Author's note: Thank you for all the votes that helped this story get to Round Three of the Purple Hearts!!! Sorry for the delayed update, I've been writing articles like crazy. Without further delay...
"We're officially reopening this case," said Arlene. "And great work, guys, really. Smilley's got to access some money. We'll watch her ATM transactions. We'll get her." She looked at John. "Tell Lizzie her tip is deeply appreciated."
She was talking about the Samuels case, of course—John had been able to explain his involvement this afternoon because the new break in the case had initially come from Lizzie. They were pursuing Marian because she had information, and made a possible suspect, in Julie's murder. All the Pride and Clay stuff, John and Mike had to keep to themselves.
"Thanks, Sarge, I will," John said. He and Mike sat in chairs in Arlene's office. She'd called them in to hear their report and given them each a cold bottled water. Mike was all sweaty and his shirt and tie looked like he'd slept in them; John could only assume he himself looked worse.
Mike got up and stretched. "I'm going to try and get a good night's shut-eye," he said. "We get a hit off the ATM and we could be real busy trying to haul this chick in."
John dragged himself out of his chair, every muscle screeching in protest after the abuse from this afternoon. "I've got an errand to run," he said. "Then I'm getting my butt home, too."
Mike glanced over at him, brow furrowed, as they walked through the squad room. "You okay? You're looking kind of stiff."
"That's 'cause I am kind of stiff."
Neither of them said any more until they hit the stairwell.
"At least," said Mike, "if George Clay should happen to turn up in Marian's bank records, you can say, 'Hey, I remember that name from Pride's phone records.' It could put the whole Pride case back in play."
"I only hope we can find some good excuse for a warrant before Clay cleans up all the evidence. I mean, who would you have called speeding out of that parking lot?"
"There isn't anything more you could have done, Johnny," said Mike, "but damn, I wish we'd have caught her. We might have had both cases wrapped up by now."
"Yeah. See ya." They parted at the door.
Earlier, John had remembered something he'd been meaning to check out, and he'd given Richmond Behavioral Health a call. Lizzie was in San Diego, so he had no reason to rush home. He got in his car and drove over. It was so close to the river that he always used to stop after he had to come over here, walk across the footbridge, go out on the rocks, and enjoy the river and the kayakers rollicking by. Now he didn't think he'd ever want to go there again. All he could see when he thought about Belle Isle was Bill Pride, face down in a stinking slick of blood.
He was shown to an office with a lobby like a closet. There was barely room for the one love seat and a table with a few magazines. "Sherry Rogers, Ph.D." was emblazoned across the door. When an investigator needed some information on a mental disorder—or, perhaps, counseling for a mental disorder—this was the office they came to.
He loitered in the outer office until a bespectacled middle-aged blonde in glasses opened the door. "Detective Robin?" she said in a slow Southern drawl that John guessed was Georgian.
He crossed the room to shake her hand. "Yeah, how're you doing?"
"Fine, thanks. I'm Dr. Rogers. You need some help with a case?"
"Yeah." John walked through into a comfortable office with a desk, another small couch and a chair, crammed bookcases, and framed degrees on the wall. He picked a spot on a chair facing the desk and took out his notebook. "I ran across this term on a homicide I'm assisting with. Can you tell me what 'DBT' is?"
Dr. Rogers took a seat behind her desk. "It's a type of psychotherapy that was developed in the nineties to treat borderline personality disorder. Now it's used for other problems, too, but BPD is what it was originally developed to treat." The clinical terms sounded odd rolling so languorously off of her tongue.
John thought briefly of Tyler Greenhouse, but kept his focus on Julie Samuels. He remembered the phrase "dumb DBT group" and asked, "Is it a group therapy?"
"Partially," said Dr. Rogers. John raised his eyebrows, about to say, "Partially?" but she went on.
Dr. Rogers tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "For a lot of people with BPD, their lives are in a constant state of crisis. Some seventy-five percent come from dysfunctional families, so they have problems there. Then a lot of them choose unhealthy relationships in friends or spouses, so they have problems there. Many of them have trouble with occupational functioning, so there's problems on their job. Then they get fired, so there's money problems. That kind of thing."
She sat back in her chair and folded her hands across her stomach. "A lot of times it's hard to help them with their core problems because every time they come in, they're dealing with a new crisis. So, in DBT there's a regular weekly therapy session, and then there's a skills training group that's run like a class. It's there to teach a lot of basic skills that most of us learn as we grow up, but that borderlines for various reasons didn't have an opportunity to learn."
John blinked. "Skills like what? Reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic?"
Dr. Rogers smiled. "A lot more basic than that. A lot of borderlines need help with things like experiencing anger or fear without flying into explosive rages and doing things they might regret. They need support in things like, how to say soothing things to themselves when they're upset to help calm themselves down. Correctly interpreting things that other people do and say. Some of it is like assertiveness training. It's run something like a high school class, and there's assigned homework."
John jotted a couple of notes. "I guess it makes sense that a teenaged girl might feel a little silly having to go to something like that."
"Possibly," said Dr. Rogers.
John thought again of Tyler Greenhouse. "I'm thinking of another case we're waiting to go to court on where the perp was actually diagnosed with this. You said, 'explosive rage'. Would that include things like kicking in windows and threatening to throw your daughter's dog off a sixth-floor balcony?"
"It might," said Dr. Rogers. "It could be consistent with a lot of other things, too, but that sort of extreme behavior is common in borderlines, especially men. It's lifelong unless the person seeks treatment, so that child probably grew up with this kind of behavior."
"Really?" said John. "What other kinds of things do these people do?"
Dr. Rogers looked up at him through her glasses. "Well, a number of behaviors are commonly reported. But borderlines are kind of like snowflakes—no two are exactly alike. You can have two vastly different people with the same diagnosis. One thing that's seen a lot is 'splitting', where a borderline sees a situation or a person as perfect under one set of circumstances, and then something happens, and they completely forget all the good qualities and only see the bad. One day a person can do no wrong, the next day they're the very devil. And they can flip back and forth between these two extremes several times in one day. Other behaviors that are common are fears of abandonment by important people. Lack of confidence in themselves and their ability to handle issues with other people. Borderlines tend a lot to try to handle issues with other people through third parties."
This didn't sound like Tyler Greenhouse, and as far as Julie was concerned, John didn't know enough to know if it was relevant or not.
"Is this helpful to you at all? I'm not sure how it relates to the case you're working on."
"I'm not sure either," said John. "Let me ask you something else. These girls who are attracted to bad or unavailable partners, like marrying guys in prison, or looking for a pimp and becoming prostitutes, is that a common behavior for a borderline?" Now he was just curious. Whatever made a successful young model participate online in romantic fantasies about movie characters, and then decide to become a prostitute, probably wouldn't help either him or Mike identify her killer; but it intrigued him nonetheless.
Dr. Rogers leaned back in her deluxe office chair and bounced it up and down a little. "It's common for a girl who had an unhealthy relationship with a parent. These girls don't have the same understanding of how a relationship is supposed to work as you or I might. Instead of envisioning a reciprocal give and take with somebody who's nice from the get-go, they might have fantasies about someone who's hard to get for whatever reason. Earning his approval, being so special that someone who wouldn't ordinarily want them, changes their mind and wants them. They want to feel loved, but they don't unless they have to work hard to earn it."
John remembered the talk online about the escort who had convinced a wealthy client to marry her, the talk about the glamorous lifestyle. "So a girl who's, say, a model—this victim was actually a model, she made it into British Vogue—she might be doing it as a means of getting approval. Looking better than anybody else, appealing to the wealthiest and most unavailable guys, that sort of thing. Not approval from the pimp, so much, but approval from the guys, if they were really wealthy upper-class men."
"I don't know all the particulars, but I won't tell you it isn't plausible. If you need to know more along those lines and you can get medical records, I might be able to be more helpful."
John jotted notes. "I don't know if there would be any information there that might help us solve the case, but I'll keep it in mind. There's a lot of weird stuff going on with this case, anyway. It's got connections to other stuff you wouldn't believe. I'm just trying to sort it all out." He put his notebook and pen away and looked up. "But you're saying that just because this girl was interested in getting involved with prostitution and was in a DBT group, she isn't necessarily borderline."
"You couldn't make that conclusion based on just that, no."
John stood up and reached across the desk to shake hands. "Well, this does give me something to think about. I might be back in touch about it later. Thank you, doc."
"Glad to be of help."
***
John was walking through the parking lot to his car when his cell phone rang. He checked his caller ID. It was a number he didn't recognize.
"Detective Robin."
Lizzie's voice bubbled into his ear. "Johnny, it's me! Have you seen the news?"
"No, I've been busy, why?"
"Somebody just got stabbed at one of the panels here, it was crazy!"
"Were you there? Are you okay?"
"No, not at that panel, I wasn't. I was out in the hallway! I heard all this screaming, and the paramedics came in, and they brought the guy out on a stretcher! But, that isn't my big news. We won the fan film competition! Our film won the George Lucas Selects award."
John heard a secret smile in her voice. "That's great, babe. You get to meet him?"
"No, he doesn't actually come to the con. He announces the winner over Skype, or something. But I didn't get to be there for that, either." Excitement bubbled over the line. "Because that isn't my big news, either. Something incredible happened! Betcha can't guess."
"Lizzie, you gotta give me a clue, here."
"Well, Hollywood people do come to this con ..."
"That's my clue? C'mon, I know you didn't get into a movie or something. Did you?"
Lizzie laughed. "Well, not quite. But this commercial director screened the film and met me before the awards were announced, and he's signing me for some TV ads for a new video game! The actress who was supposed to do them broke her leg horseback riding, and they're dropping her and signing me! They're gonna run everywhere, Johnny, and it's for really good money!"
"Hon, that's incredible! When do you film?"
"The first one, right away," said Lizzie. "That's why I'm calling. I have to stay longer for the filming. I'm so nervous! I'm playing this badass video game character–I come to life off the computer screen, and I've got a karate routine I have to learn in like, one afternoon. I've got a costume fitting tonight and a wig fitting and a script to learn. Oh, my God, oh, my God!"
She was shrieking into the phone. John could envision her dancing around in what must be a very busy hallway, from the background noise.
"Don't even worry about it, babe," he told her. "They know what they're looking for, and they wouldn't have picked you if you weren't it. You love doing this stuff. You'll be great. I'm so proud of you, Lizzie!"
"They showed me a computer simulation of what it will look like. It's really going to be cool! They're going to do a longer one for a Super Bowl ad."
"Oh, wow. You're gonna have a blast, babe. What video game is it?"
"This is totally new. It's based on a movie that's coming out this winter."
"Take pictures," said John. "We'll have a party when the first ad comes on TV."
"Oh, I'm taking pictures, all right. I bought another memory card for my camera just for this."
"When are you going to be home?"
"Sunday night or Monday morning. Depends on how tired I am. I'll have some money, so I won't have to take the red-eye."
"Lizzie, it just sounds fantastic. You be careful and have fun. I'll be waiting for you when you get back."
"I'll see you soon. I love you, Johnny."
John gulped and glanced down at the phone with a guilty twitch. They had been going out a year, counting the time in the hospital, and nobody had said the "L" word yet. He had been secretly hoping that perhaps she didn't feel that way, that perhaps they could just keep on keeping company for a while, because if she didn't shape up, one or the other of them might have to move out.
He put the phone back to his ear and said, "I miss you, too, babe." And prayed she'd think it was the connection. He said goodbye and ended the call, feeling a little weird. He really couldn't tell whether she'd bought it or not. Now, on top of having Ma and Marian to worry about, he had to worry that maybe Lizzie might be having trouble at her taping, trying to learn a script and a martial arts routine while worrying about why he hadn't said, "I love you."
Actually, it had been sort of nice, having the time to clean the place up without Lizzie lounging around at home, messing it up again as he cleaned. She was already behind on her half of the rent again, and he was starting to get concerned about it. When they'd first started going out, he hadn't envisioned this at all. She had been so beautiful, and the sex had been so great, he just would never have imagined feeling like he had the past couple of months.
But she'd sounded so excited on the phone. She'd liked making the fan film, and now she could do almost the same thing and get paid. Maybe it didn't matter about her stalled modeling career. A person could make real money doing commercials.
Maybe they could hire someone to clean.
His phone rang again. John looked at it and saw the same number. Oh, shit. What in fuck am I going to tell her? But not answering would be worse.
"What's up, babe?"
"I forgot. Did you call your mom?"
John dragged his feet. "Uh, well ..."
"John! How come you didn't call your mom? She's going to blame me, you know, and this time it isn't my fault!"
"After all that crap I had to drive down there for, I'm almost afraid to pick up the phone. I just don't want to hear it, you know?"
"But she got fired!"
"I know."
"And she's all alone down there."
"I know."
"She's got to be worried about finding another job, and when I've lost jobs, I've always felt like total shit."
"Oh, come on, when have you ever lost a job?"
Lizzie went quiet. Just when John thought he might have lost the connection, she said, "You don't know rejection until you've modeled in New York. Jesus, Johnny, after the whole newspaper thing? Call your mom!"
He broke out in sweat. Was that some kind of comment on his not having said the three magic words? "Okay, okay." He found himself holding up both hands, as if to protect himself from empty air. "I'm on my way home now. I'll call her."
He had to say something to her; he was beginning to feel like a cad. He swallowed hard and said, "And, Lizzie? We'll talk later. Really. I don't want you to worry."
Silence. Then Lizzie said, "Um, okay. But promise me you'll call your mom."
"Okay, I'm going to go right home and take care of it. Go to your fitting and I'll talk to you later."
"You bet you will. Talk to ya."
"Yeah." John ended the call. At least she hadn't sounded like she was about to cry or something. Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal to say things like, "You know, we started off great, and then..."
She had to hear it, if she was planning to stay around. It was best to just be honest. No way was he signing up for a whole life like the past few months.