The Big Law

She was about Broker’s age, midforties, with strong features, a large nose, healthy circulation and short black hair.

Her handshake was firm, her brown eyes direct and the calves trim below the hem of her casual denim jumper.

In her second-story office, tall windows looked out on bare oak branches that swam off into white schools of snow. A gas fire jetted discreetly in a small fireplace with artificially sooty bricks. The walls were a barricade of shelved books, and an invasion of blunt Eskimo stone seals and walrus overran the place. Three large photographs of European rooftops, probably Paris, were prominently positioned.

Broker wondered if the patients were supposed to notice there were no people in the pictures.

He had once dated an FBI profiler who had trouble keeping her clip-on holster fastened to her miniskirt. When they broke off, she described him as a fugitive from modern psy-chology.

Broker was leery of therapy. Under the high ceilings of this room, it looked to be a game of let’s pretend to be intimate in an atmosphere of scholarly reserve and quietly paraded affluence.

Two comfortable armchairs were arranged in front of the gas fire, but Dr. Nelson did not invite him to sit down. Instead, she asked, in a challenging tone, “How did you find me?”

“I read your name on a pill bottle.”

“Are you wearing a gun, Mr. Broker?”

Broker smiled. “I hunt Bambi too.” She had him typed: cube of beefcop with a holster for a truss. He had not formed an impression of her, which meant he had more distance than she did going into this situation. Her cliche about guns, given the neighborhood and her title, was a liberal conditioned response, like lighting a cigarette. He ignored it.

“I’d prefer you leave it out in the car, actually.”

“Sorry. This block looks nice, but I hear it has a high burglary rate. But the answer is no, no gun.” He smiled again and looked around the room. “So, this is where it happened?”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Where you met with Caren.”

“Don’t play cop tricks with me, Mr. Broker.” She crossed her arms across her chest. Miffed, looking down her beaky nose. Big eyes and black hairdo. Heckle or Jeckle with a medical degree.

“I mean, you actually sat here and talked. I thought you guys just wrote prescriptions for drugs these days. Fifteen minutes per patient.”

“Does this look like an HMO?” Cool. Expert on defense.

“No, it looks expensive. How’d she pay for it? Police lieutenants don’t make that much.”

Getting a little sanguine around the cheeks, she said, “She had her own money. She did quite well when she sold their last house.”

“Of course.” Broker pointed to one of the chairs. “May I sit down?”

“No.”

“Would you show me your file on Caren?”

“No.”

Broker took his small notebook from his parka pocket.

“When was the last time you saw her?”

Dr. Nelson walked behind her desk and flipped open a thick leather-bound organizer. “December twelfth, ten to eleven A.M. She was always prompt.” She flipped the book shut.

Broker jotted the information. Spoke without looking up.

“Did she look agitated? Mention being in danger?” When he glanced up her eyes burned at him. He raised his eyebrows.

Dr. Nelson recrossed her arms. “The morning of the day she died, he, Keith, called my office, early. He was looking for her. He said they’d had a fight. He thought she’d come here.”

Broker jotted: Keith thinks she needs shrink. Caren thinks she needs me?

He looked up. Dr. Nelson shook her head. “Just routine questions? Taking notes. You were married to her once. She talked about you. She died on her way to see you.”

Broker shifted his weight, leveled his eyes. “Caren and I divorced almost fourteen years ago. I hardly spoke to her in that time. I literally haven’t seen her for five years. I’d love to know exactly why she was coming to see me…”

What the hell?

Broker covered the distance to her desk in two brisk strides.

He spun her appointment book around. Opened it, leafed through the dates on the pages. Verified the name and time written in the doctor’s tidy printing: “Caren. 10 A.M. ”

“Hey,” protested Dr. Nelson.

His voice canceled hers: “Did she leave early?”

Dr. Nelson narrowed her eyes. “No. She always stayed the full hour. Sometimes longer, we’d talk…”

Broker raised his hand, a plea for quiet. Started to take a step, halted, changed direction, another half step, stopped.

“Maybe you should sit down,” said Dr. Nelson.

Broker shook his head, thumbed through his notebook, checked something, looked up at her. “Did the FBI- anybody from the U.S. attorney’s office-contact you about Caren?”

“No.” She hugged herself. Not body language games. Real.

“Why?”

“No one confirmed the time of her last session?”

“No.”

“I would like to sit down,” said Broker. He lowered himself in the nearest chair. He engaged the concern in her eyes for several beats, asked, “What was your professional opinion of Keith?”

“Keith?” She masterfully controlled her distaste. “He killed her, that’s my opinion.”

“I mean, did he come here? Did you observe him?”

She looked at him with this amazed expression. “Twice, at the beginning. His beeper was constantly going off, he kept asking to use the phone.”

“You didn’t like him.”

“We don’t have the luxury of personal preferences.”

“Bullshit. You disliked him.”

“I recognized him for what he was,” she said.

“Which was?”

She spun, took two steps, reached for a hefty maroon book in the bookcase behind her desk. “You want to understand Keith. He’s right here.” She thumbed the pages and thrust the heavy book at Broker.

He took it and read where she tapped her finger. “Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.” Under the subheading Diagnostic Features, he scanned: “The essential feature of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is a preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism and mental and personal control at the expense of openness, flexibility and efficiency.”

“Add anger, mix with booze and you get a witch’s brew,”

she said.

Broker rubbed his chin. “Did you point out, to him, what you just told me-give him a few shots, you know, in the back and forth?”

Back to the folded arms. “I may have told him he had some classic control issues.”

“Uh-huh.” Broker stared at her.

“I mean-he systematically killed the relationship. When he didn’t get promoted, his obsessiveness went from mild to full-blown. They had put off having a child until he became a captain. When he didn’t get the rank, he privately had a vasectomy. Then the drinking started. And the abuse. Every day he was on her, drip, drip, drip, like weather torture. The belittling, the silent anger. When he finally destroyed her, there wasn’t much left.”

Slowly Broker stood up, carried the book to the desk and set it down. He wrote the title in his notebook: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health. Fourth Edition.