Heartstone

by Phillip Margolin

  They had just returned to Mark’s office from the courthouse where Dr. Hollander had testified. As part of Dr. Hollander’s testimony, the tapes of his hypnosis and amytal sessions with Esther Pegalosi had been played. Dr. Paris had been permitted to listen to them so that he could evaluate the sessions. Mark had prepared him by giving him the transcript to study over the weekend.

  “Why do you think she’s lying?” Mark asked.

  “She’s not necessarily lying. Are you familiar with the term ‘confabulation’?”

  Mark shook his head.

  “‘Con’ means with and ‘fabulation,’ coming from fable or fabulary, means talk or discourse. Confabulation may mean just carrying on a conversation or constructing a fable, or it may have the more technical meaning given to it by neurologists when they are discussing the type of story constructed to impress the listener that it is in fact a rendition of reality when the story teller is suffering from a memory defect. In other words, the story teller constructs a fable to compensate for a memory defect. You see this with alcoholics who have brain damage and who have been in a hospital for a few months. You ask them where they were the day before and they will tell you they were at such and such a place having a great time.”

  “Is confabulation limited to people with brain damage?”

  “No. Psychiatrists and neurologists use the term to mean making up a tale. There is an interesting study that was conducted in 1954 by two Yale researchers named Rubenstein and Newman. They wanted to check the validity of past memories related by people under hypnosis. They reasoned that one way to check on possible confabulation or suggestibility by people supposedly remembering past events would be to put a person in a hypnotic trance and have them visualize themselves ten years in the future and describe what was happening. If they could describe what was happening in 1979, then it would raise some question as to the validity of their recollections of what had happened in 1939.

  “The researchers worked with five subjects and found that they could consistently live out ‘future’ experiences when an age or date was suggested to them under hypnosis. The futures that they created for themselves were plausible and well within the realm of probability as judged from a personality study that had been made of the subjects prior to the start of the investigation.

  “So, you see, you may have memories of things that did occur, things that occurred only in fantasy and things that have never occurred at all.”

  “And Esther?” Mark asked.

  “When a person is given amytal for the purpose of suppressing consciousness in addition to hypnosis, this person is placed in a greater state of suggestibility than if she is fully conscious. If a person is suffering from amnesia, we use hypnosis or drugs to make the guardians of that person’s repressed memory lower its guard. When that happens, information comes out more easily. But this is a two-edged sword and the patient becomes more open to the suggestions, intentional or unintentional, of her questioner, because her psychological defenses are depressed and her ability to test reality against unreality is weakened.

  “My impression of Esther Pegalosi from hearing the tapes and reading the transcript is that she is a person with an extremely poor self-image. She tried to kill herself once. She longs to be a strong, self-confident woman. She craves love. I think that Dr. Hollander, and to a lesser extent, Detective Shindler, became father figures and love objects during her therapy sessions. As such, anything that they suggested would be eagerly accepted out of a fear of losing their affection as well as a desire to please them.

  “Esther originally claimed to have had so much to drink on the evening of the murders that she could not remember what she had done. There is your memory defect, just waiting for a fable to fill up the missing time period.

  “I can point to several instances during the hypnosis sessions when questions concerning important information were put to Esther in a manner that suggested the answer. For instance, in Tape #5 Esther is told that she went cruising downtown after they finished drinking the stolen wine. It is then suggested that she took Monroe Boulevard home. She rejects this and states that she usually goes home by way of Marshall Road. The questioner then states, ‘But you could go that way,’ meaning Monroe. She is then told to fantasize that she is on Monroe Boulevard on the evening of the crime.

  “This whole technique, making the subject see what is happening on a movie screen, lends itself to the creation of fantasies.

  “And listen to some of the other things Hollander tells her,” Dr. Paris said, turning to pages in the transcript he had marked with paper clips.

  “Here, in Tape #8, just after he administers the amytal for the first time, he tells her that she can ‘forget,’ ‘remember’ or, and this is the important one, ‘misremember’ as her personality needs require.

  “Or on Tape #10. ‘Tell us what you remember and don’t worry about what’s true. What you remember will be true.’ Those are open invitations to confabulation.

  “And there is one thing more that convinces me that there is a high possibility that Esther’s story is the product of her imagination.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I find the whole theory that she developed amnesia because of the trauma of seeing Walters murdered unacceptable. This girl has been exposed to violence throughout her life. She discusses seeing her father stab her mother. And there was the incident where the police chased her after the miniature golf robbery. Her father shoots the pet dog she loves and makes her watch. Yet we have no amnesia. No, I…”

  The phone rang. It was after five and Mark’s secretary had left. He answered it.

  “Is this Mr. Shaeffer?” a woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’re the one that’s defending that Coolidge boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “I got some information on the case about how they tortured Esther.”

  “Excuse me?” Mark said, not sure he had heard the woman correctly.

  “Esther wasn’t at no murder. She was made to say that by the police.”

  “I see,” Mark said, wondering how he could end the conversation, which was turning out to be one of the numerous crank calls he had received since the start of the trial. “How do you know that the police tortured Esther?”

  “I seen what they done. I’m her mother.”

  The short, thin man who answered the front door walked with a slight stoop. His naked chest was covered with thick hair, in contrast to his head, which was bald except for a fringe of dark hair that started just in front of his ears and worked its way around the back of his skull. A rounded, protruding jaw and disproportionately long arms gave him a slight resemblance to a chimpanzee.

  It was bright and sunny outside, but the shades were drawn and Mark could hear a baseball game on a set in the darkened living room.

  “I’m Mark Shaeffer. Mrs. Taylor asked me to see her.”

  “She’s inside in the bedroom,” the man answered belligerently, as if the request was an insult. He had a can of beer in his right hand and he wiped the sweat from his chest with his left.

  “Who is it?” A voice called from the rear of the house.

  “She’s in the back,” the man said. Mark expected to be escorted to the bedroom, but the man went back to his ballgame, leaving Mark to search out the source of the voice.

  Mrs. Taylor was a mountain of flesh propped up on a mound of pillows. Her fleshy face was the color of pale candle wax and her gray hair was unkempt. Bottles of pills and potions sat on the nightstand alongside a reading lamp and some confession magazines. A portable television set tuned to a soap opera was perched on a second nightstand.

  “Sit down,” she said, indicating a chair piled high with dirty clothing. “Just push ’ em off. Make that son of a bitch husband of mine do some work.”

  The last sentence was said in a voice loud enough to be heard in the rest of the house. The only sound from the living room was a broadcaster’s voice announcing a three-and-two count.

&
nbsp; “I’m sorry I ain’t up. I’m under a doctor’s care.”

  Mark nodded sympathetically.

  “You said you had some information about Esther Pegalosi,” Mark prodded.

  Esther’s mother shook her head.

  “I should never have let her talk with that cop,” she said half to herself. “Cops always bring trouble.”

  “What officer was that?”

  “That, uh…Shindler. He’s the one who tortured her.”

  “When did this ‘torture’ happen, Mrs. Taylor?”

  “In ’61, when it first happened. Now she’s a big TV star. But no one came to interview me. I couldda told them a thing or two. That girl’s lyin’ cause of what he done to her.”

  “What exactly did Detective Shindler do to her?”

  Mrs. Taylor shut her eyes and let her head sink into the pillows. She seemed to have lost interest in the conversation.

  “You got a cigarette?” she asked.

  Mark shook his head and this seemed to annoy her. For a second, Mark was afraid that she would end the interview.

  “Get me one from the drawer,” she said, indicating the end table with the TV. “You can turn that thing off.”

  Mark walked around the bed and switched off the set. He handed a cigarette to Mrs. Taylor, who ripped a match out of a matchbook and lit up.

  “Esther was never on that hill,” she said after a moment. “They scared her so bad she’d say anything.”

  “How did they scare her?”

  “With the picture. You know, she had nightmares from that picture until she moved outta the house and that was years after. I was gonna sue. I shouldda done it.”

  “What picture is this?” Mark asked, feeling himself growing impatient.

  “Shindler took her to the station house and showed her a picture of that Walters kid’s face after it was bashed in. It was disgustin’. She used to wake up screaming.”

  “Did you ever ask her if she had seen Richie murdered?”

  “Of course. She never seen it. That’s what she said every time. Only she said Shindler tried to make her say she was there. And when she wouldn’t, he showed her the picture.”

  “And this happened in 1961, right after the murders?”

  “Yeah. That girl’s been brainwashed. I can tell that. Ever since she seen that picture she’s been different. Only the one thing she always denied was that she seen that boy murdered.”

  “I can’t do it,” Esther cried. Shindler held her tightly, fighting down the impulse to strike her.

  “It’s all lies,” she sobbed.

  “It is the truth, Esther. You told me and you told Dr. Hollander. If we thought that you were lying, we wouldn’t let you testify.”

  He tried to sound calm, but he had been in turmoil since her call. She was hysterical and he was afraid she would try to kill herself again. All during the harried ride to her apartment, he thought about the years of planning and investigation. So close. And now to have it ruined by an hysterical child.

  “I don’t know what’s real and what you put in my head.”

  “I didn’t put anything in your head, Esther. You were there…”

  “No.”

  “And you saw Bobby and Billy Coolidge beat Richie Walters’s head until it was a mass of blood and torn flesh…”

  “No.”

  “And then they took that girl and raped her and strangled her…”

  Esther’s sobbing grew wilder and she began to shake.

  “And you’ll testify to that, Esther…”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Or I’ll leave you and you’ll never see me again. Do you understand?”

  He lifted her chin and made her look into his eyes. She didn’t want to. She was afraid of the fire. She could see hell there. But he forced her to look and held her chin in his hard, callused hand so that she could not avert her eyes. She wanted to die. Her body trembled and her face was tracked by tears.

  “Please don’t,” she begged.

  “Never see me, Esther. You’ll live alone and die alone.”

  “No,” she sobbed and sank slowly to her knees, catching the thin fabric of his slacks, burying her head against his knees.

  He looked down at her kneeling figure and felt only disgust.

  4

  “Would you state your full name and spell the last, please?” the clerk asked.

  “Esther Pegalosi. P-e-g-a-l-o-s-i.”

  “Thank you. Would you take the stand?”

  Esther stepped up into the witness box. She was wearing a new gray knit outfit that Roy had purchased for her. Roy had also sent her to the beauty parlor and her hair felt clean and looked just right. She straightened her skirt when she sat down and absent-mindedly touched the armature of the glasses that Roy had made her wear. She focused her attention on Mr. Heider, as she had been told. She would not have had the courage to look at Bobby anyway.

  Her hands began to shake and she grabbed her left hand with her right to stop them. There were so many people in the courtroom. She had been very frightened when Roy and the other policemen led her down the corridor to the courtroom. There had been so many people squeezing around her, pushing and shoving. The reporters all talked at once and she couldn’t make out any of their questions. An old woman had tried to touch her. The noise in the corridor sounded like the rumbling of a train approaching in a darkened tunnel.

  But her fear in the corridor had been nothing to the fear she felt when the courtroom door closed behind her and she had to walk alone down the row of seats through the bar of the court and to the witness stand. She had fastened her eyes on the judge. He seemed very stern and aloof. She could feel his presence above her and to the right, hovering like God, watching her for lies he would punish with terrible swiftness.

  “Mrs. Pegalosi, do you reside in Portsmouth?” Philip Heider asked.

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you lived in Portsmouth?”

  “All my life.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Honor,” a voice from in front and to her left said, “but I can’t hear the witness.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Pegalosi,” the judge’s voice boomed from above, “you are going to have to speak up so that Mr. Shaeffer and the jurors can hear you.”

  Esther felt ashamed, as if she had done something wrong. She wanted to speak up, but her throat was so dry. Involuntarily, she ran her tongue across her lips.

  “Perhaps we could have a glass of water for Mrs. Pegalosi,” Mr. Heider said.

  The clerk filled a clear glass with water from the judge’s pitcher and handed it to her. She was grateful for the excuse to put off talking.

  “Were you attending high school in 1960 and 1961?” Heider asked when she was ready.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you hang around with a gang called the Cobras?”

  “Objection, Your Honor, to the characterization as a gang,” Shaeffer said.

  “Oh, Your Honor,…” Heider began.

  “We’ve been through this before, Mr. Heider,” Judge Samuels said.

  “Very well. Did you associate with a group known as the Cobras?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was the defendant a member of this group?” Heider asked, putting emphasis on the last word.

  “Yes.”

  “And his brother, Billy Coolidge?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Roger Hessey?”

  Esther nodded.

  “Now I am going to call your attention to the evening of the twenty-fifth day of November, 1960, and I ask you whether or not at this time you have an independent recollection of what you did that evening.”

  Esther could hear a hum in the courtroom. She moved her head, because her neck was beginning to ache from tension and she saw Bobby. He was sitting up in his chair and he was looking right at her. She averted her eyes.

  “Mrs. Pegalosi,” Heider repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “You do have an independent memory?”

  “Yes.�
��

  “Will you please relate to this Court and this jury what you did that evening.”

  “I left my house around six-thirty and went to Bob’s, because…”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but what is Bob’s?”

  “It’s for hamburgers, shakes. A restaurant.”

  “And did members of the Cobras hang out there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  “Roger was there and Billy and Bobby.”

  “That is Roger Hessey and the Coolidge brothers?”

  “Yes. Anyway, we sat around and then Billy or Bobby said we should crash a party. Roger didn’t want to go, but he finally did.”

  “Whose party was this?”

  “Alice Fay.”

  “When you say ‘crash,’ what do you mean?”

  “Well, we weren’t invited, you know, because those kids didn’t like us that much. But Billy said let’s go anyway.”

  “What kind of ‘kids’ were Alice Fay and her friends?”

  “They were rich…richer than us. They didn’t like the Cobras.”

  “Did Billy and Bobby like rich kids?”

  “Billy said…”

  “Objection. Billy Coolidge is not on trial here.”

  “Sustained,” Judge Samuels said.

  “Just confine yourself to the defendant,” Heider said.

  “No. Bobby didn’t like them. He thought they got everything so easy and didn’t deserve it.”

  “What happened at the party?”

  “We got there and right off Billy wanted to mess around. Roger got nervous, then he left and we had a fight. When I came back in, Billy went over to the table where they had a punch bowl and some food and there was a fight.”

  “Who fought?”

  “Bobby and Billy fought with Tommy Cooper, Alice’s boyfriend, and some of his friends.”

  “What did the Coolidge brothers fight with?”