Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Because I’m getting paid for it.”

  Lonborg tugged at the lapels of his blue blazer. The gold crest over the pocket exactly matched his hair and was doubtlessly significant to the millions more enlightened than I. “Did you persuade the police to arrest Larry?” he asked suddenly.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I thought maybe you’d come up with some ridiculous Sam Spade theory as to why he must have done it.”

  I shook my head. “I was as surprised as anyone when they charged him.”

  Lonborg inspected me to see if I was telling the truth. “Then tell me this, Tanner. Now that Larry’s been arrested, why aren’t the Renzels satisfied? Or do they want a private pound of flesh as well?”

  “I think what they want is to see that Usser doesn’t get away with it.”

  “Get away with it?” Lonborg frowned. “How would he do that?”

  “By having a psychiatrist like you take the stand and say he was suffering from an acute associative amalgamation or some such horror, aggravated by a manic delusive occlusion, so the jury will decide he was legally insane and let him off. Then, after he’s committed for treatment, those same shrinks will line up to proclaim him miraculously cured, praise to Jung, and swear that he can be released from the mental ward without the slightest risk to either himself or the rest of us.”

  “Those terms you used make no sense. Neither does your forecast of the future.”

  “Nevertheless, that’s what the Renzels are afraid of. Can you suggest any recent history that proves they’re foolish?”

  Lonborg smiled easily but ignored my request. “If that’s what they’re afraid of, how do you think you’re going to stop it?”

  “I’m not sure. Any suggestions?”

  “Not really.” Lonborg shrugged. “Except perhaps for you to go back to San Francisco and forget all about Lawrence Usser.”

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Because he’s a disturbed young man.” Lonborg’s eyes bored into mine. “Brilliant, but disturbed. His rehabilitation will be long and difficult. It won’t be helped by you poking and prying into the far corners of his past, reminding him of the pressures that converged to cause the problem in the first place. You see, your usual mode of operation has no meaning in this case, Mr. Tanner. Whether he did it and why he did it and how he did it, the usual focus of a criminal investigation, is irrelevant here. Lawrence Usser is mentally ill. He is not capable of forming the usual indicia of criminal conduct. He is not guilty of anything, in any sense that is commonly understood within these walls.”

  “You mean they should just let him go and forget about it?”

  “Not forget about it. Merely see to it that Larry receives appropriate treatment.”

  “From you, I suppose.”

  “Not necessarily, though now that Dianne is dead, I do know Larry better than anyone else. I believe I could put that knowledge to use therapeutically.”

  “What do you think is wrong with him?”

  Lonborg smiled another flash of neon tolerance. “I have ideas, and I’m certain my ideas are correct. But this is neither the time nor the place to discuss them. I suggest you tell your clients that their sense of vengeance is misplaced, Mr. Tanner. They would as appropriately be enraged at the weapon he used or the clothes he wore. Neither Larry nor the weapon nor his clothing could help what happened that night, because none of them possessed a will strong enough to prevent it. So go home, Mr. Tanner. Go home and leave us to our little tragedy. To do with as we will.”

  “Let me ask you something, Lonborg.”

  “Yes?”

  “There’s something I don’t understand. Your patient Lisa Usser tells the police her father murdered her mother, and tells them he’s threatened her as well. Yet here you are; spouting a sob story about Usser’s problems and why everyone should go away and leave poor Larry alone. Isn’t there a conflict of interest there, Doctor?”

  Lonborg’s lips curled. “I don’t need you to tell me my ethical responsibilities, Tanner. I am treating Lisa when I can, and I will continue to do so. Her statements to the police indicate she has regressed dramatically, to an infantile primitivism. The fact that I am sympathetic to her father’s dilemma has no bearing on her treatment.”

  “When’s the last time you saw Lisa?”

  “Why?”

  “Because she’s a little hard to locate these days. I thought maybe you could tell me how you go about it.”

  “I can tell you nothing, Mr. Tanner. About Lisa or Lawrence, either one.”

  “Oh, you’ve told me one thing, Lonborg.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’ve told me that you think your buddy killed his wife.”

  Lonborg shook his head then strolled away, his soft shoes silent as bare feet as he crossed the empty hallway.

  I stayed behind, gazing out the window at the rear wall of the police station, wondering what it had been like for a man like Lawrence Usser to spend the weekend within its walls, wondering why the case made less sense the more I learned about the participants in it, wondering if I should call the Renzels and, as Lonborg had suggested, remove myself from charting Usser’s fall. After a few more minutes I shrugged my mind and started to leave the way all the others had left.

  “Tanner.”

  The voice was gruff and dictatorial. I turned and faced the scowl of Jake Hattie. As usual he was strutting like a bantam rooster and was about to bust his buttons. “What the hell are you doing here, Tanner?”

  “Just looking, Jake.”

  “Well, you’re not working for me, and you’re not working for my client, so I can only assume you’re on the other side. Am I right?”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know.”

  “What the hell does that mean? You represent the Renzels, I know that much. Usser just told me. What I can’t figure out is what more your clients want. They’ve arrested Usser and charged him with first-degree murder, and they’re going for the death penalty. The Renzels want to pull the switch themselves?”

  “They haven’t executed anyone in this state since 1967, Jake. There are almost two hundred people on Death Row.”

  “Tell me about it. And tell me what it’s going to do for my reputation if the first one to take the pipe in twenty years is my fucking client.”

  I tried to suppress a smile. “The Renzels are just afraid he’s going to walk, Jake. They’re afraid he’s going to win on a bogus insanity plea. From the look of what just happened in the courtroom, it seems that’s just what Usser’s got in mind.”

  Jake frowned and shook his head. “He shot his mouth off when he shouldn’t have. If he listens to me he’ll withdraw that fucking insanity thing at the preliminary; hearing and stick to a simple ‘not guilty.’”

  “I don’t think he’s going to listen to you, Jake. I really don’t.”

  “Shit. This case doesn’t have anything to do with insanity; this case has to do with innocence. Usser didn’t do it, it’s as simple as that. If he lets me have my way I won’t even have to put on a case. The thing stinks of reasonable doubt.”

  “I don’t know, Jake. Gable’s no fool. Why would he file if his case was so thin?”

  “The daughter, that’s why. You want to know what this case is about, you go find out why the fuck the silly little bitch is so pissed off at her old man she wants to see him take a fall for murder.”

  “Maybe it’s because she thinks he killed her mother.”

  “Maybe. And maybe it’s because of what Freud and the boys say makes the world go round. Oedipus and Electra and all that shit.” Jake scraped his hand through his hair. “He wants to see you.”

  “Usser?”

  “Yeah.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “Where?”

  “Jury room down the hall. He’ll be with you as soon as this bail business gets settled. Shouldn’t be more than half an hour. He won’t let me sit in, so if he says anything stupid,
you tell me about it.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  I waited for him for twenty minutes. The jury room was bright but depressing, haunted by the transparent husks of a thousand guilty verdicts that had been rendered there.

  More than a million and a half arrests were made in California last year. At the other end of the pipeline, more than fifteen thousand people were committed to the state prison over that same period. The remaining million plus were disposed of in less drastic fashion—county jail, probation, fine, community service, tongue lashing, dismissal, even acquittal. It’s a system that’s overloaded, and it’s despised by virtually everyone connected with it. As with most inadequate institutions, the most obvious remedy is money. But criminals don’t make up much of a political constituency, and prisoners can’t vote, so the likelihood of significant reform is close to nil.

  I leaned back in one of the twelve chairs, put my feet up on the table and began thinking about the time some fifteen years ago when I’d spent six months in the San Francisco County Jail at San Bruno, serving a sentence for contempt of court. The nights had seemed endless, the very early mornings the loneliest, most vacant moments of my life. As Lawerence Usser joined me in the jury room, I was trying to remember exactly how the county jail had smelled. I wasn’t having any luck, though at the time I was certain I’d never forget it. I guess those scientists who claim you can’t remember smells are right.

  Usser took a seat across the table, collapsed into the chair, sighed, removed his glasses, lowered his face into his hands. His clothing was rumpled, his hair a gob of paste, his skin oiled and off-color. He emitted the stale sour scent of confinement, which was a component part of the stink I’d just been trying to remember.

  When he raised his head from his hands, he apologized for being late and thanked me for waiting for him. I told him it was all right. He replaced his glasses. Behind his wire-rim lenses his eyes were fogged with the same miserable smear as the first time I’d seen him.

  I asked if he’d posted bail.

  He nodded slowly. “I’m afraid I have totally and thankfully taken advantage of my family’s wealth.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong is that ninety-nine percent of the people in this country, if charged with what I have been charged with, would still be over in that horrid jail.”

  “That bothers you?”

  “Of course it bothers me, though obviously not enough for me to waive bail and return to my cell. Doesn’t it bother you?” Usser looked as though he dared me to deny it.

  “It used to,” I admitted. “I’m not sure it does anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  I shrugged. “I guess because outrage at economic disparity implies that all problems admit to economic solutions. We seem to be building a world where money is the measure of everything. Everything has a price tag; everything is measured by its financial aspect. I read the other day that a student decided not to go to medical school because it wouldn’t be a good return on investment. That seems a little off the track.”

  “Well,” Usser said slowly, “maybe you’re right, though I have my doubts. The benefits of letting the economic chips fall where they may are seldom recognized by those who don’t have many of those chips to play with.” He managed a weary grin. “In any event, if I weren’t so exhausted, I’d enjoy debating the proposition with you.”

  I shook my head. “It wouldn’t be much fun. I can’t defend my position with anything more than a hunch. And I doubt that I can establish that being in jail is in any circumstance better than being out of it.”

  Usser nodded, then closed his eyes and seemed to close his pugnacity as well. “It would be difficult to convince me of the proposition, I can tell you that. If there is a system of punishment more certain to breed brutal, remorseless criminals than the one in effect in this country, I’m sure no one has thought of it.”

  “Was it bad for you in there?”

  “Bad enough. The hint of incipient violence was as heavy as a shroud. I was choked by it, literally. I quickly came to believe that anything was possible in that place. Anything at all.”

  “You were probably right.”

  “Yes. I probably was.” Usser seemed still terrified by the ordeal. If he was like me, the experience would stay with him for years. “It’s not going to make it any easier for me to see any of my future clients sentenced to prison, I can tell you that,” he added. “If I have any future clients.”

  The conversation melted into Usser’s silent envisioning of his destiny. I let him muse for a moment, then asked him what he wanted to speak to me about.

  “I want to ask a favor of you,” he answered simply, looking here and there, at everything but me.

  “What favor?”

  “I want you to quit investigating the murder of my wife. I want you to leave all of it alone; to call and tell the Renzels you are resigning your commission.”

  “And why should I do that?”

  Usser met my eye. “There are reasons. Good ones. Reasons that would satisfy the Renzels if they knew them.”

  “Like what?”

  Usser hesitated. “Let’s just say the reason is that I’m guilty. Do you understand? I’m admitting it, right here, so that you can tell them. I’m guilty and I’ve been arrested and I will go to trial. So there’s no need for you to investigate any longer, no need for them to waste their money.”

  “I already told them that. They didn’t buy it then; I doubt they’ll buy it now.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because the first thing they’re going to think of is that if I withdraw from the case, it will be that much easier for you to make your insanity defense hold up.”

  “But that’s nonsense. You can’t play a part in the resolution of that issue. It’s a medical question, not a factual question.”

  “I told them that, too. But I don’t think I’ll tell them again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t think I’m wasting my time in this case. Not anymore.”

  Usser gave me a twisted grin. “Is it that you don’t accept the concept of criminal responsibility, Mr. Tanner? Is it that you disagree with the suggestion of Professor Kadish that the abolition of the insanity defense would, and I quote, ‘open to the condemnation of a criminal conviction a class of persons who, on any common sense notion of justice, are beyond blaming and ought not to be punished’? Do you deny the wisdom of Justice Holmes, who noted that even a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked?”

  “It’s not that, I—”

  “Do you really think it fair to treat everyone the same?” Usser interrupted, the opaque sheen across his eyes now burned away, replaced by sparkling crystal. “Think of the infinite variety of mental aberration, Mr. Tanner. Think of the ones who mindlessly hurt others and the ones who similarly hurt themselves, of the ones who never speak and the ones who can’t stop speaking, the ones who think they’re rabbits and the ones who think they’re Christ, the ones who feel superior and the ones who feel inferior, the ones who hear and see nothing and the ones who hear and see things that are never there, the ones who feel no pain and the ones who feel pain perpetually, and the ones who feel no guilt and the ones who are paralyzed by it. Are we to lump them all together, Mr. Tanner? Grind them through the system and toss them in a cell with the truly evil ones who prey on us with full faculties?”

  “I’m not saying that, Professor. I’m just saying that the system needs repair.”

  Usser waived at my objection with a hand. “The insanity plea isn’t all that common, you know. Ninety-five percent of all criminal cases are plea-bargained out, as I’m sure you know. And of the five percent that go to trial, only one to two percent involve the insanity defense. That’s one tenth of one percent of the total number. You and the other critics are making a mountain out of a molehill.”

  “But when it happens it tends to be dramatic,” I said. “Like this case, for example.”
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br />   Usser smiled a bleak crease. “I suppose so. But we punish people as a deterrent, do we not? To affect the conduct of others? Surely you see that punishment of one insane person will have no effect at all on the behavior of other insane persons. One in the grip of an insane delusion is not likely to consider the fate of schizophrenics past.”

  “Maybe. But there’s always revenge,” I said, suddenly the devil’s advocate, suddenly enjoying myself.

  “Do we take revenge on paraplegics because they can’t walk? Do we take revenge on children because they run into the street? No. We make allowances.”

  I smiled. “What kind of allowances do you want them to make for you, Professor?”

  Usser paused, took a deep breath, then expelled it with a ghostly whistle. When he spoke again, it was no longer as a fevered sophist but as a puzzled commoner. I couldn’t tell if he was addressing my question or one of his own. “Do you ever wake up in the night, Mr. Tanner? In a cold sweat? Your breathing labored, your heart pounding, your mind racing because you believe—no, you know—that something you have done will have absolutely disastrous results, for you or for someone else? Does that ever happen to you?”

  “Fairly often, as a matter of fact.”

  “What do you do about it?”

  “I get up and fix myself a drink.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “I fix myself another drink.”

  Usser didn’t smile. His eyes were dull again, and his thoughts had wandered far beyond the room.

  “Is that what this is about?” I asked when he didn’t speak. “Did your wife accuse you of doing something that caused needless harm to someone? Did it have something to do with the release of the Maniac, by any chance?”

  Usser blinked his eyes and frowned. “Who?”

  “His name is Ronald Nifton. He used to be your client.”

  Usser nodded with less reaction than I expected. “A troubled man. And a troubling one. Why do you mention him?”

  “Because I saw him last night.”