Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (10 page)

“
Good afternoon, Your
Honor,” I acknowledged, bowing my head slightly. Like most lawyers,
I would curtsy or kiss the hem of a judge’s robe to help win a
case.

“
Say, Jake, what do you
think of my dog-ass Gators this fall?”

“
I think they’ll play
eleven games, twelve if they go to a bowl.”

“
Ah believe those boys will
go all the way,” the judge opined, as he did each summer. “Sugar
Bowl and a numbah one ranking.” It galled him that the University
of Miami had won four national championships while his alma mater
had failed to notch even one. “Now, let’s see what roguery brings
you here today.”

The judge hunched over the
bench and riffled through a court file. He had a bulbous nose lined
with purple veins, a large bald head that reflected the overhead
lighting, and he carried close to three hundred pounds on a
five-eight frame. He liked to let people think he played football
in college, but according to an ancient yearbook some lawyer
friends passed around, the closest he got to the end zone was as a
cheerleader. The judge, still peering into the file, made a
tsk-tsk-tsking
sound.
Part of the role, as played by T. Bone, was to scare kids straight.
“Malicious mischief!” he thundered, lifting his large head and
glaring at Kip. “Trespassing and willful destruction of property.
Serious charges, one and all. Son, how do you plead?”

I was ready to say “not guilty,” but my
half-pint client was too quick for me.

“
Hey, Judge,” he called
out, “when you go through the metal detector downstairs, what goes
off first, the lead in your ass or the shit in your
brains?”

The judge turned red.

I was speechless.

Kip smiled a sinister grin I hadn’t seen
before. It didn’t even look like him. Which made me think it wasn’t
him at all. I was tossing around that idea, but the judge’s booming
voice interrupted my train of thought.

“
Young man, you’re in
direct contempt of court! Ah’m looking at your face, and it’s got
Youth Hall written all over it. Jake, you got yourself a real
in-cor-rigible here.”

“
Your Honor,” I responded,
“that wasn’t him talking.”

“
What are you saying, that
Ah cain’t believe my ears?”

“
No, just that he didn’t
have control over what he said.”

“
Why not? Is he on ecstasy
or crack? Is he one of those dopeheads who puke on my Dodge in the
parking lot?”

“
Your Honor, I believe what
the boy said was from a movie.” I turned to Kip, my eyes pleading.
“Isn’t that it, Sylvester?”

“
Bruce Willis in
Die Hard 2
,” Kip
declared, proudly. “It just sort of popped into my
head.”

“
That’s part of our
defense, Your Honor,” I volunteered, making it up as I went
along.

“
Jake, that dog won’t hunt.
You know me, Ah’m just a simple country lawyer who’s now a simple
country judge ...”

Four million people from Miami to Palm
Beach, and we still have judges chewing straw and handing out that
aw-shucks routine.

“
...and while I may not
read everything in the law books,” he continued, gesturing to a
shelf of pristine copies of the
Southern
Reporter
, “Ah believe there are only three
possible pleas—guilty, not guilty, and
nolo
con-ten-dere
...”

He made the last plea sound like the title
of a Tony Bennett song.

“
...unless you’re claiming
the boy’s incompetent. You’all looking for a competency hearing,
Jake?”

“
Respectfully, Your Honor,”
I said, employing a term lawyers use to mean just the opposite, “we
plead not guilty and seek an immediate adjudicatory hearing, and
while the facts of the incident may not be in dispute, there are
certain mitigating factors, including the defendant’s age, lack of
prior record, and psychological considerations we’ll be asking the
court to consider.”

Judge T. Bone Coleridge exhaled a guttural
snort. “Ten-minute recess. Then strap on your helmets ‘cause we’re
gonna try this case.”

I adhered to the first rule of courtroom
recesses: I took a pee, because you don’t know when you’ll have a
chance for the next one. Then I used a pay phone to call Doc Riggs
and find out if the autopsy report on Kyle Hornback was
finished.

“
Obviously, this was
neither a natural death nor an accident,” he lectured. “I believe
we can rule out suicide, though that’s often an issue in hangings.
So, we’re dealing with homicide.”

“
No kidding, Charlie.
C’mon, I’m in court. Cut to the chase.” I am not usually testy with
Charlie or Granny, but my nerves were on edge. I was worried about
Sylvester aka Kip; I was worried about Blinky; and I was worried
about me.

Charlie harrumphed and continued: “Well
then, you might be interested to know what the toxicology report
showed. I happened to be there when the chemist—”

“
Charlie,
please!”

“
All right, all
right.
Vincit qui patitur.
He who is patient prevails. Hornback’s blood was
loaded with barbiturates. Probably pentobarbital, pretty
fast-acting, and he was unconscious when throttled by person or
persons unknown. If he’d been conscious, there would have been a
struggle, and pressure on the neck would have been intermittent.
There’d probably be some petechial hemorrhaging, burst blood
vessels and the like. With slow, steady pressure, there’s less
evidence of trauma, and that’s the case here. Just a trace of blood
in the larynx, some engorged blood vessels in the brain, that’s
about it. Cause of death was asphyxia. Your tie, and quite a
handsome one at that, was the ligature, used much like a garrote.
There was a contusion in the middle of his chest. Hornback was
probably face-up on the floor when the tie was slipped around his
neck. The assailant likely placed a knee on his chest for leverage,
then tightened the tie, squeezing off the air supply, and finally
tying the knot.”

“
That it?”

“
Just about. Before the
M.E. sliced him open, they tried to pull latents off the body. As
usual, they couldn’t do it. But one of the technicians wanted me to
help with a methyl methacrylate test.”

“
Did you?”

“
Of course. We used Super
Glue, which converts to fumes quite easily, tented the body, and
came up with some nice latents on the neck and chin. Checking them
out now.”

“
Great. I hope there are
some besides mine.”

“
Yes, well next time, don’t
fool around with murder scenes.”

Next time? “Okay, Charlie, thanks.”

“
Thank
you
, Jake. You know, I’m never as
alive as when I’m poking around in a dead body. Strangulation is
quite tricky. Not like the old days of execution by hanging when
they’d just tie the knot under the left side of the jaw to throw
the head back and snap the odontoid process of the second cervical
vertebra. No, that was too easy. As Pierrepoint, the former hangman
of London once testified—”

“
Charlie, hold that
thought. I’ve got a case to try.”

***

An earnest young woman wearing a blue suit
and white silk blouse introduced herself as the assistant state
attorney. Her mouth was fixed in a grim expression, and the notes
on her yellow pad were printed in precise block lettering. I don’t
know why, but prosecutors tend to be more organized and less
humorous than defense lawyers. And the women prosecutors tend to be
very good. Just look at Marcia Clark or Josefina Baroso.

The state began with the
theater manager, whose testimony was matter-of-fact. There was a
disturbance outside the theater. A lanky blond-haired boy was
cursing at the ticket seller. The boy left and came back half an
hour later, at which time he began spray-painting the outside of
the theater, first with a drawing of Arnold Schwarzenegger, then
the phrase, “
Hasta la vista,
baby
.” When the manager dashed out of the
theater, the boy threw the spray can through a coming attractions
display window, breaking the glass. Yes, that boy is present in the
courtroom. That’s him over there in the Pittsburgh Pirates
T-shirt.

That made Kip snicker. “Dork doesn’t even
know a baseball team from a movie.”

I barely cross-examined, except to emphasize
that no one was injured.

Next came a policeman who said he found Kip
at the scene with blue paint on his hands and an explanation for
what he had done. The boy was angry at the cancellation of the film
he wanted to see. Again, my cross was concise. I had the officer
admit that Kip offered no resistance and told the truth about the
incident. That’s called putting the best face on a confession. The
state rested, and the judge looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“
The defense calls Doctor
Harvey Kornblum,” I announced with a gravity far in excess of my
witness’s credentials. The bailiff hustled out of the courtroom and
into the waiting area. While he was gone, I sneaked a peek at Kip.
He was studying a poster on the wall that showed two youngsters,
one in a cap and gown, the other behind bars. “School and Job or
Jail and Death” read the caption. Subtlety was in short supply in
the juvenile justice system.

The bailiff returned with my witness in tow.
Dr. Harvey Kornblum might not be the best psychiatrist in town, but
he was the cheapest. I choose my expert witnesses based on two
qualifications, low fees and a healthy crop of gray hair. The
reasons are obvious. Most of my clients can’t afford to pay their
lawyer and expensive experts, too, so it’s easy to see where I’ll
cut corners. Both judges and jurors like gray-haired doctors, even
if they’re pompous windbags. Besides meeting my criteria, Harvey
Kornblum was also the only shrink who would see Kip on half-an-hour
notice this morning and be ready to testify right after lunch.

Dr. Kornblum sat down, unbuttoned his suit
coat and let his paunch hang out. He patted his silvery hair and
raised his hand to take the oath. I ran through his qualifications
as a pediatric psychiatrist, letting him dawdle a bit too long over
his internship, his multiple residencies, his fellowships here and
there, his long-since outdated papers on bed-wetting and
masturbation, and finally, we got down to business.

“
Dr. Kornblum, have you had
an opportunity to examine the defendant, Sylvester Houston
Conklin?”

The witness looked confused until I pointed
toward the defense table.

“
Ah yes. Kip. I have
examined him at some length.”

Technically, that was true, the length being
twenty-five minutes. “Can you tell the court what your examination
revealed?”

Dr. Kornblum opened a thick
file that must have contained his autobiography because it couldn’t
have been the notes of his meeting this morning. He hadn’t taken
any. The doctor put on a pair of rimless eyeglasses, stared at his
file, removed the glasses, and began speaking in deep, magisterial
tones. “Kip, er, Sylvester, is a handsome and well-nourished,
though thin, lad of eleven years. He has no physical abnormalities
and is above average in intelligence, far above average, I must
say. Psychologically, I would term him emotionally isolated. He
does not know his father. He has,
de
facto
, been abandoned by his mother, and
is being raised by a woman he calls Granny, though she is not his
grandmother.”

Dr. Kornblum paused to look at the judge and
let the weight of his testimony sink in. Then he continued. “The
child spends much time alone, watching television, especially
movies. He is not a happy child. Indeed, his reality is one of
pain, isolation, and abandonment. For this reason, he seeks escape.
His reality becomes the fantasy of movies.”

“
How important are these
movies to the boy?” I asked.

“
Very important, indeed.
This child doesn’t just watch movies. He becomes a character. The
movie is real.”

“
And is there a difference
between seeing these movies on television and in a
theater?”

“
Quite so. For him, seeing
a movie on the big screen enhances that reality. In the theater, he
can lose himself, can be enveloped in the sheer size of the
picture, the depth of the stereophonic sound.”

Now we were rolling. “And what happens,
Doctor, if someone takes away that opportunity?”

“
Clearly, they have stolen
his reality. His reaction is far out of proportion to the harm
done, at least it would seem that way to those of us for whom
movies have not taken on such importance. You see, the boy has his
depression under control, in a steel box if you will. He escapes
this depression in the movies. Take that away, the depression
becomes anger and rage, and the consequence, as we have seen, is an
antisocial act in protest of cancellation of his favorite
film.”

“
Would you expect him to
repeat this conduct?”

“
Most likely not. The
conduct was aberrational. It resulted from the highly unusual
combination of his high expectations at seeing Casablanca in the
theater and the unannounced cancellation of the film after he took
a bus to Miami.”

“
Do you see that
incarceration would serve any purpose here?”

“
No. What the boy needs is
a strong male figure, someone he can trust, someone he can look up
to. He doesn’t need jailers.”