Motion to Suppress

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  "How did you come to practice hypnotherapy?"

  "After many years of general practice I had come to the conclusion that many physical diseases originate in the mind. I learned of a certificate program in hypnotherapy that appeared to be quite complete. I finished the program in 1987. I consider it a very useful skill for certain types of common problems not amenable to drug therapy, for example."

  "Such as stress reduction?"

  "Yes."

  "How about alcoholism?"

  "Perhaps. In conjunction with other therapeutic measures."

  "How about the compulsive problem you say my client had—what’s the psychiatric term for that?"

  "Uh, I believe it’s called erotomania. Well, if the compulsion was mild, yes, I believe the patient could be given some relief. Hypnosis can be a very valuable tool."

  "That’s what Freud said, at first, didn’t he, Dr. Greenspan ? Do you happen to know why Freud turned away from hypnosis and developed the tools of psychoanalysis instead?"

  "Objection," Hallowell said. "Irrelevant. Where is this lecture going?"

  "I would appreciate some latitude, Your Honor."

  Milne creased his forehead, but said, "Go ahead."

  "Just a moment, Your Honor," Nina said. Paul had swept into the courtroom and motioned to her from the counsel table.

  "Two minutes," Milne said. Nina and Paul put their heads together. Greenspan took a drink of water. Behind them, the spectators took advantage of the moment to talk. Under cover of the general buzz, Paul murmured in her ear, "The DNA results from Cytograph came in. Take a look." He passed over a sheaf of test result reports.

  Five tests. Five sets of results. She tried to read, but the words merged into technical gobbledygook.

  "Are you ready to proceed, Counsel?"

  Paul pointed. "Right there," he mouthed.

  And then she saw it. She froze in the chair.

  "What’s wrong?" Michelle whispered.

  "I’ll tell her. You go ahead," Paul said from behind his hand.

  "Ms. Reilly!" Milne, after almost two weeks of trial, had reached a heightened state of irritation that meant she would have no time to prepare her next questions.

  Nina rose, smoothing her gray linen jacket.

  "I’ve forgotten the question. Sorry," Greenspan said.

  "Why did Freud stop hypnotizing his patients, Dr. Greenspan?"

  "I believe Freud decided the results of hypnosis were too unreliable," Greenspan said.

  "Freud had some concerns about unanalyzed therapists treating patients, too, didn’t he, Doctor?" Nina asked. A wild tide of excitement filled her, making it hard to choke out the words.

  Greenspan looked puzzled. "Yes, but the hypnotherapy I practice is for mild difficulties only. I am not trying to psychoanalyze patients."

  "Yet you have just discussed Mrs. Patterson’s ambivalence toward her marriage, depression, stress, alcoholism, erotomania, and amnesia—"

  "Only up to a point. It is true that I was considering referring Mrs. Patterson to a psychiatrist."

  "In fact, she had some rather complex psychological problems. Didn’t you know that after, say, five sessions?"

  "Perhaps," Greenspan said.

  "Why didn’t you refer her?"

  "I thought I was helping her."

  Nina watched as Paul showed the DNA results to Michelle. She let out a small sound, like a kitten crushed by a car.

  "Did Mrs. Patterson develop transference toward you?"

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Transference—you know, did she fall in love with you?"

  "Objection!"

  "Overruled."

  "I should say not," Greenspan said. "As I said, I was merely undertaking a short course of hypnotherapy."

  "Was she a good hypnotic subject?"

  "Excellent. She was able to achieve a very deep state of trance."

  "Did she ever express to you that she could not remember the contents of her hypnotic sessions with you?"

  "Yes. It’s rather common. It’s called posthypnotic amnesia. Not surprising, considering her history of memory loss."

  "Not surprising at all," Nina said. "And you didn’t tape any of the sessions?"

  "As I told you, that’s not my practice. I take notes. I’m old-fashioned in that respect."

  "Have you ever heard of countertransference, Doctor?"

  For the first time, the doctor hesitated. "Yes. That goes back to the psychoanalytic situation."

  "Describe your understanding of that term, if you would."

  "Objection! This has gone on too long. Counsel is wasting the jury’s time with this irrelevant line of questioning!"

  "Approach the bench."

  When Nina came up, Milne leaned over and said in a very low voice, "Are you by any chance stalling for time, Counsel?"

  "No, Your Honor. Just give me a few more questions."

  "Make it snappy," Milne said.

  As she walked back to the counsel table, Nina took a quick survey of her audience. In the back row she spotted Al Otis, dressed up today to look like a businessman; Mrs. Greenspan with a bag of knitting right up front; and there sat Tom and Janine Clark, right next to Mrs. Greenspan. The Tengstedts kept close together in a middle row, holding hands. Stephen Rossmoor had placed himself right behind Michelle, behind the railing. The gang’s all here, she thought.

  "Okay. You can answer the question, Doctor."

  "I’m sorry, I don’t remember it," Greenspan said.

  "What is countertransference, Doctor? Not transference. Tell us about countertransference."

  "Right. Countertransference has to do with our previous, ah, discussion. About unanalyzed therapists."

  "Go on."

  "Well, the idea is that the therapist may have some psychological needs or problems that obtrude into the therapeutic relationship...."

  "For example, the therapist falls in love with his patient?"

  "Objection!" Hallowell roared.

  "Did you have sexual intercourse with Mrs. Patterson while she was under hypnosis?"

  "What?" Greenspan cried. "Never!" He had unfurled his long arms and spread his hands, like a bat.

  "How dare you!" came a female voice from the audience.

  "Your Honor, I must protest!" Riesner said. "She’s doing exactly what you—"

  "Just a couple more questions, Your Honor," Nina said. Milne gave her his careful regard, clearly unsettled. She challenged him with her eyes.

  "Proceed," Milne said. "All objections are overruled."

  "You did take advantage of her sexually while she was your patient, did you not?"

  "No!" Greenspan had sat down again, but his hands squeezed the railing.

  Nina said directly to the jury, "Suppose I told you I have here the results of a DNA test comparing samples of hair taken from Dr. Greenspan’s lab coat by me personally with the DNA of the unborn child Mrs. Patterson is carrying...." She turned back to the witness. "Congratulations. You’re going to be a father."

  Michelle Patterson stood up. For a moment they all paid respectful silence to her swaying, ghostly figure, all in white. She started to open her mouth, then covered it in a familiar gesture. She moved her hands into a praying position, pressing them hard against her lips. Paul put an arm around her and pulled her to her seat.

  "I demand the Court put a stop to this!" Riesner shouted, but nobody was listening. Hallowell stared at the physician, his eyes blank as a video screen without power. They all watched Dr. Greenspan’s face crumple and his body shrink in his suit.

  A wail came from somewhere in the audience, starting small and swelling until everyone in the courtroom was looking at Ericka Greenspan.

  Face haggard, she had risen, her hands clenched around her knitting bag.

  Milne said, not unkindly, "Now, ma’am. Court’s in session. Please take your seat."

  The words had no effect. "Frederick, look at me."

  The only person in the courtroom not already looking heard her. His w
ire-rimmed glasses glinted as he turned his long torso slowly toward his wife.

  "I would have been a better doctor than you," she said. "I covered for you so many years. It was my life too. Our good reputation. Our good name. We helped people together. I was so proud."

  No response.

  "Then the dead man came to me. He wasn’t dead then, though, was he?" A sound like a small laugh escaped. "A man like that, pretty as his wife. Oh, he was nasty. He hinted about things. I didn’t believe him at first. He told me to watch out for you and her. He said, ’You don’t put Misty on a couch and just talk to her.’ How could I believe him? You and that cheap tart? But the things he said stayed in my mind, driving me crazy. I started having these terrible doubts. About us. About what I gave up so that you could be an important man. The world’s better off without people like him. He was a malignancy."

  "You, Ericka?" Greenspan whispered.

  Milne opened his mouth, closed it. The bailiff waited alertly for instructions. In the silent courtroom, nobody breathed. The lights glared down on Ericka Greenspan’s straight back and superbly cut suit. People in the seats beside her stared up at her.

  "You always did underestimate me," she said. "I listened at your door the day the lawyer came. I learned the girl was going to go to a psychiatrist in San Francisco to be hypnotized, and I told the police. That lady lawyer told you, when you were talking to her. Didn’t you stop to think that she might destroy us? At the very least, she was bound to dream up some malpractice. Never thought of that, did you? You’re actually a very stupid man, Frederick."

  "Ericka, don’t say any more," Greenspan said in a low voice.

  "Right, don’t talk," Riesner echoed, edging away from the witness box toward the wall.

  Ericka Greenspan stood there, swaying, her chest heaving, working herself up to some fresh disclosure. Her presence now, at first a minor disruption in the long proceedings, had continued far too long without containment. The witnesses to the trial’s disintegration looked to Milne for leadership. But he was sitting there, a fascinated expression on his face.

  "I drove them off the road, and I tried to get into the girl’s room while she was dead drunk. To smother her. Just taking care of you, darling." Her mouth was a snarl now. "You make a mess; I clean up, just like always. But now—"

  "Ericka, please stop!" Greenspan cried. He looked ready to leap over the witness stand.

  "I hate you! And her! And that lawyer! All of you make a joke of my whole life!" Her head bobbed, and her mouth kept moving jerkily, as though she was going to retch.

  Milne found his voice. "Bailiff, take that woman into custody!" he ordered.

  Before the bailiff had even begun to move, Ericka Greenspan pulled a heavy gun from her knitting bag. She aimed at Greenspan, holding it in both hands, her face wild and determined.

  The people in front of her began to scream and scramble for the exits.

  "You make..."

  Blam!

  "... me sick!"

  Blam!

  The blasts slammed Greenspan back into the witness chair, echoing off the wooden benches. The bailiff had pulled his revolver, but in the confusion of screams and bodies rushing to get out, he couldn’t stop her.

  Nina, amazed and unbelieving, watched as Mrs. Greenspan, seeming to have all the time in the world, turned and pointed the gun at Michelle. Unable to move fast, fingers spread over her belly, her eyes wide with terror, Michelle cowered in her seat for what seemed like minutes before Paul hurled his big body against her, pushing her below the counsel table. The gun moved uncertainly like a black snake until Nina was watching blackness inside the barrel. Then its tongue licked toward her brightly.

  A cannonball thudded into her chest, knocking her flat against the witness box. She went deaf from the roaring in her ears, and she couldn’t raise her hands or breathe or feel a thing. Most of her had fled deep inside at the awful shock, but her eyes stayed open wide, dispassionately witnessing the shiny black gun. It had searched out Paul and Michelle tangled on the floor. Nina waited for the next lick of fire.

  When it finally came, the boom came from a different direction as Deputy Kimura shot Ericka Greenspan in the chest. Blood blossomed in a grisly bouquet over her elegant suit. She emitted a grunt of surprise and fell backward over the bench, hard, the gun firing again and again and again.

  32

  LIGHTS. VOICES. SHE had heard those voices before. She opened her eyes.

  "Easy there," Matt said. He stroked her forehead. Andrea stood beside him, her somber face glinting with tears.

  She was on a gurney, in a hospital corridor, eyes momentarily blinded by the snowstorm of light surrounding her. Closing her eyes, she disappeared into a disorienting half-dream where pain hid and emerged.

  She floated on the drugs, listening detachedly to her own voice moan. At some point Matt shouted. As the gurney jolted forward, she caved in to the pain in her chest and prayed for a quick death.

  A Bonanza rerun. The theme song was playing, so Hoss and Adam and the other cowboys must be riding their Tahoe ranch, tall in the saddle. Adam would be looking around, holding the reins firmly, steely-eyed and twinkly at the same time. He had a dimple and she had such a crush on him. What a shame when Hoss died. Everybody loved him. The TV watchers were sad for such a long time.

  The TV hung from the ceiling in the corner of her hospital room. Hoss was dead, but Nina discovered herself to be alive, though the drugs and TV had pushed her into a 1972 flashback. Her mother might come in at any moment and catch her curled up on a monumental bad trip.

  Hoss met some mean shooters on the way to Virginia City. But Nina was comforted, knowing he would escape due to the perfect and just rules of television land. There were gunshots, but she wasn’t afraid. Buddhist monks could only yearn for such a transcendent state of acceptance. She would have to tell the holy men. Bonanza was the short cut. Eyes closed and ears listening, medicated into the metaconscious, she achieved egolessness and merged with the TV program.

  Days went by, and the medicine took her from daffy to dazed. Memories surfaced gently and faded away. She thought a lot about her mother, and cried now and then. Paul came to see her and hold her hand. Bobby came every day, pressing his sweet cheek against hers, careful not to disturb the IV drip. Other faces came too ... her dad. Was that Jack? Slowly, reluctantly, she woke up again.

  "What day is it?" she asked the nurse.

  "Tuesday. A good day," the nurse said. She was writing something on a chart. "You’re looking chipper." She had short, frizzy red hair and thick, curly eyelashes, freckled hands, and a tattoo of pink-and-blue flowers peeking out from the neck of her sedate white uniform.

  "My chest hurts," Nina said.

  "It should. You were shot in the lung. Broke a couple of ribs. Came out your back. You’re going to hurt for a while, but you’re going to be fine."

  "Really?"

  "I swear," the nurse said, holding her hand to her heart. "Couple battle scars to tell your grandchildren about. Now eat your breakfast." She pressed a button and the top of the bed creaked upward. Nina drank some orange juice and ate some toast, getting used to the tight wrapping around the upper part of her body. She breathed shallowly, blunting the cudgel of pain that pounded at each ebb and flow.

  Andrea brought Bobby over after school. He had made her a cartoon in his computer lab at school, showing a funny bunny with a balloon that said, I LOVE YOU, MOM. She held him close, kissing the top of his head until he begged her to stop.

  "I have a question for you, kiddo," she said. "One I’ve been dying to ask."

  He laughed nervously. "Is this about Troy’s skateboard? Because I already explained to Uncle Matt—"

  "Don’t worry," she said, taking a pencil from her bedside. "It’s this darn puzzle." She drew nine dots in three rows. "Four connecting lines, right?"

  Bobby took the pencil from her, drew a triangle with a line through the middle, and showed it to his mother. "It’s kind of a trick, see? You have t
o be willing to go outside the dots to make it work. I thought it’d be easy for you."

  He hustled down to the lobby to buy himself a treat, while she threw her hands up in a despairing gesture. "I like to think I’m a creative person," she said to Andrea.

  "But you are, Nina. Really, everyone’s just flabbergasted at what you pulled off in that courtroom."

  "Flabbergasted must be an understatement." She punched her pillow weakly and lay back.

  Andrea stood by the bed, trim in her neat jeans. "We’re glad it’s over. You want to know what’s happened, don’t you? Curiosity is a good sign. It means you’re better. They say they’re going to let you out of here in a few days, but you’ll have to take it easy for at least six weeks after that. Your chaise will be waiting."

  "It punctured my lung," Nina said. "Andrea, she almost killed me."

  "I know, sweetie. But she missed the aorta by a centimeter. A little less air won’t hurt your law practice. One centimeter." She frowned. "Don’t cut it so close next time."

  "What happened to the trial?"

  "I don’t know where to start, except to tell you how happy we are you made it."

  "Mrs. Greenspan shot her husband," Nina said.

  "She killed him. He died on the witness stand. Then she shot you. Then the bailiff shot her. She didn’t make it."

  "Michelle?"

  "The judge declared a mistrial. I understand the DA isn’t going to refile charges against Michelle. No jury is going to convict her now. Talk about reasonable doubt. The consensus seems to be that Mrs. Greenspan went to the house that night, saw the fight, and killed Anthony after Michelle was out of commission, hoping Michelle would be blamed."

  Nina was quiet.

  "Well, aren’t you glad?"

  "Did she say anything after she shot me?" Nina said.

  "Not a word."

  Nina sighed, resting her hand on her bandaged chest. "I wish she had confessed to killing Anthony."

  "Oh, come on, Nina. What’s your problem? She came close enough. She said Anthony came to her with his suspicions. She said she protected her husband. She said she tried to kill you and Michelle. She told Collier Hallowell about the San Francisco session."

  "Yes, she confessed to plenty, but not that."