Bad Love

'multiple social problems.' Under DIAGNOSIS: 'prob. chron. schiz.' The rest of the categories- PROGNOSIS, FAMILY SUPPORT, MEDICAL HISTORY, OTHER PSYCH. TREATMENT-had been left blank. Nothing about 'bad love.'

At the bottom of the form were notations of referral for food stamps. The signature read, 'R. Basille, SWA.'

The facing page was white and smooth, marked only with the notation, 'Will follow as needed, R.B., SWA.' The date was eight weeks prior to the murder. I handed the folder back.

'Not much,' I said.

She gave a sad smile. 'Paperwork wasn't Becky's forte.'

'So you have no idea how many times she actually saw him?'

'Guess that doesn't say much for my administrative skills, does it? But I'm not one of those people who believes in riding the staff, checking out every little picayune detail. I try to find the best people I can, motivate them, and give them room to move. Generally it works out. With Becky…'

She threw up her hands. 'She was a doll, a really sweet person. Not much for rules and regulations, but so what?'

She shook her head. 'We'd talked about it- helping her get her paperwork in on time. She promised to try, but to tell the truth, I didn't harbor much hope. And I didn't care. Because she was productive where it counted- getting on the phone all day with agencies and arguing for every last penny for her cases. She stayed late, did whatever it took to help them. Who knows? Maybe she was going that extra mile for Hewitt.'

She picked up the phone. 'Mary? Coffee, please… No, just one.'

Putting it down, she said, 'The real horror is that it could happen again. We have a steel corral now, to direct them out onto the street after they get their meds. The county finally sent us a guard and the detector, but you tell me how to predict which of them is going to blow.'

'We're not very good prophets under the best of circumstances.'

'No, we're not. Hundreds of people file in here each week, for meds and vouchers. We've got to let them in. We're the court of last resort. Any of them could be another Hewitt. Even if we wanted to lock them up, we couldn't. The state hospitals that haven't been shut down are filled to capacity- I don't know what your theory is about psychosis, but mine is that most psychotics are born with it- it's biological, like any other illness. But instead of treating them, we demonize them or idealize them, and they get caught in the squeeze between the do-gooders who think they should be allowed to run free and the skinflints who think all they need is to pull themselves up by the bootstraps.'

'I know,' I said. 'When I was in grad school the whole community psych thing was in full bloom- schizophrenia as an alternative lifestyle, liberating patients from the back wards and empowering them to take over their own treatment.'

'Empowering.' She laughed without opening her mouth.

'I had a professor who was a fanatic on the subject,' I said. 'Studied the mental health system in Belgium or somewhere and wrote a book on it. He had us do a paper on deinstitutionalization. The more I researched it, the less feasible it seemed. I started to wonder what would happen to psychotics who needed medication and couldn't be counted upon to take it. He handed the paper back with one comment, 'Medication is mind control,' and gave me a C-minus.'

'Well, I give you an A. Some of our patients can't be counted upon to feed themselves, let alone calibrate dosage. In my opinion, deinstitutionalization's the major culprit in the homeless problem. Sure, some street people are working folks who hit the skids, but at least thirty or forty percent are severely mentally debilitated. They belong in hospitals, not under some freeway. And now with all the weird street drugs out there, the old cliche that the mentally ill aren't violent just isn't true anymore. Each year it gets uglier and uglier, Dr. Delaware. I pray there won't be another Hewitt, but I don't count on it.'

'Do you try at all to identify which patients are violent?'

'If we have police records, we take them seriously, but like I said, that's rare. We've got to be our own police here. If someone goes around making threats, we call security. But most of them are quiet. Hewitt was. Didn't really relate to anyone else that I'm aware of- that's why we're probably not going to be much help to Detective Sturgis. What exactly is he after, anyway?'

'Apparently, he suspects Hewitt had a friend who may be harassing some people, and he's trying to find out if the friend was a patient here.'

'Well, after Sturgis called me I asked some of the other workers if they'd seen Hewitt with anyone, and none of them had. The only one who might have known was Becky.'

'Is she the only one who worked with him?'

She nodded.

'How long had she been working here?'

'A little over a year. She got her assistantship from junior college last summer and applied right afterward. One of those second careers- she'd worked as a secretary for a while, decided to go back to school in order to do something socially important- her words.'

Her eyes flickered and her mouth set- the lower lip compressing and making her look older.

'Such a sweet girl,' she said. She shook her head, then looked at me. 'You know- I just thought of something. Hewitt's attorney- the one defending him on that theft thing? He might know if Hewitt had any friends. I think I've got his name tucked away somewhere- hold on.'

She went to the file, opened the middle drawer, and began flipping. 'Just one second, so much junk in here… He called me- the attorney- after Becky's murder. Wanting to know if there was anything he could do. I think he wanted to talk- to get his own guilt off his chest. I didn't have time for… ah, here we go.'

She pulled out a piece of cardboard stapled with business cards. Working a staple free with her fingernails, she removed a card and gave it to me.

Cheap white paper, green letters.

Andrew Coburg

Attorney-at-Law

The Human Interest Law Center

1912 Lincoln Avenue

Venice, California

'Human interest law,' I said.

'I think it's one of those storefront things.'

'Thanks,' I said, pocketing the card. 'I'll pass it along to Detective Sturgis.'

The door opened and Mary came in with the coffee.

Jean Jeffers thanked her and told her to tell someone named Amy that she'd be ready to see her in a minute.

When the door closed, she began stirring her coffee.

'Well,' she said, 'it was nice talking to you. Sorry I couldn't do more.'

'Thanks for your time,' I said. 'Is there anyone else I could talk to who might be able to help?'

'No one I can think of.'

'What about the woman he took hostage?'

'Adeline? Now there's a really sad story. She'd transferred over here a month before from a center in South Central because she had high blood pressure and wanted a safer environment.'

She threw up her hands again and gave a sour laugh.

'Any particular reason Hewitt grabbed her?' I said.

'You mean did she know him?'

'Yes.'

She shook her head. The hair flap obscured her eye and she left it there. 'Just pure bad luck. She happened to be sitting at a desk in the hall, working, just as he was running out, and he grabbed her.'

She walked me to the door. People kept coming out of the psychiatrist's office. She looked at them.

'How can you ever know someone like that, anyway?' she said. 'When you get down to it, how can you ever really know anyone?'