Projection (2 page)

Hancock had hired me as a forensic psychiatrist for the Lynn Police Department dozens of times, including the case that ended with Trevor Lucas’ arrest.  When she had run for mayor of Lynn, I figured I was about to lose my meal ticket, but she'd lost that election, then been promoted from captain to Commissioner.  "I thought you valued my independent thinking," I said.

"I'm already paying you two hundred fifty an hour.  If I value your independence any more, the department's gonna go broke."

I ran my fingertip back and forth over the word
sin
.  "What do you think the jury will do?" I asked.

"Convict.  Two counts, murder one."

"If he's found NGI he still goes away a long time."

"Time isn't the point."

"What's the point, then?"  I took a gulp of coffee.

"Like the Bible says, ‘An eye for an eye.’"  Hancock often quoted Scripture.  Unmarried and childless, she had focused her love on work and church.  She crossed and uncrossed her legs, obviously uncomfortable in the gray flannel skirt she was wearing.  Street clothes went with the Commissioner's job, but they didn't go with Hancock's demeanor.  "Glad to see you dressed for court.  With that pony-tail of yours you could do some fine undercover work — as a dealer."

I was wearing jeans, a black turtleneck and black cowboy boots, pretty much what I always wore.  "The jeans are only a couple of years old," I joked.

Hancock was looking away and shaking her head.

"It's not like I'm on the stand today."  I saw the muscles in her jaw working against each other and realized she was listening to her own thoughts, not me.  She started clicking the long, red nails of her thumb and forefinger together.  That was a bad sign.  "Emma," I said.  "You there?"

"I want Lucas in prison, not some cushy hospital."

"What difference does it make, so long as he's off the street?"

She turned and squinted at me.  "‘What
difference
does it make?’  Obviously, you haven't spent much time in places like Concord."

"I've evaluated prisoners there."

"Sure, in some interview room, with waxed floors and a Mr. Coffee outside the door.  I mean the bowels of the place — the filthy, rodent-infested, eight-by-eight cages where they warehouse monsters like Lucas."

"No.  I haven't seen those."

"It's hell on earth," she said, toying with the gold cross around her neck.  "Terrible things are allowed to go on.  Beatings.  Rapes.  Stabbings."

"Torture."

"Punishment.  I want him to suffer for what he did to Monique."

I didn't want to argue social policy with Hancock where her niece's accused killer was involved, but I'd never had much use for the penal system.  "I thought we were supposed to be rehabilitating people."  I half-smiled.

"Now there's the bleeding heart shrink I know and love.  All excited about reclaiming a soul.  You think you could heal Lucas, make him all better?"

I shook my head.  I had shut down my psychotherapy practice when an adolescent boy I had been treating committed suicide.  I wasn't sure any more how much help I could be to anyone.  And Lucas, while no killer, was a very sick character.  One of his passions had been hunting for vulnerable women, usually naked dancers, and bartering cosmetic surgery for sex.  They had to pay him back with the sadomasochistic games he liked, whenever he liked.  The games could get pretty ugly.  "I couldn't heal him," I said, "but maybe somebody.  I don't know."

Well, I
do
.  Evil only comprehends raw force."  She finished her coffee and tossed the cup in the garbage.  "Anyhow, it's too late for Lucas.  If he needed help, he should have gone and gotten it before he butchered two good people."

I knew Monique's death had left Hancock in that cold space between grief and rage.  "I can't begin to think what it's like for you sitting in that courtroom," I said, hoping she would open up.

She steered clear of the invitation.  "King has no chance with the NGI plea," she said, shaking her head.  "He would have been better off working the ‘
they've got the wrong man
’ angle.  Sanger can be a pain in the ass, but he's sharp.  We don't have a single decent lead on the copycat killer, and he knows it.  So does that jury, if they read the
Item
.  All it takes to gum up the works is one good citizen who's watched too many
Perry Mason
reruns."

My guilty conscience spoke:  "You think there's a chance they'll acquit Lucas based on reasonable doubt even without King raising the issue?"

"No way.  King would have had to put the single-killer argument front and center, then stand his ground like a great oak.  And it still would have been a hundred-to-one shot."  She shook her head.  "Lucas is going down.  Premeditated murder, with extreme atrocity and cruelty.  Life in prison, no possibility of parole.  I just wish we had the death penalty back on the books.  I'd pull the switch myself."

I didn't respond.  Half a minute passed in silence.

"You seem a little out of it today," Hancock said.  "Any news on Kathy?"

My skin turned to goose flesh.  I'd been living with Kathy during the murders.  "Still no sign of her.  Just the one-way airline reservation to London.  She could have gone anywhere from there."

"I don't get that.  She just up and left?"

"Once we called it quits, there wasn't a lot to stick around for.  She was completely estranged from her family."

"Still, one day she's the star obstetrician at Stonehill Hospital, the next she throws it all away and takes off for another country."

"She was unpredictable."

"So were you, Francis — with your intentions.  Not that it's any of my business."

"My intentions?"

"Did you expect her to live in sin forever?  She's a Catholic."  She paused.  "Not to mention your ‘extracurricular’ activities.  You never made a secret of your wandering eye."

I had even less desire to talk sex and religion with Hancock than I did social policy.  "Maybe she'll be back someday," I said dismissively.

"Anything's possible," Hancock said.  "People will surprise you, usually when you least expect it."

*            *            *

Red Donovan stood at the prosecution table and buried the fingers of one hand in his hair.  He blew out a long breath.  "Lets' see if I followed everything you had to say, doctor," he started.  His voice was a street-fighter's rasp.  "The defendant believes his right arm has a will of its own.  Is that about the long and short of it?"

"Not exactly," Elmonte said flatly.

"No?"

"Dr. Lucas is unshakably convinced the arm is not only beyond his control, but that it does not belong to him.  It is Satan's arm."

I heard Hancock clear her throat.  She had taken a seat in the middle of the front row, just behind the defense table.  I was on the aisle, near the door.

Donovan held up his hands.  "My mistake."  He walked around to the front of the table.  "The defendant believes his right arm is owned and operated by the devil."

"You could put it that way."

"Kind of like a franchise."

A few jurors chuckled.

"Objection," Josiah King said, rising out of his seat.

"Sustained," Barton said.  He looked at Donovan.  "You are welcome in my courtroom — as an attorney.  If you've decided to become a comic, you'll need to find another stage."

Donovan nodded.  "Pardon me."  He paused.  "Are you aware, Dr. Elmonte, of Dr. Lucas’ activities on the days that Sarah Johnston and Monique Peletier were murdered?"

"I'm aware of some of his activities."

"Are you aware he performed surgery on three patients on each of those days?"

Elmonte straightened up in her seat.  As the fabric of her blouse shifted, I noticed it was unbuttoned lower than courtroom etiquette would dictate, showing the top of her white lace bra.  "I was not aware of the number of surgeries, but..."

Donovan walked back to the table and picked up a folder.  He turned to Elmonte.  "In fact," he said, reading from the folder, "he removed a basal cell carcinoma from one patient's nose, performed two blastoplasties — what are those?"

"Blepharoplasty involves excision of superfluous tissue from the eyelids."

"OK.  Two lid jobs."  He smiled.  "A rhinoplasty.  I know that one:  it's a nose job.  And two liposuctions — that would be sucking fat from thighs and tummies and what have you."  He tossed the folder back on the table.  "Is Dr. Lucas right-handed or left-handed?"

"He's right-handed."

"And that's the hand owned and operated by Satan."

Another chuckle from a juror.

"Mr. Donovan," Barton deadpanned.  "Careful."

Donovan nodded.  He was playing with fire, and he knew it.  Robert ‘Buzz’ Barton, also known  as the ‘Rock,’ was one of the smartest and toughest Superior Court judges in the country.

Barton looked down at Elmonte.  "Answer the question, doctor," he said.

"The right hand is the one afflicted," Elmonte said.

"Well then, Dr. Elmonte, how do we understand Dr. Lucas performing complicated surgical procedures with that hand on the days in question?"

"The fact that Dr. Lucas suffers with
alien hand
does not necessarily prevent him from performing some behaviors he has mastered.  Technical work like surgery can become quite automatic."

"Is it possible that Dr. Lucas believed that Satan conducted those surgeries?"

"I would assume that is exactly what he believed."

"You would assume."

"To a reasonable degree of medical certainty," she deadpanned.

"You didn't ask him directly?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I didn't need to. 
Alien hand
is a major mental illness.  It doesn't come and go like a headache."

"Why didn't he sign Satan's name to the invoices?"

"Objection!" King shouted.

"In fact, he signed the bills under his own name totaling thirty-two thousand dollars for those procedures on those very days," Donovan went on.  "With his right hand."

"That's irrelevant," King said.  "Dr. Lucas’ income and billing practices are not—"

"The objection is...," Barton started.

"Your Honor," Donovan argued, "those billings go directly to the defendant's mental state on the days of the murders.  He had the self-control to perform delicate surgeries and even the presence of mind to oversee the bookkeeping.  But we're being asked to believe his hand was possessed by the devil."

"As I was about to say, Mr. Donovan, the objection is overruled.  But I'm warning you:  the court does not appreciate your tone."

"Understood.  Thank you."  Donovan walked toward Elmonte.  He stopped about six feet from her.  "Isn't it possible, doctor, that the defendant is fabricating his symptoms?"

"There is almost no possibility," Elmonte said.

"Why do you say that?"

"The psychological testing we administered to Dr. Lucas, including both the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and the Rorschoch, showed him to be minimizing his symptoms.  He was trying to appear less sick than he is, not more sick."

"But the defendant is a pretty smart guy, isn't he?"

"Dr. Lucas scores in the extremely gifted range," she said.  "Under more ideal testing conditions, he would certainly reach the genius level."  She smirked.  "He's a ‘pretty smart guy.’"

"Truly."  Donovan paused.  "You admire him."

"Objection," King said.

"Could that affect the test results?" Donovan pressed.

"Sustained," Barton said.  He glared at Donovan.  "Last chance."

"Wouldn't such a
gifted
man," Donovan continued, "be able to figure out what answers to give on a standardized test, so as to appear one way versus the other?  Say, ill versus depraved?"

"The tests are very sensitive.  They generally detect when someone is lying."

"Generally."

"Almost always."

"Isn't it the case that the tests are less reliable when administered to individuals who are legally sane, but have severe character pathology — psychopaths and sociopaths?"

"It is correct that the tests are somewhat—"

I heard a shriek from the front of the courtroom.  I jumped up and saw the stenographer cover her mouth, her eyes wide with terror.

Lucas was clutching Josiah King's gold fountain pen in his fist, high above his head.  He drove his fist down to the table.

Several jurors turned away.  Others gasped and leaned forward for a better view.  An elderly woman in the first row broke down in tears.  The television cameras panned the courtroom like hungry aliens, their lenses spinning into focus here, then there, feasting on the turmoil.

King lunged to restrain Lucas, but couldn't stop the pen from rising and falling a second, then a third time.  Blood sprayed from the pen as it arced up and down.

"Security!" Barton shouted.

The guard rushed to help.  Together they managed to force Lucas into a headlock, with his arms in the air.  I saw that the center of his hand was punctured in three places.  Blood streamed down his arm.

Barton hammered away with his gavel.  "Remove the defendant!" he seethed.

Another guard had rushed in from the lobby.  Each of them wrestled control of one of Lucas’ arms and one of his legs and started to carry him out.

My eyes met Lucas’ as he passed by.  "Clevenger!" he screamed.  He threw his head back to keep looking at me.

My stomach fell.  I felt a wave of nausea coming.  I slipped out of the courtroom amid the chaos and climbed into my Ram truck — a silver ’89 I'd taken in trade for a ’94 Range Rover I'd fallen behind on.  I lighted another cigarette and filled my lungs with smoke, holding my breath as long as I could.  I did that again, then started the car and headed past the boarded storefronts of Union Street and onto the Lynnway, toward Boston.  As the road curved past the Schooner Pub I pictured the bar, stocked with single malt scotches.  A few ounces, and I'd be rid of the churning in my gut.  I could almost taste the bronze-colored liquid, the aroma blanketing me, the warmth spreading down my throat.  I gritted my teeth and accelerated past the place, frightened by how much I wanted to turn in.