"New evidence? The night before trial, and you've found some new evidence?"
"The missing tape," Schein said matter-of-factly.
"What missing tape?" I asked, louder than I intended.
"Oh, it wasn't missing, really. I'd turned off the recorder on the last session. But the backup continued rolling."
"You didn't tell me about a backup."
He sipped at the bourbon. "No, that would have spoiled the surprise." He giggled. It must have been a four-lap head start with the liquor.
I hate surprises. There was no sound in the room but the incessant whoosh and whir of the paddle fan. I studied Lawrence Schein. His shaved head was showing black bristles above the ears, and his goatee needed trimming. I was going to have to tell my star witness to clean up his act and lay off the bourbon. But first I had to figure out if he was still my star witness.
"You want to tell me about it?" I asked finally.
"Actually," Guy Bernhardt said, "we thought you'd like to hear it. What's the expression, something like a picture is worth a thousand words?"
" Res ipsa loquitur," I said, thinking of Charlie Riggs. "The thing speaks for itself."
"Oh, it does," Bernhardt said. "It surely does."
"I've thought some more about what we discussed yesterday." Chrissy's voice.
"The need for goals?" Schein. I'd heard all this before.
"No. What we talked about afterward."
There was a pause.
"Oh, that."
"I've made a decision that you're not going to like," Chrissy said on the tape.
"Maybe you shouldn't tell me."
This time, it sounded even more ominous.
"But I've told you everything else. I can't imagine not telling you first."
"All right then. But first, let me…"
The sound of papers rustling and a chair squeaking and a click. I'd heard that all before. But then, something new.
"Is it off?" Chrissy's voice.
"It's off," Schein said.
"Well, like I said, I was thinking…"
"Yes?"
"I've bought a gun."
"I thought you were just going to visualize it."
"No. That's not enough. I've got to kill him." "Figuratively? As part of therapy?"
"C'mon, Larry. That isn't what you meant. It couldn't be."
"I didn't mean anything. I raised certain hypothetical actions, all intended to be therapeutic."
"I decided last night. I couldn't sleep. I haven't slept through the night in weeks. I'm having nightmares and migraines."
"It's all part of the process. The pain is coming out."
"No, it's not. Maybe it will after…"
"After?"
"I'm going to kill my father for raping me. I'm going to kill him for ruining my life and for ruining Mom's."
"What would that solve?"
"I don't know. But I'm going to do it." A sob and then the sound of her sniffling. "You've shown me what the bastard did to me. Now I know why everything in my life has been so-"
"You'll be caught."
"I saw on Oprah, the other day, a woman who shot her husband after he'd beaten her. She got off."
"I don't know."
"Oh, Larry, don't look so depressed." A laugh that was mixed with a sob. "That's funny, isn't it? I mean, you're treating me, and I say you're depressed."
"You know I can't endorse what you're planning."
"You can't stop me either."
"I'm not even sure you're serious. Most people never act on their revenge fantasies."
"You've helped me so much," she said. "I'll just be so glad when it's over."
"What, therapy?"
"No, Larry, when the bastard is dead."
There was the clink of ice against glass. Guy Bernhardt took a sip of bourbon and waited for me to say something. Larry Schein cupped his glass between his trembling hands. Bernhardt studied me with a wry smile. "What do you think of your precious client now?"
I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. A dozen cinder blocks sat on each shoulder.
She'd lied to me.
How many times had I caught a witness in a lie, then turned to the jury? If she lied about one thing, she's lied about others. How can you trust anything she told you?
What else had Chrissy lied about? What whispers in my darkened bedroom were part of a grand plan?
After a moment, I said, "You'll go to jail, Schein. The DPR will pull your license, and you'll go straight to jail."
Schein laughed nervously. "For what?" I wanted to jam those ice cubes down his throat.
"Conspiracy to commit murder, obstruction of justice, perjury, and a few other things Socolow will come up with."
"Let's examine that," Bernhardt said in a condescending tone. It was clear who was calling the shots. "Larry, what about it?"
"I haven't testified yet, so there's certainly no perjury," he said carefully. "I may have misled you by not producing the tape earlier, but misleading a defense lawyer is hardly obstruction of justice."
"Hell, no!" Bernhardt barked out a laugh. "It furthers justice."
"As for the conspiracy," Schein continued, "I never dreamed my patient would act out her fantasy of killing her father, and I certainly didn't encourage it."
"Fantasy? She said she bought a gun. She said she would kill him."
"Role playing. Chrissy as avenging angel. That was merely part of the therapy. At least, that's what I considered it. Unfortunately, it would appear that Chrissy played me for the fool. She planned the murder all along."
"Surprising the shit out of you two, right?"
"Truly, I'm shocked at the outcome," Schein said in a performance that would have gotten him tossed out of a high school drama class. "I had thought the therapy was coming along so well. Perhaps the estate could sue me for not warning Harry that Chrissy was threatening him. But the law is murky in that area, isn't it, Jake? In a conflict between a therapist's duty to his patient and to third parties, the evidence has to be quite overwhelming to justify a betrayal of a patient's confidence. I believe I'm on firm legal ground both criminally and civilly. The state attorney won't seek to prosecute after convicting your client. They do like to close their files, don't they?" He turned to Guy Bernhardt with a little smile. "And I don't think Guy's going to sue me."
Bernhardt grinned back and downed his drink.
"Of course he won't!" I yelled. "He's going to pay you!"
It was coming into focus now. How could I have been so stupid? All this time it had troubled me that Guy Bernhardt was helping the woman who had killed his father. But of course, he wasn't helping her at all.
"You planned to kill your father, and you tricked poor Chrissy into doing it," I said.
"Poor Chrissy?" Guy mused. "Poor little rich girl. Everyone was always so worried about her."
"Is that what this is about, your jealousy, your hatred of her?"
"That isn't it at all," Schein said.
"Shut up, Larry." Bernhardt pointed his cigar at his buddy, and then at me. "Lassiter, you don't have any proof to back up these wild accusations. In fact, the only proof is that my darling half sister shot and killed my father in front of a couple hundred witnesses after being tape-recorded as saying she would do just that."
"You set her up!" I thundered. "You had this flea bag shrink plant false memories in an emotionally troubled young woman, then you had her do your dirty work. And you set me up, too. You had Rusty MacLean invite me to Paranoia that night. You wanted me there, to see her, maybe even to fall for her. But you wanted something else, too. You wanted me to lose her case."
Bernhardt allowed himself a little smile. "Do you know what Rusty said about you?"
"Probably that I was too slow to cover the flanker over the middle and I was dumb enough to fall for that repressed-memory garbage."
Bernhardt poured himself another bourbon and came back to his chair without offering me a second beer. "Actually, he said you were smarter than you look."