even if she wanted to, which she doesn’t. Have you met her?”
Gottlieb shook his head.
“She’s young, thirty-one or thirty. Ambitious and pretty smart. She’ll want to prove she’s got the balls to send a man to Death Row.”
“On the other hand,” Gottlieb noted, “she won’t want those revelations about Christina to come to light.”
O’Connell scowled. “Christ, what a hateful little shit! Do you believe what’s in that notebook?”
“Well, let’s talk about the notebook. How would you like to be Ms. Aveiro if its contents became public knowledge?”
“I wouldn’t. Truth is, Doc, I’d rather not be on either side of this one. I want it over and done with. I love Jimmy Shannon, but I wish to God he’d taken my advice and let me get another lawyer for him. All I want right now is to go back to wills and closings, with a few drunk drivers for a change of pace.”
The lawyer said this quietly and slowly, in a voice that had none of his customary feistiness. The voice of a dispirited man, someone who’d seen too much of the worst of human nature and needed a long respite from it, but who had none in the offing. Gottlieb knew that he was fifty-five, James Shannon’s age, but he looked older now, like a man of sixty-two or sixty-three. In fact, he looked a good deal older than when he had when they’d met for the first time, less than two months ago.
This case is taking its toll on all of us.
O’Connell resumed the nervous tapping of a foot. “Why are you doing this?” he asked.
“Doing what?”
“You know. Going out on a limb for him like this. Talking to me ex parte. Giving me tips, so to speak, on how to defend him. Writing that report, which just might get you fired.”
“I don’t think it will. I’ve been around awhile now, and I have a pretty solid reputation. They’re not about to fire me because of a single report they don’t care for. It wouldn’t be that easy for them to fire me anyway. I put in enough hours at GCFI to make me civil service.”
“I hope you’re right,” O’Connell muttered. “Myself, I tend to be a cynic . . . suppose it’s an occupational hazard. While I don’t have much direct experience with the local politicians, they have a reputation for getting what they want. If they really want to get rid of someone, they’ll find a way.”
“If they do, they do. I’ve been through worse.”
His foot still tapping, O’Connell went ahead with his cross-examination. “You still haven’t answered me, haven’t told me why you’re going to bat for him like this.”
“Because I like him. Because I see him as an inherently decent man who has been through an agonizing time. Because he doesn’t pose a threat to anyone now, and there’d be no purpose served by a long prison term. Or, worse, by his execution.”
He picked up an eraser from his desk, played idly with it and continued. “And because of something else. It goes back to the first thing he told me, right after they transferred him to us, when he finally began to talk again. I asked him why he did it, and this is what he told me: to save the world from her. Well—
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m starting to see his point.”
O’Connell nodded, his face a picture of distaste. “If she could do that to her mother, God only knows what she could have done to the rest of us.”
“Plenty. Let me tell you more about Christina.” Gottlieb gave him a summary of her time at camp, of Anita Pierce’s revelations.
When he finished, the lawyer looked more shaken than at any time since Gottlieb had met him. “She was what, twelve or thirteen when she did that? What the hell would she have done later?”
“Her father’s point, exactly. Staggers the imagination, doesn’t it?”
He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I think I’ll arrange to meet
privately with Ms. Aveiro. It might make her a trifle more receptive to your report if I show her the pertinent parts of Christina’s notebook. I’d rather not put the girl on trial, but it’s possible that I’ll have no choice.”
“Perhaps not.”
“If Aveiro still balks,” he went on, “I could mention the story you told me about Ms. Pierce. Tell her we plan to have her testify. A woman who’d been blinded would have a powerful effect upon a jury.”
“But no one ever proved Christina did it.”
“True, but Aveiro doesn’t have to know that now.” He continued to play with the scenario. “The case comes to trial. Pierce takes the stand and talks about the eyedrops. Aveiro objects on grounds of conjecture and the judge upholds her objection, but the words can’t be negated. They’ve already made their impact.”
Gottlieb considered. Maybe he’s a better lawyer than I thought he was.
O’Connell continued to think aloud. “But let’s assume, for the sake of discussion, that they do find him incompetent. So, they’ll send him to a funny farm somewhere. They’ll force him to take medication, put him in a locked ward with a bunch of raving lunatics. Restrict his moves, refuse to give him passes, and refuse to give him any rights at all.” A somber expression crossed his face. “It could turn out to be a de facto life sentence anyway, the way it was with Hinckley when he shot Reagan.”
Gottlieb shook his head. “I doubt that. The fact is, he’s not Hinckley; he didn’t try to kill a head of state. Yes, they would send him to a hospital, but they’d also have to reevaluate his mental state from time to time. Sooner or later someone would have the courage to say that he was fit to go.”
“I don’t know. People fall through the cracks.”
“That would depend on you, in part, or on his subsequent attorney. Besides, his brothers and sister have a little money and at least a degree of sophistication. I don’t see them allowing that
to happen.”
“What do you see happening?”
“I’ve been wrong too many times to make predictions where the courts are concerned, but my best guess is that they’ll hospitalize him for a couple of years. Then, like it or not, they’ll have to release him.”
O’Connell looked at him in a way that was close to imploring. “So you think there’s a reasonable chance he might be free someday?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“What do you mean?”
Gottlieb folded his hands on his lap. “Well, I wonder how free you can ever be when you’ve killed the daughter who killed your wife. When the media has turned your case into a circus, a feeding frenzy. When just about everyone in Chicago—for that matter, the whole state, and much of the rest of the country— knows who you are and what you did. When your life has been shaken to the core, stripped of everything familiar, and you’ve been locked up for years.”
⸎
The Gottliebs were spending the Labor Day weekend at the Wisconsin retreat of one of Hal’s brothers and his family. Adam Gottlieb owned a home on Lake Geneva, a simple but spacious white raised ranch. Adam, a financial planner, and his wife, Lois, a self-employed caterer, had done it up in shades of light orange, browns, and greens. They’d tried to create a woodsy ambiance, in keeping with the Wisconsin forests that surrounded them.
Their two older daughters had already left for their respective colleges. Only the youngest, Emily, still in high school, would be there with them. A serious, heavyset girl with thick glasses and a kind, round face, she had always taken a warm sisterly interest in her slightly younger cousin Peter. Like her parents, she fussed shamelessly over Sarah.
They swam and water-skied behind Adam’s runabout, Hal showing grace and skill on skis despite his girth and customary awkwardness. Hal and Sharon doused themselves with OFF! and took walks along the lakefront, the mossy paths as soft as carpeting beneath their feet. When they weren’t hiking, swimming, or in the boat, they sat talking on the screened-in patio, replenishing themselves with Lois’s gazpacho and lobster pasta salad, washed down with Adam’s sangria.
Peter and Emily split off by themselves. From the patio, Hal and Sharon could see them talki
ng earnestly on the pier, their feet dangling in the cool, clear water. Peter, for once, didn’t seem self-conscious about his body. From time to time, he and Emily laughed together. Gottlieb realized how starved he’d become for the sound of his son’s laughter.
On Sunday night, following another day of swimming, boating, and hiking, Adam broiled steaks on the outdoor grill. After dinner, they adjourned to the living room, chatting while Brubeck and Ellington CDs played in the background. Adam shared his brother’s taste for the legendary jazz figures.
Sarah, happy but worn out, fell asleep right after dinner. Peter and Emily headed for the pier again. It was still early, not much past nine thirty, when Hal and Sharon went to bed themselves.
The house sat perched on a knoll. From the guest room window, they could see moonlight play against the lake. A breeze rustled through an abundance of birch and spruce. Sharon nestled against his chest and gave a contented sigh. “This is the most relaxed I’ve felt in months. It’s so peaceful here! I know we’re just an hour or so from home, but it feels like we’re a million miles from everything and everyone.”
He ran a finger through her short blonde hair. “We need a vacation, not just a long weekend. Hard to remember when the last one was. Toronto . . . that was it, Toronto. It was nice enough, that trip, but I’d hardly call it restful.”
“A classic understatement!” In May, they’d driven to a
psychiatric convention there. Along the way, they’d stopped to visit friends outside Detroit. They’d also made a side trip to Niagara Falls.
“Face it,” she went on, “it was your typical Hal Gottlieb marathon. Nonstop activity, with that famous disapproving look of yours if I slept late or, God forbid, did nothing for two hours.”
“I thought you liked that trip.” He sounded disappointed.
“I did, of course I did. Toronto’s a wonderful city, what’s not to like? But the concept of relaxation still gives you a lot of trouble, especially when you travel. And I wish you wouldn’t make me feel like the ultimate spoiled JAP if I dared to order room service. Just once before I die, I’d like to have breakfast in bed when we go away.”
“When we go to Bermuda next spring, we’ll have breakfast in bed every day if you want it. And there’ll be no meetings, no seminars, no force-fed culture.”
“Promise?”
He reached over and kissed her. “I promise.”
“Be still, my heart.”
They fell silent, listening to wind rustling through the trees and the occasional distant rumble of a motorboat. At one point, they heard laughter from the pier. “Peter does appear to be enjoying himself,” he commented. “I’m glad Emily’s here. They’ve always liked each other.”
“I have to say, he’s been much better lately. Ever since that awful day I ran away from home.”
“Hmm, so it seems.”
“Well, I’m quite impressed.” Her fingers stroked his chest. “What did you say to him that day?”
“Nothing miraculous. Mainly I just listened to him.”
“Sometimes your patience awes me, Hal. I wish I had a fraction of it.”
“Well, this summer has been an eye-opener. One thing I’ll say for Christina Shannon, she made me realize how much worse things could be with him.”
Her body tightened. “I hoped against hope that we might get through the weekend without mention of the wretched Shannons.”
“Do I really talk about the case that much?”
“Are you kidding? You mention it almost every day. You’re obsessed! You don’t even have to say a thing. I can tell when you’re thinking about it. There’s a certain look you have. Vaguely worried, distant. The Shannon look, that’s how I think of it.”
“I didn’t know it was so obvious.” He shifted in the bed. “The thing about it that takes hold of me is this — it hits on one of the three or four most basic questions of them all. Whether or not there are inherently evil people. Doesn’t that seize your interest too?”
“Not particularly.”
His voice rose slightly as he tossed the words back at her. “Not particularly? How is that possible?”
“Because I have a less speculative mind than you do. Not as good, I suppose, but often better grounded in reality. I don’t much care about the Big Bang, or quarks and black holes, or the ultimate nature of good and evil, or those other things you like to brood about. I don’t believe we’re meant to understand those things, and they don’t have a great bearing on my life in the first place. I guess I just don’t speculate a lot. Oh, I’d like to know more about the assassination of JFK, who really was behind the assassination and stuff like that, but I never felt a need to look for all the answers. If that makes me a dolt, so be it.”
“You’re the least doltish woman I’ve ever known.”
“Gosh, I bet you say that to all the girls. You’re such a masher!” She giggled, something she did every year or two.
“Many things I’ve been called, but not that,” he said, bemused.
She yawned. “It’s getting hard to stay awake.”
“Go to sleep, then.” He kissed her goodnight, and she curled herself against him, her face on his chest while he wrapped one of his arms around her midriff. Not yet quite ready for sleep, he listened to the familiar murmur of her breathing, soft against the counterpoint of the breeze and the waves splashing against the shore while he watched the play of moonlight on the lake.
⸎
The rest of his life—James Shannon and the other tortured souls at GCFI, his private patients, his quasi-affair with Cassandra—dwindled into insignificance. What mattered was Sharon, the wife who slept next to him, the partner in their bloodied but durable marriage. What mattered was Peter, happier now, at least for a week or for a day. Peter, who might finally be emerging from his adolescent angst and torpor. Peter, the same age as the late Christina Shannon, a mere four months older. What mattered was Sarah, the light of his life, a phrase he’d deemed trite and hyperbolic until she came along.
Sharon had the right idea, most likely. Put aside the huge unanswerable questions, stay grounded in reality, stay grounded in the here and now. Par for the course: Sharon usually had the right idea.
CHAPTER XXIV
J AMES SHANNON SAT IN GOTTLIEB’S OFFICE, his finger-tips touched lightly together in his typical prayerful fashion. He’d continued to lose weight: he looked diminutive and almost elfin in his bulky regulation sweatshirt. It was the Tuesday after Labor Day. Discussion focused on Christina’s notebook.
“How did you feel when you read it?” Gottlieb asked.
“How do you think I felt?” shot back Shannon. “How would you have felt?” He paused. “I told you. It was the worst experience imaginable.
“I think I went into a kind of shock,” he went on, less brusquely. “For hours, maybe even days. I kept trying to find a way to make some sense of it. Telling myself I’m imagining this, even though I knew I wasn’t.”
“What did you do?”
He rubbed his fingertips against his temples and shut his eyes, as if trying to recall events of twenty years ago. “I don’t know, I’m not really sure. Everything seemed unreal to me. I think I went into my bedroom. Of course I didn’t sleep, that was out of the question. I just lay there on the bed. A couple of times I threw up. Every so often, I went back to the notebook. I reread bits and pieces of it, a few pages at a time. Some of it . . . you must have noticed this yourself . . . some of it seemed so innocent. Lists of chores and recipes and so forth. So innocent and ordinary. But then there were those other things, and those drawings . . .”
“Did you confront her?”
“Not right away. I couldn’t.” Shannon crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Maybe it was cowardly, but I’ll admit I lacked the stomach for it. I didn’t say a thing to her for the rest of the afternoon. When she came back from her bike ride, I avoided her. Later, five or six, it must have been, I told her I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to eat. I told her to fix her
self some dinner. After she ate, she went off to watch Jeopardy the way she usually did. She liked to play along with the contestants. Then, when the program was over, I finally confronted her.”
“How did she react?”
Shannon’s tone remained the same, but his body language changed. He sat rigidly but defensively, as if expecting to ward off blows, and his right hand became a hard tight ball. “You won’t believe this—well, maybe now you will—but she was angry! More than angry, furious. The angriest I’ve ever seen her. I should tell you, Christina didn’t show anger the way most people do. She didn’t yell or scream. If anything, she spoke in a softer, more deliberate way than usual. She didn’t make threatening movements with her hands or get red in the face. Except for those hate-filled eyes of hers, and a certain way she had of squeezing her lips together, she didn’t even change expressions. I’ll remember what she said if I live to be a hundred. ‘Daddy, didn’t they teach you not to snoop?’”
“What happened then?”
He shut his eyes again. “I don’t recall too much of what she said, aside from you don’t understand. She said that several times. She was right, of course. I didn’t understand. Could anyone? I asked her, over and over, how could she do it. Do what? she’d ask, bold as brass. At one point, she even told me she’d been jotting down notes for a writing project. A story about a girl who killed her mother, a mystery story. For a split second I almost believed her. I wanted to believe her. I wanted to believe anything except the truth.”
“Did she ever admit to having caused her mother’s death?”
“Not directly, but she came close to it. She said no one would believe a girl like her would do a thing like that. I suppose she was right. Who’d believe something so far-
fetched? She said she’d stick to her guns, no matter what. She’d been jotting down notes for a mystery story, and that was all there was to it.”
Shannon stood up and walked over to the window, glancing outside, his eyes slightly glazed. “I remember something else she said, the most extraordinary thing of all. She looked at me directly, stared at me, with her hands on her hips. ‘Look at it this way, Daddy, she just would have gotten sicker and sicker. Losing her toes, maybe even her whole foot. Going blind, or maybe going on that kidney machine. She’s better off dead. Besides, you won’t have to spend the next ten years or so taking care of her now.’ I lost my temper then. ‘How dare you!’ I yelled at her. Then I slapped her, hard, across the face. The only time I ever hit her.”
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