Mortal Danger

gave him loyalty and dedication. “He was the brains, and I was the workhorse,” she recalled. “I wrote and typed up all of his grand plans, but I was all right with that.”
    There were occasional bumps in the road, sides of John that Kate hadn’t known about before, but she realized that people always reveal new aspects of their personalities as familiarity and trust take over.
    In December 1989—even as John was confessing that he loved Kate—he was being sued by a woman who lived in the condominium complex next door to the Brandens in La Mesa, California. She asked for an injunction prohibiting him from “peeping” at her. John never mentioned it to Kate, explaining later that it was merely an annoyance, and not worth worrying her about.
    “Early in November 1989,” his female neighbor’s complaint read, “I was forced to call the police regarding my neighbor, John Branden, and report him as a Peeping Tom. He was watching me over the fence through my windows. This was not the first time he has been caught doing this. Early in the summer of 1989, John Branden was also caught watching over my fence. When confronted, he just runs off. I am afraid he may do me some harm.”
    John was forty-four, and the neighbor was fifty-seven, but she was an attractive woman. He responded to a temporary restraining order granted to her in an affidavit. He explained that he was “a doctor with my own medical group,” and he scoffed at his neighbor’s claims against him, characterizing her as “emotionally unbalanced” and angry at him for reporting her to the condominium association for having too many cats. Subsequently, seven of her eight cats had been removed. He stated it was “ludicrous” to think he would watch her covertly. He had no interest in her. His daughter Tamara backed up John’s testimony, explaining that the woman seemed to be disturbed and angry—to the point of sweeping dirt at them when she and her dad were washing their car, all the while muttering obscenities.
    Tamara would always validate anything her father did. He was heroic in her eyes.
    A superior court judge ordered both parties to stay away from each other for a period of not less than three years.
    He never told Kate about this problem with his neighbor.
    More distressing was a suit brought against John, his silent partner (a naturopathic doctor), his daughter Tamara, his estranged wife, Sue, and the Bayview Clinic practice in 1992. Although John downplayed the charges against him—to the point that Kate wasn’t aware of any of the details—she saw that he was very worried about this lawsuit.
    A former woman patient and her husband were suing John for medical malpractice, sexual battery, failure to obtain informed consent, assault and battery, fraud, and misrepresentation.
    John didn’t tell Kate what the charges were, and hewaved off her worries, saying the woman was lying. He explained that Mary Ann Lakhvir * was married to a wealthy man from a Middle Eastern culture who didn’t understand that in America women could be alone with their doctors without being shamed or ostracized. John said her husband misunderstood the close ties he formed with his patients and was so jealous that the poor woman was forced to tell lies about John to her husband.
    The Lakhvirs alleged in their affidavits that they’d sought treatment for serious systemic infections but Dr. Branden hadn’t known how to treat them, leading them to endure great physical and emotional pain and suffering when he’d administered mostly ineffective massage treatments and vitamins at the Bayview Medical Group in 1990. They asserted that John Branden was not a medical doctor and was not licensed to draw blood from them or give Mary Ann Lakhvir a pelvic examination.
    (The suit was the first step in ending the silent partnership John had with the naturopath, and he later brought in an osteopathic physician to sign insurance claims.) Kate believed that John did have a phlebotomy license and that it was legal for him to draw blood. He’d been very skilled as he’d deftly and almost painlessly slipped a needle into her arm.
    But even more troubling were the Lakhvirs’ sexual accusations: They maintained that John Branden had made sexual contact with Mary Ann when he’d given her a full-body massage while she was disrobed, and that he’d kissedher while she’d been naked. They asserted that he had then removed his clothes so she could “practice massage” on his