up the driveway, hung out waiting for the photographer, and pretty much ignored me, walking right past me like I was a tree. I got her out of earshot, when she was busy inspecting her manicure, and said, “Hi, remember me? The one you had an affair with last week.”
“Yeah.” She looked up, and some kind of recognition played across her face. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I was there.”
Sometimes her social skills weren’t too good either.