“Hobson asked me about him. What have you gotten yourself into?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“Where are you, Vanessa? I’ll come there. We’ll be together. I’ll help you get through this.”
“I don’t want you to come here.”
“Please. You need help.”
“I want you to get out of the apartment, Sam. I want you to go into hiding.”
“Vanessa…”
“No. I won’t tell you where I am. It will be even more dangerous if you’re here. You’ll be a distraction.”
“Vanessa,” Sam repeated, but he was speaking to a dead line.
Ami was more puzzled than upset when Vanessa Kohler ended their conversation. She knew that Vanessa wanted to help Dan. What she didn’t understand was why Vanessa and Dan wouldn’t give her the information she needed to do her job. Ami noticed the clock. It was time to pick up Ryan at school.
Ryan was waiting when Ami pulled next to the curb. He looked exhausted, and he didn’t say anything when he slid into the seat beside her.
“How was school, Tiger?” Ami asked as she pulled into traffic.
“Okay,” Ryan mumbled.
“I saw Dan today. I visited him at the hospital.”
Ryan looked at her expectantly.
“He says, ‘Hi,’ and he wanted you to know that he’s a little banged up, but okay.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. When I saw him he was sitting up and talking just fine.”
“Will he be coming home?” Ryan asked, his eyes wide and full of hope.
“No, Ryan. He’s okay physically, but he hurt Mr. Lutz and that policeman, so he’ll have to stay in jail until that’s cleared up.”
“But after that? Can he come home then?”
“That’s a way off, Tiger. Let’s wait and see.”
Ryan got very quiet. His shoulders slumped, and he cast his eyes down. Ami felt terrible. She wasn’t sure what would happen to Dan. He had been trying to protect Ben Branton when he hurt Barney Lutz, and there was no way he could know that a policeman had grabbed him when he hurt the officer. Maybe a good defense attorney would get him probation or a light sentence. Even if he got probation, Ami was certain that Dan would move on. He had no roots in Portland. Come to think of it, he didn’t seem to have roots anywhere. She had asked him where he was from when they first met, and he had told her that he’d moved around a lot as a kid and didn’t think of any place as home. She’d accepted the answer then, but in light of what she was finding out the answer seemed evasive.
Then she realized that the answer to the mystery of Daniel Morelli was some unknown lawyer’s problem, not hers. Tomorrow, she would start asking her attorney friends for recommendations. When she found a good criminal attorney, she would give the name to Vanessa.
This realization helped her forget about Morelli for all of three minutes. He might be out of her legal life, but she couldn’t get him out of her thoughts. There was something tragic about her lodger, a sadness that had bubbled to the surface during their brief meetings at the hospital. Ami was certain that Morelli’s wounds and legal problems were not solely to blame for his fear and depression. Vanessa Kohler had said that he was “emotionally wounded.” Who had inflicted Dan’s psychological wounds? Maybe it was something that had happened in Vietnam when he was a prisoner. She imagined that their Vietnamese captors did terrible things to American prisoners of war. Did Morelli have a mental defense to his charges?
Ami remembered a case she had worked on when she was with her firm. The client had been a seriously disturbed veteran, and they’d used a psychiatrist as an expert witness on posttraumatic stress disorder. Victims of PTSD often reexperienced a traumatic event, like a rape, an earthquake, or a car accident, that was outside the range of ordinary human experience. Other symptoms included guilt feelings and reduced involvement with the external world. Many Vietnam War veterans suffered from PTSD. Ami had conducted the initial interview of the expert to see if he would help their case. She remembered him as being very smart and personable. Ami was definitely not going to continue as Morelli’s attorney, but she hadn’t found a new attorney for him yet. It would certainly assist whoever ended up with Morelli’s case if she laid the groundwork for a defense. Ami was excited. First thing tomorrow she would start her search for Morelli’s lawyer. But she would also try to remember the name of the psychiatrist.
CHAPTER NINE
Dr. George French was in his late fifties and slightly overweight, but his clothes were hand-tailored so that the weight didn’t show. French’s gray-green eyes twinkled behind custom-made steel-rimmed bifocals. His skin was pale and his mustache and beard were salt-and-pepper like the fringe of hair around his otherwise bald head. When French walked into his waiting room, Ami Vergano put down the magazine she was reading.
“You’re looking well,” the psychiatrist said, flashing Ami an engaging smile.
Ami smiled back. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice.”
“Let’s talk in my office. Do you want any coffee?”
“Coffee sounds great. I need to get my brain moving.”
There was a small kitchen halfway to Dr. French’s office. The doctor stopped there and filled two cups before continuing down the hall.
“I’m sorry your firm broke up.”
“Me too.”
“It must have been quite a shock.”
Ami shrugged. “The associates never know what’s going on. One morning the partners called us into the conference room and that was that.”
“And you’re out on your own now?”
“Yeah,” she answered, embarrassed by her fall from the higher echelons of the law to the lowly ranks of the solo shingle hangers. “I’m scraping by. Mostly divorces, wills, contracts. I’ve got a small business that sends me all its work. If Microsoft or Nike asks you for the name of a good attorney, I’d appreciate the referral.”
Dr. French laughed as he stood aside to let Ami into his office. A couch upholstered in burgundy leather sat against a pastel-blue wall under a grouping of sunny prints. Across from it, on the other side of the room, was a wide window that brought light and a skyline view into the room. The psychiatrist shut his office door and motioned Ami toward one of the two chrome-and-leather chairs that flanked a low glass coffee table. He took the other chair.
“I have someone I want you to see,” Ami told the doctor.
“A client in a divorce?”
“No. Actually, it’s a case that’s been getting a lot of notoriety. Have you heard about the fight at the Little League game?”
“Who hasn’t?”
“My son is on one of the teams that were playing and the man who was arrested was renting from me. He had the apartment over my garage. He’s the person I want to talk to you about.”
“Why me?”
“You’re an expert on posttraumatic stress disorder.”
“Ah, Mazyck,” French said, mentioning the case he had been hired to work on by Ami’s old firm. Gregory Mazyck was a veteran who had holed up in his house with a hostage. Dr. French had testified that Mazyck was suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder and believed the police were Iraqis and the hostage was his best friend, who had died in his arms during the Gulf War.
“How much do you know about what happened at the Little League game?”
“Not much.”
“Okay. Well, Dan-Daniel Morelli, my client-is a carpenter. I don’t know his age, but I’m guessing he’s in his
