Silent Partner

by Jonathan Kellerman

  But she looked stricken rather than entranced—frowning, breathing rapidly and shallowly. Her hands began to tremble. I noticed something in the right one.

  A small black-and-white snapshot, the old-fashioned type, with sawtooth edges.

  I came closer and looked at it. Two little beautiful black-haired girls, about two or three years old. Identical twins with Shirley Temple curls, sitting side by side on a wooden garden bench, clear skies and dark, brooding granite mountains in the background. Picture-postcard mountains, perfect enough to be a photographer's backdrop.

  The twins looked solemn and posed. Too solemn for their age. They'd been dressed in identical cowgirl suits—chaps, fringes, rhinestones—and held identical ice cream cones. Carbon copies of each other except for one small detail: One girl clutched her cone in her right hand; the other, in her left.

  Mirror-image twins.

  Their features were set, hyper-mature.

  Sharon's features, times two.

  I was their only little girl.

  Surprise, surprise.

  I looked up at her, touched her bare shoulder, expecting the usual heat. But she felt cold and dry, strangely inorganic.

  I leaned down and kissed the back of her neck. She jumped, cried out as if bitten. Striking out with her fists, she fell back on the bed, legs wide-flung in a helpless caricature of sexual welcome, panting, staring up at me.

  “Sharon . . .”

  She was looking at me as if I were a monster. Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

  The snapshot fell to the floor. Picking it up, I saw something written on the back. A single sentence, in a strong hand.

  S and S. Silent partners.

  I turned the photo over, looked at the twins again.

  “No!” she screamed as she sprang up and charged me. “No, no, no! Gimme, gimme! Mine, mine! Gimme!”

  She clawed for the picture. Her fury was absolute, a hellish transformation. Stunned, I tossed it onto the bed.

  She snatched it, clutched it to her chest, got up on all fours and crawled backward until she was up against the headboard. Her free hand struck out at the air between us, defining a no man's land. Her hair was tangled, Medusa-wild. She got to her knees, swayed and shook, big breasts bobbling.

  “Sharon, what's the matter—”

  “Go! Go!”

  “Honey—”

  “Go! Get out! Go! Go! Get out! Go!”

  Sweat poured out of her, flowed down her body. Hot pink patches rose on the snow of her skin, as if she were burning from within.

  “Sharon—”

  She hissed at me, then whimpered and curled fetally, holding the snapshot to her heart. I watched it rise and fall with each labored breath. Took a step forward.

  “No! Get out! Get out!”

  The look in her eyes was murderous.

  I backed out of the room, ran from the house, feeling dizzy, sick, sucker-punched.

  Certain that whatever we had was over.

  Not knowing if that was good or bad.

  Chapter

  12

  Wednesday morning I was back in Beverly Hills, in the penthouse offices of Trenton, Worthy and La Rosa. Waiting to give my deposition in a rosewood-paneled conference room slathered with abstract art and furnished with butter-colored leather chairs and a football-shaped smoked-glass table.

  Mal sat next to me, grubbily trendy in an unstructured silver silk suit, five-day beard, and shoulder-length hair. Behind us was a blackboard on a rosewood easel, and a luggage rack holding a calfskin suitcase—Mal's one-up on briefcase toters. Across the table sat a legal reporter with a steno machine. Surrounding her were eight—not seven—attorneys.

  “Insurance company sent three,” Mal whispered to me. “Those first three.”

  I looked at the trio. Young, pin-striped, funereal.

  Their spokesman was a big, prematurely bald fellow in his early thirties named Moretti. He had a meaty cleft chin, wide shoulders, and the charm of a drill instructor. One of Mal's secretaries served coffee and sweet rolls, and as we ate, Moretti made a point of letting me know he'd been a psych major at Stanford. He dropped the names of prominent professors, tried unsuccessfully to engage me in shoptalk, and watched me over the rim of his coffee cup with sharp brown eyes.

  When I presented my report he moved to the edge of his chair. When I finished he was the first to speak. The other lawyers deferred to him. Like any wolf pack, they'd chosen their lead killer and were content to sit back and let him open the first wounds.

  He reminded me that I was legally bound to tell the truth, just as if I were in court, that I was testifying under penalty of perjury. Then he removed a phone-book-thick pile of photocopied articles from his briefcase and made a show of stacking the papers on the table, shuffling and sorting and squaring off the corners. Lifting the top article, he said, “I'd like to read you something, Doctor.”

  “Sure.”

  He smiled. “I really wasn't asking permission, Doctor.”

  “I really wasn't granting it.”

  The smile disappeared. Mal nudged me under the table. Someone coughed. Moretti tried staring me down, then put on a pair of rimless octagonal glasses, cleared his throat, and began to read. He finished a paragraph before turning to me. “Familiar, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember the source?”

  “It's the introduction to an article I published in The Journal of Pediatrics in 1981. Summer of '81, I believe. August.”

  He examined the date but didn't comment on it. “Do you remember the gist of that article, Doctor?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you summarize it for us?”

  “The article describes a study I did from 1977 through 1980, when I was at Western Pediatric Hospital. The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and was designed to learn the effects of chronic disease upon the psychological adjustment of children.”

  “Was it a well-designed study, Doctor?”

  “I believe so.”

  “You believe so. Tell us what you did in this well-designed study—be specific about your methodology.”

  “I administered several tests of psychological adjustment to a sample of sick children and a control group of healthy children. The groups were matched in terms of social class, parental marital status, and family size. There was no significant difference between the groups.”

  “No significant difference on any measure of psychological adjustment?”

  “That's correct.”

  Moretti looked over at the legal reporter. “He talks fast. Do you have that down?”

  She nodded.

  Back to me: “For the sake of those of us who aren't familiar with psychological jargon, specify what no significant difference means.”

  “The groups were statistically indistinguishable. The average scores on these measures were similar.”

  “Average?”

  “Median—the fifty percent mark. Mathematically, it's the best measure of typicality.”

  “Yes, of course, but what does all of that mean?”

  “Chronically ill children may develop some problems but being sick doesn't inevitably make them neurotic or psychotic.”

  “Hold on for a moment,” said Moretti, patting the stack of papers. “I don't see mention of any problems here, Doctor. Your basic finding was that the sick children were normal.”

  “That's true. However—”

  “You spell it out right here, Doctor.” He held up the article, flipped a page, and jabbed his finger at it. “Right here in Table Three. ‘Spielberger State Anxiety scores, Rosenberg self-esteem scores, Achenbach Adjustment scores were all'—and I'm quoting verbatim—‘within normal limits.' Put in simple English, these kids were no more nervous or insecure or maladjusted or neurotic than their healthy peers, were they, Doctor?”

  “This is starting to sound argumentative,” said Mal. “We're here to find facts.”

  “Quasi-facts, at best,” s
aid Moretti. “This is psychology, not science.”

  “You quoted the article, Counselor,” said Mal.

  “Your witness's report seems to be contradicting his own published work, Counselor.”

  “Would you like me to answer your question?” I asked Moretti.

  He removed his glasses, sat back, and gave a quarter-smile. “If you can.”

  “Read the discussion section,” I said. “The last three paragraphs specifically. I list several problem areas chronically ill children have to deal with throughout their lives—pain and discomfort, disruption of school due to treatment and hospitalization, body changes brought about by both disease and treatment, social rejection, overprotectiveness by parents. In general, children cope well with these problems, but problems still exist.”

  “The discussion section,” said Moretti. “Aha. The place researchers dump their conjectures. But your own data—your statistics say otherwise. Really, Doctor—”

  “In other words,” Mal broke in, turning to me, “what you're saying, Dr. Delaware, is that sick children and traumatized children face a constant flood of challenges—life is agonizing for them—but some are able to handle it.”

  “Yes.”

  Mal swept his eyes up and down the table, avoiding Moretti, establishing momentary eye contact with each of the other lawyers. “No reason to penalize a child for coping well, is there, gentlemen?”

  “Who's the witness here?” snapped Moretti, waving the reprint.

  “No reason to penalize a child for dealing with his trauma,” said Mal.

  “Trauma?” said Moretti. “There's nothing in this article about traumatized children,” said Moretti. “These are chronically ill kids—chronic, as in long-term. Darren Burkhalter is a one-shot deal. He has no ongoing pain or physical change to deal with. He'd be even less vulnerable to problems than someone chronically disabled.”

  He allowed himself a full smile.

  To him it was all a game. I thought of little boys engaging in back-alley pissing contests and said, “Good point, Mr. Moretti. Chronically ill and traumatized children are very different. That's why I was wondering why you quoted from the article in the first place.”

  A couple of the other lawyers smiled.

  “Touché,” Mal whispered in my ear.

  One of the other insurance lawyers was whispering in Moretti's ear. The lead man wasn't pleased with what he was hearing but he listened impassively, then put the reprint aside.

  “All right, Doctor, let's talk about the whole notion of early childhood trauma. Your conclusion, as I understand it, is that Darren Burkhalter will be scarred emotionally, for life, because of his presence during an automobile accident.”

  “You understand wrong,” I said. Moretti reddened. Mal raised his eyebrows and gave a soft whistle.

  “Now, Doctor—”

  “What I did say, Mr. Moretti, was that during my examination of him, Darren Burkhalter exhibited classic symptoms of trauma for a child his age. Sleep problems, nightmares, phobias, aggressiveness, hyperactivity, tantrums, periods of increased clinginess. According to both his mother and his day-care teacher, he showed none of these behaviors prior to the accident. It's reasonable to assume they were related to the accident—though I can't prove that with hard data. Whether or not these problems will develop into chronic disabilities isn't clear, although the risk is high if psychotherapy doesn't continue. In addition, Darren is lagging in his speech and language development—his milestones are several months behind average. How much of that is due to the trauma is impossible to judge, but it's well worth thinking about when considering this child's future.”

  “It certainly is impossible to judge,” said Moretti. “My reading of the literature in your field is that intelligence is primarily genetically determined. The best predictor of a child's IQ is his father's IQ—Katz, Dash, and Ellenberg, 1981.”

  “This father's IQ will never be tested again,” said Mal.

  “In lieu of that, I requested that Mrs. Burkhalter take an IQ test, but you refused that request, Mr. Worthy.”

  “She's had enough stress, Counselor.”

  “No matter,” said Moretti. “Inferences may still be drawn from what we know of these people. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Burkhalter finished high school. Both were dropouts, worked at menial jobs. That indicates a less than average genetic endowment for this family. I wouldn't expect Darren to be average. Would you, Dr. Delaware?”

  “It's hardly that simple,” I said. “Parental IQ predicts children's IQ better than most other factors, but it's still not a very good predictor, accounting for less than twenty percent of the variance. Katz, Dash, and Ellenberg emphasize that in their follow-up 1983 study. One out of five, Mr. Moretti. Not great odds for a bet.”

  “Are you a gambler, Doctor?”

  “No. That's why I took this case.”

  The reporter smiled.

  Moretti turned to Mal. “Counselor, I'd advise that you counsel this witness on appropriate demeanor.”

  “Consider yourself advised, Dr. Delaware,” said Mal, fighting a grin. He flashed his cuffs and studied his Rolex. “May we proceed?”

  Moretti put his glasses back on and scanned some papers. “Dr. Delaware,” he said, then paused as if anticipating a punch line. “Come now, Dr. Delaware. You're not saying that except for the accident, Darren Burkhalter would have been expected to become a nuclear physicist, are you?”

  “No one knows what Darren would have become or what he will become,” I said. “Right now, the facts are that following an unusually severe psychological trauma, his language is below average and he's experiencing severe stress.”

  “What was his language like before the accident?”

  “His mother reports he was starting to talk. However, after the traum—”

  “His mother,” said Moretti. “And you base your conclusions on what she tells you.”

  “Along with other input.”

  “Such as your interview with his day-care teacher.”

  “Such as.”

  “His teacher's your expert witness?”

  “She seemed very credible and had a good understanding of Darren. She reported that the parents were very involved, very loving. His father, in particular, had taken an interest in his—”

  “Yes, let's talk about his father. Gregory Joe Burkhalter had a criminal record. Are you aware of that, Doctor?”

  “Yes I am. A conviction for petty theft, several years ago.”

  “Petty theft and larceny, Doctor. He did jail time.”

  “What's the point?” asked Mal.

  “The point, Mr. Worthy, is that your expert, basing his opinion on an individual who would not qualify as an expert in court, wants to make a case for this father being a major source of intellectual stimulation for this child, hence major material and emotional loss due to paternal death. This father was a criminal, minimally educated . . .”

  “Mr. Moretti,” I said, “is it your position that only educated parents are worth grieving for?”

  He ignored me. “. . . while, in point of fact, the data pertaining to the case in point indicate a socially and emotionally impoverished . . .”

  He went on for a while, picking up volume and speed, fairly glowing with combat lust. Mal, too, was caught up in the joust, poised for the riposte.

  More pissing. And the truth be damned. It started to really get to me and I broke in, raising my voice to be heard over the tide of legalese: “Mr. Moretti, you're a classic case of a little knowledge being dangerous.”

  Moretti rose half out of his seat, caught himself, then settled back down and bared his teeth. “Getting defensive, Doctor?”

  “This was supposed to be a fact-finding meeting. If you want to hear what I have to say, fine. If you want to play ego games, I won't waste my time.”

  Moretti clucked his tongue. “Mr. Worthy, if this is a portent of his courtroom behavior, you're in a heap of trouble, Counselor.”

  Mal said nothing. But he scra
wled on his note pad: Have I created a monster? then covered it with his hand.

  Moretti didn't miss it: “Anything we should have on the record, Counselor?”

  “Just doodling,” said Mal and he began to sketch a naked woman.

  “We were talking about childhood trauma,” I said to Moretti. “Would you like me to address that issue or am I through?”

  Moretti tried to look amused. “You may address it if you have something to add to your report.”

  “Since you drew faulty conclusions from my report, I have plenty to add. Darren Burkhalter is suffering a post-traumatic stress reaction that may convert to long-term psychological problems. Brief play therapy and counseling for the mother have brought about some symptom reduction but much more treatment is indicated.” To the other lawyers: “I'm not saying long-term psychological problems are inevitable, but neither will I rule problems out. No reasonable expert would.”

  “Oh, for God's sake,” said Moretti, “this child is two years old.”

  “Twenty-six months.”

  “Same difference. He was eighteen months at the time of the accident. You're telling me that you'll be willing to go into court and testify under oath that when he's twenty-six years old, he could be psychologically affected by an accident that took place when he was a baby?”

  “That's exactly what I'm telling you. A traumatic scene that vivid and bloody, buried in his subconscious—”

  Moretti snorted. “What does a subconscious look like, Doctor? I've never seen one.”

  “Nevertheless, you have one, Mr. Moretti. As do I and everyone else in this room. In simple terms, the subconscious is a psychic storage bin. The part of our mind where we put experiences and feelings we don't want to deal with. When our defenses are down, the bin tips over and some of the stored material spills out—dreams, fantasies, seemingly irrational or even self-destructive behaviors that we call symptoms. The subconscious is real, Mr. Moretti. It's what makes you dream of winning. A big part of what motivated you to become a lawyer.”

  That got to him. He took pains to be cool but his eyes twitched, his nostrils opened, and his mouth drew so tight it puckered.

  “Thank you for that insight, Doctor. Send me a bill—though judging from what you're charging Mr. Worthy, I don't know if I can afford you. In the meantime, let's stick to the accident—”