Self-Defence

Call his publisher… too late to phone New York.

I let my own imagination run on: Trafficant seducing the long-haired girl. Things getting out of hand… or maybe she'd resisted and he'd raped, again, then killed her. And told Lowell. Lowell panicking, rushing to bury the evidence, unaware that a little girl was watching.

A little girl who wet the bed- maybe dank sheets had aroused her.

Waking and walking and witnessing.

And paying for it now.

***

The med school cafeteria was a mass of flatware clatter, white coats everywhere. Soon after I walked in, a pretty Asian woman in a plum-colored silk suit came up to me.

'Dr. Delaware? Wendy Embrey.'

She was young and petite with long, straight, blue-black hair and onyx eyes. A faculty picture badge clipped to her lapel showed her hair permed. W. TAKAHASHI-EMBREY, M.D., PSYCHIATRY.

'I've got a table over there,' she said. 'Would you like to get some lunch?'

'No, I'm fine.'

She smiled. 'Have you eaten here before?'

'Occasionally.'

'Are you on staff?' she said, as we walked to her table.

'Crosstown.'

'I interned crosstown. Are you in Psychiatry?'

'Pediatrics. I'm a child psychologist.'

She gave me a curious look and we sat down. On her tray were a tuna sandwich, coleslaw, red Jell-O, and milk. She unwrapped her utensils and spread her napkin on her lap. 'But Lucretia was your patient?'

'Yes. Once in a while I see adults- short-term consults, usually stress-related. She was referred by the police.'

Another curious look. She couldn't have been more than a year or two out of residency, but she'd learned her therapeutic nuances.

'I consult to the police occasionally,' I said.

'What kind of stress had she been through?'

'She was a juror on the Bogeyman trial.'

She picked up her fork. 'Well, that could certainly be difficult. How long did you treat her?'

'Only a few sessions. She came to me because of sleep problems. A recurrent nightmare and, later, some somnambulism.'

'Walking in her sleep?'

'At least once, before the suicide attempt. She woke up in her kitchen. I guess, looking back, it can be seen as a rehearsal for the attempt. She also had an episode of something that looked like narcolepsy- falling asleep at her desk at work and waking up on the floor.'

'Yes, she told me about that. Said you'd sent her to a neurologist and he pronounced her healthy.'

'Phil Austerlitz. He's on staff here.'

'Did he come up negative, the way she claims?'

'Yes. He thought it was stress.'

The fork dipped into the coleslaw. 'That's what the neurologist at Woodbridge said, too. Interesting, though, the somnambulism. Do you think the suicide attempt could have occurred during some sort of sleepwalking trance? I've read case histories of self-destruction during arousal from deep sleep. Have you ever seen anything that extreme?'

'No suicide attempts, but I have treated children with night terrors who hurt themselves thrashing and walking around. I even had a family where the children and the father had terrors. The father used to try to strangle the mother in his sleep. And there are cases of people committing murder and claiming somnambulism.'

'Claiming? You don't believe it's possible?'

'It's possible, but it's rare.'

She ate some slaw, looked at her sandwich, then at me.

'It's a strange case. Her denial's so absolute. Usually, with attempters, you see just the opposite: guilt, confessions, promises never to do it again, because they feel physically lousy and want to get out of hold. The really severe ones- the ones who're sorry they failed- either get really mad or go mute. But Lucretia's cooperative and articulate; she understands why she has to be observed. Yet she remains adamant that she never tried to kill herself. Which would be a dumb approach to take if you were trying to convince your psychiatrist to let you go, right? In the wrong hands you could be tagged as delusional.'

'You don't see her as delusional?'

'I'm not sure how I see her yet, but she sure doesn't look crazy. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think she truly believes, on a conscious level, that she didn't make an attempt.'

'Did she give you an explanation for what happened?'

'She says she fell asleep and woke up in the hospital and that her first thought when you told her why she was there was someone had tried to kill her. Now that she's fully awake, she realizes it makes no sense. All in all, she's pretty confused. I could be missing the boat completely, but I don't see any schizophrenic output. Just depression- but not the crushing depression you'd associate with an attempt. I had our psychologist test her for a bipolar disorder. She seems to have such a big stake in keeping busy, I thought maybe there was some mania going on and the daytime sleep was crashing after an episode. He found her MMPI somewhat elevated on depression and anxiety but no hint of anything manic. And her Lie Scale was normal, so she seemed to be telling the truth. He said unless she's been tested a lot and knows how to fool the instruments, there's no serious personality disturbance.'

'She'd have other reasons to be anxious,' I said. 'Just before the attempt, we got into some areas that upset her. She had a very isolated childhood- a mother who died when she was an infant, a highly troubled relationship with an absentee father. But she was always coherent, and if she was really disturbed I doubt she could have lasted three months on that jury.'

'What areas upset her?'

I described the dream.

'Interesting,' she said. 'Any indication he molested her?'

'She denies ever being with him, but her brother told me she spent a summer up at his place when she was four. So she's either denying that or she's repressed it completely. As to what happened up there, I don't know.'

I told her about Trafficant, emphasizing how speculative everything was.

'Well,' she said, 'at the very least it sounds like lots of garbage coming to the surface. Going to take a long time to sift through. This is one where we'll have to tread carefully.'

'Adding to the garbage, she had a brief episode of working as a prostitute when she was eighteen. She denies any guilt, but there's probably lots. And she developed a crush on one of the detectives who worked on the Bogeyman case, the one who referred her to me. He's gay.'

She put the sandwich down. 'Just a few sessions and all that came out?'

'Most of it during the last one,' I said. 'Too much, too soon, but I couldn't stop her. That night she put her head in the oven.'

'Lovely.'

'Are you planning to let her go after the seventy-two's up?'

'She's not psychotic or violent, I can't see a judge giving me any more time. But she sure needs careful outpatient follow-up… A prostitute- she seems so prim. How long is brief?'

'Part of a summer. She claims she's been celibate since. And Phil Austerlitz said she had a real aversion to being touched.'