Kevin stepped out of the elevator and paused to listen for other sounds. At first there were none. Then, as if he materialized right before Kevin’s eyes, John Milton was suddenly sitting at the right corner of the sectional couch, sipping wine. He was in his burgundy velvet smoking jacket.
“Why, Kevin. What a pleasant surprise. Come in, come in. I was just sitting here, relaxing. And, as a matter of fact, I was thinking about you.”
“Were you?”
“Yes. I know you took the day off. Are you feeling better, rested?”
“Somewhat.”
“Good. Once again, congratulations on a wonderful defense.”
“I didn’t have to do that much,” he said, stepping farther forward. “It was handed to me when you had that note delivered.”
“Ah yes, the note. Still wondering about that, are you?”
“No.”
“No? Good. As my grandfather used to say, ‘Never look a gift horse in the mouth.’”
“My God.”
“What?”
“It was my grandfather who said that.”
“Was it?” John Milton’s smile widened. “Everybody’s grandfather probably said things like that. When you’re a grandfather, you’ll say the same sort of things, too.” John Milton put his glass of wine on the table. “Come on in. You’re standing there like some sort of messenger boy. Would you like a glass of wine?” He held the glass in the light so that the red liquid looked more dazzling.
“No, thank you.”
“No?” He sat back and studied Kevin for a moment. “What’s that you’re carrying under your arm?”
“A gift for you.”
“Oh? That’s kind of you. What’s the occasion?”
“Let’s call it gratitude, appreciation for all you’ve done for me and for Miriam.”
“I’ve already gotten my gift in seeing you do so well in court.”
“Nevertheless, I wanted to give you some small token of our . . . affection.”
Kevin moved forward until he was standing before him. Slowly, he brought the brown bag out from under his arm and handed it to John Milton.
“Feels like a book.”
Kevin reached in under his jacket and grasped the gold cross.
“Oh, it is. One of the best.”
“Really? Well, thank you.” He put his fingers in the bag and pulled out the Bible. It wasn’t until it was completely out of the bag that the words “Holy Bible” were visible. The moment they were, John Milton’s eyes bulged. He screamed just as Father Vincent had predicted, howled as if he had tried to seize the center of a fire, a hot, burning coal. The Bible fell to the floor.
Kevin pulled out the cross and extended his arm, shoving the face and body of an angry-looking crucified Christ in John Milton’s face. He screamed again and brought his hands to his eyes, covering them as quickly as he could with his palms, and fell back against the sectional. Kevin clutched the cross as he would a dagger, and without a moment’s hesitation he drove the sharpened end into John Milton’s heart. It cut through the garment and his flesh with the speed and precision of a heated knife cutting through soft ice cream, the cross cooling down as it entered. Blood spurted out and over Kevin’s fingers, but he didn’t retreat until he had driven the cross as deeply as he could.
John Milton never lowered his hands. He keeled over and died on the luxurious couch, with his palms still pressed firmly against his eyes to block out the light. Kevin stepped back. The replica of Christ on the cross was planted firmly in John Milton’s chest, only now Kevin thought the small face looked satisfied, fulfilled.
Kevin stood there, staring down at the body until his own body stopped shaking. It was over, he thought. He had saved his soul and his wife’s life. He went directly to the telephone to call Father Vincent. It rang and rang and rang. Finally, he heard the old man’s voice.
“I’m here,” Kevin said. “In his apartment, and it all went as you described.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ve done it, Father. He couldn’t touch the Bible, and he howled when it was in his hands, and then I showed him the crucified Christ and he was blinded, so I drove the dagger into his heart just as you directed.”
There was only silence on the other end.
“It was what I was supposed to do, wasn’t it?”
“Oh yes, my boy.” Father Vincent burst into a hollow laugh. “It was what you were supposed to do. Don’t do anything else. Just stay put. I’ll call the police.”
“The police?”
“Just stay put,” he repeated and hung up. Kevin held the receiver in his hand a moment and listened to the hum. Then he cradled the receiver.
He looked toward the couch and John Milton’s body. There was something different about it. Slowly, he walked back to the sectional and stared down at the body. His heart began to pound, and a cold, chilling wave traveled up his legs, making him feel as if he had just stepped into an icy pond.
John Milton was still dead. The dagger was still firmly planted in his heart.
But his hands were off his face.
And he was smiling!
15
There’s no one better to defend you,” Miriam pleaded. “Why don’t you listen to reason? You should be grateful that they’re willing to do it, considering what you’ve done. I’m amazed they don’t hate us.”
Kevin said nothing. He sat in the prison visiting room and stared straight ahead, his mind still jumbled. Had he gone mad? Was this what it was like to go completely mad?
The police had come, followed by the associates, and then Miriam and the girls had arrived. He had said nothing to anyone, not even Miriam, who became hysterical and had to be comforted by Norma and Jean anyway. The associates thought he was just being a good defendant, refusing to speak until represented by an attorney, but he wasn’t going to speak to any of them now, despite Miriam’s pleas.
And as for the associates not hating them, of course they hated them. They were just being their old conniving selves. But he understood why Miriam would be blind to that. She was so vulnerable, he thought, and looked at her.
She was still pregnant. There hadn’t been any immediate subsequent abortion, but surely it would happen. Everything else Father Vincent had predicted had happened. That thought brought him back to the moment. He studied her face more closely.
Miriam didn’t look sick or in pain. She had been crying and her makeup was streaked with tears, but she didn’t look physically uncomfortable. In fact, the paleness he had seen in her face recently was gone. She looked like a healthy pregnant woman, blooming because of her pregnancy. Maybe that meant the evil fetus within her was dying, losing its power to draw on her nutritional health. He was hopeful.
“How do you feel?” he asked her.
“I feel terrible. What do you mean? How can you ask me that now?”
“I don’t mean about any of this. I mean, physically . . . your pregnancy . . . any more black and blue marks?”
“No. I’m all right,” she said. “I’ve seen the doctor, and he says everything is fine.” She shook her head. He continued to stare at her, studying her, searching her eyes, searching the expression in her face. She looked so different to him. He sensed that the intimacy that had once been between them was gone. They were no longer a part of each other. She had become a stranger. Her eyes no longer had that warmth he had once cherished. It was as if someone else was in her body, he thought, and then he thought, of course, there was . . . that child, draining her, drawing out her warmth, her love for him.
The doctor was one of them. Maybe he was keeping the baby alive.
“I want you to stop seeing their doctor, Miriam. Stop seeing him,” he demanded.
“My God, Kevin, I didn’t realize how crazy you had become. My God.”
“I’m not crazy, Miriam. You’ll see. I’m not crazy.”
She sat back and stared at him, any sympathy or pity for him slipping away. He sensed her disgust and dismay.
“Ke
vin, why did you do it? Of all the people in the world to kill, how could you kill Mr. Milton?”
The guard standing by the door lifted his eyebrows, looked their way, and then pretended interest in something across the room.
“You didn’t believe me when I first told you, you won’t believe me now, but it will all come out at the trial.”
“The trial?” She smirked. All these expressions and reactions, they were so unlike her. That thing was taking over, he thought, possessing her just as the one in Gloria Jaffee had surely possessed her. “What kind of a trial do you expect? You admit to having done it, and you won’t permit Paul or Ted or Dave to represent you, even though they are the best defense lawyers in the city, probably in the country.”
“I’ve made inquiries and sent for an attorney.”
“Who?”
“Someone barely known as a criminal attorney. He’s not a high-powered lawyer; he’s not rich, and, most importantly, he’s not any of them.” Yet, he added to himself, if I lose, he might just become one of them.
“But Kevin, is this wise?”
“Most wise. I have a chance this way, a chance to demonstrate the truth.”
“Paul says the first thing that must be done is you must be examined psychiatrically. The prosecution is going for first-degree murder. He said the psychiatrist the prosecutors appoint will most likely support their contention that you knew what you were doing. Paul said they’ll block that avenue of defense, which, he feels, is your only defense.”
“He would say that. He’s even recommended some psychiatrist for us, no doubt.”
“Oh yes. He offered some wonderful doctors,” she said. “Ones the firm has used before.”
He thought she winked. She was becoming one of them. It was almost useless to talk to her until it was all over.
“Doctors who will definitely claim I’m crazy. That’s what they hope will happen: I’ll be declared insane, and the truth will be buried, don’t you see?” He leaned forward, getting as close as he could to her without the guards noticing. “But that won’t happen, Miriam. We’re not going to ask for any psychiatric tests. None.” He slapped the table between them so hard, she jumped in her seat.
Miriam made a small, mouselike sound and pressed her right hand against her mouth. Her eyes were glassy, wet. She shook her head.
“Everyone’s devastated—your parents, mine, the associates, Norma and Jean.”
“What about Helen?” He smiled madly. “You don’t want to conveniently forget Helen Scholefield now, do you? Just because the others have.”
“I won’t forget her, and they haven’t either. I’d blame her for all this, only she was very sick herself at the time and not responsible for the things she said and did.” She opened her purse and took out a handkerchief to dab her cheeks. She followed that with a small mirror and started to wipe away the streaks. “Thank God, she’s improved.”
“Improved?” He sat back. “What’s that supposed to mean? Is she dead?”
“Oh, Kevin, really. What a thing to say. Improved means getting better. The treatments have helped. She’s out of her comatose state. She’s eating well and conversing intelligently. Paul hopes to bring her home in a week or so if she continues to progress.”
“Bring her home? She’ll never come back to that apartment building.”
“She asks to be brought home every day, Kevin. Norma and Jean have seen her. They say the change in her is dramatic, nothing short of miraculous.
“Don’t you see?” she said quickly, pressing forward. “That’s why you need to have a psychiatric exam and treatment and . . .”
“No!” He rose out of his seat and shook his head vehemently.
“Kevin.”
“You’d better go, Miriam. I’m tired, and I have to prepare for my attorney’s first visit. Let me know the minute something happens to you. It should happen soon.”
“Something happens? What’s supposed to happen?”
“You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see,” he muttered hopefully and turned to go back to his cell.
How odd, Kevin thought. Why would Helen Scholefield be improving and want to come back knowing all she knew? Had they done something to her in Bellevue, something to erase all her memories and knowledge? Maybe they had given her a lobotomy. Yes, that was it, a lobotomy.
And why was Miriam still pregnant? Father Vincent had said once the devil in his human form was killed, all his human progeny would die. Why was it taking so long? Father Vincent didn’t say the firm’s doctor could block it. Could it be he didn’t know? He had to talk to him. Why hadn’t the priest come to see him? And why was he the one who called the police? Was it all part of the process?
There was so much to understand . . . so much. He had to go back and think, plan, reorganize. He had to work on his own defense. He had to show he had killed in self-defense. It would be the greatest brief of his career, he and the nobody lawyer proving to the state and to the people that he had saved mankind by killing the devil.
“We’ve got to subpoena the computer files in the office,” he muttered, “and Beverly Morgan.” And then McKensie would describe his meeting with him, he thought, and Father Vincent would be called . . . a man of the cloth, a man of authority, a psychiatrist in his own right who believes in the existence of the devil.
“I’m all right. I’m all right,” he concluded. “It will be just fine.”
“Sure,” the guard walking behind him replied. “Everything’s going to be great now that you’re in our hands.”
Kevin ignored him, and moments after his cell door had been closed behind him, he was on his bunk bed scribbling madly over a long yellow legal pad.
His lawyer’s name was William Samson. He was only twenty-seven and looked like a young Van Johnson—fresh, pure American apple pie. Samson couldn’t believe his luck. It was a dramatic case, high profile, heavy publicity. He had really had only one criminal trial experience, defending a nineteen-year-old college man accused of robbing a liquor store at gunpoint near the campus. The thief wore a ski mask, and the police, acting on a tip, had found an identical-looking ski mask in his apartment, and there wasn’t any other ski equipment. He wasn’t a skier. He fit the physical description as well, and there was evidence that he had some serious gambling debts. Yet it wasn’t an open-and-shut case because the police didn’t locate any weapon and the defendant’s girlfriend claimed he was with her at the time.
However, Samson knew she was lying, and he had little faith in her credibility on the witness stand. When he spelled out the punishment for perjury and explained that the prosecution was already working to disprove and/or discredit her testimony, she became very jittery. A day before the trial began, he advised his client to plea bargain and went to the district attorney’s office to negotiate. He convinced the AD to drop the armed robbery charge, replacing it with a simple robbery charge. Since his client had no priors, he got the prosecution to recommend six months and five years probation.
Kevin didn’t really know the details of this case. He didn’t care. In his way of thinking, he was simply looking for someone capable of being a criminal attorney who was least likely to have been corrupted by the devil. At their first meeting, Kevin explained why he wanted to plead self-defense. Samson listened and took notes, but as Kevin went on and on, Samson’s heart sank. This wasn’t going to be much of a case after all. His client, he decided, was crazy, suffering from hysterical paranoia. Very gingerly, he recommended a psychiatric examination.
Kevin refused. “That’s just what they want me to do—plead insanity so no one will listen to my evidence and my witnesses.”
“Then I can’t in good conscience defend you,” William Samson declared. “No one will believe your motives or your story. I have no defense to offer under these circumstances, Mr. Taylor.”
Kevin was disappointed with Samson’s reaction, but he was also impressed. William Samson was a bright young attorney who would do his best for his clients, but he operated
under a system of morality, too. This was the kind of attorney he could have been, he thought. It gave him hope and renewed his faith in himself and his actions.
“Then I’ll defend myself,” he said. “But come to the trial anyway. You may be surprised.”
William Samson was surprised to learn that the prosecution’s psychiatrist had concluded that Kevin Taylor was not insane, that he knew the difference between right and wrong at the time he committed the murder of John Milton, and that what he was probably doing was trying to disguise his real motives with this act and this ludicrous tale about Satan and his followers.
When Kevin read the psychiatric report, however, he thought it was his first real piece of luck. Now he would be able to prove his case. People would listen and give him an opportunity. If he had convinced a man as religious and as scholarly as Father Vincent, surely he could convince twelve ordinary citizens. He was buoyed by the belief that once they saw the evidence and heard the testimony of his witnesses, the jury would support his contention that he had killed John Milton in self-defense. He wouldn’t have been able to call witnesses and cross-examine them himself if the prosecution’s psychiatrist had contended he was insane.
But everything crumbled after that.
He subpoenaed John Milton and Associates’ computer files, but the “Futures” file he wanted wasn’t there. He insisted that he hadn’t been given all of them and, accompanied by court-appointed police guards, went to the office himself and tried to bring up the files on the computer. He met with no success. The file was gone. It was no longer even listed on the menu.
“They’ve deleted it,” he declared. “I should have known they would.”
Of course, no one believed him, but he thought he could go on without it.
On the opening day of the trial, Todd Lungen, another assistant district attorney, not much older than Bob McKensie but considerably better-looking, outlined the prosecution’s case. Lungen reminded Kevin of himself because he had a similar confident, almost arrogant air about him. He promised to show how this was a simple open-and-shut case involving a husband, a wife, and a victim the husband believed had been having an affair with his wife and had impregnated her. Lungen contended that after Kevin had committed the cold-blooded murder, he concocted a ridiculous story in the hope that he would be declared insane. Thus, his ludicrous claim that he had killed John Milton in self-defense. His refusal to have his own psychiatrist examine him was motivated by the realization that any competent doctor of mental health would know he was faking it.
Judgement Day Page 52