The Cutout
1.
Violet McCune had dragged herself
into my therapy office almost three months ago covered in angry bruises. I’d
been listening to her sob her guts out for almost an hour. Fifty minutes to be
exact. It was the same old story, but with a nasty twist: tan ex-husband who
arrived in the middle of the night, broke down the door, and beat the woman
senseless because he’d heard from his buddies down at the station that she’d
started dating again. And, oh yeah, he was a member of the LAPD.
I stupidly advised her
to file a police report and get a restraining order. What I couldn’t get her to
even consider was what I then believed was by far her best option, going to a
temporary woman’s shelter with her children.
“He’ll find me. He
always finds me.” She dropped the shelter’s business card in my wastebasket and
left without paying me for the session.
I’d offered to see her again for free, but she’d refused to make a
follow-up appointment. “You don’t get it, do you?” she said on her way out.
“He’s an LA cop. He can do
anything to me he wants.”
Now Violet was dead,
shot in the face last night in a convenience store parking lot not three blocks
from my office in Playa Del Rey. The snarling and barely disguised male voice
that greeted me on my answering machine first thing the next morning was less
than comforting.
“Hey, do you watch the
news? You probably read the LA Times,
right? Bad things seem to be happening to mouthy women in your neighborhood.
Well, guess what, bitch? You could be next.”
“No, I don’t think so,”
I said out loud to the voice on the machine. “You can go to hell.” The little
red light on the answering device was still beeping, showing that there were
two other unanswered calls. I deleted the robo-call from a carpet cleaning
company, and decided to ignore the request for an initial consultation from a
nasal-sounding woman named Marge who’d gotten my name from the online Yellow
Pages. Sorry, Marge Whoever-You-Are. Not going to happen. I yanked the
plug from the wall socket and shoved the annoying gizmo into my briefcase.
It was at that precise
moment that I discovered that I wasn’t as committed to my psychotherapy practice
as I thought I was, or my cozy apartment on the beach, for that matter, and
that there were very few things about LA worth dying for. I had no idea whether
or not there was a written record anywhere other than my own session notes to
prove that Violet McCune had indeed visited me at all. Had she entered my
office number on her cell phone or written our meeting down in her diary? It
seemed likely that she’d mentioned this visit to her ex-husband, possibly in a
moment of rage, perhaps even repeating verbatim what I’d said about a man who
would beat a woman to a pulp. It was just as possible that she’d told him
whatever I’d suggested she do for her own and her children’s protection,
enraging him further.
Why, oh why, do people
taunt their abusers, people they already know possess a huge capacity for
violence? Talk about Freud’s “death wish” theory. It’s the equivalent of the
soon-to-be victim in every bad horror movie confronting the serial murderer and
telling him that she knows everything he’s done and is about to go to the
police. Is that supposed to stop him in his tracks, or just make him want to
kill her sooner? I couldn’t stop wondering if our session was the last thing
Violet McCune ever talked about before her enraged ex-husband pulled the
trigger. It was something I’d he obsessing over for a very long time.
Since I didn’t take
insurance, hadn’t been paid by Violet for the session, and rarely took notes,
preferring to keep everything in my head, I thought that it was unlikely that
I’d be subpoenaed to testify, but it was still a nagging possibility that all
therapists have to face in moments like these, that despite our oaths of
confidentiality, we could still be dragged into court and harangued by the
local district attorney. What mattered at this moment wasn’t the actuality of a
subpoena as much as Violet’s husband’s fear of my possible testimony. Not only
was he facing a murder rap. The custody of his children was involved. This
often becomes a powerful motivation for violence against anyone who stands
between a man and his children, one that sometimes overrides the threat of
incarceration or the death penalty. I’d observed over the years that things
often turn out badly for murder witnesses and those who are called upon to
present hearsay evidence against truly determined criminals. Any doubts I may
have had about the extent of Officer Bruce McCune ‘s intentions toward me had
been erased by the sheer brutality of the crime committed against his former
wife, and by the threatening phone message in my office. The report of Violet’s
murder in the paper had still allowed for some doubt in my mind concerning the
identity of her killer, but that subsequent phone message removed it. I was
sure that it would only be a matter of time before Bruce McCune realized the
same thing, and understood how rash he’d been, given all the current voice
identification technology, to leave such an incriminating verbal calling card.
By the next evening I’d
broken several leases, referred out twenty clients, rented a storage unit, and
prepared to head north with my dog Winston and a hefty cashier’s check from my
bank made out to Dr. I. Raye Collier. The “I” stands for Imogene, but everybody
calls me Raye, or Dr. Collier if they’re my patients. Sometimes I wonder just
what my parents could possibly have been thinking forty years ago, naming a
defenseless child Imogene. I’d ask them, but they’ve both been gone since I was
in my early twenties.
My ten years in
practice as a clinical psychologist had given me plenty of insight into the
mind of a man, especially a cop, who’d shoot the mother of his children in the
face and threaten her shrink. Actually, it didn’t take much more than common
sense to appreciate that the safest place to be at the moment was somewhere far
away, and the sooner the better. I loaded up my Camry with a few wardrobe
essentials, my trusty cosmetics bag, a huge bag of Winston’s favorite dog food,
and soon Winston and I were heading up the coast. I’d planned to see patients right through the summer, but
now it looked as if, along with every other therapist in America these days,
I’d be taking a vacation in August after all.
Both of my older
sisters were married and living in the small town of Bennisford, the farm
valley of Western Washington in which we’d grown up. I’d never been close with
my sisters, partially because of the difference in our ages, but we talked on
the phone occasionally and sent Christmas cards. They couldn’t very well throw
their baby sister to the wolves in her time of need, could they? I sincerely
hoped not. Robert Frost had written that,
“Home is where, if you have to go there, they have to take you in.” I was
hoping that he knew what he was talking about. I planned to find my own place
as soon as possible, but what I needed at the moment was a day or two to catch
my breath and feel relatively safe. Besides, my motto has always been, “When in
doubt, go north.” Have you noticed that nothing good ever happens on the south
side of anywhere?
