Nobody Lives Forever (29 page)

Rick was sitting up in bed, his color good. “You look a helluva lot better,” Jim said.

“You wouldn't say that if you had been here when they took out the chest tube. I thought they were pulling my whole lung out of that little hole.”

“You'll be back to work in no time.”

“Who are you kidding, Jim? You know I can never come back.”

“Whaddaya mean? You'll be going home in a day or two, the doc says you'll be a hundred percent in a couple a weeks.”

“The department says my injury is not service related. The chief hasn't been by to see me. You know what that means. Christ, every cop who stubs his big toe gets a hospital visit from the chief. They're treating what happened to Dusty and me as a love triangle, a domestic. I'm an embarrassment to the department.”

“Hell, all you have to do to embarrass this department is hand the chief a microphone.”

“The handwriting is on the wall.”

“It ain't fair,” Jim said bitterly. “The whole fucking thing is just not fair. There's something else. Another body.”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“Barry, that aerobics instructor from the fitness center. The guy with the ponytail. Tawny Marie found him. Mutilated. Went by and got his landlady to open the door.”

“You don't think…”

“Yup. Ballistics isn't finished, but it was a .38 and I'm betting it was from your off-duty gun. The last visitor his neighbors saw sounds like little Laurel. Wearing a leather miniskirt. We found one in a closet at your place.”

“What happened?”

“He'd been dead more than a week. It was bad. Looks like they were partying and things got out of hand. Somebody used a really sharp blade to take off his three-piece set. Haven't found it yet.”

“Christ almighty.”

“You should consider yourself lucky that all you took was a bullet in the chest. Watch,” he said grimly. “She'll get kid-glove treatment in jail and probably wind up in a hospital. Mark my words. Meanwhile, Dusty's stuff was boxed and sent back to Iowa. So was she. The department didn't even send anybody to the funeral. Just like that, it's all over. We lose two of the best cops on the department…” He shook his head. “Something's wrong.” He blinked and looked away. “I should've quit a long time ago.”

“Hey, partner.” Rick tried to sound cheerful, but his voice was hollow. “Don't look so grim. I'm not dead. I'll still be around.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know. I'm still thinking about that. Maybe PI, or I could sell insurance.”

“Oh, sure.” Jim's voice was derisive. “You oughta fight for your goddamn job. The Fraternal Order of Police would back you.”

Rick shook his head. “Seven years to go, to qualify for a pension, and I blew it. Boy, did I blow it.”

“All the women in the world and you find that one. What are you gonna do about her?”

“I've talked to her folks. They're gonna hire Sloat to represent her.”

“Sloat? That son of a bitch?”

“I told them he was the best.”

“You sure you didn't get shot in the head? I hope that's just your pain pills talking.”

“Feigleman says she's sick.”

“There's another sumbitch. He's already playing footsie with her family. He sees a high-profile case, his name in the newspaper. And her folks, after all they dumped on you … What about Dusty?” he asked angrily.

“I won't ever forgive myself, Jim.” Rick sank back on the pillows and looked away, staring out the window. “I can't believe she's gone. I feel so goddamn guilty. She was a good woman, a fair person. She'd understand. Help me through this, will you, partner?”

“Sure,” Jim said morosely.

Jim stopped by the church later. Just to think, he told himself. It was empty, a weekday afternoon. He sat for a long time.

As he walked through the courtyard garden toward the street, the young pastor called out to him. “Did you get my messages, Jim? Are you all right? You don't look well. Your partners … It must be difficult.”

Jim did not answer. The pastor walked with him.

“It's so damn unfair, and there is no justice,” Jim finally said. “All my life I've been part of the system—part of the problem. It's broken down, it doesn't work. I wasted all those years on something that's a piece of shit.”

“Nobody promised that life would be fair, Jim. But there is justice, if not here, then a higher justice.” Concern etched the clergyman's broad, sincere face.

They stood together in the shadow of the tall iron gate between the rectory and the street. “Some people don't like to wait that long. What if this is all we ever have?”

“You can't think that way, Jim, not if you believe in God.”

Jim's brief smile was sardonic as he lifted his eyes. “If there is a God, he must be out for a beer.” He turned on his heel and left.

Laurel was moved into a solitary cell at the women's detention center. There were several reasons, including alleged sexual overtures to other inmates. She was already on a suicide watch because when not compulsively cleaning her quarters, cursing the guards or stalking other prisoners, she was sobbing hysterically, like a child.

Sloat agreed to represent her after a conference with Feigleman and the parents. The lawyer met Laurel for the first time in an interview room at the center. Feigleman was also present.

When they emerged from the interview, the faces of the two men were as radiant as those of little boys on Christmas morning.

The psychiatrist and the defense attorney wore pinstripes to the arraignment and pale blue shirts that would photograph well on TV. Sloat had informed Laurel's parents that he would request a psychiatric evaluation. He elaborated no further, thus avoiding the risk of being challenged on some point. Once the juggernaut of publicity began, it would be impossible to stop.

Sloat rubbed his palms together and scanned the courtroom. Exactly the way he liked it, standing room only. The press section was packed. The usual court observers, mostly older folks sick of TV soap operas, were out in force, as well as a number of off-duty police officers.

Laurel's entrance created a stir among the murmuring spectators. The jailhouse beauticians had outdone themselves. Nicely manicured, perfectly made up, she wore a new hairdo, a short, boyish cut, and she wore it well. Sloat had suggested that she dress simply and demurely and she and her mother had selected a soft pink dress with a lacy collar. She looked like a schoolgirl.

Jim stood watching just inside the courtroom door.

The proceeding was routine. The plea was not guilty. Sloat moved that Laurel be transferred to a private psychiatric hospital for evaluation and treatment, if necessary. Instead of the usual thirty to ninety days, the lawyer requested an unspecified length of time.

The judge raised his eyebrows. Sloat dropped his bombshell.

“This is an unusual situation, your honor. We all have read such true stories as
The Three Faces of Eve
and
Sybil
.” Total silence reigned as Sloat turned theatrically to his client, pinky ring flashing. “You see such a case standing before you now, your honor. Dr. Feigleman had conducted some preliminary interviews, and he is convinced, as I am, that my client is a victim of multiple personality disorder.

“We have reason to believe”—he paused for effect—“that at least five different and distinct personalities occupy the body of this young woman.”

“Most likely the result of unbearable abuse she suffered as a child,” volunteered Feigleman, unable to contain himself any longer.

“As to whether any of
them
are guilty of a crime remains to be seen.
She
is not,” Sloat said. “She has no knowledge whatever of any of the crimes with which she is charged.”

“It is an illness,” Feigleman added. “A disorder that can be cured.” He continued, his Adam's apple bobbing behind his bowtie. “In the past, multiple personality disorder may have been confused with schizophrenia. But that's wrong. It is definitely not schizophrenia. It is something far more rare. What she suffers from is a multitude of personalities warring inside the same body, grappling for control, emerging, submerging and re-emerging in sudden unpredictable bursts.”

The judge appeared skeptical. “What did you say would cause this disorder?”

“Repeated abuse as a child, probably sexual abuse. A little child trapped in a painful and abusive situation copes by withdrawing, and part of the personality is shut off to deal with the horror and pain. Another part of that child goes on as if nothing happened.

“If the trauma continues through important stages of development, it happens again and again. That explains her lack of knowledge about what occurred when one of them was in control. The transitions can be triggered by stress.”

“The good news,” Sloat said, nodding his head sagely, “is that it is curable.”

“Are you positive?”

“Yes,” Feigleman said emphatically. “The treatment is called fusion therapy. I'd like to begin as soon as possible.”

The judge ordered the evaluation but refused to leave it open-ended. He instructed Sloat and Feigleman to report on their progress in ninety days and left the bench.

The press moved in one motion, like a great wave, toward the door.

The pressroom stood open to accommodate the crowd that spilled out into the hall along with the glare of high-intensity camera lights. Sloat and Feigleman presided, their faces aglow. Laurel, looking bewildered, had been returned to the women's detention center. Her parents were present, however, a bit dazzled by all the attention, but eager to assist in her cause and to make it clear to reporters that the abuse suffered by their daughter had taken place long before they ever saw her.

Jim lingered to watch the spectacle on a TV monitor set up in a hallway by one of the local affiliates. He had not slept, had not eaten. Who could? he thought.

Sloat was describing Laurel's condition as “a form of posttraumatic stress disorder, such as afflicts some Vietnam War veterans.”

Feigleman offered that “Laurel Trevelyn, the core personality, remembers none of the abuse she suffered as a toddler and a young child. But the others do, and it fills them with rage and anger, accounting for her behavioral problems over the years.”

He shifted his eyes to the parents for affirmation. They nodded vigorously.

“As a small child, she was sexually abused by her natural father. The records we have been able to find indicate that the man dominated and terrorized her mother. Laurel discovered her mother's body—in a sea of blood—in a bathtub, her wrists slashed. This little child became convinced that somehow she was to blame for her mother's death. The child's physician later reported her sexual abuse, and she testified against her own father. When he went to jail, our juvenile authorities, acting with their usual wisdom, released this already traumatized little girl to her parental grandparents, who then”—the doctor's voice rose—“blamed her for his incarceration and subsequent death in prison.”

“When this child was given up for adoption, these good people,” Sloat said, his gesture sweeping, “came into the picture, gave her a loving home and did what they could, but it was too late. The damage had been done.”

“Doctor, how does an abused child become a multiple personality?” The questioner, a young black woman, held a radio microphone bearing the call letters of a local station.

“Personalities begin to split off the core in self-defense to maintain safety and sanity. Painful experiences are broken into parts with which each personality can deal. Each personality has different and consistent traits. They usually emerge when the victim is angry or under stress.”

“Doctor, isn't it a conflict of interest for you, the police psychiatrist, to represent a defendant accused of shooting two police officers?” The thin, intense young man in horn-rimmed glasses was an investigative reporter for the morning paper. Always looking for something to expose, Feigleman thought furiously, instead of paying attention to the real story.

“Not at all,” Feigleman answered, removing his eyeglasses in an effort to appear more earnest. “I am in private practice and merely a part-time consultant to the department. An important aspect of that job is counseling, not only police officers but their loves ones. Laurel certainly fits that criteria, but in order that there be no question, I will be resigning my post as of this afternoon to devote more of my time and energy to this case.”

“Who are these other personalities, what are they like?” a sleek, honey-blond anchorwoman wanted to know.

“We know of four, in addition to Laurel,” Feigleman said enthusiastically, relieved to see the questioning back on track. “That is not to say that no others exist. Some MPD victims have had as many as ninety-nine different personalities, each with distinctly separate identities, physical characteristics, attitudes, speech, handwriting and values. They can be different ages and sexes, with varying degrees of intelligence. In this case one of them, a male personality named Alex, appears to be antisocial and the root of many of the patient's problems.”

“I have met a frightened little girl named Jennifer and a flirtatious young woman who calls herself Marilyn,” Sloat said, seizing the spotlight. “As well as Harriet, a woman who is apparently the housekeeper among them, adept at cooking and cleaning and homemaking.”

Jim's incredulous expression caught the eye of one of the reporters log-jammed outside the door. “What do you think, Detective?”

“It's all bullshit. Do they get an Academy Award now or later? This is nothing but a circus, a fucking three-ring circus. Lookit those guys,” he said angrily, staring at the screen where Sloat and Feigleman were now talking in tandem.

It was the night of the full moon over Miami. The shooting started early.

Irate shopkeepers, employees and customers armed with soda bottles, guns and CB radios won a bloody gun battle with two armed robbers. The manager of a produce market was beaten to death in a fight over who would unload a truckload of onions from Texas. An enraged auto repairman shot down a dissatisfied customer who had stopped payment on a check. And a troubled Vietnam veteran held his landlady hostage at rifle point in a rundown hotel for hours, demanding to talk to the president. Cuban gangs stomped Puerto Ricans, American blacks fought Haitians and Anglo rednecks warred with blacks and Latins.

The afternoon shift went on overtime, and the midnight crew was called in early. The story of Laurel's courtroom appearance and the press conference that followed was stripped across page one in the afternoon paper. When Jim arrived at the office, a copy folded under his arm, he found an apologetic secretary cleaning out Rick's desk. “The lieutenant says we need the room. We have to be have some place to put your new sergeant.”

Among his messages was one from Sloat. Jim crumpled and tossed it. The lawyer called again five minutes later.

“Sorry to bother you, Detective, but we plan to confer with my client this evening, prior to her transfer to the hospital in the morning. The parents will not be present. They're exhausted. It's been quite a day.

“The judge has suggested that, in the interests of propriety, someone from your department sit in on this meeting. We have no objection. We want it made clear that there is no coaching involved, no prompting of the defendant on our part.” He paused. “I know the revelations today may have been a surprise.”

“Yeah,” Jim said, “and I don't like surprises. Neither does Rick. He's been released from the hospital and saw the news this afternoon. He talked to the parents last night. They didn't mention this multiple personality business.”

“It was a surprise to them too. Everything has been happening so fast that Dr. Feigleman and I haven't had much opportunity to report to the family first. If you're busy,” Sloat said, almost too accommodatingly, “we understand. But we wanted to extend the invitation, per the judge's suggestion.”

Jim sighed and picked up a pencil. “Gimme the time and place.” He called Rick, filled him in, grabbed a slice of pizza, his first food of the day, then took his next call, a routine DOA. Full moon, he thought, as he drove there alone, with all hell breaking out in the city and they give a routine case to the most experienced man in homicide. Another demonstration of the brainpower in charge. The department was like a freight train roaring downhill at top speed with nobody at the helm. He, Dusty and Rick had been a terrific team, the cases they had solved, the hours they had worked. The years. They should have been bringing us gifts of frankincense and myrrh, he thought. Instead they don't give a shit what happens to any of us.

His mind was made up by the time he reached the scene. When he got back to the office he would find the forms and fill out his retirement papers. The bastards! Dumping Rick, treating Dusty like her life didn't matter—no reason to hang around now. He was eligible for retirement, and he would take it—make it effective in thirty days. With the vacation time he had coming, he could leave next week. He had no plans beyond that. In the old days he and Molly used to talk about what they would do when he retired. Too bad it was too late. Twenty-seven years and what did he have to show for it. Time to walk away. Should've done it a long time ago, he thought.

The call was at an old house, fallen into disrepair, in a changing neighborhood. The man who lived there for fifty years had died there, slumped on the bathroom floor. Elderly people who die of natural causes generate routine paperwork, distasteful tasks, and they remind detectives of their own mortality. They offer no challenge to investigative skills, and because so many older people live and die alone and their corpses often lie undiscovered for days, dealing with them is decidedly unpleasant. That was the case on this call. Flies had led the uniforms to the dead man after they broke in through a front window.

A neighbor had become suspicious and called it in just before dark. She had not seen the old man for days and his porch light had been burning constantly. She was concerned. A frugal man who just got by, he was never one to waste electricity. He tried to keep expenses down. His budget was too tight to take a newspaper or even own a telephone. Death appeared to be from natural causes.

In the bedroom Jim found a locked metal file box. The likely place for burial instructions and personal papers with the names of the next of kin. Sure enough, the key was taped to the bottom, probably so it would not be mislaid. So many of the elderly who lived alone were forgetful. Jim opened the box and found a scrapbook of faded family photos that appeared to have been taken in pre-World War II Europe. Beneath the scrapbook was what made him gasp. Stacks and stacks and stacks of bills, hundreds and fifties, almost all old-time silver certificates, worth more than face value now. Thousands and thousands of dollars, and a smaller metal box with gold jewelry and coins, old silver dollars in mint condition and an antique gold pocket watch. Another survivor of the Depression, Jim thought. Many go to their graves still distrusting banks, hoarding away life savings in shoe boxes or coat linings or mattresses.

Jim turned to summon one of the young uniforms to witness and help inventory the find, then hesitated. Why should the man's uncaring relatives cash in? This kind of money could set him and Rick up in any sort of business they chose. Neither had ever taken a dime, and look where it had gotten them, he thought bitterly.