Sara Paretsky - V.I. Warshawski 10 (10 page)

Various right-wing family foundations had ridden to
MacLean’s rescue, claiming the daughter was the mouthpiece of a liberal smear
campaign, since the father was a conservative Republican. In the end, the jury
in the criminal sexual-assault trial found for the father, but his name was
dropped from consideration for the judgeship.

“And Wiell testified?” I asked Mary Louise.

“More than that. She was the daughter’s therapist. It
was working with Rhea Wiell that made the woman recover the memories of abuse,
when she’d blocked them for twenty years. The defense brought in Arnold Praeger
from the Planted Memory Foundation. He tried all kinds of cheap shots to make
her look bad, but he couldn’t shake her.” Mary Louise glowed with admiration.

“So Praeger and Wiell go back a ways together.”

“I don’t know about that, but they definitely have
been adversaries in court for quite a few years.”

“I put in a search to ProQuest before I left this
morning. If their fights have been in the news, I should have the stories.” I
brought up my ProQuest search. Mary Louise came to read over my shoulder. The
case she had mentioned had generated a lot of ink at the time. I skimmed a
couple of pieces in the
Herald-Star,
which praised Wiell’s unflappable
testimony.

Mary Louise bristled with anger over an op-ed piece
Arnold Praeger had run in
The Wall Street Journal,
criticizing both
Wiell and the law, which would allow the testimony of young children who had
clearly been coached in what they remembered. Wiell wasn’t even a reputable
therapist, Praeger concluded. If she was, why had the State of Illinois dropped
her from its payroll?

“Dropped her?” I said to Mary Louise, sending the
piece to the printer with several of the others. “Do you know about that?”

“No. I assumed she decided private practice was a
better place to be. Sooner or later, just about everyone gets burned out
working for DCFS.” Mary Louise’s pale eyes were troubled. “I thought she was a
really good, really genuine therapist. I can’t believe the state would fire
her, or at least not for any good reason. Maybe out of spite. She was the best
they had, but there’s always a lot of jealousy in offices like that. When I saw
her in court, I used to imagine she was my mother. In fact, I was incredibly
jealous of a woman I met who saw her professionally.”

She laughed in embarrassment. “I’ve got to go, time
for me to pick up the kids before class. I’ll do those Sommers queries first
thing tomorrow. You filling in your time sheets?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I saluted her smartly.

“It’s not a joke, Vic,” she said sternly. “It’s the
only way—”

“I know, I know.” Mary Louise doesn’t like to be
teased, which can be boring—but probably also is why she’s such a good office
manager.

When Mary Louise had left, promising to stop by the
courts to check for Radbuka’s change-of-name filing, I called a lawyer I knew
in the State Department of Children and Family Services. We’d met at a seminar
on women and law in the public sector and kept in touch in a desultory way.

She referred me to a supervisor in the DCFS office who
would speak if it was far off the record. The supervisor wanted to call me back
from a pay phone, in case her desk line was being monitored. I had to wait
until five, when the woman stopped at a public phone in the basement of the
Illinois Center on her way home. Before she’d tell me anything, my informant
made me swear I wasn’t calling on behalf of the Planted Memory Foundation.

“Not everyone at DCFS believes in hypnotherapy, but
nobody here wants to see our clients hurt by one of those Planted Memory
lawsuits.”

When I assured her, by running through a list of
possible references until I hit on a name she knew and trusted, she was
amazingly frank. “Rhea was the most empathic therapist we ever used. She got
incredible results from kids who would hardly even give their names to other
therapists. I still miss her when we have certain kinds of trauma cases. The
trouble was, she began to see herself as the priestess of DCFS. You couldn’t
question her results or her judgment.

“I don’t remember exactly when she started her private
practice, maybe six years ago, doing it part-time. But it was three years ago
when we decided to sever her contract with the state. The press release said it
was her decision, that she wanted to concentrate on her practice, but the
feeling here was that she wouldn’t take direction. She was always right; we—or
the state attorney general, or anyone who disagreed with her—were wrong. And
you can’t have a staff person, someone you rely on with kids and in court, who always
wants to be Joan of Arc.”

“Did you think she might misrepresent a situation for
her own glory?” I asked.

“Oh, no. Nothing like that. She wasn’t out for
glory—she was on a mission. I’m telling you, some of the younger women started
calling her Mother Teresa, and not always out of admiration. Actually, that was
part of the problem; she split the office straight in half between Rhea
worshipers and Rhea doubters. And then she wouldn’t let you question how she
came to a conclusion. Like in that one case where the guy she was accusing of
molestation was a former prosecutor who’d been nominated for a federal
judgeship. Rhea wouldn’t let us see her case notes before she testified. If the
case had backfired, we could have been facing a ton of damages.”

I thumbed through my stack of printouts. “Wasn’t the
daughter who brought the charges part of Wiell’s private practice?”

“Yes, but Rhea was still on the state payroll, so the
guy could have claimed she was using state office space or facilities for
photocopying or whatnot—anything like that would have brought us into a
lawsuit. We couldn’t afford that kind of exposure. We had to let her go. Now
you tell me, since I’ve been so frank with you, what’s Rhea done that means a
PI is interested in her?”

I’d known I’d have to cough up something. Tit for tat,
it’s how you keep information coming to you. “One of her clients was in the
news this week. I don’t know if you saw the guy with the recovered memories
from the Holocaust? Someone wants to write a book about him and about how Rhea
works. I’ve been asked to do some background checking.”

“One thing Rhea knows better than any other therapist
who ever worked for this office, and that’s how to attract attention.” My
informant hung up smartly.

Princess of Austria

S
o she is a
legitimate therapist. Controversial but legitimate,” I said to the glowing tip
of Don’s cigarette. “If you did a book with her, you wouldn’t be signing on
with a fraud.”

“Actually, they’re excited enough in New York that I
went ahead and scheduled an appointment with the lady. Tomorrow at eleven. If
you’re free, want to sit in on it? Maybe she’ll allow you to bring back a
report to Dr. Herschel that will help you allay her concerns.”

“Under the circumstances I can’t imagine that
happening. But I would like to meet Rhea Wiell.”

We were sitting on Morrell’s back porch. It was close
to ten, but Morrell was still downtown at a meeting with some State Department
officials—I had an uneasy feeling they were trying to persuade him to do some
spying while he was in Kabul. I was wrapped in one of Morrell’s old sweaters,
drawing some small comfort from it—which made me feel like Mitch and Peppy—the
dogs like to have my old socks to play with when I’m out of town. Lotty had
brought my day to such a ragged end that I needed what comfort I could find.

I’d been running since I kissed Morrell good-bye this
morning. Even though I still had a dozen urgent tasks, I was too tired to keep
going. Before dictating my case notes, before calling Isaiah Sommers, before
going home to run the dogs, before heading back to Morrell’s place with a
contract for Don Strzepek to cover my queries about Rhea Wiell, I needed to
rest. Just half an hour on the portable bed in my back room, I’d thought. Half
an hour would make me fit enough to cram another day’s work into the evening.
It was almost ninety minutes later that my client roused me.

“What made you go down to my aunt with all those
accusations?” he demanded when the phone dragged me awake. “Couldn’t you
respect her widowhood?”

“What accusations?” My mouth and eyes felt as though
they’d been stuffed with cotton.

“Going to her home and saying she stole money from the
insurance company.”

If I hadn’t been bleary from my nap I might have
answered more coolly. But maybe not.

“I will make every allowance for your aunt’s grief,
but that is not what I said. And before you call to accuse me of such
abominable behavior, why don’t you ask me what I said.”

“All right. I’m asking you.” His voice was leaden with
suppressed anger.

“I showed your aunt the canceled check the company
issued when a death claim was submitted nine years ago. I asked her what she
knew about it. That is not an accusation. A check for her had been made out in
care of the Midway Insurance Agency. I couldn’t pretend her name wasn’t on the
check. I couldn’t pretend Ajax hadn’t issued it based on a bona fide death
certificate. I had to ask her about it.”

“You should have talked to me first. I’m the person
who paid you.”

“I cannot consult with clients about every step I take
in an investigation. I’d never get anything done.”

“You took my money. You spent it on accusing my aunt.
Your contract says I can terminate our arrangement at any time. I am
terminating it now.”

“Fine,” I snapped. “Terminate away. Someone committed
fraud with your uncle’s policy. If you want them to get away with it, so be
it.”

“Of course I don’t want that, but I’ll look into the
matter on my own, in a way that will respect my aunt. I should have known a
white detective would act just like the police. I should have listened to my
wife.” He hung up.

It wasn’t the first time an angry client had fired me,
but I’ve never learned to take it with equanimity. I could have done things
differently. I should have called him, called him before I went to see his
aunt, gotten him on my side. Or at least called him before I went to sleep. I
could have kept my temper—my besetting sin.

I tried to remember exactly what I’d said to his aunt.
Damn it, I should do as Mary Louise said, dictate my notes as soon as I
finished a meeting. Better late than never: I could start with my phone
conversation with the client. Ex-client. I dialed up the word-processing
service I use and dictated a summary of the call, adding a letter to Sommers
confirming that he’d canceled my services; I’d enclose his uncle’s policy with
the letter. When I’d finished with Isaiah Sommers, I dictated notes from my
other conversations of the day, working backward from my informant at Family
Services to my meeting with Ralph at Ajax.

Lotty called on the other line when I was halfway
through reconstructing my encounter with the insurance agent Howard Fepple.
“Max told me about the program he saw with you at Morrell’s last night,” she
said, without preamble. “It sounded very disturbing.”

“It was.”

“He didn’t know whether to believe the man’s story or
not. Did Morrell make a tape of the interview?”

“Not that I know of. I got a copy of the tape today,
which I can—”

“I want to see it. Will you bring it to my apartment
this evening, please.” It came out as a command, not a request.

“Lotty, this isn’t your operating room. I don’t have
time to stop at your place tonight, but in the morning I—”

“This is a very simple favor, Victoria, which has
nothing to do with my operating room. You don’t need to leave the tape with me,
but I want to see it. You can stand over me while I watch it.”

“Lotty, I don’t have the time. I will get copies made
tomorrow and let you have one of your very own. But this one is for a client
who hired me to investigate the situation.”

“A client?” She was outraged. “Did Max hire you
without either of you talking to me?”

My forehead felt as though it were squeezed inside a
vise. “If he did, that’s between him and me, not you and me. What difference
does it make to you?”

“What difference? That he violated a trust, that’s
what matters. When he told me about this person at the conference, this man
calling himself Radbuka, I said we shouldn’t act hastily and that I would give
him my opinion after I had seen the interview.”

I took a deep breath and tried to bring my brain into
focus. “So the Radbuka name means something to you.”

“And to Max. And to Carl. From our days in London. Max
thought we should hire you to find out about this man. I wanted to wait. I
thought Max respected my opinion.”

She was almost spitting mad, but her explanation made
me say gently, “Take it easy, Lotty. Max didn’t hire me. This is a separate
matter.”

I told her about Don Strzepek’s interest in doing a
book about Rhea Wiell, showcasing Paul Radbuka’s recovered memory. “I’m sure he
wouldn’t object to sharing the tape with you, but I really don’t have time to
do it tonight. I still need to finish some work here, go to my own place to
look after the dogs, and then I’m going up to Evanston. Do you want me to tell
Morrell that you’ll be coming up to view the tape at his place?”