Line of Fire (17 page)

He smiled that lopsided, cranial-nerve-damaged smile. I couldn’t help myself; I got distracted trying to figure out which cranial nerve had been injured. He yanked me back to the moment when he said, “But I’m wondering if she really killed herself. Even after all this time, there seems to be some doubt in town about that.

“In case you’re wondering, that’s the one that got my attention. That supposed suicide. The one you guys were jabbering about in my room.”

• • •

Rick, it turned out, had spent a few hours in Frederick already. He wanted me to know what he knew, and he wanted me to know how easy it had been for him to learn what he knew.

He’d chatted up a butcher and a cashier at a grocery in town. He had a long discussion about the benefits of vegetarianism with a girl at the counter in the coffee shop—she was the vegan; Rick was a pescetarian. And he’d even managed to get a bartender at one of the town’s saloons to tell him stories about the shit that he and his buddy Segundo used to pull before Segundo became a marine.

The cover story Rick Contreras was telling the Frederick locals was that he was a criminal justice student at Metropolitan State College in Denver. My gut seized as he filled out the details of the ruse he had manufactured. The fact that he stumbled onto such a fine fake story left me with no doubt that his quest in Frederick, and the story he was telling me in my office, would eventually reveal that he’d been in touch with Izza Kane.

Her truth, and Rick Contreras’s fiction, would leave them with ever so much in common.
Mostly unanswered questions about the death of Justine Winter Brown. Currie.

The specific story Rick told to anyone who seemed even the slightest bit interested during his visit to Frederick was that one of his professors at Metro had given the class an assignment to reinvestigate a death that the authorities had originally identified as suspicious. Each student was to reinvestigate the available public facts and come to an independent conclusion about the case, writing an eight-page paper about how he or she reached their conclusion.

The specific cases were assigned to the students at random. Rick had been assigned a case in Frederick. A suicide.

The butcher had grave doubts about the Rockies’ bullpen but knew nothing about the suicide. The clerk at the grocery store had been in town for only eighteen months. Her truck driver husband had left her after nine of those months. She didn’t think she had ever met the dead woman and didn’t think she could be any help with his school paper.

As an unwelcome aside, Rick described the clerk as “ripe.” He maintained she would be his “for the price of a cheap motel.” My countertransference for my new patient was already in need of some repair. That little aside didn’t help. I was tempted to point out that his cranial-nerve-damaged grin was on the evil side of attractive. I didn’t.

With the waitress in the café—a woman who reminded him of his father’s baby sister, his aunt Tawny—he struck gold. She knew the whole story of the suicide and recalled a wealth of details, including the dead woman’s first name, Justine, and the fact that she had a way with horses. The waitress drew him a little map to show him precisely where the property was—“you can walk from here, hon, take you no more than three minutes”—and she explained how he could tell exactly which house was the specific cottage where the woman died.

Once Rick got the bartender in the saloon talking—the key was a compliment about the man’s cowboy boots—the man told him all about his high school friend Segundo, and Segundo’s little boy, Elias Tres. The bartender told Rick Contreras that if he was smart he would focus his story on that little boy—that would get him an A on his paper for sure. “That kid is a trip,” is what the bartender said about Elias Tres. “Nope, make that a trip and a half.”

The bartender then warned Rick off trying to talk to Big Elias. “I wouldn’t recommend that. Don’t even say hi. Odds are he’ll take it the wrong way.”

26

I
followed him, of course,” Sam said. “After you were done healing him. You are one precise shrink, by the way. It was forty-five minutes on the nose that you spent with the guy. What do you get a minute? Three bucks? Four? Five? More?”

I didn’t reply. Sam wasn’t curious about my fees. He was strip-mining for raw material for future ridicule.

“I waited that whole time. Outside
,
in my car. I didn’t sleep. I spent those forty-five minutes pondering what this might mean. And then he came out. He walked to his car a little farther down Walnut.” Sam raised his beer but didn’t drink. “He went to McGuckin. Bought P-traps. Three of them. Who does that who’s not a plumber? Then he went to Liquor Mart. Jägermeister. Who still drinks Jäger? Then he stopped and got gas on North Broadway. I ended up getting worried he’d notice the same car behind him for so long, so I made an executive decision to break off the tail.

“When I was on my way back over here, I pulled up to a patrol car in the Ideal parking lot. I got the patrol guys to run the plate for me from their vehicle computer. Turns out that the car he was driving isn’t registered to any variation of the name you used to greet him. So—if it ever turns out that you get curious about such things—you might want to consider the possibility that he didn’t use his real name.”

Sam gave me a moment to reply. When I didn’t—he had to know I wouldn’t—he said, “I assume psychologists, like you, ask a new patient for a home address?”

I said, “I know I do.” I could have found a way to give Sam the address the man had given me, but I was presuming it was fake and that there was a chance I was the only one to whom he’d given it. If Coma Doe spotted me, or anyone else, showing any unusual interest in the address he’d provided, he would know who was responsible for the attention. That would be me. I wasn’t at all interested in getting compromised that easily for so little potential gain.

Sam hadn’t really expected me to spill the address. He said, “Do psychologists, like you, reputable doctors, ask their patients for identification? A picture ID?”

I decided I could answer Sam’s question. I didn’t waste much mental energy deciding whether or not I should. Given my mood at that time—modulated rage mixed with a gut-wrenching sense of vulnerability for me and my family—I wasn’t so much searching for ethical brakes as I was searching for ethical license.

“I don’t,” I said.

Sam scratched the back of his neck. I lost a second or two trying to interpret the gesture before I decided his neck itched.

Sam hunched forward, flattening his forearms on the bar. He said, “My doctor makes a copy of my driver’s license.” He spoke the final words into his almost-empty pint glass. The sound that reached me rumbled and echoed.

“That’s because you let him. I don’t.”

“You don’t do it? Or you don’t let your doctor do it?”

“Both. Neither.”

“You just decline?” Sam seemed to be having a revelation.

I said, “I just decline.”

“Okay, do psychologists, like you, ask new patients for a Social Security number? I’m thinking for insurance. Or to track down a guy who skips on his bill? Or even just for the hell of it?” He smiled. “Because people like me let you.”

“I don’t do insurance billing for my patients, so I don’t require that kind of information. I’ve never yet sent a client into collection, don’t think I ever would, so I don’t have a need for Social Security numbers.”

“No collections? Your patients all pay?”

I chuckled. “Almost. I don’t chase down the ones who don’t. I eat it. My policy about patient information? Anything I don’t require, I don’t collect.” I glanced over. “There have been times in the past when certain authorities have become overly enthusiastic about examining my patient files. If I don’t collect something, then nobody can discover it.”

Sam returned my glance. He winked, acknowledging that he thought that I’d played that card well. We both knew that Sam had been one of those overly enthusiastic authorities taking a peek at my off-limits patient files.

Then he said, “Bottom line, though? A patient could lie? About his or her real identity? Place of business? Living situation? You would have no way to know?”

“Patients lie to me every day. I’m sure I miss most of it. Has it happened about identity? Sure. The patients who pay by check? I see what’s printed on the check. But a patient who doesn’t?” I shrugged. “A patient could mislead me about who he is. Where he lives. Other things.”

Sam nodded. He dug around in the pathetic bag for the last of the Beer Nut crumbs. He tilted his head back while he poured them into his mouth from the thumb side of his fist. He said, “It’s completely possible that you may have had a patient, even as recently as this afternoon, who was not exactly who he said he was?”

I sniffed the air for rancidity while I weighed Sam’s question for ambiguity. For me, ambiguity meant license. I was comfortable with what I detected.

“I would say that was possible. Given whom I saw this afternoon.”

Sam raised his empty glass and narrowed his eyes as though squinting would make a fresh brew magically appear. He asked me if I wanted another. I shook my head. He caught the bartender’s attention, pointed to his glass, and held up his pinkie. I almost missed what he said next because I was wondering why he used his pinkie.

“So here’s what else I did today while I was out in my car waiting for you to finish up with that patient in your office. I tracked down Coma Doe’s real name.”

The more Sam said the name Coma Doe, the more he compressed it into a solitary word, Comadoe.

I was tempted to ask for Comadoe’s real name but decided I was better off not knowing. If I saw him again, I might use it inadvertently. That wouldn’t be good.

I said, “If you have his real name, I presume you ran it. Or you tricked a colleague into doing it. I am kind of curious if the guy has a record.” I recognized that it was the kind of question that Sam would get around to answering on his own.

“Guy is not much of a driver. That’s for sure. Speeds a lot, school zones even, and he isn’t at all fond of stop signs and red lights. But more important, he has a few drug priors. Two for possession when he was still an asshole kid. His parents lawyered him right up back then and he got deferred prosecutions. But he was a slow learner even before that night his brain got beaten around like it was a hanging curve thrown to Albert Pujols.”

“Yeah?” I said. “You got more?” Sam, it seemed to me, was investing a lot of energy in waxing his board. I was interested in coaxing him back into the water, watching him catch a wave.

“He deals. When he was young, weed to his friends. Later, he was busted for intent when he was old enough to know better. He copped a plea on that one—charge was changed to possession. Substance was”—Sam did a drumroll on the bar top—“meth.”

Sam was back in the water, paddling into a swell. “This next part is interesting. See, there’s a pending charge from the night of the Fourmile Fire. Serious shit.”

Some good news?
“For?” I asked.

Sam again tapped his fingertip on the blank sheet of paper on the bar. He was using the doubled-over empty envelope as an ineffective coaster for his sweating glass.

“In the T-Bird he crashed that night? Turns out a K-9 discovered meth in a nylon zipper bag in the trunk. Ounces. O-Zs. For a guy with his priors? Could be real time.”

“Yet,” I said, “he’s out and about, not incarcerated. He could even be visiting psychotherapists.”

Sam smiled. “It appears that there are complications with the investigation. Having to do with proving possession of the meth.”

“You want to tell me about the complications?”

“I’m deciding.”

“While you decide, how is Henry doing?” I said. “The bulldog?”

“Thanks for asking,” Sam said. “Henry spent that night in a temporary shelter with all the other dogs rescued from the fire. Was returned to the girlfriend the next day no worse for wear. Want some irony?” Sam was a fan of irony. “The back of Comadoe’s head probably saved Henry from a trip through the windshield of the crashed T-Bird. Comadoe may be a true hero in the bulldog underground.”

I was relieved about Henry. I also thought that, as a breed, bulldogs were too wise to pin a medal on the chest of someone like Comadoe.

27

S
am went on. The anticipation of that second beer was bringing out the storyteller in him. “The first night of the fire was crazy for us, for law enforcement. Certain protocols were . . . suspended in order to keep personnel available to smooth the evacuation and to assist the firefighters. That’s a roundabout way of saying that the car Comadoe crashed was left at the scene overnight. No tow trucks were being allowed up the hill, so the car wasn’t towed to impound until midday the next day. That has created some chain-of-custody problems, seeing that the meth wasn’t discovered in the trunk of the T-Bird until a sniffer dog went batshit at impound eighteen hours after the crash.

“The detectives Lucy and I were helping that night have a tough nut. They have to prove that Comadoe knew the meth was in the car and that it was under his personal control. Those unresolved issues are why he hasn’t already been charged with a new drug felony, and they are why he hasn’t already been picked up for violating probation on his intent-to-sell plea bargain. With me?”

I nodded. Sam nodded right back at me. “For reasons that I hope are obvious, it’s just not prudent for me to snoop around the edges of that drug investigation, but let’s assume the worst for Comadoe. There are two reasons I want to assume the worst. One, just for argument’s sake. The other because, well, it makes me feel better.

“If we’re presuming the new meth charge is righteous—that the drugs in the trunk were his; that the quantity constitutes intent-to-distribute, which it does; and that the good guys, the cops, can prove it all to the DA’s satisfaction. Which I’m not sure we can. But I don’t think Comadoe believes that.

“If all my presuming is true? Our boy looks like toast and he’s feeling all kinds of vulnerable right about now. Comadoe’s never done real time. Yeah, yeah, he’s survived a couple of sleepovers at County, but nothing scary. I’m sure he’s heard stories about what big-boy prison is like, and I’m thinking he’s a little anxious about his peculiar vulnerability. Those curls of his? That cute little tat? All the unmarked flesh begging for clink ink? I would say our boy is feeling a little desperate.”

So that’s what Rick was alluding to with his comment to me that afternoon about dirty cops.
I looked at Sam. I thought I was following his reasoning, but to be certain I said, “If Comadoe is desperate, he may well be looking for some leverage. Something he can barter to make his drug problems diminish. Maybe another plea bargain.”

Sam began to tap the bar top with his index finger. No particular rhythm emerged before he said, “Since another plea is unlikely, is that supposition based on what I told you? Or is that a conclusion based on something you may have heard, you know, elsewhere?”

• • •

During that afternoon’s session, Rick Contreras had indeed described himself as a desperate man. Although he hadn’t mentioned the meth in the trunk of the T-Bird, he had suggested that his only way to avoid serious incarceration was to begin to fulfill a lifelong dream of ridding the world of “dirty cops” by pointing out “one or two” to a suitably grateful district attorney.

As allegory, Comadoe related a quick story about the first time he was busted when he was sixteen. He was the passenger in a friend’s pickup when a cop car came out of nowhere with one quick pulse-elevating burst of siren, lights flashing. His friend told him to roll down the passenger-side window and flick their weed out at the next curve.

During the ensuing traffic stop the driver engaged in a one-sided discussion with one of the two officers about probable cause. The argument didn’t turn out the way the driver hoped. The kids were each patted down. Somehow, during the search, the same bag of weed that the young Comadoe had tossed out the window had ended up back in the inside pocket of his jacket.

“Dirty cop, right,” was my new patient’s conclusion about the law enforcement sleight of hand.

I had sensed no indication that Comadoe was aware of the irony of the circumstance he was describing.

Comadoe told me that ever since that experience he’d had a fantasy about making things more fair. Getting rid of the dirty cops. He was, he said, basically a go-along, get-along kind of guy. A don’t-prosecute-victimless-crimes, no-collateral-damage, leave-well-enough-alone kind of guy.

Dirty cops, he maintained, upset that natural order. They “skewed everything.” His analogy for the problem had to do with tilting a pinball machine. “Same thing.”

He stood. I thought he was going to leave abruptly again, as he had during the first session. “You willing to help me?” he asked. “Or not?”

I did not know what he was asking. “Recover from your trauma? Absolutely.”

“No. Help me nail that cop you were with in my hospital room.”

“I don’t understand,” I lied.

“You can’t tell anybody what I’m saying, right?”

I thought about his question. I thought about misleading him with my answer. I gave him an honest reply. “Basically, no. But there are exceptions.”

“Like?”

“If you’re planning to harm someone. Yourself, or someone else.” He’d asked for an example. I had offered a less-than-comprehensive list of exceptions.

“That’s not this. Now tell me you understand,” he said. “Yes or no?”

“Your psychological reactions to your injuries are understandable,” I said. “I think I can be of help in sorting them out.”

“Don’t bullshit me. I’ve been watching your eyes. Your face. To try to decide if you know. If you remember. Well, you do know. And you do remember. So decide whether you’re going to help me.”

At that moment I was grateful that patients did not have a right to take a therapist’s pulse. My one-twenty-plus would have revealed more about my state of mind than I wanted Comadoe to know. I did not know how to react. I said, “Would you like to set up another appointment, then?”

“You kidding me? I don’t care about you or your help. I don’t know—yet—how things came down with that dead woman. I think you do know. That’s the help I want.”

I said, “I think I made clear how I can be of help. The rest . . . is not clear to me.”

“You got balls, man,” he said. “I’ll give you that. Call me if you see the light. I did not make you as a hero. If you fall when he falls, it’s not on me.”

He walked out.

How did I read Comadoe’s exit?

He was telling me he would spare me if I would help him set up Sam.

And he was reminding me of the consequences of not complying. What Comadoe didn’t understand were the consequences I would suffer if I did comply.

• • •

I couldn’t directly answer Sam’s question about what I’d heard from Comadoe and when I heard it. But by not replying at all, I was able to convey to Sam what he needed to know.

“Thought so,” Sam said. Over the years, he’d developed certain skills reading me.

The bartender delivered Sam’s second beer. Sam gestured at the wall and asked her if she would switch one of the TVs to
SportsCenter.
Our lives were in the balance, our families’ futures were on the line, and Sam wanted to check the early hockey scores from the East Coast.

He dropped his voice in volume and imbued it with a certain confessional timbre. “Since this afternoon, I’ve been wondering what the guy might have to barter. So,” he said, “I’ve been thinking back to that night in the ICU. Let’s say Comadoe wasn’t actually in a coma. Let’s say maybe he was just . . . I don’t know, sleeping. Drifting in and out. A post-concussive state. Drugged even. Let’s say during the drifting he heard . . . shit that was being said in his room. Or at least parts, fragments. Like when you and I were there. Depending on what he heard, or thinks he heard, that could create a serious problem for us. Should he decide to exert his, what did you call it? Leverage.”

I could tell Sam wanted a verbal indication that he and I were assessing the risks the same way. I probably should have thrown him a simple, “Go on.” Instead I said, “He could have actually been in a coma, like the intensivist said. There are reports of coma patients hearing what was going on. It’s relatively rare, but that rare phenomenon may well turn out to be a crucial part of our current dilemma.”

Sam repeated the word. “Dilemma.” He drenched it in sarcasm. He had dropped his head down as though it were too heavy to hold upright. His face was parallel to the bar top, hovering two inches above his beer glass. He rotated his head a quarter-turn to look at me, which left his ear hanging close enough to the foam of the fresh beer to allow him to listen to the carbonation combusting, were he so inclined.

“One of us”—Sam paused for effect—“made a point that night of announcing his name and his professional status to the clerk on the unit. Imogen. That was her name, if you forgot. If I remember it all correctly, one of us even gave her an effing business card. That business card may have made it easier for someone like Comadoe to track down the identity of his two visitors.”

Sam was blowing smoke. I said, “He could have just asked her who I was, Sam. She would have told him.”

Sam wasn’t in the mood for a mitigating-circumstances defense. He held up his hands. “Just saying.”

“Our problem isn’t what the guy might have heard from the ward clerk. Our problem is what he might have heard when certain people were talking in his room.”

“You think he heard enough?” Sam asked.

“I think he heard enough to find out enough. If he’s smart and he’s motivated. Pure guess? I’m thinking he’s no genius, but he’s smart enough. You’ve already amply described his motivation.”

Sam took a measured sip of his second beer. I was waiting for an indication that Sam understood our vulnerability.

“You ever think about living in another country?” Sam asked.

“Excuse me?” I was sure I had misheard him. If the con- versation had been taking place on the phone, I would’ve switched the receiver from one ear to the other.

“You heard me.”

If I’d heard him right, Sam understood our vulnerability. I decided to be vague so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot. “Like?” I said.

“I don’t know. South America.”

“That’s not a country.”

He shot me a
fuck you
look. “Argentina then. That’s a country. Turns out I have, like, this standing job offer down there. Good job. Pays well. In the security business, loosely defined.”

From a pure news-value perspective, it was as tantalizing as hearing that Sam had been invited to be on
Dancing with the Stars.
“Really? Because of your language skills? Or is it your well-honed cultural sensitivity?”

It wasn’t an ideal time for my sarcasm, but the target was too tempting to resist. In almost any circumstance when cultural awareness was imperative, Sam could be counted on to be an Iron Ranger. All else was unnatural to him.

Sam didn’t bite. He said, “I did something for somebody once, somebody with influence. That somebody is, like, eternally grateful.”

“Yeah? I’d love to hear about it. What did—”

“Can’t. Don’t ask again. Just answer my question—you ever think what it would be like to live in another country?”

“When I was younger. Kidless. Sure.”

“Want to think about it now? This person is so grateful, I could probably get you some work, too. Though I don’t know if they even believe in shrinks down there.”

I was tempted to explain that psychology wasn’t a religion, and I wasn’t a priest. But the truth was that psychotherapy was quite popular in Argentina. Still, the futility of proceeding with the argument loomed, at least with Sam. I closed my mouth.

God, Sam is talking about going south of the border.

That
kind of going south of the border.

I had images of us as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And immediately considered that their trip south of the border had not ended well.

I lowered my voice. “So, Argentina doesn’t have an extradition treaty with us? I assume you’ve checked.”

“Yeah, I checked. And, actually, they do. Which is a problem. So Buenos Aires isn’t really option numero uno.” Sam pronounced it
you-kno,
even though I knew he knew how to say it correctly. “It’d be someplace else down there. Somewhere smaller, and maybe a little more banana-y.” He sat up straight for a moment, as though good posture was something he would need to demonstrate in his new career. “Think about it. It’s a real option.”

Banana-y?
That was the cultural sensitivity I was concerned about. I said, “Not a lot of hockey in South America, Sam.”

He stared at me with
you imbecile
in his eyes, in neon. I chose that moment to get up to pee. He grabbed my arm. “Did he hear enough?” he asked. “Comadoe?”

“Sometimes people hear dots. And everything depends on their ability to connect those dots. If I were us, I would be worried that Comadoe heard some dots and was born with some of those dot-connecting skills.”

• • •

Sam was ready for my return. “So when would you guess might be a good time for me to be parked nearby your office again? Don’t worry, I won’t come in. I’m assuming that the one-time pass to your waiting room will not be renewed.”

I wanted to tell Sam everything I’d learned about my new patient, but I didn’t think I could. Not ethically. I had, of course, considered and reconsidered tossing ethical considerations to the wind—Comadoe was not a real patient; he was a fake patient making a real threat—but I hadn’t reached the point where I would be cavalier about discussing our time together. I could see reaching that destination soon enough, but arriving there would still require some deliberation.

A tiny part of my reluctance was that I continued to cherish the ethics of my profession, but the bigger part was that I didn’t trust that Rick Contreras was setting a trap only to catch Sam. I had to assume that, as a backup, he was setting a parallel snare to catch me. Getting me to start abrogating my professional responsibilities had nowhere near the cachet of implicating Sam in a felony murder, but if I fell for Comadoe’s simple ethical trap, it could cost me my career and my livelihood. I was confident that I could toe an ethical line and still manage to communicate to Sam the essential things he needed to know about the man who wasn’t really Rick Contreras.