"No. I didn't consider her dangerous."
"Even though you diagnosed her as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, the same malady as Vietnam syndrome, in which combat veterans sometimes go berserk?"
"That's relatively rare."
"So you're telling this jury that you didn't warn Harry, you didn't warn Guy, and you didn't alert the police, correct?"
"Correct."
"Then let's see what you did do. Did you seek a court order that would require her hospitalization and testing?"
"No. I tried to talk her out of killing her father."
"How? By saying, 'I can't endorse what you're planning'? Pretty tough language, Doctor."
The judge cleared his throat. "Mr. Lassiter, please refrain from sarcasm."
"Sorry, Your Honor," I said halfheartedly. Sarcasm is to me what scratching is to a center fielder. I turned back toward the witness stand. "Doctor, where were you on the night of June sixteenth?"
"I had dinner with a colleague at the Hotel Astor on South Beach."
"How did you learn of the shooting?"
"The police called Guy. He called the hotel and had me paged. He told me that his father was in surgery at Mount Sinai."
"And he wanted you to get to the hospital as quickly as possible?"
"Well, yes. Guy was an hour away, and I was much closer."
"Did he tell you who shot his father?"
"Yes."
"Did you, on that occasion, say, 'By the way, Guy, forty-eight hours ago, Chrissy threatened to kill your father. So sorry I neglected to mention it'?"
"No. I maintained the confidentiality of my patient's communication."
"How admirably ethical," I said, and Judge Stanger shot me a warning look.
"By the way, Doctor, why weren't you and Guy at Paranoia with Harry Bernhardt?"
"Why should we have been?"
I opened a little black book so recently produced by the state attorney. "Because, according to Harry Bernhardt's appointment book, he was to meet you and Guy there at eight o'clock."
"I don't know anything about that," he said quickly. "You'll have to ask Guy."
I planned to do just that, but first, as my granny would say, I had other fish to fry.
"What did you do after being informed of the shooting?" I asked.
"I paid my bill immediately, got my car, and rushed to Mount Sinai."
"What time did you leave the hotel?"
"I don't recall. I wasn't paying attention to the time."
I put down Harry's appointment book and picked up another file, pulling out a copy of a credit charge slip. "If you paid your bill at eleven-oh-one P.M., would it be fair to say that you left the hotel in the next three or four minutes, say eleven-oh-five P.M.?"
"Yes."
"At the hospital, did you go to Harry's room inside the ICU?"
"Yes."
"Was he conscious?"
"Semiconscious. He was coming out of anesthesia."
"How long did you stay?"
"Just a few minutes. I went down to the lobby to use the phone. I called Guy, who was in his car, on the way there. While I was down there, I heard the Code Blue call. I ran back to the ICU, but of course, they wouldn't let me near Harry while they worked on him. A short time later, he was pronounced dead."
I put down the police report and picked up the folder containing Schein's reports. He thought we were done. After all, we'd gone through the story chronologically. But sometimes you retrace steps. General George Patton never liked to retreat, saying he didn't want to pay for the same real estate twice. I look at it differently. I'll mine the same ground until I find a precious stone.
"Let's go back to June fourteenth, the day of the threat."
Schein sighed. This again.
"At that time," I said, "Chrissy Bernhardt was suffering from depression, was she not?"
He thought a moment, seemed to figure out where I was going, then said, "I don't think she was clinically depressed, no."
When they try to weasel out of it, they always make mistakes. Sometimes a simple admission is less damaging than a slippery evasion.
"The preceding month, had you prescribed Desyrel for her?"
"I believe so."
"For what purpose?"
"It has many salutary benefits."
"Why did you prescribe it for Chrissy Bernhardt?"
"For her mental state."
Making me drag it out of him. "For her depression?"
Reluctantly, "Yes."
"And you prescribed Prozac several weeks earlier?"
"I believe so."
"For depression?"
He mumbled something through clenched lips. I wanted one of those dentist's clamps to hold his jaws open. "Doctor?"
"Yes, for depression." Aggravated.
"And Ativan?"
"Yes, for anxiety and depression, Mr. Lassiter."
One of the jurors whispered to another. I didn't think they were discussing the glorious architecture of the courtroom.
"So, Dr. Schein, isn't it true that Chrissy Bernhardt was suffering from depression?"
"Obviously she had some problems," he said, scrambling now, "but she was functioning fairly well…"
And sometimes when they weasel, they just dig deeper holes.
"Functioning fairly well," I repeated. I picked up Schein's medical report and pretended to study it. The important parts I'd already memorized. "What was your diagnosis of Chrissy Bernhardt's condition?"
"Various conditions, but she was making progress."
I turned to the judge. "Your Honor, the witness is not being responsive."
"Dr. Schein, please listen carefully to the question and answer it," Judge Stanger instructed.
I smiled my thank-you toward the bench. A public scolding delivered the message that the shrink was hiding something. "What was your diagnosis?" I repeated.
"Posttraumatic stress order, neurotic depressive disorder, possible borderline personality disorder."
"But she was 'functioning fairly well.' "
When a hostile witness craps on the rug, I like to rub his nose in it.
"She was alert, clean, and well groomed, aware of her surroundings," he said. "Believe me, Mr. Lassiter, I have treated patients in far worse condition."
I'll say this for Schein: He didn't curl up and die the first time you kicked him in the nuts.
"Was she still taking the Ativan, Prozac, and Desyrel on June fourteenth?" I asked.
"Yes, I believe so."
"What else?"
He consulted his treatment notes. "Mellaril to control flashbacks, Xanax for anxiety, Restoril to help her sleep, Darvocet for headaches, and lithium for mood swings."
"Anything else in that grab bag of elixirs and potions?"
He ran a hand over his bare scalp and said, "Not that I recall."
I walked to the clerk's table, carrying a handful of small plastic bottles. "Would the clerk please mark these for identification?"
When she was done with the tagging and marking, I grabbed the bottles and turned toward the judge. "May I approach the witness?"
Judge Stanger motioned me forward and I closed the space between us. I had been in the public zone, the distance strangers give themselves when talking. By moving closer-through the social zone, an arm's length away, to the personal zone, close enough to touch, and nearly to the intimate zone-I increased the stress on the witness. Now, as I hovered over him, leaning on the witness stand railing, I was close enough to let him catch a whiff of rigatoni and beer. His eyes shot from me to the jury to the little bottles. "Can you identify these, sir?" I asked.
Schein slipped on a pair of half-glasses and leaned back in the chair, as if to escape from me. "They appear to be bottles of prescription medication for Christina Bernhardt." He studied them a moment more. "And I would appear to be the prescribing physician."
"Do these medications, these drugs, appear in your notes?"
"No." He anticipated the next question before I asked it, the sign of a nervous witness. "Christina and I had an informal relationship. After all, I'd known her since she was a little girl. She probably called me and I prescribed the drugs for her."