Borderline Page 5

  He thought about the drunk-driving charge. Some flaw could be introduced in the arrest. It sounded like the police had more than probable cause, but maybe the Breathalyzer was defective. Still, there were the witnesses to the erratic driving. Maybe the appointee could have been having an allergic reaction to medication or a bee sting. There might be problems with the subsequent search or the way he was advised of his rights. But having the police look bad on this high-publicity case would have worse ramifications.

  Ultimately, Dorsey decided the appointee would resign. Maybe get another chance at the office in a year, after completing treatment. He came from a family that was one of the larger contributors to Robinson’s campaign. The family liked the respectability it gave them, since they had made their money in construction work and most hadn’t completed high school.

  The deputy mayor buzzed his assistant. “Edith, I’m going to be getting a call from a Jeanie Hanson. When she gives you a date, book us for lunch at Antoinette’s.”

  “Got it.” Edith chuckled. Antoinette’s was in a gabled, renovated house on the outskirts of downtown, a romantic French restaurant known for private booths for secret business deals or errant lovers. Her boss was such a naughty boy.

  FOUR

  On the phone, Hanson hadn’t detailed his connection with Tammy LaFleur, but as he walked into the block-square park in downtown, he presumed McFarlane had figured it out. Hanson sat on a bench and people-watched, trying not to anticipate what he might hear. He kept the large bag he carried close to him, knowing what the detective was expecting.

  As his wife had so cuttingly asked, would he feel much better if he knew Tammy had been murdered? Did that mean it was okay, that he had done his job? Not really, but death by homicide was less of a treatment failure. What could he have done differently? What had he missed?

  He thought about how distant Jeanie was. They had had good weeks, months, together. On an intellectual level, he could understand her drive. For him, being economically stable with basic needs met was enough. She had been raised upper class; he had come from a lower-middle-class background. For her, there always needed to be more. Maybe he’d try and reconcile when he got answers on Tammy.

  He spotted McFarlane ambling into the park with a cop’s combination of “I own this ground” and alertness to threat. McFarlane was a trim six-footer who carried himself with a linebacker’s athletic grace. He had aged little since they first met, though Hanson knew the detective sergeant had been involved in two shoot-outs, and one arrest where the suspect pulled a knife and had slashed his shoulder. Even dressed in a dark blue tapered Brioni suit and five-hundred-dollar shoes, with his graying hair slicked back, his eyes in a perennial questioning squint, McFarlane could be more obviously a cop only if he had a siren and revolving red cherry light on his head.

  He dropped his bulk on the bench and reached for the bag. “The usual?”

  “A little different this time,” Hanson said.

  McFarlane squinted and pulled the bag to him. He opened it and peered in.

  “Cheddar cheese popcorn,” Hanson said. Meeting, with enough popcorn for the two of them and the inevitable pigeons, was a decade-long tradition.

  McFarlane took a handful. “You’ve become a wild man in your old age.

  “The clerk said this was their best.” Hanson took a handful.

  They filled their mouths at about the same time and chewed.

  “Not bad,” the detective sergeant said. “How’ve you been with the urges?”

  Hanson was more eager to talk about LaFleur’s death than his own cravings, but he knew McFarlane wouldn’t open up until he had an answer. “One day at a time, sometimes an hour at a time.”

  “Working your program?”

  “Pretty much. No meetings, but looking at the Big Book. Reviewing the steps.”

  “We could catch a meeting tonight. There’s one I like in Northeast.”

  “I’m comfortable in my recovery,” Hanson said, raising his hand to interrupt McFarlane before he could speak. “And I know denial is a river. I’ve been clean and sober all these years, admit I’m an addict, and recognize my triggers.”

  “So what are your triggers right now?”

  “Part of it was a scuffle at work—it’s been a while since I was involved in anything physical.”

  “But the main thing was the girl’s death. She was a client, right?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “You know why the first step is the first step? The addict’s desire to control everything. And the Serenity Prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept what I can’t change, the strength to change what I can, and the—”

  “Wisdom to know the difference between the two,” Hanson interrupted. “I do know all of that. I also know you won’t bullshit me. If the Tammy LaFleur suicide is righteous tell me so and I’ll be on my way. I’ll even go to a couple meetings over the next few weeks.”

  McFarlane took another big handful of popcorn and tossed most of it to the birds. A couple dozen pecked and cooed around the men. “Flying rats,” the cop said. “Nothing definite, but they’ve got Quimby on it. He’s the chief’s cleanup guy. I tried asking around and got shot down. Even by people who usually like to chat. I’m not really surprised. You know who her father was?”

  “No.”

  “Did you think LaFleur was her real name?” McFarlane asked.

  “Not really. But my job isn’t to investigate. Who’s her father?” McFarlane milked his anticipation, tossing a few more kernels to the birds. “Does the name Grundig ring a bell?” They were both looking at the birds. It was easier for them to talk not making eye contact.

  “I saw a Pat Grundig as her emergency number.”

  “That’s her sister, who’s a lieutenant in the sheriff’s department. Her father was deputy chief of police until he retired a couple years ago. There’s about a half dozen Grundigs in law enforcement around town. A couple more off working for various federal agencies. Tammy was the black sheep of a cop royalty family. The case will be quickly shitcanned.” “But if she didn’t kill herself, she was murdered.”

  “Right.”

  “Don’t they want the killer brought to justice?”

  “Brought to justice, yes. Taken to court, no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Brian, you wanted to know in my professional opinion whether it was suicide or homicide. From the little I know, I would guess, and that is guess, homicide. The Grundigs won’t want publicity about Tammy. They’d rather see the death fade from memory. They will find out who killed her and that person will wind up fertilizing a patch way back in the Mount Hood National Forest.”

  “Could one of the Grundigs have killed her? Maybe she was getting too embarrassing for them.”

  “That’s the kind of talk that could get you in big trouble,” McFarlane said sincerely. “And honestly, I doubt it. Cop families can be more dysfunctional than most. I’m talking heavy-duty drinking, drugging, domestic violence, abuse. It’s a rare meeting I go to that I don’t see a couple guys I know from on the job. But when the shit comes down, they pull together. It’s very impressive in a truly screwed-up way.”

  Hanson fed a few more pigeons, throwing toward the back of the pecking flock, hoping to feed the less aggressive birds. “You got any theories about Tammy’s death? Any leads that can be followed up?”

  McFarlane turned and faced him, his weary blue eyes locking in with a force that Hanson remembered from past confrontations. “My advice is forget about it. Do some meetings. Work your program. This is not something you want to get involved in.”

  “That’s not your usual ‘listen to your higher power’ talk.”

  McFarlane stood. “Like you said, I’ve always been straight with you. Always had your best interests at heart. Don’t get involved.” The cop strode away without saying good-bye.

  At work, thoughts of Tammy LaFleur kept intruding. What could he have done differently? What was going on with her? What were her la
st moments like? Could she really have been so desperate, so disconnected, that she killed herself? In all his years, he’d had only two other clients kill themselves. One was early on in his career, when a woman was having her kids taken away by Child Protective Services. The other was an HIV-positive man who had just progressed to AIDS. The first still haunted him occasionally. The second he had suspected was coming, and the client had had a posthumous note sent to him, thanking him for the comfort he had given.

  As he thought of his last conversation with Tammy, he had a sense of failure, a feeling that somehow he had missed a key clue if she had indeed killed herself. She had sounded optimistic, future-oriented, he reassured himself. But he felt he was not without self-blame, even if she was murdered, since it would mean that the paranoia he had dismissed had been justified.

  Tammy's critical-incident review meeting didn’t change anything. They met in the medical director’s office, a room larger than anyone else’s except for the agency’s CEO. The psychiatrist, who took pride in his world travels, had furnished his twelve-by-eighteen-foot sanctuary with masks from around the world—Indonesian frog faces, brightly colored Sri Lankan demons, big-nosed Japanese tengu, Zulu war masks. He saw clients in a nearby treatment room—many of the psychotic clients would have decomped to the hospital immediately after seeing his eerie office display.

  The doctor presided over the review, and was joined by Hanson, Pearlman, Tammy’s case manager, a skills trainer who had had her in a couple of groups, and the quality-assurance manager.

  The psychiatrist, who was close to seventy, could have made twice as much with a private practice, but remained dedicated to community mental health. A Grateful Dead fan who bore a more than passing resemblance to Jerry Garcia, his greatest joy was playing Santa at the Christmas party for clients and their children.

  He peered through his glasses at the chart while Pearlman spoke. “I’ve reviewed the records and it appears appropriate precautions were taken.” All but Hanson nodded along, their minds already on their next appointments.

  “Looks complete to me, Brian,” the medical director said. “It’s hard to lose a client. The timing on closing her is awkward, but it’s clear there were no indicators of suicidality or even depression. Your sessions are well documented, contacts with collateral agencies and releases up-to-date. You had a solid therapeutic relationship.”

  “But she’s dead nevertheless.”

  “Even when I worked inpatient, we’d lose someone every now and then. That’s in a locked ward where we had control of access to weapons. If someone is determined to kill herself, she’s going to be able to do it. Particularly in an outpatient setting.”

  “What if she didn’t kill herself? What if she was murdered?”

  “The police and medical examiner say it was suicide,” Pearlman said. “You mentioned her paranoid ideation. Had she discussed her concerns with the police?’

  “If she did, I’m sure it would have been covered up,” Hanson said tersely.

  The psychiatrist mused, “I remember I had a client who had convinced me the FBI had her under surveillance. I actually started talking with her about getting an attorney and the Freedom of Information Act files. She hit my old lefty buttons. A month later, when she told me about the aliens in the UFO, I got suspicious.”

  Everyone but Hanson chuckled, and Pearlman asked, “Any conclusions or recommendations?”

  Hanson sighed as they reached a foregone conclusion, signed off on the paperwork, and filed out of the office. Walking down the narrow hallway, Pearlman patted his back. “You’re taking this personally.”

  “You think I shouldn’t?”

  “There’s that fine line of caring about clients but not caring too much. You’ve been in the business long enough to know where it is.” “Maybe I should take a couple days off.”

  “That would be good. Don’t even bother filling out a vacation request. I can have support staff call your clients to reschedule.”

  “I can handle that myself. They’ve got enough to do. I’ve got an intake scheduled for tomorrow at eleven, and then one at three p.m.” “We’ll cover it. Do you need to fill out crisis alerts on anyone?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t think so. Then again, I didn’t think Tammy needed an alert.”

  “You don’t believe it was suicide, do you?”

  “No.”

  “I read the whole chart. Looked at the way she was living her life. She had every high-risk behavior I could imagine, short of skydiving without a chute. Picking up strangers, unprotected sex, IV drug use. What am I forgetting?”

  “Okay, she had borderline personality disorder. It’s like blaming someone with a cold for sneezing. She was getting better.”

  “She was getting more paranoid. Which you know is normal for people with BPD under stress. Maybe she had decided to tell you less. Go home. Take a hot bath. Read a trashy novel. Cuddle with your wife. Practice that healthy self-care stuff we tell our clients to practice.”

  He frowned.

  “Listen, Brian, in case you can’t tell, I’m concerned. You’re one of my best. I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

  “You ever heard the story about Freud? He had a client, Jewish, who was nervous early on about the rise of the Nazi Party in Austria. Freud psychoanalyzed him, convinced him the anxiety was unresolved father issues, so the guy stayed put, wound up in the gas chamber at Auschwitz.”

  “Don’t get me started on Freud,” she said. “What’s your point?”

  “Even paranoids can have real enemies.”

  Police Chief Harold Forester paced his office. He tugged at his nose, ran his hand through his thinning hair, and looked out the window. The view from the eighteenth floor included the two rivers that flowed through the city and helped it prosper, the six crowded bridges over the rivers, the freeways, and the business towers in the commercial district on the east side. On the horizon were the snowcapped Cascade Mountains.

  Home to courts and the police, adorned with highly praised cream-colored limestone columns and stained-glass works, the Justice Center building was hailed as a triumph of postmodern design. The police bureau controlled the upper floors, the peak of one of the taller buildings in town. Forester enjoyed that the sheriff and the district attorney, his rivals in law enforcement power, were both in less touted buildings with less commanding views. Of course the higher he was, the further to fall. Portland police chiefs had a long history of spectacular flame-out, consumed by scandals, politics, or a mixture of both.

  That bastard Tony Dorsey would love to see him ousted. The Old Testament was unforgiving of sinners. The New Testament tempered that, but with restrictions, depending on which of the Gospels you believed. Was it sinful to question the origin of the scriptures, to wonder about the human hand as it tried to capture the words of the Lord?

  He thought of immersing himself in the Bible he kept in his desk. The huge desk, a rich mahogany piece that had belonged to the city’s police chiefs for several decades, was as much a symbol of his power as the badge and gun.

  Instead he paced, wondering if he could find peace in the Twenty-third Psalm or by humming Amazing Grace. Basics, but they usually helped. He had a small ivory statue of Jesus he took from his desk drawer. It was weathered, losing its identity from all the times he had clenched it with sweaty hands.

  Tammy Grundig. He’d known her as a girl, sweet, friendly, a six-year-old cutie climbing onto his lap at police barbecues. What had she turned into? Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, he thought, as his own son came to mind. Forgive him, O Lord. The tale of Job, a righteous man, afflicted, a test of faith.

  Forester had dedicated his life to the law as set down in the Bible and the more secular provisions of city government. He had gradually compromised as he rose higher, learning what it meant to be a “team player.” He recognized the irony, having, to some extent, reached his lifelong goal, yet being unhappier than he had ever been before.

  If the mayor followed
what seemed to be a natural trajectory, Forester might become head of a national law enforcement agency. If he broke free of the mayor—and Dorsey, his more dangerous and conniving toady—Forester could move up only a notch. Police chief of Seattle, or maybe San Diego. He had been a featured speaker at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference a few months earlier. Then the press had quoted him extensively, describing him as a candidate for president of the IACP.

  The more he gained in power and influence, the better he could spread the Lord’s word. But maybe he was deceiving himself, and his ambition really masked pride, one of the seven deadly sins. He wished he didn’t feel like he had sold his soul to the devil.

  Before leaving the office, Hanson tracked down Tammy LaFleur’s chart. It had to pass through a couple of departments, including Billing and Quality Assurance, before it could be officially closed, put in a folder, and sent to archives. The chart was a confidential medical-legal document, subject to federal HIPAA regulations that could result in a fine or even jail if grossly misused.

  “I thought you were done,” the officious but perennially overworked office manager said.

  “Ah, you know how it is, Mary. The paperwork is never done.”

  “I’m not sure if I can find …”

  “If anyone can, you can,” he said with his most charming smile.

  Mary came back in five minutes with the chart, and a lecture about how he was making her job more difficult, how she wasn’t paid enough, and how no one appreciated her.

  “Would a box of See’s candies show how I feel?”

  “Do doctors have bad handwriting?”

  Hanson took the chart back to his office and spent fifteen minutes taking notes on LaFleur’s addresses, demographic information including Social Security number, and the names of anyone she had mentioned. He felt strangely guilty, violating the privacy of a dead person, particularly when he slipped the glamour shot into his pocket. Before her death, he would have been the primary clinician, who “owned” the chart, responsible for annual reviews, release of records, treatment-plan updates, follow-up-care inquiries. Now, he was snooping.