The Crime Writer (aka I See You) (2007) Page 3

  The guard pronounced his name incorrectly, like the French appraisal of a hairdo, though Chic is anything but. He was dressed as he always was, as if he'd just gone shopping for the first time without his mother. Denim shorts that stretched below the knee. Oversize silk shirt, olive green, buttoned across his vast chest. A bling chain necklace matched the chunk of gold on the left-hand ring finger.

  He shifted his big frame around, trying to get comfortable on a chair not designed for professional athletes. Seeing him made my eyes well at the ways in which my life had unraveled since the last time I'd seen him. A week? Eight days?

  Chic placed a surprisingly white palm on the Plexiglas. I matched it with my own it felt surreal to mimic the gesture I knew only from movies.

  "What do you need?" he asked.

  My voice, little used, sounded as hoarse as those that floated up the walls. "I didn't do this."

  He gave me a calming gesture, hands spread, head tilted and slightly lowered. "Don't you cry, Drew-Drew," he said softly. "Not in here. Don't give 'em that."

  I wiped my eyes with the hem of my prison-issue shirt. "I know. I'm not."

  Chic looked like he wanted to break through the glass and fight a few fights for me to make sure the bullies gave me wide berth. "What can I do?"

  "Just being here."

  He bridled a bit, indicating, I guessed, his desire for a task, for some better way to help. Philly born, Chic is East Coast loyal and likes to prove it. I would find out later that he'd waited downstairs for four and a half hours to get in and see me.

  His powerful hands clenched. "This is like one of your books. Except worse."

  "I'll take that as a compliment."

  My fingers were at my head again, riding the rosary beads of the secondary suture scars. I noticed Chic watching me and lowered my hand.

  He looked concerned. "How you holding up?"

  I stared up at the ceiling until my vision got less watery. "Scared shitless." A rush of panic constricted my throat, reminding me why it was better not to tackle the fear head-on.

  He seemed to be considering his next words. "I been in jail, but nothing like this. Your shadow must be 'fraid of its shadow."

  I rubbed my eyelids until my heartbeat no longer sounded like a scaffold drumroll. Then I said, "Make sure April's okay. She hasn't visited me. Not in the hospital, not here."

  "You haven't been together so long."

  "I suppose it is a lot to handle."

  Chic raised his eyebrows as if to say, Ya think?

  I couldn't talk about losing April while maintaining a stiff upper lip, so I asked, "What news from the front?"

  "Usual shit. CourtTV, three-minute segments on Five, five-minute segments on Three. Reporters feeling good 'bout themselves because they remember to say 'allegedly.' "

  I already knew that the prosecutor's version had infected the media's take, and vice versa. The victim had been photogenic, and the public had hooked into her the way it liked and into me the way it required. The story had taken on a life of its own, and I'd been cast in the nastiest role.

  He squinted at me. "You getting any sleep?"

  "Sure."

  But I wasn't getting much. Last night I'd stayed up like Lady Macbeth, staring at my hands, staggered by their secret history. A fleck of dried blood remained wedged under my right thumbnail, and I dug at it and dug at it until frustration gave way to something like horror and I tore off the tip of the nail with my teeth. Later I dreamed about Genevieve her pale Parisian skin, her inviting cushiony hips, lounging on my deck chair and spooning avocado curls from the dark shell, edging them with mayonnaise from the dollop she'd dropped where the pit had been. She looked at me and smiled forgivingly, and I awoke having sweated through one end of the slim pad of a pillow. The polyester sheet was thin, and I knew I was a sorry sight there in the darkness, trembling and terrified by something I couldn't put a name to.

  "Can you get my condolences to Genevieve's family?" I said quietly. "Tell them I didn't do this."

  "All due respect, they prob'ly don't much want to hear from you right now." He held up a hand when I started to protest. "How are those lawyers who your overeager editor found for you?"

  "They seem to know what they're doing."

  "Let's hope so." He withdrew a stapled document and put it in the pass-through box.

  The guard rushed forward, blurting, "Let me take a look at that, sir."

  Chic waited impatiently while the guard flipped through the document, searching for the blowtorch concealed in the pages. He justified himself by removing the staple from the corner.

  Scrap Plan B. No flying out of here on a magic staple.

  Once the document cleared security, Chic slid it through to me. A power of attorney that designated Chic Bales with broad powers over my finances and legal affairs.

  "Broad powers," I said. "That include X-ray vision or just shape-shifting?"

  He half smiled, but I could see his concern in the lines that pouched his eyes. "Law firm needs a two-fifty retainer. You'll have to take a second on the house."

  "A third." Just contemplating the state of my finances made my temples throb. There was some bureaucratic fuss until the guard produced a notary's seal, required to validate any power of attorney. Another reality tidbit overlooked in the pages of my I now realized woefully unrealistic novels.

  I signed and sent the document back through. Chic's eyes caught on the note I'd included. "What's this?"

  "For Adeline."

  "Genevieve's sister? You really think she wants to hear from you?"

  He unfolded the paper without asking and regarded my adolescent script.

  I didn't kill your sister.

  Tell me if there's anything I can do.

  I'm so sorry for your loss.

  He refolded the note, and it disappeared into a pocket. His look said it all.

  "You get accused and you're no longer allowed to have a human reaction?" I said.

  "You are, but no one's gonna believe it. If you're sincere now, you'll get chewed up. Everyone'll think you playin' to the jury pool. You're in a game. The sooner you figure that out, the better."

  "So what can I do?"

  "Look innocent."

  "I am innocent."

  "Look it."

  We sat in silence for a few moments, staring at each other. The guard strode over. "Time's up."

  Chic's stare didn't so much as tic over to pick up the guard's reflection in the glass. "I just got here."

  "You'll exit to the right. Got it?"

  Chic sucked his teeth and screwed his mouth to the side. "Why, sho'." And then, to me, "Hang tough. I'm here for whatever and all of it." He pushed back with a screech, and then his footfall echoed off the cold concrete walls.

  The next morning I was summoned by my lawyers back down that ammonia-reeking hall to the Plexiglas Pavilion. They waited in their chairs, outlines bleached by strong morning light, one leaning forward, elbows resting on knees, lips pouched against the weight of the decisions to come, the other canted back in his chair, thumb dimpling a cheek, forefinger riding his upper lip. Both of their heads were bowed as if in prayer. Before their features resolved, I had a strong sense I was walking into the famous picture of JFK and Bobby taken when Khrushchev's freighters were steaming toward Cuba.

  I understood their concern. I'd already proven less than pliable as a client. Despite their advice, I'd elected not to waive my right to a speedy trial. Bail had been denied, a cover-yer-ass move by the down-the-middle judge we'd drawn, cowed by mounting media fanfare. The prospect of spending maybe years locked up awaiting trial was terrifying enough to compromise my judgment on the matter. My lawyers and I had also gone a few rounds over the plea. My choices were guilty or not guilty. The temporary-insanity issue would be visited in a second trial phase only if I were found guilty.

  Donnie Smith, hair tamped down from his post-gym shower, picked up right where we'd left off. "Your pleading not guilty will antagonize the judge, the publi
c, the press, and the court. And it's that group that decides your fate. Not just those twelve people. You have to plead guilty to help you gain credibility on the question of impaired sanity. Given the media, Harriman's gonna try the case, and you can bet she'll mop the floor with us in the guilt phase, leave you stained. We need to get to sanity quickly, with a clean slate, and without dragging you through a trial that you are unlikely to win."

  My heart felt like it was fluttering my shirt. "But I didn't do it. And not a single fucking person believes me."

  Not the first time they'd encountered such a claim. Blank eyes. Patience, edging to impatience.

  "So your position is you don't remember that you didn't kill her?" Donnie spoke slowly, as if to a developmentally delayed child.

  I didn't answer. It sounded stupid to me, too. As before, each minute with them contributed to my growing fear that I had no defense. And that if I didn't want to die in a prison cell, I'd have to admit to something I did not remember.

  My frustration bubbled to the surface. "Is anyone trying to find out who really did this? Or are they all too busy playing trial games like us?"

  Donnie and Terry glanced at each other uneasily.

  "What?" I said, worried. "What's that look?"

  "LAPD turned over something troubling yesterday in discovery," Donnie said. "Genevieve called you the night of the murder at 1:08 A.M., approximately twenty minutes before her murder."

  "I was told that already."

  Donnie removed a sealed LAPD evidence bag from his briefcase. It contained a CD. "And she left you a message."

  "Is it bad?" I asked. No answer. Agitated, I stood, walked a tight circle, sat back down again. "That's why they changed my voice mail access."

  Donnie popped the CD into his laptop and clicked a few buttons.

  The familiar voice, back from the dead, was haunting. "I wanted to tell you I'm with someone new. I hope I hurt you. I hope you feel this pain. I hope you feel so alone. Good-bye."

  It took me a few moments to recover from hearing Genevieve. I sat there with my heartbeat pounding in my ears and my lawyers staring at me with calm concern. Her voice, the accent, those nuanced pronunciations. But the invasiveness of the message's presentation also unnerved me. The cops had heard Genevieve's last words to me before I had. The message like the rest of my life, frozen by the prosecution and available to me only secondhand hammered the final nail into the coffin of my rights and privacy.

  I didn't remember hearing Genevieve's message that night, of course. The bitterness of it clashed with where I thought she and I had left things between us, but she'd been moody and difficult at times, so the tone was hardly shocking. Under no circumstances could I imagine it making me want to harm Genevieve. But, I realized with mounting dread, the message would play nicely to a jury primed on photos of her abused body.

  "This shores up motive even more," Donnie said gently. "So we need a simple version to sell to the jury. Temporary insanity's your only way out of this. It's clean. It's self-evident. It's supported by the facts. The brain tumor did it."

  I returned his exasperated stare.

  He pressed on. "We lay out the facts, you'll walk out of here. You can worry about the rest of it from your own bed someday." He studied my expression, finding something in it he didn't like. "We play this wrong with what we have stacked against us . . ."

  The thought of hard time made me feint fetal, my shoulders hunching, my shoes lifting an inch or two from the floor before I stopped my knees' rise to my chest. In the movies, no matter what, prison is the same. You go in scared, and they call you "fish" and bet cigarettes as to how long it'll be until you cry. You cell with Bubba, and he breaks you in, and then you become hardened, dead inside, and you barter for candy bars and have to shiv some guy in the shop or his buddies will gang-rape you, and then you get gang-raped anyway just for good measure.

  "You're a crime writer," Terry said calmly. "Allow us to help you see how this will read to a jury. Let us take you through it again."

  And they did, right from the sordid beginning. I sat in my hard little chair, dry-mouthed and stunned by as they call it on TV the preponderance of evidence. I'd known the elements, of course, but hearing them edited together into a tale of my murdering Genevieve was chilling. When my nerves settled, I had room for a single lucid thought.

  I'm fucked.

  My righteousness about the plea would have to dissolve under the pressures and realities I was facing. I could offer a gut sense of my innocence and little more. Nothing felt more important than staying alive, than staying free. Not even announcing to the world that I was a murderer.

  When they finished, I wanted to give the answer I'd been rehearsing in my head but found myself frozen. I folded my hands on the pitted wood and stared at them, and then I heard myself say, "I won't plead guilty to a murder I don't think I committed."

  The attorneys' heads swiveled to face each other, their worst fear realized. They appeared as shocked as I was by my decision.

  "With all due respect," Terry said, "how can you still think you didn't?"

  "Because I would know in my bones if I had."

  Out in the hall, the guard cleared his throat loudly. Terry scratched his hair in the back, fingernails giving off a good scraping sound. The sun inched higher in the window, making me squint against the glare.

  Donnie finally punctured the swollen silence with a sigh. He bounced forward, slapped his knees, and rose.

  "So what now?" I asked.

  "We argue each phase like your life depends on it." He looked up from loading papers into his briefcase. "Because it does."

  I hunched against the cold under the sheet, eyes on the blank wall opposite. A discoloration stained the concrete a few feet up, a splotch and then the trickling fallout. It couldn't have come from anything benign. I thought of the men who had occupied this cell before me, who'd slept their restless sleep and dreamed their lying dreams.

  Wudn't me.

  Some motherfucker set me up.

  I'm innocent.

  A guard approached, slipped an envelope through the bars. "You got a letter."

  I retrieved the envelope from the floor. My name, in a feminine hand. I sat back down and opened it. A piece of paper, torn to shreds.

  llyour sister.

  Tell me if

  I didn't ki

  so sorry for

  I can do. I'm

  there's anything

  your loss.

  The scraps of my note to Adeline slipped from my hands, scattering across the floor. One in particular stared back at me: your loss. I didn't notice my slow-motion deterioration to the concrete until it was pressed against my cheek, my body curled around my knees. I remained more or less in that position until the next morning, when they summoned me to court.

  L.A. had sweated out a whole year without a celebrity murder trial. I was neither a household name nor, as far as I knew, a killer, but the forces of the market had converged to make me both. Opening arguments had started sixty days from the second arraignment, time enough for me to lose weight, grow sallow and shaggy, and look otherwise convictable.

  A few minutes into the trial, I knew that my lawyers were right and that it would end disastrously. As promised, the rising-star prosecutor sharply dressed Katherine Harriman accessorized with sensible low-heel slingbacks and a father who'd jetted in from Chicago to beam proudly from the front row Swiffered the floor with me, the jury sailing to their verdict after only an eight-day trial and an hour's deliberation.

  I'd been convicted. The only question now was if I'd slide off with a not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Through the beginning of the sanity phase, the only way I could slow the quiet breakdown I was undergoing was to detach. I quickly learned that like the other players I had to devote my attention not to the ingredients of the trial but to its sugar glaze.

  And I had the support of my friends, who, my lawyers were pleased to note, comprised a nice demographic skew. Chic tapped his che
st with a fist whenever I caught his eyes. From time to time, Preston would glance up from whatever manuscript he was editing and offer a supportive nod. He had a stack of pages that went with him everywhere like a King Charles spaniel, under his arm, peeking out from his bag, perching on his thighs when he sat more than once when the courtroom hushed, I could make out the distinctive sound of his scribbling. And April, bless her, had shown up that morning as promised, even enduring the requisite walk of shame along an appointed stretch of public sidewalk while reporters mobbed her. It was clear we no longer had a future together, but I was deeply grateful she'd done me this final turn.

  More than anyone else, though, Katherine Harriman commanded the court's attention. She played to the jury now, doing her best to ignore my brain tumor, which Donnie had ingeniously left floating in a jar on the defense table. It looked menacing in the brackish waters, an unexploded hand grenade. I'd suffered the humiliation of sitting before it for opening arguments and more. I pictured it inside my head, latched onto my brain, operating me like a subservient robot. I was, I'm embarrassed to report, scared of a wad of brown tissue.

  And why not? The expert witness for the home team, a white-haired neurologist with a dignified bearing, had just identified it as a left anterior temporal ganglioglioma. There was much discussion of ventricles and glands, designed, I assumed, to cow the jurors with Medical Science. Ganglioglioma? Even the repetitive syllable seems tacked on to intimidate. Despite the malignant look of the word, gangliogliomas are okay as far as brain tumors go. After resection, patients enjoy a survival rate that approaches 100 percent, and we don't have to smell colors or taste music. The temporal lobe, the court learned, is involved in our processing of memory, thus my inconvenient blackout. Conditions like mine have been known to lead to schizophrenia-like psychosis, delusion, and episodic aggressive behavior.

  "And what causes this impressive constellation of symptoms to kick in?" Harriman asked midway into the cross, angling a bright cheek toward the carefully selected men who constituted Jurors Three through Seven.