The Vengeful Heart

Chapter One Excerpt: 1

The haunting of Janice Trahan began on the sultry Louisiana evening of August 4, 1994.

It was deep dark in Lafayette, the capital of Cajun country, about 70 miles southwest of Baton Rouge, and the thirty-four-year-old nurse was asleep, her three-year-old son, Jeffery, beside her in bed.

Then Trahan suddenly sensed a presence in the room. She looked up. By the dim light from the open bathroom door she saw Dr. Richard Schmidt, her estranged lover and the sleeping toddler's father, standing over them. He had a hypodermic needle in his hand.

Janice Trahan
(The Advertiser)

Janice didn't immediately sense her peril. Although she just recently had severed a destructive ten-year relationship with Schmidt—they hadn't seen one another since July 19 — this visit was not a surprise. Before their break-up, Richard had begun giving Janice B-12 injections he'd prescribed for her chronic fatigue. Tonight, he'd called to say he was coming over to give her another one. Janice even left the front door unlocked for him.

Yet the 46-year-old gastroenterologist seemed surprisingly nervous. Janice sleepily protested she'd decided against the shot—it was too late, she was tired—yet Schmidt ignored her, and proceeded with the injection before she could react.

There came a second surprise. Accustomed to the injections, Trahan knew what to expect. But this time there was searing pain as Richard squeezed the syringe's contents into her left arm. The fluid was the right color, light pink; but she never had experienced such agony from a B-12 injection.

No sooner was he finished than Dr. Schmidt hastily departed, explaining that he was needed in a nearby ER. Later, when the throbbing in her arm did not subside, Janice paged him. At first Schmidt was angry, accusing his former lover of "checking up" on him. But when she explained her pain and confusion, the doctor softened. He promised, as she later told the court, "he wouldn't give me another injection in the dark."

He wouldn't need to.