They both tried to argue me out of it, but my mind was made up. After about fifteen minutes, they gave up, and it was agreed that I would go to trial.
Suddenly, there was a silence at the table. Vaughn sat there and stared at me for a long moment, then turned to Stephanie. “Your client has balls,” he said, “I’ll give him that. And I’ll give you one other thing, but this is the only favor you get. I won’t tell Branson about this. If your client is telling the truth, you might be able to crack Branson on the stand.”
Stephanie’s eyes went very wide. “Are you serious? Why would you do that? I would’ve had to give you this information anyway.”
Vaughn glanced at me, then turned back to my attorney. “As much as I want a conviction in this case, I pride myself on the fact that I truly seek justice, not just a flashy record. I don’t want to send an innocent man to the execution chamber. If you can crack Branson, then it’s possible he’s guilty and using your client to cover it up. I’m willing to let the jury decide.”
“Steve, that’s perfect. I don’t know how to thank you.”
Vaughn grinned from ear to ear. “Oh, trust me, this is going to cost you in the long run.”
He stood suddenly, and the bailiff came over from where he had been standing on the other side of the room. I thanked Vaughn and Stephanie, and was taken back to the jailers who were waiting to walk me back through the tunnel.
Back in the day room, I told Gunner and Harley and the others that I had made my decision. All of them clapped me on the back, telling me that I was doing the right thing.
Lunch had already been served, but the tray was waiting for me, and I ate while I told my friends about the meeting. I didn’t mention Vaughn’s willingness to keep my defense strategy a secret in front of all of them, but I got the chance to tell Gunner about it a little later, when we went to our cell for a bit.
“I don’t know,” Gunner said. “Sheriff Branson is a very good liar. Your girl gonna have to catch him slap off guard to get him to slip up.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I figured that out, too,” I said. “She’s young, but she seems to be pretty sharp.”
“I heard her name before; she been public defender for a few guys I’ve been knowing. Most of them took a deal, but I know she got one or two of them off. One of the good things about a young lawyer as your public defender is they still want to change the world—they ain’t got all caught up in how dirty the world really is. She might be best thing ever happened to you.”
Chapter 17
The next morning, right after breakfast, my name was called again over the loudspeaker, but this time a lot of the men in the cell block all started echoing it, like some kind of crazy chant. “Sal Jones, come to the door! Sal Jones, come to the door!”
Gunner started laughing, and I gave him a lopsided grin as I got up and went to the door. Three deputies were waiting, once again, and I was taken out and shackled up for a trip out of the jail. One of the deputies told me I was going to see a psychiatrist, and it occurred to me that if Stevens County did nothing else, they moved fast whenever the judge spoke.
The psychiatrist’s office was in the same clinic where I had gone to see the other doctor before, but in a different part of the building. Once again, they went around to the back of the building and took me through a private entrance. A woman met us at the door, and led us into a room that had only a recliner, a desk and an executive’s chair. The room was painted a pale green, one of those colors that is supposed to induce calmness.
“Mr. Jones, I’m Doctor Perkins,” the woman said. “I’ll be doing your evaluation today.” She looked at the deputies and told them to unshackle me. They did so, and then she told them to leave the room.
“Can’t do that, Ma’am,” the lead deputy said. “This man is very dangerous, and a murder suspect.”
“Gentlemen, I can’t do my job if you’re hovering over him. You can stand just outside the door, if you wish. As you can see, there are no windows in this room, there’s no way out except through that door.”
The deputy looked stubborn. “Ma’am, he could be dangerous to you. I think…”
Doctor Perkins looked at me. “Mr. Jones, do you intend to do me any harm?”
My eyebrows shot up. “Absolutely not, Ma’am,” I replied.
She looked back at the lead deputy. “You see? No problem. Outside, gentlemen, now.”
The deputies scowled, but filed out of the room. The doctor shut the door behind them, and told me to take a seat in the recliner, while she sat down behind the desk.
“Mr. Jones, I’m going to ask you a lot of questions today that may seem rather silly. What I want you to do is just give me the first answer that comes to mind whenever I do. Okay?”
I nodded. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“Now, Doctor Reynolds, the jail psychologist, was the one who called to set this appointment up for you. She tells me that you seem to have some kind of amnesia, and can’t remember details of your life. Is that correct?”
I nodded. “Yes, Ma’am,” I said. “If we go by my memory, then I suddenly came into existence just a few nights ago. I woke up, and the only thing I knew was that my name was Sal. I mean, I know lots of other things, but nothing that’s related to me, personally. I think I’ve had one little memory that surfaced, but it was like just a quick flash of my own face, but with longer hair. I guess maybe I looked in a mirror one time, and for some reason it stuck.”
She looked me over. “But you can’t remember anything from, say, your childhood? Parents, siblings, school, anything?”
“No, Ma’am, I can’t.”
“I have the report from your physical examination yesterday, which says that you don’t seem to have suffered any kind of physical trauma that could have caused a memory loss. It also says that there is a small lesion near your brain, but the doctor didn’t feel that it was either dangerous or connected, and he was conscientious enough to send it to a neurologist for a second opinion, who concurred. Since there doesn’t seem to be any physical reason for your memory loss, we need to look at psychological or emotional causes. Tell me, Mr. Jones, did you murder Deputy Johnson?”
“All I can tell you at this moment, Ma’am, is that I don’t remember doing it, and I have reason to believe that I didn’t.”
“What kind of reason?” Doctor Perkins asked me.
I explained to her about the slashed jugular vein, how long it takes to bleed out, and how Kyle Johnson was still awake and trying to talk to me.
The doctor scribbled something on a notepad. “Are you a medical professional, Mr. Jones? You seem to have some kind of intimate knowledge of cranial anatomy.”
That hadn’t occurred to me before, so I probably looked surprised. “I honestly don’t know,” I said. “Now that I think about it, I do seem to know a lot about the human body. I suppose it’s possible.”
“Intriguing,” she said. “So, based on what you have just said, someone else would’ve had to have cut his throat only seconds before you entered the room. Was there anyone else there?”
I hesitated. For all I knew, Sheriff Branson might get to look at her report, and after the prosecutor had agreed to keep my theory a secret, I didn’t want to be the one to tip him off. “All I can say at this moment, Ma’am, is that someone else had to have done it.”
She looked at me. “Mr. Jones, there’s something you’re not telling. Is there a reason for that?”
I thought for a second about how to answer her, and finally decided to go for the truth. “Yes, Ma’am, I’m afraid there is. It’s something my attorney wants to keep secret, for now.”
She nodded and smiled. “All right. Tell me about your very first memory, when you came into existence, can you do that?”
I took a deep breath, and then told her everything. About waking up, those three pesky words, being almost naked, and then everything that took place after I ran up the stairs.
The doctor had been scribbling furiously as I spoke, but her eyes had remaine
d on me. She finished her notes, then just sat there and looked at me for a moment. “Doctor Reynolds said she couldn’t see any sign that you were making up the story, or that you were being deceptive in any way. I’m going to have to agree with her on that, because everything about you, your body language, your facial expressions, all that, all says you’re telling the truth.”
I shrugged. “That’s because I am,” I said.
“How are you getting along in the jail?”
“I’ve made a few friends, but there was a ruckus the first night. I refused to join one of the gangs, so they didn’t want to let me have a place to sit at dinnertime. The only empty seat I could find turned out to be in the section that the black guys claimed, so a fight broke out. Apparently, somewhere in my past, I’ve had some kind of martial arts training, because when the fight was over, I had knocked out a bunch of my attackers, and I was virtually unhurt. Since then, everybody treats me pretty respectfully, but I’ve been warned that one of the black gangs is out to get me.”
“Yes, I knew about that. I understand no one else has tried to hurt you since then?”
I grinned. “Not yet,” I said. “But I’m told it’s likely to come.”
“So, it appears that you’ve had some sort of medical training, as well as martial arts training. Can you think of any connection between the two?”
“No, Ma’am,” I said, shaking my head. “One of my friends has suggested that I might have had military training, like for special forces or something. I honestly don’t have a clue.”
“Are you married?”
The question caught me off guard, but she had warned me that she would be asking questions I wouldn’t expect. I thought about it for a second, and then realized that my very first thought when I heard the question had been that I was not.
“No, I don’t think so. When you asked me that, I thought, no, I’m single.”
“Very good,” she said. “That first thought is what I’m looking for when I ask questions like that. Have you ever been married?”
“I think I might have been, once,” I said. “That first thought was basically that I’m not married anymore, but that’s all I get.” I thought about it for another moment. “To be honest, it almost seems like I’m talking about someone else, rather than myself.”
“That would make sense,” she said. “If you’ve suffered some sort of emotional trauma, then it’s possible you’re suffering from what we call dissociative personality disorder. What that means is that your subconscious has decided that it’s no longer in your best interest to be who you were, so it has basically disassociated you from your past. That would make it seem like you’re talking about someone other than yourself, even if a memory does surface. Do you have children?”
That question got an immediate reaction. “Again, that first thought was that I don’t have children anymore. Maybe I got a divorce, and my wife took our children?”
“That’s certainly possible, but the fact that you feel you no longer have children makes me wonder if something may have happened to them.” She looked through the file in front of her for a moment, then looked back up at me. “According to the investigation report, so far, you didn’t have a family living with you in the house that burned down, but it also says that another body was found in the basement. You didn’t see anyone else in the basement, when you woke up there?”
I shook my head. “No, Ma’am.”
“Well, then your children didn’t die in the fire, so that’s a good thing. Have you ever killed anyone, Mr. Jones?”
“No,” I said instantly. I was getting the hang of just letting that first thought come out of my mouth. “And that brings up something else. One of my friends in the jail pointed out that, when that big fight broke out, it was surprising that I didn’t kill anyone. Everything was happening so fast, and I was hitting them hard enough to knock them cold, but not hard enough to do any serious harm. Anyone with the kind of training it would’ve taken for me to be able to do that would certainly be capable of killing, but I didn’t. That makes me think that killing isn’t something I would do.”
“That theory certainly has merit. One thing we know about people who kill is that it seems to get easier each time they do it. If you had deliberately killed someone in the past, I’d say there’s a good chance you would have been far more destructive when defending yourself. Have you ever been in war?”
“No, that I’m sure of. There was an instant negative response when you asked.”
“Are you a policeman?”
My eyebrows went up. “No, I’m pretty sure I’m not.”
“I wondered,” she said, “because sometimes, when law enforcement officers spend time in an undercover role, they can lose track of who they really are. There have even been cases of DPD that have resulted. What is your father’s name?”
Nothing came to mind. “I don’t know.”
She scribbled. “Are you sexually attracted to men?”
“No, and that one I’m certain of.”
“Women?”
I grinned. “Well, I did notice that my lawyer is awfully pretty.”
That got a smile from the doctor. “Are you right-handed or left-handed?”
I had to think about it. “Well, I think I’m right-handed, but I haven’t written anything, so I’m not sure.”
She got up from behind her desk and brought me a notepad and pen. “Write your name,” she said.
I took the pen and pad, and wrote, “Sal.” I noticed instantly that I did it with my right hand, but then I switched the pen to my left hand and wrote it again. There was almost no difference between the two.
“Ambidextrous,” she said. “That’s very interesting, and rather rare. Of course, it could have something to do with the martial arts training. I’ve read articles in the past that suggests that ambidexterity can be a result of well-developed motor control over your muscles and limbs.” She took the pad and pen, and sat down behind the desk again. “Do you read a lot?”
“Not at the moment,” I said. “There was an incident my first day at the jail—I had picked up a book and sat down to read it in the day room, but it caused an uproar. Somehow, I read the whole book in just a matter of minutes, and some of the men thought I was playing some sort of game with them. I brushed it off, just claimed that I was only skimming through the book, not really reading it, but I was.”
This time it was her eyebrows that went up. “So, you’re a speed reader, too?” She got up again, and brought me a book that had been lying on the desk. “Read the first chapter,” she said.
The book was a novel, a romance story. I opened it and began reading as she stood there, and handed it back less than a minute later.
“Can you tell me the names of the characters that are mentioned that chapter?”
I nodded. “It starts out with a woman named Pamela Miller, a widow with two children, a son named Mark and a daughter named Miranda. She works for a lawyer named Jonathan Ferris, as his receptionist. Through her job, she meets a man named Richard Montrose, a wealthy, single man who is a client of her boss. There’s also a couple of paralegals working in the office, one named Janice and one named Harold. Neither of them has a last name that is mentioned in that chapter.”
“What’s the basic storyline?”
“There seems to be a spark between Pamela and Richard when they first meet, a mutual attraction. Pamela thinks that a man as rich as Richard would never be interested in a mere receptionist, especially one who was a single mother, but she begins to fantasize about him. At the end of the chapter, she’s surprised when her boss calls her in to say that Richard wants some documents brought over to his office, and specifically asked for her to bring them. That’s where it ends, but I got the impression that Richard had asked her boss about her, and was actually very interested.”
Doctor Perkins stood there and just looked at me for a moment, then turned and went back to her desk. “That is remarkable,” she said. “I’ve known a few speed rea
ders, but I’ve never seen anyone read as fast as you just did, and actually understand what they were reading. You are quite an enigma, Mr. Jones.”
She sat down in her chair again and scribbled more notes. She continued firing questions at me for a couple of hours, and I gradually came to realize that what she was doing was forcing me to examine those first thoughts. We concluded that I was probably a widower, because when she asked if my wife was dead, my first thought was a yes. There were other things that I seemed to learn about myself, but we were completely unable to get any kind of reading on what my profession might have been. It was as if I had lived my whole life without working or going to school. We also found no sign that I had ever been in the military.
“Well,” she said at last, “I can tell you that my report will state that you are quite sane, but that I am thoroughly convinced your amnesia is genuine. I can’t see any sign that you’re faking, and I haven’t managed to get you to slip in any way at all. The chance that you could fool me for this long would be about the same as going to Las Vegas and playing five slot machines one time each, and hitting the jackpot each time.”
“So, about one chance in five million three hundred and thirty-two thousand?” I asked.
She looked at me strangely for a moment, and then started scribbling furiously. A moment later she looked up with her eyes wide. “I think we can add mathematical prodigy to your list of talents, Mr. Jones. I had to figure it out, but that’s exactly right.”
I shrugged. “I was just throwing a number out there, I was only kidding.”
She started scribbling again. “What is five thousand nine hundred and sixty-five times two thousand four hundred and eighty-nine?”
“Fourteen million eight hundred and forty-six thousand eight hundred and fifty-five.”
She continued scribbling for almost a minute, then stared at me with her eyes as wide as they could get. “That’s correct,” she said, “and you gave me the answer without even a second’s hesitation. Very few people in the world are able to do instant calculations such as yours, Mr. Jones, and it’s almost always due to an anomaly in the brain where the mathematics section gets mixed with the sub-conscious that deals with moment-to-moment tasks. Such as breathing and blinking. You are able to do complex calculations without even having to think about them. You are, quite literally, a human calculator.”
Thriller: I Am Sal - A Mystifying Crime Thriller (Thriller, Crime Thriller, Murder Mystery Book 1) Page 10