Flesh and Bones: A Jake Lassiter Novel Page 7

  "Christina, I must ask you to dig deep into the recesses of your memory."

  "All right."

  "What we're looking for won't be on the surface and may not be easy to find. . . ."

  Now I pictured her nodding.

  "Were you sexually abused as a child?"

  The answer came quickly. Twice, in fact. "No. No."

  "Not so fast. You gave yourself no time to think, to dredge the waters."

  "But I'd remember. I wouldn't have to think about it."

  "Not necessarily," the doctor said. "In fact, there are only two correct answers to the question 'Were you sexually abused?' There's 'Yes' and 'I don't know.' You simply can't rule it out, particularly not with your symptoms."

  Oh, brother. I hear a lot of leading questions in court, but this breaks new ground. Encouraging a different answer by "dredging the waters" of memory. I saw where this was going. The doctor was going to dig up memories Chrissy couldn't produce on her own. I could imagine how it would play to a jury. A part of me, the not-so-ethical part, was telling the rest of me, the semi-ethical part, that burning the tapes wasn't such a bad idea. Schein had known just what he was doing when he hinted he could deep-six them. Having Chrissy testify to the abuse would be a helluva lot better than showing how she had recovered the memories.

  "I don't understand," Chrissy was saying. "If I'd been molested, I can't imagine forgetting it."

  "You didn't forget. It's still there, but survivors of incest are frequently in denial. You have to work hard to break through the walls your mind has created. There are locked doors. We've got to find the keys to turn the latch, and it won't be easy. It can take weeks or years, and when the memories come, they will be painful. They may float up like bubbles or be disgorged like lava from a volcano."

  Bubbles? Lava? As my granny would say, malarkey!

  "Who abused me?" Chrissy asked, her voice weak.

  "We don't know that, do we?"

  "Was it a stranger or someone I knew?"

  "What do you think?"

  "I don't know. I just can't understand why I wouldn't remember."

  "Your inner child is protecting you from the memory. But that denial only creates other problems. To cure those problems, we have to get that child to tell us the truth."

  "I'm afraid," Chrissy said.

  "I'll hold your hand on this journey. The road to recovery is treacherous and filled with pain, but at the other end is renewal and life."

  I heard Chrissy sigh. "All right. What now?"

  "Have you ever been hypnotized?" Dr. Schein replied.

  "Focus on your breathing and relax," Dr. Schein said, his voice soothing and melodious. In the background, New Age music played softly, a piano tinkling with single notes like a light rain on a tin roof. "Breathe from way down. That's it. Sink deeper into the chair. Allow your face and neck to relax. Let yourself go. Now visualize a brilliant white light. The light will move from your head throughout your body, relaxing everything it touches. Every cell, every muscle, every organ will be touched by the beautiful, brilliant light. You are calm and serene as it moves through your blood vessels, through every part of your body. See the light. Feel its peacefulness as it fills your lungs and your heart, deepening your state of relaxation, reaching everywhere."

  I didn't know about Chrissy, but I was getting sleepy. Either Schein was good at this, or I shouldn't have had two Grolsches with my cheeseburger at lunch.

  "Free up your mind from the normal limits of time and space. Soon you'll be able to remember everything, to heal yourself."

  Dr. Schein stayed quiet a moment, and I visualized Chrissy lying there, her eyes closed. Then the doctor began counting backward. "Ten, nine, eight—getting deeper and deeper—seven, six, five—so peaceful and calm—four, three—totally relaxed—two, one. You're in complete serenity, in another state altogether."

  My head dropped forward, startling me as I awoke, and for a moment I was in another state, Pennsylvania, sleeping through Poli Sci 101.

  "Visualize yourself walking down a beautiful staircase into the deepest recesses of your mind," Dr. Schein said, "a place with no time or space, a place of connection and oneness, a place of wisdom where you can remember everything. Can you see it?"

  From Chrissy, a sleepy "Yes."

  "Now you see a tunnel with a brilliant light at the other end. You begin walking through the tunnel toward the light. When you emerge into the light, you'll be in a different time and different place, and you'll be able to remember everything. The knowledge is within you, the wisdom, the memories. Your inner child is ready to speak."

  Another pause with no sound except the monotonous repetition of the low-key piano, now joined by a nearly inaudible flute. Then, the doctor's voice. "How old are you, Christina?"

  "Eleven."

  "Are you a happy girl?"

  "Oh, yes." The words came slowly but clearly, the sweet voice of a child. "I have everything a girl could want."

  "What do you have?"

  "Toys and friends and a wonderful mommy."

  "What about your father?"

  A pause, then, "He gives me everything."

  "Does Mommy love him?"

  "I don't know."

  "Christina, I'm Dr. Schein. I'm a friend of your mommy's."

  "I know. You take care of her. She likes you. She told me so."

  "Your mother is a wonderful woman. Tell me about your father."

  "He hits her," Christina said, beginning to sob. "He hits her a lot and calls her names. Mommy got sick, so she stays in her room. Daddy moved down the hall, next to my room."

  "Does your father ever hit you?"

  "No. Never. Not even when I'm bad."

  "When are you bad, Christina?"

  "When I don't do what Daddy says."

  "Does he ever touch you in ways that frighten you?"

  Silence. Then, "No."

  "Does he ever come into your bedroom and do things to you?"

  "No. I don't remember anything like that at all."

  "Christina, memory is a funny thing. There are memories we recall and some we just feel. What do you feel?"

  "I don't know. Strange things."

  "Ah, that may be the beginning. Do you know what sex is?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you ever have sex with your father?"

  Another sob. "I don't remember that."

  "But you're crying. Why are you crying?"

  "I don't know."

  "Christina, have you ever seen the tracks of a wild animal in the woods?"

  "Not in the woods, but I've seen turtle tracks on the beach."

  "And did you see the turtle, too?"

  "Not always. Sometimes just the tracks."

  "But you knew the turtle had been there."

  "Yes."

  "I can see the tracks of the animal all through your life. The monster has been there. I think you see it, too, but you've covered it with layers of dirt. Can we scrape through that dirt, can we uncover the monster?"

  "I don't know."

  Click. What the hell was that? The faint sound of the recorder being turned off.

  Then Schein's voice. "Let's talk about your father."

  Wait a second! I stopped and rewound the tape. The same click, and then Schein continued. How long was the gap? A second, a minute, eighteen and a half minutes? Who knows? And what happened then? What did Schein say in the darkness of his office to the troubled young woman, groggy under hypnosis? And what was he saying now?

  "Let's talk about your father."

  "I always loved my daddy. Always."

  "Good Chrissy. That's a good girl."

  "And my daddy always loved me."

  "Did he?"

  "Daddy told me I was his best girl, and now that Mommy's sick, I . . ."

  "What, Christina?"

  "I remember now. I remember."

  "Very good, Christina. Very good. What do you remember?"

  "I make Daddy happy. I pretend I'm Mommy."

  "D
oes he come to your bedroom?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you have sex with your daddy?"

  "Of course I do, silly. I'm his wife."

  I listened to the rest of the tapes. The memories became more vivid and graphic. Chrissy's little-girl voice re-created the nighttime whispers with her father. "Our little secret," he had told her. Her adult cries reflected her anger. She was in and out of a hypnotic trance. I heard her sobs when she described the pain she had felt in her "peepee." I heard her voice waver between the innocent confusion of a child and the angry cries of a woman.

  The male of the species. His chromosomes tuned for survival of the fittest, he wages war and slaughters his fellowman. His soul shriveled, he defiles the earth, mocks his Creator, and lives by no code other than his own. At the low end of the evolutionary scale, he lords his physical superiority over women, beating and raping. At the very bottom, this reptilian cousin of Homo sapiens neander-thalensis, this horned beast of hellish evil, is the father who would rape his own child.

  I felt sick and angry and, for a moment, felt like killing Harry Bernhardt myself. Which made me think. Whether the memories were real or not, they sounded authentic. And though I knew that the prior abuse was not a defense to murder, I wondered if a jury might not be persuaded to come back on a lesser charge of manslaughter or even to acquit.

  On the final tape, Chrissy wasn't hypnotized at all. She was telling Dr. Schein about her adult life, the failed romances, the drug and alcohol abuse, and thanking him for opening the door to her past. "I've thought more about what we discussed yesterday," she said.

  "The need for goals?" he asked.

  "No. What we talked about afterward."

  There was a pause. "Oh, that."

  "I've made a decision that you're not going to like."

  "Maybe you shouldn't tell me," he said.

  What the hell was this all about? What were they dancing around?

  "But I've told you everything else. I can't imagine not telling you first."

  "All right then. But first, let me . . ."

  I heard papers rustling and the sound of a chair squeaking.

  Click.

  Again. Damn! I waited, but this time, nothing. Just a faint mechanical hum as the tape wound out. I looked for another tape, but there was none. I checked the date on the plastic box: June 14, 1995.

  I considered all the things Chrissy might have said to her psychiatrist two days before shooting her father, and I didn't like any of them one bit.

  8

  Like Father, Like Son

  A short, stocky Nicaraguan woman in a white uniform dipped a ladle into a bowl and served me chilled gazpacho. I tasted some without slurping or leaving a tomato stain on my blue oxford-cloth shirt. Refreshing on a steamy July day, but a tad too heavy on the cayenne pepper for my taste.

  "I hope you like mangoes," Guy Bernhardt said. He was wearing jeans and a red-plaid western shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His forearms were work hardened and cabled with veins, but his face was soft, his cheeks pudgy, giving his little eyes a permanent squint.

  "Love them. Have a tree in my backyard. Kents."

  Guy gestured to another servant, who began pouring mango iced tea from pitchers into tall glasses. "You must live in Coconut Grove."

  "How'd you know?"

  "Leith Kent planted the first mangoes there in 1932. Just about the best eating ones, but so fragile they don't ship well. We grow Cushmans, Hadens, and Glenns, plus some Nam Doc Mais brought over from Thailand. Sweet as can be and no fiber."

  We were sitting at opposite ends of a table of Dade County pine on the patio of a ranch house at Bernhardt Farms near Homestead, thirty miles south of Miami. A cedar overhang kept us in the shade and paddle fans waved at the soggy air. Sitting between us on one side of the table was Guy's wife, Loretta, a woman in her mid-thirties with dyed red hair and some extra weight around the hips. Across from her sat Dr. Lawrence Schein, who wore a Florida Marlins ball cap, khaki shorts, and a matching shirt with epaulets. Loretta had already consumed three mango daiquiris, thick as milk shakes, which left a creamy mustache on her upper lip.

  "Guy's a nutcase when it comes to mangoes," Loretta said, a trace of Georgia in her voice. "He's got 'em on the brain."

  "Pop grew them even before he had the Castleberry money," Guy said. "I use the same fertilizer mix he formulated thirty years ago. If it ain't broke, why fix it? Mangoes are in my blood, that's all."

  "Sure, darlin'," she cooed. "And thank God I love them, too." She turned to me and winked. "Guy won't admit it, but he divorced Mary Ann because she wouldn't eat mangoes."

  "She was allergic," Guy said, finishing his gazpacho.

  "Could have been psychosomatic," Dr. Schein said. "If Guy and Mary Ann were having other problems, the mangoes began to represent Guy."

  "Oh, fiddle!" Loretta nearly shouted. "No more headshrinking talk, Larry."

  "Think about it," the doctor continued, a little smile forming. "Were not the mangoes the fruit of Guy's labor, both figuratively and literally? So Mary Ann rejected him by refusing to eat his mangoes."

  "That ain't all she refused to eat, if Guy's telling the truth," Loretta said, with another wink and a laugh, followed by a burp.

  "Mangoes would make her break out in a rash," Guy said. "Stomach cramps, headaches. Didn't have anything to do with me."

  Loretta leaned back in her chair. "Seven years we've been married and I've never had a headache, have I, honey?"

  "No, Loretta. You're a real trouper."

  "My mama raised me that way. I don't cause a man any trouble." She shot me a look to make sure I was listening, then turned toward her husband. "Not like that half sister of yours. Spoiled rotten from day one, just getting by on her long legs and pouty lips. Now look at her." Loretta Bernhardt sounded downright pleased that her sister-in-law, or maybe her half sister-in-law, was getting her comeuppance. "And if you ask me—"

  "Nobody did, Loretta," Guy interrupted.

  "Your daddy never touched that girl," she continued, now looking across the table at me. "Harry was a dear man, never once got out of line with me or anyone else I heard of. That girl's got you all fooled. I'll bet she planned to kill Harry and cooked up all that abuse talk after seeing some TV show."

  "Why?" I asked.

  Loretta looked at me. "Why what?"

  The Nicaraguan woman was clearing away the soup bowls, while another served grilled yellowtail snapper covered with mango salsa. At the head of the table, Guy was digging into a platter of fried sweet plantains.

  "Why would she want to kill her father?" I asked. "What was her motive?"

  "Money, honey. Ain't it always?"

  "What about the estate?" I asked, turning to Guy. "What did the will provide?"

  "Fifty-fifty," he said. "Chrissy and I split everything."

  "But if she's convicted of murder, she forfeits the inheritance," I said, munching a bite of tender white snapper. "Everything would go to you if she takes the fall."

  "That's why she cooked up that cockamamy story," Loretta announced triumphantly. "You're supposed to get her off, and my bleeding-heart husband's helping you, though for the life of me, I don't know why. She killed his father, for goodness' sake. And if she gets away with it, Guy has to share the estate with her. It doesn't seem right."

  "Actually, I don't even have to get her off," I said. "If Chrissy is convicted of manslaughter instead of murder, she'll get her share of the estate."

  "Why?" Loretta demanded.

  "It's the law," I said. "If someone pulls a Menendez, acing his parents to hurry up the inheritance, he'll go directly to jail, without collecting the two hundred bucks."

  "Not in California," Dr. Schein said. "At least not without a circus."

  "Send in the clowns," I said in partial agreement. "But manslaughter is different than murder. It's almost considered an accident."

  Loretta scrunched up her face in a look of inebriated contemplation. "So, why help her at all?" Sh
e shot a look at her husband. "What kind of man would be so damned . . ."

  She let it hang there, so I said, "Giving?"

  "More like stupid!" Loretta gave a helpless shrug and looked toward her husband. "I'm sorry, darlin'. I love you to death. I just don't understand you. If it was me, I'd turn the first spadeful of dirt to bury her."

  Guy placidly sliced his snapper and gave no indication of wanting to engage his wife in conversation. Married men have a surefire way of changing the subject: Simply ignore the wife. After a moment, Guy gestured toward me with his fork. "The food okay, Jake?"

  "Great. The snapper's good, the salsa even better."

  Guy smiled. "It's my own recipe."

  "Quite a combination: sweet mangoes, mild onions—Vidalias, I'd guess—then the strong jalapeño."

  "You got it."

  "There's another taste I can't quite identify."

  "Cilantro."

  "Right. And a little olive oil?"

  "Very good," Guy said. "You pay attention. That's a fine attribute in a man."

  "And a lawyer," Lawrence Schein said.

  I nodded and finished eating, damn proud to be a culinary sleuth. Now if I could only figure out these characters.

  After the servants cleared the plates, they brought mango sorbet to clear the palate, followed by a small course of barbecued mango chicken, where I easily identified the brown sugar and vinegar but completely missed the chopped chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. Then came the mango-passionfruit crème brûlée, and finally espresso, which, best I could tell, did not have a trace of mango.

  Loretta was right. Guy had mangoes on the brain.

  And Guy was right about something. I do pay attention. I had been wondering the same thing as sweetly drunk Loretta. Just why was Guy Bernhardt helping a half sister he hadn't even known the first seventeen years of his life? Why help this spoiled, pampered favorite child when anything less than a murder conviction would cut his inheritance in half?