Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  “Dianne Renzel threatened to put a stop to it, didn’t she?”

  Lonborg responded only indirectly. “I’ve always been hypersensitive to incompetence. I can’t abide it in others so of course I can’t tolerate it in myself. For some reason, I am terrified of the consequences of personal inadequacy. The public consequences, that is. If only I know of my failures, it is endurable. When others know, it is abominable. Fortunately, with Larry’s help I was able to know almost unbroken success. I am the foremost forensic psychiatrist on the West Coast.”

  Given the circumstances, I found his self-aggrandizement chilling. “That’s great for you,” I said. “I’m not sure it’s all that great for the West Coast.”

  Lonborg laughed sadly. “You tease me, Mr. Tanner. You hope to provoke an attack or an enraged confession. I assure you, I am sanguine. I am in control.”

  We fell silent again. On stage the twins were skipping in a circle, hands clasped, the large one trilling a nonsense song. Suddenly Lonborg left my side and crossed the pit and vaulted onto the stage and motioned for me to follow.

  “My turn,” he said to Leandra as I clambered up on the platform. She handed her book to him and clapped. “Oh, good; oh, good.”

  Lonborg flipped some pages, then began to read:

  “O, lest the world should task you to recite

  What merit liv’d in me, that you should love

  After my death,—dear love, forget me quite,

  For you in me can nothing worthy prove;

  Unless you would devise some virtuous lie,

  To do more for me than mine own desert,

  And hang more praise upon deceased I

  Than niggard truth would willingly impart:

  O, lest your true love may seem false in this,

  That you for love speak well of me untrue,

  My name be buried where my body is,

  And live for no more to shame nor me nor you.

  For I am sham’d by that which I bring forth,

  And so should you, to love things nothing worth.”

  By the time Lonborg had finished his recital Cassandra was sobbing, tears as thick as lava streaming through mascara and down her cheeks, above her groans of heartbreak. She made no move to stem her grief, and Lonborg made no move to stem it for her. Leandra was still her opposite, hopping up and down, calling, “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” as her jellied flesh trembled beneath her slacks and flowing shirt.

  Lonborg smiled and put the book on the floor. “What’s wrong, Dr. Lonborg?” Leandra asked again. “What’s wrong?”

  Lonborg pointed to me. “He’s going to kill me. I’ll be dead, just like Shakespeare said. Do you understand, Cassandra? ‘The earthy and cold hand of death lies on my tongue.’”

  Lonborg looked expectantly at the slender girl. Cassandra just kept crying.

  “Why, Doctor? Why?” Leandra pleaded, as jolly as she’d been when I first laid eyes on her, her words at total odds with her surface mood.

  Lonborg went to the back of the stage and reached into a nylon sports bag he had placed there and pulled out two objects wrapped in towels and brought them back toward the three of us. I couldn’t identify the objects until he unwrapped them and held them out, offering one to each of the girls. “Here. Take them. If you want to let me live, if you want him not to murder me, you must use these weapons. You must stab him. Again and again. Stab him. Save me, Cassandra. Save my life. ‘I am done to death by his slanderous tongue.’”

  Each of the girls took the climber’s axe that Lonborg offered, looked at it, then looked at me. Without another word they separated, raised the axes to the assault position, and advanced on me from my flanks, as though they’d been drilled in such maneuvers. Leandra couldn’t suppress a giggle; her sister still spewed forth her tears.

  I looked at Lonborg. “For God’s sake,” I said. “You can’t be serious. You can’t want them to kill me.”

  Lonborg only smiled a plastic smile and admired the results of his instructions. I wanted to strike out at him, but I was afraid to turn my back.

  Cassandra was the closest and the most dangerous. Still wordless, still in tears, she extended her axe to within a foot of my crotch, adze forward, and made a slashing, ripping motion, calculated to castrate. I backed away and glanced at the other one. She was grinning in moronic ecstasy, her axe upraised as well, her big body blocking my most direct escape. I circled, keeping them to my front, until my back was to the orchestra and the seats empty of help or even witnesses.

  “I’ll have to hurt them, Lonborg,” I said, fear a black acid eating at my throat. “Call them off. Come on. This is absurd.”

  Lonborg laughed. “I seriously doubt that you can hurt them, Tanner. They are immensely strong. Their foster parents work them like mules and beat them for the slightest infraction. They think pain is an inevitable part of life; I doubt they will even notice.”

  We continued our ballet, each of us edging toward what we perceived as our advantage, one of us enjoying it, one of us more frightened by the minute, and one of us beyond intelligible emotion.

  “Think of what you’re doing to them, Lonborg, for Christ’s sake. You’re turning them into criminals.”

  “That’s not true,” Lonborg said mildly from somewhere near my back. “There’s no court in the land that would find either one of them competent to stand trial. I may not know much that is certain in my field, but I know that.”

  “Now, Dr. Lonborg?” Leandra bubbled to my left. “Should I stick him now?”

  “Yes, now!” Lonborg screamed, suddenly the savage. “Attack! Both of you.”

  Leandra lunged straight for me, her giant body advancing as relentlessly as a locomotive. I leaped to the side to avoid her thrust. At the same instant, Cassandra glided to my rear and circled my throat with an arm that was as hard and crushing as a cable on a winch. I tried to throw her off by twisting from side to side, but she held on like a mongoose, cinching my throat more tightly with each of my writhing movements. When I stopped to gasp for breath I saw her axe high over my right shoulder, pick down, poised to descend. I raised a wrist to block it. At the same time Leandra attacked from my other side.

  I leaned back against Cassandra, until my weight was resting on her chest, then kicked out at Leandra’s axe. The serendipity of violence let me strike her fist with the toe of my boot. The axe flew out of her hand and skittered across the stage. “Oh, no! Oh, no!” Leandra cried through her perpetual smile.

  “I’ll get it,” Lonborg said soothingly. “Don’t worry, Leandra.”

  Leandra came to a stop and waited obediently for Lonborg to fetch her weapon. For the moment it was one on one, as good as the sides were going to get. I curled forward suddenly, and reached behind my head and grasped Cassandra behind the neck and tried to flip her forward. But she held fast to my throat, cried out in a bobcat’s scream and plunged the spike end of her axe deep into my side.

  I groaned and sank to one knee. The pressure on my throat tightened. I tried to pry her arm free with my fingers but my vision blurred, my head grew light and empty, as though my mind had stepped beyond my reach.

  My chest surged to draw air. My hands clawed at Cassandra’s stringy arm. I tried to jab an elbow at her ribs but she was too thin to get at. A thick wet snake of blood crawled slowly down my leg, fleeing the white-hot fire that ate into my side.

  I tried to stand, but the pain kept me where I was. Cassandra’s breath was a torch beside my ear. I tilted one way, then rolled the other, trying to dislodge my wiry, crazed assailant. From somewhere above us Leandra laughed, as though her sister and I were playing horsey.

  My weight was enough to topple us both to the floor. I twisted as we fell, and banged Cassandra’s elbow on the concrete stage so hard she loosed her grip around my neck and grunted from the ache. I gasped a quart of air, shrugged her to my side, then strained to wrestle her to my front while I waited for my head to clear. After a second breath I twisted the opposite way all of a sudden,
and her strength betrayed her and we were face to face, locked in a grim embrace.

  The pain in my side flashed once more. My concentration broke and Cassandra knocked me to my back. Above me, her axe glinted in the morning sun. I reached for the hand that brandished it, and got a firm hold on a wrist that was as slick and solid as a bat handle.

  In the movies they parry like that for hours. In real life, with a weapon such as Cassandra’s, a fractional twist of the wrist can place the pick on the opponent’s forearm and puncture it till it bleeds. I grunted and held on. Blood flowed down my arm to my elbow, then dripped onto my face.

  In desperation I drove my other hand at Cassandra’s sternum. She anticipated me and turned away, so that my stiffened fingers compressed only a bony cage of ribs. Behind me, Lonborg called out again: “Now, Leandra. Jump! Do it!”

  The weight of a boulder slammed down onto my hips and thighs, crushing me against the stage, numbing everything below my waist. An instant later the nerves recovered, and the pain from my genitals reached my brain and stunned it. I passed out for the period of time in which my life was saved.

  When I came to, a dark Othello was standing over me, his black face blotting out the sun, his crooked smile descending from a height that made me dizzy. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “An ambulance is on the way. I got a compress tied around your waist, but you’ve lost a lot of blood and it ain’t quit yet.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sorry I couldn’t keep her off your gonads. Your sex life may be a little tame for a while.”

  I tried to smile. “So what else is new?”

  Bart Kinn grinned, then got down on a knee and adjusted the compress on my side. When he was finished he looked at me. “Lonborg sic them on you?”

  “Right.”

  “The Renzel thing?”

  I nodded.

  “You know why?”

  “I think so.”

  “The Misteen girl too?”

  I shook my head. “The Maniac did that one.”

  “Anything I should do right now?” Kinn asked after he thought it over.

  I coughed. My voice felt sanded, as though I’d swallowed gravel. “What evidence there is against Lonborg is at the Community Crisis Center. Have someone talk to Pierce Richards, the director. Have him show you what I told him to dig out of his records. It might be worth making another pass at the Usser place, to try to tie Lonborg into the bedroom.”

  “You got any other suggestions about how I can do my job?” This time the jab was gentle.

  “Sorry,” I said, and coughed again. “Did he get away?”

  Kinn shook his head. “He looks better than he runs. But he ain’t talking.”

  “How about the girls?”

  “Had to cold-cock the skinny one to get her off you. The fat one’s out there acting like she’s on a trip to Disneyland.”

  “I’m not pressing charges against them,” I said.

  “Be a waste,” Kinn agreed after a moment.

  I breathed deeply in the silence, the eucalyptus fragrance a medicinal inhalant. “So how’d you know I was here?” I asked after a moment.

  Kinn grinned once more. “You better get that windshield fixed, Tanner. Before someone gives you a ticket.”

  THIRTY

  “Mrs. Renzel?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Marsh Tanner. I’ve got some good news for you.”

  “Oh. Well. I … what is it?”

  “The police have just arrested the man who killed your daughter.”

  “But I thought—”

  “I know. So did the police. But Usser didn’t do it. It was a man named Lonborg. A psychiatrist.”

  “Lisa went to a psychiatrist. Was he the one?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why? Why would he do such a thing?”

  “It’s kind of complicated. He made a mistake, and your daughter was going to make it public. If she did, it would cost Lonborg some of his money and all of his reputation. He decided to try to keep that from happening.”

  “You make it sound so … normal.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t normal. Not at all.”

  “Then he was an evil man?”

  “I don’t know. Fortunately, that’s not for me to decide. I just think life got too much for him. He got very frightened. He didn’t think it was possible for him to live any way but the way he had always lived. He didn’t think he had a choice. But there’s always a choice, Mrs. Renzel. It just doesn’t seem that way sometimes. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Yes. I think so. Gunther and I were so afraid during the war, it turned us inside out. We did not recognize ourselves, not for many years. What about Lisa, Mr. Tanner? What will happen to her?”

  “Well, her father’s going to try to mend their relationship. If Lisa gives him a chance, I think she’ll be all right. You might get in touch with Usser, Mrs. Renzel. He can use all the help he can get.”

  “Yes. Of course. I will. Right away.”

  “There’s one more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your husband took a shot at Usser last night. He missed, but you’d better tell him to knock it off before someone gets hurt. In fact, you’d better tell him to stay out of Berkeley altogether. If he hangs around over there too much, it’s going to drive him crazy.”

  The defendant has been found guilty of the crime of murder. It is now your function to determine the issue raised by the defendant’s plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity.” Such plea now places before you the issue as to whether he was legally sane or legally insane at the time of the commission of the crime. This is the sole issue for you to determine at this proceeding.

  Although you may consider evidence of his mental condition both before and after the time of the commission of the crime, such evidence is to be considered for the purpose of throwing light upon the defendant’s mental condition as it was when the crime was committed.

  A person is legally insane when he was incapable of knowing or understanding the nature and quality of his act and incapable of distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the commission of the offense.

  The defendant has the burden of proving his legal insanity at the time of the commission of the crime by a preponderance of the evidence.

  By a preponderance of the evidence is meant such evidence as, when weighed with that opposed to it, has more convincing force and greater probability of truth.

  California Jury Instruction 4.00

  (1982 revision), for offenses

  committed after June 9, 1982

  Turn the page to continue reading from the John Marshall Tanner Mysteries

  ONE

  “State your name, please.”

  “John Marshall Tanner.”

  “Are you a resident of the city and county of San Francisco?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “What is your business, Mr. Tanner?”

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  “Licensed by the State of California?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you been a private detective?”

  “A little over ten years.”

  “And what did you do before that?”

  “I was a lawyer.”

  “In this city?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long did you practice law?”

  “Approximately eight years.”

  “Are you still a member of the bar of this state, Mr. Tanner?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you no longer practice law.”

  “That’s correct. But I occasionally accept a retainer.”

  “Why is that?”

  “It allows me to keep certain information confidential pursuant to the attorney-client privilege. I find that useful, and my clients find it reassuring.”

  “I see. Now, let me turn your attention to this past October, approximately a year ago. At that time did you have occasion to discus
s certain business affairs of the plaintiff in this case, Mr. Malcolm Halliburton?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “With whom did you have that discussion?”

  “With you, Mr. Stacey.”

  “Pursuant to that discussion, were you engaged in your professional capacity to perform services for the defendant in this case, the Arundel Corporation?”

  “I was.”

  “And what were those services?”

  “I was given a copy of the resumé Mr. Halliburton had included with his application for the position of vice-president of international marketing for Arundel Corporation, and I was asked to verify certain items of personal history listed on that resumé.”

  “Were you told why?”

  “I was.”

  “What were you told?”

  “Objection. Hearsay.”

  “It goes to his state of mind, Your Honor.”

  “The jury is cautioned that the answer will be admitted solely to show the state of mind of the witness, and not for the truth of the matters asserted. You may answer the question, Mr. Tanner.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. I was told that Mr. Halliburton had been hired by Arundel in 1979; that his contract contained certain bonus and incentive provisions which were highly lucrative; that over the next five years Mr. Halliburton had not performed pursuant to Arundel’s expectations in that certain of his activities were being investigated for possible illegalities, including embezzlement and bribery; that in view of these irregularities the company had decided to terminate Mr. Halliburton’s employment; and that shortly after his termination Mr. Halliburton had filed suit to collect the amounts he felt were due and owing to him pursuant to his employment contract. As part of its defense to that lawsuit, the corporation wanted to ascertain whether Mr. Halliburton’s employment application had been truthful and complete in all respects, or whether it had been fraudulent and misleading in certain particulars.”

  “So essentially you were asked to verify the employment application.”

  “Right.”

  “And if you found any errors or omissions what were you to do?”