Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones

by Levine, Paul

  "And he wanted you to get to the hospital as quickly as possible?"

  "Well, yes. Guy was an hour away, and I was much closer."

  "Did he tell you who shot his father?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you, on that occasion, say, 'By the way, Guy, forty-eight hours ago, Chrissy threatened to kill your father. So sorry I neglected to mention it'?"

  "No. I maintained the confidentiality of my patient's communication."

  "How admirably ethical," I said, and Judge Stanger shot me a warning look.

  "By the way, Doctor, why weren't you and Guy at Paranoia with Harry Bernhardt?"

  "Why should we have been?"

  I opened a little black book so recently produced by the state attorney. "Because, according to Harry Bernhardt's appointment book, he was to meet you and Guy there at eight o'clock."

  "I don't know anything about that," he said quickly. "You'll have to ask Guy."

  I planned to do just that, but first, as my granny would say, I had other fish to fry.

  "What did you do after being informed of the shooting?" I asked.

  "I paid my bill immediately, got my car, and rushed to Mount Sinai."

  "What time did you leave the hotel?"

  "I don't recall. I wasn't paying attention to the time."

  I put down Harry's appointment book and picked up another file, pulling out a copy of a credit charge slip. "If you paid your bill at eleven-oh-one P.M., would it be fair to say that you left the hotel in the next three or four minutes, say eleven-oh-five P.M.?"

  "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."

  "I helped her remember! I helped her heal."

  "You wanted her to kill Harry Bernhardt!"

  "No!"

  "You prayed for her to kill him! You made her kill him!"

  "No!"

  "You programmed her to kill and you set her loose."

  "No!"

  "You took a confused young woman, pumped her full of drugs until her head spun, then you put a loaded gun in her hands and you aimed it and pulled the trigger."

  "No!"

  "You killed Harry Bernhardt! You wanted him dead, and you got Chrissy to do your dirty work!"

  "He deserved it!" Schein shouted. He looked around, realized he was standing, seemed to notice for the first time the jury staring at him, wide-eyed. "But I'm not a killer. I didn't . . ."

  His voice trailed off, his knees buckled, and he sank into his chair.

  31

  Doomed Beauty

  The house smelled of tomato sauce, garlic, and melted cheese. I had asked Kip to bring home a couple of pizzas for the nightly war council, so he'd gathered up Tanya from next door, and they bicycled into the downtown Grove. An hour later, they returned with a pizza quattro stagioni (olives, roasted peppers, mushrooms, and artichokes) from Mezzanotte, a pizza musculi (mussels and marinara sauce) from Paulo Luigi's, and a Margherita (fresh tomatoes and basil) from Ats-a-Nice.

  "Taste test," Kip proclaimed, carrying the boxes into the house.

  During trial, everything tastes like cardboard to me, though I appreciated the theatricality of Kip's gesture. All the pizzas were good, but I'm partial to the basic simplicity of a Margherita. I try to keep both my life and my meals free of excessive clutter. With pizzas, at least, I succeed.

  I opened a bottle of Chianti for Doc Riggs and Chrissy, sent Kip and Tanya onto the back porch with a couple of root beers, and popped the porcelain top on a pint of Grolsch for myself.

  Chrissy sat on the sofa, her knees tucked up under her chin. She wore one of my old football jerseys, and with her bare feet and no makeup, she looked like a teenager. An unhappy teenager. She had sobbed quietly in the car on the way home from the courthouse, and now she sipped at the wine and stared into space, red-eyed and sniffling.

  "I don't know what to believe anymore," she said. "At first, I was so sure. Jake, I could feel it happening, feel his flesh tearing into mine. Even now, when I close my eyes, it seems so real."

  Chrissy shuddered, her face filled with such haunting sorrow as to stir something deep inside me. I remembered what she had said the first time we met, how the photographers loved that vulnerable look. Wounded and sexy. Doomed Beauty. I wrapped my arms around her, and she let her cheek rest on my shoulder.

  "Regardless of how the trial turns out," she said, "I want you to know how much you mean to me. You're the one man who hasn't tried to use me."

  "I'm living inside your skin," I said. "I'd do anything for you."

  "You already have. You believe in me, and you're going to win."

  "What?"

  "Jake, you were brilliant today. You destroyed Larry. You showed what he did to me."

  "I proved he had the motive to kill your father. I may have even proved he programmed you to carry out his plan of revenge. But no matter which way we turn, you pulled the trigger."

  "What are you saying?" she asked, alarmed.

  "We'll be entitled to a jury instruction on the lesser included charges, second-degree murder and manslaughter. A win is a conviction for manslaughter."

  "Meaning what?"

  "A ten- or eleven-year sentence, out in eight or nine."

  "Eight years! No, it's not possible."

  Chrissy was shaking her head in childlike disbelief. Dr. Schein might say she was in denial.

  I cupped her head in my hands. "Chrissy, that's always been the goal. Either hang the jury or get lucky with a manslaughter verdict. If Abe had offered the plea, we would have taken it, but he's always gone after first-degree murder, life with no possibility of parole."

  "Eight years," she repeated. "There must be something you can do. Please tell me there's something."

  I looked at her, but there wasn't a thought in my head. No plan, no strategy for an acquittal. But I couldn't tell her that.

  "There is something," I said with contrived enthusiasm. "I just didn't want to get your hopes up."

  "You'll do it, Jake. I know you will. You would never let me down."

  I peeked through the kitchen window toward the backyard. Kip and Tanya were stretched out in the hammock, side by side. Kip's hands were behind his head, just the way I lie there. Maybe it's heredity, maybe environment—who knows?—but the little guy is starting to pick up my gestures and mannerisms. I cracked the window just enough to eavesdrop. I know kids are supposed to have their privacy, but I was worried. I didn't have any idea what stage these two were at, so I wanted to know if they were discussing homework or condoms.

  "How many movies can you name with the word 'pizza' in the title?" Tanya asked.

  "Mystic Pizza." he shot back without hesitating. "That's an easy one. Bet you don't know who had her first starring role."

  "Julia Roberts, unless you count Baja Oklahoma."

  "Doesn't count 'cause it was made for cable."

  "Yeah, but they showed it in theaters anyway," Tanya said.

  Great, the kid had found a soulmate.

  They were quiet a moment before Kip said, "The Pizza Triangle with Marcello Mastroianni and Monica Vitti."

  "Wow! That's a tough one."

  I closed the window just as Charlie came into the kitchen and started clearing my counter of a week's worth of fast food. Dried-out burgers, curled pizza crusts, half-empty cola cups.

  "You shouldn't make promises you can't keep," he said, tossing some shriveled French fries into the garbage can.

  I shot a look toward the door.

  "She's sleeping," he said, "but before she nodded off, she told me you had a great, secret plan. Want to share it with me?"

  "Nothing to share," I said.

  "Just as I thought." He was folding pizza boxes in half, jamming them into the trash. "She's such a frail thing, Jake."

  "That's why I've got to win. She'll never make it in prison. Never."

  "You're in a quandary," Char
lie said. "You've proved Chrissy is a victim of Schein's manipulations, but you can't get around the fact that she killed her father."

  "It's not a fact. It's an assumption made by the medical examiner." Getting out of my doldrums, starting to think like a lawyer.

  "Unless you have contrary evidence, my boy, it's a fact."

  "It could have been natural heart failure. It could have been medical malpractice. Larry Schein might have killed Harry in the hospital room."

  "Proof, Jake! Where's your proof?"

  I thought about it a second. "Schein said a couple of squirrelly things in court today, and they're still bothering me."

  "A fine piece of lawyering, Jake, in case I failed to mention it. You built a fine ladder, put your hostile witness on the top rung, then knocked it down. He fell pretty hard."

  "Thanks. Did you notice his time line's off?"

  "How so?"

  "Schein rushes out of the Hotel Astor at eleven-oh-five P.M. He gets to the hospital at eleven-forty P.M. It shouldn't take thirty-five minutes to get from the Astor to Mount Sinai."

  "It was a Friday night. You know how slow traffic is on South Beach."

  "Only if you go up Ocean Drive. The hospital is a straight shot up Alton. Ten to twelve minutes, no problem, especially if you're in a hurry."

  "Maybe someone's watch was wrong. Maybe the valet parkers at the Astor were smoking weed or shooting craps."

  "Yeah, and maybe Schein stayed to polish off his Grand Marnier soufflé, but I think it's screwy."

  "What else?" Charlie asked. "What else did Schein say that you found 'squirrelly'? An interesting choice of words."

  "Why, because he's a rodent?"

  "No, because the name is derived from the Vulgar Latin scuriolus, which sounds so much like our word 'scurrilous.' At any rate, what did he say?"

  "Maybe it's nothing, but it gave me an idea. Can you get a business directory for Miami Beach, one of those books that lists every commercial establishment by street?"

  "Sure."

  "And go over the autopsy report again, everything from toxicology to the EKG, okay?"

  "I'll do it, Jake. But Harry Bernhardt wasn't poisoned; he wasn't stabbed; and he wasn't smothered. He was shot by that poor girl and had a heart attack following surgery. They've got causation nailed down tight. What's the point of attacking it?"