False Witness (17 page)

“You are accusing me of telling Sanderalee Dawson that what happened to her happened for political reasons? And that I then offered proof to her along the way? That I provided her with a Jew-doctor, all made-to-order? Is this what you are now saying?” He drew himself up in rage. Quite frankly, he was more than just a little frightening.

A soft answer turneth away wrath. I learned that in high school. It was printed neatly on a card tacked over the blackboard in the English-comp. room along with other quotations of worldly wisdom.

I answered softly: “We are trying to establish what the facts are in this matter, Dr. Morris. You’re the one who has introduced an entirely new slant on this case.”

He stood up so violently that he knocked over the chair in front of my desk. Bobby Jones started to move toward him. He thought Dr. Regg Morris was going to have at me. He wasn’t; it just seemed that way. Morris whirled around, uprighted the chair with a thud and faced me, standing very straight and very stiff and with a very righteous expression on his handsome face.

“I think, Ms. Jacobi, that Sanderalee Dawson will be well within her rights to demand that another prosecutor handle this case. One perhaps with a less
vested
interest.”

“Uh-huh. And my vested interest is?”

He leaned forward and his eyes tried to pin me to my chair. “We have got us the culprit, lady. And he is a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
Jew-doctor
and we’re gonna check him out good and see where he fits into the
Zionist
scheme of things, you got that? And we’re going to find out who you get
your
orders from. What part of the international Jew-conspiracy gives you your instructions.”

I leaned way back in my chair.

“Shalom,
Dr. Morris. In Zionist-talk, it means go fuck yourself.”

I
STOPPED AT THE
hospital for a quick conference with Lucy Capella. Sanderalee was asleep. There was sensation in her fingertips and motion to the second joint; her hand was pink and warm. Her jaws, though they would be wired for many weeks, no longer ached and the swelling had subsided considerably. Of course, there was the horror of her ripped mouth. Sans lower lip and with broken teeth, she did not look very pleasant. However, she took enough interest in herself to ask to see a plastic surgeon and she had taken to draping her lower face with filmy chiffon scarves whenever she had visitors.

“Some dental surgeons are scheduled to take a look either today or tomorrow,” Lucy told me. “Sanderalee is very confident of what they can accomplish. She’s in good spirits and a lot more relaxed since we made that tape.”

I discussed the meeting with Regg Morris. “I’m not sure how we can keep him out, Lucy. But I’m pretty sure we’re going to have to. At this point, I am getting very worried.”

“About what? About what Sanderalee told us?”

“About what Regg Morris may have told Sanderalee. Look, just for the sake of argument, let’s say the assailant picked her up in the park or at Columbus Circle or wherever. They proceeded to her apartment. The man goes bonkers and attacks her. She wakes up and
thinks
one of the faces looking down at her is the guy who did it. Let’s say she honestly doesn’t remember very much of the conversation that took place with her assailant that night. Regg Morris checks out the guy she thinks she recognizes and tells her he’s a doctor. Let’s say he then ‘helps her’ to remember talking with her assailant that night. And in order to tighten her resolve, he leads her a little. Like ‘Didn’t that guy tell you he was a doctor?’ That sort of thing. So that she’d feel a little stronger, a little tougher when she tells us about him. After all, you don’t accuse an eminent microsurgeon of this kind of brutality every day. You need some sort of a lead-in.”

“If only she had mentioned that her assailant told her he was a doctor. At some time prior to when Regg Morris spoke to her.” Lucy was on my line of thinking exactly.

“I’m assigning reinterviews with every person who had any contact with her, from the first people on the scene—Doyle and the two patrolmen, the ambulance medics, the people at the emergency room. And the key question will be: did she mention the word ‘doctor’ at any time. Maybe she groaned the word and they just assumed it was a logical thing. That she was injured and asking for a doctor. Maybe it was so logical that no one really noticed that she said it. And maybe zeroing in on even one single groan that sounded like ‘doctor’ would ...” I threw my hands up. “Would I don’t know what.”

Lucy said it for me. “Would reassure you a little that the word ‘doctor’ as assailant wasn’t put into Sanderalee’s head by her good friend, Regg Morris.” Lucy stretched her neck and massaged it lightly. “A little peculiar, though, the whole sequence. She twisted her ankle while running on a cold and lonely night. No one around but a doctor, who just happens to be running in back of her, sees what happened, offers help.” Lucy raised her eyebrows. “Lynne? Come on.”

“You don’t believe in terrifically good luck coupled with terrifically bad luck? She’s running; twists her foot; only person in vicinity is very competent doctor; they are right near her apartment; he helps her home; he massages her aching ankle. Then, instead of accepting a nice drink, he proceeds to rape, sodomize and dismember her. What is this ‘Lynne, come on’? You find this all hard to believe?”

Lucy’s dark eyes were steady on mine and she spoke slowly. “I find anything at all in the whole world believable. Maybe not likely, but believable. I’m thinking in terms of a jury. But let’s put that aside, Lynne. Was Sanderalee in the habit of picking up men and taking them home with her?”

I shrugged. “It would not strain the limits of credulity.”

“That means yes?”

“That means yes.”

“Then why the big story—of the running and the twisted ankle and the doctor just happening along? Why not just the truth—if it is the truth—a casual pickup that went wrong?”

“I think when we figure that out, we’ll know a great deal more than we do now. I do sense the fine manipulative hand of Regg Morris in some of this. Let’s say that yes, our good Dr. Cohen is indeed a lunatic-monster and did in fact do what Sanderalee says he did. Maybe Regg felt she should offer a few upfront statements as to how come Sanderalee brought a total stranger home with her. Listen, Lucy, I’m not in the answering position yet.” I dug my notebook out and jotted a reminder to myself, reading as I wrote it down. “Ask Tim Doyle if he noticed Sanderalee limping when she came back with unidentified male. Also, ask hospital personnel if anyone examined her ankle and noted any swelling.” Lucy seemed about to say something, changed her mind, thought it over and started again.

“Lucy? What?”

She hesitated. “I think ... it would be a good idea to consider ... at this point ... having her declared a material witness and hold her in protective custody. That way, no Regg Morris. No outside influence.”

We did indeed think alike. “But not just yet. It might backfire. I have to see how Regg is going to conduct himself. We’ll have to start shortening his visits. ‘She’s in therapy.’ ‘She’s resting.’ That kind of thing. Get that Dr. Fernow to go along with you. He’s a real police buff; tell him it’s an important part of the case and he’ll see to it that Sanderalee has ten sponge baths a day. Let’s just keep putting Regg Morris off for now. And when he does visit with her, you stay in the room. No secret whispered conferences.”

“Lynne, what do you think?”

“I’m not sure. It’s a farout possibility. Crazy. But possible. In the last three years there have been nine dismemberment murders in New York City. At least two of them fit a similar pattern: rape, sodomy, beating, partial dismemberment. The others we can cancel: male torsos, obvious gang rubouts, drug-related scare-murders. But there are two cases in Manhattan where the women were seen entering their apartments with a ‘white male,’ no further description. He doesn’t leave prints. He doesn’t leave anything of himself behind. Except for the corpses.”

“Maybe this time he left a not-quite dead victim. Surely he must have thought she was dead or dying.”

“Which would account—if by some chance it was the good Dr. Cohen—for his telling her he was a doctor. What difference would it make what he told her? If he was planning to kill her?”

“If he did it.”

“Right, Lucy. If he did it.”

If he did it. Could he have done it?

Dr. David Cohen?

“I
KNOW DR. DAVID
Cohen as a teaching colleague since for many years we were both on the staff at Columbia. And of course his wife was my patient, but that had very little to do with him.”

Dr. Irving Calendar was a pompous jerk. He had shaved the remaining hair on his head to make it appear that his state of baldness was his option rather than nature’s. As he spoke, reacting to a pre-set inner time clock, he periodically reached his right hand behind his head and slowly, lovingly brushed his fingers along the shaved edge of his neck.

“I used to be a Freudian,” he told us. “But I realized a few years ago that the therapy of the future was preventive medication. Instead of seeing maybe six, seven patients a day for the famous fifty-minute hour, I can now deal with four, maybe five patients an
hour.
That’s twenty-four, thirty patients a day. At fifty to sixty bucks a throw.”

“That is remarkable, Dr. Calendar. How many patients does that multiply up to per week?”

He shrugged at me and pulled his wide lips into a smile, then gave his neck the old feel.

“Depends. There are days when I just don’t schedule myself. Days when I devote myself
to
myself.” He pressed his hard flat stomach and flexed his hard wide shoulders.
“Tennis.
That’s my game.”

It sounded like his raison d’etre. It was said with tight but passionate emphasis.

“Another thing about this type of therapy is that it doesn’t leave me drained. They make no emotional demands on me. My patients. They come; I check their reaction to dosage: good, bad, effective, not effective; high, low, stable. I have each one keep a journal. I give them a coded notebook I have printed up especially for this kind of notekeeping.”

“So your patient just shows you a notebook and that’s it?”

“I
evaluate
what’s been going on, medication-wise. And make whatever adjustment, if any, is necessary. And decide when the next visit should be. Maybe two weeks, maybe four. The patient is reassured by the visit. We don’t get involved with their emotional hangups or past lives. After all, it is the current day-by-day life we have to deal with, not mama and the toidy potty and papa and the primal scene.”

“Are many of you former Freudians crossing over?” Bobby Jones asked.

Another gentle shrug; another brush of the stubble; another smile. “The smart ones are.”

Dr. Calendar had treated Mrs. Melissa Wise Cohen for depression. It had been a lifelong syndrome with her. She had tried conventional therapies and found none that helped. Regardless of what was going on in her life, when her biological time clock messed up her blood chemistry, she hit bottom. The fact that there was no precipitating cause for the depression, the cyclical nature of it, and the degree of total despair she suffered during it were right up Dr. Calendar’s alley.

“Very typical type of case and the most likely to respond to medication therapy. An almost casebook demonstration of clinical depression.”

“And what about the other side of the syndrome, Dr. Calendar? What was Mrs. Cohen like when she entered the manic period?”

Dr. Calendar moved around in his chair. He studied his fingertips as they made contact with each other, gently tapping. “Mrs. Cohen was not a
manic-depressive.
She was a flat-out
depressive.
Her high cycle was well within normal bounds. To the best of my knowledge, she never experienced a manic state.”

I quickly scanned the minutes of the inquest, which Bobby Jones had given me an hour before Dr. Calendar arrived.

“I’m quoting from the inquest into the death of Mrs. Cohen. Question: Would ‘dancing around exuberantly on a balcony, despite rain, and seating oneself precariously on the edge of a metal railing and waving her arms up in the air without regard for consequences while in a state of great hilarity’—would that kind of behavior be fairly typical of a person during a ‘manic state’? That question was put to you, Dr. Calendar, and your response was ‘That just about sums up the kinds of activities of a person in a manic state.’ Question: If during this surge of manic behavior, a person toppled over backward from a great height, how would you categorize her death? Your answer:
Accidental.”

Dr. Calendar nodded and contemplated his fingertips.

“Dr. Calendar, if you never treated Mrs. Cohen for manic behavior, if her case was clinical depression, how do you explain this alleged outburst of mania during which she was so careless of her own safety that she inadvertently toppled off the railing of her balcony, ten stories from the sidewalk?”

“I never said that
she
was manic. I never said that it was my opinion that
Mrs. Cohen, in particular,
had behaved the way you just described. I never said, in so many words, that
her
behavior caused
her
to die an
accidental
death.”

“That was the finding of the inquest:
death by accident.
Based largely on your opinion.” I came around my desk and leaned against the arm of my couch. I was elevated a good six inches from his face. My heart was thumping. Jesus. Maybe.

“How
would
you characterize Mrs. Cohen’s death?”

Say
murder.
Say murder-most-foul. At the hands of her schizo husband who every now and then, in between performing surgical miracles, killed women.
Say murder.

“Suicide,”
Dr. Calendar said. “No question in the world about that. Melissa Cohen killed herself. Committed suicide.”

I lifted the minutes of the inquest and flipped the pages at him. “There is not one single word about suicide in these minutes. You never even suggested suicide.”