“Like you are?” asked Berns.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That outthinking a criminal is a kind of game for you, too.”
“I didn’t come here to discuss my views on police work.”
“So what did you come to discuss?”
I hesitated, wondering how to phrase my inquiry. Should my visit to Berns ever come to light, any mention of my illegal search of Carns’s house could prove disastrous. Though I had repeatedly pondered the problem on the drive to Orange County, I still hadn’t reached a solution. Now, as I began to question the wisdom of my visit, I noticed that something had changed about the psychiatrist. It took a moment to figure it out: no cigarettes. “You kick the nicotine habit?” I asked, buying some time.
Berns sighed. “Not yet. My wife wants me to give it up. It’s supposed to be one of my New Year’s resolutions. I’m doing a test run before making any promises I can’t keep.”
“How’s it going?”
“Rotten,” Berns responded irritably. “But I’m sure you didn’t come here to talk about my smoking, either. What is it you want?”
I shifted from foot to foot. “This may seem like a real basic question,” I said finally, “but what does it take these days to pull off an insanity defense?”
“In California?”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Absolutely,” answered Berns. “There are diverse legal criteria for insanity. For example, the Durham Rule asks whether a crime is the product of a mental disease or defect. The American Law Institute Model Penal Code adds volitional language to that definition, things like not being able to conform to the law or being subject to irresistible impulses. And of course there’s the M’Naghten Rule, named after a famous English case tried in the mideighteen hundreds. Different states, different rules. Some states like Idaho don’t even allow an insanity plea.”
“Let’s make it California.”
“Ah, California.” Berns said. “California law follows narrow M’Naghten guidelines for defining legal insanity. Which, by the way, differ from those generally accepted by the medical community.”
“What are these, uh, M’Naghten guidelines?”
“Basically, M’Naghten says that for something to be a crime, the criminal must realize the nature of the act, and he must know that it’s wrong.”
“Realize the nature of his act,” I repeated. “So if the guy thinks his gun’s a banana or he’s killing Satan or whatever, he gets off?”
“Not quite. As I said, there’s also the issue of the criminal knowing his actions are wrong.”
“So if a criminal tries to conceal his crime, that would indicate he knows it’s wrong-making him sane, even if he is a fruitcake.”
“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but yes. Bottom line, having a severe sociopathic personality disturbance doesn’t necessarily make someone legally insane.”
“Pulling off an insanity plea sounds tough.”
“It is. Especially in capital cases.”
“But it’s done. What are the courts buying these days? Multiple personality?”
Berns smiled for the first time since my arrival. “Contrary to what you see in popular fiction, juries are extremely skeptical of a multiple-personality-syndrome defense. Besides, the condition is extremely rare. In fact, many clinicians doubt its existence entirely, not to mention the dilemma it poses the legal system: What do you do with the personalities who weren’t involved in the crime?”
“Charge them with harboring a fugitive,” I suggested.
Berns smiled again, then continued. “Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. But to answer your question, there are exculpatory psychological diseases. Manic depressive psychosis, for one. Paranoid schizophrenia, for another.”
“Schizophrenia, huh?” I thought back, recalling several terms I’d seen while scanning Carns’s medical files. “Satanic delusions, florid psychotic episodes, periods of fugal amnesia covering days and weeks… that kinda stuff?”
Berns nodded. “How do you happen to know those terms?”
“I read them somewhere,” I answered evasively. “So if somebody wanted to fake a case of schizophrenia, he could?”
“Maybe. As yet, there are no conclusive physical tests to support a diagnosis of schizophrenia, but faking it would be difficult. For someone to do it, he’d have to be a consummate actor, as well as being extremely knowledgeable about the disease and a wide spectrum of associated psychological tests.”
I remembered the psychology books I had seen in Carns’s office. “But it’s possible?”
“I suppose it’s possible,” Berns conceded. “We psychiatrists like to think we’re above being fooled, but it happens. But even if someone could pull it off, most courts view a criminal’s postarrest development of a mental illness just a little too convenient.”
“Right. So let me pose a hypothetical situation here. Suppose a criminal wanted to create a psychological backdoor for himself, an escape hatch in case he got caught at some future time. He buys the right books and bones up on a mental illness that can’t be disproved by physical testing. Paranoid schizophrenia, say. He goes to a few clinics and perfects his act, then gets some outpatient treatment-maybe even takes medication for a couple of years.”
“He wouldn’t even have to take the pills,” mused Berns, anticipating my line of reasoning. “They’d probably put him on something like Haldol. Most outpatient clinics don’t do blood-level monitoring on those types of drugs.”
“Fine,” I said. “Okay, let’s take it a step further. Our man stops getting treatment, but now he’s on record as being a psycho. Years later he’s arrested for something serious-murder, say-and he goes for an insanity defense. Unlike most scumbags who try to avoid first degree murder charges and a death penalty sentence by going the nut-cake route, our man’s got a medical history. He’s been off his medication for years, and the poor guy just couldn’t help himself. What’re his chances of skating?”
Berns stroked his chin pensively. “A lot better than without a prior history. Something like that could make a huge difference.”
“He could pull it off?”
“Maybe. With a longstanding record of mental illness, a slick lawyer, and the right jury-he might.”
50
Tuesday afternoon, having decided to spend New Year’s Eve at home, Victor Carns made an unsettling discovery, one that changed everything. He had just returned from a record store in Mission Viejo, where he’d purchased a Glen Gould disk and two Yo Yo Ma recordings. As he climbed from the cockpit of his Lamborghini, he dropped his keys. Bending to retrieve them, he spotted the antenna wire hidden behind his back left wheel. Less than an inch was exposed, but it was well defined in the backlight from across the garage. With a feeling of horror, Carns got down on his hands and knees. He looked under the frame. It was a transmitter.
They had found him.
But how?
He was sure he had escaped the police trap in Sherman Oaks without being followed.
What, then? The health clubs? The stolen license plates? The DMV trace? Lauren Van Owen?
Again, as he had repeatedly since learning that the blond newscaster had survived, he berated himself for not taking the time to dispose of her properly before fleeing her West LA condo. On the other hand, that the authorities hadn’t already come for him was proof she hadn’t managed to get a clear look at him-even when he’d held the phone to her mouth so she could speak with Kane. Nevertheless, leaving her alive was another unaccustomed error, one that disturbed and angered him. And once more, Kane had been involved.
Shaken, Carns rose to his knees. He left the matchbox-sized tracking device in place, fearing if he touched it, the police might be able to tell. Something like that might force their hand.
Think!
Mind racing, Carns pondered his situation.
Somehow they’d found him. But again, if they had enough for an arrest, or even grounds to search his estate, they would have already come.