Paul Levine - Flesh and bones

"No, of course not. Daddy would never do that."

What? In the courtroom, time was frozen. No movement except for dust motes floating in the shaft of an overhead spotlight. A moment of crystal clarity, of blinding intensity, a moment carved into the soft metal of my memory with the forged steel blade of the truth.

"Who does it, Chrissy?"

She didn't seem able to answer.

"Who comes to you in the night? Who frightens you? Who hurts you?"

Unconsciously, Chrissy wiped away a tear with the back of a hand. A little girl's gesture. Sweet and innocent and so painful as to sear the soul.

"My brother," Chrissy said. "Guy hurts me. It's always Guy."

Granny was grilling shrimp on the barbecue in my backyard. Fat and juicy, marinated in beer. The shrimp, not my granny, though she was half pickled in her home brew.

Granny was still embarked on a plot to fatten up Chrissy. In the kitchen, duck-and-sausage gumbo was simmering on the stove next to a pot of black bean soup with bell peppers and bacon. Bowls of rice and chopped onions warmed in the oven.

"That girl's gotten skinnier," Granny had whispered to me as she carried the victuals into the house. "I gave her a hug and her hipbones jabbed me like bamboo sticks. It's no wonder she's always fainting, the way she eats."

Granny was right. Charlie Riggs had told me that Chrissy was borderline hypoglycemic and should be eating several times a day, and not just a little tofu. At the moment, Chrissy was curled up on the sofa, purring in her sleep. I checked on her, gently stroked a strand of blond hair from her eyes, and walked to the kitchen where Charlie was making cocktail sauce for the shrimp. I opened a Grolsch, and Charlie hummed show tunes while mixing Worcestershire with vinegar.

In the Florida room, Kip was watching… And Justice for All on cable. Defense lawyer Al Pacino, half crazed by a legal system run amok, was prancing in front of the jury box while his client, John Forsythe, a judge charged with rape, watched in astonishment. "The prosecution is not going to get this man," Pacino sang out, "because I'm going to get him. My client, the Honorable Henry T. Fleming, should go right to fucking jail! The son of a bitch is guilty!"

I've had clients like that. Most, in fact. But I never gave the speech. And now I had a client I would have done anything to help.

"I did the homework you requested," Charlie said. "Nothing new in the autopsy report, and there won't be if I read it another ten times. I did find something, though. The morgue has started saving ocular fluids from cadavers' eyes. Just freezing them for possible testing later. I've got Harry Bernhardt's."

"And?"

"Toxicology tests are negative. I'll get the electrolyte readings first thing in the morning. Plus, I've got a cardiologist, Dr. Eric Prystowsky, taking a fresh look at the EKG. He's the best rhythm-disturbance man in the country, and if there's something funky there…"

Did Charlie really say "funky"?

"Good work," I told him. "I had Cindy check the business directory. There are three possibilities, so we subpoenaed them all."

Charlie wiped his hands on an apron I could swear came from the morgue, but maybe the stains were catsup and molasses. "Were my eyes deceiving me," he asked, "or was that Larry Schein in the front row of the gallery today?"

"That was him. Socolow and I stipulated to waive the witness exclusion rule. It makes sense if I'm going to ask Schein about Chrissy's in-court hypnosis."

"I caught sight of him after your client dropped the bombshell. He turned a grayish yellow, kind of like a beached amberjack."

I took a pull on the beer. "I saw. Complete and utter shock. He didn't know his old buddy Guy was the rapist, I'm sure of it."

"And you're surprised?"

"I was at first. I'd always put Guy and Schein on the same team, but I was only partially right. Guy wanted his pop's money and couldn't care less about Chrissy. Look what he did to her as a kid. He knows Schein hates his old man, blames him for Emily's death. So he tells Schein he's always suspected Dad abused Chrissy. It would explain a lot, and it would make it easier for Schein to take part in something he never would have done otherwise."

"Program Christina to commit murder."

"Exactly. Schein implanted false memories all right, but he thought they were true."

"How does it affect your closing argument?" Charlie asked.

I gave him a preview. "When we began this trial, each of you raised your hand and swore 'a true verdict render,' " I chanted in my speechifying voice. "Now you must be true to your oath. Chrissy Bernhardt is charged with killing her father with premeditation. In just a few moments, Judge Stanger will instruct you that premeditation means 'killing after consciously deciding to do so.' But Chrissy didn't decide to kill Harry Bernhardt. Lawrence Schein did. She tried to kill a man who didn't exist, a man with the head of a goat and cloven hooves, a man-beast invented by Lawrence Schein, a devil of his imagination, a man he hated, a man he consciously decided to kill."

Charlie nodded his approval. "Let's take inventory," he said while spooning minced onions into a mixture that now included chili sauce, hot peppers, plus a secret ingredient I hoped didn't come from the building with walk-in coolers on Bob Hope Road. "You proved your client really is a victim, first of her brother, then her psychiatrist. That'll win sympathy from the jury, but where are you legally?"

"Simple. The evidence is that that Chrissy was defrauded into forming an intent to kill her father. She killed someone who didn't exist."

"Sounds like manslaughter to me," Charlie said.

I drained the Grolsch and looked in the fridge for one of its brothers. "Socolow thinks so, too. On my way out of the courtroom, he offered me a plea. Eight years. Says he'll go below double digits 'cause we're such old friends."

"Which means she'd be out in six years and a few months with gain time," Charlie said, dipping a finger into his cocktail sauce, then tasting it. "Mmmm. So much better than tired old catsup and horseradish."

"I turned it down."

Charlie raised his bushy eyebrows.

"I can win, Charlie. I can win this case."

"Manslaughter's a win. You said it yourself. She killed a man. Regardless whether she was tricked into believing he had raped her, she killed him. The jury will have to find her guilty of something, and manslaughter's a lot better than first- or second-degree murder."

"They like her, Charlie. I can feel it. You're getting too hung up on the law, on technicalities. They're looking for a reason to acquit. I can feel their emotion."

"Theirs," Charlie asked, "or yours?"

This time, Dr. Lawrence Schein was ready. Pale, baggy-eyed, and haggard, but ready. He had brought a lawyer, who sat in the first row of the gallery. I liked that. This isn't Los Angeles, where everybody from Rosa Lopez to Kato Kaelin (whose English isn't as good as Rosa's) brings a lawyer, an agent, and a publicist to court. Jurors, blessed with common sense, distrust anyone who needs a mouthpiece. I planned to hang a neon sign on the lawyer at the first opportunity.

Schein took long pauses, weighing each question before answering, his eyes flicking to Jonas Blackwell, an aging medical malpractice defense lawyer who knew his way around a courtroom.

"You understand that my client has repudiated your conclusion that she was sexually abused by her father?" I asked.

"It was not my conclusion, it was hers," Schein said smugly.

"Under drug-induced hypnosis?"

"If you want to call it that."

"And suggestive questioning by you, Doctor?"

"I wouldn't characterize it that way. But I will concede this. Recovered-memory therapy is as much an art as a science. I quite correctly diagnosed your client as having been raped as a child."