Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones (30 page)

The reporter thumbed through her pages, then read in a monotone that didn't do me justice,

" 'Isn't it true, Dr. Schein, that you were Emily Bernhardt's friend, not Harry's?' "

The doctor cleared his throat and glanced toward Chrissy. She sat at the defense table in a three-piece burgundy outfit: a banded turtleneck, a belted cardigan, and a matching pleated skirt that nearly reached her ankles. Tasteful and refined, but the wrong color. I had forgotten my lecture banning anything that resembled dried blood. "Yes and no," Schein said. "I mean, Emily was my patient. Her husband was . . . there, in the house. We knew each other, all of us."

"Cutting to the heart of it, Emily Bernhardt was more than a patient, wasn't she?"

"I'm not sure I understand the question."

I raised my eyebrows at Dr. Schein, but the gesture was intended for the jury. Then I waited. Sometimes the pause will do it. The silence fills the courtroom. The witness becomes nervous, aware the jury is waiting. A spectator coughs, the courtroom door squeaks open, feet shuffle. A witness in control will wait out the lawyer. After all, Schein just said he didn't understand. I could have rephrased, but I chose to wait. Ten seconds, fifteen, it seemed like an hour.

"Well, I have become close to a number of patients over the years," Schein said finally. Defensive, worried, shifty.

" I'm not concerned about other patients. Would you please answer the question? Was Emily Bernhardt more than a patient?"

After a pause. "Yes, she was."

"And more than a friend?"

"I don't know what you're implying."

"Yes, you do."

"Objection, argumentative." Socolow was starting to wake up.

Judge Stanger cocked his head. "Actually, there was no question at all. Next question, Mr. Lassiter."

"Dr. Schein, were you and Emily Bernhardt lovers?"

"Objection, irrelevant!" Now, Socolow was on his feet. Caught off guard, pissing off the jury by objecting to a juicy question.

"Denied. This is a murder trial, and I'll give the defense some latitude."

"Were you and Emily Bernhardt lovers?" I repeated.

"No."

I reached into a file and pulled out a faded sheet of paper. "Did you write her love poems?"

His face froze. His eyes were wide. What did I know?

"No."

This time I didn't have my laundry list or my old college letter-of-intent signed by Joe Paterno. What I had was the personal stationery of Lawrence B. Schein and a faded, handwritten note to "My Dearest Emily." I read aloud:

Wild Nights—Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

I paused a moment, then asked, "Did you write that?"

"No—I mean, yes. I didn't write it, but I copied it, out of a book."

"All right. You borrowed it. After painstakingly copying these breathless words of Emily Dickinson, did you give the poem to your Emily,
Mrs
. Emily Bernhardt?"

He reddened. "Yes."

" 'Wild Nights should be our luxury!' " I repeated. "Were they?"

"I resent your implication. You can't examine poetry as if it were an X ray. Ours was a cerebral relationship, not a physical one."

"Ce-re-bral," I said, as if it were a dirty word. Angling toward the jury, I let my voice fall into a whisper. If you really want them to listen, speak softly.

Rowing in Eden—

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor—Tonight—

In Thee!

Two jurors tittered.

"You were Emily Bernhardt's lover, weren't you, Dr. Schein?"

"No! Not the way you mean. No."

"Were you in love with Emily Bernhardt?"

He stared off into space. A vein throbbed in his forehead. "She was the finest woman I've ever known."

"Were you in love with her?" I repeated. Demanding now.

He mumbled something.

"Doctor?"

"Yes, I was in love with her."

"And she with you?"

"Yes."

"To your knowledge, did Harry Bernhardt know of your feelings for his wife?"

"She told him. She didn't love him, hadn't for years. But she wouldn't divorce him. Christina was just a child. Emily didn't want to break up the family, and she wasn't strong enough to fight him." The words came tumbling out now. Maybe he wanted to talk about her. All these years, and no one to tell, to feel his pain, the great unconsummated love of his life. "No one had ever been divorced in the Castleberry family, and Emily was so . . . so prudent in matters like that. She wouldn't pursue her own happiness. Besides, Harry, wouldn't let her go. She was his claim to respectability, his entrée to society. And there was something else, too. A mean, sadistic side to him. He liked punishing her."

"You hated him, didn't you?"

"She was so frail," Schein answered, as if he hadn't heard the question. "No strength at all. Like rose petals, an elegant flower of a woman."

"Did you hate him, Doctor?"

"I didn't respect him."

"This man you previously told the jury was your friend."

Softly, "I misspoke."

"And Harry Bernhardt despised you, didn't he?"

"Objection!" Socolow boomed. "The witness isn't a mind reader."

"To the contrary," I protested. "That's exactly what he claims to be where my client is concerned."

Bang!
Judge Stanger slammed his gavel down and shot me a look that said I'd better bring my toothbrush to court the next time I made a crack like that. "Mr. Lassiter, please refrain from addressing the jury instead of the court."

"I'm sorry. Your Honor," I said meekly, "but implicit in my question is the notion 'do you know?' "

The judge turned toward the witness stand. "Doctor, do you know if Mr. Bernhardt despised you?"

Schein's head twisted at an awkward angle, toward the judge above him. Then he swung back toward the jury, unable to decide where he should be looking. "If he did, he never said so to my face. But then he wasn't a man to express his feelings. Subconsciously, who knows? So much lurks there that we can neither control nor explain."

"Isn't that your job, Doctor," I asked, "to explain the subconscious?"

"Part of my job, yes."

"You told Chrissy that her father was to blame for her mother's death, didn't you?"

He seemed to wince. Every mention of Emily Bernhardt tore at him. His fist moved up toward his mouth, shielding much of his face, "It was common knowledge . . . the way he treated her. She was so fine, so fragile and sensitive, and he was this boor. He was insulting and rude. He covered it up with humor, or what passed for humor. But it was always cutting. He couldn't be part of Emily's world so he had to tear it down. He scoffed at culture, at refinement, at everything that made Emily the special person she was."

"So you blamed Harry for Emily Bernhardt's death?"

He looked off again. "Yes. Not with a gun or a needle, but by stripping her of her dignity, keeping her prisoner in the home. He barred me from the house, loaded her with antidepressants and pain-killers. She ODed twice on a mixture of barbiturates and alcohol, and died of heart failure far too young."

"Then how, sir, can you deny hating this man you blame for killing the woman you loved?"

He gripped the armrest of the witness chair and made a truncated gesture with his hand. "No. I knew him for the beast he was. He was a product of his upbringing. He didn't deserve a woman like Emily. But I didn't hate him."

"And Christina," I said. "You resented her."

"Why would I? She was an innocent little girl."

"She kept you and Emily apart."

"I wouldn't fault her for that. That would be irrational."

"Are you a completely rational man?"

"No one is completely rational, but I—"

"Have you ever thought that Christina, innocent as she may have been, was to blame for keeping you and Emily apart?"

He shifted in his chair, arms folded across his chest. "I don't recall ever having that thought. Never."

"What about subconsciously, Dr. Schein?"

"What?"

"Did the thought ever occur in the place where so much lurks that we can neither control nor explain?"

He didn't answer. But then, how could he?

Killing two Bernhardts with one stone," Charlie Riggs muttered.

"That's my theory," I said.

"You're not biting off more than you can chew, are you, Jake?" he asked, as he gnawed at a slice of garlic bread dripping with butter. "Getting even with both Harry and Christina in one fell swoop?"

"One swell foop!" Kip exclaimed. He was wearing a Deion Sanders jersey just to irritate me. "That's what Peter Sellers says in one of the
Pink Panther
movies."

"Frankly, I never understood the expression, either way," I admitted.

Doc Riggs sipped at his red wine. " 'Swopen' is a Middle English word dating from the sixteenth century. It means 'to sweep.' Therefore—"

"Charlie, we're in the middle of trial, so . . ."

"Actually," he said, patting his mustache with a napkin, "we're in the middle of lunch."

I couldn't argue with that. We were at Piccolo Paradiso, just across the river on Miami Avenue, and I had ninety minutes to finish my rigatoni alia vodka and get back to court.

"But if you want me to dispense with the etymology discussion," Charlie offered, "I shall do so."

"Thank you," I said, motioning to the attentive waiter for a second beer. I never drink during trial, but technically, as Charlie pointed out, luncheon recess is not
during
trial. As a lawyer, I am capable of making fine distinctions.

I had left Chrissy in the care and custody of my secretary, Cindy, and Milagros Santiago. It had been Kip's idea, bless his cinematic little heart. If Schein had programmed Chrissy, the memories should be in her head somewhere, he said. Just bring them back like flashbacks in a movie. I had given the assignment to Dr. Santiago.

Later, I would work with Chrissy to prepare her testimony. Notice I didn't say "rehearse," even though my personal glossary prefers the more accurate, if less genteel, terminology. Clients are customers, referral fees are kickbacks, experts are whores, and bondsmen are bloodsuckers. Client development is ambulance chasing. Pro bono work means getting stiffed for a fee. A retainer means "pay me now for work I may or may not do later." Lawyers' hourly bills are exercises in creative writing, in which our clients pay not only for our time but also for expensive lunches and dinners and the time we spend deciding what to order. Our "research time" often gets us paid to learn what we should have known or to relearn what we have forgotten.

If I sound a tad cynical, let me cop a plea. Guilty with an explanation. With all the garbage and all the games, there are still moments of pure adrenaline-driven exhilaration in what I do. The moment the jury walks in the door is one. I've left a piece of myself in every courtroom I have inhabited, with every client I have represented. Which might prompt me to ask, if I were the introspective type, just what do I have left?

"While I wouldn't want to celebrate prematurely," Charlie said, taking a bite of the bruschetta, "I must say your examination of the slippery Dr. Schein is going swimmingly."

"Swimmingly," I repeated, just because I liked the feel of the word on my tongue.

"Still, you have a distance to go," Charlie said.

"I'm going to crack Schein like a coconut under a machete," I said.

"Broly," Kip said. "Like José Ferrer did to Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny." He rolled some imaginary ball bearings in his hand. "The mess boys stole the strawberries."

"I'll keep Schein on the rest of the day. Then, after Dr. Santiago testifies, I'm going to bring him back."

"Bifurcating his testimony," Charlie said, musing over the possibilities, "which means you expect to elicit something on the first round that will pin him into a corner on the second."

"Just the truth, Charlie."

"
Magna est veritas
. Great is truth. But there's something I don't get. Did Harry Bernhardt rape his daughter or not?"

"I don't know. I wasn't there."

"Jake!"

"I think I can raise a reasonable doubt that he did."

"But why? You'll create incredible dissonance in the jurors' minds. They expect you to prove that he raped her. They may even want to acquit if you prove it. For God's sake, if she's going to testify she was raped when she was eleven years old, why cast doubt on it?"

"She's less culpable if she wasn't abused," I said.

"I'm just a retired coroner, so I must have missed this newfangled development in the law that says you're better off killing someone if you didn't have a good reason to."

"Think about it, Charlie. She had no motive to kill her father. None. She was a pawn in Schein's hands. It's the only way to get around the secret tape. Even if she was abused, the jury will convict her for the cold-blooded plan of revenge all these years later. But if she wasn't raped, if Schein planted false memories and controlled her, then taped what he wanted and didn't tape what he didn't want, he's the only one with the motivation to kill. Chrissy's as much of a victim as her father. Morally, she'd be absolved."

"But not legally," Charlie said, a bit weakly.

"Not to a judge, not to a law professor," I said. "But jurors are people. They follow a moral compass, not a statute book."

"Uh-huh," Charlie said, sounding unconvinced. "Isn't it possible the jurors will believe that Schein hated Harry Bernhardt but still wouldn't resort to murder? After all, the motivation for the killing was fifteen years old. Why did it take him so long to seek revenge for Emily's death? And why didn't he ever confront Harry, man to man?"