Past Tense Page 10

  “Then why are you disturbed that Jillian Wints is seeking some small recompense for her many injuries?”

  “It doesn’t disturb me at all if the crime was actually committed.”

  “Why do you doubt that it was?”

  “Because, as I understand it, there’s no evidence to support it other than these new memories she’s come up with.”

  She arched a brow. “It happened twenty years ago in the privacy of a small child’s bedroom. What kind of evidence would you expect there to be at this point?”

  “There are people who say that if the abuse was continuing, the victim would remember it. That such things don’t disappear from consciousness the way you people claim they do.”

  “You’ve been reading Professor James.”

  “Among others.”

  “Well, she’s wrong. She’s not evil, at least I hope she’s not, but she’s mistaken.” She stood up and walked around the room, then gestured toward her desk. “If someone like Professor James sat in that chair for a week, and listened to the horrors that tumble out of the mouths of my clients and heard the screams and saw the tears and felt the pain of the violations she so casually dismisses well up until they warp the features and blind the eyes and cramp the muscles and convulse the gut until … well, I don’t think she could so easily declare it as fantasy, Mr. Tanner. I truly don’t.”

  Danielle was genuinely agitated. She brushed away a tear, looked past me toward the window that opened out onto the courtyard, let the little garden work its magic, then returned to her chair and sat down. I was tempted to tell her that I could paint an equally anguished picture of a father who had been falsely accused of molesting his daughter, but I decided not to. Not yet.

  “I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult week. I wanted Mr. Wints to be called to account for what he did but I didn’t want him to pay with his life. I don’t know why someone would do something like that.”

  “The man who shot him was a policeman.”

  “So he said.”

  “Who?”

  She opened a drawer in the desk and fumbled through some papers. “Hilton. Detective Gary Hilton. And the newspapers say the same, of course.”

  “Charley Sleet is my friend,” I declared for what seemed like the hundredth time, although somehow I wasn’t getting tired of it.

  “And you want to see him exonerated.”

  “If it’s appropriate. Yes.”

  “How can it be? A dozen people saw him do it.”

  “Not all homicide is punishable. Some of it is justified.”

  “In what circumstances?”

  “Self-defense, for one.”

  “That hardly seems applicable—Leonard had his back to the man.”

  “Defense of another, then.”

  “Of Jillian, you mean.”

  “It’s a possibility. What was the connection between them? Charley and Jillian, I mean.”

  She shook her head. “The police asked the same question, but I could be of no help to them.”

  “Jillian never mentioned him?”

  “I can’t disclose what Jillian may have mentioned.”

  “You could blink three times if she did.”

  She didn’t blink but she smiled. I didn’t know the import of either phenomenon.

  “Do you think Leonard Wints abused other children besides his daughter?”

  She shrugged. “I have no idea. He never agreed to meet with me, even in the early stages of Jillian’s treatment when I offered to hear his side of the story. The statistics are all over the place. Sometimes the obsession is confined to their own child and the incest taboo is part of the attraction. Sometimes the child is only the first step in a lifelong pattern of pedophilia, and sometimes the sex drive is undifferentiated and they prey on anyone who can satisfy it—young, old, whomever.”

  “Did Wints ever work with young people? Scouts? Police Athletic League? School or church groups? Community centers?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Was he ever in trouble with the police?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Was Jillian?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  I shifted gears. “Is there any question of Jillian’s ancestry?”

  She frowned. “I don’t … oh. That it would explain it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, it would.”

  “I have no knowledge on that subject, but a DNA test could tell for sure.”

  “I know. Would you mind if Jillian were tested?”

  She hesitated. “I’d have to think about it and I would guess that Mindy Cartson would require a court order. Are you planning to seek one?”

  “I’ll let you know.” I cast about for a fresh focus. “This case has gotten lots of press. Has anyone come forward to tell you that Leonard Wints assaulted them as well?”

  “If they did, I couldn’t tell you about it.”

  “If they did, you could blink three times.”

  She didn’t blink and this time she didn’t smile either. She just looked at the clock.

  “How did Wints react when you sued him?”

  “He denied the charges, of course. Vehemently.”

  “Convincingly?”

  “To some, perhaps, but not to me. Convincing denial is quite common to perverts.”

  “To innocent people as well.”

  She met my look. “Presumably.”

  “The irony doesn’t bother you?”

  “No.”

  I laughed. “What’s this CMI organization I’ve heard about?”

  “The Corrected Memory Institute. Their mission is quite simple—they are bound and determined to erect a safety barrier around the child abusers of the world, to demonize therapists such as myself who dare reveal their crimes, to make it impossible for the truth to be heard and the victims to be healed.”

  “Have they made threats to you?”

  “Only in general. Exposure of my methods, reprogramming of my clients, that kind of thing.”

  “What about the threat the police are investigating? Are they behind it, do you think?”

  She frowned. “How did you know about that?”

  I decided not to rat on the secretary. “Just a shot in the dark.”

  “It was an anonymous call. Threatening to cut my heart out. I get them frequently, but for some reason this one chilled me. I fully believed he would try it.”

  “Do you know who it was?”

  “No idea.”

  “Are you taking precautions?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  I was tempted to make some suggestions, then decided she wouldn’t listen. “Did Mindy Cartson take Leonard Wints’s deposition?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it revealing?”

  “Not at all.”

  “How did this lawsuit change his life? Did it bankrupt him? Cost him friends? Turn him into a basket case? What?”

  “What does it matter? And how would I know in any event? He’s not my client; Jillian is.”

  “I’m looking for friction, Ms. Derwinski. Cases like this do lots of damage. It’s the kind of thing that could make a guy do something that might provoke a similar response.”

  “Like doing something that would make a man like Charley Sleet want to kill him.”

  I nodded. “The only absolute truth I know in this world is that Charley Sleet wouldn’t shoot anyone unless he deserved it.”

  Her smiled was chilly and arch. “Leonard Wints deserved to be shot, Mr. Tanner. He just didn’t deserve to die. He should have lived for years in intense and disabling pain, exactly the way his daughter is living. That’s what he deserved. Your friend let him off the hook.”

  She sighed, then rubbed her arms as if to ward off a sudden chill, then stood up. “I’m afraid I have a patient to see. I’ve given you far too much of my time.”

  I was about to launch one last line of questions when the phone on her desk buzzed once. She picked up the receiver and listened. Her face
reddened and her hand became an ugly pink claw around the white receiver.

  When she hung up, she looked at me. “How dare you confront Jillian without my permission? How dare you interrogate her in a public place?”

  “It’s a free country, Ms. Derwinski.”

  Her voice became operatic. “Don’t do it again. Do you understand? If you talk to her again, you’ll regret it.”

  I know a threat when I hear one, too.

  As I left the office, a young woman was coming through the door. She was young, and black, and ethereal; if her nose was broken, it didn’t show. She said hi and I said hi; her smile was as bright as chrome. She seemed far too chipper to need anything a therapist had to offer.

  At my back, the receptionist gushed, “How are you, Tafoya? It’s so good to see you.” The contrast to my own welcome couldn’t have been more marked. But I couldn’t help but wonder whether Tafoya’s bright smile would survive an hour spent with Danielle Derwinski.

  CHAPTER

  14

  THE OFFICES OF THE CORRECTED MEMORY INSTITUTE ON Beale Street were several blocks south of Market on the second floor of a commercial complex known as Bayside Village. The receptionist welcomed me extravagantly, presumably because I was male and thus a potential victim of uncorrected memories. When she asked me my business, I told her I wanted to see Kirby Allison. When she asked the purpose of my visit, I told her with a degree of truth that I was having a problem with a claim of recovered memory.

  She preened with satisfaction. “I’m sure we can help you, Mr. Tanner. We’ve helped countless others in that situation and we can help you, too. Voodoo therapy is on the run.”

  She seemed as pleased as if she were winning at Pictionary. I sat where she told me to sit and waited while she checked to see if Mr. Allison was free. When she returned moments later, she had a man in tow.

  He was husky and hearty, with a salesman’s mien, a convert’s zeal, and a drill sergeant’s haircut. As we shook hands, he hauled me to my feet. “Step right this way, Mr. Tanner. And let me compliment you on your decision to consult the CMI. You won’t regret it, believe me; we can lift the burden that has been so unjustly heaped upon you. We can support you in your grief and we can show you how to turn the tables on your accusers.”

  With a pudgy palm he beckoned me to follow, then led me toward the rear of the building. Along the way we passed a series of small offices in which men and women were manning phones and feeding Xerox machines and typing truth into laptop computers. As he passed them by, Allison issued various signs of encouragement, as if we were in a locker room just before game time. The players looked willing and able to go out and win one for Kirby.

  Allison’s office was bureaucratically plain and philosophically low-key, in contrast to the frenetic activity in the cubicles down the hall. He motioned for me to sit on a small tweed couch, then took the vinyl chair across from me. He clasped his hands in his lap and leaned forward as he began to speak, to make certain I wouldn’t miss a word. For a moment, I was afraid he was going to take my hand as a symbol of his devotion to my well-being, but at the last minute he held off.

  “Let me begin by saying that I have been where you are,” he said softly, in the manner of preachers in the early innings of a sermon. “I want you to know that up front. I have felt the hurt, the shock, the outrage, the frustration. I have lain awake nights trying to imagine how my child could tell such lies about me, I have wondered what would cause my darling daughter to even think such things, let alone make such charges against me or anyone. I have asked myself what kind of person could encourage a woman to invent such hateful falsehoods and then to compound the lie by making them public. In response to the charges, I have considered suicide, I have considered violence, and I have considered litigation, all as a means of relief from the tortures I have suffered.

  “So I have been where you are,” he said again, this time more intently. “Every man in this building has been, as have others you will never know of. There is a man in city prison right now being victimized in absentia by a therapist who is bent on persuading his daughter to charge the foulest possible … So you are among friends, Mr. Tanner. Even though you don’t know a single individual in the building, you are in the presence of the dearest friends you will ever have.”

  When he had finished his invocation, Allison leaned back and looked at me. He smiled till his eyes swelled shut, pleased with himself, pleased with whatever he saw in me that was responding to his call, pleased with the ways he would please me.

  I had to admit I was moved, at least in some sense of the term. Although I had not been accused of child molesting, I had been unjustly accused of other things over the years, quite often by myself. The idea that someone understood and sympathized, and forgave me my impurities, struck a surprisingly grateful chord.

  I tried to break the spell. “How much is this going to cost me?”

  Allison crossed a stubby leg and shook his head with sadness. “Only what you feel you can afford. Quite frankly, we are as much in need of your time as we are of your funds.”

  “Who supports the place, then?”

  “The founding families—there are three of us, six people in all—put our life savings in the association in order to get it off the ground. That was four years ago. More recently, contributions from grateful clients have covered virtually all of our expenses.”

  It didn’t sound much like the worldwide cabal Jillian Wints had described. “What is it you do, exactly?”

  “It depends on the circumstance. If there is litigation pending, we provide access to attorneys and experts in the field of recovered memory who are familiar with the issues and can show such claims for the fabrications that they are. We also maintain a file of judicial precedents that indicate recovered memory cases are increasingly being found to be without merit by the courts. If there is only the informal charge of abuse, without litigation, we provide grief counseling to the family, a list of therapists who can reorient and rehabilitate the person making the claim, and suggested courses of action to counter such brainwashing as has already occurred.”

  “Deprogramming, in other words.”

  For the first time, he clouded. “That is not a term we use at the Institute. Nor a method. Have you been named in a lawsuit, Mr. Tanner? Or only slandered by your offspring and her therp?”

  “Therp?”

  “It rhymes with perp as in perpetrator, and refers to her therapist. We find it an apt analogy.”

  I smiled. “No lawsuit.”

  “That’s fortunate. It doesn’t mean your struggle will be less painful, necessarily, but it does mean it will be less expensive.”

  “Good. I hear one of your people is particularly effective in getting the accuser to see the light. I was hoping I could work with him.”

  “What person is that?”

  “Sleet, I think his name is. Charles Sleet.”

  Allison frowned. “I don’t—”

  “I don’t think he’s full-time; I think he just handles certain special projects.”

  “Sleet?” He shook his head. “The name is not familiar to me.”

  “Do you have a personnel list of some sort? I did hear that this guy really went to bat for people. He’s the reason I came here, actually. I’d be willing to pay a premium to work with him.”

  Allison thought about it, then abruptly left the room.

  It had been a gamble and it didn’t pay off. When he returned, the bonhomie was gone. “Who are you working for, Mr. Tanner? The Cartson woman?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not working for anyone.”

  “I don’t believe you. You’re trying to link the CMI with the man who shot Leonard Wints. Well, it won’t wash. We were in Leonard’s corner; we were not opposed to him. The idea that we would want him dead is ridiculous. If you come here again, or make any attempt to interrogate our staff, we’ll seek a restraining order and take whatever additional steps that are necessary to be rid of you.”

  I he
ld up a peaceable hand. “I admit I got in under false pretenses. But I think we’re on the same side in this thing. If you were working with Wints, you must have an interest in who killed him and why.”

  Allison hesitated. “So?”

  “So is there anything at all you can tell me about Charley Sleet and Mr. Wints? Maybe if I could talk to the person who counseled him.”

  “I counseled Leonard myself.”

  “Was there anything unusual about the case?”

  “Only the virulence and scope of the charges against him.”

  “You’re convinced the charges were bogus?”

  He met my look. “Did you know Leonard?”

  I shook my head.

  “He was a great guy. A truly kind individual. He was as devastated as any man could be by his daughter’s hysterical allegations. He became a recluse. His lovely wife despaired for him. Only in recent weeks, when he had finally become convinced that he would win in court and be exonerated, did his outlook begin to brighten.”

  “How about the police? Were they called in on this case in any respect?”

  Allison shook his head. “Not in its current posture, at least. If they made an inquiry at the time the abuse took place, I’m not aware of it.” He rushed to correct his implication. “And how could they? Since it didn’t happen.”

  “Have there been any other instances of accused abusers being killed mysteriously, Mr. Allison?”

  “There was the woman from Sierra who shot the man who abused her son. But he wasn’t a parent, he was a teacher, and recovered memory wasn’t an issue. That’s the only one I know of.”

  “So you can’t help me.”

  “I’m afraid not. But we have plenty of others whom we can help, I can assure you. The degree of witch-hunting in this field is phenomenal. The Spanish Inquisition had nothing on these so-called Recovery Therapists.”

  The ghost of Torquemada went with me out the door.

  CHAPTER

  15

  THERE WERE A COUPLE OF COPS TO CALL, so I WENT BACK TO the office and called them.

  One was in and one was out. The one who was out was Gary Hilton, the guy who’d talked to Danielle Derwinski about the Wints shooting. The one who was in was Earl Jamette, who had investigated the anonymous phone threat to the selfsame woman.