Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones Page 23

  He reddened. "Yes."

  " 'Wild Nights should be our luxury!' " I repeated. "Were they?"

  "I resent your implication. You can't examine poetry as if it were an X ray. Ours was a cerebral relationship, not a physical one."

  "Ce-re-bral," I said, as if it were a dirty word. Angling toward the jury, I let my voice fall into a whisper. If you really want them to listen, speak softly.

  Rowing in Eden—

  Ah, the Sea!

  Might I but moor—Tonight—

  In Thee!

  Two jurors tittered.

  "You were Emily Bernhardt's lover, weren't you, Dr. Schein?"

  "No! Not the way you mean. No."

  "Were you in love with Emily Bernhardt?"

  He stared off into space. A vein throbbed in his forehead. "She was the finest woman I've ever known."

  "Were you in love with her?" I repeated. Demanding now.

  He mumbled something.

  "Doctor?"

  "Yes, I was in love with her."

  "And she with you?"

  "Yes."

  "To your knowledge, did Harry Bernhardt know of your feelings for his wife?"

  "She told him. She didn't love him, hadn't for years. But she wouldn't divorce him. Christina was just a child. Emily didn't want to break up the family, and she wasn't strong enough to fight him." The words came tumbling out now. Maybe he wanted to talk about her. All these years, and no one to tell, to feel his pain, the great unconsummated love of his life. "No one had ever been divorced in the Castleberry family, and Emily was so . . . so prudent in matters like that. She wouldn't pursue her own happiness. Besides, Harry, wouldn't let her go. She was his claim to respectability, his entrée to society. And there was something else, too. A mean, sadistic side to him. He liked punishing her."

  "You hated him, didn't you?"

  "She was so frail," Schein answered, as if he hadn't heard the question. "No strength at all. Like rose petals, an elegant flower of a woman."

  "Did you hate him, Doctor?"

  "I didn't respect him."

  "This man you previously told the jury was your friend."

  Softly, "I misspoke."

  "And Harry Bernhardt despised you, didn't he?"

  "Objection!" Socolow boomed. "The witness isn't a mind reader."

  "To the contrary," I protested. "That's exactly what he claims to be where my client is concerned."

  Bang! Judge Stanger slammed his gavel down and shot me a look that said I'd better bring my toothbrush to court the next time I made a crack like that. "Mr. Lassiter, please refrain from addressing the jury instead of the court."

  "I'm sorry. Your Honor," I said meekly, "but implicit in my question is the notion 'do you know?' "

  The judge turned toward the witness stand. "Doctor, do you know if Mr. Bernhardt despised you?"

  Schein's head twisted at an awkward angle, toward the judge above him. Then he swung back toward the jury, unable to decide where he should be looking. "If he did, he never said so to my face. But then he wasn't a man to express his feelings. Subconsciously, who knows? So much lurks there that we can neither control nor explain."

  "Isn't that your job, Doctor," I asked, "to explain the subconscious?"

  "Part of my job, yes."

  "You told Chrissy that her father was to blame for her mother's death, didn't you?"

  He seemed to wince. Every mention of Emily Bernhardt tore at him. His fist moved up toward his mouth, shielding much of his face, "It was common knowledge . . . the way he treated her. She was so fine, so fragile and sensitive, and he was this boor. He was insulting and rude. He covered it up with humor, or what passed for humor. But it was always cutting. He couldn't be part of Emily's world so he had to tear it down. He scoffed at culture, at refinement, at everything that made Emily the special person she was."

  "So you blamed Harry for Emily Bernhardt's death?"

  He looked off again. "Yes. Not with a gun or a needle, but by stripping her of her dignity, keeping her prisoner in the home. He barred me from the house, loaded her with antidepressants and pain-killers. She ODed twice on a mixture of barbiturates and alcohol, and died of heart failure far too young."

  "Then how, sir, can you deny hating this man you blame for killing the woman you loved?"

  He gripped the armrest of the witness chair and made a truncated gesture with his hand. "No. I knew him for the beast he was. He was a product of his upbringing. He didn't deserve a woman like Emily. But I didn't hate him."

  "And Christina," I said. "You resented her."

  "Why would I? She was an innocent little girl."

  "She kept you and Emily apart."

  "I wouldn't fault her for that. That would be irrational."

  "Are you a completely rational man?"

  "No one is completely rational, but I—"

  "Have you ever thought that Christina, innocent as she may have been, was to blame for keeping you and Emily apart?"

  He shifted in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "I don't recall ever having that thought. Never."

  "What about subconsciously, Dr. Schein?"

  "What?"

  "Did the thought ever occur in the place where so much lurks that we can neither control nor explain?"

  He didn't answer. But then, how could he?

  29

  The Doomsday Rock

  Killing two Bernhardts with one stone," Charlie Riggs muttered.

  "That's my theory," I said.

  "You're not biting off more than you can chew, are you, Jake?" he asked, as he gnawed at a slice of garlic bread dripping with butter. "Getting even with both Harry and Christina in one fell swoop?"

  "One swell foop!" Kip exclaimed. He was wearing a Deion Sanders jersey just to irritate me. "That's what Peter Sellers says in one of the Pink Panther movies."

  "Frankly, I never understood the expression, either way," I admitted.

  Doc Riggs sipped at his red wine. " 'Swopen' is a Middle English word dating from the sixteenth century. It means 'to sweep.' Therefore—"

  "Charlie, we're in the middle of trial, so . . ."

  "Actually," he said, patting his mustache with a napkin, "we're in the middle of lunch."

  I couldn't argue with that. We were at Piccolo Paradiso, just across the river on Miami Avenue, and I had ninety minutes to finish my rigatoni alia vodka and get back to court.

  "But if you want me to dispense with the etymology discussion," Charlie offered, "I shall do so."

  "Thank you," I said, motioning to the attentive waiter for a second beer. I never drink during trial, but technically, as Charlie pointed out, luncheon recess is not during trial. As a lawyer, I am capable of making fine distinctions.

  I had left Chrissy in the care and custody of my secretary, Cindy, and Milagros Santiago. It had been Kip's idea, bless his cinematic little heart. If Schein had programmed Chrissy, the memories should be in her head somewhere, he said. Just bring them back like flashbacks in a movie. I had given the assignment to Dr. Santiago.

  Later, I would work with Chrissy to prepare her testimony. Notice I didn't say "rehearse," even though my personal glossary prefers the more accurate, if less genteel, terminology. Clients are customers, referral fees are kickbacks, experts are whores, and bondsmen are bloodsuckers. Client development is ambulance chasing. Pro bono work means getting stiffed for a fee. A retainer means "pay me now for work I may or may not do later." Lawyers' hourly bills are exercises in creative writing, in which our clients pay not only for our time but also for expensive lunches and dinners and the time we spend deciding what to order. Our "research time" often gets us paid to learn what we should have known or to relearn what we have forgotten.

  If I sound a tad cynical, let me cop a plea. Guilty with an explanation. With all the garbage and all the games, there are still moments of pure adrenaline-driven exhilaration in what I do. The moment the jury walks in the door is one. I've left a piece of myself in every courtroom I have inhabited, with every clie
nt I have represented. Which might prompt me to ask, if I were the introspective type, just what do I have left?

  "While I wouldn't want to celebrate prematurely," Charlie said, taking a bite of the bruschetta, "I must say your examination of the slippery Dr. Schein is going swimmingly."

  "Swimmingly," I repeated, just because I liked the feel of the word on my tongue.

  "Still, you have a distance to go," Charlie said.

  "I'm going to crack Schein like a coconut under a machete," I said.

  "Broly," Kip said. "Like José Ferrer did to Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny." He rolled some imaginary ball bearings in his hand. "The mess boys stole the strawberries."

  "I'll keep Schein on the rest of the day. Then, after Dr. Santiago testifies, I'm going to bring him back."

  "Bifurcating his testimony," Charlie said, musing over the possibilities, "which means you expect to elicit something on the first round that will pin him into a corner on the second."

  "Just the truth, Charlie."

  "Magna est veritas. Great is truth. But there's something I don't get. Did Harry Bernhardt rape his daughter or not?"

  "I don't know. I wasn't there."

  "Jake!"

  "I think I can raise a reasonable doubt that he did."

  "But why? You'll create incredible dissonance in the jurors' minds. They expect you to prove that he raped her. They may even want to acquit if you prove it. For God's sake, if she's going to testify she was raped when she was eleven years old, why cast doubt on it?"

  "She's less culpable if she wasn't abused," I said.

  "I'm just a retired coroner, so I must have missed this newfangled development in the law that says you're better off killing someone if you didn't have a good reason to."

  "Think about it, Charlie. She had no motive to kill her father. None. She was a pawn in Schein's hands. It's the only way to get around the secret tape. Even if she was abused, the jury will convict her for the cold-blooded plan of revenge all these years later. But if she wasn't raped, if Schein planted false memories and controlled her, then taped what he wanted and didn't tape what he didn't want, he's the only one with the motivation to kill. Chrissy's as much of a victim as her father. Morally, she'd be absolved."

  "But not legally," Charlie said, a bit weakly.

  "Not to a judge, not to a law professor," I said. "But jurors are people. They follow a moral compass, not a statute book."

  "Uh-huh," Charlie said, sounding unconvinced. "Isn't it possible the jurors will believe that Schein hated Harry Bernhardt but still wouldn't resort to murder? After all, the motivation for the killing was fifteen years old. Why did it take him so long to seek revenge for Emily's death? And why didn't he ever confront Harry, man to man?"

  "Right," Kip chimed in, twisting his angel-hair pasta around his fork. "Like Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride, when he catches up with the bad guy and says, 'My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.' "

  "Because Schein's a coward," I said, "who might never have done anything if Guy Bernhardt hadn't egged him on."

  "Many theories," Charlie said, attacking a piece of chicken piccata. "Little proof."

  "I got a little proof this morning before court."

  "Socolow give you what you wanted?"

  "Yeah. I didn't specify what I was looking for, just asked for the entire contents of Harry's desk, and there it was."

  "So Socolow doesn't really know what you want?"

  "Doesn't have a clue."

  The old buzzard sliced his chicken, then said, "You're quite caught up in this trial."

  "It's what I do, Charlie."

  "But are you prepared to lose?"

  "What does that mean?"

  "Emotionally, are you prepared to go on with your life when . . . if you lose?"

  He had that father-to-son look of worry I get only from Charlie. "Okay," I said. "I'm living and breathing this one. It's the most important thing in the world to me."

  Charlie sighed and neatly lined up his knife and fork on his plate. "Jake, did you know that at this very minute, the Swift-Tuttle comet, a chunk of rock six miles in diameter, is hurtling through space on a collision course with the earth? On its present course, traveling at sixteen miles per second, it will crash into our insignificant little planet on August 14, 2126."

  "Most of Uncle Jake's clients will still be in prison," Kip said.

  "What's the point, Charlie?" I asked.

  "It's a doomsday rock!" he thundered. "The explosion will be a billion times greater than the Hiroshima bomb. It will create a cloud of dust that will encircle the earth for decades, cutting off all sunlight, killing all crops, destroying the global climate, causing worldwide famine and perhaps the extinction of the human race."

  "Holy Star Wars!" Kip said.

  I polished off the beer. "I get it, but I don't buy it. You're telling me that in the scope of things, what happens in our day-to-day lives doesn't matter. As individuals, we are nothing, and as a species—"

  "We're doomed," Charlie said with finality.

  "Then why do anything?" I asked. "Why not just hang out at the beach and windsurf and fish and chase women?"

  "I like the fishing part," Kip said, his mouth painted with marinara sauce.

  "As I recall, you tried that," Charlie said, "and found it unfulfilling. There has to be a balance. You have to find fulfilling work, what Mortimer Adler called play, or what Joseph Campbell called finding your bliss. At the same time, you cannot wager your entire worth, your self-esteem, on something so fleeting as the whims of a judge or jury, not when everything we call civilization can be extinguished in—"

  "One swell foop," Kip said.

  30

  Body Language

  After lunch, Dr. Lawrence Schein told the jurors that each of us has a secret compartment in which traumatic memories are locked away. "My job is to unlock that compartment, open the gateway to the mind, and release the memories. Only by remembering can we heal."

  I kept the questions open and easy and let him talk. I wanted him relaxed and confident. It would make the contrast even greater when I broke him. If I broke him.

  "All memories are stored somewhere in the brain," he said. "Some are accessible, ready to be called up at any time. Others are frozen, as if in a glacier. I use my training to warm up that glacier, to melt the ice, to let the memories run free as a river in the pristine woods."

  He was up to his ass in picturesque wordplay, but I let him continue the spiel. Like a fish on a line, he would run a while before I set the hook. He told the jury about hypnosis, imagistic recall, psychodrama, free association, age regression, and gestalt therapy. He talked about patients in denial and the sensory flashbacks of abuse survivors. The words "remember" and "heal" came up repeatedly, as did the initials PTSD.

  "Posttraumatic stress disorder—you may be familiar with the term," Schein said, with just a touch of condescension, turning toward the jury. "We called it Vietnam syndrome when our soldiers suffered it. Whatever term we use, it means the patient has sublimated the horrors of the past."

  He talked about Chrissy Bernhardt's history. The eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, destructive relationships with men, the blocks of missing memories from childhood, the feeling of being out of control. He described the differences between traumatic experiences that are remembered in intricate detail and those we cannot remember at all.

  "A Type I trauma is a short incident that leads to a brilliant, indelible memory," he explained. "A Type II trauma is caused by multiple, repetitious acts and may not be remembered. The mind anticipates the abuse—physical, sexual, or emotional—and represses the memory as a way of continuing to function. Of course, this defense mechanism does as much harm as good. The victim is not spared the agony of the abuse. She only feels it in different, self-destructive ways. Chrissy suffered Type II trauma and hence could not remember it until I unlocked the gate and the healing process began."

  "She had no memories of the all
eged abuse until you told her she was abused, is that correct?"

  "No, not at all. I didn't tell her anything." Indignant and better prepared now that he knew where I was going. He gave the jury a little smile that said he was in control of this wily shyster.

  "You suggested that her father abused her?" I said.

  "No, I helped her remember what had happened so that she could heal. This is a little girl who had been raped, time and time again." He hit the word "rape" hard. An ugly word, and one of the woman jurors seemed to cringe. "To combat the pain and the shame, she had put herself into a trancelike state each time she was abused. Afterward, she told no one. Not her mother, not her teachers, not even herself. She didn't remember because she wouldn't let herself remember."

  He was assured and convincing. He was either a brilliant practitioner of the latest advances in psychotherapy or a complete bullshit artist. I thought I knew which, but could I prove it? Then I played the tapes.

  "How old are you, Christina?"

  "Eleven."

  "Are you a happy girl?"

  "Oh, yes. I have everything a girl could want. "

  The jurors sat transfixed, listening to that childlike voice.

  "What do you have?"

  "Toys and friends and a wonderful mommy."

  ''What about your father?"

  "He gives me everything."

  "Does Mommy love him?"

  "I don't know."

  "Christina, I'm Dr. Schein. I'm a friend of your mommy's."

  "I know. You take care of her. She likes you. She told me so."

  "Your mother is a wonderful woman. Tell me about your father."

  "He hits her. He hits her a lot and calls her names. Mommy got sick, so she stays in her room. Daddy moved down the hall, next to my room."

  "Does your father ever hit you?"

  "No. Never. Not even when I'm bad."

  "When are you bad, Christina?"

  "When I don't do what Daddy says."

  "Does he ever touch you in ways that frighten you?"

  "No."