The Hidden Law Read Online Free PDF

a resident?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.
    “Not yet.”
    “Well let’s hope you never are,” he said. “So, do you want the tour?”
    “Actually, I’m here on business. One of my clients was supposed to check in on Monday, but he’s not going to make it. He overdosed last night.”
    “Too bad,” he said briskly. “Too bad.”
    “He was carrying a letter from Edith Rosen.”
    “Oh, Edie. Did you talk to her already?”
    “I was told she wasn’t in. She’s a professional isn’t she, an M.F.C.C?”
    “Marriage, Family and Child Counselor,” he replied sardonically. “Don’t that cover all the bases.”
    “I didn’t think you used professionals here.”
    “Times change, we change with ’em.”
    “Well, anyway, my client’s name was James Dee.”
    He jotted a note. “Listen Henry, as long as you’re here, I wonder if I could run a little something by you, law-wise.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Is the house having a legal problem?”
    “Close the door, would you?”
    I reached back and pulled the door shut.
    “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe. That’s what I’m hoping you could tell me. This is the situation. You see, one of our residents, hotheaded little guy, well he’s a patient of Edie’s, and it seems he told her that he was going to kill another resident, ex-resident now; he checked out last week.” He jerked his head toward me. “You following?”
    “Perfectly.”
    “Good, good. So this little guy makes this threat and I find out about it.”
    “From the therapist?”
    “I hear about it,” he continued, “and, of course, I’m concerned, a mite concerned, anyway. I mean, shit, Henry, people are always threatening to kill each other around here, but this guy, well, he don’t seem to want what we have to offer.”
    “What exactly do you want to do? Expel the kid?”
    “Well, now that’s where you come in, Henry. See, I want to throw him out, but you know, there’s paperwork,” he shuffled through a stack of files on his desk. “Seems I have to document my reasons,” he said caustically. “For the state, because they give us money now. But Edie says she can’t say anything about what the kid told her because there’s some privilege these days between patients and counselors, like the kind you have with priests or,” he twinkled at me, “lawyers. But that can’t be right, can it? I mean, he threatened to kill this guy.”
    “There is a psychotherapist-patient privilege,” I said, “but it’s not absolute. In some cases a therapist does have a duty to warn a third party if one of the therapist’s clients has made a threat against that person. Otherwise, the therapist could be sued if anything actually happened.”
    “Exactly,” Chuck said, shedding his vague, folksy manner. “That’s exactly what I told her, and I told her that that means the house could be on the line. But damned if she refuses to cooperate. Maybe if she heard it from you.”
    “Chuck, the privilege also doesn’t apply if someone other than the patient and the therapist know about the threat. You know. Why don’t you expel the kid?”
    “I need Edie to back me up,” he said grimly. “Let’s go find her. It’ll just take a minute of your time.”
    We found her in a large closet beneath the stairwell that evidently served as her office. A small metal desk was shoved across the space and against the wall, leaving enough room behind the desk for her chair and a file cabinet. Her phone was connected to a jack outside the room by a long, tangled cord. An uncovered light bulb hung down from the ceiling providing the room’s only light. The trod of footsteps on the stairs was audible above us. The only other furniture was another chair wedged between the back wall and her desk. Anyone sitting on it would have to have sat spread-legged. On the corner of her desk was a vase that held a white rose.
    “Edie,” Chuck said, “there’s someone I’d like you to meet, an old friend of mine, Henry Rios,