Last Dance, Last Chance

while fighting for your life is a crime…
    “If this had been a boxing match, the referee would have stopped it. First arsenic, then a lengthy session with a hostile defense lawyer…. How much punishment can one woman take?
    “Judge Mix says she wants to be sure the kids are safe. We hear that. But this system bends over backward—sometimes too far backward—to put kids back in homes with parents trying to beat crack addictions, with parents who say they’re sorry for beating a toddler to a pulp. Yet now we’ve got a woman whose worst crime against her kids was getting poisoned, possibly by her husband, and the court case never ends.”
    What Donn Esmonde saw was obvious to almost everyone. No one had ever observed that Debbie was a bad mother. On the contrary, if she had a flaw, it was that she had often given up something she wanted so that her children would be safe and happy. She was worried that she would always be crippled, but her biggest fear was that Lauren and Ralph would be kept away from her forever.
    On some days in Judge Mix’s courtroom, it seemed that that was going to happen.

Part Six
Last Chance…

23
    D ebbie had once persuaded Anthony to go with her to a family counselor, hoping that a trained professional third party might be able to help them rebuild their marriage. The counselor perceived quickly that Anthony was a poster boy for Narcissistic Personality Disorder as it is outlined in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual—IV, the bible of psychologists and psychiatrists. His attitudes and reactions were certainly flamboyant, but he clearly was not insane. He might have been more responsive to counseling if he had been.
    “Crazy” often gets better with drug therapy, shock treatments, and psychiatric help. But those with personality disorders embrace their approach to life and have no desire to change. Consumed by one of the half dozen widely accepted personality disorders, the narcissist sees himself as the center of the world, the most important person around, but he still seeks constant admiration, and he has almost no empathy with or sympathy for other people.
    Narcissus, a Greek god, was a handsome young man who fell in love with his own image while looking into a clear pond. He was so enchanted by his own beauty that he slipped into the water and perished. The personality disorder named for Narcissus is easily seen in people who overestimate their own importance and accomplishments and boast of their achievements. They believe that they are special.
    Anthony fell perfectly within the parameters of the disorder. Trying to fit him into a successful marriage counseling plan was akin to trying to teach a pig how to roller skate. He just didn’t get it. He was constitutionally unwilling and unable to put himself into anyone else’s shoes. He saw himself as a “co-therapist” and in no need of counseling. He consented to family counseling only to straighten out his wife’s problems. When Debbie tried to say how she felt, he snickered. He simply could not see that his behavior might have any detrimental effect on her or his children.
    And, of course, he had never accepted that he had any responsibility in the death of Sarah Smith.
    When he looked into a mirror, his “pond,” Anthony Pignataro saw only a handsome man with a full head of hair, a brilliant physician, a study in perfection. It was always other people who were getting in his way and stopping him from creating his world of accomplishment as a famed surgeon. And it was always other people he blamed when he encountered roadblocks.
    Anthony was, if possible, even better looking in his forties than he had been in his twenties—at least when he wore his trademark toupee. And he was highly intelligent, but he was totally blind to his own faults. Indeed, he could see no faults.
     
    Now, as the first crocuses poked through the snow in Erie County in 2000, Anthony languished in the ENE section of the Erie County Holding Center—but only because, in his mind, jealous and misguided people had thwarted him.
    One of his prime enemies was Frank Sedita, who still titled his investigation “People v. Dr. Doe.” Buffalo reporters knew that something big was going to happen with the Pignataro story, but nothing was official yet. As long as Anthony remained “Dr. Doe,” the real investigation—the poisoning probe—would be harder to track. The District Attorney’s office was in no hurry to expose the intricacies of their case