My resolve kicked up a notch. It was errand time. My first stop was the law office of Tom Landers, where he handed me a bill for $1,200. He apologized, and said the increase was based on the complexity of John’s estate.
“What estate? I don’t know if there is one. Does this include his meeting with you and Jason?”
“Jason? I don’t recall having a meeting with John and anyone else.”
“Do you mind if I call Jason?” Tom pushed the telephone my way. Jason was friendly, but didn’t know what I was talking about. “I bought my house over twelve years ago,” Jason said, “but not from John. In fact, I’ve only known him for about eleven years.”
“What? I thought he was your dad’s cousin.”
“No, I met John first and introduced him to my parents. They hit it off and became friends.” I thanked Jason and hung up the phone.
“John lied to me,” I said grimly. “Now I know why there was never any payment. John didn’t own the house.”
My world tumbled in on me for the umpteenth time that week. With each discovery the ice beneath my feet got thinner and thinner. Now it had just given way. I made a decision. I would have to get a divorce for my sanity’s sake, no matter what anyone thought of me. It was the very thing I had dreaded for the last nine years. “I want to start divorce proceedings immediately,” I said.
Tom didn’t practice family law, but he called someone who did. “They’ve had a cancellation. You can go right over.”
My mother and I walked into Ross Grissom’s office. A short, well-dressed man with a warm smile stood and walked over to greet us. We settled in, and the multiple volumes of California Family Code behind Ross faced me while I explained my situation.
“Strangest case I’ve ever heard of,” Ross said, shaking his head. I could feel my internal pressure rise. Why couldn’t this be a simple divorce, like my first?
“I can represent you,” Ross continued. “What I need to start is a twenty-five-hundred-dollar retainer fee.”
I gulped. My hands twisted around the wet tissue in my lap. Somehow, it always came back to money, no matter which way I turned. “I don’t have that much right now. Is there some other way?”
He needed the retainer to bill against. I’d hit a brick wall and didn’t know where to turn. “I’ll loan you the money,” my mother said. “You can sign a promissory note later.”
Mom wrote a check, and Ross hit me with the next bit of distasteful news. “We have to get John a divorce attorney in Contra Costa County.”
“I won’t have any part of it,” I announced. “He’s on his own. Besides, he’s in jail in Virginia and has a public defender named Kent Whistler.”
Ross explained that the Virginia lawyer practiced criminal law and probably hadn’t passed the California bar, but he could be used to pass information along to John. Grudgingly, I retrieved my telephone book from my purse and gave him Kent Whistler’s phone number. Too bad Greg Smith had given me the number, I thought. Ross called and arranged to fax a list of attorneys who sat on the family law board of Contra Costa County. I silently wondered if I was going to have to pay for the phone call.
More menacing, and unknown to me at the time, was that this phone call was the first step in a battle that would last for years as I struggled to be legally free of John Perry. Ross recommended stalling the divorce settlement until the Concord house sold. “It will make it easier to divide,” he said.
“But I want to file for a divorce
now.
And I want a restraining order. He might make bail.”
Perhaps Ross didn’t understand the seriousness of my case. My panic accelerated when he said I had to keep paying the car and medical insurance on John. “What! He’s in jail. He can’t use them.”
“It’s the law. We’re a community property state. In fact, John will get half your retirement fund and, based on what you’ve told me, he’s entitled to alimony.”
“Excuse me. He just tried to murder me and now I’m going to have to
pay
him?”
“Well, he’s in jail and not working. It’s the way the formula works. It’s the law.”
My hands worked the wet tissue into shreds. It was unbelievable. All I wanted to do was file and get a simple divorce, but it seemed nothing having to do with John was ever going to be simple. I felt my throat constrict and tears welling in my eyes once more.
“It’s not fair,” I whispered. “I’m a victim once more, this time of the divorce law of California.”
Later that afternoon I sat alone in the reception area of the family therapist’s office feeling like a fish out of water. The walls closed in on me. I knew I needed help. Carolyn emerged, a tall, professionally dressed woman with a brightly colored scarf draped around the shoulders of her navy blue dress. She introduced herself and called me into her office. “Please, have a seat.”
“Do you want me to lie on the couch?”
“Only if you want to,” she said, smiling. “Most people choose to sit in the wingback chair opposite me.”
“I’d prefer that,” I said, settling in right next to the box of tissues on the end table.
Carolyn gently probed into my family background and my relationship with John. It’s a good thing the tissues were handy. I went through almost the whole box. Toward the end of the hour she looked at me intently.
“You have a decision to make,” she said. “We can work on the grief you’re feeling over the death of John, as the person you thought you knew, or we can work on why you allowed yourself to stay in a situation that almost cost you your life.”
I chose the latter. I didn’t want to make the same mistake ever again.
“Good choice,” Carolyn said. “It sounds like John is a socio-psychopath. He has no conscience. Whatever he wants, he feels he has the right to take. He manipulated your feminine traits of caretaking and compassion, he assessed your loneliness at the time he met you, and his lies and deceit attacked your limits and boundaries. He snared you, and you became his victim.”
She explained that my self-esteem had been shattered, and that there were many tools to piece it back together. She asked if I had ever heard the term
codependent.
I shook my head no. She scribbled something down on the back of one of her business cards and handed it to me, explaining that it was the one tool she felt would help me best.
“Here, I want you to read Melody Beattie’s book
Codependent No More
before our next session. You can find it in any bookstore. Be proud of yourself; your positive action saved your life and you did not allow yourself to be frozen by your fear. You fought back intelligently and extricated yourself from a very dangerous situation.”
My heart pounded as I left. I had survived and was on the road to recovery, although I didn’t know if it would be a bumpy trail or a smooth path. Eventually I would find it was both.
In the bookstore, I stood and flipped to a page somewhere in the middle and read:
We may even convince ourselves that we can’t live without someone and will wither and die if that person is not in our lives. If that person is...deeply troubled, we may tolerate abuse and insanity to keep him... in our lives to protect our source of emotional security.
That was me! Melody Beattie, the author, had just described my actions, feelings, and emotions. I was frightened and excited at the same time as I clutched the book tightly and walked to the checkout stand.
Thursday morning I woke and counted six days after terror had invaded my life and turned me in a new direction. It seemed like an eternity.
After breakfast I went into John’s office. Yesterday’s appointments had slowed my progress. I still had a lot of papers to review, categorize, and file. The detective’s comments about proving John’s military rank were foremost in my mind.
What can you do to confirm an admiral? Of course, why hadn’t I thought of it sooner? I’d get in touch with the rear admiral who was a consultant for John’s company, the one who had formerly commanded Treasure Island. I had always wondered why he and his wife had stopped being our friends. When I mentioned it to John, he scoffed at the rift, saying it wasn’t important. I found the rear admiral’s number and dialed.
“Hi, this is Barbara Perry, John’s wife.” There was an uncomfortable silence before he acknowledged me. I explained what had happened and asked him if he could help me prove that John was a retired rear admiral from the U.S. Navy.
“Don’t you know about the FBI?” he said.
“FBI? No. What about the FBI?”
“John is being investigated by the FBI for impersonating an admiral.”
I just about dropped the phone. For all my suspicions of John, I had become fairly comfortable with his rank. I had lived the proof. We had been piped aboard ships. He had worn the Medal of Honor. We had been guests with other admirals on a commanding admiral’s ship, and the Blue Angels had given us a photograph signed to Rear Admiral Perry. We had been allowed entry onto any base that we visited.
“I called the FBI and reported him in the fall of eighty-nine,” the rear admiral said in clipped tones. “If you want any more information, call the Concord FBI office. And please don’t contact me again.”
I hung up the phone and dug into my memory. About the time the FBI showed up at our door, John stopped working. Could those events have been connected? I called the FBI office and spoke to the agent the rear admiral had contacted. I explained who I was and what I was looking for. He was respectful and confirmed what I had been afraid to admit to myself. John was the object of an ongoing investigation. “He has a history of this kind of behavior. Did you know he spent three years in federal prison for impersonating an Air Force officer?”
“No.” I gasped. It was a good thing I was sitting down.
We continued the conversation. The agent gave me as much information as he was allowed to divulge. “I have the case of medals that we confiscated at your house,” he said. “Since John’s involved in a more serious charge, I think we’ll stop the investigation. Can I drop them off to you?”
“Sure, just let me know when you want to come by. I’ll let Homicide Detective Greg Smith know about your investigation. You’ll probably get a call from him, as well.”
“Oh, one more thing,” the agent said. “The Medal of Honor wasn’t in the case. Do you know where it might be?”
I didn’t have any idea. I hung up the phone.
So that’s what happened to the medals,
I raged. All those lies, all those times I was stressed out by John’s indifference. “I hate you!” I shouted to the empty room. I immediately called Greg Smith and reported my findings.
“Great,” he said. “With this information I think the PA can get the bail raised back to twenty-five thousand dollars. You’re amazing. You’ve really helped this case along.” Then he added that he had talked with the FBI agent. “Have you ever heard of John’s aliases?” he asked.
“Aliases?”
“The FBI said he’s gone by Calliet Delvin, Guy D. Delvin, Daniel F. Malley, Robert Lee Stuart, and Thomas John Mudge. Ring a bell?”
“I’ve never heard those names before,” I said. “But I’ll keep a lookout as I go through his office paperwork.”
When I hung up the phone, I felt proud of myself. In spite of my grief, I had been able to function, to move forward, and in doing so I found enough evidence to allow the case to go to trial. But my job as investigator was far from over, and my recovery had just begun.
TWENTY-TWO
The Trial
Five weeks later, in Arlington, Virginia, I fidgeted with my foam coffee cup in the office of Alexandra Kouracos, the prosecuting attorney assigned to my case. She had been convinced John was a criminal from the start. Today, she had to convince the family court judge of the same, in order to move the trial to criminal court.
Alexandra whizzed into her office, a pile of folders in her hand. With her distinctive features and brunette hair, she closely resembled the portrait, hung prominently on one wall, of a judge in his court robes.
“My father,” she said, smiling. She exuded strength and confidence. “Let’s review your testimony while we wait for Greg Smith.”
“I’ve worked hard to be ready for today,” I said.
“You’ll do great. I have to tell you this is the strangest case I have handled.”
“Thanks. First my divorce attorney tells me that, and now you. I feel like a freak.”
When Greg arrived we gathered our things and meandered through a maze of hallways and elevator rides. Outside the courtroom Alexandra asked me to take a seat on the bench while she took care of a last-minute detail. Greg also disappeared.
I was nervous. Today would be the first test of my newfound freedom. I had to be strong. John’s intimidations during the proceedings could not sway me. He no longer had power over me, and I had to let him see my determination. I wondered how it would play out. I twitched each time the prisoner elevator or holding cell opened and someone in a blue jumpsuit emerged.
It had taken a lot of time and hard work for me to regain my power. I made a major breakthrough when I discovered how to tap into my inner strength using techniques associated with healing the inner child. I was amazed at what happened next. This new self-realization propelled me through recovery, as Carolyn referenced my writings and drawings for our discussions. By the fifth session I was amazed at my emotional growth.
“I feel I’m progressing too fast,” I confessed to her.
“Don’t you know why? You had to regain your strength before the preliminary hearing. You persevered. You found that recovery takes more work than just sitting in my office for fifty minutes a week.”
Today, seated on this hard bench in the corridor, I was in agony. Alexandra and Greg had not returned. Nervous anticipation ate at me as the minutes ticked away. Needing reassurance, I reached inside my purse and pulled out the horoscope from the morning’s
Washington Post
, and found solace in the words:
You’ll no longer fear the dark. Focus on inside information...Family member “explains” bizarre plan. Maintain balance, perspective. Say, “NO!”