Ehrengraf for the Defense

by Lawrence Block

  Ehrengraf, who could well imagine how a young McCandless might have spent his summer vacation, was diplomatically silent.

  “But this time around,” McCandless said, “I’ve been writing up a storm. What’s it been, five days since you got me started? Well, I ran through that pad you gave me, and I got one of the guards to bring me this little notebook, but I like the pads better. Here, look at what I wrote this morning.”

  Ehrengraf unfolded a sheet of unlined white paper. McCandless had drawn a line down its center, writing his affirmation over and over again in the left-hand column, jotting down his responses to the right.

  I am completely innocent/I’ve been in trouble all my life

  I am completely innocent/Maybe it wasn’t always my fault

  I am completely innocent/I don’t remember doing anything bad

  I am completely innocent/In my heart I am

  I am completely innocent/How great it would be if it was true!

  “You’ve come a long way,” Ehrengraf told his client. “You see how the nature of your responses is changing.”

  “It seems like magic,” McCandless said.

  “The magic of affirmation.”

  “All along, I would just write down the first thing that popped into my head. But the old bad stuff just stopped popping in.”

  “You cleared it away.”

  “I don’t know what I did,” McCandless said. “Maybe I just wore it out. But it got to the point where it didn’t seem natural to write that I was a born killer.”

  “Because you’re not.”

  “I guess.”

  “And how do you feel now, Mr. McCandless? Without a pen in your hand, just talking face to face? Are you innocent of the crimes of which you stand accused?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “It’s almost too much to hope for,” the young man said. “but maybe I am. I could be, couldn’t I? I really could be.”

  Ehrengraf beamed. “Indeed you are,” he said, “and it’s my job to prove it. And yours—” he opened his briefcase, provided his client with a fresh legal pad “—yours to further affirm that innocence until there is no room in your consciousness for doubt and negativity. You’ve got work to do, Mr. McCandless. Are you up for it?”

  Eagerly, McCandless reached for the pad.

  * * *

  “Little Bobby Bickerstaff,” McCandless said, shaking his head in wonder.

  Ehrengraf’s hand went to the knot of his necktie, adjusting it imperceptibly. The tie was that of the Caedmon Society, and Ehrengraf was not entitled to wear it, never having been a member of that organization. It was, however, his invariable choice for occasions of triumph, and this was just such an occasion.

  “I never would have dreamed it,” McCandless said. “Not in a million years.”

  “You knew him, then?”

  “We went to grade school together. In fact we were in the same class until I got held back. You know something? That’s hard to believe, too.”

  “That you’d be held back? I must say I find it hard to believe myself. You’re an intelligent young man.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t for that. It was for deportment. You know, talking in class, throwing chalk.”

  “High spirits,” Ehrengraf said.

  “Setting fires,” McCandless went on. “Breaking windows. Doing cars.”

  “Doing cars?”

  “Teachers’ cars,” the young man explained. “Icepicking the tires, or sugaring the gas tank, or keying the paint job. Or doing the windows.”

  “Bricking them,” Ehrengraf suggested.

  “I suppose you could call it that. That’s what’s hard to believe, Mr. Ehrengraf. That I did those things.”

  “I see.”

  “I used to be like that,” he said, and frowned in thought. “Or maybe I just used to think I was that way, and that’s why I did bad things.”

  “Ah,” Ehrengraf said.

  “All along I was innocent,” McCandless said, groping for the truth. “But I didn’t know it, I had this belief I was bad, and when I was a little kid it made me do bad things.”

  “Precisely.”

  “And I got in trouble, and they blamed me even when I didn’t do anything bad, and that convinced me I was really bad, bad clear to the bone. And...and...”

  The youth put his head in his hands and sobbed.

  “There, there,” Ehrengraf said softly, and clapped him on the shoulder.

  After a moment McCandless got hold of himself and said, “But little Bobby Bickerstaff. I can’t get over it.”

  “He killed your parents,” Ehrengraf said.

  “It’s so hard to believe. I always thought of him as a little goody-goody.”

  “A nice quiet boy,” Ehrengraf said.

  “Yeah, well, those are the ones who lose it, aren’t they? They pop off one day and the neighbors can’t believe it, same as I can’t believe it myself about Bobby. What was the name of the couple he killed?”

  “Roger and Sheila Capstone.”

  “I didn’t know them,” McCandless said, “but they lived in the same neighborhood as my folks, in the same kind of house. And was she in a wheelchair the same as my mom?”

  “It was Mr. Capstone who was wheelchair-bound,” Ehrengraf said. “He’d been crippled in an automobile accident.”

  “Poor guy. And little Bobby Bickerstaff emptied a clip into him, and another into his wife.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Meek little Bobby. Whacked them both, then went into the bathroom and wrote something on the mirror.”

  “It was Mrs. Capstone’s dressing table mirror,” Ehrengraf said. “And he used her lipstick to write his last message.”

  “‘This is the last time. God forgive me.’”

  “His very words.”

  “And then he put on the woman’s underwear,” McCandless said, “or maybe he put it on before, who knows, and then he popped a fresh clip in his gun and stuck the business end in his mouth and got off a burst. Must have made some mess.”

  “I imagine it did.”

  McCandless shook his head in amazement. “Little Bobby,” he said. “Mr. Straight Arrow. Cops searched his place afterward, house he grew up in, what did they find? All these guns and knives and dirty magazines and stuff.”

  “It happens all the time,” Ehrengraf said.

  “Other stuff, too. Some things that must have been stolen from my parents’ house, not that anybody had even noticed they were missing. Some jewelry of my mom’s and a sterling silver flask with my dad’s initials engraved on it. I don’t think I ever even knew he had a flask, but how many are you going to find engraved W. R. McC.?”

  “It could only have been his.”

  “Well, sure. But what really wrapped it up was the diary. From what I heard, most of it was sketchy, just weird stuff that was going through his mind. But the entry the day after my parents died, that was something else.”

  “It was a little vague as well,” Ehrengraf said, “but quite conclusive all the same. He told how he’d gone to your parents’ home and found you passed out in a chair.”

  “From the EKG, it must have been.”

  “He thought about killing all three of you. Instead he gunned down both your parents, making sure that you and your clothes were spattered with their blood, then wiped his prints off the empty gun and pressed it into your hands.”

  “Bobby’s mom was crippled,” McCandless remembered. “I remember kids used to say we ought to be friends because of it. Like him and me were in the same boat.”

  “But you weren’t friends.”

  “Are you kidding? A hood like me team up with a goody-goody like Bobby Bickerstaff?” His expression turned thoughtful. “Except it turns out I was innocent all along, so I wasn’t such a hood after all. And Bobby wasn’t such a goody-goody.”

  “No.”

  “In fact,” McCandless said, “he might have had something to do with his own parents’ death. Bobby was still a
kid at the time. They weren’t too clear on what happened, whether it was a suicide pact or the old man committed a mercy killing and then killed himself afterward. I guess everybody figured it amounted to the same thing. But now...”

  “Now there’s suspicion that Bobby may have done it.”

  “I suppose he could have. There’s a pattern, isn’t there? His mom was crippled, my mom was in a wheelchair, and this Mr. Capstone was more of the same. Maybe the shock of what happened to his folks drove him around the bend, or maybe he was the one responsible for what happened to them to start with, and the other two murders were just a way of re-enacting the crime. I wonder which it was.”

  “I doubt we’ll ever know,” Ehrengraf said gently.

  “I guess not,” McCandless said. “What we do know is I didn’t kill anybody, and I already knew that, thanks to you. Bobby killed my parents, and my grandparents both had simple accidents. That’s what the police decided at the time, and it was only my own negative thoughts about myself that led me to believe I had anything to do with their deaths.”

  “That’s it,” Ehrengraf said, delighted. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “I’ll tell you, Mr. Ehrengraf, this business with affirmations is pretty amazing stuff. I mean, I did some bad things over the years. Let’s face it, I pulled some mean stuff. But do you know why?”

  “Tell me, Dale.”

  “I did it because I thought I was bad. I mean, if you’re a bad person, what do you do? You do bad things. I thought I was bad, so I did some bad things.”

  “‘Give a dog a bad name—’”

  “And he’ll bite you,” McCandless said. “And I did, in a manner of speaking, but I never killed anybody. And now that I know I’m innocent, I’ll be a changed human being entirely.”

  “A productive member of society.”

  “Well, I don’t know about productive,” McCandless said. “I mean, face it, I’m a rich man. Between what I had from my grandmother and what I stand to inherit from my parents, I can live a life of ease.” He grinned. “Even after I pay your fee, I’m still set for life.”

  “An enviable position to be in.”

  “So I may not knock myself out being productive,” McCandless went on. “I may just focus on having fun.”

  “Boys will be boys,” said Ehrengraf.

  “You said it. I’ll work on my suntan, I’ll see that the bar’s well stocked, I’ll round up a couple of totally choice babes. Get some good drugs, plenty of tasty food in case anybody gets the munchies, and next thing you know—”

  “Drugs,” Ehrengraf said.

  “Hey, it’s like you said, Mr. Ehrengraf. Boys will be boys.”

  “Suppose you got hold of some of that EKG.”

  “Suppose I did? I’m innocent, Mr. Ehrengraf. You’re the one showed me how to see that. Anything I do, drunk or sober, straight or loaded, it’s going to be innocent. So what have I got to worry about?”

  He grinned disarmingly, but Ehrengraf was not disarmed. “I’m not sure EKG is a good idea for you,” he said carefully.

  “You could be right. But sooner or later it’ll be around, and I won’t be able to resist it. But so what? I can handle it.”

  Ehrengraf reached for the yellow legal pad, turned to a clean sheet, drew a line down the center of the page. “Here,” he said, handing the pad to McCandless. “This time I’d like you to work with a different affirmation.”

  “How about ‘I am a perfect child of God?’ I sort of like the sound of that one.”

  “Let’s try something a little more specific,” Ehrengraf suggested. “Write, ‘I am through with EKG, now and forever.’”

  McCandless frowned, shrugged, took the pad and started writing. Ehrengraf, watching over his shoulder, read the responses as his client wrote them.

  I am through with EKG, now and forever/You must be kidding

  I am through with EKG, now and forever/I love the way it makes me crazy

  I am through with EKG, now and forever/I’ll never give it up

  I am through with EKG, now and forever/What harm does it do?

  I am through with EKG, now and forever/I couldn’t resist it

  “We have our work cut out for us,” Ehrengraf said. “But that only shows how deep the thought goes. Look at the self-image you had earlier, and look how you managed to turn it around.”

  “I know I’m innocent.”

  “And the world has changed to reflect the change in your own mental landscape. Once you became clear on your innocence, proof of it began to manifest in the world around you.”

  “I think I see what you mean.”

  Ehrengraf handed the legal pad back to his client. The process would work, he assured himself. Soon the mere thought of ingesting EKG would be anathema to young Dale McCandless.

  And that, Ehrengraf thought, would be all to the good. Because he had a feeling the world would be a kinder and gentler place for all if the innocent Mr. McCandless never ingested that particular chemical again.

  The End

  The Ehrengraf Reverse

  “How does it happen, tell me,

  That I lie here unmarked, forgotten,

  While Chase Henry, the town drunkard,

  Has a marble block, topped by an urn,

  Wherein Nature, in a mood ironical,

  Has sown a flowering weed?”

  —Edgar Lee Masters

  “I didn’t do it,” Blaine Starkey said.

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  “Everyone thinks I did it,” Starkey went on, “and I guess I can understand why. But I’m innocent.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “I’m not a murderer.”

  “Of course you’re not.”

  “Not this time,” the man said. “Mr. Ehrengraf, it’s not supposed to matter whether a lawyer thinks his client is guilty or innocent. But it matters to me. I really am innocent, and it’s important that you believe me.”

  “I do.”

  “I don’t know why it’s so important,” Starkey said, “but it just is, and—” He paused, and seemed to register for the first time what Ehrengraf had been saying all along. His big open face showed puzzlement. “You do?”

  “Yes.”

  “You believe I’m innocent.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s pretty amazing, Mr. Ehrengraf. Nobody else believes me.”

  Ehrengraf regarded his client. Indeed, if you looked at the man’s record you could hardly avoid presuming him guilty. But once you turned your gaze into his cornflower blue eyes, how could you fail to recognize the innocence gleaming there?

  Even if you didn’t believe the man, how would you have the nerve to tell him so? Blaine Starkey was, to say the least, an imposing presence. When you saw him on the television screen, catching a pass and racing downfield, breaking tackles as effortlessly as a politician breaks his word, you didn’t appreciate the sheer size of him. All the men on the field were huge, and your eye learned to see them as normal.

  In a jail cell, across a little pine table, you began to realize just how massive a man Blaine Starkey was. He stood as many inches over six feet as Ehrengraf stood under it, and was big in the shoulders and narrow in the waist, with thighs like tree trunks and arms like—well, words failed Ehrengraf. The man was enormous.

  “The whole world thinks I killed Claureen,” Starkey said, “and it’s not hard to see why. I mean, look at my stats.”

  His stats? Thousands of yards gained rushing. Hundreds of passes caught. No end of touchdowns scored. Ehrengraf, who was more interested in watching the action on the field than in crunching the numbers, knew nevertheless that the big man’s statistics were impressive.

  He also knew Starkey meant another set of stats.

  “I mean,” the man said, “it’s not like this never happened before. Three women, three coffins. Hell, Mr. Ehrengraf, if I was a hockey player they’d call it the hat trick.”

  “But it’s not hockey,” Ehrengraf assured him, �
�and it’s not football, either. You’re an innocent man, and there’s no reason you should have to pay for a crime you didn’t commit.”

  “You really think I’m innocent,” Starkey said.

  “Absolutely.”

  “That’s what everybody’s supposed to presume, until it’s proved otherwise. Is that what you mean? That I’m innocent for the time being, far as the law’s concerned?”

  Ehrengraf shook his head. “That’s not what I mean.”

  “You mean innocent no matter what the jury says.”

  “I mean exactly what you meant earlier,” the little lawyer said. “You didn’t kill your wife. You’re entirely innocent of her death, and the jury should never be in a position to say anything on the subject, because you should never be brought to trial. You’re an innocent man, Mr. Starkey.”

  The football player took a deep breath, and Ehrengraf was surprised that there was any air left in the cell. “That’s just so hard for me to believe.”

  “That you’re innocent?”

  “Hell, I know I’m innocent,” Starkey said. “What’s hard to believe is that you believe it.”

  * * *

  But how could Ehrengraf believe otherwise? He fingered the knot in his deep blue necktie and reflected on the presumption of innocence—not the one which had long served as a cardinal precept of Anglo-American jurisprudence, but a higher, more personal principle. The Ehrengraf presumption. Any client of Martin H. Ehrengraf’s was innocent. Not until proven guilty, but until the end of time.

  But he didn’t want to get into a philosophical discussion with Blaine Starkey. He kept it simple, explaining that he only represented the innocent.

  The football player took this in. His face fell. “Then if you change your mind,” he said, “you’ll drop me like a hot rock. Is that about right?”

  “I won’t change my mind.”

  “If you get to thinking I’m guilty—”

  “I’ll never think that.”

  “But—”

  “We’re wasting time,” Ehrengraf told him. “We both know you’re innocent. Why dispute a point on which we’re already in agreement?”