"Dr. Schein, isn't it true that you stopped at the Beach Mart Pharmacy on the way to the hospital?"
His mouth was locked tight, and the muscles of his jaws were doing isometrics. This time he didn't look at his lawyer. He looked directly at me.
Wondering.
How much did I know?
"I don't recall that." Hedging his bets.
"The pharmacy's located on Arthur Godfrey Road. It's open twenty-four hours. Does that refresh your recollection?"
"Not really."
Cindy had cased the place, and now I wanted to make it sound like my second home. "Just a little hole-in-the wall. Sunglasses up front, Russell Stover candies on a rack by the register, and a pharmacist behind bulletproof glass in back."
It wasn't a question, so he didn't answer. He was waiting, and I wanted him to wait some more. To sweat, to worry. How much does the shyster know? I know it all, Schein, and I can prove most of it.
I continued, "There's a pass-through counter in the glass wall that they hand the prescriptions through. On the inside of the counter sits a time stamp, so every time a prescription is filled, they stamp it, isn't that right?"
"I don't know." His neck was blotched with red, and I'd bet his heart was racing. Hook him up to an EKG and the stylus would draw the Himalayas.
I made a big production of going back to the defense table, opening files, looking for something, seeming to have lost it. I felt his eyes on my back. Let him sweat some more. "Ah, here it is, Doctor. Perhaps this will refresh your memory."
Sometimes I bluff, and sometimes I really hold the aces. "Your Honor, may I approach the witness?"
The judge waved me forward. On the way, I dropped a copy on Socolow's table, then handed the little rectangular form to Schein. He grabbed for it. "Can you identify that?" I asked.
He nodded.
"You'll have to answer audibly."
"It appears to be a prescription form from the Beach Mart Pharmacy."
"And that's your signature, isn't it?"
He studied it, as if trying to decipher the Axis war code. No answer. Wondering if he could deny it. Hoping for a miracle that would keep the sky from falling.
"Perhaps you remember the pharmacist as well as he remembers you," I prompted. Bluffing now. The pharmacist was on vacation in Barbados, not in the corridor waiting to testify. I hadn't been able to reach him.
"That's my signature," he said at last.
"KC1," I said. "What's that?"
"Potassium chloride." His voice was a whisper.
"What's it used for?"
"Many things. Making fertilizer, for one."
"You weren't doing some gardening that night, were you. Doctor?"
"It's a harmless substance," he blurted out. "Potassium and chloride. Both are found naturally in the body."
"Really? Then I suppose if someone was injected with potassium chloride, it wouldn't show up in a toxicology test?"
"I don't know anything about that."
"What's potassium chloride used for, Doctor, besides making fertilizer?"
"It's used in heart surgery."
"And what does it do?"
His eyes darted to Jonas Blackwell and back to me again. "I'm not an expert. I mean, I'm not a surgeon."
"Oh, don't be so modest. The drug is injected into the heart to stop it during open-heart surgery, isn't it?"
"I'm not sure."
"You weren't performing open-heart surgery that night, were you?"
"No, of course not."
"But you wrote a prescription for one hundred milliliters of potassium chloride, which you picked up at eleven-twenty-seven P.M. on your way to the hospital, didn't you?"
He didn't answer.
"Doctor?"
"Yes."
"Thank you," I said. I returned to the defense table and let him hold on to the prescription slip. He looked like he wanted to swallow it. "Dr. Schein, do you remember, the other day, I asked if you blamed Harry for Emily Bernhardt's death?"
"I remember."
"And do you recall your answer?"
"Not verbatim."
"Well, it struck me as a little odd, so let's just take a look at it." The jurors leaned forward in their seats. I had them. I had Schein. I had the whole damn world just where I wanted it. Cindy handed me the daily transcript, provided efficiently by the stenographer for a sum equal to the gross national product of a small Caribbean nation.
"I asked you this question: 'So you blamed Harry for Emily Bernhardt's death?' And you answered, 'Yes. Not with a gun or a needle, but by stripping her of her dignity, keeping her prisoner in the home,' et cetera, et cetera. Now, what did that mean, 'Not with a gun or a needle'?"
"It's just an expression. It means, not with a weapon."
"Then wouldn't the expression be 'a gun or a knife'? Where does a needle fit into this?"
"Knife, needle… They sound alike."
"But you were thinking of a needle. So it made me wonder, Doctor, what would Freud say? Why were you thinking of a needle? What memories were lurking in your subconscious?"
"I have no idea."
"Going back to the night of June sixteenth at the Beach Mart Pharmacy, you also purchased a fifteen-gauge hypodermic needle, didn't you? If you like, I'll show you the store's cash register receipt."
A vein in his shaved scalp seemed to throb, but it could have been my imagination. He stretched his neck out of his shirt collar, then answered. "Yes, I sometimes inject tranquilizers into patients, and of course sodium amytal during hypnosis, as you know. I was out of syringes, so I…"
He drifted off.
"On the way to see Harry Bernhardt, who had just been shot and operated on, who was in the ICU, you stopped off to do some shopping-is that your testimony, Doctor?"
"Well, yes."
"Now you don't inject potassium chloride into any of your patients, do you, Doctor?"
"Of course not."
"What would happen if you were to inject potassium chloride into someone not undergoing surgery, someone not on a heart pump?"
"It would short-circuit the electrical activity of the heart."
"There'd be a rhythm disturbance, wouldn't there. Doctor?"
"Yes, I believe so."
"And the heart would go into ventricular fibrillation, then stop, indicating to all the world that the person died of cardiac arrest?"
"I didn't do that!"
"I didn't say you had."
"I've seen the autopsy report," Schein said, though no question was pending. Good. Let him run his mouth. "There's no indication of anything like that."
"No, there aren't even any unexplained puncture marks on the body, are there?"
"That's right."
"But if the potassium chloride had been injected directly into Harry Bernhardt's IV tube, it wouldn't leave any unexplained marks on the body, would it?"
"I suppose not."
"Is that how you did it, Dr. Schein? Did you pop a dose of KC1 right into the IV?"
"What are you saying! No!"
"Doctor, when the man you hated…"
Motive.
"… was lying flat on his back, semiconscious and sedated.. "
Opportunity.
"… you took that fifteen-gauge hypodermic needle and injected his IV tube with a massive dose of potassium chloride, didn't you?"
Means.
"No!" He looked toward the judge for help but didn't get any.
"When the potassium chloride hit his arm, he started thrashing. Even coming out of the anesthesia, he could feel the sting of the KC1, couldn't he?"
"No! I don't know."
"Doctor, if I told you that the ocular fluids removed from Harry Bernhardt's eyes showed elevated levels of potassium, would that surprise you?"
"Not at all," he said, licking a bead of perspiration from his upper lip and calming down. He relished the question, had a ready answer. "Potassium levels increase after death. It's not an indication of hyperkalemia."
"To what level would they increase?"
"I don't know exactly, but they could easily double or more, say from five milliequivalents per liter to ten or fifteen."