Whittaker 02 The One We Love

by Donna White Glaser

  No RTA in that.

  I moved to the computer, pulling up the shelter website. The “About Us” page had a directory of staff and volunteers with the separate page listing the board of directors by name. No RTAs.

  Sighing, I set that question aside for later, and, since I was at the computer anyway, I decided to Google the women’s names.

  Starting alphabetically and because the name seemed vaguely familiar, I typed in “Cherly Bailey.” In this information era I figured I’d find something, maybe a social networking site, something from the community, things like that. Instead, I found a lot more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Cherly Bailey had been killed last spring, explaining why her name sounded familiar. Her husband, a high-profile, defense attorney, had been accused, tried, and acquitted. Most of the more recent stories had to do with the lawsuit he was currently filing against the police department, the local newspaper, the county, the state and whomever else he could think of. Despite his scary propensity for revenge litigation, the news articles still identified him as the main suspect although they tossed in the words “recently acquitted” to cover their butts.

  Much of the case had unfolded just after my own brush with death, so I wasn’t as familiar with the details as I might have been. Scrolling down the accounts of the murder, I learned that Cherly Bailey had been found strangled on the floor of her kitchen. A tape of her husband’s remarkably composed 911 call had been made public and probably had much to do with the rush to convict. The defense later claimed that, as a trial lawyer, Bailey was used to sordid crime and was so caught up in his desire to get help for his beloved wife that he suppressed his own emotions during the initial part of the discovery.

  Might even be true.

  I printed several of the more comprehensive articles covering the murder and the most recent one on the lawsuit before plugging in the name of the next woman: Amy Church.

  Amy Church was dead, too. This time by suicide three years ago. It probably wouldn’t have made the papers except she hadn’t been discovered for several days—a gruesome fact on its own—and there had been some speculation about the cause of death. Apparently she’d cut her own throat and done a remarkably efficient job of it. Her mother, Sandee Church, was quoted in the article. “Ain’t no way Amy killed herself. She hated the sight of blood, especially her own.” Church’s mother had gone on to organize a fundraising banquet to “get to the bottom” of her daughter’s death.

  I sank back against the couch, thinking. A mother in denial wasn’t unusual, but the bit about “hating blood,” if it were true, seemed to be a point in her favor. The other thing that bugged me was the method Amy used. Throat slashing, while not unheard of, is more often used as a threat, resulting in a wickedly ugly scar. It’s surprisingly difficult to carry out.

  I pulled her file, leafing through to where her therapist, Lachlyn, had recorded her mental health history. According to this, she’d never attempted suicide before. At least, none that she’d admitted. Her depression scales were moderate, but she was compliant with her medication and, according to Lachlyn, denied any suicidal ideation.

  I could feel the popcorn twisting into a greasy clump inside me as I typed in the next name. Kelly Jordan. Found stabbed outside a local bar. No mention of a trial, although the police reportedly had a suspect. She’d been Lachlyn’s client as well.

  Tammy Long, killed in April 2007, was seen by Regina. Her boyfriend at the time was tried and convicted of her murder. She’d been beaten to death with a crowbar. Witnesses in their apartment building claimed to have heard an argument, and one reported the boyfriend, Lyle Chester, as storming out of the apartment in a rage. Chester admitted arguing, but claimed he left Tammy in order to keep from hurting her, and stayed overnight at his mother’s. When he returned the next morning to get his work clothes, he found Tammy lying in a bloody mess on the kitchen floor. He called the police. Currently, he resided in the Stanley Correctional Institution hoping for an appeal.

  Monica Skolnik: left the shelter just this July, killed in August. Her husband, the primary suspect, hung himself in his jail cell. Whether that closed the case or not, I didn’t know.

  The only one that Google failed to provide details for was Jean Tschida. Hers was also the oldest file, dating back to March 2001. She’d been Regina’s client, and the last note indicated that Jean was returning home and had refused a termination session.

  Five out of the six women whose files Regina snuck out of the shelter were dead, victims of violent or suspicious deaths. I assumed Jean Tschida hadn’t had a happy ending, or else why would Regina have dug the file out? She must have remembered something.

  Clotilde had set Friday as the deadline, but I needed a lot more time than that. The only ones who could supersede her wishes were the board, but even with Beth’s influence I couldn’t imagine that happening. Unfortunately, I had nothing to offer that would influence their decision to wrap up Regina’s cases. In my experience, the only thing that reliably swayed boards of directors was money. Lots of it.

  In this economy, everyone was hurting and the governments, state and federal, were adding hoops within hoops for organizations to jump through before cutting a check. Grant monies were drying up faster than a drip of spit on a sidewalk in August.

  Money was a guarantee, but sometimes political influence—a slower, less certain pressure—could work, too. I tried to think if I knew anyone at the state level who had the power to divert a trickle of the cash flow to the shelter. I didn’t; along with Garth, all my friends were in low places.

  Besides, nowadays there were so many checks and double checks at the front end of the money and outcome reports and efficacy studies at the back end that keeping the money was just as difficult as getting it.

  Wait.

  Efficacy studies. More and more funding sources were requiring studies that proved the money was doing what it was supposed to be doing. Not a bad thing, really, but they were demanding those results at a time when less money meant less staff to execute the studies.

  So wouldn’t a volunteer who was willing to systematize an evaluation process come in handy? Someone willing to do the grunt work that kept the money a-comin’? Someone willing to dig through the records to chart how the women fared after leaving the shelter?

  Someone like me.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  I spent Wednesday morning at the shelter holed up in Regina’s old office, finishing up the last of the paperwork. As I had passed the stairwell door, I’d taken note of the new padlock—menacing and ominous despite its bright, efficient shininess—that now graced the door leading to the second story.

  Contrary to my recent blustering, I took care to keep a low profile. Lachlyn wasn’t there, but Clotilde surprised me by allowing me to proceed unsupervised. Of course, if they’d already vetted the new stack of files, they had nothing to worry about. I had no way of verifying they were complete. None had the RTA notation on the discharge page, though.

  Obviously, she wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible. On the two occasions when I crossed paths with her, I kept my face a careful blank, not wanting to give away any sign that I was engineering a coup. Between forcing myself to be patient and the suspicions that roiled around my brain, I worked up a splitting headache.

  Despite that, I found myself looking forward to the AA meeting later that night. A women’s group, it had been meeting for more than a decade. I counted myself lucky that at less than a year of sobriety, I had access to such a wealth of sober experience. Plus, since we took turns meeting at each other’s houses, the coffee was infinitely better than at the club and there were usually delicious, homemade munchies. So good, in fact, that we’d had several men try to infiltrate over the years. Technically we couldn’t exclude anyone, but after an evening spent listening to the minute details of menstrual cycles and comparisons of cervical dilation records in birthing, the brave soldier would usually decamp, vastly preferring rancid coffee and vending machi
ne candy over “that woman stuff.”

  This month we were meeting at Rhonda’s. She shared one-half of a tiny duplex that felt crowded with three people gathered, but her peanut butter chunk brownie recipe was to die for. She’d crammed five extra folding chairs—the metal kind that chills your butt when you first sit down—alongside a couple of lawn chairs with dubious webbing. There were so many of us that we ended up sitting five to a couch, but we all had warm brownie and a smile.

  My smile had much to do with the ominous ripping sound that I’d heard when Sue claimed one of the lawn chairs. She pretended not to hear it, but I noticed her trying to sit light, bracing herself on the metal arms and using her leg muscles to attempt a David Copperfield-style of levitation. Betting that her thighs would give out before the ragged webbing, I was busily calculating the trajectory of her brownie (in case it needed rescuing) when Rhonda passed out the readings.

  I would have preferred the Promises, but I got the Twelve Steps instead. Could’ve been worse. Charlie got the boring Traditions, but after eight years of sobriety, she demonstrated more maturity.

  I started reading but hadn’t even gotten through the second step, “Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity,” when I felt someone staring. I glanced up and found Sue giving me a Sponsor Stare of Death, which was supposed to alert me to an issue relating to my sobriety that I should be attending to. I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to talk to the group about my current struggles with the Second and Third Steps. The whole “Higher Power” thing scared me to death and I’d been avoiding it. Sue had been trying to get me to look at why.

  And I might have. Except just then her chair bottom, with a sound like two mating monkeys, split wide open. Maybe even three monkeys. It was loud.

  It took four of us to pull Sue to her feet and an extra person to uncouple her from the aluminum chair frame that had embedded itself on her nether regions. We had to pause in sheer wonder at the originality, velocity, and intensity with which she described her feelings about being victimized by patio furniture. I wanted to take notes.

  Eventually we wrestled the thing off her butt and got her settled on a sturdy dining room chair with a new brownie since her last had gone flying. After all of that, the meeting was a lost cause. Every time we’d start to settle down, someone would get the giggles, reigniting the rest of us. Except for Sue, of course. She refused to see the humor in the situation.

  Later, as we gathered our things to leave, Sue pointed a stubby finger at me and said, “We need to meet. Soon. You’re going to talk about the Third.” With that pronouncement, she sailed out the door, leaving us an unrestricted view of the missing brownie’s final resting place.

  Not pretty. The death of a brownie is a sad thing.

  Unfortunately in all the hoopla, I’d forgotten to get Beth’s phone number, which forced me to call Sue first thing the next morning. She didn’t mention the brownie or “Attack of the Chair Night,” as it was later called. I didn’t either. I’m not stupid.

  I didn’t even argue when she pushed for our meeting. Facing God and the Third Step was far less scary than my sponsor. We set it up for the weekend.

  I waited until I had a half-hour break between clients before making three calls—one to Beth, where I left a message; the next to the hospital, where the only thing they would tell me was that Blodgett was stable; and, lastly, to Bettina Reyes.

  I hated to break the news on the phone, but I didn’t know how to ask her to come in for a session without explaining the situation. Not telling would be unduly mysterious and, to a certain extent, manipulative. Besides, she probably wouldn’t have come. Still, telling someone over the phone that her therapist died has its own set of problems.

  I did the best I could. Initially, she refused to meet with me. She claimed that, although surprised and saddened, she didn’t see the need for further counseling. However, when I explained my role in closing out Regina’s affairs and how the ethics review was still moving forward, I sensed her beginning to waiver. The “Oh, shit. This again?” comment was my clue. Eventually she agreed to meet with me and we scheduled her in for 4:00 that afternoon.

  Beth back called twenty minutes later. She was available for lunch and we decided on Northwoods Pub. Everything was falling in place.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  By the time I arrived, Beth had snagged a table and two menus. Seemed a little strange for two alcoholics to be meeting in a pub, but they had a chicken breast sandwich with sauteed mushrooms and Swiss cheese that made whatever risk there might be worth it. We ordered and then Beth sat back waiting for me to open the conversation. Fair enough.

  “You probably know Clotilde gave me a deadline to finish up the review of Regina’s files,” I said. “That’s up tomorrow. I’m hoping that I can get that extended. In fact, I have a proposition that I believe will really benefit the shelter as well as let me complete my obligations.” If I expected her to pick up on the bait, I was mistaken.

  “Can’t you finish up by then?”

  “I could.” I hedged, wishing I knew her better. When we’d first met at the board meeting, Beth, although shorter and curvier than fashion dictated, had seemed to fit right in with the professionals. Today she had her auburn hair pulled back in a pony tail and looked right at home wearing a faded, well-worn Packer sweatshirt. In a way, she reminded me of Siggy—a scrappy survivor who had come into some good luck. They had the same elf-green eyes and don’t-give-me-shit attitude. Like most AA members with a few years under their belt, she seemed a straight shooter. I needed to walk a fine line between telling her enough to buy me more time and dumping the whole “I think there’s a killer running around the shelter” bomb on her. That, I was certain, would be a surefire way to get all avenues shut down.

  “The thing is, while I was going through Regina’s clients, I noticed a surprising lack of documented outcomes. The shelter just doesn’t have any way of knowing how—or if—their interventions and techniques are effective. Anecdotally, of course, we can say that the women make progress, but there’s no real proof. It’s an easy enough thing to fix, too.

  “In fact,” I continued, “I’m surprised that the shelter hasn’t already implemented a system of tracking their results. More and more, grants are requiring outcome studies. And, of course, they’re a great tool for attracting donations. People want to know that the money they’re giving is being used effectively.”

  Our food arrived and we sat back as the waiter set the plates down. Smelled delicious. Beth was watching me, a speculative gleam in her eye. I busied myself with the napkin and pretended to be unconcerned with her scrutiny.

  “So, what’s the plan?” she asked. “What are you looking to do?”

  “I thought I could set up an efficacy study. I could, um, review the files—Regina’s included—and do some follow-up with former residents. Find out what happened to the women, how they’ve fared, how the shelter impacted their lives. Meanwhile, I’d put together a survey. It would be given to a woman when she’s first admitted. That gives us a baseline. She’d fill out a second copy right before she leaves, if we know beforehand. Sometimes they just take off. That one could double as an exit interview. Then when she leaves, we’d send a survey with her, with maybe a stamped envelope, so she could pop it in the mail on her own. I don’t know, though. The last one would be tougher since we really don’t know what will be going on with the woman after she leaves, especially if she returns to her abuser. By the way, we don’t know for certain how often that happens either.”

  Beth had finished most of her sandwich while I talked. I took a hasty bite of my own while I waited to hear her response.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Since I had a mouth full of mushrooms and Swiss cheese, I just raised my eyebrows in a “why, what?” look.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said, crumpling her napkin. “I think it’s a great idea, but I’m more interested in what’s behind it. Something tells me there�
��s more to this than charitable impulse. No offense. What aren’t you telling me?”

  I started re-evaluating my stance on psychic abilities. This woman was scary perceptive. Sue had warned me not to try bullshitting her. I swallowed and took a deep breath.

  “I can’t explain the whole thing,” I admitted. “Part of it is wanting to make amends to Regina. She did some things for me that I didn’t truly appreciate until after she died. I was so busy being pissed at her that I never told her thank you.

  “Another part of it is just stubbornness, I guess. Clotilde and Lachlyn seem to have gone out of their way to let me know that they don’t want me there, and it bugs me. I just want to do my job, fulfill my obligation to Regina, and get out. Maybe if I were as fanatical as they are, they wouldn’t discount me. But I don’t have to drink the shelter’s Kool-Aid to do a good job. Even Regina recognized that.”

  “Maybe that’s what bugs them,” Beth said. “I know what they’re like. In fact, I’m pretty sure Clotilde has higher aspirations. I’ve been on the board nine months, and you’re right about their … I wouldn’t call it narrow-mindedness, but they’re certainly devoted to the shelter. That’s a good thing, by the way.” She raised a sardonic eyebrow at me.

  “I know it is. I’d admire them for it if they weren’t so annoying. What do you mean by higher aspirations?”

  “Political. I think Clotilde’s been positioning herself for a run at the state senate. She would certainly be a powerful ally to women in this community, but think how much more could she do at a higher level? She seems to be grooming Lachlyn to take over as director, but I’m not satisfied that Lachlyn is, well, versatile enough to handle the people-pleasing side of things.”