Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“She fell down the stairs?”

McCandless nodded. “They ought to do something about that staircase,” he said. “Three months earlier, my grandfather fell down those same stairs and broke his neck.”

“And left all his money to your grandmother,” Ehrengraf said.

“Right.”

“Who in turn left it to you.”

“Yeah. Handy, huh?”

“Indeed,” said Ehrengraf. “It must have been a frightening thing for an old woman, tumbling down a flight of stairs.”

“Maybe not,” McCandless said. “According to the autopsy, she was already dead when she fell. So what probably happened is she had a heart attack while she was standing at the top of the stairs and never felt a thing.”

“A heart attack.”

“Or a stroke or something,” McCandless said carefully. “Or maybe she was sleeping and a pillow got stuck over her face and suffocated her.”

“The pillow just got stuck on top of her face?”

“Well, she was old,” McCandless said. “Who knows what could happen?”

“And then, after the pillow smothered her, how do you suppose she got from her bed to the staircase?”

“Sleepwalking,” McCandless said.

“Of course,” said Ehrengraf. “I should have thought of that.”

“My parents lived in this ranch house,” McCandless said. “Big sprawling thing, lots of square footage but all of it on one level. No basement and no attic.” He sighed. “In other words, no stairs.” He shook his head ruefully. “Point is, there was never any problem about my grandparents’ death, so I’ve got some money of my own. So you don’t have to worry about your fee.”

Ehrengraf drew himself up straight. He was a small man, but his perfect posture and impeccably tailored raw silk suit lent him stature beyond his height. “There will be no fee,” he said, “unless you are found innocent.”

“Huh?”

“My longstanding policy, Mr. McCandless. My fees are quite considerable, but they are payable only in the event that my client is exonerated. As it happens, I rarely see the inside of a courtroom. My clients are innocent, and their innocence always wins out in the long run. I do what I can toward that end, often working behind the scenes. And, when charges are dropped, when the real killer confesses, when my client’s innocence has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the legal system, then and only then do I profit from my efforts on his behalf.”

McCandless was silent for a long moment. At length he fixed his eyes on the little lawyer. “We got ourselves a problem,” he said. “See, just between you and me, I did it.”

“With stairs,” youngMcCandless was saying, “it might have been entirely different. Especially with Mom in the wheelchair. Good steep flight of stairs and it’s a piece of cake. Instead I went out and got the gun, and then I bought the gloves.”

“Gloves?”

“A size too small,” McCandless said. “To leave at the crime scene. I thought — well, never mind what I thought. I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly. Hey, that reminds me. You think maybe a Dim Cap defense would turn the trick?”

“Innocent by reason of diminished capacity?”

“Yeah. See, I did a couple of lines of DTT before I went out and bought the gloves.”

“Do you mean DDT? The insecticide?”

“Naw, DTT. It’s short for di-tetra thiazole, it’s a tranquilizer for circus animals, but if you snort it it sort of mellows you out. What I could do, though, is I could forget about the DTT and tell people I ate a Twinkie.”

Court TV, Ehrengraf thought, had a lot to answer for. “You got the gun,” he prompted his client, “and you bought the gloves...”

“And I went over there and did what I had to do. But of course I don’t remember that part.”

“You don’t?”

McCandless shook his head. “Not a thing, from the time I parked the car in their driveway until I woke up hours later in my own bed. See, I never remember. I don’t remember doing my grandparents, either. It’s all because of the EKG.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” said Ehrengraf, rather understating the matter. “You had an electrocardiogram?”

“That’s for your heart, isn’t it? My heart’s fine. No, EKG’s this powder, you roll it up and smoke it. I couldn’t tell you what the initials stand for, but it was originally developed as a fertilizer for African violets. They had to take it off the market when they found out what it did to people.”

“What does it do?”

“I guess it gets you high,” McCandless said, “but I don’t know for sure. See, what happens is you take it and you black out. It’s the same story every time I smoke it. I light up, I take the first puff, and the next thing I remember I’m waking up in my own bed hours later. So I couldn’t tell you what it feels like. All I know is what it lets me do while I’m operating behind it. And so far it’s let me do my grandparents and my mother and father.”

“I knew it,” Ehrengraf said.

“How’s that?”

“I knew you were innocent,” he said. “I knew it. Mr. McCandless, you have no memory whatsoever of any of those killings, is that what you’re telling me?”

“Yeah, but—”

“You may have intended to do those persons harm. But it was so much against your nature that you had to ingest a dangerous controlled substance in order to gird yourself for the task. Is that correct?”

“Well, more or less, but—”

“And you have no recollection of committing any crimes whatsoever. You believe yourself to be guilty, and as a result you are in a jail cell charged with a hideous crime. Do you see the problem, sir? The problem is not what you have done, because in fact you have done nothing. The problem is what you believe.”

McCandless looked at him.

“If you don’t believe in your own innocence,” Ehrengraf demanded, “how can the rest of the world believe in it? Your thoughts are powerful, Mr. McCandless. And right now your own negative thoughts are damning you as a murderer.”

“But—”

“You must affirm your innocence, sir.”

“Okay,” McCandless agreed. “ ‘I’m innocent.’ How’s that?”

“It’s a start,” Ehrengraf said. He opened his briefcase, drew out a yellow legal pad, produced a pen. “But it takes more than a simple declaration to change your own thoughts on the matter. What I want you to do is affirm your innocence in writing.”

“Just write ‘I’m innocent’ over and over?”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Ehrengraf uncapped the pen and drew a vertical line down the center of the page. “Here’s what you do,” he said. “Over here on the left you write ‘I am completely innocent.’ Then on the right you immediately write down the first negative response to that sentence that pops into your mind.”

“Fair enough.” McCandless took the pad and pen. I am completely innocent, he wrote in the left-hand column. What a load of crap, he wrote at once on the right.

“Excellent,” Ehrengraf assured him. “Now keep going, but with a different response each time.”

“Just keep going?”

“Until you get to the bottom of the page,” Ehrengraf said.

The pen raced over the paper, as McCandless no sooner proclaimed his complete innocence than he dashed off a repudiation of it. When he’d reached the bottom of the page, Ehrengraf took the pad from him. I am completely innocent. / I murdered both my parents... I am completely innocent. / Killed Grandma and Grampa... I am completely innocent. / I deserve the gas chamber... I am completely innocent. / I’m guilty as sin... I am completely innocent. / They ought to hang me... I am completely innocent. / I’m a murderer... I am completely innocent. / I killed a girl last year and there wasn’t even any money in it for me... I am completely innocent. / I’m a born killer... I am completely innocent / I am bad, bad, bad!