Another deep breath. “Everything started in June when I broke up with him. He didn’t take it well.”

How many clients’ stories began just this way? Too many to count.

“Why did you break up with him?” Leigh asked.

“He . . . I don’t know, changed. At first when we started seeing each other he was sweet and charming and always complimenting me. It was good. But then I started to have doubts.” She glanced at her. “For one thing, he’s married.” She looked down. “Kate’s ex cheated on her, and I felt really guilty about being with someone’s husband. I mean, their marriage was a mess before me, but still.”

“Okay, so he changed . . . ?” Leigh could guess where this was going, but she needed to hear it from Vanessa.

“He became controlling. He started grilling me about my plans all the time, and my friends. I caught him going through my phone. Stuff like that. I didn’t like the way he was acting, and the guilt was getting to me, and I decided I needed to break things off, so I did. At first, he was nice. You know—relatively speaking. He tried to talk me out of it and told me he was in love with me.” She rolled her eyes. “I didn’t really believe that, but I knew he wanted to change my mind. But when I wouldn’t, it was like he, I don’t know, became a different person. We had this big fight in the parking lot at work and he started calling me names and threatening me.”

“Threatening what?”

“He said he’d tell everyone at work what a whore I was.” She shuddered. “By ‘everyone’ he meant his doctor friends, which would have been humiliating. At the time, I thought him bad-mouthing me to them would be the worst thing he could do.” Her face contorted as she fought back tears. “Little did I know . . .”

She took a sip of water and glanced at the window. Leigh looked over her shoulder, wondering if Cooper was back. But she didn’t see him in the parking lot.

“It got worse,” Vanessa said. “He started calling me at all hours. Showing up at my apartment. Sometimes he’d be drunk. I blocked his number, but then he just started using other phones to call me, so finally I got a new number. But that backfired, too, and he showed up at my apartment even more, and every time he did it, I had to sit inside and wait for him to go away. One time he cornered me in the parking lot at Pura Vida when I was getting into my car, and I told him if he didn’t leave me alone, I’d call the police.”

“Did you?” Leigh asked hopefully, even though C.J. hadn’t turned up any record of it.