She sobbed and pulled her knees tight up against her chest. There was no sound in the courtroom other than the wheeze of the ancient air conditioning and the scratching of pen on paper in the press row.
"Tell me about the men," Dr. Santiago said.
"So many men. Always laughing."
"Why would they laugh?"
"Not out loud. Not so that I could hear them. But they laughed at me. They knew. I could tell by looking at them that they knew."
"What did they know, Chrissy?"
"They knew I was dirty." She curled into the fetal position. "Who would ever want me?"
"What made you dirty, Chrissy?"
"So long ago. So long… I don't remember." She seemed to drift off.
"Let's go back to that time. Let me help you remember. I've seen your pictures. You had a ponytail and you rode a palomino. How old are you?"
Silence.
"Chrissy."
"Sugarcane."
"What?"
"I'm eleven and my horse's name is Sugarcane." The little girl voice. "She broke a leg and Daddy had to shoot her."
"That must have made you very sad."
Another sob.
"What else makes you sad?"
No answer.
"Does anything frighten you?"
"The sounds."
"What sounds, Chrissy?"
"At night. In my room."
"What's in your room?"
"He is. The door opens, and he comes in. I can hear the floor squeaking even though he walks on tippy-toes. The bed squeaks, too, but I don't make a sound because he tells me not to. His voice is so rough. He sounds like a pig grunting, and he sweats so much, the bed is all wet. I get scared, 'cause I think he's sick or hurt."
I wasn't breathing. Her anguish cut to my heart. And I was getting what I deserved. After I'd discredited Schein for his methods, he still turned out to be right. Harry Bernhardt had been a slime who raped his daughter. All the fancy footwork and we were right back where we started. Chrissy had the motive, but not the lawful excuse, to kill her father.
"I pull the sheet up over my head so I can't see," Chrissy said, "and I think about an island with green cliffs and high waterfalls. I don't really feel anything until morning, when my peepee hurts. I tell him it hurts, but he keeps coming to my room anyway."
"How many times has this happened, Chrissy?"
"I don't know. Lots of times."
"Who does this to you?"
Another sob.
"Chrissy, who comes into your bed at night?"
A sniffle caught in her throat and she coughed.
"Chrissy, is it someone you know?"
"Yes."
"Someone in your family?"
"Yes."
"Is it your father?"
"My father?"
"Is it your father who comes to your bed and hurts you?"
"No, of course not. Daddy would never do that."
What? In the courtroom, time was frozen. No movement except for dust motes floating in the shaft of an overhead spotlight. A moment of crystal clarity, of blinding intensity, a moment carved into the soft metal of my memory with the forged steel blade of the truth.
"Who does it, Chrissy?"
She didn't seem able to answer.
"Who comes to you in the night? Who frightens you? Who hurts you?"
Unconsciously, Chrissy wiped away a tear with the back of a hand. A little girl's gesture. Sweet and innocent and so painful as to sear the soul.
"My brother," Chrissy said. "Guy hurts me. It's always Guy."
33
Granny was grilling shrimp on the barbecue in my backyard. Fat and juicy, marinated in beer. The shrimp, not my granny, though she was half pickled in her home brew.
Granny was still embarked on a plot to fatten up Chrissy. In the kitchen, duck-and-sausage gumbo was simmering on the stove next to a pot of black bean soup with bell peppers and bacon. Bowls of rice and chopped onions warmed in the oven.
"That girl's gotten skinnier," Granny had whispered to me as she carried the victuals into the house. "I gave her a hug and her hipbones jabbed me like bamboo sticks. It's no wonder she's always fainting, the way she eats."
Granny was right. Charlie Riggs had told me that Chrissy was borderline hypoglycemic and should be eating several times a day, and not just a little tofu. At the moment, Chrissy was curled up on the sofa, purring in her sleep. I checked on her, gently stroked a strand of blond hair from her eyes, and walked to the kitchen where Charlie was making cocktail sauce for the shrimp. I opened a Grolsch, and Charlie hummed show tunes while mixing Worcestershire with vinegar.
In the Florida room, Kip was watching… And Justice for All on cable. Defense lawyer Al Pacino, half crazed by a legal system run amok, was prancing in front of the jury box while his client, John Forsythe, a judge charged with rape, watched in astonishment. "The prosecution is not going to get this man," Pacino sang out, "because I'm going to get him. My client, the Honorable Henry T. Fleming, should go right to fucking jail! The son of a bitch is guilty!"
I've had clients like that. Most, in fact. But I never gave the speech. And now I had a client I would have done anything to help.
"I did the homework you requested," Charlie said. "Nothing new in the autopsy report, and there won't be if I read it another ten times. I did find something, though. The morgue has started saving ocular fluids from cadavers' eyes. Just freezing them for possible testing later. I've got Harry Bernhardt's."
"And?"
"Toxicology tests are negative. I'll get the electrolyte readings first thing in the morning. Plus, I've got a cardiologist, Dr. Eric Prystowsky, taking a fresh look at the EKG. He's the best rhythm-disturbance man in the country, and if there's something funky there…"
Did Charlie really say "funky"?
"Good work," I told him. "I had Cindy check the business directory. There are three possibilities, so we subpoenaed them all."
Charlie wiped his hands on an apron I could swear came from the morgue, but maybe the stains were catsup and molasses. "Were my eyes deceiving me," he asked, "or was that Larry Schein in the front row of the gallery today?"
"That was him. Socolow and I stipulated to waive the witness exclusion rule. It makes sense if I'm going to ask Schein about Chrissy's in-court hypnosis."
"I caught sight of him after your client dropped the bombshell. He turned a grayish yellow, kind of like a beached amberjack."
I took a pull on the beer. "I saw. Complete and utter shock. He didn't know his old buddy Guy was the rapist, I'm sure of it."
"And you're surprised?"
"I was at first. I'd always put Guy and Schein on the same team, but I was only partially right. Guy wanted his pop's money and couldn't care less about Chrissy. Look what he did to her as a kid. He knows Schein hates his old man, blames him for Emily's death. So he tells Schein he's always suspected Dad abused Chrissy. It would explain a lot, and it would make it easier for Schein to take part in something he never would have done otherwise."
"Program Christina to commit murder."
"Exactly. Schein implanted false memories all right, but he thought they were true."
"How does it affect your closing argument?" Charlie asked.
I gave him a preview. "When we began this trial, each of you raised your hand and swore 'a true verdict render,' " I chanted in my speechifying voice. "Now you must be true to your oath. Chrissy Bernhardt is charged with killing her father with premeditation. In just a few moments, Judge Stanger will instruct you that premeditation means 'killing after consciously deciding to do so.' But Chrissy didn't decide to kill Harry Bernhardt. Lawrence Schein did. She tried to kill a man who didn't exist, a man with the head of a goat and cloven hooves, a man-beast invented by Lawrence Schein, a devil of his imagination, a man he hated, a man he consciously decided to kill."