The Law of Similars

by Chris Bohjalian

  But she kept thinking of something I'd told her the day after Christmas: It's not so much what you say that matters, it's what people hear.

  And as much as a part of her wanted to despise Richard Emmons for his obstinacy and his persistence, for his idiocy and his determination--for what he had done to his wife and his children and now to her--she kept coming back to the things she had said to him, and the last of her confidence waned. The despair conceived inside her Christmas Day promptly hatched, and the void in her soul was replaced almost wholly by doubt.

  Imagine a vase that is watertight but cracked. Now imagine it poured full with regret.

  She grew less and less interested in whether she'd be prosecuted or sued; she cared less and less about the law.

  She cared less and less about how I'd tried to help her.

  I, after all, had been working on the supposition that if I didn't protect her, she might lose everything in her life that mattered.

  Neither of us understood at the time that she already had.

  I can see her alone in her room that night, gazing up at the stars on her ceiling. Staring at the windmills and church spires on her walls. Sainte-Chapelle. Notre Dame. The great gold dome of the Invalides.

  Perhaps she pretended she saw Madeline, the figure drawn by the hand of a little girl.

  Perhaps she looked out the window and saw the moon over Bartlett.

  Perhaps not. Perhaps she just sat in her chair and shook.

  Chapter 17.

  Number 96

  Not even the most extreme hypochondriacs will entirely fabricate their complaints and symptoms.

  Dr. Samuel Hahnemann,

  Organon of Medicine, 1842

  .

  I was getting paranoid. I'd found my exchange with Whitney so upsetting that I'd almost run back to her house and pounded on the door, and demanded that she come outside and let me defend myself. And while on one level I understood she was merely a kid who was spending her last few weeks home from college on a higher moral plateau than the rest of us mortals, it still gave me yet one more thing to worry about: Exactly what did that young woman believe I had done? Just how loose was that cannon she was calling her mouth?

  Clearly I wasn't cut out for a life of crime. It was making me nauseous and giving me the trots. It was making my hands and feet tingle. All the time. Tingle.

  I felt a pressure building up in my bowels and walked with haste to the bathroom, stopping only briefly as I passed by the hall closet: My arsenic was still in my overcoat pocket, and I recalled the little book on homeopathy saying something about arsenic being a good remedy for the runs. And so I shook another two pills into the palm of my hand on my way to the bathroom and dropped them under my tongue.

  Tomorrow, I decided, I'd try and connect with Carissa. Definitely. I had to know if she was aware of her niece's anger with me, and whether she understood what was really behind it. Maybe she could nip it in the bud.

  Abby woke up early Friday morning, and then woke me up, too. She carried Candy Land into my bedroom, plopped the game board upon my bed, and handed me the green gingerbread man.

  "I'm littlest, so I go first," she said.

  We played the game for half an hour, and for thirty minutes I don't think I thought about Carissa Lake's statement or Whitney Lake's accusation, or the fact that Jennifer Emmons was about to start raising two children on her own.

  I don't believe I thought of Richard Emmons on his back in a coma, shrinking a bit each day because he was living on glucose and vitamin water.

  I was not exactly happy. But I was still dazed with sleep and I was with my little girl, and so I was content.

  Later that morning, I found myself wondering who would benefit that day from my uncharacteristic mercy. It was the very last workday of the year. I glanced at the date book on my desk as soon as I'd hung up my coat and opened the venetian blinds in my office--it was sunny, and I wanted all the daylight and cheer I could secure--and saw the usual litany of wife beaters, larcenists, drunk drivers, and drug dealers. As far as I knew, however, none of them was a full-fledged justice obstructor. Or whatever the hell the noun was.

  I looked at my ten o'clock, still almost ninety minutes away. It was a thirty-one-year-old guy named Paquette with no apparent source of legitimate income. He'd been charged with two counts of delivering marijuana, each one a felony. But each bag he'd been delivering was a whopping five ounces, and the guy had no priors. So I could envision exactly what would transpire in Courtroom 3A later that morning: The two charges would be amended from delivery to possession, and would therefore become mere misdemeanors. Paquette would be sentenced to six months for each count, with both terms suspended. He'd walk out the door with a year of probation.

  Normally, I knew, I wouldn't cave to possession. Not with two counts and ten ounces. But I was positive I would today.

  "Your Honor," I imagined myself saying, "at least Mr. Paquette did not fabricate evidence to preclude a possible criminal charge, and destroy the evidence of his own involvement with a woman being investigated for criminal negligence."

  I sat back in my chair and decided I was going to have a cup of coffee. I was going to stand up, walk to the coffee machine I hadn't touched in a month, and make a full pot--twelve killer cups--of joe. Fuck the fact that I already had a case of the trots. And I was a little bit nauseous. And I had the weirdest tingling in my fingers and toes.

  I wanted a cup. I needed a cup. And it was important that I was alert. If I had any chance of getting through the last workday of the year, it was important that I was...together.

  I stood up, felt the small prickles I'd come to know well run across the soles of my feet, and immediately sat back down. I didn't need coffee. I needed arsenic. That's what I needed. I pulled the tube from my pocket, tapped the pills that remained into a small anthill in the palm of my hand, and with the tip of my tongue speared the pair that had bounced to one end of my lifeline.

  And then, just to be sure, decided to seize another two.

  Just before nine, Phil Hood came into my office without his jacket and closed the door. "So you honestly saw this homeopath a total of two times," he said. He looked tired and sad. He was leaning against the back of the door, his hands behind him.

  "Good morning, Phil."

  My boss nodded. "It isn't good, Leland."

  "It's sunny."

  "Two times?"

  "Two times."

  He sat down across from me, and I thought the lines in his face looked deeper in the morning sun.

  "Why do you ask, Phil?"

  "I don't know."

  "You don't know...."

  "No."

  "Did she give a statement?"

  "She did," he said, and he looked away from me, out the window at Burlington. "At Becky McNeil's office. A mere three blocks away. A delightful little walk most days of the year."

  "You waited in the next room?"

  "I did."

  "You almost never bother with statements."

  "I wanted to make sure the right questions were asked. And given the...the runaround Jennifer Emmons got from you, I thought it was the politic thing to do."

  "A public-affairs gesture?"

  He turned to me, and I realized instantly that I'd just said exactly the wrong thing. The weariness that masked his face had been transformed by my four words into disgust. "A human gesture," Phil answered, and his lips went thin.

  "I see," I said. I hoped I sounded as chastised as I felt.

  "You really don't drink coffee anymore, do you?"

  I shook my head. "Oh, but I still hanker for some."

  "I'll bet you do." Phil crossed a leg in his lap and wrapped his hands around his knee. "Ever hanker for a homeopath?"

  I took a breath and tried to decide whether I should sound indignant or merely perplexed. The words that came out, I thought as I said them, were somewhere in between: "Is this badgering? Or does this line of questioning have a purpose?"

  "I honestly don't k
now," Phil said.

  "Because two days ago, you made it clear to me you didn't want me anywhere near Carissa Lake or this case. And now you've come into my office and all you want to do is talk about her. Have I missed a step?"

  "Know what?"

  "No. What?"

  "I'm not sure there is a case."

  "Really?"

  "Surprised?"

  I shrugged, hoping I looked unconcerned.

  "I was," Phil said.

  "Surprised..."

  "You bet. I think that's why it doesn't seem like a very good morning to me. There's a very nice man in a coma at the hospital and a very nice woman who's going to have to raise a couple of kids on her own. And there's a homeopath who I am absolutely convinced is responsible, but who we can't touch."

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Better now than when I was actually speaking. Then Phil would assume anything I was saying was a lie--which, of course, it probably would be.

  "Every week there's a case like that in this office," I said finally. "Every week we come across someone we know is guilty as hell--and who, for one reason or another, we'll never, ever prosecute. Why does this one disturb you so much?"

  He raised his eyebrows. "Because this one has the taint of our office."

  "Taint? Taint? Give me a break, Phil. I went out to dinner with the woman one time."

  Outside my shut office door I heard laughter. I wondered how long I'd have to endure Phil mano a mano before I could escape into the hall for a drink of water. Or a run to the toilet. I didn't dare, I decided, cut short our conversation.

  "One time," he murmured.

  "Yes. One time."

  "It's just...No, it isn't just anything. It's everything. It's everything your friend said in her statement. It's everything she had ready for the detectives at Becky's office."

  "Not my friend. That's not fair."

  "Forgive me. Your acquaintance."

  "Thank you."

  "She brought her notes with her. Lots of notes."

  "I'd expect that."

  "Of course you would. Would you expect them to be perfect?"

  "Perfect?"

  "Perfect. At least from the perspective of a woman who doesn't want to be charged with a criminal offense. Or face a civil suit that would make her gray before her time, and not leave her a dime for a rinse."

  "You've already gone through them?"

  "Carefully."

  "And?"

  "And it was like she knew exactly what we'd be looking for, and what she'd need for an airtight defense. There's Richard Emmons asking Carissa Lake if he can stop taking his asthma drugs. And there's Carissa Lake saying no. 'Told him not to consider it.' No, wait, it was better than that: 'Told him not to consider such a thing. Told him to stay with his inhalers and pills.' Isn't that terrific? Told him not to consider such a thing." His voice had gone almost liquidy-sweet.

  "Terrific," I said.

  "The notes show the two of them had a similar exchange when she actually gave him his homeopathic medicine. And then, when he called her a week or so later, they show her telling him that going off his regular drugs would be dangerous and stupid and...and irresponsible."

  "Most doctors keep pretty good records."

  "I guess."

  "Anything about cashews?" I decided I would probably have asked that question even if I'd known nothing about what was actually in those nineteen pages of notes.

  "Ah, the cashews. The notes are quite clear about the cashews, Leland. About cashews and poison ivy. Seems they're in the same plant family."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Yes, indeed. And Carissa Lake told her patient that he should never, ever eat cashews. Not with his allergy. Not with his asthma."

  I wondered briefly if Carissa and I had overdone it, if we'd gone too far in the Octagon Wednesday morning. But we'd had to go far, that was the point: We had to be absolutely sure we'd built such a strong defense that the State wouldn't bother to prosecute. Of course Phil Hood was going to be angry. That was to be expected. It was the suspicion--the mistrust and the cynicism--that surprised me.

  "Have you broken the news to Jennifer Emmons?"

  "What news is that?" He looked directly at me for the first time in minutes.

  "The news that we're not going to prosecute."

  "No."

  "Telling her will be hard. You have my sympathies."

  "Does she, too?"

  "She?"

  "Jennifer Emmons. Does she also have your sympathies?"

  "She does. Of course."

  "I'm glad. Because you know what? While the odds are slim to none that we'll ever build a case, I'm not prepared to close the investigation just yet."

  I felt something ripple across my stomach. "No?"

  He stood and glanced once more at the city from my window, squinting for a moment against the sun, and then went to the door. With his fingers on the knob he said, "Nope. Want to know why?"

  I wasn't at all sure that I did. In fact, I was pretty sure that I didn't. I knew that whatever Phil had to say would make me sick. "Sure. Tell me why."

  "Her car wouldn't start. I left Becky's a couple minutes before she did, but I had to stop at that little gourmet shop on Bank Street. We're having a few people over for dinner New Year's Eve, and Barbara asked me to pick up some wild rice. Well, when I came out, who should I see but your friend--excuse me, your acquaintance--standing beside her slick little Audi with the hood up. She was parked at one of the meters beside the diner, and a young fellow was about to jump her car. 'No problem,' she said to me, smiling. 'This happened Christmas Eve, too.'"

  Was I sweating? I doubted it. But I did feel sickly and nauseous and warm.

  "'Before or after church?' I asked, just being polite. And Leland? That smile on her face evaporated, it just disappeared. 'Before,' she mumbled, and I nodded--there wasn't a damn thing I could say; we both knew I didn't dare ask her another question without Becky present. And so I just said good night and went to the parking garage to get my own car.

  "But all the way home, I kept thinking to myself: That lady must have had one hell of a strong desire to go to Leland's church Christmas Eve. After all, she'd had to find someone willing to jump-start her car. But that kind of interest seemed a little unlikely, since she'd never, ever been there before. So then I thought, What if someone picked her up and drove her there? That's possible. Right?"

  "Right."

  "Of course, then you'd expect her to have sat with them. And not with you."

  "I don't recall seeing her car Christmas Eve."

  "No. I don't think it was there. I think Carissa was telling the truth about that. I think she really is having trouble with her battery. Or her alternator, maybe." He pulled open the door. "See why I'm not quite ready to close the investigation?"

  "I do."

  He looked into the hallway, and I thought he was going to leave. But then almost abruptly he asked, "How are you feeling?"

  "I've felt better. But I'm okay."

  "You don't look okay. Take advantage of the three-day weekend. Get some rest. Sometimes..." His voice trailed off uncharacteristically.

  "Sometimes what?" I asked.

  "Look, I know we don't talk about Elizabeth very often these days, but don't think I don't think about her. And you. Everyone in this office remembers what you went through. Everyone respects how you've handled yourself since the accident. How you've lived your life."

  "I appreciate that."

  "But your...misfortune," he said, choosing his words with great care, "awesome as it was, is still no excuse to start cutting corners. Especially now. Especially after keeping body and soul together for so damn long."

  "I'm fine, Phil."

  "I'm worried about you, Leland. That's all," he said, and then he was gone. And I ran my handkerchief over my forehead.

  In my mind, I saw somebody's fingers closing Richard Emmons's eyes for him, the fingers a part of an arm that was draped in loose hospital scrubs. I saw Jennifer i
n a chair beside the bed, whispering a sentence now and then, her lips close to her husband's ear. I saw children, a teenage girl and a younger boy, staring out the window at the sky.

  I had no delusions that a visit to the ICU would offer atonement.