If you’re defending, your client will be as lucid as a cantaloupe. If you’re prosecuting, he’ll be normal but antisocial to an extreme. Like Heinrich Himmler.
Occasionally the opposing doctors take umbrage at the remarks of the other. Old grievances may appear. The attorneys, bless their evil minds, exploit these differences. We sometimes reach the threshold of threats and counterthreats, of possible slander charges, of complaints filed with whatever professional societies the doctors are members of. In a dull, protracted murder trial where the evidence is inconclusive and the witnesses numerous, such fireworks are about all that keep any of us awake.
I had written off the hearing. It was a leadpipe cinch that Peter Junior was going to be remanded to Superior Court to stand trial as an adult. My only hope was testimony from our psychiatrist. I wasn’t happy with the prospect of the kid whiling away the years with the Mad Hatter and March Hare, munching tranquilizers six times a day; but if he went to the state pen the old hands would scoop him up in five minutes.
I don’t have to tell you why. He’d be Queen of the Hop.
In his office Dr. Pelfrey, our guy, ruined my whole day. He said, “He’s a textbook sociopath. Dissertations have been written with less material than he alone provides.”
“I don’t seem to have Webster with me.”
“A psychopath and a sociopath are similar. They manifest their needs, their whims, with an utter lack of concern for any other creature on this planet. Say a sociopath is in a bar and runs out of money; though he would prefer to stay and drink more, he’ll excuse himself, hurry out and stick up a gas station. If it happens that the attendant recognizes him and the sociopath knows he is recognized, he may put a bullet in the attendant’s head. He’s aware that what he’s doing is wrong. There’s no confusion, no departure from reality. He wants something, he gets it. So sorry about the flotsam left in his wake.
“The psychotic personality differs. He has a nodding acquaintance with reality, but when his mind is made up on something, Nellie bar the door. To use a technical term, he’s a brick short of a load. He wanders between Earth and a parallel universe.”
“Aside from what’s in your report, what can you tell me about Peter? Did he do it?”
Dr. Pelfrey’s hands flew up in mock surrender. “If he confessed, I can’t say. We’re in the doctor-patient realm there.”
Alvin Harris, to his credit, instructed me not to waltz with Pelfrey. Our office did ten grand a year with him.
“Hippocrates won’t roll over in his grave if you give me a teensy-weensy clue, Dr. Pelfrey,” I said. “I have to go in there Friday like a Super Bowl coach with twenty-five of my best players out with knee injuries. Alvin got next year’s budget last week. He says it’s brutal. We’ll have to shut down the office coffee pot. Among other cutbacks. We can be coy if you like. You know, is it larger than a breadbox and so forth. You pick the format. So long as the information emerges.”
Dr. Pelfrey slammed his palms down on his polished rosewood. He took a deep breath and glared at me. “I can read between the lines. Get out your bamboo splints because it ain’t no free lunch! Clay, hell, you should pay him my fee. I stumbled out of there and he knew more about me than I did about him. I haven’t a glimmer!”
Alvin Harris cried out in imagined pain, then laid his head on his desk and buried it with his arms. By and by he sat up, saying, “You want to plead that little squirrel not guilty? Clay, the house was sealed, the alarm system was functioning!”
I’d picked up one of Peter’s mannerisms. I shrugged and offered a tight smile. I sure as hell didn’t have anything else going on this case. “Have they found the gun yet?” I asked.
“It’ll turn up. The damn thing isn’t biodegradable, you know. But that’s the least of your problems. What you have to do is get over to what’s-his-name, the Chief Criminal Deputy, and extend a formality. He’s not gonna fry the kid. Even if he wanted to, his campaign manager wouldn’t let him. If you want to be a hero, maybe you can get concurrent terms instead of consecutive. The kid will be up for parole before all his hair has fallen out. By then no one will care.
“Do something, for Pete’s sake, and make it positive. That guy from Channel Three was over about an hour ago, the one who does those editorials on how the pollution from the chemical plant affects us. He was trailing this dame from the network who was mumbling about doing a documentary. Clay, get the kid in there Friday, tell him to behave himself, and maybe we can lighten the problem for him a tad.”
Alvin wasn’t in an ideal frame of mind for a debate, but I felt I had to present the facts, or the lack of them.
“No gun. No powder burns. No nothing. He was just there.”
“Circumstantial evidence isn’t bad in this one,” Harris fired back. “They don’t have to have a smoking pistol here.”
“Whatever. I have my doubts. You know he’ll be handed over Friday. You also know that if Pelfrey says he’s competent, their guy will too. What you’re saying is for me to make a deal with the P.A.’s office and trade a plea so Peter has to spend only fifty years in the can instead of a hundred.”
“I’m telling you to be reasonable. If we had anything to go on, I’d say fight. But we don’t.”
“Yes, we do,” I said. “The boy is, uh, strange, but I’m not entirely convinced he’s a killer.”
Alvin closed his eyes and moaned. I got out of his office before he opened them again.
Thursday was on me in what seemed like a hurry. I’d planned to see Peter in the afternoon and outline my strategy. I stopped over at the Chief Criminal Deputy’s, hinting that I was in a flexible mood, then asking if the investigation had turned up the gun or any other information.
He shook his head and served me another cup of lukewarm coffee. He began discussing concurrent sentences when I told him that he needed a new coffee pot and that I was going to let a jury decide this one. I’m not certain which assertion he thought was so hilarious because I left his office without further conversation.
I had some time to kill so I called the business editor of one of the newspapers to learn more about Callison Air Freight. Undoubtedly the police had covered this territory by now and if a skeleton had fallen out of a corporate closet, our office would have been notified, so my efforts were in the realm of idle curiosity.
The editor had done an article on Callison Air Freight a month ago when they won a contract that connected them to Malaysia and Singapore. Callison was financially healthy, he said, and growing like a weed.
I wondered if he knew who the other corporate officers were and who besides Peter Senior owned large blocks of Callison stock. He didn’t, but he gave me a number to call at the capital.
The woman I talked to worked in the Secretary of State’s office, in the department that processed corporation charters. She couldn’t tell me much except the date of incorporation, the names of the officers, and the changes to the charter that had taken place over the years.
She may have told me a great deal more than she realized.
Peter and I small-talked for a while, then I told him what I wanted to do. He was agreeable, maddeningly so, as if we’d just decided where to have lunch.
I said, “I learned something interesting this morning. Did you know that Callison Air Freight was formerly Callison Brothers Air Cargo, that your father bought out your Uncle Paul in 1964?”
He nodded blankly. “Yeah. They were small back then. One beat-up old DC-3. Uncle Paul was the chief and only pilot. I told you before that Dad didn’t fly.”