Paul Levine - Flesh and bones

"Yes."

"At the hospital, did you go to Harry's room inside the ICU?"

"Yes."

"Was he conscious?"

"Semiconscious. He was coming out of anesthesia."

"How long did you stay?"

"Just a few minutes. I went down to the lobby to use the phone. I called Guy, who was in his car, on the way there. While I was down there, I heard the Code Blue call. I ran back to the ICU, but of course, they wouldn't let me near Harry while they worked on him. A short time later, he was pronounced dead."

I put down the police report and picked up the folder containing Schein's reports. He thought we were done. After all, we'd gone through the story chronologically. But sometimes you retrace steps. General George Patton never liked to retreat, saying he didn't want to pay for the same real estate twice. I look at it differently. I'll mine the same ground until I find a precious stone.

"Let's go back to June fourteenth, the day of the threat."

Schein sighed. This again.

"At that time," I said, "Chrissy Bernhardt was suffering from depression, was she not?"

He thought a moment, seemed to figure out where I was going, then said, "I don't think she was clinically depressed, no."

When they try to weasel out of it, they always make mistakes. Sometimes a simple admission is less damaging than a slippery evasion.

"The preceding month, had you prescribed Desyrel for her?"

"I believe so."

"For what purpose?"

"It has many salutary benefits."

"Why did you prescribe it for Chrissy Bernhardt?"

"For her mental state."

Making me drag it out of him. "For her depression?"

Reluctantly, "Yes."

"And you prescribed Prozac several weeks earlier?"

"I believe so."

"For depression?"

He mumbled something through clenched lips. I wanted one of those dentist's clamps to hold his jaws open. "Doctor?"

"Yes, for depression." Aggravated.

"And Ativan?"

"Yes, for anxiety and depression, Mr. Lassiter."

One of the jurors whispered to another. I didn't think they were discussing the glorious architecture of the courtroom.

"So, Dr. Schein, isn't it true that Chrissy Bernhardt was suffering from depression?"

"Obviously she had some problems," he said, scrambling now, "but she was functioning fairly well…"

And sometimes when they weasel, they just dig deeper holes.

"Functioning fairly well," I repeated. I picked up Schein's medical report and pretended to study it. The important parts I'd already memorized. "What was your diagnosis of Chrissy Bernhardt's condition?"

"Various conditions, but she was making progress."

I turned to the judge. "Your Honor, the witness is not being responsive."

"Dr. Schein, please listen carefully to the question and answer it," Judge Stanger instructed.

I smiled my thank-you toward the bench. A public scolding delivered the message that the shrink was hiding something. "What was your diagnosis?" I repeated.

"Posttraumatic stress order, neurotic depressive disorder, possible borderline personality disorder."

"But she was 'functioning fairly well.' "

When a hostile witness craps on the rug, I like to rub his nose in it.

"She was alert, clean, and well groomed, aware of her surroundings," he said. "Believe me, Mr. Lassiter, I have treated patients in far worse condition."

I'll say this for Schein: He didn't curl up and die the first time you kicked him in the nuts.

"Was she still taking the Ativan, Prozac, and Desyrel on June fourteenth?" I asked.

"Yes, I believe so."

"What else?"

He consulted his treatment notes. "Mellaril to control flashbacks, Xanax for anxiety, Restoril to help her sleep, Darvocet for headaches, and lithium for mood swings."

"Anything else in that grab bag of elixirs and potions?"

He ran a hand over his bare scalp and said, "Not that I recall."

I walked to the clerk's table, carrying a handful of small plastic bottles. "Would the clerk please mark these for identification?"

When she was done with the tagging and marking, I grabbed the bottles and turned toward the judge. "May I approach the witness?"

Judge Stanger motioned me forward and I closed the space between us. I had been in the public zone, the distance strangers give themselves when talking. By moving closer-through the social zone, an arm's length away, to the personal zone, close enough to touch, and nearly to the intimate zone-I increased the stress on the witness. Now, as I hovered over him, leaning on the witness stand railing, I was close enough to let him catch a whiff of rigatoni and beer. His eyes shot from me to the jury to the little bottles. "Can you identify these, sir?" I asked.

Schein slipped on a pair of half-glasses and leaned back in the chair, as if to escape from me. "They appear to be bottles of prescription medication for Christina Bernhardt." He studied them a moment more. "And I would appear to be the prescribing physician."

"Do these medications, these drugs, appear in your notes?"

"No." He anticipated the next question before I asked it, the sign of a nervous witness. "Christina and I had an informal relationship. After all, I'd known her since she was a little girl. She probably called me and I prescribed the drugs for her."

"What drugs, Doctor?" I asked, innocently.

He gritted his teeth and examined the first bottle. "Percodan.. "

"Which is what, sir?"

"Aspirin with codeine."

"A pain-killer, a narcotic, correct?"

"Yes."

"What else?"

He turned the other bottles over in his hand. "Valium, generic name diazepam, a tranquilizer. Nardil, an antidepressant. And Halcion, a sedative prescribed for insomnia."

"What are the side effects of Halcion?" I asked.

"There are many reported."

"Psychotic episodes?" I asked.

"Yes, but that's rare."

"What else?"

"Oh, everything from nightmares and ringing ears to nausea and fainting."

"Fainting," I repeated, just for the jury. "And Nardil is prescribed for the severely depressed?"

"Yes, ordinarily."

"And the combination of all these drugs, Doctor, what is the effect of that?"

"Well, I'm not sure."

"Because you've never had a patient taking all of them before, isn't that right?"

"I don't know. Some patients are overmedicated just as some people take too many vitamins."

"And Chrissy was overmedicated, wasn't she?"

"I would have preferred her to have taken less."

"Then you should have prescribed less," I said, it wasn't a question, and he didn't answer, so I continued. "Therefore, as of June fourteenth, you knew that Chrissy was having trouble sleeping, was having nightmares when she did sleep, and severe headaches when she was awake. She was distraught from the so-called recovered memory of her abuse, and she was ingesting a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals, which had a variety of serious side effects. She had just bought a gun and told you she intended to kill her father, and your reaction was simply to turn off the lights, send her on her way, and two nights later, you're shocked to learn that she did just what she threatened to do. Is that about it, Doctor?"

"That's not… When you say it like that, it isn't… fair. You're second-guessing. I didn't know what she would do."

I moved away from the jury box so I could raise my voice without breaking the windowpanes. "But you hoped she would!"

Schein stiffened.

"You hoped she'd do what you wanted to do all these years!" Louder now, picking up the tempo, banging on the drums.

"No." He was flushed and sweating.

My voice pealed like summer thunder. "You hated Harry Bernhardt, but you didn't have the guts to do anything about it!"

Schein rose halfway out of his chair. "No!"

"You told her you saw the tracks of the monster where she saw none. You told her she'd been raped by her father though she had no memory of it."