“How about if I promise to restrict our discussion about you to these test results?”
Reluctantly, Olivia agreed.
“You'll be meeting with Mr. Ferguson this afternoon,” I said.
Olivia looked at me, solemn.
“He's here to help you. Just be honest. Be yourself.” It sounded obvious, but it was the best I advice I could give.
I had bumper-to-bumper appointments all afternoon. I only had time to put my head in and say hello to Chip while he met with Olivia. Later, during a break, I was talking with Gloria when Kwan appeared.
“Sorry. I haven't been able to find out what this is,” he said, holding out my mother's white pill. “I suppose we could have it analyzed.”
Gloria picked the pill out of Kwan's open palm. “Looks like what Ginger takes for arthritis. I recognize the shape.”
“It is for arthritis,” I said. “But isn't Ginger your dog?”
“Dogs get arthritis,” Gloria said defensively. I remembered the Christmas cards Gloria and Rachel sent out each year, photographs of their cocker spaniel in a red bow and felt antlers. “Ginger's getting on, poor thing,” she added.
“It's probably got the same drug they give to humans,” Kwan said. “Probably safe. We just have to figure out how much ⦔
“You'd advise
your
mother to take it?” I asked.
“My mother wouldn't go all the way to Canada and bring back mystery medicine. She's nutty in different ways from your mother. You know, acupuncture and ginseng.”
I called my mother and told her why we hadn't been able to find her pill in the
Physicians' Desk Reference.
“It's a veterinary medicine.”
My mother gasped. “You're kidding me. You mean, for cows and chickens?”
“More like dogs and cats. Cows and chickens usually get slaughtered long before they become arthritic.”
“Is that what you think should happen to me now that I have a little arthritis?”
“Of course that's not what I think. What I think is that it's a crazy way to save money when you can afford to pay what drugs cost. And if you can't, I can.”
“It just galls me ⦔ my mother started, and was off on a tirade about how the drug companies were making their profits on the backs of the elderly poor. But I knew it was something else, too. My mother hates to pay full price for anything. I remembered the cold mornings my brother and I got schlepped to Union Square in Manhattan and stood on the sidewalk, huddled alongside her, jostled by the crowd of women waiting for S. Klein's to open its doors. We'd be steaming in too many layers of clothing, inhaling a miasma of wet wool, mothballs, and hair spray. Our reward was pants that we'd “grow into.”
My mother had ended her rant. There was a silence. Then I heard footsteps. Then it sounded like a toilet flushing. “So much for their veterinary medicine! What do they think I am?” she asked, outraged. “A Siamese cat?”
Back in my office, my brain felt as if it had a fog machine going in it. I reached for my coffee mug. A reflex. I walked down the hall to the men's room and doused my face with cold water. That didn't help.
When I got back, my phone was blinking. I retrieved the message. It was Chip. “Can you come over and meet with Annie and me? The autopsy results show Channing Temple was comatose when she's supposed to have shot herself.”
IT WAS nearly six by the time I made it over to Chip's office. By then, there were plenty of parking spaces in East Cambridge. The new office was in a brick building shaped like a miniature airplane hangar. Before renovations it had been an auto-repair shop, and long before that, probably a stable and blacksmith's. Double doors that would have swung open to admit a horse and buggy had been replaced by multipaned windows.
I climbed the stairs to the second floor. They had an old-fashioned oak door with a pebbled glass panel in the upper half and a brass doorknob that reminded me of the engraved ones on every door in P.S. 181. In black letters across the glass, it said FERGUSON & ASSOCIATES. And in smaller letters beneath that: SQUIRES INVESTIGATIONS.
The door was locked. I rang the bell. A minute later, Annie pulled the door open. A roomy, skylighted central area opened up before me. The space dwarfed the meager furnishingsâa half-dozen file cabinets and a few industrial-strength steel desks.
“Nice digs,” I said, looking around at the beamed ceiling and exposed-brick wall. “Very nice.” I gave her a quick kiss on the mouth.
Annie glowed with pleasure. Her hand lingered on my arm. “As soon as our receivables turn the corner, we'll have an assistant or two out here. In the meanwhile, I'm considering moving my futon in. This is a helluva lot nicer than my place.”
She took me on a tour of the five-room suite. I was relieved that the coffeepot was turned off. Nothing to tempt me. Then we went into Chip's office. He was finishing up a phone call, his back to a huge arched window. In the distance, white cables supporting a new bridge were strung like a giant, inverted fan-shaped harp across the skyline at the northern edge of the Big Dig, Boston's Herculean effort to bury its primary north-south artery and let mere mortals reclaim the heart of the city and the waterfront.
I recognized the Grateful Dead poster on the wall, now in a chrome frame. Chip had had it tacked to the back of his office door in the public defender's office.
When he got off the phone, Chip got straight to the point. “The autopsy results turned up a fair amount of drugs in Channing Temple's stomach. But even more had been metabolized. She was probably unconscious when she was shot.”
“Probably?”
“They always hedge. They're putting together an arrest warrant for Olivia.”
“How soon?” I asked.
“MacRae wouldn't tell me that,” Annie said. “But I think you can count on it by the end of the week.”
“Have you told Drew?” I asked.
“That was him on the phone, just now,” Chip said. “He's frantic.”
I'd known this could happenâOlivia getting arrested for Channing's murder. But knowing something intellectually and then having it happen are two different things. How do you help a seventeen-year-old prepare to be charged with murder? All my training in psychology came up short.
“How was your meeting with Olivia this afternoon?” I asked Chip.
“She's terrified,” he said.
“Seems like an appropriate response.”
“The jury will want to like her. But she is off-putting. Not someone who gives you the warm fuzzies.”
“I like her.”
“That's because it's your job,” Chip said.
I started to explain that it wasn't my job to
like
her, but I let it go.
Chip went on. “I wanted you here to help prepare for the arraignment. There are two ways we can go with this. Plead not guiltyâsomeone else did it. Or not guilty and go with a Twinkie defense.”
“Better if someone else did it,” Annie said.
“Absolutely,” Chip answered, “but I want to be ready to go either way, depending on what kind of evidence they dig up.”
I wasn't surprised at their reluctance to embrace a Twinkie defenseâa defense based on diminished capacity. The Twinkie part of it goes back to a trial for a double murder in San Francisco. A city supervisor shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Harvey Milk, another city official. The press reported that the defense team blamed the killer's actions on Twinkies and other sugary junk food. Diminished his mental capacity.
As usual, the press got it wrong. What the defense actually argued was that the guy had a long-standing, untreated depression that diminished his capacity to distinguish right from wrong. He was incapable of the premeditation required for first-degree murder. How could you tell? Here was a guy who'd always eaten a healthy diet and suddenly, he's bingeing on junk food. Eating Twinkies didn't cause the depression, but it was evidence of it, like his lack of personal hygiene.
If the Twinkie defense was going to work for Olivia, Chip had to demonstrate she had an underlying problem that diminished her mental capacity.
“I'm about halfway through testing Olivia,” I said. “There's already
a basis for arguing that she needs to take a psychostimulant like Ritalin to help her focus. We know her doctor prescribed it. That should establish the foundation you need.”
“What's the underlying condition?” Chip asked.
“A right-hemisphere learning disorder. Not nearly as powerful as depression,” I admitted. “But excessive amounts of Ritalin can alter judgment. Still, it's a hard sell. Besides, I don't think she did it.”
“You really don't?” Chip asked.
“They'll have a strong case,” Annie said. “She's found holding the gun. She's got Ativan in her pocket. Hate-filled e-mail messages are in her mother's computer.”
“She wrote those messages as part of her therapy,” I said.
“You said Ritalin could have altered her judgment,” Chip argued. “Could it have bent her to the point where she'd kill someone?”
I sighed. “People have this notion of the good Dr. Jekyll turning into the murderous Mr. Hyde, courtesy of a potion. But it's a lot of bunk. Listen, addiction doesn't bend the personality so much as subvert it. Loosen the screws. Drugs can disinhibit you, bring out latent personality traits. But they can't make you into a murderer if fundamentally you're not.”
“And Olivia?” Chip asked.
“Not.” I was pretty sure of that.
Chip cocked his head, pressed his lips together, and closed one eye at me. “Okay. So, let's say Olivia Temple didn't do it. And it's not suicide. Who elseâ?”
“Isn't it enough just to cast doubt?” I asked.
“Reasonable doubt. But a jury wants plausible alternatives. Let's see, there's her father,” Chip said. “Financial problems. He have a girlfriend?” I didn't respond. “Know if Drew has an alibi?”
Chip and Annie looked at me. I swallowed. “I don't know,” I said. “I tried to call him after I found Channing, and his assistant couldn't reach him for about thirty minutes.”
Chip took notes. “Did Channing have any enemies?” he asked.
Channing had managed to piss off any number of people over the years. But I wasn't about to offer them up as sacrificial lambs. Finally, I said, “She had a few. Channing was a radical. She never lost her distrust of the establishment.”
Chip looked up. “Sounds as if I would have liked her.”
“You would have. Soul mates, in fact.”
“People don't usually get killed over professional differences,” Annie said.
She was right. There were other ways to handle thoseâtidier and almost as destructive. “No one had to kill Channing to discredit her work,” I said. “It was already happening. There was a scathing review of her research in a medical journal a few weeks ago. Then there were rumors about improprieties. I don't know exactly what kind of boundary violations, or if the allegations have merit. No disciplinary hearing. She suspected that they were replacing her as head of the Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Unit, and I think she was right. On top of all that, the files documenting her research have gone missing.”
Chip whistled. “Any idea who might have taken them?”
“No,” I said. But I guess it didn't sound too convincing, because Annie responded, “Peter, come on.”
“Liam Jensen. He claims he hasn't got them. But when I visited him in his office the other day, he had an overflowing file drawer he kept trying to push shut with his foot. Purple file folders were sticking out, and if you ask me, he's not the purple type.”
“Isn't he the one who had a screaming fight with Channing at the end of her party?” Annie asked.
I nodded.
It was after six-thirty by the time we finished up. I called and left a message for Jess, asking her to give Olivia some more cognitive tests the next morning.
I said good-bye to Chip, and Annie walked me out. “It wouldn't be hard to get into Dr. Jensen's office.” Annie said it nonchalantly, as if she was suggesting a stroll on the banks of the Charles.
“Break in?” I asked.
“Just to check what he's got in that file drawer. He'll never know anyone was there.”
I wanted to help Olivia. I'd do just about anything to keep Channing's research from being consigned to oblivion. But breaking into a colleague's office was definitely over the line.
Annie pressed, “You searched Channing's office, didn't you?”
“It's not the same. Channing's dead. And one of the hospital administrators let me in. Going into Jensen's office without his permission, without anyone's permissionâthat would be another thing entirely,” I said. I tried to sound outraged. But I was considering the possibility. If we just looked for the research data, avoided looking at confidential patient records â¦
Annie saw her opening. “It'll be easy.”
I found myself asking, “How easy?”
“Real easy. Trust me.” I always get worried when Annie says that. “Who knows, someone could be shredding the files right this moment, as we speak.”