Ehrengraf for the Defense (18 page)

“Setting fires,” McCandless went on.
“Breaking windows. Doing cars.”

“Doing cars?”

“Teachers’ cars,” the young man explained.
“Icepicking the tires, or sugaring the gas tank, or keying the
paint job. Or doing the windows.”

“Bricking them,” Ehrengraf suggested.

“I suppose you could call it that. That’s
what’s hard to believe, Mr. Ehrengraf. That I did those
things.”

“I see.”

“I used to be like that,” he said, and
frowned in thought. “Or maybe I just used to
think
I was
that way, and that’s why I did bad things.”

“Ah,” Ehrengraf said.

“All along I was innocent,” McCandless said,
groping for the truth. “But I didn’t know it, I had this belief I
was bad, and when I was a little kid it made me do bad things.”

“Precisely.”

“And I got in trouble, and they blamed me
even when I didn’t do anything bad, and that convinced me I was
really bad, bad clear to the bone. And...and...”

The youth put his head in his hands and
sobbed.

“There, there,” Ehrengraf said softly, and
clapped him on the shoulder.

After a moment McCandless got hold of himself
and said, “But little Bobby Bickerstaff. I can’t get over it.”

“He killed your parents,” Ehrengraf said.

“It’s so hard to believe. I always thought of
him as a little goody-goody.”

“A nice quiet boy,” Ehrengraf said.

“Yeah, well, those are the ones who lose it,
aren’t they? They pop off one day and the neighbors can’t believe
it, same as I can’t believe it myself about Bobby. What was the
name of the couple he killed?”

“Roger and Sheila Capstone.”

“I didn’t know them,” McCandless said, “but
they lived in the same neighborhood as my folks, in the same kind
of house. And was she in a wheelchair the same as my mom?”

“It was Mr. Capstone who was
wheelchair-bound,” Ehrengraf said. “He’d been crippled in an
automobile accident.”

“Poor guy. And little Bobby Bickerstaff
emptied a clip into him, and another into his wife.”

“So it seems.”

“Meek little Bobby. Whacked them both, then
went into the bathroom and wrote something on the mirror.”

“It was Mrs. Capstone’s dressing table
mirror,” Ehrengraf said. “And he used her lipstick to write his
last message.”

“‘This is the last time. God forgive
me.’”

“His very words.”

“And then he put on the woman’s underwear,”
McCandless said, “or maybe he put it on before, who knows, and then
he popped a fresh clip in his gun and stuck the business end in his
mouth and got off a burst. Must have made some mess.”

“I imagine it did.”

McCandless shook his head in amazement.
“Little Bobby,” he said. “Mr. Straight Arrow. Cops searched his
place afterward, house he grew up in, what did they find? All these
guns and knives and dirty magazines and stuff.”

“It happens all the time,” Ehrengraf
said.

“Other stuff, too. Some things that must have
been stolen from my parents’ house, not that anybody had even
noticed they were missing. Some jewelry of my mom’s and a sterling
silver flask with my dad’s initials engraved on it. I don’t think I
ever even knew he had a flask, but how many are you going to find
engraved W. R. McC.?”

“It could only have been his.”

“Well, sure. But what really wrapped it up
was the diary. From what I heard, most of it was sketchy, just
weird stuff that was going through his mind. But the entry the day
after my parents died, that was something else.”

“It was a little vague as well,” Ehrengraf
said, “but quite conclusive all the same. He told how he’d gone to
your parents’ home and found you passed out in a chair.”

“From the EKG, it must have been.”

“He thought about killing all three of you.
Instead he gunned down both your parents, making sure that you and
your clothes were spattered with their blood, then wiped his prints
off the empty gun and pressed it into your hands.”

“Bobby’s mom was crippled,” McCandless
remembered. “I remember kids used to say we ought to be friends
because of it. Like him and me were in the same boat.”

“But you weren’t friends.”

“Are you kidding? A hood like me team up with
a goody-goody like Bobby Bickerstaff?” His expression turned
thoughtful. “Except it turns out I was innocent all along, so I
wasn’t such a hood after all. And Bobby wasn’t such a
goody-goody.”

“No.”

“In fact,” McCandless said, “he might have
had something to do with his own parents’ death. Bobby was still a
kid at the time. They weren’t too clear on what happened, whether
it was a suicide pact or the old man committed a mercy killing and
then killed himself afterward. I guess everybody figured it
amounted to the same thing. But now...”

“Now there’s suspicion that Bobby may have
done it.”

“I suppose he could have. There’s a pattern,
isn’t there? His mom was crippled, my mom was in a wheelchair, and
this Mr. Capstone was more of the same. Maybe the shock of what
happened to his folks drove him around the bend, or maybe he was
the one responsible for what happened to them to start with, and
the other two murders were just a way of re-enacting the crime. I
wonder which it was.”

“I doubt we’ll ever know,” Ehrengraf said
gently.

“I guess not,” McCandless said. “What we do
know is
I
didn’t kill anybody, and I already knew that,
thanks to you. Bobby killed my parents, and my grandparents both
had simple accidents. That’s what the police decided at the time,
and it was only my own negative thoughts about myself that led me
to believe I had anything to do with their deaths.”

“That’s it,” Ehrengraf said, delighted.
“You’re absolutely right.”

“I’ll tell you, Mr. Ehrengraf, this business
with affirmations is pretty amazing stuff. I mean, I did some bad
things over the years. Let’s face it, I pulled some mean stuff. But
do you know why?”

“Tell me, Dale.”

“I did it because I thought I was bad. I
mean, if you’re a bad person, what do you do? You do bad things. I
thought I was bad, so I did some bad things.”

“‘Give a dog a bad name—’”

“And he’ll bite you,” McCandless said. “And I
did, in a manner of speaking, but I never killed anybody. And now
that I know I’m innocent, I’ll be a changed human being
entirely.”

“A productive member of society.”

“Well, I don’t know about productive,”
McCandless said. “I mean, face it, I’m a rich man. Between what I
had from my grandmother and what I stand to inherit from my
parents, I can live a life of ease.” He grinned. “Even after I pay
your fee, I’m still set for life.”

“An enviable position to be in.”

“So I may not knock myself out being
productive,” McCandless went on. “I may just focus on having
fun.”

“Boys will be boys,” said Ehrengraf.

“You said it. I’ll work on my suntan, I’ll
see that the bar’s well stocked, I’ll round up a couple of totally
choice babes. Get some good drugs, plenty of tasty food in case
anybody gets the munchies, and next thing you know—”

“Drugs,” Ehrengraf said.

“Hey, it’s like you said, Mr. Ehrengraf. Boys
will be boys.”

“Suppose you got hold of some of that
EKG.”

“Suppose I did? I’m innocent, Mr. Ehrengraf.
You’re the one showed me how to see that. Anything I do, drunk or
sober, straight or loaded, it’s going to be innocent. So what have
I got to worry about?”

He grinned disarmingly, but Ehrengraf was not
disarmed. “I’m not sure EKG is a good idea for you,” he said
carefully.

“You could be right. But sooner or later
it’ll be around, and I won’t be able to resist it. But so what? I
can handle it.”

Ehrengraf reached for the yellow legal pad,
turned to a clean sheet, drew a line down the center of the page.
“Here,” he said, handing the pad to McCandless. “This time I’d like
you to work with a different affirmation.”

“How about ‘I am a perfect child of God?’ I
sort of like the sound of that one.”

“Let’s try something a little more specific,”
Ehrengraf suggested. “Write, ‘I am through with EKG, now and
forever.’”

McCandless frowned, shrugged, took the pad
and started writing. Ehrengraf, watching over his shoulder, read
the responses as his client wrote them.

I am through with EKG, now and forever/You must be
kidding

I am through with EKG, now and forever/I love the way
it makes me crazy

I am through with EKG, now and forever/I’ll never
give it up

I am through with EKG, now and forever/What harm does
it do?

I am through with EKG, now and forever/I couldn’t
resist it

“We have our work cut out for us,” Ehrengraf
said. “But that only shows how deep the thought goes. Look at the
self-image you had earlier, and look how you managed to turn it
around.”

“I know I’m innocent.”

“And the world has changed to reflect the
change in your own mental landscape. Once you became clear on your
innocence, proof of it began to manifest in the world around
you.”

“I think I see what you mean.”

Ehrengraf handed the legal pad back to his
client. The process would work, he assured himself. Soon the mere
thought of ingesting EKG would be anathema to young Dale
McCandless.

And that, Ehrengraf thought, would be all to
the good. Because he had a feeling the world would be a kinder and
gentler place for all if the innocent Mr. McCandless never ingested
that particular chemical again.

The End

“
How does it happen, tell me,

That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,

While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,

Has a marble block, topped by an urn,

Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,

Has sown a flowering weed?”

—
Edgar Lee Masters

“I didn’t do it,” Blaine Starkey said.

“Of course you didn’t.”

“Everyone thinks I did it,” Starkey went on,
“and I guess I can understand why. But I’m innocent.”

“Of course you are.”

“I’m not a murderer.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“Not this time,” the man said. “Mr.
Ehrengraf, it’s not supposed to matter whether a lawyer thinks his
client is guilty or innocent. But it matters to me. I really am
innocent, and it’s important that you believe me.”

“I do.”

“I don’t know why it’s so important,” Starkey
said, “but it just is, and—” He paused, and seemed to register for
the first time what Ehrengraf had been saying all along. His big
open face showed puzzlement. “You do?”

“Yes.”

“You believe I’m innocent.”

“Absolutely.”

“That’s pretty amazing, Mr. Ehrengraf. Nobody
else believes me.”

Ehrengraf regarded his client. Indeed, if you
looked at the man’s record you could hardly avoid presuming him
guilty. But once you turned your gaze into his cornflower blue
eyes, how could you fail to recognize the innocence gleaming
there?

Even if you didn’t believe the man, how would
you have the nerve to tell him so? Blaine Starkey was, to say the
least, an imposing presence. When you saw him on the television
screen, catching a pass and racing downfield, breaking tackles as
effortlessly as a politician breaks his word, you didn’t appreciate
the sheer size of him. All the men on the field were huge, and your
eye learned to see them as normal.

In a jail cell, across a little pine table,
you began to realize just how massive a man Blaine Starkey was. He
stood as many inches over six feet as Ehrengraf stood under it, and
was big in the shoulders and narrow in the waist, with thighs like
tree trunks and arms like—well, words failed Ehrengraf. The man was
enormous.

“The whole world thinks I killed Claureen,”
Starkey said, “and it’s not hard to see why. I mean, look at my
stats.”

His stats? Thousands of yards gained rushing.
Hundreds of passes caught. No end of touchdowns scored. Ehrengraf,
who was more interested in watching the action on the field than in
crunching the numbers, knew nevertheless that the big man’s
statistics were impressive.

He also knew Starkey meant another set of
stats.

“I mean,” the man said, “it’s not like this
never happened before. Three women, three coffins. Hell, Mr.
Ehrengraf, if I was a hockey player they’d call it the hat
trick.”

“But it’s not hockey,” Ehrengraf assured him,
“and it’s not football, either. You’re an innocent man, and there’s
no reason you should have to pay for a crime you didn’t
commit.”

“You really think I’m innocent,” Starkey
said.

“Absolutely.”

“That’s what everybody’s supposed to presume,
until it’s proved otherwise. Is that what you mean? That I’m
innocent for the time being, far as the law’s concerned?”

Ehrengraf shook his head. “That’s not what I
mean.”

“You mean innocent no matter what the jury
says.”

“I mean exactly what you meant earlier,” the
little lawyer said. “You didn’t kill your wife. You’re entirely
innocent of her death, and the jury should never be in a position
to say anything on the subject, because you should never be brought
to trial. You’re an innocent man, Mr. Starkey.”

The football player took a deep breath, and
Ehrengraf was surprised that there was any air left in the cell.
“That’s just so hard for me to believe.”

“That you’re innocent?”

“Hell, I
know
I’m innocent,” Starkey
said. “What’s hard to believe is that
you
believe it.”

* * *

But how could Ehrengraf believe otherwise? He
fingered the knot in his deep blue necktie and reflected on the
presumption of innocence—not the one which had long served as a
cardinal precept of Anglo-American jurisprudence, but a higher,
more personal principle. The Ehrengraf presumption. Any client of
Martin H. Ehrengraf’s was innocent. Not until proven guilty, but
until the end of time.