Free Mind Games by William Deverell Page B

a quiet tête-à-tête with the prosecutor, the charge was withdrawn and the accused released to the street. Sloan could not look at me.
    I’ve gone on at length about this episode because it’s an example of the kind of shoddy forensic practice that
should
draw the attention of a medical inquisition. Dr. Sloan didn’t innocently mislay the file of a person of reputation. He talked to a penniless vagrant for about ten minutes, found him unresponsive, certified him insane, and practically sentenced himto life in the Coquitlam River gulag. (A full critique of slipshod forensic work is, by the way, to be found in Chapter Five of
Shrinking Expectations.)
    The scene is also useful in sketching a typical picture of your patient on the job. I work both sides of the street, selling my services to the Crown for the occasional felony, more often going to bat for some outcast on legal aid. In this Une of work I make less than the average chicken farmer in Jackson Cove – bills for taxis, restaurants, and severance to departing secretaries add up – so I supplement with a private clientele.
    But bravo! I succeeded in hiring a secretary that afternoon. For some reason I’ve attracted a series of fingernail-polishing misfits, three of whom quit on me, two were let gently go.
    I hired James Lombardi, a former patient, a manic-depressive (a term I prefer to the politically correct Bipolar I Disorder), who saw my classified in the
Sun
. James had just been fired as private secretary to a local tycoon after an unauthorized spending spree (I assume he was off his lithium). He is a business-school graduate, a fifty-one-year-old workaholic, dapper and balding. He is dying to work with me. “I worship at your altar.”
    I’m the saviour who originally diagnosed his condition, who grabbed him by the lapels when the news sank him lower, who told him a mood disorder was a sign of artistic temperament: look at Van Gogh, Tchaikovsky, Shelley. Now he draws with a rough talent and composes saccharine poetry. Otherwise, he lives a normal life: a West End apartment, a gay francophone partner who is teaching him French, breakfast at the Bagel Bar every Sunday morning.
    His disorder is mild, but a careful monitoring of his intake of lithium carbonate might keep him marginally manic as he whirls through the tasks of bringing order from chaos (just joking). I gave him a tour of the office, and he managed not to grimace too much, though he said my billings were a shambles and the computer, a relic, would have to go.
    The first test of his lasting powers came on Tuesday, his first day of work, as he was opening my mail. I’d already told James about Grundy Grundison, warning him to beware of letter bombs, but the note, I
know where you live
, still jarred him.
    “Oh, my. This is
very
Vincent Price.”
    I picked up the envelope by the corner. It was postmarked Vancouver, had been mailed Friday. Again: no return address, mine written in the kind of block capital letters a young child might print, as was the note. I was undecided whether to confront Bob Grundison or to play a more slippery game. He was to make his first regular visit to my office on Thursday.
    “Surely I’m not about to meet this ogre?”
    I told him Dotty Chung would be here too, hidden.
    As I phoned her, James went back to his tasks, humming the theme from
Jaws
. My initial rush of fear was now tempered by the chilling reassurance that my suspicion, with its slight, worrisome air of paranoia, had grounds: someone
was
stalking me.
    Dotty and I met for lunch at the Granville Island Market and took our sandwiches to the pier. This former industrial area, a bridged wedge of land in the heart of the city, has been custom-gentrified: corrugated metal is the motif of many of the smart shops and cafés. It was a fine day, a few clouds clinging to the mountains, tourists in abundance, the little tub of a passenger ferry disembarking a convoy of Nikon-toting Japanese, but I was morose, lacked