Rabid (63 page)

“Bev, listen to me.” He couldn’t say anything to help her because he had never felt what she had. She might be hallucinating. He had no map to help her return to a place he had never been. “That feeling still exists inside you.”

Yet, if her ecstasy was evidence of mania or psychosis or epileptic aura, its absence might mean she was sane or cured. It could not be ethical as a doctor to return her to that prior state.

But she pined for it, for God. A priest could not deny God to a petitioner.

Leila was right. His loyalties were too divided. He could not go on like this.

His first day in America, when Bev had stumbled into the confessional, frantic, he had helped her, and she had found the strength to confront her philandering husband. Her daughters needed her with every milligram of strength she could muster.

And she looked so sad, exhausted. Her grief disheartened him.

He said, “When you kneel in church next time, you should relax. God is all around. You believe that God is in the church.”

“Yes.” She sounded resolute.
Good.

“You must open this shell around yourself. It will crack slowly, like an egg hatching, and you will feel glimmers of what you described. The next time you come into the church, bits of the shell will flake away, and you will feel more. The third time you pray, the shell will fall away and you will feel as before, and God will be there for you. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Do you believe this will happen?”

“Yes?” A definite up-note lilted, questioning. She did not believe.

Still, it might work.

“All right. I will count up now, and you will awake,” he remembered old movies with staircases and playing cards and spinning spirals, “refreshed and relaxed. You will remember everything we discussed,” because he did not imagine otherwise.

“When you are ready,” just in case hypnosis worked, “your memory of that night will return to you, but you will be calm. Memory is only truth, and it is better to know the truth.”

Dante rubbed his forehead. If she was feeling otherworldly phenomena, if she was hearing voices, she might have an insanity defense, though he did not know American law.

But he couldn’t talk to her lawyer unless she gave him permission to do so because he was her confessor and her counselor.

Before he had left Roma, he had had a thorough grounding in American law concerning
privilege
for both doctors and priests.

Her head bobbed. Strands of her gold-flecked hair caught on the chair’s dark upholstery.

“Bev, you will wake when I count to ten. One. Two.”

When he reached ten, he flicked on the lights.

Bev squinted in the light and rubbed her eyes.

~~~~~

Heath Sheldon clasped his hands as he approached Dr. Sridhar Bhupadi, who had been enjoying a morning of the prosecution’s softball questioning on the witness stand. Heath had sparred with Bhupadi in eighteen previous trials, and he hated that fat little man. Bhupadi was an egotistical, self-righteous worm who shaved the truth for the prosecution. Heath was dying to catch him committing real perjury, and any trial might be his chance. Maybe this would be the one.

The Georgies had already run through his forensic credentials and their scripted testimony that the knife recovered from Conroy Sloan’s chest had Beverly’s fingerprints and Conroy’s blood on it. No surprises, there.

“So, Dr. Bhupadi,”
BOOP
-uh-dee,
Heath said, “You testified that Beverly Sloan’s fingerprints were on the handle of the knife.”

“Yes,” Bhupadi smirked.

“That wasn’t a question, Doctor. Please refrain from testifying unless you’ve been asked a question.”

“All right.”

“That wasn’t a question either.” Heath paced the courtroom. “Beverly Sloan’s fingerprints were on the knife.”

Bhupadi sat, staring stolidly ahead of him, angry but smiling. He and Sheldon had squared off so many times in court. Sheldon’s quibbling to liberate guilty clients irritated the hell out of Bhupadi. Guilty people should go to jail/

Heath asked, “Which one of her hands fingerprinted the knife?”

“The fingerprints were from her left hand,” Bhupadi said.  

“Her left arm was badly broken that night, and she had emergency surgery to reconstruct blood vessels in her left arm later that night, right?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.” Bhupadi smiled slightly, the insolent jerk. Heath hated it when Bhupadi screwed up his patter.

“The blood you recovered from the knife, Dr. Bhupadi, was it a pure sample?”

“No.” Bhupadi waited. If Sheldon wanted him not to answer unless directly questioned, he could play that game. Bhupadi had played this game often with Sheldon, that slimy albino.

Heath waited, then tapped his foot impatiently, an excellent bit of stage business to show the state’s witness was being recalcitrant and would not be forthcoming with information that could exonerate his client. The railroading plot was central to Heath’s story. “Did you find anyone else’s blood on that knife, besides Dr. Sloan’s?”

Bhupadi, the prim scientist, scowled. “Yes. The defendant’s blood was on the knife.”

“So she had been cut with the knife?”

“She had bled on it.” He stared at the seam where the dark paneling met the white ceiling.

Heath played to the jury, raising his gold eyebrows. “And do you know whose hand was on the knife as it went into Conroy Sloan’s chest?”

“No I do not.”

“Who was the last person to touch the knife?”

“It appeared that the victim’s fingerprints were the uppermost ones.”

“Was Conroy Sloan trying to pull the knife out of his chest?”

“I could not say.”

“Yes or no, please, Dr. Bhupadi.”

Bhupadi stared upward, which the jury might see as rude, Heath hoped.

Bhupadi said, “It is unclear from the forensic data.”

Heath leaned on the witness box. Damn new shoes were killing his pinky toes.

“Objection!” From behind Heath, DA George Grossberg, shouted again. “Objection!”

“What?” Heath turned around, his hands spread apart. That little stickler had already objected a hundred times today.

Judge Washington leaned on her elbows. “Yes, prosecutor. What is it this time?”

“He’s encroaching on the witness.” Grossberg said.

Judge Washington glanced at Heath, and he thought her eyes rolled as she looked back at Grossberg. Judge Washington said, “Overruled. Proceed, Mr. Sheldon.”

“Thank you, your honor.”
Score! Score!
Heath turned back to the forensic twerp on the witness stand. “So he might have stabbed himself with the knife.”

“It is unclear from the forensic data.”

“At the autopsy, did the medical examiner state whether the blow was from the victim’s own hand or someone else’s?”

“The report did not specify.”

“So you didn’t do those tests.”

“I did not perform the postmortem examination. I can only testify as to what’s in the report. The report did not state whether such a test was performed.”

“But if it was performed, the results would be on the report.”

Bhupadi turned his hands over in his lap. “Yes.”

“So the testing for that was not performed.”

“It would appear not, but such a test for a knife wound would be impossible to perform. In the case of a gunshot wound, it is easier to discern whether the wound might have been self-inflicted due to the proximity of the weapon when it was fired.”

“Objection!” Heath said.

Bhupadi continued, “But in the case of a knife, the weapon is always within the victim’s reach. Thus, you can never be certain whether a knife wound was or was not self-inflicted.”

“Objection!” Heath said again. “He’s lecturing.”

Bhupadi continued, “Thus the tests that the defense asks for cannot be performed.”

“Objection!” Heath repeated.

Judge Leonine Washington tapped her steepled fingers together and looked down. “Overruled.”

Heath said, “He was lecturing, your honor, not answering the question.”

The judge said, “It’s ‘lecturing’ when it gets on
my
nerves, counselor. Proceed.”

“Yes, your honor.” Heath had at least distracted the jury even if he hadn’t gotten the testimony thrown out.

Well, if it wasn’t thrown out, maybe he could use it. “So, Dr. Bhupadi, your testing could not distinguish whether the wound was self-inflicted.”

“No we cannot.”

“And so you can’t say whose hand was holding the knife when it stabbed Conroy Sloan.”

“No we cannot.”

“Could Conroy Sloan have been holding the knife?”

“It is unlikely.”

“Why is it unlikely? His fingerprints were on the knife.”

“Yes,” Bhupadi conceded.

“And they were the uppermost fingerprints, right? Conroy Sloan’s fingerprints weren’t smudged by anyone else’s?”

“Yes. But he could have tried to pull the knife out of his chest.”

Heath nearly fell to his knees and thanked God for that lovely, lovely leading phrase. “Would Dr. Sloan, as a doctor, have tried to pull a knife out of his own chest?”

“Objection!” Behind Heath, George the prosecution lawyer yelled, “Conjecture!”

Heath said, “The witness opened the door.”

Judge Washington shifted in her chair. She knew the answer to this. Living with a cardiologist had a few benefits, and a smattering of medical knowledge was one of them. Heath Sheldon might have something. “I’ll allow it, but I want to see where this goes.”

Heath repeated to Bhupadi, “Would Dr. Sloan, as a doctor, have tried to pull a knife out of his own chest?”

“I did not know Dr. Sloan.”

Heath sighed and flipped one hand in the air. “Fine. As a doctor, Dr. Bhupadi, if
you
had an object sticking in
you
, deeply embedded in
your
chest, would
you
pull it out?”

Bhupadi scowled deeper. Slimeball defense lawyers rankled him, especially this Heath Sheldon guy who knew too much science for his own good and bamboozled everyone. “No.”

Heath waited for Bhupadi to finish telling the audience, er,
jury
why he wouldn’t remove a knife.

And waited.

And waited some more.

Bhupadi was being obstinate again.

Heath prodded, “And why not?”

Bhupadi’s lip lifted in a repressed snarl. “Ripping an object out of one’s heart would cause yet more damage, bleeding, and probably kill the person immediately. A surgeon should remove an embedded object in an operating room under controlled, sterile conditions.”