"I've got a case I would love to run by you. It's urgent, unfortunately. I see this woman again tomorrow evening and I should probably talk to you before her next appointment."
"Outpatient?"
"Yes."
"What's the urgency?"
"Columbine issues, Raymond."
"It's that time of year, I guess. What are we talking, grief? Anniversary reaction? Post-traumatic stress?"
"I'm not referring to the last Columbine, Raymond. I'm referring to concerns about the next Columbine."
"Oh," he said. "Oh."
"Can you squeeze me in?"
"I'm going to be at CU in Boulder doing a seminar on suicidal tendencies from one to three today. Meet me outside of Wardenburg-the student health center-at three. If the weather holds we'll find someplace pretty to sit, and we'll talk."
I rescheduled my two forty-five patient, picked up sandwiches and drinks at Alfalfa's on Arapahoe, and started to wait for Ray on the University of Colorado campus.
The campus is over a hundred years old and the founders had had their pick of prime foothills real estate for the location of the university. They'd chosen wisely. The CU campus is far enough from the vaulting mountains to maximize views, close enough to ensure that the Rockies would never cease to be a dominating presence. The flagstone buildings and red tile roofs of the major buildings on the University of Colorado campus are as distinctive an architectural feature as can be found on any campus in the western United States. The feeling is vaguely Italian, and that afternoon, the brilliance of the April sunshine added to the Mediterranean ambience.
Raymond Farley walked out the front door of Wardenburg a few minutes after three. I held up the bag I was carrying. "Grilled chicken on sourdough. I seem to recall you have a fondness. And Dr Pepper? Did I get that right?"
He rewarded me with a welcome embrace and his wide grin. His rich brown skin glowed in the springtime sun. "You recalled correctly, on both counts. I'm afraid I'm responsible for the demise of way too much fowl. Cynthia says that she thinks I'll have to answer to Saint Peter about that."
"If that's all that Saint Peter has to question you about, Raymond, you'll have a fine day at the pearly gates."
We walked in the direction of the planetarium and found a bench below a small mountain ash that was just beginning to leaf out. Raymond unwrapped his sandwich and popped the top on his Dr Pepper. "You talk while I eat," he said.
"The patient I'm concerned about is a fiftyish female whom I saw for the first time this past Monday. Tomorrow's appointment will be our fourth session this week. That alone should tell you something."
It told him something: Raymond whistled between chews.
It took about five minutes for me to explain Naomi Bigg's situation-her daughter's rape, her husband's jail sentence, her son's friendship with Ramp and their preoccupation with retribution. All the details I could remember about the wouldn't-it-be-cool games.
His first question surprised me. He asked, "Your patient's white?"
Raymond wasn't. I wondered about the question. "Yes, why?"
" 'Cause, for some reason, black kids don't tend to do these things."
Raymond gave me a moment to digest his remark, then asked me to repeat the part that had to do with Royal Peterson's murder.
I did, finally adding, "Lauren was involved in the plea bargain of the kid who raped Naomi Bigg's daughter."
"Ahh," Ray said. "That explains your tone."
"My tone?"
"My impression, listening to you, is that you don't like this woman you're treating. I'm not accustomed to hearing negative countertransference so clearly from you. But now you say that you fear your wife's in danger-that explains your negative feelings."
"I'm pushing her, Ray. Pushing her hard. Her resistance… is intense. She desperately wants to believe her son is uninvolved in anything other than some retribution fantasies. I've known her-what?-three days and already I'm pounding away at the resistance, and the reality is that I don't have the alliance to get away with it. She's getting angry at me."
Raymond chewed methodically, appreciating each mouthful of food the way that I imagined Mozart appreciated each note of a concerto. After Ray swallowed, he asked, "Whose idea was the four sessions this week? Yours or hers?"
A simple question. But one that told me that Raymond Farley already understood the crux of why I'd asked him for supervision on this case.
I sighed involuntarily. "Mine."
"You're trying to goad her into taking some action against her son, aren't you? Confront him, turn him in?"
"I suppose I am. That would protect Lauren. And maybe a whole lot of other people, as well."
"Sure it would. But it's not your job. Here's what I'm thinking: Given your concerns about Lauren's safety, you probably shouldn't be treating this patient at all. You know that you can't be objective as a psychotherapist if you're putting your wife's interests in front of your patient's interests."
"Raymond, that's the dilemma. Given my concerns about Lauren's safety, there's no way in the world I'm not going to treat this woman. If Lauren's really at risk, I have to be in a position to know what's coming next. If I refer her to someone else, Lauren could be in danger and I wouldn't even know it."
He kissed the last bit of sauce from the tips of his fingers and wiped his hands with his napkin. He said, "If you've already made your decision, what do you want from me?"
He read my reaction in my expression-I imagined I looked as though I'd been slapped in the face-and he grinned at me kindly. "Step back, Alan. You want from me exactly what she wants from you. She wants you to validate her inaction in regard to her concerns about her son. You? You want me to validate your inaction in regard to your concerns about continuing this treatment. You won't do what your patient wants you to do, and even though I've been bribed with an excellent sandwich, I won't do what you want me to do. I'm not about to tell you that you have a 'get out of jail, free' card on this one."
With some effort, I managed to smile back at him. "I actually didn't think you would, Raymond. Help me with something else then. This kid-her son-how dangerous is he? Because of my anxiety over Lauren, maybe I'm misreading the facts. You work with more young people than I do."
"What do you know about him?"
I told him everything Naomi had revealed about her son, Paul.
When I was through, Raymond leaned back and rested his weight on his hands. "There're some concerns there, no doubt about it. I've been on a committee at Wardenburg trying to help the university develop criteria for identifying kids who might be at risk of violent acting out. Your patient's son has some warning signs, that's for sure."
"What criteria has your committee developed?"
"We started with the criteria the FBI proposed and we're modifying them slightly." He held up one of his big hands, flicking out one finger after another as he ticked off the criteria. "One, kids who are on the outside socially and have verbalized their anger at popular kids, or even bullies. That fits this kid. Two, kids who have made overt threats, especially threats to kill. That fits. Three, kids with a prior mental health history. That fits. Four, kids who feel that they've been wronged, that they're victims. That fits. Five, kids with a history of the troublesome triad-fire setting, bed-wetting, cruelty to animals. I'm assuming that you don't know enough about his history to confirm that one, do you?"