Sleeping Beauty

by Phillip Margolin

  “Delilah won’t let you down, Henry,” Stamm assured him. “She’s the best I’ve got and she’s already putting in long hours on the case.”

  Everyone sat down and Stamm continued the conversation. “I wanted Dr. Karpinski to update you on Casey’s condition so you’ll understand why we’re going ahead with her case now as an assault instead of waiting to see if she passes away so we can try Maxfield for murder. Then Delilah has some questions she wants to ask.”

  Karpinski had a head of white hair and a patrician air. He dressed as elegantly as Miles Van Meter. The doctor straightened his cuffs as he began to speak.

  “Mr. Van Meter, your daughter is in a coma. That means that she is alive but unaware of herself and her surroundings. To be blunt, a coma is a type of living death.”

  Henry took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment.

  “So you can better understand what’s wrong with Casey, let me explain why a coma occurs. The cerebral cortex is the part of the brain that is ultimately responsible for processing all sensory input, motor output, and integrative functions of the nervous system. The reticular activating system, or RAS, is the core of neurons in the center of the brainstem that projects into the cerebral cortex and wakes up the cortex so it can process the information it’s getting and do something about it. To put it another way, the RAS is like an alarm clock. If it doesn’t go off, the cerebral cortex stays asleep and doesn’t do its job, so you stay unconscious.”

  “Will Casey come out of her coma?” Miles asked.

  “That’s hard to say. There is a slim chance that she will. More likely, she will probably stay asleep for years. She may never regain consciousness.”

  “But there is a chance that she’ll come back to us?” Henry asked.

  “That’s not something you can count on. Let me explain. There are three types of coma. In the first category, widespread areas of the cortex are damaged by causes such as severe trauma, absence of blood flow for more than seven to ten minutes, or advanced meningitis. In the second category, processes like prolonged seizure activity, intoxication and alcohol withdrawal, or liver and renal failure alter the ability of the brain tissue to function normally. In the third category, things like tumors, strokes, or compression of the brainstem damage the RAS.

  “When a coma falls into the first two categories, meaningful neurologic recovery isn’t possible. With the first type, even if the patient regains consciousness, they’re severely incapacitated because of the widespread brain damage. In the second, say where there’s liver failure or prolonged seizures, the patient dies if the metabolic cause of the coma isn’t corrected quickly.

  “Fortunately, Casey became comatose because of trauma damage to the brainstem RAS that occurred when she struck her head with a lot of force against one of the timbers that support the roof of the Academy’s boathouse. Traumatic damage was done to the lower posterior portion of the skull just above the top of the neck. This covers the brainstem and cerebellum. The area that was damaged was the locus ceruleus, a section of the RAS. What’s good about this is that people in a prolonged comatose state caused by damage to the RAS can spontaneously recover consciousness. In theory, recovery can also be induced pharmaceutically, though no one has done it yet.”

  “Are you saying that a drug exists that can wake up my sister?” Miles asked.

  “No, but scientists are working to develop one. Theoretically, yohimbine, which has been around for years, should do the trick. The problem is that it causes extreme elevations of blood pressure even at relatively small doses. There have been attempts to develop a drug that will block the peripheral effect of yohimbine on the heart and blood vessels. That would allow us to administer high doses to the locus ceruleus and reverse the coma. The greatest success has been achieved by using a drug that is similar to carbidopa, which is used to treat Parkinson’s disease, but the pharmaceutical companies are far from the point where the FDA will approve such a drug for use on living patients.”

  Miles struggled to maintain his composure.

  “If I understand you correctly, Dr. Karpinski, Casey will wake up spontaneously, or a miracle drug, which does not currently exist, will bring her out of her coma. Otherwise she will stay a vegetable for the rest of her life. There is no other alternative.”

  Karpinski nodded. “Unfortunately, under the present state of our knowledge, those are the alternatives.”

  “That’s why we’re going after Maxfield for assault, Miles,” Stamm said. “But we’re also prosecuting him for Terri Spencer’s murder, so he will receive the severest punishment the law allows.”

  Miles’s hands curled into fists. He glared at Jack Stamm. “I want that bastard dead, Jack. I want him dead.”

  “We’re going to convict him, Miles. We’re going to send him down,” Stamm assured him.

  “Mr. Van Meter,” Delilah asked Miles in a calm voice that sought to defuse his hatred, “can you help us with any information about Joshua Maxfield or your sister that could help my prosecution?”

  Miles took a deep breath and regained his self control.

  “I don’t think so. The night Casey was attacked, I was in New York City with two other members of my firm negotiating a deal for a client.”

  “How well did you know Joshua Maxfield?”

  “Not well at all. I’m an attorney with Brucher, Platt and Heinecken. I don’t have much to do with the Academy. I did meet Maxfield briefly at a fund-raiser for the school, and I had dinner with him when he was hired. Casey wanted me to meet him. She thought we might get along, but we really had little in common.”

  Delilah turned to Henry Van Meter. “Sir, did you have any contact with Joshua Maxfield?”

  Henry looked very tired. He shook his head wearily.

  “Almost none. Like my son, I met him at a few functions but we never talked much. I have not been well these past few years. My daughter handled the day-to-day operations of the school.”

  “I’m not going to take up any more of your time today,” Delilah said, “but I may need one or both of you to testify at Maxfield’s trial about Casey. The jury needs to see her as a human being, and family members-loved ones-can do that better than anyone. Would it be okay if I came back to talk to you about Casey?”

  “Certainly,” Miles said. He handed Delilah his business card. “You can call me at my office anytime. If you don’t have anything more for my father, I’ll walk you out.”

  As soon as they were far enough away from the library so Henry Van Meter could not hear, Miles turned to Jack Stamm and Dr. Karpinski.

  “Thank you for coming to the house. I know how inconvenient it is to travel out here, but my father really isn’t well.”

  “Glad to do it, Miles,” Stamm said. “I only wish we could be more encouraging about your sister’s chances.”

  “That’s up to God and science, Jack. All Father and I can do is pray.”

  Miles turned to Delilah. “You have my card, Ms. Wallace. If there is anything I can do to put Maxfield on death row, just ask.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The preliminary hearing in State of Oregon v. Joshua Maxfield was scheduled for one in the afternoon, but Delilah Wallace had been working on her preparation since seven in the morning. She’d let herself into the district attorney’s office with her key, first in as usual, turning on the lights as she walked past the empty offices.

  Delilah was always first at everything she did; she’d been first in her high school class, first in her college class, and first in her law school class. Delilah was smart but she also worked as hard as she was able on everything she did; she didn’t know any other way. She could hardly remember a time when she wasn’t working. Her father had walked out on the family when she was born, and her mother had supported her and her brother with minimum-wage jobs because she had no education and no skills except the ability to push herself to exhaustion and beyond. That meant that Delilah worked, too, from the time she could work, to help pay the rent and put food o
n the table. She had been an adult long before she was one legally.

  Religion and music had been Delilah’s salvation. The church choir had given her purpose and pride in an ability to sing that was unique. Her voice had kept her in high school while her friends dropped out. Her solos put her in a spotlight that she came to cherish, and had pointed her toward trial work where she could continue to be the center of attention. There was no bigger spotlight than the one the press and public shone on a trial lawyer who was seeking the death penalty.

  At eight A.M., someone knocked on Delilah’s doorjamb. She looked up from a stack of police reports to find Tony Marx standing in her doorway with a smile plastered on his face and a small notebook in his hand.

  “What is the reason for your shit-eating grin, detective?”

  “My excellent detection skills. You have some time to hear what I’ve discovered about Joshua Maxfield?”

  Delilah glanced at her watch. “I’m not prepping Ashley Spencer until eleven, so I can spare a few minutes. What have you got?”

  Marx took a chair in front of Wallace’s desk, which was completely covered with law books, police reports, crumpled scraps of paper, and legal pads.

  “How the hell do you ever find anything?” Marx asked as he opened his notebook.

  Delilah tapped her temple. “It’s all up here. Come on now, what have you got?”

  “Our boy is definitely not what he seems. First, Maxfield isn’t the name he was born with. That’s Joshua Peltz. Mr. and Mrs. Peltz belonged to some fringe Christian sect in Massachusetts that subscribed to a spare-the-rod-and-spoil-the-child philosophy. When Joshua was eleven, he was truant from school for a week. A caseworker found him chained in a closet. He was emaciated, dehydrated, and covered with cigarette burns. My guess is that he was subjected to some really sick shit. The state must have thought so, too, because it terminated the Peltzs’ parental rights and put our client in foster care.”

  “I just read Maxfield’s first book, A Tourist in Babylon,” Delilah said. “Now I know how he can write so realistically about a classic abused childhood.”

  “He’s also pretty knowledgeable about crime,” Marx said. “Our boy developed quite a juvenile record. He set fire to his first foster home and spent time in juvenile detention for arson; there are several assaults in elementary and middle school, quite a few expulsions, too. The only consistent thing in his life was judo. One of his foster parents thought the discipline would do him good, but he only used his skills to bully kids. He was expelled from high school when he was a senior for breaking a boy’s arm. After that, he bummed around for a year, then went back to school.”

  “When did Peltz become Maxfield?” Weller asked.

  “His last foster family was named Maxfield. He had his name changed legally when he went to college at the University of Massachusetts. I guess Maxfield does sound classier than Peltz. He used to tell people that he was from a wealthy family in California.”

  “He wrote his big bestseller in college, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he started it in community college and finished it his senior year at U. Mass.” Marx looked up from his notes. “I got a lot of his writing history from book reviews and interviews he gave when Tourist hit the big time. The story is that he wrote an essay about his childhood in an English class, and the professor suggested he expand it. There was a big-bucks advance, literary prizes, bestseller lists, the whole nine yards. Maxfield was on top of the world, a genuine boy wonder. The problem was that he used up all the material he’d accumulated from his miserable life in his first novel and couldn’t write a decent follow-up. His second book tanked, and he hasn’t written another one since.”

  “Unless you count his serial-killer opus.”

  “A point well taken.” Marx paused. “You don’t think he killed to get material for the book, do you?”

  “Now that’s an idea.” Delilah stared into space for a moment. “I’m gonna think on that.” She refocused on the detective. “You have anything more for me, Tony?”

  Marx told Wallace what he’d found out about Maxfield’s reasons for leaving Eton College.

  “Can we get the name of the woman he hit on?” Delilah asked.

  “I’m working on it.”

  “Any luck tying Maxfield to any of the out-of-state murders?”

  “The FBI is working that angle and I haven’t heard from them yet.”

  “Okay, good job. Now let me get back to work so I don’t mess up this afternoon.”

  Ashley’s nightmares were less intense after Joshua Maxfield’s arrest. Boredom replaced fear as her preeminent emotion. She started exercising again, because it gave her something to do. One afternoon, Ashley kicked a ball around the soccer field and tried a few shots on goal. The next day, she practiced again. It felt good to be back on the pitch where her only problem was getting the ball in the net. On Saturday, Sally Castle drove Ashley to the mall where they saw a movie and ate pizza. Leaving the Academy campus made Ashley feel like a prisoner freed from solitary confinement.

  Ashley looked forward to her meals with Henry Van Meter. She enjoyed Henry’s stories about his travels, Oregon history, and interesting things he’d accomplished. By contrast, her life seemed dull. The only time she’d traveled was when her parents took her on vacations to Mexico and Aruba, but they had stayed at resorts with other Americans, and the places hadn’t seemed as foreign as she expected.

  Sometimes Miles joined Ashley and his father for a meal. He was as kind to her as his father, and she felt comfortable in their company. The Van Meters encouraged Ashley to think about her future. She resisted at first, but they assured her that she could attend the Academy for free in the fall and they mentioned the soccer team from time to time. There was a plan to send the girls on several trips out of state where they would test themselves against other nationally ranked powers.

  Ashley’s recovery took a step backward on the morning of the preliminary hearing. She woke up frightened and nauseated, passing on a morning run because nerves and fear sapped her energy. She had gone to the mansion for breakfast but she could only eat toast and tea. As usual, Henry Van Meter tried to distract her from her troubles with tales of far-off places, but she only half-heard him. None of his stories could stop her from imagining what it would be like to face Joshua Maxfield later in the day.

  Detective Birch picked up Ashley from the Academy dormitory at nine and drove her to the courthouse. He asked her how she was feeling and she told him that she was nervous, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell him how truly frightened she was at the thought of being in the same room with the man who had killed her parents and come within moments of murdering her. Birch said that it was natural to be nervous, and he assured her that Delilah Wallace was a nice woman who would make sure that her ordeal was as painless as possible. Ashley pulled into herself after that, and there was very little conversation during the rest of the ride.

  Jerry Philips was sitting in the reception area with his nose in a book when Ashley entered the DA’s office. He smiled and stood up when she came in. Birch placed himself between Ashley and the attorney.

  “Do you know this gentleman?” the detective asked Ashley without taking his eyes off of Philips.

  “Yes. He was my parents’ lawyer.” She looked at Jerry. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m your lawyer, too, Ashley. I’m here because I thought you might need some moral support. I’ve already spoken to Ms. Wallace. She seems very nice, and she’d prefer to talk to you alone, but I’ll go with you if you’d feel more comfortable with me sitting in. She has no objection.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll go by myself.”

  “Okay. I’ll be out here when you’re done.”

  Ashley was very tense at the start of the interview, but Delilah calmed her down in less than five minutes. Delilah told Ashley that she would not keep her on the stand for long. She was only going to ask questions about what Ashley had seen in the boathouse. Maxfield’s lawyer wou
ld have a chance to cross-examine, but Delilah did not expect him to ask her anything that would embarrass her. And Delilah assured her that she would be right there in the courtroom to object if Maxfield’s attorney got out of hand.

  “Will I have to see Mr. Maxfield?” Ashley asked.

  “You’ll be in my office until I call you, so you won’t see him until you testify. When you’re in court he’ll be sitting across from you at the defense table, but there’s going to be extra security, so you don’t have to worry. I picked my meanest officers to guard you. They’ll beat Maxfield to a pulp if he so much as breathes in your direction,” Delilah said sternly. Then she broke into a smile. “And I’ll sit on that weasel when they’re through, and really put the fear of God in him.”

  The thought of this massive woman crushing Maxfield under her tremendous weight made Ashley laugh. She covered her mouth, embarrassed, but Delilah broke out laughing, too, and, for a moment, they were girls together, giggling over a private joke.

  Delilah spent the rest of their time together going over the questions she was going to ask Ashley and listening to her answers. Every once in a while, the prosecutor would comment on an answer and suggest different phrasing, but she never tried to make Ashley say anything that wasn’t true. Finally, Delilah subjected Ashley to a mock cross-examination. She told Ashley that the best way to handle cross was to tell the truth. She advised her not to rush, to listen to each question before answering and to make her answer to the point and as short as possible.

  “Admit you don’t know an answer if that’s true and don’t be afraid to say that you aren’t sure,” Delilah instructed her.

  After the mock cross, Delilah told her that she had held up pretty well. By the time the interview was over, Ashley was less frightened and she was convinced that she would get through her ordeal.

  When Delilah escorted Ashley back to the reception area, Ashley’s lawyer was still waiting for her.