When the Bough Breaks (3 page)

He went on stroking me, talking about the need for the hospital to be in the “forefront of humanitarian endeavors,” then smiled and leaned forward.

“Also, I imagine there’d be significant research potential in all of this—at least two or three publications by June.”

June was when I came up for full professorship. The director was on the tenure committee at the medical school.

“Henry, I believe you’re appealing to my baser instincts.”

“Perish the thought.” He winkled slyly. “Our main interest in helping those poor, poor children.” He shook his head. “A truly repugnant affair. The man should be castrated.”

A surgeon’s justice.

I threw myself, with customary monomania, into designing the treatment program. I received permission to run the therapy sessions in my private office after promising that Western Peds would get all the credit.

My goals were to help the families express the feelings that had been locked inside since Hickle’s subterranean rites had been exposed, and to help them share those feelings with each other in order to see that they weren’t alone. The therapy was designed as an intensive, six-week program, using groups—the kids, parents, siblings and multiple families—as well as individual sessions as needed. Eighty percent of the families signed up and no one dropped out. We met at night in my suite on Wilshire, when the building was quiet and empty.

There were nights when I left the sessions physically and emotionally drained after hearing the anguish pour out like blood from a gaping
wound. Don’t let anyone ever tell you different: Psychotherapy is one of the most taxing endeavors known to mankind. I’ve done all sorts of work, from picking carrots in the scorching sun to sitting on national committees in paneled boardrooms, and there’s nothing that compares to confronting human misery, hour after hour, and bearing the responsibility for easing that misery using only one’s mind and mouth. At its best it’s tremendously uplifting, as you watch the patient open up, breathe, let go of the pain. At its worst it’s like surfing in a cesspool, struggling for balance while being slapped with wave after putrid wave.

The treatment worked. Sparkle returned to the kids’ eyes. The families reached out and helped each other. Gradually, my role diminished to that of silent observer.

A few days before the last session I received a call from a reporter for
National Medical News
—a throwaway for physicians. His name was Bill Roberts, he was in town and wanted to interview me. The piece would be for practicing pediatricians, to alert them to the issue of child molestation. It sounded like a worthy project and I agreed to meet him.

It was seven-thirty in the evening when I nosed my car out of the hospital parking lot and headed westward. Traffic was light and I reached the black-granite-and-glass tower that housed my office by eight. I parked in the subterranean garage, walked through double glass doors into a lobby that was silent save for Muzak and rode the elevator to the sixth floor. The doors slid open, I made my way down the corridor, turned a corner and stopped.

There was nobody waiting for me, which was unusual because I’d always found reporters to be punctual.

I approached my office door and saw a stiletto of light slashed diagonally across the floor. The door was ajar, perhaps an inch. I wondered if the night cleaning crew had let Roberts in. If so I’d have a talk with the building manager over that breach of security.

When I reached the door I knew something was wrong. There were scratch marks around the knob, metal filings in the rug. Yet, as if working from a script, I entered.

“Mr. Roberts?”

The waiting room was empty. I went into the consultation office. The man on my sofa wasn’t Bill Roberts. I’d never met him but I knew him very well.

Stuart Hickle slumped in the soft cotton cushions. His head—what was left of it—was propped against the wall, the eyes staring vacantly at the ceiling. His legs splayed out spastically. One hand rested near a wet spot on his groin. He had an erection. The veins in his neck stood out in bas relief. His other hand lay limply across his chest. One finger hooked around the trigger of an ugly little blue steel pistol. The gun
dangled, butt downward, the muzzle an inch from Hickle’s open mouth. There were bits of brain, blood and bone on the wall behind the head. A crimson splotch decorated the soft-green print of the wallpaper like a child’s fingerpainting. More crimson ran out of the nose, the ears and the mouth. The room smelled of firecrackers and human waste.

I dialed the phone.

The coroner’s verdict was death by suicide. The final version went something like this: Hickle had been profoundly depressed since his arrest and, unable to bear the public humiliation of a trial, he’d taken the Samurai way out. It was he, as Bill Roberts, who’d set up the appointment with me, he who’d picked the lock and blown his brains out. When the police played me tapes of his confession the voice did sound similar to that of “Roberts”—at least similar enough to prevent my saying it wasn’t a match.

As for why he’d chosen my office for his swan song, the supporting cast of shrinks had an easy answer: Because of my role as the victims’ therapist, I was a symbolic father figure, undoing the damage he’d perpetrated. His death was an equally symbolic gesture of repentance.

Finis.

But even suicides—especially those connected with felonies—must be investigated, the loose ends tied up, and there began a buck-passing contest between the Beverly Hills Police Department and L.A.P.D. Beverly Hills acknowledged the suicide had taken place on their turf but claimed that it was an extension of the original crimes—which had occurred in West L.A. Division territory. Punt. West L.A. would have liked to kick it back but the case was still in the papers and the last thing the department wanted was a dereliction-of-duties story.

So West L.A. got stuck with it. Specifically, Homicide Detective Milo Bernard Sturgis got stuck with it.

I didn’t start to have problems until a week after finding Hickle’s body, a normal delay, because I was denying the whole thing and was more than a little numb. Since, as a psychologist, I was presumed able to handle such things, no one thought to inquire after my welfare.

I held myself in check when facing the children and their families, creating a façade that was calm, knowledgeable and accepting. I looked
in control
. In therapy we talked about Hickle’s death, with an emphasis upon
them
, upon how
they
were coping.

The last session was a party during which the families thanked me, hugged me and gave me a framed print of Braggs’
The Psychologist
. It was a good party, lots of laughter and mess on the carpet, as they rejoiced at getting better, and, in part, at the death of their tormentor.

I got home close to midnight and crawled between the covers feeling
hollow, cold and helpless, like an orphaned child on an empty road. The next morning the symptoms began.

I grew fidgety and had trouble concentrating. The episodes of labored breathing increased and intensified. I became unaccountably anxious, had a constantly queasy feeling in my gut, and suffered from premonitions of death.

Patients began asking me if I was all right. At that point I must have been noticeably troubled because it takes a lot to shift a patient’s focus away from himself.

I had enough education to know what was going on but not enough insight to make sense of it.

It wasn’t finding the body, for I was used to shocking events, but the discovery of Hickle’s corpse was a catalyst that plunged me into a full-fledged crisis. Looking back now I can see that treating his victims had allowed me to step off the treadmill for six weeks, and that the end of treatment had left me with time to engage in the dangerous pastime of self-evaluation. I didn’t like what I learned.

I was alone, isolated, without a single real friend in the world. For almost a decade the only humans I’d related to had been patients, and patients by definition were takers, not givers.

The feelings of loneliness grew painful. I turned further inward and became profoundly depressed. I called in sick to the hospital, canceled my private patients and spent days in bed watching soap operas.

The sound and lights of the TV washed over me like some vile paralytic drug, deadening but not healing.

I ate little and slept too much, felt heavy, weak and useless. I kept the phone off the hook and never left the house except to shove the junk mail inside the door and retreat to solitude.

On the eighth day of this funereal existence Milo appeared at the door wanting to ask me questions. He held a notepad in his hands, just like an analyst. Only he didn’t look like an analyst: a big, droopy, shaggy-haired fellow in slept-in clothes.

“Dr. Alex Delaware?” He held up his badge.

“Yes.”

He introduced himself and stared at me. I was dressed in a ratty yellow bathrobe. My untrimmed beard had reached rabbinic proportions and my hair looked like electrified Brillo. Despite thirteen hours of sleep I looked and felt drowsy.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Doctor. Your office referred me to your home number, which was out of order.”

I let him in and he sat down, scanning the place. Foot-high stacks of unopened mail littered the dining-room table. The house was dark, lirapes drawn, and smelled stale. “Days of Our Lives” flickered on the tube.

He rested his notepad on one knee and told me the interview was a formality for the coroner’s inquest. Then he had me rehash the night I’d found the body, interrupting to clarify a point, scratching and jotting and staring. It was tediously procedural and my mind wandered often, so that he had to repeat his questions. Sometimes I talked so softly he asked me to repeat my answers.

After twenty minutes he asked:

“Doctor, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Unconvincingly.

“Oka-ay.” He shook his head, asked a few more questions, then put his pencil down and laughed nervously.

“You know I feel kind of funny asking a doctor how he feels.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He resumed questioning me and, even through the haze, I could see he had a curious technique. He’d skip from topic to topic with no apparent line of inquiry. It threw me off balance and made me more alert.

“You’re an assistant professor at the medical school?”

“Associate.”

“Pretty young to be an associate professor, aren’t you.”

“I’m thirty-two. I started young.”

“Uh-huh. How many kids in the treatment program?”

“About thirty.”

“Parents?”

“Maybe ten, eleven couples, half a dozen single parents.”

“Any talk about Mr. Hickle in treatment?”

“That’s confidential.”

“Of course, sir.”

“You ran the treatment as part of your job at—” he consulted his notes—“Western Pediatric Hospital.”

“It was volunteer work associated with the hospital.”

“You didn’t get paid for it?”

“I continued to receive my salary and the hospital relieved me of other duties.”

“There were fathers in the treatment groups, too.”

“Yes.” I thought I’d mentioned couples.

“Some of those guys were pretty mad at Mr. Hickle, I guess.”

Mr.
Hickle. Only a policeman could be so artificially polite as to call a dead pervert
sir
. Between themselves they used other terms, I supposed. Insufferable etiquette was a way of keeping the barrier between cop and civilian.

“That’s confidential, Detective.”

He grinned as if to say
Can’t blame a fella for trying
, and scribbled in his notepad.

“Why so many questions about a suicide?”

“Just routine.” He answered automatically without looking up. “I like to be thorough.”

He stared at me absently, then asked:

“Did you have any help running the groups?”

“I encouraged the families to participate—to help themselves. I was the only professional.”

“Peer counseling?”

“Exactly.”

“We’ve got it in the department now.” Noncommittal. “So they kind of took over.”

“Gradually. I was always there.”

“Did any of them have a key to your office?”

Aha.

“Absolutely not. You’re thinking one of those people killed Hickle and faked it to look like suicide?” Of course he was. The same suspicion had occurred to me.

“I’m not drawing conclusions. Just investigating.” This guy was elusive enough to
be
an analyst.

“I see.”

Abruptly he stood, closed his pad and put his pencil away.

I rose to walk him to the door, teetered and blacked out.

The first thing I saw when things came back into focus was his big ugly face looming over me. I felt damp and cold. He was holding a washcloth that dripped water on to my face.

“You fainted. How do you feel?”

“Fine.” The last thing I felt was
fine
.

“You don’t look wonderful. Maybe I should call a doctor, Doctor.”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“No. It’s nothing. I’ve had the flu for a few days. I just need to get something in my stomach.”

He went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of orange juice. I sipped slowly and started to feel stronger.

I sat up and held the glass myself.

“Thank you,” I said.

“To protect and serve.”

“I’m really fine now. If you don’t have any more questions …”

“No. Nothing more at this time.” He got up and opened some windows; the light hurt my eyes. He turned off the TV.

“Want something to eat before I go?”

What a strange, motherly man.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Okay, Doctor. You take care now.”

I was eager to see him go. But when the sound of his car engine was no longer audible I felt disoriented. Not depressed, like before, but agitated, restless, without peace. I tried watching “As the World Turns” but couldn’t concentrate. Now the inane dialogue annoyed me. I picked up a book but the words wouldn’t come into focus. I took a swallow of orange juice and it left a bad taste in my mouth and a stabbing pain in my throat.