Crack-Up (17 page)

“Because?”

“Just showing my
Texas
pride,” Les said with a wink.

Actually, Les didn’t strike me as very Texany.
 
His twang was barely noticeable.
 
His tie was standard
K Street
.
 
And how much barbecued brisket or five alarm chili could the man possibly eat with a build like a vegetarian marathon runner?

“Shall we?” Harry said, motioning toward the table in the center of the room.

We sat down, me on one side, the lawyers on the other—as if orange jumpsuits were contagious.
 
Through a glass pane, I could see a sheriff’s deputy with his back to the door, standing guard.

Over the phone the night before, I’d been told all about Les Cravey.
 
“You come highly recommended,” I said to him, “but—”

“But when buying a horse,” Les said, “always check the teeth yourself.”
 
He winked at me—for the second time already.
 
I have never liked men winking at me.
 
Women, sexy.
 
Men, squirrelly.

“What I was going to say,” I said, “is that, now that I’ve had time to reflect, I’ve decided I won’t be needing your brand of legal expertise after all.”

“Argus!” Harry said.
 
“What are you saying?
 
We’ve been over this.
 
You have no choice but to plead insanity.
 
You need Les.”

“I don’t see it that way anymore.
 
I just finished reading the insanity statute for myself.”

Harry sighed.
 
“I’ll remind you, the prosecution has overwhelming physical evidence against you, plus two of your own bodyguards for eyewitnesses.
 
Both decorated war veterans.
 
And—”

“Eyewitnesses?
 
That’s not true, not exactly.”

Harry sighed harder.
 
“The bodyguards agree they heard an altercation, burst into the room, and found you—a martial arts expert, by the way—standing over the twitching body of John Helms, spattered in the dying man’s blood.
 
John died a minute later of suffocation from a crushed larynx—the result of a single, expert blow—while you fought with your own guards, preventing them from conducting an emergency tracheotomy.
 
I repeat:
 
You
have
to plead insanity.
 
You
need
Les.”

“It’ll never work,” I said.
 
“Look what happened to that Christian mother from Houston who murdered her own children.
 
How sane was she?
 
But it didn’t matter in the end, hearing voices and seeing demons, and so on.
 
She still got life behind bars.”

Harry peered over the top of his skinny spectacles.
 
“At least . . . she avoided . . . the death penalty.”

“Some consolation prize.”

“You might do better than her,” Harry said.

I shook my head.
 
“I doubt it.
 
The legal definition of insanity in that statute is extremely narrow.
 
Hell, it’s worse than that.
 
It’s ignorant, it’s backward, it’s barbaric.”

“That’s correct,” Les said.
 
“That statute belongs in the nineteenth century, just like my lizard-skin boots.
 
But Harry’s right.
 
It’s all you’ve got.”
 
He didn’t wink.

I sighed.
 
“Let me ask you a question, Les.
 
Say I could prove that I wasn’t responsible for my own loss of sanity.
 
That someone had switched my meds with dummy pills—placebos identical to my own pills—and that’s why I lost my mind and went on to slay John Helms.
 
How would that change my situation?”

Les blinked, rather than winked.
 
“Well I . . .”

“Argus,” Harry said, “not that again.”

“Just answer my question,” I said.

“It wouldn’t change a thing,” Les said.
 
“Not at trial.
 
But at sentencing.
 
It would be considered a mitigating factor.
 
One that might reduce your sentence, that’s all.
 
That’s it.”

I remember leaning back in my chair at that moment, exhaling deeply, and thinking,
I am totally fucked
.
 
My next thought, very nearly, was that I had nothing left to lose.
 
In other words, I became very dangerous again.

Chapter 17

“No,” Sarah said to me through the smelly jailhouse phone I had pressed to my ear.
 
“I haven’t checked.
 
On second thought, I just don’t think it’s a good idea to feed your paranoia.
 
It’s for your own good, Argus.”

“You promised me,” I said.
 
“You promised.”

“But—”

“You promised!”

“Oh, alright!
 
Hold on.”

Because of what this meant if I were right—or if I were wrong—tiny rivulets of adrenalin coursed through my body as I waited.
 
Waited and wondered.
 
Is Doctor Woods right?
 
That I hadn’t been taking my pills?
 
And that my belief in dummy pills is only a sign of lingering sickness?
 
Residual paranoia?
 
Or, deeper still, a defense mechanism?
 
My way of refusing to believe myself capable of murder?
 
Or is it me who’s right after all?

Hell, I just know I’m right
!

I could easily visualize myself counting the pills in the bathroom that day.
 
I was still in pretty good mental shape that day, clear-headed, not counting a few minutes up in the sky when I’d seen the flight attendant naked.
 
I could see the big pill bottle again, resting on the top shelf of my medicine cabinet.
 
It’d been half empty.
 
It’d felt half empty in my hand.
 
I’d poured the pills onto the counter top.
 
Counted carefully . . .

Fifty something pills.
 
I’d counted fifty-three pills, to be precise.
 
Yes, that was the number.
 
Which told me I hadn’t been skipping, I’d been taking my pills every day.

Every.
 
Damn.
 
Day
.

My rib cage took a sudden, sharp poke.
 
I turned.

“You done or what?” said the man standing behind me, the shaggy jail inmate next in line for the phone.
 
My five allotted minutes weren’t nearly up yet.

“Hey, Fu Manchu,” I said, in reference to the man’s facial hair, “ask the deputies here if it’s a good idea to keep poking me.”
 
I turned my back to him.
 
Waited for Sarah . . .

If I’m right
, I thought,
and I will be—I will be!—I’ll have that half-bottle of pills tested.
 
They’ll turn out to be dummies.
 
They’d have to be.
 
Not a trace of Risperdal in my system, Doctor Woods said.
 
Not a trace.
 
Which means someone deliberately drove me crazy.
 
Can you believe it?
 
Someone’s trying to destroy me!

But who?
 
But who
?

“Got it,” Sarah said.
 
“I’m holding the bottle in my hand.
 
It looks full.”

“What did you say?”

“The pill bottle,” Sarah said.
 
“It looks full to me.”

“That’s not possible,” I said.
 
“It should be half empty.”

“Here,” Sarah said, “I’ll open it up.”

“When you say full—”

“I mean full,” Sarah said.
 
“You might be able to squeeze three or four more pills in the bottle, tops.”

“No!
 
No!
 
No!” I said.
 
“That can’t be!”

“Honey, calm down.”

“She refilled it!” I said.
 
“She refilled the bottle!”

“Who?”

“What’s her name!”

“Darla?”

“Yes, Darla!” I said.
 
“And I’ll bet she put the real pills back in the bottle too.
 
If we tested them, it probably wouldn’t do any good.
 
But test them, we shall.
 
Just in case.
 
Maybe she left one of the dummies inside by accident.”

“Honey—”

“Sarah, lock those pills in the safe in my study.
 
Now!
 
And for God’s sake, fire that maid!
 
Understand?”

I waited for an answer . . . Didn’t get one.

“Did you hear me?
 
Sarah?”

“Argus,” she said.
 
“When are you going before the judge?”

“Tomorrow morning,” I said.
 
“Around
10:30
.
 
Les is confident he can get me out on bail.
 
Harry doesn’t seem to share his confidence, though.”

“I hate to say this,” Sarah said.
 
“It really fuckin’ hurts to say this . . .”

“What’s the matter?” I said, thinking I might’ve heard her stifling a cry.

“If you make bail tomorrow, Argus . . .”
 
She
was
crying.
 
Her voice had turned all quavery too.

“Yes?” I said.

“If you make bail, I want you to f-f-find somewhere else to l-l-live for awhile.”

“Somewhere else to live?”

“I don’t think you’re ready to come home!”
 
Sarah let go with a loud wail.
 
Then another.

“Please, Sarah.”

“I don’t think it’s safe!
 
For Ellie and myself and the baby, I mean!
 
Not to mention Darla!
 
Or even Duke!”

Unable to speak, I listened to Sarah’s crying and sniffling for a long, long time . . . until I took another sharp poke in my ribs.
 
I turned.
 
Fu Manchu was glaring at me again.

“Get off the phone, asshole.”

My eyes swept the room.
 
One deputy in sight.
 
Thirty feet away.
 
With his back turned.

As fast and hard and sudden as I could, I swung my elbow at a particular spot near Fu Manchu’s left temple.
 
Fu crumpled to the floor, where he lay as I’d intended, still and insentient.