Dry Ice (27 page)

    With an i.

    The good news? It turned out that I wasn't the first mentalhealth, medical, or law enforcement professional to make the mistake of assuming that Nicole's gender was male. Nicole had used her androgyny to her advantage whenever she thought the system would let her get away with it, which was apparently frequently.

    My shame over my piss-poor clinical-practice skills wasn't pacified by the discovery that I wasn't alone in misjudging Kol's gender. I had enough professional pride left, barely, to recognize that if the sole good tidings generated by my ten minutes listen ing to Dr. Thibodeaux talk about my recently deceased patient was that I had plentiful professional company in mistaking her for a man, I was in a whole peck of trouble.

Tharon and I paused from our discussion long enough to get refills from the woman running the big espresso machine. We returned to the table below the burlap sacks of unroasted beans and moved our discussion on to Michael McClelland.

    I already knew that McClelland was in the Colorado State Hospital with at least one treatment goal that had been mandated by the judicial branch of the state of Colorado: his state caregivers had been mandated by the trial judge to provide care to help Michael attain a particular legal threshold—competence to proceed within the criminal justice system. They were to notify the court when they had determined that Michael had reached that ambiguous, but attainable threshold of mental health.

    A conviction on any of the serious pending charges would undoubtedly have forced Michael to change his mailing address from the quasi-urban Pueblo hospital to someplace decidedly more rural and slightly farther north and west—the much less hospitable environs of the maximum security wing of the Colorado State Penitentiary, New Max, outside Cañon City.

    Michael, despite his many character flaws, was a bright guy. Sometime in the summer of 2002 he had apparently recognized that his crazy act was getting worn around the edges and had determined that his physicians were getting perilously close to declaring him competent to proceed to trial for his earlier crimes in Pitkin County. Even if he escaped justice for those, Boulder County was waiting its prosecutorial turn. He had, not surprisingly, responded to the threat by tossing impediments in the state's path.

    The golden sabot? Michael stopped talking to hospital staff.

    According to Tharon, in the month or two just prior to go ing dumb, Michael elucidated and embellished to his therapists a series of paranoid delusions involving his father, his sister, and some colorful characters from the
Harry Potter
saga, a number of whom he had concluded were remarkably similar in appearance and behavior to staff at the forensic facility in Pueblo.

    His psychiatrist responded to his patient's apparent increase in psychotic thinking by upping his antipsychotic meds. Michael responded by refusing to talk to professional staff. He told his fellow patients enough about what was going on in his head that the staff soon learned that he was convinced that some of his
Potter
antagonists had infiltrated the clinical ranks of the hospital.

    "To the best of my knowledge he hasn't spoken to a member of the clinical staff since the summer of 2002," Tharon said.

    "But he talks to other patients?" I asked.

    "Specific people. Patients. Some people in housekeeping, too. He can act pretty crazy."

    "Act?"

    He shrugged. "Act. It's been a topic of some vocal disagreements among the clinical staff. Some think he's malingering."

    "You?"

    "Never knew him well enough to have an opinion."

    "People you respect?"

    "Thought he was playing us. Some of the best clinicians in the forensics institute thought he should be the poster child for what's wrong with 16-8-112."

    "Excuse me?"

    "That's the statute that addresses the question of offenders who are judged incompetent to proceed within the criminal justice system. If a gifted sociopath gets a foot inside the door and can seduce a professional ally or two, he can play the system like Hendrix played the guitar. Some people on staff think that where that statute is concerned, Michael McClelland is Hendrix. Others think his paranoia is real."

    "The patients he did talk with? They included Nicole Cruz?"

    "See, that's what's interesting. I don't think Michael ever had much contact, if any, with Nicole. Not directly anyway." Tharon began to rehash his description of the unit demarcations at the state hospital.

    I stopped him. "Why is that interesting, Tharon?" I asked. "That he didn't have much contact with Nicole?"

    "One of Michael's confidantes among the patients was a woman who became a friend of Nicole's prior to her discharge."

    "You can't tell me her name, can you?"

    "No, I can't." He wasn't apologetic about it. I hadn't given him any reason to be.

    "Is she still there? Has that woman been discharged?"

    "Nicole was discharged in January of this year. We wanted to watch her through the holidays. You know how that goes." I did. I nodded. "Her friend had been discharged a while before. Four months? Five? I'd have to go back and check."

   "But this woman—Nicole's friend—had also been a confidante of Michael McClelland's? You're sure?"

   "The security requirements of their respective units prohibited a lot of contact. But their relationship—even at a distance— created some clinical and community issues. The two of them were complementary colors. Yin and yang."

   "What issues?"

   "Nicole's friend is a psychologist. Made things complicated clinically in the institute. And in the community at large."

   "I can only imagine."

   "Unless you've treated a colleague, especially a violent colleague, in an inpatient environment, I really doubt that you can imagine how complex it is."

   "What was her diagnosis? Why was she in the forensic institute?" I asked.

He thought about my question for a moment. "Sorry," he said. "I really shouldn't."

My meeting with Tharon made many things clear for me, one of which was why he had called me.

    After I discovered Nicole's body in Peter's barn, the authorities had obviously quickly tracked her identity—even if she didn't have ID on her person, her fingerprints were on file all over the Colorado criminal justice system—and had quickly been able to confirm her recent prolonged stay at the state hospital. Someone from Boulder's law enforcement community, probably one of the sheriff's investigators, had then called Dr. Thibodeaux to ask some questions about his ex-patient. The name of her current therapist—me—had come up during the conversation, and Thibodeaux had tracked down my home number and called me as an act of rather dubious, but much-appreciated, professional courtesy.

    When Tharon said that it was time for him to leave to meet his friends for the basketball game, I asked him if he would answer one more question.

    "Depends on the question," he said, glancing at his watch.

    "That's fair. Earlier, you said you'd been in my shoes during your residency, that you didn't want what happened to you to happen to anyone else. What did happen during your residency?"

    He didn't hesitate. "I had a borderline guy I'd been treating for a while. The transference was . . . let's say, labile. Constant splitting. He was a cutter, among other things. Very manipulative. Multiple suicidal gestures." He forced a small smile. "It wasn't my best clinical work."

    He reached for his jacket.

    "Borderlines can do that," I said. "I'm not good with them. Never have been. I think it takes a certain type of therapist."

    "Yeah, well." He shook his head, shooing away some memory. "You want to know what happened?"

    "Yes." And I thought he wanted to tell me.

    He folded the coat across his lap. "Okay. We were having a department Christmas party. Second year of my residency. The party was at an attending's new apartment in a building near the Quarter. Somehow my patient found out where the party was being held. One of the other residents was on call that night. She was at the party, too."

    "The on-call resident was an optimist?" I said.

    "Marlene was an optimist. My borderline guy calls the psychiatric clinic, says it's an emergency, and gets his call returned by Marlene. She just went into one of the bedrooms of the apartment and called him. My guy is no virgin at badgering oncall residents—he immediately says he's in treatment with me and in his own overwrought diva way conveys that he's in crisis. Marlene begins to do her intervention. He stops her and says he wants to talk with me, no one but me. She begins to dig deeper into her clinical bag of tricks—Marlene was good—but he stops her again. He demands to talk to me. She begins to explain the call system and tries to get him to understand why that's not possible. He stops her again. He's getting more agitated. When she persists, he tells her he's on top of a building, and he is going to jump if I won't talk to him right then."

    "Wow. On a manipulative scale, that's a ten," I said.

    Tharon made a what-are-you-going-to-do face. "Marlene goes into one final song-and-dance about how the emergency call system works and tries to convince him that I'm unavailable and tells him he will need to talk with her. She's sure she can help. I'm sure you know the script. My patient says he knows all about the call system and that he also knows I'm standing close enough to her at that moment that she could hand me the phone."

    "What?" I asked. "How did—"

    "Marlene's quick. She asks what building roof he is on. He says, 'The one where your party is. The one you're in this very minute. The one that Dr. Thibodeaux is in this very minute. In fact, when I jump, I should pass right by the living room window on my way down.' The building was six stories tall."

    "Holy . . ." I said.

    "The party was on the fourth floor."

    "Crap," I said.

    "After a couple more minutes trying to get any connection with the guy, Marlene hands me a note explaining what's going on. My first reaction is I think he's bluffing—he's manipulative and self-destructive, but I never saw him as suicidal. Not intentionally, anyway. But just to be safe I borrow a phone and call

911 to report a possible jumper. Marlene scribbles me another note telling me she's sure she can handle him.

    "The rescue truck shows up a few minutes later with siren and lights. Couple of cop cars, too. By then, the whole psychiatry department—all the attendings, all the other residents, everybody's dates and significant others—knows exactly what's coming down on the roof. Half the party is at the window watching, wondering what's going to happen. One of the other residents is actually joking about where my patient will land."

    "Hostile," I said. "Your patient, and your colleague."

    Tharon shrugged. "Actually, 'hostile' was just beginning. Hostile was a few minutes later when he did exactly what he was threatening to do. He jumped. True to his word, he did indeed pass right in front of the living room window. For me, it was a blur. He was there; he was gone. He landed on top of a car. He died on impact ten feet from the rescue truck."

    "I'm so sorry," I said. "I can't imagine."

    "Old wound, old story," he said. "Before we had coffee today I thought that what Nicole did to you was something similar. Killing herself so close to your house. Suicide as weapon. Hostil ity. Humiliation. Anyway, I thought I might be able to cushion the blow a little bit by giving you some of her history."

    "Do you still think that? That Nicole's death is the same kind of thing your guy did to you?"

    He shook his head. "Maybe not."

    "It's not the same, is it?" I said. "I'm not convinced that what Nicole did was part of a crazy transference. I don't think it was even a medication failure. I may have made some diagnostic mistakes, but she wasn't a character disorder out of control. And she wasn't that depressed."

    Tharon shrugged. "From a distance that's what I thought it was. But if Michael M.'s involved—and especially if his friend is—you may have a whole different problem on your hands."

    I thanked him. We shook hands. We exchanged business cards. He left.

KIRSTEN SAT back and retrieved her wine from the hibachi.

I could taste her on my lips.

    "God," she exclaimed. "What a relief that was. I didn't realize how badly I needed to say that." She looked at my bewildered face. "Oh . . . I didn't say it to put you on the spot. I said it for me." She spread both hands on her chest. Her face broke into a wide smile. "Now maybe I can let it go. We can both let it go. Pretend I didn't say it."

    
It had been a secret.

    "I didn't know," I said. I had felt transferential breezes of affection blowing from her during the brief interval she was my patient. That wasn't unusual. But the admission she'd just made did not feel like an unresolved transference from Kirsten's therapy.

    It did not.

    "Men are dense." She laughed. The trill was a lovely note that hung in the air. "Dear God, I feel better," she said. "Oh . . . but I bet you don't. I'm sorry."

    "You bet right."

    "Will you tell me about it?" she asked. It was her turn to change the subject. "What happened back then?"

    She was inviting me to spill my secret as she had spilled hers. I recited the familiar relationship equation in my head: disclosure plus vulnerability equals intimacy.

    Did I want that? Could I handle that? I wouldn't go near the first question, but knew the answer to the second. I could not handle it. I shook my head. My therapist rationalization machinery kicked in
—It's unresolved transference she's feeling.
That's all it is. She didn't really love me. Doesn't. She loved
what I represented.