Rose Connors - Temporary Sanity

“Honest to God. I do.” He leans back in his chair, looks exhausted.

“Are we finished?”

“No,” Harry says, “but almost. There’s one more thing I want to talk about.”

“What’s that?” Buck looks as if he can’t believe there’s a topic we haven’t covered.

“Your hunting rifle,” Harry says.

Buck nods. “The rifle…”

Harry jumps up from his chair, both hands held out toward Buck to silence him. “I said I want to talk about it.”

Buck looks surprised. I’m not. I know exactly what Harry’s doing.

“I want to tell you about a client of mine,” Harry says.

Buck turns to me, question marks in his eyes.

“Listen,” I tell him. “This is important.”

And it is. There are probably a hundred reasons why I wanted Harry here tonight, a hundred points Harry knows how to cover that I don’t. This one, by far, is the most important.

“My client,” Harry says, walking toward the wall, “is a two-bit hood. He’s got a record his mother isn’t proud of, but it’s all pretty low-level stuff.”

Harry turns and pauses to make sure Buck’s listening. He is.

“Then one night he shoots a guy-kills him. Says it was self-defense. Swears it was. The guy came out of nowhere, he says, with a knife. Mad as hell about a woman. Tried to slit my client’s throat.”

Harry walks slowly toward our table again, hands thrust into his pants pockets. Buck watches, his expression blank.

“The Commonwealth-in the person of Attorney Geraldine Schilling-doesn’t buy it. My client’s no stranger to the system, don’t forget. She doesn’t buy much of what he says. So she charges him with first-degree. Premeditated.

“The arresting officers take him to the station and book him, then lead him to the interview room. The cop asking the questions wants to know about the handgun, where it came from.

“What my guy should do is keep quiet. He shouldn’t say a word until I get there. But he’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. He talks. He tells them he had the gun in his pocket, in the inside pocket of his jacket.”

Harry pulls his chair out from the table and flips it backward before he sits.

“The next question the cop asks is important. Everybody in the room-except my guy-knows how important it is.”

Buck shifts in his seat and looks my way for a moment before turning back to Harry. He’s wondering what any of this has to do with him, I’m sure.

“The question the cop asks is: Do you always carry the handgun? Or did you just happen to have it with you on that particular night?

“Remember,” Harry says, “I know this guy. He probably isn’t a murderer, but he’s a hell of a good liar. He thinks it over. He decides the cops-not to mention the judge and jury-probably don’t like guys who carry guns. Especially guys who aren’t licensed. So he tells them he almost never carries it. It was a fluke. He just happened to have it in his jacket pocket that night.”

Buck shrugs. “So?”

“So,” Harry says, “the Commonwealth’s case just got a hell of a lot easier. My two-bit hood just handed them premeditation.”

Buck’s gaze lingers a moment on Harry, then moves to me. He’s still, silent.

“So,” Harry continues, “I thought you might find that interesting.”

Buck’s eyes leave mine and return to Harry. He nods, slowly. He gets it.

“On June twenty-first, where did the hunting rifle come from? Where did you get it?”

Buck shakes his head. “Do you think…?”

“I don’t think anything.” Harry leans over the seat back, his eyes holding Buck’s. “I’m asking a question.”

For a moment, no one speaks. The room is still.

“From my rack,” Buck says. “I have a rack in the truck. I keep it there.” He leans back on two legs of the chair. “Always.”

Harry stands and bangs on the metal door. “You’re ready,” he says. “Get out of here. Go to sleep. You need to be clearheaded tomorrow.”

The guard appears instantly and ushers Buck out the door, leaving it open for Harry and me.

I lean in the doorway and watch them walk down the brightly lit corridor while Harry packs up his old schoolbag. The guard’s head is turned upward toward Buck, the two of them exchanging comments as if they’re buddies, on their way to a ball game, maybe.

Harry and I have known from the beginning that Buck should testify. In this particular case, it’s critical that the jury hear from him. If he had opted to keep quiet, we would have done our level best to change his mind. But that wasn’t necessary. From day one, Buck insisted he would take the stand, insisted he would tell the jurors what happened that morning, from where he stood in the shadow of the airport hangar. And he never wavered from that decision, never needed a push from us.

I’m glad. Glad it’s Buck’s decision. Glad he’s so sure about it. It’s Buck, after all, who will live with the outcome.

It’s almost ten o’clock by the time Harry and I reach Cape Cod Hospital. Neither one of us has had dinner, and we’re both soaking wet. Snow melts on our hair and eyelashes and trickles like little rivers down our faces as soon as we enter the building. We stomp our feet and bang our briefcases on the inside mat, hoping to leave at least some of the slush and snow in the lobby.

Two security guards eye us from the front desk, then exchange wary glances. It’s plain from their expressions that they don’t like what they see. And I don’t blame them.

Harry looks like an unusually well-fed refugee. Shin-high work boots and an old tan coat hide his suit. A day’s worth of salt-and-pepper stubble covers his cheeks and chin, and dark half-moons underline his bloodshot eyes. He’s either a man on a mission or he’s a nut.

I don’t need a mirror to tell me I look every bit as bedraggled as Harry does. Even my soul is tired.

One of the uniformed guards listens to Harry tell our story and checks both our IDs. The other one rides the elevator with us to the third floor, clutching a two-way radio. He faces his reflection in the elevator doors throughout the ride. He doesn’t look at us, doesn’t speak.

Geraldine sits in the small waiting area outside the intensive care unit, writing in a notepad. It’s a rare sight, Geraldine in a chair. She looks no different now than she did at nine o’clock this morning. Her dark gray suit and starched white blouse are unwrinkled. Her black spiked heels and smoky nylons are flawless, relentless snowstorm or not. And every blond hair is in place. I don’t know how she does it.

She stops writing as we approach, removes her glasses. Her arched eyebrows say she wasn’t expecting company. “Good of you to drop in,” she tells us. “But His Honor isn’t receiving guests at the moment.”

There are a dozen empty chairs in this antiseptic square, but Harry drops into the one next to Geraldine’s and leans toward her over their shared armrest. “Is he awake?”

Harry’s been doing this to Geraldine-invading her personal space whenever possible-for the past month. He’s aspiring to greatness, he tells her, emulating her hand-selected protégé, Stanley.

Geraldine doesn’t think it’s funny. She growls at him like an annoyed German shepherd, then gets to her feet. “No, he’s not awake. But he was a couple of hours ago-for a few minutes.”

“Did he say anything?” Harry pats Geraldine’s vacant chair, inviting her to reclaim it.

She scowls at the invitation, directs her answer to me. “No, not a word. But he tried. He couldn’t get anything out. His throat is bad.”

Geraldine takes a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and taps one out. I’m relieved, to say the least, when she doesn’t light it.