The Fregoli Delusion (12 page)

“Okay.” He closed his eyes. “I
heard the shot. You want me to start there?”

“Sure.”

“I heard the shot. It was like a
pop. I guess maybe it sounded weird—no, different—and I wanted to see what it
was. It sounded like a balloon breaking. So I walked over there. Richard ran by
me with a gun in his hand. I took his picture. Three frames. He saw me and
stopped. He said, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ and ran up to me. He grabbed
the camera out of my hand before I could move. Then he kind of put his leg
behind me and knocked me down. He pointed the gun at my face and moved it like
he was shooting me. Pantomimed it. Then he ran across the lawn and got in his
car and drove away.”

A gun in his hand. Karen took a
deep breath. Something new, that he hadn’t mentioned before. “What did the gun
look like, Brett?”

“I don’t know. Like a gun. I don’t
know anything about them, so that’s all. It looked like a gun. Sorry.”

“That’s okay, not a problem.”
Karen unholstered her gun and held it flat on her palm, muzzle pointing away.
“Can I show you something?”

“Okay.” He opened his eyes.

“Did it look like this?”

He frowned. “Sorry. No. Not like
that.”

“Okay, no problem. Just a sec.”
She put away her SIG, took out her cell phone, launched the browser, and ran a
quick Google search. “Here.” She reached across the coffee table and put the
phone down in front of him. “Did it look like that?”

He picked up the phone, looked at
the photo she’d selected, and shook his head. “No.” He put it back down on the
coffee table.

“Okay.” She picked up the phone
and looked at the photo, which was of a Smith and Wesson M66 revolver. “Between
the two of them, which one was it more like?”

“It wasn’t a revolver,” Brett
said, “because it didn’t have a cylinder. It was the other kind, with a
magazine. What do you call that? An automatic?”

Karen grinned. “Sorry, champ. My
bad. Feel free to kick my ass any time. Figuratively speaking. So it was a semi-automatic
but it didn’t look like my SIG. Bigger? Smaller? Different color?”

“I don’t remember. Sorry. It
looked like a starter’s pistol or a target pistol, I guess. Brown.”

“A brown target pistol.” The grin
went away. “Hmm. Interesting. Anything else you can tell me about it?”

“No.”

“Okay. But that’s good. That’s
very good. I like it.” She worked with the phone again. “Can I show you my pics
now?”

“All right.”

“Great.” She put the phone back
down on the coffee table. “I took those yesterday. They’re in a table, six in
all, but you can look up close at each one. Go ahead and check them out.
They’re six different pictures of cars. I want you to tell me if any of them
look like the car you saw leave the scene yesterday at the bike path.”

“Richard’s car, you mean.” Brett
picked up the phone.

“Well, let’s not put a name to it
just now. Look at the cars and tell me if you saw one of them yesterday at the
bike path when Mr. Jarrett was shot.”

He took a moment studying the
photos. “My memory’s not the best. I do exercises with Mona that help, but it’s
still not very good.” He shook his head. “Not this first one. It wasn’t a red
Corvette.” He moved his finger on the touch screen. “Not this one, it’s silver
but it’s too small. And this one’s gray.” His eyes lifted toward Jensen. “Last
night, didn’t I say it was silver? Or did I say it was gray? No, it was
silver.”

“Take your time,” Karen said,
trying to hide her disappointment.

He thumbed to the fourth photo.
“This silver sports car. It’s Richard’s car. I don’t know what kind it is.” He
looked at Karen, making eye contact very briefly, as though by accident. “I saw
him get into this car yesterday and drive away after shooting Mr. Jarrett.” His
eyes returned to the phone. “It’s his car. This is the one I saw.”

“There’s two more,” Karen said.
“Take a look at them.”

“Okay.” He looked. “No, this is
black. A nice car. A friend of mine has one like that.” His fingers moved. “No,
this is white.” He put the phone down on the coffee table. “Sorry. It was that
other one, the silver one. What kind is it? It looks expensive.”

“It’s a Ferrari,” Karen said,
retrieving her phone. “Costs a freaking fortune.” She turned it off and slipped
it into her jacket pocket. “How come you know what car Richard Holland has?”

“I’ve seen it before.”

“When?”

“Around.”

She’d pretty much beaten this
horse to death, she decided. “Brett, when you found Mr. Jarrett, did you touch
him at all?”

“No.”

“You didn’t maybe try to see if he
was still alive, or try to move him?”

“No, he was dead. His eyes were
open and staring. He was dead. I didn’t touch him.”

“But you took pictures of him with
your cell phone.”

“I thought I should, in case
somebody needed them to prove afterwards he was dead right then. By the time
stamp.”

“Okay.” Karen stood up. “Thanks
for your help. I really appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.”

She started for the door and
turned back. “Oh, one other thing. Could you do me a favor?”

“Okay.”

“I’d like to ask Mona here a few
questions about your memory and stuff. I’d like to get her take on how you’re
doing, but she needs your permission to answer my questions because it’s your
private information. I need to know about your schizophrenia and your Fregoli
syndrome stuff, how you’re treating it, and how it’s going. That kind of thing.
You remember we went through this yesterday and you gave us permission to talk
to Dr. Caldwell. Can you give me the same permission to talk to Mona about it
now?”

He stood next to Jensen, looking
down at her. “I don’t think it’s a problem. Do you think it’s okay?”

“It’s your decision, Brett,”
Jensen said.

He turned back to Karen. “Sure,
it’s okay.”

“You’re sure.”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She took out a business
card and put it down on a little table just inside the door. “That’s my card.
Call me anytime if there’s anything else you want to talk about.”

“Thank you.”

“No problem, champ. See you
later.”

Karen and Jensen left the house
and walked across the driveway to a small patio with an arrangement of white
cast iron lawn furniture beneath a blue and white sun umbrella. Karen had expected
to be accosted either by Walter Parris or by Brett’s mother, Lisa Gregg Parris,
whom she hadn’t yet met, but they’d seen no one but the animatronic maid who’d
politely opened the front door for them on their way out.

As if reading her thoughts, Jensen
smiled as she sat down in a chair. “They’re all getting ready for a fundraising
event downtown tonight. That’s one reason why Mr. Parris was a little stressed.
Mrs. Parris doesn’t do very well at those sorts of things, and he’s very
protective of her as well as of Brett. You caught him on a bad day.”

“A bad week.” Karen sat down
across from her. She remembered Hank promising his mother he would attend some
bash or other tonight, and she wondered if it was the same thing. “The life of
the rich and famous.”

Jensen reached into her black
briefcase and took out a pack of cigarettes. “Do you mind?”

“No, go right ahead.”

Jensen lit a cigarette, inhaling
deeply and exhaling slowly. “What can I tell you about Brett?”

“Well, a bunch of stuff, but let’s
start with what you do. Caldwell didn’t tell me any of the details, but let me
guess. As his APRN you’re probably more hands-on with him than she is. You’ve probably
developed a whole program for him, and you probably do all the day-to-day work
with him on it.”

“Yes, that’s right. How much do
you know about schizophrenia, Detective Stainer?”

“My mother’s been living in an
institution in Texas with it since I was twelve. I know a helluva lot more
about it than I want to, believe me.”

“I see.” Jensen exhaled another
long stream of smoke. “Is she a paranoid schizophrenic?”

“Disorganized. With some
hallucinations and delusions, now and then, but disorganized, not paranoid like
Brett.”

“That’s also a very difficult
subtype. Well, with Brett, as you’d expect, his treatment includes both
medication and therapy. On the meds side, I administer them twice a day, to
make sure he takes them, and I monitor for side effects. Anti-psychotics can
have some particularly nasty ones, so I watch for those. I also do regular
blood and urine tests for alcohol, drugs, and nutrition, I monitor his personal
hygiene, his sleep patterns, and the like. On the therapy side, I do things a
little differently than your average bear.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Good. A typical cop would be
bored to tears right now. Your experience with your mother has had benefits for
you that maybe you haven’t completely realized.”

Karen bit her tongue.

“Which is a segue into the type of
therapy I’m using with Brett. Have you heard of positive psychology?”

“No.” It sounded to her like a
contradiction in terms.

“I’m working on my Ph.D. right
now, and that’s my area of specialization. Positive psychology. It’s rooted in
the theories and practices of Carl Rogers and Eric Fromm, taking a humanistic
view of happiness and well-being. It’s a psychology of positive human
functioning that tries to nurture talent and make life more fulfilling. It
doesn’t replace traditional approaches, and on that note I should mention that Brett
sees Dr. Caldwell once a month for an hour of psychoanalysis, and he sees me
once a week in my office for an hour of therapy based on Carl Rogers’s
client-centered therapy, where I practice active listening with him. It
encourages him to verbalize his thoughts and feelings. I thought he actually
did very well with you.”

She removed a small red pocket
ashtray from her skirt, opened the lid, and tapped ash from her cigarette. “In
our daily interactions, Brett and I concentrate on techniques related directly
to positive psychology. You’re likely aware that flattened affect is common
among schizophrenic patients, and you could see that Brett doesn’t show a lot
of emotional range, but he’s had problems with depression. What I’m trying to
do is train him to recognize things he can do that give him pleasure, to spend
his time doing those things, and so increase his overall level of happiness. It
sounds simple enough but it actually isn’t, not even for someone like you or
me, so imagine how important it might be to someone like Brett.

“I borrowed a technique from
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who developed the concept of flow. His idea was that
people are the most happy when they’re in a state of flow, when they’re
completely absorbed in something they’re doing. Maybe painting a picture,
playing music, writing a book, whatever, a person becomes so involved that the
world seems to disappear, time passes without them being aware of it, and all
their cares and problems slip away.”

She smiled. “So the idea is to be
able to have periods of time in your day when you can do something that lifts
you into this flow state, the overall effect being to increase your level of
happiness for that day, and every day, really.”

She put the cigarette into the
corner of her mouth and squinted at Karen through the smoke. “The technique I
borrowed charts the patient’s emotional states at various times during the day.
They wear something called a flow timer. For Brett it was a simple Casio sports
watch with five different alarm settings. I programmed the alarm in the morning
to vibrate at five random times during the day. He carried a notebook in his
pocket, and when the alarm went off he wrote down what he was doing and how he
felt. Basic experience sampling. The next morning I’d set it to different times
and he’d do it again.”

“I’m sure that went well,” Karen said.

Jensen exhaled smoke and laughed.
“It drove him nuts, but he tries very hard to cooperate. He did his best. We
ran it for two weeks, then stopped for a week. I started it up again, hoping
for another week’s worth of data, but he quit on me after a day. He said it was
so intrusive it was making him unhappy, which is not an outcome we want, so I
let it go at that. I’m still analyzing the data, but I’ve already identified a
few things to use.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for example, his
photography. He works at it as a free-lance professional, but he also takes
pictures out of interest, for his own enjoyment. It’s a good way for him to
start his day. He’s an early riser—sleep patterns are another challenge—so he
goes for a walk early in the morning and takes his camera with him. It’s not
only for the exercise, then, but also to take pictures. Sometimes he does
serious work, and sometimes he just plays with it.”

“Okay. I get it.” Karen shifted.
“You saw him later in the day, after we sent him home.”

“In the evening.”

“How was he?”

“Very upset, naturally.”