Desperate Measures (33 page)

On the way back to Eugene, Barbara told Shelley what they had learned. “What it means to me personally,” she added at the end, “is that I'd better clean my damn stove. If there had been grease in the burner well, or around it, that place would be ashes.”

“What it also means,” Frank said, breaking his long silence, “is that the stove in Marchand's house was turned on no later than twenty-five minutes before seven, and that doesn't allow time for anyone to park on Opal Creek Road and get there through the orchard after the boys left.”

No one said another word all the way back to Frank's house.

29

It was Friday
,
and Bailey had already left the weekly conference; Barbara had had nothing for him to do in the next few days.

Earlier that day, as part of discovery, Barbara had received the prosecution's statement from a psychologist, an expert witness who claimed that a severely disfigured, violent youth would in all likelihood be a violent adult, with violence sometimes suppressed for years but ready to erupt with the right provocation. It was a long evaluation, full of psychobabble, but that was the gist of it.

Shelley's hands were shaking when she put the report down on the coffee table. “He's full of shit! He never even talked to Alex!”

“They'll try to show that he's violent, and I can refute that,” Barbara said. “They don't have a case, damn it! It's all circumstantial.”

“And you know as well as I do that circumstantial cases are the norm, not the exception,” Frank said. “A jury that becomes sympathetic to the defendant might want more than that, but Judge Mac has seen too much to be swayed by personal sympathy—or antipathy, either. And an awful lot of people are serving time based on the outcome of circumstantial cases.”

She glared at the chart she had placed on an easel earlier; it showed the times that Daniel had run home, when he left, how long the boys waited, when the stove must have been turned on, when the smoke alarm alerted Bakken and the inspector….

“All right, I'll give Judge Mac something else to chew on,” she said angrily. “Leona did it herself. Gus found out she was using birth-control pills and had a fit, and she ended the argument with a hammer.”

Frank did not say a word, and Shelley looked embarrassed. “Another alternative,” Barbara said. “Daniel ran in and Gus screamed at him for riding around the countryside in a kid's car, and he ended the argument with the hammer.”

“Or maybe Gus hit himself in the head,” Frank said.

“I like that one best,” Barbara said. Maria buzzed then to say that Dr. Minick had arrived, and Barbara went to the door to admit him. She had asked him to come while Alex was at the computer in XandersRealm that afternoon. He came in carrying a magazine.

He nodded to Frank and smiled at Shelley, then seated himself on the sofa and put the magazine,
The New Yorker
, down on the table. “What happened?” he asked.

“Two things,” Barbara said. She handed him the psychological evaluation. “Will you read through this, and then give your take on it?”

He glanced at it, then back to her. “Jacoby's a whore, you understand. A paid witness. You could have hired him to say the opposite of whatever he says here.”

“I know. But read it.”

He read it carefully, then put it down. “Statistically he's right,” he said. “Violent youths often become violent adults. Without intervention—counseling and behavioral therapy, sometimes medication—that happens more often than not. Violence has to have an object—the self, objects, things, property, or other people—and there often is a progression from wreaking violence against objects or animals long before violence is directed at other people, or the self. But, Barbara, Alex had intervention, both therapy and counseling, and from an expert. He is not a violent young man.”

“Can you refute that report, or should we find our own hired gun to do it?”

“I can, but would my testimony be considered unbiased?”

She was grateful that he had brought up the point himself. That would have been her next question. “Can you advise us about whom to get?”

He nodded. “I'll give you several names. You said two things. What's the other one?”

“Your name has been added to the list of witnesses for the prosecution. You will be called as a hostile witness.”

“I won't testify against Alex!” he said vehemently. “They can't force a doctor to reveal doctor-patient confidences.”

“They will call you, and you will be compelled to testify regarding the progress reports you made to the New York City authorities, and to the hospital where Alex was a patient. Those reports have all been subpoenaed, and you will have to testify concerning what you wrote in them.”

“Why? They have the reports.”

“It's always more effective to drag the answers from an unwilling witness,” she said. “You and I have to go over those reports and that statement,” she said, pointing to the evaluation. “I have to know exactly what's in them, what it all means.”

Dr. Minick stood up and walked across the office to gaze at the time chart on the easel. After a few moments he turned back to face the group at the coffee table. “I never dreamed this would go this far,” he said. He sounded hoarse. “I thought, when you managed to keep Alex out of jail, that you would find a way out of this for him. A neighbor with a real grudge, perhaps. Alex didn't do it, but they'll convict him, won't they? Barbara, I have to go to the police and tell the truth. I killed Gus Marchand. I walked over; we had an argument, a fierce fight actually, and I lost control, picked up the hammer and swung it.”

She stared at him, aghast, and furious. “You do that and you seal his conviction! They'll know he did it and that you know it and are trying to protect him! That's the most idiotic thing you could do!” She jumped up.

Before she could say more, Frank said very kindly, “She's right, you know. That's the sort of gesture a loving father would make to save his child. And they know that, too.”

Dr. Minick didn't move for a few seconds; then he seemed to sag in on himself, as if their words had weighted him down. “That isn't why I know he's innocent,” he said, gazing at a distant point. “I know him better than he knows himself. The violence is gone, sublimated in his art; he doesn't need it any longer. As soon as I learned that the fingerprints had been wiped from the hammer, I knew beyond any doubt that he had not done it. Alex wouldn't hurt anyone, and Alexander has been banished for many years. At one time Alexander might have lashed out, but he wouldn't have been able to think clearly enough to get rid of his fingerprints; it was blind, irrational fury driving him. Wiping the hammer was a very deliberate act.”

Frank said, “Just how much weight do you think anyone will grant your assessment? You say he's not violent; Jacoby says he is, or can be. Are we dealing with a dual personality here, a Jekyll and Hyde? Is an evil twin in the wings hankering to get out? You say his art has compensated for a lot; I say his art is mediocre at best, and he must know that, or he's even more delusional than I thought. I think it's time to let me in on the secret of Alex/Alexander, and if I can't be trusted with it, I should excuse myself and go fishing.”

Dr. Minick had not moved as Frank spoke; now he walked back to the table and picked up the magazine he had placed there. He opened it to a full-page cartoon and handed it to Frank. “It's an advance copy,” he said. “That's Alex's work.”

Frank studied the cartoon, then Dr. Minick's face. He turned to Barbara and she nodded. “I'll be damned,” he said. “He's X?”

“And he draws the comic strip
Xander
,” Dr. Minick said. He sat down again.

“Christ on a mountain!” Frank exploded. “Why haven't you revealed this? It proves he had nothing to gain and everything to lose. He's no longer just a poor reclusive freak who's probably psychotic, living the life of a hermit.”

For the next several minutes Dr. Minick and Shelley explained Alex to Frank, who was not convinced.

Wearily then Barbara said, “Dad, can you imagine what it would be like? His face on the tabloids,
People
magazine? Low-flying aircraft with photographers using telephoto lenses, people sneaking in through the woods, sob stories, baby pictures, interviews with his parents, their reaction to the way he's drawn them, Baba Wawa laying her hand on his knee with big fat tears crawling down her face….” She shook her head. “He's seen that future and he prefers not to go there.”

‘'I'm talking about saving his life,” Frank said sharply, “not his vanity. He can buy a place farther out in the country, a place with hundreds of acres and a high fence.”

“A prison isn't defined by how many square feet are enclosed,” Shelley said. “He'll kill off X and
Xander
if he's exposed. Kids relate to
Xander
now, the hero, because he's like them—normal, fallible, vulnerable, idealistic. But if it's known that a freak draws that strip, if the artist becomes the center instead of the character, it would be worthless. He won't live in prison, one of his own or one chosen by the state.”

“Dad,” Barbara said when Frank waved Shelley's comments away angrily, “Alex has grounded himself through X and
Xander
. They are his whip and his chair to keep the beast in check. If he loses them, or has to give them up…” She spread her hands. “His real fear isn't of prison, and it isn't of dying. His real fear is of Alexander, that he might come roaring back to life.”

Dr. Minick had been listening and watching. Now he nodded with a tormented expression. “Exactly so,” he said.

Silenced, Frank leaned back in his chair.

After a moment Barbara said to Dr. Minick, “Can you come back tomorrow, spend some time going over Jacoby's statement? I have so much to do, taking an hour off to drive out and back is time I should use doing something else.”

“Come out to the house tomorrow,” Frank said. “Bring Alex, and I'll make us all something to eat. You, too,” he said to Shelley.

After Dr. Minick left and Shelley returned to her own office, Frank regarded Barbara somberly. “You realize he still might confess,” he said. “And I doubt he'd wait for a verdict to do it. He's no dummy. He knows what that time chart means.”

She nodded. “And he will make it look good if he does. Goddamn it!” She slapped a paper down on her desk. “I wish I knew what that stupid time chart means!” She walked over to glare at it.

An hour or two earlier Frank had known exactly what the chart meant, and now he no longer did. What one knows can change abruptly, he thought, as he had thought before. Only belief and faith persisted. “I wish I knew why Gus Marchand never filed a formal complaint against Alex,” he said.

“What do you mean?” Barbara asked.

“If he really believed Alex was endangering his child, stalking her, why did he stop with a verbal threat to build houses? Something he couldn't have carried out.”

“He knew it was a lie,” she said after a moment. “He must have known it was a lie.”

“Maybe.”

“You stopped believing Alex was a murderer, and now, if I read you right, you don't believe Dr. Minick is, either. Why?”

“As for Alex, the pen is mightier than the hammer, too. He has a superior weapon to use in his own defense. And Graham? I think he would be capable of killing for Alex, and he's ready to sacrifice himself, but I don't think he would put Alex through the hell of being charged and facing trial. He would have confessed months ago if he had done it.”

She had not thought of Dr. Minick in those terms, but she nodded. Frank was talking about how a father would fight and die for his child, and Frank knew.

Frank stood up. “I'll leave you to get to things,” he said. At the door he paused. “Do you really believe Alex would kill himself if he's found guilty?”

She nodded. “Also if he's exposed.” Then she said, “If you looked like him, would you want to keep living in a fishbowl?”

“I don't know,” Frank said slowly. “So help me God, I don't know.”

Later, when Shelley checked in to say she was leaving, Barbara said tiredly, “I told you fifty-hour weeks. I lied. How many hours do you reckon you've put in this week?”

Shelley shrugged. “Who counts? Are you staying longer? Do you have anything for me to do?”

“I'm staying awhile, and nothing for you. But tomorrow, if Alex comes with Dr. Minick, will you two reenact Daniel's movements when he reached the house? He said he met his mother in the hall and carried a box out to her car for her, not running, I'd guess, and then ran back in and upstairs to get money from his other jeans. Back down and out the front door. Start and stop right at the door. Dad's house isn't exact, but close enough probably to what the Marchand house is like inside. Can do? Take the stopwatch.”

“Can do. Alex will show up. I spoke on the phone with him; he'll come.” She looked at Barbara curiously. “You don't really think Daniel had time to get into a fight with his father and kill him, do you?”

“Honey chile, I think the Wicked Witch of the West did the foul deed. There wasn't enough time for
anyone
to go in and start a fight, apparently. Maybe it was a fight of long standing and it just ended that day. Anyway, I'm going for the nanoseconds now.”

She didn't know how many miles she had walked from her desk to the reception room, back, stopping now and then to make a note, walking again. She was in the reception room when there was a tap on the door, and Frank called out.

“Barbara, open up.”

She opened the door.

“I saw your lights. Bobby, have you had anything to eat? What are you thinking of, skipping meals— What's wrong?” His voice went from irritable scold to concern in a flash.