“That’s okay. I’ll have the legislative counsels work on a draft. Then I’ll ask for your comments and revisions. In the meantime, you need to start looking for a sponsor for your bill.”
Eric explained that the sponsor is the group that spearheads getting support for a bill and rounds up witnesses to testify before the committees. I scribbled notes as fast as I could while he talked. This was important stuff, and I didn’t want to forget a word.
My mother and I gathered our things and got up to leave. As we walked toward the door, I turned around and looked Eric directly in the eye. “I am going to change the law,” I said.
Two weeks later, on October 6, 1994, I stood in the American Airlines terminal at JFK International Airport in New York, waiting for the commuter flight to take me to Hartford, Connecticut. I was on my way to a writers’ retreat and workshop. I strolled around concourse D, killing time. At gate 49, the door opened and a plane-load of passengers spilled into the area.
With nothing better to do, I watched as they deplaned. A middle-aged woman in a black business suit emerged, then a bald man with a wrinkled coat, followed by a couple of thirtysomething men carrying briefcases. Next, an older man in a Burberry raincoat and Stetson... oh my God! No, it couldn’t be. What’s he doing here? He’s no longer on parole. Is he following me? My heart pounded. My breathing escalated. The man wearing the raincoat and Stetson hat was John. He moved to one side, checked his itinerary, and looked at the direction sign above. Then he winced as he limped to the next gate and sat down.
Fearfully, I melted into the wall and crept along it until I got to my departure gate. I sidled up to the podium, as close to the gate agent as I could get, checking the concourse all the while. “The man who tried to murder me just got off the plane at gate 49,” I panted. “He may be following me. He may try again to kill me.”
The agent escorted me behind the partition, out of sight, and listened intently as I spilled my story between sobs. “Stay here. Let me check out the flights,” he soothed. After five minutes that seemed more like five hours, the agent slipped around the corner with a passenger manifest in his hand and a security guard behind him. “I confirmed that a John Perry was on the flight from Geneva, Switzerland,” the agent said. “He’s booked on a connecting flight to Seattle that leaves in two hours.”
A coincidence. It was a coincidence, albeit a highly emotional one! I stayed behind the podium with the security guard until time to board my flight. Even after all this time, seeing John made me panic and stirred up demons I thought I had laid to rest. My emotions spilled into my writing over the next ten days. When I shared the encounter that night with the writing group, I was told it was the strangest event to have happened on the way to one of the retreats. “Great! Now I get to add you to my ‘this is the strangest case I’ve known’ fan club.” I laughed.
In late October, a week before her retirement, my friend Pam popped into my office and invited me to join her for lunch, with the added caveat that I could reconnect with our former workmate, Rex Johnston, who was meeting her at the Potato Barge. I accepted.
During lunch the three of us laughed as we recounted stories from our lab days. We brought each other up to date on what we had been up to for the last couple of years, including some about my encounter with a psychopath. On that one, we didn’t laugh. Before we parted, Rex invited us to a dinner party at his house on the third Friday of November.
The following week Rex was gone on a Mexico vacation and I dealt with the devastating loss of my beloved golden retriever Gobi only four days after our re-acquaintance lunch. At fourteen-and-a-half, Gobi had lived a good life, but it was hard to let him go. I couldn’t stop crying. I took two days off from work to grieve then concentrated on my job, getting rid of John, and changing the law. When Rex returned the first week of November, I invited him to the Justice for Murder Victims dinner dance in San Francisco, which was a week before his own dinner party. We enjoyed each other’s company on both occasions. With success at hand, I extended an invitation to him to join my mom and me for Thanksgiving dinner at my house, and he gladly accepted with an offer to bring a smoked turkey. I insisted he also bring his small dog, Taffy. The dinner was delicious, Rex’s laugh was infectious, and our pets integrated with ease. Rex told my mom the story of how his ex-wife had adopted Taffy at the Oakland SPCA a day before the dog was to be snuffed. It seemed that no one wanted a one-year-old scraggily blond mixed terrier with a horrendous overbite complicated by too many teeth. I picked Taffy up and gave her an extra long hug. Mom eagerly engaged in the conversation and, after Rex left, she commented that he looked and acted somewhat like my dad. Her observation shocked me. She was right. Rex, from Illinois, had some of the same Midwestern traits of my dad, who was born and raised in Kansas, and they were of similar build and coloring.
Rex and I started to date, slowly. With each date I noticed that our common interests and values meshed into a comfortable relationship. I had trusted my Higher Power. My trust was not misplaced, in either my Higher Power or in Rex.
Many mystical happenings have no obvious explanation but produce amazing results. My first psychic reading with Nancy Weber had been one such. She told me things about John’s past that chilled me, including that he had murdered three women in the Miami area around 1960. Nancy also “saw” events that coincided with what John’s stepmother had told me, things that Nancy would have no way of knowing. Eerie. Now I sat perched on the edge of my chair at work at the end of November, ready for the second reading. It was noon and Nancy was due to call any minute. We were going to deal with John’s future.
I jumped when the phone rang. Nancy said she was holding John’s photograph and his money clip once more, and that visions were popping into her head. “This time I see money being exchanged for shipments of something... crates with straw sticking out... and the something is being imported illegally.”
I hadn’t told her John was importing plants. What she said chilled me. “I see him with connections in Zurich... something about arms dealers and money laundering.”
“Oh, Nancy, I ran into John in the airport when he was on his way home from Geneva, not too far away from Zurich.”
“You’re always in danger from him, Barbara. Especially if he thinks you are following him.” I took heed of her ominous warning. I would watch my step, even more than I was already doing. When I didn’t think it could get any worse, it did.
“John’s connected with a woman,” Nancy continued. “When he gets this way, he gets violent and possessive. But it’s not jealousy; it has to do with possession of wealth, and it’s starting to happen.”
Her prognostications turned darker. “It’s dangerous for her to be with him,” Nancy said. “He’s going to try to murder her. He’s a sociopath with psychopathic serial tendencies. You’ve got to warn her and let her know her life is in danger, but you must do it anonymously.”
When the consultation ended I sat like a zombie, mulling over all the details I had scribbled on my white lined paper. I had to share this amazing event with someone. I went to Elizabeth’s office and told her what Nancy said. “What are you going to do?” she gulped.
“I don’t know, but I trust in my Higher Power. He will give me the way.”
For three months I worked diligently on the bill. Finding a sponsor was paramount to my success, so I wrote letters, made phone calls, and visited offices, to no avail. No one was interested in taking on my cause, including my divorce attorney. Oh, they all agreed the law needed to be changed, and they would support me. They just didn’t have the staff to commit. More likely, they lacked my passion.
However, Eric Burlington worked with the Democratic and Republican legislative counsels to structure the bill, and I had the opportunity to review their results. The legal language was strange to me, and I was often confused, especially regarding a section on fiduciary duty. I didn’t understand why the bill amended both family law and the civil code, when the bill was to address a divorce issue on
ly.
One afternoon, Eric called me. “We have a number. It’s Assembly Bill Sixteen.”
“Sweet sixteen. Never been kissed.” I laughed, then slipped back to serious. “Are we ready for next week?”
“Rainey has five bills he’s carrying this year,” Eric continued, “but he can only introduce one on the floor on opening day. He’s chosen AB Sixteen.”
“Mine? Assembly Bill Sixteen?”
I asked if I could come up; Eric advised saving my vacation time for the committee hearings. He was right. It would have been a waste to drive to Sacramento for the opening day; it was a fiasco. The political climate was explosive. Democrats and Republicans were equally represented and the speaker, Willie Brown, who was supposed to step down, refused to relinquish his seat. There was a lot of yelling. Because no regular business could be conducted until the speaker issue was settled, no bills were introduced. A rumor began to spread that not much would get passed in this year’s session if the assemblymen voted on party lines. My bill was in limbo.
I have learned to trust my Higher Power, and I find that I’m given what I need when I need it. In mid-December, Hal Ledman, the man who had helped John with his parole plan, called me in a panic. “John’s criminal activities are continuing,” he complained. “He’s not who he says he is. I believe you now. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you first before letting him come live with me.” Hal relayed that John was no longer living with him, that he had moved in with Trudy, a sixty-five-year-old woman who owned a twenty-acre ranch in Redmond, thirty miles east of Seattle. Hal was a long-time friend with Trudy and her brother.
I thought it strange he would call and cry on my shoulder. Then I remembered my conversation with Nancy and realized I was being given the moment I needed to warn the woman who was living with John. This man was her friend. “You must warn Trudy. John is going to try to murder her, but you can’t say it came from me.” He agreed to talk to Trudy’s brother, and the two of them would approach her. “Her life depends on it,” I warned.
In December, Rex and I cultivated relationships with friends and merged closer together. We attended George’s sixtieth birthday party. We took our first trip together to a romantic cabin on the Mendocino coast, accompanied by our dogs, Taffy and Gaby, who made us laugh as Taffy dodged the crashing waves and Gaby pounced into the foaming surf. We spent Christmas with my mom at Pam and George’s home.
We renewed our friendship with Cathy and Carl Crenshaw, a couple from our Excelsior Chemical days, and attended a New Year’s Eve dinner and party with them at Snooker Pete’s restaurant. The party crowd counted down the seconds. Rex squeezed my hand. At midnight we clinked glasses, sipped champagne, and lingered over a tender kiss. It feels good to trust someone’s arms. We toasted with Cathy and Carl. It feels good to trust friendships. I thought about the challenges that lay ahead: balancing a budding relationship with changing the law, writing a book, and legally eliminating John from my life. It feels good to trust my Higher Power. When the crowd broke into a raucous rendition of “Auld Lang Syne,” I fought back tears of joy and struggled to join in the lyrics. I’m too emotional, just like my mom.
TWENTY-SIX
The Sponsor
At lunch on a Wednesday in February 1995, I sat at my desk nibbling a tuna sandwich while editing the latest procedure for the global quality team. The double ring of the telephone startled me; I wasn’t expecting a call. I quickly swallowed and answered. A soft female voice introduced herself.
“I’m Anne Dunsmuir, a legislative aide from Assemblyman Rainey’s office. Dick asked me to take over your bill from Eric Burlington.”
I felt uncomfortable about the change. I wondered if Rainey thought my bill didn’t have a chance, and worried that Anne might not be as competent as Eric.
“Will this change anything?” I asked.
“It shouldn’t. I’ve reviewed the file and I’m excited to be working with you to get AB Sixteen through the system.”
She asked for background information. I wanted her to hear the passion in my voice and understand how dedicated I was to changing the law. “One thing has troubled me, Anne. I haven’t been able to find a sponsor, and I’ve been trying for almost six months. Can you help?”
“You have a sponsor, Barbara,” Anne said.
“What?”
“Look in the mirror. You are the sponsor.”
“But... I’m not an organization.”
“Haven’t you been writing letters? Haven’t you been directing the outcome of the bill? Aren’t you the driving force?”
“Yes, but...”
I suddenly realized that through my efforts during the last several months I had evolved into the sponsor of AB16, as an individual, not an organization. My shoulders sagged under the weight of this added responsibility.
“The sponsor of my own bill, huh?”
“That’s right,” Anne giggled. “Now you need to get some public support and think about who will testify with you. The heat is on. The bill was introduced into the assembly this morning and has been assigned to the Judiciary Committee.”
“It’s really happening,” I said, choking with emotion. It had been more than two months since Willie Brown disrupted the new session by refusing to step down. My bill, along with everyone else’s, had languished in the interim.
“The hearing has been scheduled for May seventeenth,” Anne said. “Just about three months from now.”
“What do I need to do?”
“Write letters to the committee members, asking for their support. I’ll fax you a list of members. I’ll be at Dick’s office in Walnut Creek in a couple of weeks. Maybe you could come by and we could meet face to face.”
“It’s a date,” I said, scribbling a note in my organizer. When our conversation ended, I hung up the phone and squealed out loud. I had to release my excitement somehow. Good thing no one walked by my office at that moment.
Five minutes later I pulled the list of names off the fax machine and settled back. There were fourteen members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee. That evening, while visiting Rex, I wrote my first round of letters to the committee members. Rex believed in me. He believed in my quest to change the law. I smiled as he plopped down beside me, grabbed the stuffed envelopes, licked them closed, and stamped them.
Two weeks later I sat with Anne in Rainey’s regional office in Walnut Creek. I was confident as I outlined my recent activities that ranged from writing letters to getting a video produced. Then Anne dropped a bombshell.
“We’re starting to get negative feedback. The way the bill is worded and the sections of law it is trying to amend, both civil and family codes, are causing concern. Because the bill has become controversial, it has been assigned two hearings. The first is scheduled on April nineteenth for the punitive damages; the second will be on May third or seventeenth for the family law portion.”
The news upset me. These new hurdles seemed higher than the previous ones. I didn’t know if I could negotiate them in order to win the race.
“I’m worried,” I said. “What can I do to pull AB Sixteen back into a positive light?”
“We have to keep the judges neutral,” Anne warned. “If they come out against it, AB Sixteen is dead. Marty Montano, who works for the California Judges Association, told me the judges are coming out against it.”
I looked her square in the eye. “I’ll do whatever it takes to win them over,” I said.
When Marty Montano ignored my letter for more than three weeks, I called him. He told me the judges were against Assembly Bill 16 because they believed it would open up a whole new can of worms with the revision to the civil code. I explained my goal. Marty was sympathetic, but stood his ground.
“The judges are against changing a thirty-year-old law they fought hard to develop and implement in order to alleviate a lot of unnecessary courtroom antics.”
“But we have changed some words.”
Marty would not budge. I asked him what could be done to h
ave the group at least remain neutral. I can be stubborn, too, especially when an important issue is on the table. Marty and I went back and forth, neither of us willing to move, when out of the blue a potential connection between us popped into my mind.
“By the way, did your dad work for Excelsior?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What a small world! I worked with your dad over twenty years ago. My first husband and I took your family’s portrait at our house in Concord.”
“Oh, my gosh,” he exclaimed. “I was in that photo.”
“All I can remember is that there were a lot of kids.” I laughed. “And it was hard to get everyone to smile at the same time.”
I had brazenly joined the “good-old-boy network,” and it didn’t let me down. Marty agreed to reevaluate AB16; he’d try to come up with wording that might appease the judges. I thanked him profusely, hung up the phone, and immediately dialed Anne to give her the good news.
Anne reciprocated with good news of her own. She told me Rainey had received a compliment about me from a representative of the California Federation of Republican Women.
“I remember talking to her,” I said. “She teaches advocacy at the local college. She was very helpful, gave me lots of information on lobbying, and suggested whom to target on the committee. At her request, I sent her my appeal letter.”
Once more in my journey, I had been given the right people at the right time to help me or teach me new skills. In less than a month I would use this new insight as I rattled around the halls of the capitol. Two weeks later, in Sacramento, Rex and I set up my folding table, chair, signs, pens, and box of petitions near the sunny eastern entrance of the state capitol. Today was another new adventure for the sponsor of AB16, and a bold one. I had invited myself to participate in a victims’ rights ceremony.
A Dance With the Devil: A True Story of Marriage to a Psychopath Page 30