Private Screening

by Richard North Patterson

Shriver frowned. “As is often the case, Mr. Carson’s memory of Vietnam is suppressed except for fragments—plus no records exist for the latter part of his service. Which,” he added pointedly, “is not usual, and no fault of his.”

  “But you can’t tell us, for example, why the memory of leaving Vietnam would impel him to murder a senator.”

  “What I don’t have,” Shriver retorted, “are facts to tell me how the anniversary reaction might fit with what he did.”

  “In their absence, Dr. Shriver, isn’t there equal reason to believe that Mr. Carson used a convenient date and a helpfully titled poem to cloak a simple assassination?”

  Shriver’s frown became pensive. “That would require sufficient understanding to manipulate what I am convinced is a genuine psychological condition. There is nothing here to suggest that level of sophistication.”

  “Then,” DiPalma pursued, “what your opinion comes to is that but for events fourteen years past, he would not have shot Senator Kilcannon.”

  “Without the irony, yes.”

  Folding his arms, DiPalma summoned a tone of amazement. “But can you state, Doctor, that Mr. Carson did not appreciate the consequence of shooting the senator, or that murdering him was wrong?”

  It was the only test that Rainey would allow the jury to apply; their faces, cautious and alert, registered Shriver’s pause. “I believe that,” he finally answered. “But I don’t yet have the facts to tell you why.”

  DiPalma stared, as if stupefied by inexplicable foolishness. “No further questions,” he murmured and walked to his table, leaving Shriver’s frustrated look for the jurors.

  Mary Carson’s courtroom voice was flat, and she would not face her son.

  Lord spoke softly. “Before Vietnam, then, Harry was a normal farm boy.”

  Her mouth compressed in a bitter line which made other lines appear. “He was his father’s son.”

  “Was he violent?”

  “No.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “He was lost to us.” As if caught in a crosscurrent of feeling, she added, “It killed my husband.…”

  She stopped herself, mouth ajar. As Carson looked up in sudden, palpable hurt, Lord realized he had her eyes.

  “That was after the fight you described,” he ventured.

  She faced him, seemingly surprised by this intervention. “Yes,” she said at length. “Harry left that day.”

  “When was that?”

  She gave her son one long look, and turned from him. “Early June,” she said in a tone of final reckoning, “almost a year to the day after they sent him back to us.”

  “During the fight,” DiPalma asked her, “did your son do anything that told you he didn’t know where he was?”

  She gave him a bewildered look. “No.”

  “Or who he was hitting?”

  “No.” The look became chiding. “My husband had rebuked him for cursing me.”

  DiPalma nodded. “What was the significance of the pine trees?”

  “His father had planted them.”

  “So cutting them down was a specific act of hatred against his father.”

  “Objection,” Lord snapped. “The question assumes Mrs. Carson’s clairvoyance.”

  “Overruled. You may answer, Mrs. Carson.”

  She held herself straight, as though strengthened by bitter memory. “Yes,” she said finally. “It was.”

  Glancing toward Carson, Lord noticed that Kleist’s blue notebook had been replaced by a red one, in which he wrote now. But Carson’s eyes were shut.

  “No further questions,” DiPalma said.

  Faced with his past, Carson looked smaller. It was a trick of his mind, Lord knew, and Carson’s posture; as Beth took the stand, he seemed to curl in a shell.

  She sat with a tentative delicacy, as if poised to run. Through the glass, Damone watched her.

  “Before Vietnam,” she was saying, “Harry was different.”

  “Different than afterwards?”

  “That, and from the other boys I knew.” Her voice became softer, reminiscent. “He knew how to see things and not to be embarrassed by it. Like he had a second way of looking.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “He saw the farm like that. He said the reason he wanted to keep it was because he could smell and touch and feel things, see the work he’d done.” Lord sensed her groping to make the jury understand. “He could name all the sounds and smells—I remember he took me for a walk once, down to this bog they had. Afterwards, he asked what smell I remembered.…”

  “Objection,” DiPalma cut in. “Unresponsive.”

  “Sustained.”

  Beth turned to Rainey. “It smelled like wild mint,” she finished.

  Lord saw Carson’s quick, sideways glance at Beth, as if afraid looking would hurt him yet afraid she’d disappear. “After the war,” Lord asked, “did he still notice things like that?”

  “No. But in a way I could still see it in him—like that second part of him was hurt now.” Her neck gave an embarrassed twitch toward Carson. “He used to cry in his sleep.…”

  “Objection—unresponsive.”

  Lord turned. “What are you afraid of, Ralph?”

  “Sustained, Mr. Lord—and that’s sufficient.” To Beth, Rainey added less severely, “You’ll have to confine yourself to answering the question.”

  She nodded, then answered softly, “I thought I was.”

  The judge gave her a look of perplexity. “You may proceed, Mr. Lord.”

  “When he would cry, did you try to wake him?”

  “At first.” Her gaze flickered toward Carson again; she picked at a fold of her dress, like a smoker without a cigarette. “One night when I did, he rolled on top of me and clamped his hand over my mouth. ‘Shut up,’ he whispered. ‘They’ll find us.…’”

  “When was that?” Lord broke in.

  “June.” She looked down. “I just lay there, trying to breathe through my nose and feeling his heart beat against me. Then he drew back his head—it was like he knew who I was then. But he could never talk about it.” She shot another half-glance at Carson. “I think that’s where the poetry came from.…”

  “Objection.” DiPalma made this dutiful, bored. “Unresponsive.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Did your husband write poems?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were they about?”

  “He’d never say. But I knew they were about the war—death, dying.…”

  “Did you show them to anyone?”

  “I tried to show Harry’s mother. They were too ugly, she said.”

  “That was after the fight.”

  “Yes.” Her glance at Carson was longer. “I wanted them to understand.”

  “Did they?”

  Her eyes stopped between Carson and Lord. “They couldn’t.”

  Lord paused. “But there came a time,” he said, “when Harry was violent with you.”

  “Only that once.” She turned a fraction more toward Carson. “He looked so surprised.…”

  “What did he do?”

  “When I told him to leave, he did—like he was ashamed to argue. But I was just so scared it happened.”

  She was no longer speaking to him, Lord thought, or to the jury. “When was that?”

  “Last year.” Slowly, she faced Carson, as if seeing what they could never have. “I never saw him again.”

  “Do you remember the date?” Lord asked.

  “June.” She said this quietly, to Carson. “June second.”

  “So when your husband hit you,” DiPalma asked, “you think he was confused?”

  “Yes.”

  He eyed her with melancholy skepticism. “But he also told you he hit a sergeant, didn’t he? In boot camp.”

  “Objection,” Lord said, startled. “Hearsay—the witness wasn’t in boot camp.”

  “Your Honor, the question falls within two exceptions to the hearsay rule. First, a pattern of v
iolence would indicate Mr. Carson’s persistent intent to commit violent acts. Second, it would negate the Vietnam stress defense advanced by Mr. Lord.”

  Rainey nodded. “Objection overruled. You may answer, Miss Winship.”

  “He wrote me about it.” She hesitated. “But the sergeant tried to make him buy savings bonds.”

  “So he hit him?” DiPalma asked. “Tell me, was this before or after he went to Vietnam?”

  Beth stared at her lap. “Before.”

  DiPalma drew himself up. In a tone of pity which underscored her crestfallen answer, he said, “No further questions.”

  “Mr. Lord?”

  As Lord hesitated, Carson took his pen and wrote “Cathy,” and then his lips formed “Please.”

  Lord stood. “Did Harry also write you that he’d seen this sergeant skin a rabbit alive and throw its entrails into an audience of recruits?”

  “Yes.” Her voice firmed. “Harry hated animals being mistreated.”

  Recalling Kilcannon’s autopsy photos, Lord mentally winced. “Would you call him a good father?” he asked.

  “A gentle father.” She glanced toward Carson. “Even with his problems, he tried to listen to Cathy.”

  Lord paused. “How is she taking this, now?”

  “Objection. Irrelevant.”

  Lord gave DiPalma a weary look. “You mean harmless.”

  Rainey frowned a moment. “I’ll allow it.”

  “Miss Winship?”

  “For Cathy’s sake, I wish this weren’t on television.” She faced Carson again, finishing softly. “But I think she’ll be all right.”

  “Thank you, Miss Winship.”

  Lord lay on the bed, motionless. Marcia did not look at him.

  “It’s coming down to Damone,” he finally said. “He’s the only one who knows what happened to Harry up to June. And DiPalma may have put him there in front of me, knowing he can devastate our defense, until I’m desperate enough to risk that.”

  He heard Marcia flip a page. “What does it matter,” she answered evenly, “as long as it’s the truth about him.”

  “I wonder if we’ll hear the truth.” He stared at the ceiling. “Today reminds me of what an old defense lawyer said before my first case: ‘A trial isn’t about truth—it’s where twelve people vote for who constructs the best story.’”

  “I thought this was what you wanted, Tony. The big case, where people can see how good you are.”

  Lord turned to her. “I’m getting killed,” he said softly.

  “And I’ve given up security, a career.…” She closed the book. “Everything.”

  He watched her, silent. Since the incident of the woman, she had withheld herself in small, clear ways—silence, a certain space between them, a book on her knees, as now. There would always be a reason, he was suddenly sure, for what she did or had not done. But it would never be her.

  “I’d better say good night to Christopher,” he said.

  His son’s room had the warm musky smell of a child and the stuffed animals he slept with. Each night last year, he recalled, when Christopher still believed they had feelings, he would place a different animal near his pillow.

  “Daddy?”

  His son’s voice, sleepy in the dark. Lord kissed the top of his head.

  “Good night,” he murmured, “don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Said this to reassure himself, because his father had said this to him. Said it in his father’s tone of voice.

  It scared him not to care if they made love.

  He stopped in the hallway.

  What he had told her about law, he had lived by for years. But it was painful now to watch as each piece of Carson’s life was sifted by rules and divorced from context, to become another building block of someone’s self-serving hindsight. A lie, like the lies he and Marcia spoke to each other, telling two stories of a single life.

  He entered their room, and took his keys from the dresser.

  “Preparing another witness?” she asked coldly.

  “A good one, I hope. Named Bramley.”

  2

  THE witness was stocky and round-shouldered, with curly brown hair and a wide-eyed way of looking, as if fearful he would sound like a fool. Glancing at Damone, Lord put both hands in his pockets and turned away.

  “Would you state your full name?” he asked.

  “Robert Lee Bramley.”

  “And what is your occupation?”

  “I’m an accountant.” Though his voice was light and quite young, he had forced it into a monotone. “In Chicago.”

  “Are you also a veteran of Vietnam?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did that come about?”

  “I was drafted.”

  “At what age?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “How long were you in combat?”

  Bramley eyed the ceiling. “Two hundred and thirty-four days.”

  “Did your tour end early?”

  A small shrug. “When I was wounded, they sent me back to the States.”

  “Can you describe your return?”

  “We landed in Oakland.” He paused. “Some demonstrators were chanting ‘Babykillers.’”

  He could have been reading a repair manual, Lord thought. “After Vietnam, did you receive any counseling from the Army to help you readjust?”

  A second, fractional shrug. “They discharged me.”

  “Could you have used some help?”

  “I still have nightmares.” An embarrassed pause. “I get angry for no reason.”

  “Are you in counseling now?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what problem?”

  “My wife left me.” There was a faint echo of surprise. “I could never talk to her—explain what happened to me.”

  “But you’ll try to tell the jury.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is that?”

  Turned to Carson, the wide-eyed look registered disbelief that they were there. “Harry saved my life.”

  As Kleist leaned forward, Carson glanced away. “He served with you then,” Lord asked.

  “In the Hundred and First.” Bramley began to watch the ceiling again. “We were near Khanh Duong, walking up and down these hills with three-foot grass. It was rainy and cold—there were leeches and red ants, jungle rot, hepatitis, parasites—” He shrugged, cutting himself off. “Harry came in to replace a guy who’d been booby-trapped.”

  “Did you strike up a friendship?”

  “Replacements got you killed—my only friends, Stillman and Cook, had been there long as me. And Harry came in with a picture of his girlfriend, all spooked about some body bag breaking open.” When he shrugged again, Lord recognized it as a kind of tic. “It might have been the guy he replaced.”

  “At first, how did he do?”

  “For five days, I think it was, he stumbled around while we tried to find some VC.” He seemed to count mentally. “Sixth day, they found us.”

  “Objection. Unresponsive.”

  “Sustained.”

  When Bramley looked confused, Lord knew that DiPalma would start trying to rattle him, making his account lifeless and fragmented. Stepping between them, he asked, “What happened when they found you?”

  “We were in triple canopy jungle.” Pausing, Bramley retrieved his monotone. “A thirty-caliber machine gun opened up from somewhere—you could never see where it came from ’cause it sent up this echo all around. So you watched for bullets splitting the foliage.” His speech became so careful that Lord imagined him repressing a shrug. “I saw the jungle splitting in a straight line toward me.”

  “What happened?”

  “I froze. Someone hit me. Falling back, I saw the grass fly up from where I’d been.” An odd, inappropriate smile. “Harry was on top of me.”

  “After that, how did you feel toward him?”

  “I wanted to keep him alive—Cook and Stillman did, too.” He gave a furtive glance at Carson. “We began calling ourselves ‘
brothers.’”

  “Cook and Stillman—what were they like?”

  “Objection. Irrelevant.”

  It was time, Lord thought, turning to Rainey. “Mr. DiPalma and I can either go through this piece by piece, Your Honor, or let the witness put Harry Carson’s introduction to the Vietnam War in context.”

  Rainey pursed his lips. “I’ll allow it—provisionally.”

  “Cook …” Bramley seemed to blank out, start again. “He was from Kentucky, with glasses, big ears. Stillman was funny, from New York.”

  “Who was your battalion commander?”

  “Colonel Bast.” The witness nodded to himself. “First day he chewed Harry’s ass ’cause his hair was too long. He was wanting to find us a firefight.”

  “Did he?”

  “Uh-huh. One night he put us on top of some hill about five hundred feet high—with helicopters, so Charlie would know we were there.”

  His voice still showed no emotion. “What happened?” Lord asked.

  “It was dark—first we heard them shouting, ‘Kill GI, kill GI.’ We dug trenches. It was drizzling—the choppers dropped our reserve ammo in the wrong place. Charlie got it.…”

  “Objection. Unresponsive.”

  “Sustained.”

  Bramley’s mouth remained open; it gave him the look of a runner, tired and a little detached, deep in the thoughts he ran with. “I … it started with mortars, was all. The four of us were together—like brothers, Stillman said. Dumb—there were bodies flying up around us, then pieces of bodies. People screaming.…”

  “After the mortars, did they attack?”

  “Used a human wave, around oh-one-hundred.” The shrug was like a spasm. “All around us—you could see them in the tracer bullets.”

  “Did you take casualties?”

  “Most of us died. Stillman got it through the eye.” Bramley paused, scratching one side of his face. “I couldn’t stop looking at that. Then they got Cook in the calf—”

  “And Harry?”

  “He pulled Stillman on top of Cook.” He paused, as if recalling something. “When the VC overran you, they bayoneted the bodies to make sure you were dead.”

  “Were you overrun?”

  “No.” Another shrug. “Bast called artillery in on our position.”

  “What happened to Cook?”

  “They medevaced him out.”

  “At the time, where was Colonel Bast?”