Prodigy Page 4

  From there, she worked as a prostitute, and went through a string of boyfriends who got her pregnant and beat her up, not necessarily in that order. She’d had three children, all of them removed from her custody, and two months ago had been arrested for attacking one Melvin Jones with a steak knife.

  For Barrett, Monica’s case stirred up eerie emotions and memories. Like the night her father tracked them down to the tiny apartment over the music store. His fists pounding on the security door. The fear in her mother’s eyes, Justine crying, Sophie and Max shouting that they were calling the cops. And Barrett, eight years old, shrieking at the door as it started to break, “Go away! Go away!” The sirens, the red-and-blue lights flashing through the window. Terrified of being taken from her mother. Of wishing he would just die.

  To Barrett, this Monica Harris carried the scent of what could have happened if her mother had not run from her father. The night they fled was still crisp in her mind. She was in the front seat, Justine asleep between them, as they drove, stopping only for gas, eating Wonder Bread and peanut butter sandwiches slapped together at a truck stop with a white plastic knife. Her mother barely speaking, her raccoon eyes fixed on the road. Twenty hours of driving, and the acrid smell of burning oil, until the engine seized in lower Manhattan. With two small children, a ruined station wagon, and fifteen dollars in a ripped K-Mart purse, Ruth Conyors’ life could have gone many ways.

  For Monica Harris, it had gone all wrong, and now the court needed two questions answered. Could she stand trial for her crime, or was her mental illness so severe that she was not competent to go before a judge and jury? If that was answered in the affirmative the next big question, and the one that could get parlayed into a not guilty by reason of insanity plea (NGRI) was: As a result of her mental illness could she understand right from wrong?

  Barrett’s task was to write up a ten-to-twenty-page report that detailed Monica’s history and pull together her evaluation. She’d talk about Monica’s recurrent depression, intermittent paranoia, and severe post-traumatic stress disorder. She’d mention Monica’s borderline personality disorder and how that caused her emotions to cycle uncontrollably. But aside from all that, at the time she stabbed Melvin Jones, even though it was in the heat-of-the-moment, Monica did know that it was wrong, and her case would fall apart. The judge would determine that she had the ability to choose a non-criminal method for dealing with her boyfriend—such as a restraining order—and as long as she could take part in her defense, she’d stand trial. Monica wouldn’t go to a hospital; she’d serve time.

  “Shit,” Barrett muttered, feeling heaviness in her body and a resistance to the work that lay ahead. She pictured Monica, dressed in hospital-issue pajamas, rubber-soled slippers, and a thin cotton robe. Her blond hair had grown skunk roots and her eyes were amazingly pale, as though the color had been drained from them. At first, all she’d wanted from Barrett was a cigarette. As the hours had passed the thin woman who’d stabbed her boyfriend, and sometimes pimp, laid out a story that was a roller-coaster ride of how a life gets twisted into something not worth living. Her raspy voice had dulled as she spoke about the rapes and the beatings and how every so often a rage exploded inside, and if there was a knife, or a gun, or a bottle of pills, someone would get hurt. Usually it was herself, sometimes someone else; this time it was Melvin. She wasn’t sorry, but said she would be if it would help her case. “Melvin is a piece of shit,” she’d told Barrett. “He had it coming. I should have killed the bastard.”

  Barrett stared at her dictating machine. “Just do it,” she clicked on the machine. She needed to work, to try and stop her thoughts from racing back over her unraveling life. She saw Ralph’s panicked face, as she walked in on him and Carol in bed—her bed. She heard Monica’s cigarette-cured voice, “I should have killed the bastard.”

  The tape whirred quietly as Barrett—using what she called her New York voice— laid down Monica’s history, each of the arrests, suicide attempts, rapes, betrayals, beatings, the failed tries to get off drugs, to go to school, and to be a mother, only to have each of her children taken away.

  She was halfway through when the phone rang.

  “Barrett, it’s Anton.” Her boss’s nasal Boston accent greeted her.

  “What’s up?”

  “I got some records on the Martin case, do you want me to bring them down?”

  “Absolutely,” Barrett perked at the one potential bright spot on her horizon. “And Anton, I really appreciate your thinking of me. I can use the extra bucks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  ___

  Anton Fielding, medical director for the forensic center, hung up the receiver and stared out the windows of his ninth-floor corner office. He pushed his thinning gray bangs back against his scalp, and wondered why he hadn’t told her the truth. What difference would it make? She’d find out on her own. There wasn’t keeping much back from the good Dr. Conyors. His gaze fell on the recent edition of Psychiatry and the Law Review. Wherever he looked, there she was with another article on the classification of sociopaths, or taxonomy of stalkers, or … . He was happy for her; at least that’s what he said in public. But the truth was, he was facing fifty and had just been turned down for tenure—for the second time. He had one shot left. His last interview had left a bitter taste, as the committee had drifted away from him and onto his protégé. He’d smiled and didn’t let them see how much pain he was in as they talked about his “nice little papers” but that they didn’t “quite make the cut for a full professorship, maybe next year.” “And how come Dr. Conyors wasn’t on the tenure track?” The answer to that was obvious, but not the sort of thing you bring up in a room of tight-assed academics. You had to make a living, and for the extreme honor of being on the tenure track you got paid forty thousand less a year. Barrett Conyors was no fool. Before long, she’d take her pages-long bibliography and parlay it into a juicy faculty position at Columbia or Cornell. At least that’s what he’d do.

  He leaned across his desk and picked up an eight-inch-thick binder. He hated himself for this stomach-churning jealousy. Barrett had bailed him out of more than one tough case. She never complained and she loved her work. She’d even asked him if he wanted to work with her on the development of her sociopathy scale and classification system. At the time he’d declined, citing that his own research consumed all available time. And now … in two weeks her groundbreaking paper, “An Outcomes-Based Classification of Sociopathy and its Ramifications for Recidivism” was slated for The American Journal of Medicine. It was bad enough that her work would revolutionize the way everyone evaluated sociopaths, but that she’d had the audacity to send a forensic paper to one of the largest and most prestigious journals, and that they’d accepted it … Why couldn’t he have swallowed his damn pride and taken her up on her offer? Even if he weren’t the first author, he’d still have gotten his name added to dozens of subsequent publications. “Idiot,” he muttered, closing the door behind him and shaking the handle to ensure it was locked. “Idiot.”

  ___

  A knock at the door interrupted Barrett’s nearly completed dictation. “It’s open,” she shouted. Balancing one of Monica’s files in her lap, she turned to see Anton’s smiling face. “Thank you,” she said, noticing the voluminous manila-covered chart wedged under his arm.

  “This is only a fraction of it,” he admitted. “But I figured next time you’re at Croton, you can go through the microfiche and read to your heart’s content.”

  “He was there for eighteen years,” she said. “Did you know I interviewed him—or at least tried to—when I was doing my fellowship? I wanted to use him as a test case.”

  “What happened?”

  “His sister happened. I was working on an analysis of antisocial and criminal behavior and I thought he’d add an interesting twist; his case was fascinating. So I met with him the one time, had him sign a consent to be a test subject, and two days later I get a call from Dean Werther.” />
  “Really?” Anton asked. “Not a good sign.”

  “It wasn’t. Apparently, Jimmy Martin has a twin sister and she called, threatening lawsuits. Said I was causing irreparable psychological damage by interviewing her brother.”

  “That’s a stretch,” Anton commented, pushing aside stacks of papers to clear a spot for the file on Barrett’s desk and then sitting down.

  “Stretch or no, Werther told me that I was to cease-and-desist any and all contact with Jimmy Martin. I think his exact words were, ‘this may be bullshit, but bullshit plus a $500-an-hour attorney equals years of litigation hell’. Which is why this surprised me.”

  Barrett dragged the chart toward her and opened it. She looked at Anton. “And how did he ever get hooked up with Morris Kravitz? I didn’t think forensic work was his bag.”

  Anton chuckled, “I shouldn’t say this, because Morris was a great guy, but he’d go wherever the money was, and as you’re about to find out, Jimmy Martin can afford the best.”

  “I’m surprised the forensic review board would have allowed Kravitz to be his psychiatrist. He’s not trained to handle the monitoring part.”

  Anton shifted position and looked out through Barrett’s single grime-smeared window at a pair of pigeons roosting on the ledge. “Maybe they couldn’t get anyone else.”

  “Please,” Barrett replied sarcastically, “with his kind of money? I’m surprised they weren’t lined up. And Anton …”

  “Yes?”

  “I appreciate your throwing my name in like this. I don’t really want to talk about it, but … it looks like Ralph and I … shit!”

  “What?”

  “It’s not good,” she admitted, finding the words hard to get out.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” she forced the corners of her lips into a smile. “He’s staying at his mom’s till we figure things out. Anyway, thanks for thinking of me. Because I’m going to need the money.”

  “Don’t mention it,” he stood.

  Barrett looked up at him, she considered Anton a friend, but even so it felt odd telling him about Ralph. The worst part though, had been last Sunday dinner at her mother’s apartment over what used to be Sophie and Max’s used bookstore—but was now a Korean deli—on the Bowery. Up till then, she hadn’t even told Justine. So when Ruth had innocently asked, “Where’s Ralph?” the whole mess had tumbled out.

  “So how did Kravitz get to work with Martin?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s just odd … do you know how he died?”

  “Hypoglycemic shock, he was diabetic.”

  “He wasn’t that old, was he?”

  “Fifties.”

  “And it just happened.”

  “Saturday, I think.”

  “Interesting,” she flipped through the chart until she came to a copy of James Cyrus Martin IV’s conditional release agreement. She turned to the page of stipulations and ran her finger down the bulleted terms that outlined the do’s-and-don’ts for his return to the community.

  “Anyway, I’ll leave you to it,” Anton commented.

  “Right,” she said, not looking up, and barely registering the sound of her office door closing behind him.

  She found what she was looking for halfway down the second page. Under the heading of “Psychiatric Supervision,” it stated, “Releasee is to meet at least weekly with a board-appointed psychiatrist.” Farther down it spelled out the responsibilities for the psychiatrist that included monthly reports back to the forensic review board, random drug screens, oversight of medication, and appropriate monitoring of same.

  She leaned back and watched as a mottled pigeon awkwardly flapped its wings and banked up against the guano-stained brick of the adjacent building. Anton had approached her on Tuesday morning—the day after Charlie Rohr shot himself—with taking over Martin’s case. When he’d told her that she could pretty much name her fee, it had felt like a gift. Amazing how quickly it all happened. She’d see Jimmy tomorrow—Thursday—and by her doing that, his chart would reflect total compliance; he wouldn’t miss a single week of meeting with a psychiatrist.

  She worked her way backward through the conditional release agreement. Most of it was boilerplate legalese that she’d read a thousand times before, a laundry list of all the rules that Jimmy Martin had to follow if he wanted to stay out of the maximum-security hospital—required at all times to wear an electronic monitoring device and if he intended to travel farther than a quarter-mile radius from his home, he needed written permission. All his medications were to be supervised and any “significant changes” in his drug regimen had to be approved by the review board.

  The main thing that struck her as odd was that Kravitz had gone to the patient’s home for their sessions. Barrett provided psychiatric coverage for other releasees in mid-Manhattan, but they all came to her office—usually in the company of their parole officer or case manager, This would be a first and it didn’t sit right. She’d told Anton that the only way she’d take the case was if Martin agreed to a police escort. Apparently, that was no big deal. She’d gotten an affirmative response in under half an hour.

  She flipped to the front of the chart and fanned the pages in search of a typed summary. She pictured the obese and twitching blond man she’d interviewed when she was still in training. Scanning through the documents, she remembered why she’d found his case intriguing. Jimmy Martin had spent well over a decade at Croton following his arrest at age eighteen in the apartment of a young violinist from South Carolina, Nicole Foster. Ms. Foster, along with her bass player fiancé, had been brutally and sadistically butchered. Immediately following Jimmy’s arrest he had a psychotic break and was deemed incompetent to stand trial, and eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity. Beyond that was the curious twist that the murders were actually committed by a second man, Mason Carter, who subsequently hung himself in prison prior to being tried. Also odd was Jimmy’s consistent assertion that he’d never touched the murder victims, which was corroborated by a lack of physical evidence linking him to the mutilated bodies. What was clear, however, was that Jimmy had been fixated on Nicole Foster, and had been stalking her. The prosecution also had strong evidence that money had passed between him and the murderer. At his arraignment, Carter had alleged that he’d been hired by Martin to scare away Ms. Foster’s fiancé, and that in the heat of the moment, things had gotten out of control. Key pieces of that were never confirmed, and within days Carter was found slumped down in his cell with a sheet knotted around his neck.

  For the next half hour Barrett gleaned whatever she could from the forensic center’s records. It was a creepy case, but she found a comfort in the work, not having to think about Ralph or Charlie Rohr. She scanned Kravitz’s weekly notes. Clearly, he was no forensic psychiatrist and she found little insight into Jimmy Martin’s internal world. Still, it felt good to be immersed in the unknown of a new case.

  The phone rang. Without looking up, she picked up.

  “Dr. Conyors?” her secretary’s breathy voice asked.

  “Yes, Marla.”

  “There’s an Ellen Martin on the phone for you.”

  “Is something wrong, Marla?” Barrett asked, noting a tremor in her voice.

  “No. Do you want to take it? Or should I tell her you’re not in?”

  “Put her through.” Barrett listened as the line clicked, and wondered if her lucrative gig might be about to disappear.

  “Hello, Dr. Conyors?” The voice was husky, the syllables crisp.

  “Yes.”

  “I understand you’ve agreed to work with my brother; I was hoping we could have a chance to chat first. I suppose I should start by letting you know that I’m Jimmy’s conservator, so you won’t need a release to talk with me.”

  “Of course,” Barrett said, having already scanned the paperwork giving Ellen Martin responsibility for handling Jimmy’s finances and treatment.

  �
��Did you know that I met your brother one time before?” Barrett asked.

  There was a slight hesitation, “Yes, I’m aware of that, and I suppose I should explain why I didn’t want you interviewing my brother back then.”

  “No need.”

  “No, it’s actually pretty complicated. Is there any way I could get an hour or two of your time? This may be presumptuous, but I know you have to see him tomorrow … could I buy you dinner?”

  “Tonight?”

  “If you’re able, there’s a lot to tell.”

  Barrett weighed the pros and cons. Ellen Martin, as Jimmy’s conservator, could be a powerful ally in the treatment. Beyond that, it was clear from the record that Ellen had been instrumental in securing Jimmy’s release. But it was unusual, and a bit beyond the norm to have a meal with a patient’s family, still … she’d get a lot more insight out of the sister than Kravitz’s bone-dry notes. “What time?”

  “Fantastic, how’s seven?”

  FOUR

  It was dusk, the air warm and spring sweet as Barrett cut through Bryant Park and headed west. Since Ellen Martin’s call, she’d plowed through her work, and realized that several things about this case had her intrigued. The fact that she’d be getting $750 a pop for meeting with Jimmy Martin didn’t hurt. Beyond the money, she was hooked, loving the challenge of the unsolved mystery. Of the four people in that bloody apartment eighteen years ago, only Jimmy was still alive. In reading through the chart, the impression the Croton doctors had was that Jimmy was a victim. Sure, he’d been stalking the girl, but the actual murders had been committed by Mason Carter—a previously convicted sex offender. Their conclusion had been that Jimmy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  Something about that didn’t jibe—starting with Carter’s allegation that Jimmy had paid him. Admittedly, Carter would say all sorts of things if he thought it would lessen his sentence, but why was he there? It seemed statistically unlikely that Nicole Foster—a talented violinist from Charleston—would be the object of two stalkers. Plus, the detectives and the prosecution had built an argument that traced twenty thousand in cash found on Carter back to a series of withdrawals made by Jimmy Martin. If Martin hadn’t wound up at Croton—declared too crazy to stand trial—he would have faced accessory to murder, possibly more. As it was, the whole case and definitive investigation got short-circuited by Carter’s suicide and Jimmy’s not guilty by reason of insanity plea.