'Alex, if it turns out he was under the involuntary influence of drugs, he'll never see a day in jail.'
'That's not innocence.'
'But it is, kind of. There's something called the unconsciousness defence - applies to perps who commit crimes while unaware of what they're doing: sleepwalkers; epileptics in seizures; head injury victims; the chemically brainwashed. It's almost never used because it's even harder to prove than dim cap; real unconscious felonies are pretty damned rare. Only reason I know about it is an old guy I busted several years ago. Strangled his wife in his sleep after his doctors had fucked up his medicines and derailed his circuits. It was bona fide, backed up by real medical data, not just psych stuff - no offence. Even the DA bought it. They let him off at the prelim. Free and sane. Innocent. Souza'll be sure to jump on it.'
'Speaking of Souza,' I said, 'there's something else to
consider. He was the one who found Mainwaring. And Surtees. What if he's in on it and the whole defence is a sham?'
'Then why would he call you in and subject it to scrutiny?'
I had no answer for that.
'Listen, Alex, I like the general flavour of what we've come up with. But that doesn't mean we're even close to know what actually happened. There are lots of question marks. How did the diary get from Chancellor to Yamaguchi? How did Radovic know to look for it? Why was he following you around? And where do Fat and Skinny figure in? And what about all those other Slasher victims? I'm sure I could come up with a few more if you gave me some time. Point is, I can't afford to sit around and speculate, can't keep cowboying this thing much longer without clueing in Whitehead and the others. And before I'd do that, I'd prefer something more solid than old books to back me up.'
'Such as?'
'A confession.'
'How do you plan on getting that?'
'The honourable way. By intimidation.'
The STORM continued to rage, battering the coastline and dressing it in graveclothes of fog. Pacific Coast Highway was closed to nonresidents past Topanga, because of mud slides and poor visibility. The highway patrol was out in force, setting up roadblocks and checking IDs. Milo grabbed the magnetic flasher from the dash, opened the window, and slammed it onto the roof of the Matador. Having returned a drenched arm to the wheel, he steered onto the shoulder and sailed past the jam of high-priced buggies.
He braked at the command of a CHP captain, engaged in the ritual exchange of police banter, and drove on. As we hit the highway, the Matador's tyres spun and skidded before attaining traction. He slowed down, squinted, and followed the taillights of a BMW with vanity plates proclaiming it HALS TOY. The police radio belched out a litany of disaster: fatal crackups on the Hollywood and San Bernadino freeways; a disabled truck obstructing the Cahuenga Pass; killer surf jeopardising what remained of the Santa Monica Pier.
'Goddamn city's like a spoiled brat," he growled. 'Minute things aren't gorgeous it falls apart.'
To the left was the ocean, roiling and black: to the right, the southern edge of the Santa Monica Mountains. We passed through a section of highway that had been decimated by slides two years ago, the hillsides skinned like a slaughterhouse steer. Art and chemistry had come to the rescue: The denuded earth had been preseved under an immense sheath of pinkish brown fibreglass - the kind of trompe l'oeil topography used on movie sets, complete with moulded furrows and simulated scrub. A Disneyland solution, synthetically perfect.
The house was two miles into Malibu, on the wrong side of the Pacific Coast Highway, segregated from sand and sea by four lanes of blacktop. It was a small fifties ranch structure, a single storey of white texture-coated stucco under a low, flat composition roof, the entry side coated with used brick, the sole landscaping beds of ice plant that hugged a rising asphalt driveway. Attached to the house was a double garage. Where the front lawn should have been was all oil-stained concrete.
Parked in front was a pea green Mercedes sedan. Through its rain-clouded windows came a flash of white - a doctor's coat, draped over the passenger seat.
'I think I've got it down pretty good,' said Milo, parking close to the house and turning off the engine, 'but do me a favour and keep your ears open. In case he tries to snow me with technical stuff.'
We went out and made a dash for the front door. The bell was out of order, but Milo's knock evoked a quick response - a slice of thin face through a door barely edged open.
'Yes?'
'Police, Dr. Mainwaring. Sergeant Sturgis, West L.A. Division. I believe you know Dr. Delaware. May we please come in?'
Mainwaring's eyes caromed from Milo to me and back to Milo, settling, finally, on a spot somewhere in the middle of my friend's thick torso.
'I don't understand - '
'Be happy to explain it, sir' - Milo smiled - 'if we could just step out of this monsoon.'
'Yes. Of course.'
The door swung open. We walked through, and he backed away, staring at us, smiling nervously. Stripped of his white coat and status, he was far from impressive: a stoop-shouldered middle-aged man, undernourished and overworked, wolf face dotted with a day's growth of white stubble, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He wore a bulky grey fisherman's sweater over rumpled olive twill trousers and scuffed bedroom slippers. The slippers were cut low and revealed marble-white flesh veined with blue.
The interior of the house was musty and so devoid of style it had been rendered psychologically invisible: a boxy white living room filled with bland furniture that appeared to have been lifted intact from a department store display; walls hung with the type of seascape and landscape that can be purchased by the pound. Beyond the half-open door at the rear of the room was a long dark hallway.
The adjacent dining area had been converted to an office, its table piled high with the same kind of clutter I remembered from Mainwaring's sanctum at Canyon Oaks. A framed snapshot of two sad-looking children - the boy seven or eight, the girl two years old - was propped against a pile of medical journals. There was food on the table: a wax carton of orange juice, a plate of cookies, and a half-gnawed apple, browned by oxidation. On the floor was one of those robot toys - a jet plane - that transform into three other objects when manipulated by small, nimble fingers. Beyond the dining area was a pistachio green kitchen, still resonating with last night's cabbage and boiled meat. A Bach organ fugue streamed out of a Montgomery Ward stereo.
'Make yourselves comfortable, gentlemen,' said Mainwaring, gesturing toward a cotton couch the colour and texture of congealed oatmeal.
'Thanks,' said Milo, removing his slicker.
The psychiatrist took it and my London Fog, regarded them as if they were diseased.
'Let me hang these up.'
He carried the garments through the half-open door into the hall and disappeared in the darkness long enough for Milo to grow antsy. But a moment later he returned, closing the door.
'Can I get you anything? Some coffee or biscuits?'
'No, thanks, Doc'
The psychiatrist looked down at the cookies on the table, thought for a moment, then sat down, folding his spare frame into a brown velveteen armchair. After selecting a briar out of a rack on the coffee table, he packed it. lit, sucked, and settled back, exhaling bitter blue smoke.
'Now then, what can I do for you, Sergeant?'
Out came the notepad. Milo flashed a stupid grin.
'Guess it's a switch for someone like you, huh? Me taking notes while you talk.'
Mainwaring smiled with just a trace of impatience.
'Let me just get a few details out of the way, Doctor. First name?'
'Guy.'
'As in Fawkes, huh?'
The smile widened condescendingly.
'Yes, Sergeant.'
'Middle name?'
'Martin.' He looked at me quizzically, as if expecting a secret eye signal or other evidence of a camaraderie. I turned away.
Milo put the pad on his knee and scrawled.
'Guy Martin Mainwaring...
okay.. and you're a psychiatrist, right?'
'That's correct.'
'Which means you charge ten bucks an hour more than Dr. Delaware here, right?'
Mainwaring's eyes narrowed with hostility as he looked at me again, unsure what game was being played but aware, suddenly, that I was on the other team. He kept silent.
'The accent's British, right?'
'English.'
'Where'd you go to school? In Britain?'
'I attended the University of Sussex,' the psychiatrist recited crisply. 'Upon earning my M.B. - '
'M.B.?'
'It's the English equivalent of the M.D. - '
'What does the B stand for?'
'Bachelor.'
'So you're a Bachelor of Medicine, not a doctor?'
The psychiatrist sighed.
'It's called that, Sergeant, but it's equivalent to an American medical doctorate.'
'Oh. I thought they called doctors Mister in Britain.'
'Nonsurgical physicians are addressed as Doctor, surgeons as Mister. One of our funny little traditions.'
'What do you use here in America?'
'M.D. To avoid the type of confusion you just experienced.' When Milo didn't say anything, he added: 'It's all quite legal, Sergeant.'
'Confusion is right. Probably be more simple if I just called you Guy, huh?'
Mainwaring bit down on the pipe and puffed furiously.
'You were telling me about what you did after you got your... M.B., Doctor.'
'I was awarded a residency at the Maudsley Hospital in London and was subsequently appointed to a lectureship there in the department of psychiatry.'
'What'd you teach?'
Mainwaring looked at the detective as if he were a dull child.
'Clinical psychiatry, Sergeant.'
'Anything in particular?'
'I instructed the house staff in comprehensive patient management. My specialty was the treatment of the major psychoses. The biochemical aspects of human behaviour.'
'Do any research?'
'Some. Sergeant, I really must ask - '
'I'm asking 'cause Dr. Delaware has done a lot of
research, and when he talks about it, I always find it interesting.'
'I'm sure you do.'
'So what was your research about?'
'The limbic system. It's a part of the lower brain that's related to emotional-
'How'd you study it - examine people's brains?'
'On occasion.'
'Live brains?'
'Cadavers.'
'That reminds me of something,' said Milo. 'There was this guy Cole; they executed him last year in Nevada; he used to go into sudden rages and strangle women. Killed anywhere from thirteen to thirty-five. After he was dead, some doctor lifted his brain in order to study it, see if he could find something to explain the guy's behaviour. That was awhile back, and I haven't heard if he found anything. Has it been written up in some medical journal?'
'I really wouldn't know.'
'What do you think? Could you look at a brain and say anything about criminal tendencies?'
'The origins of all behaviour are in the brain, Sergeant, but it's not quite as simple as merely looking - '
'So what did you do with those cadaver brains?'
'Do?'
'How'd you study them?"
'I conducted biochemical analyses on homogenized - '
'Under a microscope?'
'Yes. Actually my use of human brains was infrequent. My usual subjects were higher-level mammals - primates.'
'Monkeys?'
'Chimpanzees.'
'You figure there's a lot to learn about human brains from looking at monkey brains?'
'Within limits. In terms of cognitive function - thinking and reasoning - the chimpanzee brain is significantly more limited than its human counterpart. However - '
'But so are some people's brains, right? Limited.'
'Unfortunately that's true, Sergeant.'
Milo inspected his notes and closed the pad.
'So,' he said, 'you're quite an expert.'
Mainwaring looked down with forced modesty and polished his pipe with the edge of his sweater.
'One tries one's best.'
My friend swivelled toward me.
'You were right, Dr. D. He is the right person to talk to.' Back to Mainwaring.
'I'm here for a little medical education, Doctor. An expert consultation.'
'Regarding what?'
'Drugs. How they affect behaviour.'
Mainwaring tensed and glanced at me sharply.
'In relationship to the Cadmus case?' he asked.
'Possibly.'
'Then I'm afraid I can't be of much help, Sergeant. James Cadmus is my patient, and any information I have is privileged.'
Milo got up and walked over to the dining room table. He picked up the photo of the two children and examined it.
'Nice-looking kids.'
'Thank you.'
'The girl kind of looks like you.'
'Actually both of them resemble their mother. Sergeant, ordinarily I'd be pleased to help, but I have a staggering amount of work to do, so if- '
'Homework, huh?'
'Pardon me?'
'You took the day off to work at home.'
Mainwaring shrugged and smiled.
'Sometimes it's the only way to get through the paper work.'
'Who takes care of the patients when you're gone?'
'I have three excellent psychiatrists on my staff.'
Milo returned to the living room and sat down.
'Like Dr. Djibouti?' he asked.
Mainwaring tried to hide his surprise behind a veil of smoke.
'Yes,' he said, exhaling. 'Dr. Djibouti. And Drs. Kline and Bieber.'
'Reason I know his name is when I called the hospital to talk to you, they hooked me up with the psychiatrist on call, who was Dr. Djibouti. Very nice guy. What is he, Iranian?'
'Indian.'
'He said you'd been out for four days.'
'I've had a nasty cold.' As if illustrating, he sniffled.
'What do you do for it?'
'Aspirin, fluids, rest.'
Milo snapped his fingers and gave an aw-shucks grin.
'That's it, huh? For a minute I thought I might pick up a medical secret.'
'I wish I had one to offer you, Sergeant.'
'What about chicken soup?'
'As a matter of fact, I cooked a pot last night. A noble palliative.'
'Let's talk about drugs,' said Milo. 'On a theoretical level.'
'Really, Sergeant, I'm sure you're aware that my position as a defence witness for Mr. Cadmus precludes any discussion of his case with the police.'
'That's not exactly true, Doctor. It's only your conversations with Cadmus, your notes, and your final report that are off-limits. And once you testify in court, even those will be fair game.'
Mainwaring shook his head.
'Not being an attorney, I can't evaluate the validity of that assertion, Sergeant. In any event, I have nothing to offer by way of theoretical speculation. Every case must be judged on its own merits.'
Milo leaned forward suddenly and cracked his knuckles. The sound made Mainwaring flinch.
'You could call Souza,' said the detective. 'If he decides to be straight, he'll admit I'm right and tell you to cooperate. Or he might advise you to stonewall while he pushes enough paper to stall me - to avoid looking like a patsy; lawyers like to play power games. In the meantime,
you'd be wasting time: taken out of this nice warm house; forced to take a long ride in this kind of weather; sitting in an ugly room down at the West L.A. station; cooling your heels while Souza and the DA sling fifty-dollar words at each other. All at the expense of your paperwork. And after it's over, chances are you'll still be required to talk to me.'
'To what end, Sergeant? What's the purpose of this?'
'Police business,' said Milo, opening the pad again and writing in it.
Mainwaring bit down hard on the pipe.
'Sergeant,' he said between clenched jaws, 'I do believe you're trying to bully me.'
Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 03 - Over the Edge Page 40
