Dante's Poison (5 page)

“And if I think he's squeaky clean?”

“Then we'll take it from there. Are you game?”

I thought about it. Since I'd begun doing it, most of my expert engagements had involved the poor and relatively downtrodden. A well-off shrink in a malpractice suit wasn't an obvious candidate for my sympathy. But if the guy had never been in trouble before . . . I put myself in his shoes. Maybe he was just being defensive; maybe he really
had
done everything by the book. Either way, I knew what he was going through. I lived with the same soul-crushing doubt every waking moment. If nothing else, maybe I could help
him
sleep better at night.

“OK,” I said. “But no promises about what I'll conclude.”

“I wouldn't have it any other way.”

We made arrangements to meet at Rusty's office in a few days' time. In the meantime, he'd send over a copy of the file. After setting down the receiver, I sat still for a moment before remembering it was late in the day and checking my watch. 5:25. If I didn't race out the door that minute, I'd be late for my date with Hallie and could look forward to a death-defying sprint through traffic to get to the Court Theater on time. I grabbed my jacket and cane from the door, turned the knob, and ran straight into . . . Jonathan.

A few hours later, Hallie was still giving me the Sub Zero treatment over missing the first act of
Mourning Becomes Electra
.

“It's not my fault there was a Kenny Chesney concert at Soldier Field.”

Hallie didn't answer.

“Or that there was a speed trap just after the Eisenhower.”

She coasted her MG down a ramp.

“I said I'd pay for the ticket, didn't I?”

More silence.

Hallie and I had met the previous spring. A mentally handicapped patient of mine, Charlie Dickerson, was talked into a murder confession by the police, and not understanding what I was getting into, I volunteered to testify that he wasn't competent to waive his
Miranda
rights. If you put aside some of my youthful near-misses with the law, it was my first introduction to the criminal justice system. Under Hallie's tutelage, I'd learned all the tricks in trade of an expert witness: how to sound spontaneous despite long hours of rehearsal, when to offer information and when to shut up, and most important of all, what to do when opposing counsel has just driven a stake through the heart of your testimony. (Smile pleasantly and act as though nothing has happened.) My first cross-examination was abysmal, but it hooked me on courtroom work, and to my surprise, many lawyers found my blindness a plus. It mesmerized juries and spooked the other side, who handled me with uncommon courtesy to avoid appearing insensitive to the handicapped. I soon found myself in demand as a hired gun, which pleased my hospital's publicity department even if it fueled the resentment of colleagues like Jonathan.

Hallie was smart, funny, and direct. Based on Josh's survey, she was also wildly attractive, with the Latin coloring and ample curves I'd always found hardest to resist. She had a sweet scent that hovered between fresh figs and vanilla, and a husky contralto I could listen to for hours. And those weren't her only attractions. Her older brother, Geraldo, was born two months early during the sixties, when preemies were still treated with artificially high levels of oxygen to speed their lung development. Gerry's lungs turned out fine; his retinas didn't fare as well. Growing up with a blind sibling meant Hallie was immune to the tortured syntax and irritating over-solicitousness I'd come to expect from virtually all new acquaintances. Words like
look
and
see
didn't stick in her throat, her directions were never more than I needed, and she didn't hesitate to tell me when there was ketchup on my tie. Best of all, if she harbored any sympathy for me, she kept it to herself.

My feelings for Hallie were far from casual, but so far I'd pretended not to notice that she wanted more out of our relationship than a BFF. My therapist was disappointed. His name was Harvey, which inevitably made me think of a large, pale person with over-developed ears, when in fact (easy to tell) he was no taller than me. I'd been seeing him once a week, part of a deal I'd struck with Sep when I was in danger of losing my job. According to Harvey, healthy relationships with the opposite sex were part of my Learning To Forgive Myself program, which sounded a lot like Alcoholics Anonymous minus the abstinence and all the meetings. (Step One: admit you are powerless before your guilt. Step Two: admit you need help from a “higher power” you aren't quite sure you believe in.) Harvey thought Hallie was good for me, overriding my objection that I'd only end up driving her away. “If you're comfortable with her and she with you, that's all that matters at this point. Stop overanalyzing the situation,” he said. Which was funny advice coming from another shrink.

Hallie brought the car to a stop in front of my building and yanked irascibly at the emergency brake while I attempted to get the conversation going again. “Are you still there? I'm beginning to feel like Helen Keller.”

“Then you'll understand why my lips aren't moving.”

Ouch.
This was worse than I'd thought. I turned in my seat to face her, aiming for a contrite expression. “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you? I could stand on my head. Or perform a song and dance routine with my cane.”

She relented a bit. “You could start by pretending you had a good time tonight.”

“What do you mean? I enjoyed every minute of it.”

“Nice try. You were fidgeting so much I'm surprised they didn't charge you for a new carpet square. The couple next to you kept looking over, trying to get my attention. I think they were worried you were going to start foaming at the mouth.”

I squirmed under the description. I'd always been a bit loose around the knee, but the tendency had grown much worse since I lost my sight, especially when I was feeling tense. “That bad, huh? OK, I admit I found four hours of incest, adultery, murder, and suicide a little hard to stomach.”

“I thought so.”

“And I wasn't crazy about the ending, either.”

“Why? What was wrong with it?”

“Orin's suicide. Remember the play notes you read to me while we were waiting to get in? The ones about the Greek myth the play is based on? In the Agamemnon cycle, Athena pardons Orestes so he doesn't have to spend the rest of his life being driven insane by the Furies. O'Neill should have stuck to the original.”

“And given Orin a pass? He killed two people, including his mother.”

“If I heard correctly, she shot herself.”

She waved this off. “He did everything but pull the trigger.”

“Spoken like a true ex-prosecutor.”

“You'd feel the same way if you'd tried some of the people I did. Orin was a sick boy, but he deserved everything he got. I remember when we tried Donald Tesma. You'll never get me to say a monster like that shouldn't get the needle.”

I was impressed. Tesma was a notorious physician-turned-serial killer who'd murdered dozens of nursing-home patients by spiking their intravenous fluid with substances that mimicked natural death. He was eventually caught, convicted, and, if I remembered right, hanged himself in prison. “You tried Tesma?”

“Not exactly. I was the junior lawyer on the team, so the only time they let me out of the library was to watch Jane's closing argument.” I'd heard about Jane Barrett too. They'd met at the State's Attorney's office when Hallie was a rookie assistant and Jane was heading up the felony division. Hallie rarely gushed about anyone, but listening to her talk about Jane was like sitting through a reading from
The Lives of the Saints
. Each had since left the office—Hallie to start a white-collar practice at a big Loop firm, and Jane to head her own litigation boutique.

“You should have seen the jurors' faces,” Hallie was saying. “They were weeping as hard as if Tesma had done away with their own loved ones.”

“But Tesma didn't get the death penalty.”

“Sadly, no. The handicapping back at the County Building was that the jury took pity on his son. The boy's mother had run off years ago and Tesma was the only family he had. Kid was sixteen at the time and wept even harder than the jurors.”

“How'd the jurors get to see him? Surely he wasn't in the courtroom?”

“Not only that, but they put him on the stand during the penalty phase to plead for his father's life. I don't think I'll ever forget how he looked in the witness box.”

I was horrified. “Now that's what I call criminal. The poor kid shouldn't have been within a hundred miles of that courtroom.”

“Tell me about it. The defense team didn't have a choice. We were told Daddy insisted on it. Like I said, a real monster.”

“Still, even without the child there, I would have voted the same way.”

“I didn't know you were such a bleeding heart,” she said, amused.

“I'm not. It's just that there's a growing consensus in my field that people like Tesma are born that way—without a conscience.”

“That there's such a thing as a murder gene, you mean?”

“Maybe. Studies involving identical twins point strongly to an inherited component, possibly in as much as one percent of the male population. Female psychopaths are much rarer. The interesting thing is not all of them end up killers. Some who fit the diagnostic criteria end up as politicians or running big corporations. So there must be a nurture piece as well. Whatever the cause, it's clear that psychopaths don't feel empathy or remorse the way normal people do. We should be trying to cure them, not putting them to death.”

Hallie laughed. “Spoken like a true psychiatrist. Next thing you know, you'll be trying to rationalize away the Nuremberg Trials. But seriously, what does that say about our justice system—about any justice system? If people aren't responsible for their crimes, doesn't the whole thing fall apart?”

“I wouldn't go that far. When we started out talking I was simply expressing the opinion that for most people the guilt from having ended another person's life is its own punishment.” I was thinking not only of myself but of someone I'd put away recently, now languishing in a downstate prison. “That's my real problem with what O'Neill was saying. If you ask me, the damned
do
cry—and sometimes the hardest.”

“I'm the one who should be damned for suggesting that play,” Hallie said, reaching over to pat my knee in a conciliatory gesture. “I had no idea it would upset you.”

“I'm not upset,” I said.

“You're also a terrible liar. I'm just glad you didn't have to look at the Kabuki masks.”

“Which no doubt
would
have sent me into fits.”

I struggled with where to go next. We'd reached the point in the evening when it was time to say our good-byes, a parting ritual that was becoming increasingly strained. I made a show of flipping the crystal on my watch and fingering the dial. “It's late. I should let you get home.”

Hallie let out a sigh.

I thought if there was ever a time when I should clear the air, this was it. “Hallie,” I began.

She stopped me with a hand to my arm. “It's OK.”

“No, it isn't.”

“Really. You don't have to explain.”

The dejection in her voice made me wince. I wanted to carry her upstairs, throw her on my bed, and screw her brains out. Instead, I went on with the speech I'd been mentally rehearsing for the better part of the evening. “Listen, I know you've been waiting for me to say something about, umm . . . us.”

There. I'd gotten started.

I continued with mounting confidence. “And I want you to know it's got nothing to do with you.”

“Of course it doesn't.”

“It's me that's the problem.”

She laughed bitterly. “If I had a dime for every time a guy said that to me I'd be living in Kenilworth.”

I could see this wasn't coming out right.

“That's not what I meant. What I meant was—”

She stopped me again. “Anyway, it's not like I haven't been turned down before.”

I'm not turning you down
, I wanted to shout. “No, wait. You don't understand—”

She put the key back in the ignition. “Like I said, no hard feelings.”

I reached over to stop her. “Please. Please just listen for a moment.”

“Okaaay,” Hallie said, drawing the syllables out. “I'm all ears.”

Now that I finally had her full attention, I found it almost impossible to go on. My mouth had gone dry and my telltale knee was shaking.
Fuck. I was losing it already.
I swallowed hard and said, “You see, I'm not—”

Right at that moment, Providence—or maybe it was another one of my bad genies—intervened. My lips were still forming the words
what you think I am
when a cell phone started ringing in the neighborhood of the dashboard. Hallie plucked it from the jack and scanned the caller. “I'm sorry,” she said, “but I have to take this.” I listened while a series of low-pitched squawks came over the wire. “What?!” she said. “On what charge? . . . That's absurd! Hold on a sec—”