Death Gets a Time-Out (9 page)

He shook his fist at another car, and then said, “How did you go from an accident that Lilly doesn’t want to talk about to a suspicious death?”

“It’s suspicious that no one wants to talk about it. And will you please
stop
giving people the finger! Haven’t you ever heard of highway shootings? Are you trying to get me killed here?”

He rolled his eyes. “Let’s worry first about what we’re being paid to worry about, okay? We’ll work on gathering the mitigation evidence. Then, if we’ve got time, we’ll follow up on the Mexico thing.”

I acquiesced, albeit a bit unwillingly, and sank down in my seat so that I could not be visible to enraged drivers
responding to Al’s vigorously expressive highway maneuvers.

The Ojai Rehabilitation and Self-Actualization Center was located in the hills above the town for which it was named, a farming community that had over the years become something of an artists’ colony. Al and I wound our way through the little streets, passing signs for open studios and gallery openings, and fresh farmer’s cheese. Much to Al’s chagrin, I broke the hermetic seal of his air-conditioned SUV and rolled down my window as we drove up a long road through rolling hills of brown grasses and scrub oaks. I took a deep breath, inhaling air redolent with dried brush, cow manure, and surprisingly, given how far inland we were, the faint tang of salt and sea.

A wooden sign so discreet that we almost missed it pointed us to an electronic gate that guarded the entrance to the center. Al pulled up to the gate and leaned precariously out of his window to reach the microphone.

“Lucky you’ve got that gut to provide ballast,” I told my partner. “Otherwise you’d fall head first out the window.”

He grunted and hauled himself back in the car. “Very funny. The director’s waiting for us in the main building.”

The gate slid silently open. We drove through and continued for another half a mile or so along a road of crushed gravel, bright white, shaded on either side with feathery cottonwood trees. Beyond the trees, paths wound through gardens planted with cacti and succulents. The grounds were dotted with people sitting on redwood benches, faces raised to the sun. One woman swung lazily on a wooden swing that dangled from the limb of a tall oak. The road ended in a circular driveway, before a ranch house, its thick stucco walls painted terracotta, with brilliant purple and red bougainvillea spilling down from its roof. Huge pots of brightly colored Mexican pottery bursting with geraniums and nasturtiums flanked the massive oak doors, which were propped open to catch the breeze. An orange cat lay in the doorway in a patch of sun.

“Nice place,” Al said as he pulled into a parking space next to the building.

“It’s a long way from the crack house,” I said. I couldn’t help thinking of all the drug rehab centers where I’d visited clients over the years, of the grimness of those facilities, made even more apparent by their pitiable attempts at cheerfulness—barred windows hidden behind bright polyester curtains, narrow cots covered with children’s bedspreads that might once have been cute but had long since grown pilly and faded from years of institutional laundries. Their grounds, if they had any, weren’t rolling meadows sprinkled with swings and benches, but cracked asphalt yards, with patches of garden tended by the patients themselves, one of the many chores they were required to do. Although all that gardening and cleaning was supposed to be therapeutic, I could never discount the suspicion that it had more to do with limited maintenance budgets. I jumped down from the truck and looked around, squinting against the glare of the sun reflected off the glistening white gravel.

“Why do I think it might be a lot easier to kick a drug habit here, than in one of the county-run dumps our clients always ended up in?” Al said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, what happens if you get clean and sober? They make you go home! I’d keep shooting up, just to stay here for as long as possible.”

Inside, the building was delightfully cool. The walls were decorated with imitation Gaughins and Diego Riveras. At least I
hoped
they were fakes. I peered at the lower corner of a portrait of a bare-breasted woman in a grass skirt. There was no signature that I could see, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That really would have been too much.

“May I help you?” a soft voice said, and I turned to find a young woman standing next to Al. She had long blond hair tucked behind ears that stood straight out from her head. She was standing with her back to the sun, and it shone through her ears, lighting them up like little pink lanterns—almost the same pink as her cashmere sweater. She smiled pleasantly.

“We have an appointment with Dr. Blackmore,” Al said.

“Of course. Mr. Hockey and Ms. Applebaum?” We nodded. “I’m Dr. Blackmore’s assistant, Molly Weston.” We
shook hands. “He’s waiting for you out on the terrace.”

We followed her through the lobby, kind of a mock living room with overstuffed chairs, built-in bookshelves overflowing with fat paperbacks, and a massive stone fireplace. There was a teenage boy sprawled on the rug in front of the fireplace, his head pillowed on a book, and a number of other people sitting in small groups around the room, chatting or reading. They all looked vaguely disheveled, as if they had just woken from a nap, or hadn’t taken the time to look in the mirror when they got dressed. They seemed either too thin, gaunt and twitchy, or like they’d grown fat on a diet of donuts and French fries. A few glanced up as we passed, and I smiled a greeting. Only one person smiled back, a man of about thirty, with long tangled hair and a patchy beard. He looked familiar to me, and I wondered if we’d gone to college together. It was a moment before I remembered where I’d seen his face—on the cover of a CD Peter had played incessantly for a month or two a couple of years ago. My expression must have betrayed my dawning recognition, because he winked and shrugged ruefully before turning back to his book.

Reese Blackmore was sitting at a wrought iron table on a flagstone terrace that overlooked a swimming pool. He had the most beautiful hair that I’d ever seen, chalk-white, worn long, brushing his collar. It shone in the sunlight, and his skin glowed with the kind of even, honey-brown suntan acquired only under the blue lights of a tanning booth.

“Can I offer you something to drink?” the doctor asked once we’d joined him at the table. “Some tea? A soymilk chai latte?”

“I’ll have a coffee. Black,” Al said.

“Ms. Applebaum?” Molly invited.

“I’ll try the chai latte. But do you have milk milk? Cow milk?”

“Nonfat?”

Was that a comment on the baby fat I was already packing on?

“That would be fine. Dr. Blackmore,” I began.

“Please. Reese,” he said, his voice as smooth and even as his skin.

“Reese. Did you receive Jupiter Jones’s waiver of confidentiality that I faxed this morning?” We had asked Jupiter to sign a paper indicating that his doctors had permission to speak to us, as members of his defense team, about his medical history. Otherwise, doctor-patient confidentiality would have precluded any conversation.

“Yes. Yes I did. How is Jupiter? I’ve been sick at the thought of him in jail. He’s not the kind of person who can defend himself very well.”

I nodded. “He’s having a hard time. But his attorney is doing what he can to get him out.” I explained our role to the doctor, and asked him if he could begin by telling us a little bit about his facility, and how Jupiter had come to be a patient there.

“First of all, we don’t call them patients. They are residents, or clients. While the center is, of course, a medical facility in that its mission is to treat the disease of addiction, we like to view this as more of a retreat, a place for wounded individuals to come, rest, and do their work of healing surrounded by others engaged in the same endeavor. Our system is based on group therapy, group motivation. Every resident is both a patient working on his or her own disease and, in a very real sense, a therapist helping the other residents in their struggles.”

I delicately and gently stomped on Al’s foot to stifle the groan of disgust I knew the doctor’s speech would produce in my partner. Al doesn’t have a lot of patience with “wounded individuals” unless those wounds bleed and can be bandaged with actual gauze.

“The center is lovely,” I said.

“Being surrounded by natural beauty helps our residents. At first many of them don’t even notice the surroundings. And then, after a while, their work progresses, and they become able to focus on something other than their desperate need to alter their consciousnesses. That’s when they begin to take note of the environment, to allow its beauty to give
them pleasure, even a kind of natural high of its own.”

“Swell,” Al said, and I hoped I could hear the disdain in his voice only because I knew him so well, not because it was so obvious. I didn’t share it. Sure, the doctor was slick enough to have spilled from the hold of the
Exxon Valdez
, but what he was saying made sense to me. When I was a public defender, almost all of my clients had been drug users. Their entire lives were structured around the next high—where they were going to get it, how they would come up with the money. They didn’t commit crimes under the influence of drugs; they committed crimes in order to
get
under the influence. I had often wondered what would have happened if we just gave all the junkies their drugs. They wouldn’t have to steal to support their habits, and if they knew where their next fix was coming from, they would suddenly have all this time to think about something else, like what had become of their lives. I bet at least some of them might have time to
develop
lives that would one day become reasons to get off drugs entirely.

Anyway, I certainly believed that when they first showed up at the Ojai center, the residents were not able even to see the gorgeousness of its setting. And it made sense to me that once they could no longer spend all their time and energy trying to get high, the beauty they hadn’t before noticed might begin to creep into their consciousness, and even give them a reason to be happy.

“How much does it cost to come here?” Al asked.

“Quite a bit, I’m afraid,” the doctor said, with a smile that had the tiniest hint of smugness. “Generally around seven thousand dollars a week.” Al whistled through his teeth. “Yes, I know,” Blackmore continued. “It sounds like a lot, but I promise you we don’t make much of a profit. The program costs a fortune to run, and the grounds”—he waved around him—“well, the upkeep is just astonishing. But we do our best not to be just a clinic for the very wealthy. In cases where we feel that the individual would benefit from our program, but can’t afford it, we try to make special arrangements. And because I believe all of us in the therapeutic
community have a civic responsibility, we always take a certain number of state-sponsored individuals, primarily referred through the drug courts. By and large, however, our residents are very successful individuals, many of whom are in the public eye. We provide a supportive and anonymous environment that doesn’t force them to sacrifice the comforts they are accustomed to.”

I looked across the terrace and down at the pool. It was irregularly shaped and its water was dark, almost like a pond or small lake. A waterfall bubbled over rocks and plants at one end, and at the other, steam rose from a small area separated by a low wall of rocks. One or two people soaked in the hot tub, and a few others lay on wooden chaise lounges under striped umbrellas. A dark-skinned man in a white T-shirt and shorts distributed tall glasses of water and towels to the sunbathers. Nope. Nobody at the center was sacrificing any of the comforts of home.

“When was Jupiter Jones here?” I asked.

“Jupiter joined us almost exactly four years ago. He checked in for a ninety-day residency to help him end his dependence on cocaine. He completed the program and participated in our outpatient program in Santa Monica for another few months.”

“You have an outpatient program?”

“Yes. Most of our clients are from the Los Angeles area. We run a program of group and individual therapy to help our clients manage the transition back into their regular lives. That is a very dangerous time for a drug-dependent individual. It is significantly easier to stay sober surrounded by others doing the same thing, in a place where drugs are hard to find. Most find it much more of a challenge when they return home, to the same environment, family, and friends, where they acquired their self-destructive habits to begin with. We aid them in finding social and living situations that don’t encourage their return to drug use.”

“And Jupiter participated in that?”

“Yes, for a few months.”

“Is that a normal amount of time?”

“What do you mean?”

“Is three months the amount of time you expect people to stay in the outpatient program?”

“We have no expectations. Different people use it for different amounts of time. It depends on the individual.”

“What’s the average?”

He looked uncomfortable. “Well, perhaps a little longer. More like six months or a year. But each client is different.”

Al grunted, and this time I agreed with what it was that he wasn’t saying. I was willing to bet that Jupiter Jones hadn’t quit the program because he was so well on the road to recovery that further treatment had become superfluous.

We had intended to ask Dr. Blackmore to testify on Jupiter’s behalf at the penalty phase of the trial. His job would be to describe for the jury Jupiter’s battles with drug addiction. But if Jupiter had dropped out early, then I wasn’t sure that the doctor’s testimony wouldn’t do more harm than good. Even if that weren’t the case, Dr. Blackmore was the kind of witness designed to grate on a jury. The slick suntan, the carefully tended hair, the New Age speak. All that was sure to turn the jury off in a big way. Worse, if the prosecutor decided that in order to prepare for his cross-examination of the doctor, he had to send a detective up to visit the center, we would be in serious trouble. I was sure that a jury would not be inclined to sympathize with someone whose rehab experience included being waited on by uniformed pool boys.