I was inhaling the musky aroma of the field, half listening to Guy, half wondering what the hell was going on with the odd couple of Guy Bernhardt and Larry Schein. I couldn't shake the feeling that Guy was more complicated than a good-ole-boy mango grower and Schein had more secrets than Freud's Wolf Man.
"You have a problem with varmints?" I asked, and Guy seemed puzzled for a moment, then saw I was looking at a 12-gauge mounted between the front seats.
"Oh, that? Yeah, the two-legged kind. It's to protect the water, which is more valuable than the fruit-hell, more valuable than oil. We've got our own well fields out here, and some of the neighboring farmers claim we're sucking their wells dry. Then the state cited us for supposedly lowering Little Bass Lake a foot or so."
We passed under a forty-foot irrigation tower that resembled an oil derrick, and I watched a rainbow form in the parabola of a giant stream of water that shot from the gun assembly at its peak. Mist drifted into the Jeep, cooling us.
"You do any environmental law, Jake?" Guy asked.
Seducing me with the hint of future business.
"Don't know the first thing about it."
"You oughta learn. It's a real lawyers' relief act, all those regulations. They want to fine us ten thousand dollars a day, can you believe that horse crap? I told them it's the drought, go sue God."
"What about your neighbors?"
"Hell, when their wells went dry, I sold them water. Got a special act through the legislature-Pop had some clout up in Tallahassee-so they treated us like a mini-utility. Some of the locals, the lime and avocado growers, didn't like my price and didn't like me, so the bastards complained to the state, to the Department of Environmental Resources Management, to the Army Corps of Engineers, to their congressmen, who wouldn't know a well field from…"
"A hole in the ground," I helped out.
"Yeah. So I said, screw you. No more water for you at any price, and we'll pump as much as the Water Management District lets us, and maybe a little more." He laughed, and we crossed a wooden bridge into a different section of the field. "Now we have some hardcases who sneak out here at night and cut our irrigation pipes."
After about fifteen minutes, we turned onto a road of crushed seashells and into the tree farm, where palms of a dozen different varieties were growing from seed. Here, too, irrigation towers shot long graceful arcs into the air, which misted into kaleidoscopes of color.
"Pop loved to grow things," Guy said. "Jake, you ought to come up to Palm Beach sometime, see Pop's work at the house on A1A. Shouldn't he, Larry?"
Next to me, Dr. Schein's ball cap nodded in assent.
"Flowering trees were Pop's favorites. Jacaranda, mahogany, pigeon plum, wild tamarind. Planted some for old man Castleberry, kept planting them after he owned the place. Liked to dig the holes himself, get his hands dirty."
"Like father, like son," Dr. Schein said, taking off his cap and running a hand over his gleaming scalp.
"It's true," Guy said, laughing. "The mango doesn't fall far from the tree."
"I'd like to see the place someday," I allowed.
"Anytime," Guy said, fiddling with his gold earring.
It seemed out of place on him, this husky son of a farmer. I don't wear an earring, carry a purse, or say "ciao," so men with pierced ears seem as out of place to me as a nun shooting the bird.
The Jeeps crossed a narrow irrigation stream where water rippled through a shallow gully. Guy said something in Spanish to the driver, and I turned to Schein. "You're pretty close to the family, aren't you?"
"Oh, I've been making house calls-to all their houses-for twenty years. I'm more of a friend than a doctor."
To Guy Bernhardt, he meant. To Chrissy, he was still a doctor, I figured. And despite Guy's apparent attempts to help Chrissy, I couldn't help but wonder which was stronger, Schein's relationship with his patient or that with his friend.
"I need to ask both of you some questions about Chrissy's case."
"Shoot," Guy said. Then he laughed. "No pun intended."
I sat there a moment, trying to keep from looking startled. A trial lawyer never wants to appear surprised, in or out of court. The man's father had been shot dead two weeks ago, and he was making a little joke. Okay, we all react to loss differently, but it just struck me as a discordant note.
Turning to the doctor, I said, "The tape recorder you use on your office sessions, does it take batteries?"
"Well, it can. But I use the jack to a wall outlet, or else I'd be changing batteries twice a week."
"Uh-huh. There seemed to be a gap on the tape of the hypnotic regression session when Chrissy remembered the abuse."
"A gap?" Sounding innocent enough. "I could have run out of tape and inserted a new one."
"No. The tape was about two thirds of the way through. You had just asked Chrissy about her father, and the tape went dead. Then it picked up again, but of course I can't tell how long it was off."
The doctor shrugged. "Sometimes my secretary buzzes me if there's an emergency call I have to take, and I'll hit the Stop button. Or maybe I had to sign for a package. Who knows?"
Not me, that's for sure. I hadn't heard a secretary buzzing or a UPS driver toting packages into the room. All I'd heard was the click, and next thing I knew, Chrissy was recovering lost memories.
"Then on the last tape, June fourteenth, she was going to tell you something, some decision she made, but you turned off the recorder."
"No. I wouldn't do that. Did you look at my office notes of the session?"
"Yeah. They just say Chrissy's agitated and anxious. She's to continue medication and see you on the seventeenth."
"But on the night of the sixteenth…" he said, and he didn't have to finish.
"Do you have any idea how long Chrissy was in your office on June fourteenth?"
"Not offhand."
"But your appointment book would tell us."
"Yes. I mean, it could. But if there wasn't an appointment right after hers, it might appear she was there longer than she was."
"Uh-huh. How long was she usually there?"
"It varied. The hypnosis sessions could last two or three hours, some even longer."
"Three hours," I repeated.
The team's orthopedic surgeon hadn't taken that long rebuilding my knee. Five days a week. Chrissy wasn't a patient; she was a career.
"Hey, Jake, what's the big deal?" Guy Bernhardt broke in. "If it took an hour or a year, Chrissy came up with it. I didn't want to accept it, but Larry says that Sis is telling the truth, so I have to live with the knowledge that my old man was a miserable letch, and you can make hay with it in court."
"Yeah, maybe. Let me ask you something, Guy. In court the other day, you mentioned an insanity plea. But our defense is lack of intent due to posttraumatic stress disorder, and that's not insanity."
We passed over another road and into a stand of tropical fruit trees. Surinam cherry, carambola, and banana. The air was sweet with ripening fruit.
"I was just giving you another option," Guy Bernhardt said. "Larry and I talked about insanity as another way to go."
Great, the inmates were running the asylum. And trying to send my client there.
"Thanks for the help," I said evenly.
"According to Larry, you weren't jumping for joy over the defense he handed you."
He handed me? Funny, that was the same term Schein had used the other day. These guys did talk a lot. Now what were they handing me? Manure for the mangoes?
The doctor cleared his throat. "We're not trying to interfere. You're the lawyer. We're just members of your team."
"You're the captain," Guy Bernhardt said.
They seemed so sincere. Why couldn't I just take what they were offering? Why did my Dream Team have nightmare written all over it?