The Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

  I looked at the birds on the feeder and tried to gather my thoughts. The last thing I wanted to do at that moment was fight with Carissa. She didn't need that. But as badly as I felt for her given all she'd been through, she wasn't the victim in this disaster. Not by a long shot. The victim was up at the hospital in Burlington at that moment, lying flat in a bed in a coma.

  I wonder if the guy has disability insurance. I wonder if life insurance kicks in if you're in a coma.

  "I'm sorry," I said, without looking away from the window. "I was just trying to get a sense of whether there might be crimi-nal...whether there might be grounds to investigate what happened."

  She tossed her hairbrush on the table, and the crack of wood on wood scared the cat. "And I didn't mean to snap at you. It's just..."

  "It's just what?"

  "Oh," she said, waving a hand in the air, "I could just throw up. That's what. I could just throw up."

  Sepia jumped onto the dish rack beside the sink, and the birds on the other side of the window flew away. A thought crossed my mind: This is such a nice house. I hope she can keep it.

  I sat down beside Carissa and began rubbing her back. I murmured over and over that this would all turn out fine in the end, eventually everything would be okay, while trying to decide whether I should have her call Oren Candon or Becky McNeil. They were both excellent lawyers, with outstanding records in civil trials.

  And, as defense attorneys, they'd both beaten the State.

  Chapter 13.

  Number 264

  It is for [the true physician] a matter of conscience to be absolutely sure that the patient always receives the right medicine.

  Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,

  Organon of Medicine, 1842

  .

  I felt a tad queasy as I drove to work, and I told myself it was my driving: I was so concerned about Carissa, I was handling the truck like a drunk. Swerving at the last minute to avoid a rural mailbox. Slamming on the brakes when I almost went into the rear of another pickup stopped at a light. Sliding into the wrong lane while taking a turn particularly badly.

  What must it be like to live with the possibility that you put someone in a coma? I'd certainly seen the faces of remorse enough in my life: The real drunk (versus the merely preoccupied prosecutor the day after Christmas) who kills a five-year-old and cripples her mother while driving under the influence. The uncle who shoots his niece's boyfriend when he gets the mistaken idea that the young guy was abusing her.

  But I'd never really experienced remorse myself, I decided. I understood regret; I'd certainly made my share of bad decisions in my life. And clearly I knew guilt, at least the sort of guilt I assumed most people experienced every day: Telling Abby I was too tired to read her one more book. Taking months to build the handicapped-access ramp at the church. Spending massive amounts of time on the Web looking up sites devoted solely to female ejaculation.

  Guilt? Oh, yeah. Been there, done that.

  Not so, I thought, with remorse.

  I wished it was the Emmons woman's predicament that was making me queasy, but I was afraid it wasn't. A few times, I had to remind myself that she wasn't a terrible, evil person--a stalker bent senselessly upon the ruination of my girlfriend's life.

  By the time I got to the office, it was almost eleven-thirty. Emmons's wife had to have called, I was sure of it. Often that morning when I'd been trapped in my truck behind lumbering milk tankers, I'd imagine her on the phone with Phil Hood.

  No one in my office was aware that I was dating Carissa, which meant there was still a chance I could be the one to chat with the wife. Call her back if she'd phoned and no one had dealt with her. Take the call if for some reason she was only just now contacting the State's Attorneys Office.

  Your husband knew he was allergic to cashews, Ms. Emmons? This is a real tragedy, and I'll be sure to review your statement very carefully. But I just don't see a criminal offense. Bye.

  If she was adamant, I could tell her to call the Vermont Attorney General's Office.

  Or, perhaps, I could tell her that I'd look into her charges. And then do nothing. Or everything. Or whatever in between was appropriate, with the singular goal of making sure that Carissa was never charged with a crime.

  Which would mean making sure that no one ever discovered I was dating her.

  Which was impossible.

  Someone was going to find out I was seeing the woman. It was inevitable.

  If this thing did explode, at some point I'd have to 'fess up. And if I did have to 'fess up, the sooner the better. Like that morning.

  When I arrived, I asked Gerianne, our receptionist, what sort of Christmas she'd had, and then realized I was completely unable to focus on her response--despite the fact that I was dimly aware that she was telling me something about a toy fire truck, her six-year-old son, and a hook and ladder snapping shut on his finger.

  "Any messages?" I asked, fearing for a brief moment she'd just told me her little boy had lost a pinkie while I wasn't listening.

  "Oh, yeah," she said, and she handed me a typical pile of five or six little pink squares. I glanced at them quickly and saw none were from a woman named Emmons.

  "Any unusual calls this morning?"

  "Someone called in a bomb threat to Wal-Mart. Put a damper on the day-after-Christmas sale."

  I nodded. "Anyone looking for me?"

  "You shoot somebody?"

  "No."

  "Nobody's looking for you."

  "Thank you."

  She gave me a smile that looked plenty maternal, despite the fact that it was coming from a woman five or six years my junior. "Leland, it's okay to be a little late the day after Christmas. Trust me. Seems to me we shouldn't even be working today."

  I tried to smile back. I hadn't realized I was acting so squir-relly.

  I put my head into Phil's office before I'd even ventured into my own, unsure what I was planning to say. I like to believe that I was about to tell him about Carissa, but that's probably rubbish. I was relieved when I saw that Margaret Turnbull was there with him, because it meant I had an excuse not to say a word.

  The two attorneys were sitting around the small round conference table opposite Phil's desk.

  "Leland, good morning!" Phil said when he saw me, actually rising from his seat in a show of mock earnestness. "Merry day after Christmas. I'm so glad you decided to join us."

  "Phil, Margaret. Good morning."

  "Hi, Leland. A little too much Christmas cheer yesterday?" Margaret asked.

  "Day-care problems," I told her.

  "Nice Christmas?" Phil asked, and I realized instead of "day-care problems," I could have told Margaret, Yeah. I was doing speedballs with my daughter, and Phil still would have asked whether I'd had a nice Christmas. It wasn't that they weren't listening, and it wasn't that they didn't care. It was simply that I was so reliable in their minds, it hadn't fazed them a bit that I was late. Day-care problems? Happens all the time.

  "Wonderful Christmas," I told Phil. "You?"

  "Aces. Barbara made the most magnificent stuffed squash you've ever tasted--a Christmas dinner absolutely free of dairy and meat. And almost no fat."

  "Yummy."

  "I assume you feasted on the usual dead flesh of animals great and small?"

  "Of course. But this year we decided we wouldn't even cook them. And we killed the critters ourselves on Christmas morn." I turned to Margaret, planning to change the subject by asking her how her Christmas with Dr. Strangelove had been, when I heard Gerianne paging me, telling me I had a call waiting.

  "Be sure to connect with Justin when you're done," Phil told me, referring to one of the younger attorneys in the office.

  "For sure. Anything unusual going on?"

  "No, I think he simply has a couple questions. Why?"

  "Just curious."

  "Do you feel okay, Leland?" Margaret asked. "You look a little pale."

  "It must be all that meat," I answered. "You know how unhealthy
we carnivores are."

  "It's Rod Morrow," Gerianne told me on my speakerphone as I took off my coat and dropped my attache onto the credenza behind my desk. I thanked her and picked up the line that was blinking. As we compared our holidays--and Rod really didn't sound as though he minded having to have worked a part of Christmas Day--I hoped my voice didn't sound as uneasy on the phone as it apparently sounded in person to Gerianne and Margaret.

  "You get my message?" Rod asked me.

  "I did. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to call you back. And then I figured it could wait till today."

  "She call in yet?"

  "The...Emmons woman?"

  "That's the one."

  "I don't know."

  "I told her if it would make her feel any better, she should call your office."

  "Very kind of you."

  "You know them?"

  "The Emmons family? No."

  "She seems..."

  "Angry?"

  "No, not really. Scared. She seems sad and scared."

  "Oh."

  "She seems like this sweet lady who's just scared shitless for her husband and kids. Actually, she probably seemed a hell of a lot more reasonable than I would have if I had two children and some quasi-doctor had just put my husband in a coma."

  "Did she know the doctor's name?"

  "Carissa."

  "Carissa," I repeated.

  "Carissa Lake. She's a homeopath--whatever that means."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I think it's some kind of alternative medicine."

  I said nothing, and he quickly filled in the silence: "The woman--Emmons's wife, not the quack who was treating him--is very concerned this Carissa Lake is going to kill someone someday. Assuming, of course, she hasn't already."

  "Killed someone."

  "Right."

  "If Emmons had died, I think I'd have heard," I said. It wouldn't, technically, be the sort of unattended death that automatically involves the State's Attorneys Office, because the fellow would have died at the hospital. But it would have been a death triggered by an unforeseen event in his home. And that would have involved my office, and surely Gerianne or Margaret or Phil would have said something to me if a possible homicide or suicide had come in earlier that morning.

  "I guess."

  "What's the Emmons woman's name?"

  "Jennifer."

  "What exactly did she say happened?"

  "Well, in the middle of the night Christmas Eve, her husband got out of bed. He's an asthmatic, and he was having trouble breathing. He went downstairs, opened the refrigerator, and ate cashews she didn't even know they had in the house. When she found him, he was already on the floor, and he couldn't breathe. See, he's allergic to them."

  For the first time, the image of a family man--a father like me--collapsed on the kitchen tiles grew real in my mind. Then I imagined this Jennifer Emmons person crouched over him. "It must have been horrible for her," I said.

  "I'm sure. And so she called the rescue squad, and now the guy's in a coma."

  "Where did she say the homeopath fits in?"

  "She thinks the woman advised her husband to eat the cashews, because he wouldn't have bought them on his own. And she thinks this voodoo doctor told her husband to go off his meds."

  "He was off his meds?"

  "Apparently. Now, this lady admits she doesn't know a damn thing about the law--she's a very reasonable woman, all things considered--but she can't believe it isn't illegal to be some kind of doctor and tell an asthmatic to stop taking his medicine and then eat foods he knows he's allergic to."

  "She doesn't just see it as stupid advice?"

  "No way."

  I sighed. "I'm sure they've already done blood work at the hospital. I'm sure they know whether or not he was taking his asthma drugs."

  "His wife will tell you he wasn't."

  "But that doesn't mean the homeopath told him to give them up."

  "His wife will tell--"

  "Would you just let his wife tell me, then!"

  Rod whistled. "What kind of coal did you get yesterday?"

  "I just walked in the office, and I've got a stack of messages as fat as my briefcase. I'm sorry."

  "Hey, just thought you'd want to know. He is sort of a neighbor, after all. Fact is, she is, too. The homeopath. I looked her up in the DMV computer, and there she was. She lives in the village itself, of course, unlike you and Abby up there in those hills. But this Carissa Lake is a Bartlett resident, too."

  I glanced up, and Margaret was standing in my doorway with a yellow pad in her hands. She signaled that she wanted to chat when I was off the phone. "Thank you," I said to the detective, while holding up one finger for Margaret, trying to tell her I'd be done in a minute. Then, to be sure, I mouthed the words "One minute," and she nodded and disappeared down the hall.

  "You're welcome, Mr. Grinch."

  "I'm sorry I snapped at you."

  "Noted."

  "Do you have any idea how old her kids are?"

  "One's a teen. And one's a little younger."

  "Boys? Girls?"

  "One of each."

  I wondered if it would kill me to have a single cup of coffee. Suddenly, for the first time in days, I had a desire for even the sludge we called coffee in the State's Attorneys Office.

  "I'll let you know if she calls, okay?" I told Rod.

  "No obligation, we're investigating. I just called you 'cause I thought you might know her."

  "Jennifer Emmons?"

  "Of course! I thought you might know the whole Emmons family! Why in the name of God would I think you knew the homeopath? You're not into that kind of thing, are you?"

  "Do I seem like the type?" I asked, realizing as I spoke that if I had waved Margaret into my office instead of away, I might have just told Rod the truth. Come clean right there on the phone. After all, it's no easy task to obstruct justice when there's a witness who happens to be a state's attorney.

  It really is the little things in this world, isn't it? I thought. It's the little things that change everything. If Margaret had been sitting across my desk from me then, I might have been completely unable to withhold from Rod the fact that I was indeed into that sort of thing, and that I was actually getting to know the homeopath in question rather well.

  "Are you kidding?" Rod told me. "I can sooner see you getting a recreational enema than wasting your time with some New Age quack."

  "I'll take that as a compliment," I said.

  "That's just how it was meant," he said, and then we both said good-bye. In the ensuing silence, I tried not to regret not asking Margaret to wait.

  It was possible, I decided around two-fifteen, that Jennifer Emmons was never going to call. Unlikely. But possible. After all, for one reason or another I'd spoken with a half-dozen of the attorneys in the office, and there had been absolutely no sign of her.

  At least no sign that I'd seen: I reminded myself that there were four or five other lawyers wandering through the courthouse, and any one of them could have heard from Jennifer that morning.

  It was right around then, I believe, that I first decided I really wanted more arsenic. That I really needed more arsenic.

  Not like a junkie, of course, not the way an addict needs drugs. It wasn't like that, I told myself. Besides, the arsenic I craved wasn't really a drug anyway. In reality, it was just sugar. Right? It was a little sucrose pellet that belonged in a big bag of candy. Not a tiny pharmacological vial.

  No, I simply needed arsenic the way I'd once needed cough drops. I needed those little white pills as a psychological crutch, and it had absolutely nothing to do with a physiological or chemical dependence.

  Besides, wasn't homeopathic arsenic safer than cough drops?

  Maybe. Probably. Certainly.

  And it sure as hell worked better. Throughout that interminable summer and fall, lozenges had never done a damn thing for my sore throat, but that arsenic Carissa had given me had worked wonders on my anxieties and fears
overnight.

  For all I knew, I might never have found the energy and the courage to court Carissa Lake without arsenic. I might never have asked her to spend Christmas Eve at my house.

  Without arsenic, I might never have beaten back the cold that had lived inside me for a full half a year, I might never have been able to stand in Courtroom 3A without my nose running. My throat burning. My pockets overflowing with handkerchiefs and Halls.