Model Child_a psychological thriller Page 7

  “The last time I saw him was a week or two before that,” Rita said. “My husband was away on business. I called Jimmy and asked if they’d like to go out for a pizza or something. He came, but Her Nibs decided to stay home.”

  “How was he then?”

  “Exactly the way Tim described him. You’d never have guessed that he was about to . . . you know . . .”

  Gottlieb settled back in his desk chair. “I’m sure there are questions you’d like to ask me. I’ll try to answer them as best I can.”

  Timothy spoke first. “I only have one. Is he crazy?” He clearly feared the answer, any answer.

  “We see no present evidence of that,” Gottlieb answered, “but we can’t rule it out completely. Psychotic thinking can be obvious, but it can also be very subtle. I should also tell you that a number of physical conditions can have a powerful impact on someone’s behavior. We’re looking into those possibilities too.” He gave a quick summary of the work-up still in progress.

  Rita chewed on her lower lip. “But if he isn’t crazy, then why—?” With that, her diminished stores of self-control gave way. She began to cry, to sob, burying her face in shaking hands. Gottlieb said nothing as her brother tried to comfort her, awkwardly but kindly, taking her head against his shoulder. “Now, now, Rita, it will all turn out all right. Now, now, we have to keep the faith and trust in the Lord . . .”

  Gottlieb hearkened back to what the optometrist had said before. We may not advertise our emotions on billboards, but

  we have them.

  ⸎

  The day after his interview with Timothy and Rita, Gottlieb talked to someone else with a keen interest in the Shannon case. Brendan O’Connell, a heavyset man with a florid complexion and a boxer’s pug nose, sat still only with great effort; he clearly would have liked to pace. Even when he sat, his body crackled with near-palpable tension. He bounced his knees, tapped his fingers and twitched his toes in a nonstop flurry. O’Connell was James Shannon’s lawyer.

  “Jimmy isn’t just my client, Doctor,” he began, scrutinizing Gottlieb with brown eyes at once fierce and beseeching. “He’s one of my best and oldest friends.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Forty years, give or take.” O’Connell rhythmically dug the heels of his perfectly shined black shoes into Gottlieb’s carpet. Gottlieb had seen the same shoes advertised in Esquire.

  “We started kindergarten together,” the lawyer went on. “Played baseball together, served as altar boys together at St. Claire’s. It’s hard to remember when I didn’t know him.”

  “And you’ve stayed close through the years?”

  “Not as close as when we were growing up, but we’ve stayed in touch. We went to each other’s weddings and the christenings of each other’s children. When I saw him, it was usually in church. Once in a while I did some legal work for him. Nothing big. The closing on his house, wills for him and Margaret.” The tempo of the tapping and twitching quickened. “I never thought I’d be defending him in a case like this one, not in a million years.”

  Giving up the effort to sit still, he stood up and strode

  towards the window. “I should tell you this right off, Dr. Gottlieb, I’m not a criminal lawyer. We’re a small firm, just two partners and me. General law. Most of our criminal work involves domestic violence. Someone gets loaded and beats up his wife, or they pick him up for drunk driving. Or someone’s kid gets in trouble with drugs. That’s what I told Jimmy. I offered to find him the best criminal lawyer I could, but he said he wanted me. Given his predicament, I felt I couldn’t turn him down.”

  Gottlieb raised his eyebrows. “I thought he didn’t talk at all after his arrest.”

  “He didn’t. The first two times I met with him, he wouldn’t speak to me. Christ, he wouldn’t even look at me! Finally, now this would have been a few days after they brought him here, we managed to have a conversation. Not an ordinary conversation; he mostly nodded yes or no. But at least he said a few words now and then.”

  “Did he sign a release?” Gottlieb couldn’t talk about the legal issues in a case, not even to the defendant’s own lawyer, without his written permission.

  O’Connell nodded, reaching for the inside pocket of his suit coat. He retrieved a single sheet of paper and handed it to Gottlieb, who read it carefully. Then the lawyer turned to business. “The first thing I want to talk about is motive. He said he tried to save the world from her. Now, people give lots of reasons for what they’ve done, but that’s a new one for me. I’m no shrink, but that sounds pretty crazy, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does, but so far there’s been no other evidence of craziness. I’m not saying it won’t turn up later, but so far I haven’t seen it. Neither has anyone else.”

  “Are you saying what he did was sane?” the lawyer shot back irately. “That a sane man, middle-aged, without a criminal history of any kind, would kill a sleeping child to save the world from her?”

  “I’m saying nothing of the kind, Mr. O’Connell,” he

  answered calmly. “I’m only going by what I’ve learned so far about your client. That’s subject to change. You should know this, though—it’s hard enough in any case to sell an insanity defense to a jury, but it’s particularly hard when there’s only one psychotic act. If there’s only one thread of psychotic thinking.”

  “It might be easier in this case than usual,” O’Connell said. “I admit, I’m working on a hunch here, but I think a jury might want to find him crazy. They could understand it more easily than they could if he were sane. People have been known to lose their minds, and when they do, they’ve been known to do some awful things.”

  “And sometimes they do awful things when there’s not the smallest hint of insanity.”

  O’Connell chewed on a knuckle. “If the jury thinks he’s sane, he’s a dead man.”

  The lawyer returned to his chair and sat down. The tapping and twitching was much less now, little more than an occasional jerk. “I’m also considering a defense based on diminished capacity.”

  “Well, you might have a better chance with that one,” agreed Gottlieb. He’d often seen attorneys use this stratagem. Diminished capacity meant different things in different jurisdictions, but the gist of it was this: a defendant’s mental state at the time of an offense had been significantly compromised. The standard of proof was less rigid than it was for the insanity defense. A lawyer could sell it more easily to the jury.

  They fell into a momentary silence. Gottlieb compared him to other attorneys he’d worked with. Not as shrewd as most of them, not as polished. Certainly not as experienced in criminal law, as O’Connell himself was first to admit. On the other hand, he brought a special commitment to his client, born of years of friendship. A commitment bordering on fervor. He’d spare no effort on behalf of James Shannon, he’d try anything.

  Gottlieb felt a passing wave of sympathy for Brendan O’Connell. He wondered what it must be like for him, defending a lifelong friend, in a capital case—the DA’s office had made it clear they’d seek the death penalty. So here he was, a man who lacked expertise in criminal law, who now found himself enmeshed in a capital case, with overwhelming evidence against his client. And his client had made a full confession in the first place.

  CHAPTER VIII

  C ASSANDRA WAS ALREADY WAITING at the table when Gottlieb rushed into the restaurant, frazzled and apologetic. They’d arranged to meet for lunch, at a Japanese place equidistant from GCFI and her office at the university. He’d arrived ten minutes late.

  “I’m sorry. Terrible morning . . .”

  She waved off the apology. “Relax, Hal. To tell you the truth, I enjoyed a few quiet minutes. First time I’ve had them all day.”

  They presented a study in contrasts. She looked cool and crisp in a mint-green cotton dress. He wore a rumpled tan jacket, a loosened red-and-blue-striped tie and a white shirt that needed to be tucked in here and there. She regarded him with slight amusement
, not unkindly. “I must say, you do look somewhat thrown together.”

  “Thanks, you look nice too.” He started to sit down but checked himself. “I think I’ll straighten up a bit. If the waiter comes around while I’m gone, would you please order an iced tea for me?”

  She nodded, and he headed for the men’s room. Once there, he washed his hands and face, loosened his belt and tucked in his shirt, retied his tie and straightened it. Finally, he took out a small pocket comb and tried to do something with his curly, unruly hair.

  A mirror over the sink allowed him to take in the results. He made the usual survey of his aesthetic failings. A face too long, a nose too prominent, a coarse complexion. Eyes too close together. Still, his appearance pained him less than it used to. He was one of those men who looked better at forty-eight than twenty-eight. Sharon told him that he’d grown into his face. More important, he’d grown to accept his appearance, to a point. I can fret all I want, but I’ll look the way I look. Gottlieb did not believe in banging one’s head against a wall.

  He turned to the table just as the waiter brought them two iced teas. “I gather it’s been hectic,” she said when he sat down.

  “It’s always pretty hectic at GCFI. Today was just a bit worse than usual.”

  “What exactly do you do there?”

  He sipped the iced tea. “We evaluate and treat mentally ill inmates from the correctional facilities in the area. Anyone they can’t handle, for whatever reason, is likely to wind up with us. We also get inmates who don’t look like they’re competent to stand trial.”

  “What determines competence?”

  “Three things, essentially.” Gottlieb grew more relaxed as he fell into a familiar teaching role. “A defendant has to know the charges that he’s facing. And he has to have a basic knowledge of the legal system. What’s the judge’s job, who’s for him, who’s against him, things like that. Finally, he has to be able to work with an attorney to defend himself in court. In other words, he has to be psychologically as well as physically present in the courtroom. If he’s not, the law says he can’t receive fair treatment there.”

  She stirred her iced tea with the straw. “Do you think people get fair treatment there anyway?”

  “Not always, but more often than not.”

  “All right, let’s say someone’s incompetent. What happens then?”

  He pushed his chair back slightly and crossed his legs. “He receives treatment until he’s competent. Then we send him back to court.”

  “And what if the treatment doesn’t work, if he can’t be restored to competence?”

  “There are several possibilities. He might be sent to a state

  hospital for long-term treatment. He might even be sent to a nursing home. That is, if he isn’t dangerous, and if his care is likely to be custodial. Or his lawyer may waive competence and proceed directly to an insanity defense. Or—if the charges are minor, as is often the case—they may simply be dropped. Judges have tremendous discretion. One judge might find someone competent, but not another one.” He paused. “I don’t mean to bore you with all these details.”

  Cassandra shook her head. “It isn’t boring. If it were, I’d tell you.” She took a swallow of iced tea. “What’s your typical patient like?”

  “Impossible to generalize. He might be eighteen. First arrest, let’s say. He’s facing a long bid, he’s terrified and sees no way out. So he tries to hang himself. He might be forty-five, a chronic schizophrenic who obeyed his voices telling him to kill someone. He might be an old man arrested for breach of peace, with a brain turned to slush by fifty years of booze, a man who thinks Eisenhower’s still in the White House.”

  They broke off while the waiter took their order, sushi and sashimi deluxe for two. “Do you work them up for undiagnosed physical illness?” She resumed, “neurological problem, hyperactive thyroid and so forth?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “We order whatever studies we feel appropriate. We call in consultants. Do you come from a medical background?”

  She nodded. “My father’s a doctor, my brother too. My grandfather taught medicine in Berlin before the war. His name was Friedrich Wirth. There’s a story about him that’s part of the family folklore.”

  “I’d love to hear it,” Gottlieb said. Cassandra smiled.

  “Okay, so one day his boss, the head of the department, told him, ‘Friedrich, from now on we must greet our patients with Heil Hitler!’ This would have been in 1934 or ’35. ‘That’s no way to address a sick man,’ my grandfather said. ‘I shall take a vacation.’ And he did, he took the family to the US and never

  came back.”

  “Hmm,” muttered Gottlieb, impressed. “It must have been hard for him to uproot himself like that.”

  She shrugged. “I suppose. We never talked about it. We never talked about much of anything too serious. He was content to be a doting grandfather, to bounce me on his knee and read to me. Mind you, that was fine with me. I was only ten when he died. I wish he’d lived longer.”

  “You were very fond of him.”

  “Yes, but it was more than that. I would have liked to talk to him about . . . oh, about all kinds of things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as details of family life, what all of them were really like, the kinds of things you can only get from an oral record. Such as, his impressions of life in Germany between the wars, especially before Hitler’s rise to power.” She hesitated for a moment. “My father says he carried a lot of guilt because he left.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, bear in mind that this comes to me secondhand, but my grandfather felt people like them were precisely the ones who should have stayed. Educated Christians, upper middle class. He felt they should have stayed and tried to fight against what was happening.”

  “As a historian, do you think it would have made a difference?”

  “If more of the intelligentsia had stayed and fought?” She mulled it over. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. As far as I’m concerned, the central truth about the Holocaust, and the hardest truth, is this: The German people made it possible.”

  Gottlieb broke the silence that ensued. “So, is that how your passion for history started?”

  “You could say it had a bearing.”

  They fell silent again, as the waiter laid a tray of sushi and

  sashimi before them. Bright red bubbles of the salmon roe,

  kura; the chartreuse cucumber rolls, kappamaki; fat pink strips of tuna, and the rest of it. Apart from the taste of sushi, Gottlieb loved its appearance and presentation.

  When talk resumed, she sought to bring the focus back to him. “Why don’t you sleep well?”

  “Racing thoughts. My head hits the pillow, and it’s as if I just threw down a couple of espressos. Doesn’t matter how tired I am, how long the day has been.”

  She placed a piece of pickled ginger on a piece of mackerel and deftly lifted it to her mouth with chopsticks. “What do you think about?”

  “Anything. A book I’m reading, a movie I’ve just seen. It’s all grist for the mill. My son—first and foremost, him. Whether he’ll survive his adolescence, and whether the rest of us will. My patients. After all these years, I still obsess about them after hours. My wife, our marriage. Where we’ve been, where we’re going.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Almost nineteen years. I’d just finished my residency.”

  “First marriage?”

  He nodded. “First and only one for both of us.”

  She pushed her chair away from the table and folded her hands in front of her. A tacit invitation to talk at length. A familiar gesture to him, one he’d often used himself. “How has it been for you?”

  He brought a piece of calamari to his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “Interesting. At times a great comfort, at times excruciating. In the balance, there’s been more good than bad to it.”

  Gottlieb felt acutely vulnerable, and on the ve
rge of becoming twisted in his words. It seemed urgent that he turn the conversation back to her. He parried with the first question that occurred to him. “Have you ever wanted to be married?”

  “Occasionally. Not very often or for very long. I know about three unhappy couples for every happy one. Maybe five or six to one would be more accurate. Of course, they’re mostly academics, so you could call them a skewed sample.”

  “How about your parents? Are they happy?”

  She played with one of her chopsticks. “Oh yes, it always goes back to the parents, doesn’t it? As best I can tell, they stay together from force of habit. That, and Germanic pigheadedness. My father has his infidelities, and my mother has her martyrdom. I supposed they’ve reached a kind of equilibrium.”

  “My wife had an affair once,” he blurted. “We were separated for half a year.” He was amazed to find himself telling her this. It was a piece of his life he’d shared with just one person, his closest friend, the man with whom he’d stayed when he and Sharon lived apart. Gottlieb had two brothers, in whom he confided almost everything, and he hadn’t told them.

  Cassandra took the disclosure in stride, as though it were something casual and slightly banal. My wife took cello lessons once. She looked straight into his eyes. “What was it like for you?”

  As had been the case in the Italian restaurant, the night they met, he found himself unable to evade her. He fiddled with his napkin before answering. “Let me put it this way. I adored my father. I was a sophomore in college when he died, after a long illness. Multiple sclerosis. To this day, I miss him terribly. But Sharon’s affair was more painful to me than his death.”

  “Well, that makes sense when you think about it. Nothing’s more painful than a trust betrayed. Your father may have abandoned you by dying, but that’s different from betraying your trust.” She sipped iced tea. “Have you forgiven her?”

  “Yes, I have. I think I have. Sometimes I’ll think about it

  . . . them . . . late at night.”