Justice Edge (Chris Seely Vigilante Justice Book 10) Read online

  Chapter 6

  Monday morning Chris figured why not try Dr. Moore again, that the last session hadn’t been that unproductive had it?

  Yes, there were the couple instances where she rolled what he wanted to discuss into something else, but you were never going to get the full package out of these people, that seemed a given.

  And maybe their training limited them, didn’t always let them think outside the box -- or maybe they just wanted to keep the upper hand on you.

  Either way, not much on the agenda today . . . and Chris called the office.

  Which rang funny after the first couple rings, the way it does when you’re patched through somewhere else . . . and there was a pause and then a “Dr. Loren Moore speaking.”

  “Jeez,” Chris said. “You answer your own phone now?”

  “It’s been known to happen,” Dr. Moore said somewhat cautiously. “With whom and I speaking please?”

  “Chris Seeley. I’m a little disappointed now, you didn’t catch on. The anxiety in my tone alone, that should have been the giveaway.”

  “Hello Chris,” she said, “is everything all right?”

  “You know something,” he said, “this is getting to be like a broken record. You and Dr. Stride both -- Bruce -- every cotton pickin communication represents a crisis of the tallest order.”

  She was quiet for a minute and unfortunately probably already taking notes. She said, “Chris it’s okay if it’s not. How are you doing?”

  “Fine, couldn’t be better, if you want to know the truth. I even jogged a little this morning. Not on the beach or anything, like I used to, but over to a new coffee kiosk they got, in the parking lot behind Taco Bell . . . until that place opens up for the day. Then they have to move it.”

  “That’s encouraging. May I ask how far?”

  “Is this, like a medical question . . . or for your own information.”

  “Both.”

  “Why,” Chris said, “do you work out yourself?” Like a one-track-minded 8th grader, he couldn’t redirect himself from Dr. Moore’s anatomy, the abnormally large chest, and now that jogging was on the table, what would that have been like, exactly, in her case? . . . Both her participating in it, and others witnessing her efforts.

  “Chris, what can I do for you?” she was saying now.

  “Well like I say, I’m surprised you picked up directly,” he said. “No big deal, but since I have you on the line anyway, can you work me in?”

  “Today?”

  “Well no, I wasn’t expecting that . . . You do have time today though?”

  “I’m going to need to check, and I’ll call you back.”

  Oh boy. All he figured, once again, stick your name in the rotation, stop in for kicks, maybe in a couple weeks. Why were these therapists such drama kings, and queens?

  Chris shaved and the phone rang, and Dr. Moore said she could see him at 12:15.

  “I guess,” Chris said. “If you insist. Hopefully you didn’t discombobulate a real patient on my account.” She said she did not, and she’d see him then.

  Chris went back to morning TV, and this was the thing, it was all pasteurized these days, even the local shows, like this guy and gal on KTLA right now interviewing someone starting a winery from their back yard in Holmby Hills, using a software program and special solar netting to cram two growing seasons into one -- and of course both hosts are yukking it up.

  Chris looked at this kind of ‘human interest story’ as an example of what you’d find on similar TV in Columbus, Ohio . . . or Athens, Maine . . . or Bargesville, Indiana, or Alamo, Nevada . . . or Cobalt, Ontario, since the Canadians were losing their distinctive cultural ways as well.

  This was what the mainstream considered progress, he supposed, and he flipped to a replay of the Masters golf, Tiger Woods looking older and bulkier on the 12th hole, but still driving the shit out of the ball . . . but golf didn’t do it for him either, and he was going to go out for a paper to kill an hour and a half before Dr. Moore -- when he realized he didn’t have a car.

  Yikes. He apparently conveniently left that fact out of the equation when he went to bed last night, and maybe it worked, no bad to dreams to contend with, nothing like the weird one the night before Roland.

  Anyhow . . . one option -- the only one -- would be to use another car service for the appointment . . . unless . . . and that was that used car place a quarter mile down on Sepulveda, the block before Sharif’s motel.

  The guy always said hi, friendly enough, when Chris walked past, which hadn’t been for a while, but still.

  So he hustled over there, the original guy wasn’t there any more, the replacement guy said, but that guy seemed okay too -- and Chris said, “It doesn’t matter what it looks like. Just don’t gouge me on the price, and don’t let me drive out of here with something unreliable.”

  “Of course, sir. Any other criteria?”

  “Yeah, we gotta close this in like a half hour.” And he’d obviously just thrown away any leverage he might have in the price department . . . but life was too short sometimes, and there’d been another real estate investor guy one time -- not the catch ‘em before the drug dealers wake up guy -- but this other guy with a sensible outlook too: that if money makes a problem go away -- spend it.

  One thing you weren’t going to do was report the Camry missing, for obvious reasons.

  You never knew though, one time an old couple, where he grew up, Pacific Heights, they got carjacked in front of their house, middle of the day, and it was a traumatic event of course, but they reported it and the cops came up empty so they went and bought a new car, and then a month later they’re driving down to Fillmore Street and they spot the old car on Steiner and Pine. Nothing wrong with it, the a-hole had apparently driven it a few blocks after carjacking them, parked it there, and that was it.

  So yeah, conceivably the Camry was around, maybe someone jacked it up and ripped off the wheels alone -- but you wouldn’t count on it. There was a bit of sentimental value there, Chris conceded, big hunk of metal with some rubber and vinyl and plastic mixed in, but even so, it represented plenty of memories, corny as that sounded. She had been a good friend, had taken care of you, 260,000 miles and going strong, the timing belt changed not once but twice.

  But you moved on . . . and Chris drove off the used car lot in a 2012 Chevy Malibu with a couple of dents here and there that didn’t seem like they’d affect anything. Chris liked the name of course, and was happy to buy American when possible, but he was worried about the reliability and this guy Delf, the salesman, assured him that all the parts came from Asian technology these days, that they essentially duplicated what was under the hood in your standard Honda Accord . . . which Chris had his doubts about, but he didn’t press it.

  One criteria, which he hadn’t mentioned to the guy, had been the wheel well in the trunk that had served him well in the Camry, meaning you could store appropriate shit in there under the spare tire, without creating a huge lump on the trunk bed, and the Malibu seemed to work . . . and Chris hesitated for a second coming out of the lot, should he stop back home first or go straight to Dr. Moore’s -- and he nearly got sideswiped by a UPS truck, and that guy -- even though UPS drivers were the nicest ones around -- gave him an extended finger out the window, which he did deserve.

  Dr. Moore ushered a patient out at 12:12, went back in the office, and greeted Chris on the button at 12:15.

  “You run a rightfully tight ship,” he said. “Would that be Type A behavior, if it were a patient? Something that would qualify for you making a note?”

  “It would depend,” she said, “whether it was an extension of other compulsive behavior, or an isolated example of the patient behaving responsibly.”

  “How do you tell?”

  Dr. Moore smiled. “You should become a psychologist. You’re quite curious how we operate.”

  “What did you study before that?” Chris said. “Or that was it.”

  “Gosh no. I was a li
nguistics major. I spent a decade in St. Louis. Didn’t come to this until well into my 30’s.”

  “I’ll give you credit then, dang . . . Something bad happen at that point, that turned you introspective?”

  “No. I had a boyfriend. We took a summer, hiked the Appalachian Trail. Thought things through. We came back, applied to PhD programs together.”

  “How’d that work out?”

  “Things don’t always go completely as planned,” she said. “But here I am.” Nice comfortable smile, obviously at ease with her decision from back when, despite the bit of mystery with the boyfriend.

  Chris sat there a moment. He of course tried not to stare at her chest -- and maybe it was just coincidence, or the light -- but her get-up today -- a cream-colored cotton blouse buttoned down the front -- seemed to accentuate the situation worse than last time, when he made the unfortunate couple of comments.

  Of course you’d assume the woman just went in the closet every day and put something on like anyone else, no deep-rooted thought to that aspect of the presentation -- the reality being, in her case no matter what she wore, it wouldn’t help her out that much . . . and for God’s sakes give the lady a break, none of us can control the luck of the draw when it comes to physical features.

  Dr. Moore said, “Is that enough about me this afternoon? It’s your dime of course. But my sense is you had a different motivation in reaching out this morning.”

  “There you guys go again, with the reaching out . . . But fine. For starters, something that’s been bugging me lately . . . I had a friend with large breasts one time. There were issues.” What a surprise that he’d lead off with this topic, whether he consciously had wanted to or not -- but it was on the table now.

  “Uh-huh,” Dr. Moore said.

  “She wasn’t, like a girlfriend. She was older.”

  “Might she have been someone’s mother? Who you knew?”

  “Oh brother. We can’t get past this. Now you have me in the womb again, or fresh out of it. You’re going to ask me if I was breast fed.”

  “Were you?”

  “I would assume so. But honestly, it was never brought up. And it won’t be. My mom’s not around. Neither of my parents, unfortunately.”

  “How old was she, your mom?”

  “When she had me? Or when she passed?”

  “Both.”

  “Let’s get back on topic here. This friend, it was a summer during college, one of my roommates got us jobs in Florida. We had a band too, nothing official, just kicking it around a little, and then someone hires us to play . . . not the wedding obviously, but what do you call it when girls have a bachelor party?”

  “A bachelorette party?”

  “Probably. Not even that, it was when they all came back after. We played in someone’s apartment.”

  “Do you play an instrument currently?”

  “You’re not complicated, you know it? I know where you’re going, that music is good therapy, yada yada. Let me finish this.”

  She was taking a note.

  Chris continued, “One of the people from the party -- she wasn’t someone’s mother-- not that kind of age difference -- but she might have been like a big sister or family friend. I never established it frankly.”

  “Umm-hmm.”

  “Anyways. When we’re packing up the instruments she asks me if I give lessons. I never had, but I said sure, it seemed harmless enough . . . and only when the lessons began and we’re both sitting there with the guitars on our laps, and you have that certain angle . . . then I noticed it, or them, you couldn’t help it.”

  “Hmm,” Dr. Moore said.

  “And you know how when you purposely try not to call attention to something? And your eyes are roaming every which way but there? How that makes it worse?”

  “Continue.”

  “So fine, I must have given her a half dozen lessons, it wasn’t hard, she wasn’t a rank beginner . . . and then the final one, she announces that she can’t come for a while because she’s going in for some minor surgery.”

  “Ah.”

  “So I figured that was it, I picked up a few bucks spending money out of the deal and I moved on. But then one day my roommate tells me he heard she was going in for breast reduction surgery.”

  “Uhn-huh. And that bothered you.”

  “Very much so, are you kidding? So I called her up. I tell her, it’s none of my business, and it’s fine if you hang up -- but what the hell are you doing here?” Or had she done here, assuming it’s too late already.

  “Yes?”

  “She was embarrassed, but she addressed it. She said she had second thoughts, she’d received some negative advice from a few people, and put the procedure on hold for the time being . . . I told her that was a wise decision . . . and did she want to set up another lesson in that case, and she said she’d let me know, but I never heard from her again.”

  “I see,” Dr. Moore said. She looked at her notes. “You prefaced this discourse by labeling it ‘something that’s been bothering me lately’. How so?”

  “I never got closure, is why. For all I know she went in a month later and took care of it. I know it sounds silly, and you probably think I’m a nut case.”

  “Let’s explore that for a moment. How many years ago was this?”

  “20. Give or take.”

  “Would you characterize this experience as having been on your mind often, since then?”

  “Not really. Only when something reminds me of it . . . like in a porno flick once in a while, that type thing.”

  “And why do you think it still disturbs you occasionally? Is it a lack of control?”

  “I think you got it,” Chris said. “I can’t stand it when people don’t listen to me. In certain cases.”

  “And you feel this woman did not.”

  “Put it this way. She ignored me, which is worse.”

  “And why do feel that?”

  “She canned the lessons, for starters.”

  Dr. Moore made a note. “Did it occur to you that she may not have returned for the guitar lessons because you touched on a sensitive subject?”

  “Fine, that too,” Chris said.

  “Did you have sexual feelings for this person? And part of your frustration stems from not being able to explore those further?”

  “Fine. That too . . . plus it was like, if she shrunk her situation, right in my face so to speak, she wasn’t giving anything a chance to play out.”

  “And you wouldn’t have been as attracted to her, if she’d had the reduction procedure.”

  “Again, you’re going to shake your head . . . but correct.”

  “Have you been involved in any relationships with older women?”

  “I thought I was once, and I got dumped pretty quick.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Nah, it’s not worth it. But okay in a nutshell, I worked at a newspaper once. When you start off they stick you on the late shift, 5 to 2. Some gal comes in after midnight, I say can I help you, and it turns out she’s a roving food critic, turning in a restaurant review. This is before the internet was in full swing at newspapers, a lot of people still turned shit in.”

  “And a brief relationship followed.”

  “Yeah, about 10 minutes later, if you know what I mean. That late shift, it was pretty dead in the newsroom, and there were empty offices and so forth.”

  “I see . . . So that was the extent of it.”

  “I didn’t want it to be. I bought Warriors tickets for a couple nights later. I picked her up, it was all good. But she left in the 3rd quarter . . . No idea how she got home. I guess she took BART.”

  “What was your age difference?”

  “I was like mid-20’s, she was probably early 40’s? . . . Right about where I am now, in fact . . . Jeez, weird to think of like that.”

  “So . . . anything else you can add Chris? From any direction that might be helpful?”

  “Yeah well, I was in the central va
lley not too long ago. Do you like small towns?”

  “Sometimes. I grew up in one. Do you?”

  “I hear you. Good place to be from, might not want to live there though? . . . I’m taking care of some nonsense there, it’s running me a few days, I’m in a hotel, the staff is friendly, it’s not the worst thing, you know what I mean? You’re not in a major rush to get out of there, but even so.”

  “I believe you’ve mentioned your affinity for hotels before. Why do you think you’re comfortable in that environment?”

  “No, no. The womb stuff again? . . . Security? No responsibility? They even make your bed for you and clean up?”

  “I’m detecting sarcasm.”

  “You’re wondering if truth is sprinkled in though. Fine. I’ll add when you’re on the road, residing in those type places, your commitments are less. Normally.”

  “Life is not as complicated for you, I believe you’re saying.”

  “Yeah. So I meet this high school kid, he’s probably 18, he’s a senior, he’ll be out of there in a couple months. Guy has a good name, Pike Gillette.”

  “He does. It’s catchy.”

  “What I did, TV was bad one night so I found the high school track. I figure 4 laps to a mile, so if I go 8, I’ve done a little something. I’m talking walking, of course, no big thing. I stop at 6, but anyway I’m sitting in the bleachers, this kid comes along, putting on running shoes and we start talking, and I can tell he’s fine with it, because you always want to procrastinate your workout, it’s human nature.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing monumental, except I found myself envying the heck out of this kid. He was athletic, all-American features, genuine smile. Polite, well-spoken. Everything ahead of him, is what I’m thinking . . . It also made me want to turn back the clock myself and do it right.”

  “High school?”

  “Sure. It had its moments, but plenty of stuff to straighten out. Wouldn’t you?”