Sins of the Fathers (17 page)

But Foster’s eyes narrowed with unyielding resolution.“You heard me,Ms. Field. I suggest you get yourself a lawyer.”

3.

Outside the courthouse, Lindy faced a bank of microphones and a rippling sea of reporters’ faces. They looked rabid and grotesque, like she imagined the crowd in
A Tale of Two Cities
, gawking and cheering at the thrill of the guillotine.

And there, right in the middle, smiling at her,was Sean McIntyre. Of course.

“I have a statement,” Lindy said. She didn’t really but figured as long as the pack was here she’d throw them some bait. Maybe a few would chew sufficiently to realize that what was happening in the justice system was actually worse than the guillotine. At least the blade gave you a quick death. What they did with juveniles was slice a piece at a time from their flesh, making the torture last for years.

The reporters quieted, readied pads and pencils. Camera eyes turned toward her. Human eyes opened wide with anticipatory glee. A story was about to break. A defense lawyer in the biggest case of the season was ready to spout. She almost laughed at their predictability.

“This hearing was a sham,” Lindy said evenly, formulating the headline she wanted the media outlets to grab. “The DA wants to make this one of his tough-on-crime cases. We have an election coming up, don’t we? Ambition always takes away good judgment. It removes the desire to do what’s right and replaces it with a
just win,
baby
mentality.”

She swallowed, hard, and hoped the cameras wouldn’t pick that up. But she had just opened her mouth wide and either stuffed it full of shoe, or thrown a gauntlet down on the desk of the Los Angeles County district attorney. Or both. Either way, it was not going to get any more pleasant for her after this.

So what?

“Somebody should explain to Mr. Colby that this isn’t football. We had a doctor in there, O’Connor, who testified for the prosecution on competency. We might as well have had a parrot on the stand, a parrot from Mr. Colby’s living room.”

Most of the reporters laughed at that, scribbling wildly. Oh, tomorrow was going to be rich.

“My client is a thirteen-year-old boy.
Boy.
He’s sick. He is not competent to stand trial. Are we crazy in this country? When did we decide to get rid of sick kids as fast as we can without trying to help them?”

“When they start killing people?” some clown called out, causing a few guffaws.

Lindy threw a couple of eyeball lightning bolts his way. “You find something funny about this? I don’t. I don’t find it funny to have lying witnesses on the stand. If you think this is funny, why don’t you go back and look at the transcript of the Marcel Lee case? And why don’t you ask Mr. Colby what size blinders he wears?”

Sanctions
she heard in her mind. She was going to get slapped by a judge for certain. Who cared? The judges needed to hear this too. Except Greene. And she wondered what he’d have to say.

“You saying your client’s not guilty?” a woman with a Channel 7 logo on her blazer shouted.

Lindy held her ground. “You have to be responsible to be guilty, and if your mental state is messed up, you’re not responsible. My client is messed up. Why is that so hard for people to understand?”

“Maybe because he shot five kids and one adult.” That was Sean.

Lindy’s face went geothermal. She wanted to brush his teeth with a microphone, preferably hot-wired. “If you were any more ignorant of the legal system you’d be a danger to society.”

Hoots from some of the reporters, good natured catcalls thrown Sean’s way, then back at her.

“Listen to me,” Lindy said. “If we decide to throw kids away, let’s just close up shop as a society. Let’s sit back and forget about doing anything for anybody, except the ones who were lucky enough to be born with money or privilege or whatever else. Let’s just sweep them all away so we won’t have to look at them anymore. Because when we do we’re going to see ourselves reflected in their faces, and it ain’t pretty, is it?”

“You accusing the DA of an ethical breach?” someone finally said, an older guy she didn’t know.

“I wouldn’t blink on this one. You might miss something.”

4.

After faking out the reporters by pretending to leave, Lindy slipped into the parking lot behind the courthouse. She played a grown-up version of hide-and-seek, a game at which she had excelled in elementary school. Hiding seemed to be one of the best things a person could do. It was like being invisible.

And Lindy often wanted to be invisible.

What things would she be able to see if she herself could not be seen? She could slip into police stations and listen to the cops talk about cases. She could pick up when prosecutors were not playing straight with the facts. She could become the justice crusader, a new comic-book hero, rooting out evil in the hearts of men.

She could, in other words, make a difference. She could do some good. She could save the people who needed saving.

But so long as she was in a body, she’d have to walk around like every other poor slob and fight the battles as they came, face to face, nose to nose.

Alone.

At least for the moment the reporters did not see her. Being “vertically challenged” was a plus in this case, as she could easily lean against an SUV and have the perfect cover.

She waited in hopes that he would come out soon, the good doctor, who would most likely have taken one of the witness spaces in the parking lot. She had seen him in conversation with Colby in the hallway before her off-the-cuff press conference. Maybe she’d be able to catch him.

And do what? Something, anything. Get a look on his face. Find out what was going on. Because whatever it was, it stunk.

Ten minutes. Fifteen. She kept looking into her shoulder bag, pretending to rummage, whenever someone walked by. Pretty soon she’d have to make a move, or a security guard would start asking questions.

Twenty minutes. And then out he came.

He even walked arrogantly, this O’Connor. He stopped when he saw her, and his whole body seemed to clench.

“Business done for the day?” Lindy said.

O’Connor reached into his pocket. “What are you doing out here?”

“What did you think you were doing in there?”

“You mean testifying?”

“That’s what you call it?”

“Excuse me, but I—”

“You lied to me.”

His face tightened as he pulled out his car keys. “I did nothing of the kind.”

“You told me you didn’t know anything about my client. But two years ago—”

“As I recall our conversation, Ms. Fields, you did not ask me if I had examined your client.”

“Don’t you think that little bit of information was important?”

“I don’t volunteer that kind of information. You should know that would be improper.”

“Then you said you weren’t going to give expert testimony.”

“I was contacted by Mr. Colby after you called. I changed my mind.”

“Why? Money?”

“I don’t have to—”

“And you told me Darren was not mentally sound.”

O’Connor’s eyes hardened. “You have selective memory, Ms.

Fields. As I recall, we talked about likelihoods.”

“But now you’re sure?”

“In my opinion Darren DiCinni is competent. That’s my opinion
now.

”

“What about sane?”

“Ms. Fields, I—”

“Field. The name is Field, no
s.
”

O’Connor jangled his keys. “I really can’t talk to you anymore.”

“Did you ever ask Darren about God?”

The doctor singled out a key then looked at Lindy. “Off the record, Ms.
Field
, you’re not going to get anywhere with that angle. Not these days.”

“But what if it’s true?”

“It won’t fly.” He made a move toward his car.

“Why’d you put me off, Doctor? Just answer me that.”

He did not answer. He unlocked his Jaguar, got in. Just before pulling out he lowered the window. “Do not contact me again,” he said.

5.

They were demons, and Darren knew it.

They had him back in his cage now, his keepers. They would try to get him to dis God, but he would ignore them, wait them out. Beat them. They pretended to be jail guards, and sometimes they faked like they were on his side.

They would talk to him sometimes.

He wouldn’t answer. You don’t talk to demons, you stare them down.

And that’s what he did.

No way he was going to be fooled.

So he stared. And he blocked out voices.

He would beat them, and God would approve.

6.

Everett Woodard had been Lindy’s favorite law professor at Southwestern. He taught criminal law and she could still recite the flash cards created to help her study for his legendary exams. Like the M’Naughten rule for the insanity defense:
Mental disease or defect
of reason + did not know nature and quality of act—or if did know, did
not know it was wrong.

Today, she wanted to talk to him about this rule. Darren’s case was all about the insanity defense, and Woodard knew it backward and forward.

Woodard greeted her warmly in his cramped office. He had sounded a bit tired over the phone, most likely due to his prodigious work habits. At fifty-two, Woodard still logged long hours doing appellate work, mostly for indigent clients. He’d grown up in poverty in Inglewood and was kept out of gang life by a strong mother. He earned his success and could have made a high six-figure salary at any of a number of large law firms. But he chose instead to train new lawyers and work on behalf of those who could not afford legal representation.

“So here’s the walking news story,”Woodard said.

“Don’t believe everything you read.”

“In your case, I think I will. Who else would give the DA a public tongue-lashing like that? My my.”

“Was I out of line?”

Woodard flashed a smile that made him look like a little boy on a holiday. “Not in my book. You might’ve gone too easy. But I’m not the judge.”

“Oh yeah. That. I guess I need a lawyer. Think you can—”

“Consider it done. And get a good apology ready.”

“Apology!”

“Lindy,” he said like a scolding parent.

“Oh, all right.”

Woodard’s office was crammed with books of all sorts, from law to sociology to criminology to literature.

“But if I’m going to do that,” Lindy said, “I want you to testify for me.”

“Testify? About what?”

“Mental state.
Mens rea
.”

“I’m not a mental-health expert.”

“Mental-health experts aren’t worth the paper their lousy degrees are written on.”

“Sounds like you had yourself a bad experience.”

“The yahoo who testified is sleaze on ice. My guy couldn’t get Darren to talk at all. Foster’s not going to rule for me with dueling experts, so I need your testimony on what the law
means
. In class we talked about the M’Naughten rule, and we came up on the whole issue of what
know
means.”

“And what do you remember?”

“Still the professor, eh?”

“It never ends.”

“All right, then I will prove to you that getting the top grade in your class was no fluke.”

“I’m all ears.”

“At issue is the meaning of the word
know
. It can mean either being intellectually aware or having a moral appreciation.”

“Explain.”

“Well, I may know that it is wrong to kill someone, in the sense that I can articulate those words and therefore have some concept of what wrong means. But in order to be sane I must also have the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of my actions. Most jurisdictions leave it to the jury to hash it out.”

“Well done. You get an
A
on this part of the exam.”

“Now I’ll ask you a question: If you were convinced that God told you to do something, you would think that was good, right?”

Woodard nodded. “That’s called
command hallucination
, a very tough mental nut to crack.”

“But what if a person really believes it’s God talking?”

“The problem is proving that. All you have is the subject saying that’s what was going on in his mind.”

“But here’s my angle: What if you’re a kid? You don’t have the background, the experience of life yet. Your brain is still forming. You’re more susceptible.”

“But the judge and then a jury; that’s what you’ve got to worry about. The God-told-me-to defense, or the devil-made-me defense, these don’t fly anymore. People are just too cynical, even when it comes to kids.”

“Can I give it a try? Can I make an argument to you?”