“Jesus, can’t you ever be nice?” Shaughnessey said, changing his tone.
Vail flashed his crooked smile. “And here I thought I was.”
“I got a firm offer for you,” said Shaughnessey.
“Oh? What are we talking about? Real estate? Used cars?”
Shaughnessey ignored the wisecrack. “You go on as chief prosecutor and assistant D.A. When Hardy moves up, you get the top spot. Then you move to attorney general. Shit, you can be governor before you turn forty-five. No strings attached.”
“No strings attached?”
“You heard me.”
Vail got up to leave. He finished his drink and put the glass in the sink.
“Hell, you don’t want me to be attorney general,” he said, walking to the door.
“Why not?” Shaughnessey said.
“Because if I am, you’ll probably end up in jail,” Vail said with a chuckle, and left.
Jack Connerman was sitting on a bench outside the courtroom drinking a cup of coffee when Vail came out. The reporter stood up and walked down the hall with him.
“Dynamite, Counselor,” he said. “Probably your best performance to date.” He motioned to a room with the hand holding the coffee. “The rest of the press chased the doctor down there.”
“Why aren’t you down there with them? She’s got the story.”
“The story’s right here, Martin. You’re always the story. That was a hell of a long shot, putting the kid on the stand. How could you be sure Venable would turn him around?”
“Never give up, do you, Jack?” Vail said with a smile.
“I love to watch an artist at work.”
“Flattery doesn’t work. You’ve tried it before.”
“And you never give up a thing, do you?”
“Hell, I don’t have any secrets, Jack.” Vail smiled. “I play every hand in public.”
“Sure you do, and this one is a classic. This performance today? It’s for the book! You were good in the Heyhey case, but that was a warm-up compared to this one. First-year law students’ll be reading about this for years to come.”
“Second-year,” Vail said. “Too advanced for beginners.”
They both laughed at his arrogance.
“You can get all the quotes you need from Dr. Arrington,” Vail told him.
“I’m not interested in the mental jargon—I’m sure she’s right on the button with whatever she says. I’m interested in how you maneuvered this case into a plea settlement.”
“I didn’t. The prosecutor did. She triggered Aaron.”
“How did you set her up?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“C’mon, Marty, Christ, I’ve been following your career for six, seven years. You had everything riding on it—that Venable would turn him on the stand, I mean.”
“Who says?”
“It’s obvious.”
“Circumstantial.”
“Yeah, well I’ll read the testimony on that. I’ll figure it out. Thing is, you could have revealed this thing about a split personality a couple of weeks ago but you figured it had to blow up in the courtroom to have the impact, right?”
“It’s your story, not mine.”
“You ambushed Venable,” Connerman said. “I know it. When you two came outta Shoat’s chambers she looked like she was just told she had to eat her own young. Before that, you had nothing … and you still ate her witnesses up.” He shook his head. “You’re the ultimate crowd pleaser, Marty. But you make me nervous.”
“Why’s that?”
“Hell, it isn’t as if this boy’s some back-alley shooter, y’know. What he did makes my palms wet.”
“By the time they’re through with ice cube baths and electric shock treatments, he’ll be a pussycat.”
“You really think the kid’s two different people?”
“Talk to Dr. Arrington about that,” Vail said. “She’s free to say anything she wants.”
“Will she talk to me?”
“Ask her. Hell, it’s a free country.”
They stopped at the rotunda and stared down into the sprawling lobby of the courthouse. Cigarette butts, discarded newspapers and trash from the mob littered the marble floors.
“Didn’t get their pound of flesh today,” Vail muttered.
“Who?”
“The mob. You never write about the mob, Jack, and the mob’s what it’s all about. Justice is crowd pleasing. It’s the freak show, the geek biting heads off live chickens. That crowd for the past few days wanted to see the madman who butchered the saint. Up close … so they could smell his breath. When he freaked out on the stand, it was like … like the Super Bowl. They got to see madness up close, in person, got to wet their pants when he started tearing up the courtroom. I don’t please the crowd, Jack; the mob pleases itself. It comes to court to masturbate. Sometimes you have to manufacture the fantasy for it.”
“I’ll quote you on that, whatever the hell it means. Do you think he’ll ever get out?”
Vail started to say something and hesitated for a moment. “Let’s hope so,” he said. “Be terrible to waste a mind like that.”
“But what do you think?”
Vail stared at him for a moment and said, “I think I’m a lawyer, not a shrink.”
Connerman watched Vail stride down the hall toward the holding room, then threw his empty coffee cup into a crammed trash can and headed for the Arrington press conference.
Aaron would be leaving for Daisyland in a few minutes. He was sitting beside a table in a far comer of the room, his hands behind him and his legs shackled together by a short chain, when Vail entered the small room.
“Could we have a moment in private?” Vail asked the two guards, who were smoking and joking with each other near the door.
“Why not, Marty,” one of them answered. “He ain’t goin’ nowheres.” They stepped into the hall. Vail sat down beside Aaron.
“Know what I heard the guards say?” Aaron said. “Thet Miss Molly’s gonna be faimous ’cause o’ all this.”
“Probably,” Vail told him. “She certainly deserves to be.”
Aaron smiled at him and said in a low voice, “Kin ah tell you sumpin’, Mr. Vail? Jest ’tween you ’n’ me?”
“Sure.”
“You were a godsend t’ me, y’know thet? You and Miss Molly.”
“Thanks, Aaron.”
“Thet night they found me in the confessional, I was scairt outta m’ wits.”
“I’m sure you were. Must’ve been terrifying.”
“Yeah, but after I met you, I knew ev’thing’d be all right.”
“You have good instincts,” Vail said.
“I s’pose,” he said. “I jes’ knew from the first time I met yuh, we was gonna win, n’ matter what.”
“How did you figure that?”
“Jes’ the way yuh talked.” He giggled and leaned toward Vail. “Yuh had the right attitude.”
The comment surprised Vail.
“Right attitude?” he said.
“Y’know what I main,” he said, and winked.
“Look, she’ll go over the tapes with Dr. Bascott and his staff. Brief them on what she knows about your condition.”
“They ain’t as smart as she is.”
“They’ll do okay by you, I’m sure. They’re excellent in their field.”
“Didn’t seem like thet. You kinda made ’em look foolish.”
“That’s how it goes sometimes. Doesn’t work that way all the time.”
“Will I ever get t’ see the taipes?”
“I’m sure you will, sooner or later. It will probably depend on how well your therapy goes.”
“Maybe they won’t accept her opinion, y’know, thet thair’s two of me. Cain’t she work with me?”
“I’d like that, too, Aaron. Unfortunately you’re now under the state’s jurisdiction. It’s their ballgame.”
“Kinda stupid, doncha thaink?”
“How come?
”
“Well, her and me, we been workin’ t’gether fer awhile, you’d think they’d want t’ take advantage of that experience …”
As Aaron spoke, something about him distracted Vail for a moment. What was it? Was it his eyes? An almost imperceptible shift in expression…
“… she knows Roy s’ well…” he added.
Vail stared at Aaron for several seconds. He shook a cigarette from his pack, drew it out with his lips and lit it. Thinking.
“What about Roy?” he asked.
“Sometimes I annoyed myself,” he said.
Vail felt a sudden chill. An inner thing. Instinct. Something was happening here.
“I beg your pardon?” he said.
Suddenly all trace of the Appalachian twang had vanished, replaced by Roy’s flat Midwestern accent. Vail smoked quietly, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling, waiting to see what was coming.
“Roy?” he said, finally.
“Thet depends,” he said in Aaron’s voice. “Who d’yuh railly wanna talk to? Me?” His body language changed suddenly. His eyes became dead, his tone harsh. “Or do you want to talk to old Roy? Wanna hear a secret?” Once again his body language altered, his eyes brightened, Appalachia returned to his voice. “Yuh’ll get the saim answers either way.”
And he laughed at Vail.
This time the chill sliced through Vail. His mouth turned a little drier. He glared at the boy for several seconds, then stood up suddenly and started toward the door.
“Hang on there, Marty. Don’t be foolish.” The body language had changed again. “Just relax and listen to me.” He stood up, stretched his arms out behind him and, without taking his eyes off Vail, shuffled to the end of the table and back. He stood a foot or so in front of the lawyer. Vail sat back down. When Stampler spoke, his demeanor and his accent changed. Back and forth. Roy to Aaron to Roy to Aaron … It was like watching a surreal cartoon. Or an alien in a sci-fi movie. It was like watching mercury slithering back and forth in a test tube.
“Jest thaink about it, Marty. What’re yuh gonna tell ’em? That they screwed up? Christ, man, you plowed up the courtroom with their noses. You made that judge look like he just swallowed a fuckin’ watermelon.” He sat on the edge of the table, staring down at Vail through Aaron’s soft eyes. “They cain’t try me no more, that’d be double jeopardy.” The eyes changed again, hardened. “Besides, yuh tell ’em I tricked yuh, you’ll be the biggest fool in th’ stait. And the doc? Hell, she’ll be gone, man. She may get the word somewheres down the line.” Roy laughed. “But you won’t tell her, that’d be just plain stupid, right?” He laughed again. “They’d thaink you two set up th’ whole thaing. That might hurt you but it’d ruin her.”
Vail glared at him with ball-bearing eyes. Anger roiled up inside him but he remained deadly calm. He finished the cigarette and leaned toward the ashtray.
“Here, lemme do that for yuh,” Roy said, twitching the butt from Vail’s fingers. He took a deep drag and blew a perfect circle of smoke, which wobbled across the room before it dissipated. “Thaink ’bout it, Martin, ackshully it weren’t too hard … all I had to do was fool you and Molly and those jokers up at Daisyland for a few weeks. Just a few weeks is all. Play it straight fer th’ thray stooges up at the nut farm…do the switch between me and Aaron for you and Molly … look good on yer taipes …” He laughed, a soft, mirthless chuckle.
The hair on Vail’s arms and the back of his neck was electrified as Stampler switched, suddenly and easily, in the middle of a sentence, merging Roy and Aaron before Vail’s eyes.
“I gave her the lie, you made it stick. I didn’t know how lucky I was—until I heard the guards up at Daisyland talkin’ about all her great work with splits … ’twas thet background give me th’ idea. I knew enough ’bout it, why, shit, I been readin’ all them books ’bout it for yairs, even DSM3 … so what’d I have to lose, anyway, right? I mean, they were gonna burn me, Marty!”
Vail looked up at Aaron—and Roy—and said harshly, “Okay, what’s the angle? Why the hell’re you telling me this?”
“Ohhh, hell, I gotta tell somebody. Wouldn’t you want to? … I main, yuh cain’t keep somethin’ thet good t’ yerself. Who’m I gonna tell, Harcourt Bascomb? Shit, I’ll bet he thinks he’s gonna be famous when he cures me … Y’ know, he figgers he’ll get ridda old Roy and then I’ll be jest fine … Well, let me give you a clue, Marty. Old Roy’s gonna be around awhile longer. See, somebody’s gotta know. Or what’d be the point in doin’ it?” Roy leaned forward and whispered down at Vail. “Look, they’re gonna treat me the same way up at the nut farm no matter what the doc tells ’em, so why do something stupid now? You’re a winner, Marty. And you won. Don’t throw away a victory over somethin’ that don’t make no difference to nobody.”
“Nobody except you and me,” Vail said.
“That’s right,” Aaron said, “you ’n’ me.” Then he sat there, switching back and forth, laughing at Vail, laughing at all of them, until one of the guards stuck his head in the door. “Time to go, son,” he said.
“So there never was a Roy,” Vail said flatly. “That what you’re telling me?”
Stampler leaned back toward Vail.
“Well thaink ’bout this, Mr. Vail,” Aaron said, and Roy added a sentence, and then he started to laugh and he was still laughing as the marshal led him out the door. Vail could hear the laughter echoing down the hall as they took Stampler away. And for years after that, in the silence of the night, he would remember that laugh. And hear Stampler’s last words to him.
“Suppose there never was an Aaron.”
Primal Fear Page 47
