Jonathan Kellerman - Victims

“Perfectly.”

“Perfectly,” he echoed. “You sound like a positive person.”

As if he’d just uncovered a character flaw.

“I try.”

“Try,” said Shacker, “is all we can do.”

Shacker’s building was three stories of lime and brick in the midst of Beverly Hills’ business district. Glossy navy carpeting smothered footsteps. Walls were paneled in bleached oak. A pharmacy calling itself a Dispensing Apothecarie and designed to look Victorian took up a quarter of the ground floor. The rest of the tenants were M.D.’s, D.D.S.’s, a few other psychologists.

B. Shacker, Ph. D., Suite 207.

His waiting room was tiny, white, and set up with three friendly chairs and a wall-stack of magazines. Soft new-age music played from somewhere. A two-bulb panel sat to the left of the inner door. Red for In Session, green for free. Red was illuminated but moments after I sat down, it went dark.

The door opened. An arm extended. “Alex? Bern Shacker.”

The body attached to the arm was five six, thin, narrow-shouldered. The handshake offered was firm, dry, solid.

Shacker looked around fifty. A fine-boned, rosy-cheeked face was topped by thinning chestnut hair laced with silver and styled in a not-too-bad comb-over. Prominent ears and a slightly crooked pug nose gave him an elfin look. His eyes were soft, hazel, vaguely rueful. He wore a gray V-neck sweater over a black shirt, charcoal slacks, black loafers. The sleeves of the sweater were pushed to his elbows. Black shirt-cuffs overlapped the edges.

“Thanks for taking the time, Bern.”

“Please, come in.”

The treatment room was painted pale aqua, carpeted in a darker variant of the same hue, dimmed by brown silk drapes shielding the window that looked out to Bedford Drive. Not a trace of street noise; double- or triple-glazed glass. The requisite professional paper adorned the wall behind a modest walnut desk: doctorate, internship, postdoc, license. The only thing mildly interesting was a Ph. D. from the University of Louvain in Belgium.

Shacker said, “My Catholic days,” and smiled.

The wall to the left of the desk bore the auxiliary door that had allowed Shacker’s patient to exit into the hallway without encountering me. Next to that hung a chrome-framed cubist print of fruit and bread. Two Scandinavian leather chairs sat in front of the desk, facing each other. Shacker motioned me to one, took the other.

He crossed a leg, tugged his trousers up, flashed argyle sock. “Over the phone I mentioned insurance lawyers. They’re the ones who sent Vita to me.”

“Therapy was part of a settlement?”

“Three years ago she sued her employer. The case dragged on. Finally the employer’s coverer was ready to settle but insisted upon a psych evaluation. Insurance work isn’t my usual thing but I’d treated an individual with a connection to the insurer-obviously I can’t say more-and was asked to see Vita.”

I said, “What was the purpose of the evaluation?”

“To see if she was malingering.”

“She was claiming some sort of emotional damage?”

“Supposedly she’d been bullied at work and the company hadn’t done enough to ensure a hostility-free work environment.”

“What company are we talking about?”

Shacker recrossed his legs. “I’m sorry, I can’t give you that, one condition of the settlement was a ban on discussion by both sides. What I can tell you is that it was an insurance company. Health insurance, to be exact. Vita worked for them as a screener.”

“She decided who got care and who didn’t?”

“The company would call it managing the flow of treatment requests.”

“Was she a nurse?”

“She’d had two years of secretarial school and her employment history consisted of nonmedical clerical positions.”

“That qualified her to decide who got to talk to a doctor?”

“Who got to talk to a nurse,” he said. “She was a pre-screening screener. It’s called diagnosis-specific utilization management and yes, it’s atrocious. Vita described working at a huge phone-bank, claimed she’d been provided scripts to read from. Certain conditions were to be ignored, for others she’d suggest an over-the-counter remedy. She was given a list of various call-back protocols-a week for this, a month for that. Acute conditions were to be referred to local emergency rooms, serious diagnoses were put on hold as she pretended to search for the next available nurse.”

I said, “Telemarketing in reverse: Don’t use our product.”

Shacker said, “This is what it’s come to. What was different about Vita was that she loved her job. Getting back at ‘weaklings’ and ‘fakers.’ ”

I said, “That didn’t apply to her post-traumatic symptoms.”

He smiled. “What can I tell you?”

“What kind of bullying are we talking about?”

“No physical intimidation, just pranks and ridicule from some of her co-workers. Vita said she complained repeatedly to her supervisors but was ignored. Her suit was for five million dollars.”

“High-priced ridicule. What were her symptoms?”

“Difficulty concentrating, insomnia, appetite loss, stomach problems, aches and pains. Ambiguous things unlikely to show up on a medical exam but impossible to disprove. Since the alleged root cause was emotional trauma, the health insurer’s casualty insurer wanted an official opinion as to her psychological status.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That her claims couldn’t be validated or invalidated and that she came across as a hostile individual. I didn’t offer a diagnosis as it wasn’t requested. Had I been asked, I suppose I could’ve dug around the DSM for something that fit, but I’m not one of those therapists who feel bad behavior’s a disease.”

“What was Vita’s bad behavior?”

He folded his arms across his chest. “May I tell you something in utter confidence, Alex? Really, I don’t want this entered in any official record.”

“Absolutely.”

“Thank you.” He chewed his lip, played with a sleeve. “Vita was quite possibly the least pleasant person I’ve ever met. I know we’re not supposed to judge, but let’s face it, we do. It didn’t help that she had no motivation to cooperate and regarded our profession with obvious disdain. Most of our sessions consisted of her complaining that I was wasting her time. That anyone with half a brain could see she’d suffered grievous injury. She just about came out and called me a quack. Now you tell me she’s been murdered. Was there evidence of rage? Because I can see her inciting someone’s anger past the point of no return.”

“I’m also limited in what I can say, Bern.”

“I see… all right. Then that’s really all I can tell you.”

“Could we go back to her lawsuit? What kind of pranks and ridicule did she say she’d experienced?”

“Gluing her desk drawer shut, hiding her headset, making off with her snacks. She claimed she overheard people referring to her as the ‘Mad Cow’ and ‘Grumpy Gertie.’ ”

“Claimed,” I said. “You think she was pouring it on.”

“I have no doubt she wasn’t popular but all I had to go on was her self-report. The question in my mind was what role did her behavior play in provoking hostility? But figuring that out wasn’t my job. I was asked to render an opinion about her faking and couldn’t. Apparently that was enough because the settlement went through.”

“How much of the five million did she get?”

“I wasn’t privy to details but the lawyer said it was considerably less-under a million.”

“Pretty nice payoff for having your drawers glued.”

Shacker stifled a laugh that pitched his spare frame forward, as if he’d been shoved from behind. “Forgive me, this is a terrible situation. But what you just said-‘Having her drawers glued.’ I’m no Freudian, but that’s some image, no? And you could certainly describe Vita as being sealed up. In every way.”