But Sam didn’t think he could prove it either. Lauren admitted that when the DA reviewed the evidence, she’d concurred.
The Millers became a family again: Mallory was home, Reese came back from his sabbatical with out-of-state relatives, and Rachel moved back into the house. Would the familial bliss last? I had my doubts. Mary Black, still consumed with her triplets, referred Rachel to a psychiatrist in Denver who was having success treating people with symptoms like Rachel’s with some innovative pharmaceutical cocktails.
Miracles happen sometimes. Rachel needed one, probably deserved one.
Bill?
As the dust was starting to settle I phoned him, and asked politely for one last session.
He declined.
I rephrased my request, turning it into something a little less polite and a little stronger than an invitation. He relented, as I knew he would, and when he came to my office to see me I didn’t bother to waste any time on therapeutic niceties. I told him I wanted both of his kids in therapy, and gave him the names of the carefully chosen therapists I wanted each of them to see. I made it clear that I wasn’t making a suggestion; the consequences of not heeding my advice would be harsh.
“Yeah?” he said, cocky as shit. His attitude was, “What the hell can you do to me now?”
I had placed my walnut-framed Colorado psychologist’s license upside down on the table between us.
“Yeah,” I said, failing to match his cockiness.
He crossed his arms. “I don’t think so, although I appreciate your concern.”
It was readily apparent that he didn’t actually appreciate my concern. I reached down to the table and flipped the frame right-side up. In case he didn’t recognize the parchment document, I said, “That’s my psychology license.”
He looked down at it. “So?”
“I’m willing to lose it.”
He eyed me suspiciously. Disbelieving my resolve, I think.
I added, “What are you willing to lose, Bill?”
“You wouldn’t.”
I handed him a copy of a letter that I’d mailed the day before. “Read this. All it lacks is a name. Your name, actually.”
He took a moment to read the letter.
“You release my name like this, you’ll never work again.”
“Maybe. My colleagues on the state ethics board have always proven themselves to be rather lenient, even to a fault. Regardless, I’m willing to take the risk. If it does come to losing my license, I think I can find work, but something tells me it won’t come to that. Why? Because I don’t think you really want your role in this whole thing examined by a panel of skeptical strangers with Ph.D.’s.”
Was I blackmailing him?
Yes.
Bill knew plenty about blackmail. He’d seen it from both sides.
Ultimately, he accepted my prescription about his children because he didn’t have much choice. How did I know he followed through? Both therapists called and thanked me for referring the kids. I felt some consolation that Reese and Mallory were getting the best mental health care possible. Would it be enough to save them?
In truth, probably not. I wasn’t even sure what saving them would look like. But I held out hope for them anyway.
75
The letter that I’d mailed the day before I met with Bill Miller?
The head of the Ethics Committee of the Colorado Psychological Association didn’t know exactly what to do with it.
Psychologists don’t usually turn themselves in for ethical violations.
But I did; I turned myself in for multiple violations of the ethical code of the American Psychological Association.
There’s a psychological phenomenon, an ego defense if you will, called undoing, or sometimes, doing-undoing. A husband sends flowers to his wife the day after he flirts shamelessly with his secretary. A mother makes a special dessert for her daughter after she sentences the kid to death row for not putting the cap back on a tube of toothpaste. It’s unconscious psychological misdirection-the substitution of an act that is acceptable to the ego for something that was not. In the world of psychological defenses, it’s the great cosmic chalkboard eraser.
Turning myself in for unethical conduct was my own twisted version of doing-undoing.
What I’d prepared and submitted to the ethics board was a detailed account of my multiple professional transgressions in the clinical care of both Bill Miller and Bob Brandt. Although I had to withhold plenty of specifics-including my patients’ names-I put in sufficient evidence of misjudgment to make my myriad ethical lapses crystal clear to my colleagues.
I’d also sought written permission from both Bob and Bill to release their names to the ethics investigators, but both, not surprisingly, chose anonymity and declined to participate in the inquiry. Neither was eager to prolong public scrutiny of their behavior. Without the cooperation of the patients involved the board had little to go on other than my self-damning appraisal of my own professional conduct.
The head of the board phoned and asked me, mildly exasperated, what I thought they should do with me.
I suggested a sanction: a full year’s monitored supervision of my practice by a senior, respected psychologist.
The board greedily concurred, content to have the matter behind them.
I felt a little better, but not much. As an ego balm, doing-undoing is a notoriously ineffective palliative. And when you know you’re doing it-and employ it without the insulation of unconscious motivation-as I was, undoing amounts to little more than a half-hearted mea culpa.
76
Bob?
Our regular Tuesday at 4:15 came around slightly less than forty-eight hours after he and Mallory had been picked up by the police in the plasma physics reception area in the Duane Building at CU. Mallory was watching Bob deadhead his Christmas begonia when the first few SWAT officers burst into the room and scared the crap out of both of them.
Head down, as usual, he walked into my office for his appointment at the regular time. He plopped his backpack onto the floor and sat across from me without a word of greeting.
We’d been there, literally, a hundred times before.
Bob had spent one night stewing in police custody while Cozy Maitlin convinced the authorities that his client was guilty of nothing more than piss-poor judgment. Mallory had repeatedly denied that Bob had ever coerced her to do anything, denied that he encouraged her to run away, vigorously maintained that the road trip had been her idea, and asserted that he’d never placed a hand on her during their entire time together. Mallory’s only actual complaints about Bob were that he wasn’t very friendly and hardly ever said a word that wasn’t about cars or board games.
Rachel Miller confirmed that Bob had been a well-behaved, if boring, companion to her and her daughter.
The police discovered no evidence to the contrary. None.
I waited only a moment for him to settle onto his chair before I said, “Hello.”
He was staring at his hands. I supposed that Bob knew that I had arranged for Cozy to represent him. Although Bob Brandt and Cozier Maitlin were probably the oddest client-attorney pairing since Michael Jackson and anybody, I suspected that Cozy would have told Bob how lucky he was to have him for a lawyer. I doubted Bob would mention it to me, and I wondered if I should bring it up if he didn’t.
“Am I going to be charged?” he said, finally breaking the silence, and interrupting my reverie long before I’d reached anything approximating a decision.
With kidnapping? Didn’t look like it, but that was definitely a question that should be directed to Cozy, not to me. It was my turn, though, so I said, “Charged for what?”