Blind Justice

by James Scott Bell

  Raising his head, Howie seemed lost in a mental fog. “I don’t know, Jake. I just don’t know.”

  I heaved a sigh. Having a client who can’t remember is worse than having one who lies. You can pick out lies and confront them, but you can’t pick out what isn’t in the mind to begin with. “Start with the dreams, Howie. What is it about the dreams?”

  For a moment I didn’t think he would tell me. His face drained of color. Then he said, “The devil.”

  “What about the devil?”

  “Torture.”

  I waited.

  “Beelzebub.”

  “Come on—”

  “I have sinned.”

  “How?”

  “The devil prowls around like a lion. He is devouring me! I can’t sleep.”

  “The devil is in your dreams, is that it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Join the club. That still doesn’t answer my question.”

  Howie shook his head slowly. “I willed it, Jake. I willed her to die. I wanted her dead. I wanted her to die, and the devil’s purpose was accomplished.”

  “But did you stab her?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Do you remember holding the knife?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I slammed my hand on the table. “Come on, Howie! Get in the game with me. Did you, or did you not, stab Rae?”

  Short bursts of breath came out of his mouth rapidly, like his heart was racing. “I must have!”

  “Put yourself back in the room.”

  “No, Jake. Don’t make me!”

  “Do it.”

  “No!” He stood up, and his chair went flying backwards.

  A deputy sheriff opened the door. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “We’re finished.” I was not pleased. At that point I didn’t care about Howie or Lindsay or anything else about this crazy case.

  “Let’s go,” the deputy said to Howie. My client didn’t even look at me as he left the room.

  I headed back to the Valley and straight to Max’s. I took my usual table in the back and began the parade of beers.

  Taking stock, I looked at my case. It was getting weirder by the hour. Howie was obviously off his nut, but that would be a tough nut to crack in trial. The key was his mental state at the time of the murder, and there was no evidence he was anything but legally sane. It was only when I had to try to get information out of him that he flipped out. Some client.

  Then there was this Delliplane who had potentially startling evidence but was about as credible as a Frisbee. What did he really see that night? Since he was stoned, how sure could he be? If he ever took the stand, even the colorless Sylvia Plotzske would make surfer meat out of him.

  Some of the usual crowd wandered into Max’s and gave me a few waves. I pretended to be writing notes on a legal pad.

  When I was finally in that condition where what anyone thought of me didn’t matter an iota, I took out my phone and dialed Lindsay Patino’s number, that is, what I thought was her number. I actually got some woman who spoke Spanish and didn’t know any Lindsay Patino.

  I hung up and took the paper from my wallet with Lindsay’s number on it. In my inebriated state, my fingers felt like sausages. None of them connected with the others. But I managed to punch the numbers.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Denney.”

  “Oh, hello. How are you?” She sounded concerned, not just making conversation.

  “Oh, I’m at the top of my game. You like what your brother did today?” I said it with a note of anger.

  “He’s so scared.”

  “Yeah? He’s crazy too.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “He keeps telling me all this about the devil and like that and doesn’t remember squat that will help us.”

  “You sound angry, Jake.”

  “Look, I gotta talk to you about this case. Now. I’m coming over.”

  “Wait, tonight wouldn’t—”

  I hung up. Such was my cheap exercise of power.

  As I weaved out to the parking lot at Max’s, I realized I hadn’t asked her where she lived. I only remembered she had once mentioned the cross streets for the house where she rented the guest quarters. I turned on the lights in my car and tried to find the spot in my Thomas Guide map of city streets. Normally that would be a three-minute process. In my condition it took ten.

  I finally found the streets and drove over. My plan was to look for her car, which I had a vague picture of from our little bumping incident. I must have cruised up and down the street four times before I spotted what looked like her vehicle.

  I knocked on the front door of the house, and an old man peeked out from behind the chain lock.

  “Excuse me,” I said, “I’m looking for Lindsay Patino.”

  “Who are you?” His voice sounded like it came from a gravel pit.

  “I’m her lawyer. Does she live here?”

  “What’s a lawyer doing making house calls?”

  “I care about my clients.”

  “If you’re a lawyer, how come you don’t have a briefcase?”

  I looked heavenward. “She live in the guest house?” I started to walk toward the side.

  “Wait a minute!” the old man shouted, but I was gone. I walked down the driveway, which led all the way to the back. I could see the small guest house and lights on in the window.

  Before I was halfway there, the old man shuffled out the back door of the main house. “You stop right there!” he commanded.

  I turned to explain reality to him and found myself looking into the dark eye of a hunting rifle.

  “Whoa!” I said.

  “You’re trespassing.”

  “I’m a lawyer!”

  “All the more reason to shoot you!”

  I put my hands in the air. “Listen, I—”

  “Now go out the way you came.”

  Then I heard Lindsay’s voice. “It’s all right, Mr. Laguzza.” She stepped out of the shadows.

  The old man said, “You know this fella?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Says he’s your lawyer.”

  “Yes, it’s all right.”

  Old man Laguzza lowered the rifle, reluctantly, it seemed to me. “Strange kind of lawyer,” he said.

  Lindsay looked at me with some consternation.

  “Well,” she said, “I guess you better come in.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE LITTLE GUEST house had a country-cottage feel. Without being asked, I sat in a blue wingback chair, like the invited guest I wasn’t.

  “Where’d you find this place?” I asked.

  “Someone at my church recommended it to me,” Lindsay said, sitting on the sofa. “She knew Mr. Laguzza, I came to see him, and we hit it off.”

  “He’s handy with a gun.”

  “Emil Laguzza believes in the Second Amendment.”

  “It must get pretty exciting when Jehovah’s Witnesses come calling. Did you know Jehovah’s Witnesses are merging with the Optimist Club? They’re gonna knock on your door and tell you everything’s okay.”

  Lindsay didn’t laugh.

  I cleared my throat. “I talked to Howie earlier, and he got very disturbed again about the devil. Started shouting, going crazy, just like in court. Says he willed for Rae to die and that’s how the devil accomplished his purpose. You know anything about this?”

  She leaned back and sighed. “Howie has had visions of the devil before.”

  “Why didn’t you mention anything about this?”

  “I didn’t see any connection before. Then today, when he tried to run out of court, it all came back.”

  “What came back?”

  “Howie’s had nightmares his whole life. Terrible nightmares. Waking up screaming in the middle of the night. When he was little, the doctors told Mom and Dad it was just night terrors, something kids get from time to time. They said he’d outgrow the
m.”

  “Only he didn’t.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And he would tell you about these dreams?”

  “They always came back to the same thing. The devil was out to get him.”

  I rubbed my eyes, which by this time must have been a nice shade of red. “I never knew that about Howie. I don’t remember him ever talking to me about it.”

  “He was scared to talk about it, except to me.”

  “That’s rough. I’ve had some doozie nightmares myself, but not my whole life. Why do you think he dreamed about the devil?”

  “Because,” Lindsay said matter-of-factly, “I think he saw him.”

  My addled brain was beginning to mellow out, but I still had trouble believing what Lindsay Patino just said. My stare must have been enough because she felt compelled to explain. “Maybe not Satan himself, but a demon, which he has come to feel represents Satan.”

  Shaking my head, I said, “You actually believe this?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a little hard for me to swallow, Lindsay.”

  “It is for most people. We are all so certain and sophisticated.”

  “Yeah, but demons?”

  ”Yeah, but electricity? Yeah, but black holes?”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who’d believe demons are everywhere.”

  “I believe we have to avoid two extremes. If your car doesn’t start in the morning or you burn your toast, that doesn’t mean a demon is behind it.”

  “I’ll give you that much.”

  “But there’s another extreme, and that is not believing at all. Our culture has become totally naturalistic. It rules out supernatural phenomena, but it has absolutely no reason to do so.”

  We were quiet for a moment, and I tried to put all this into some perspective. Here was a well-spoken, well-educated woman, someone who could have been a success at just about anything she chose, telling me she believed in actual devils and demons. I was incredulous. The only other person I remember talking to me about the devil with such certainty was a guy downtown who had wine breath and lived out of a shopping cart.

  Lindsay Patino did not fit that profile. I wasn’t at all leaning toward believing her, but I admit, I was getting intrigued. “Howie said something about a lion devouring him. What’s that all about?”

  “There’s a passage in the Bible. It says to be alert, because the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for people to devour.”

  The image was striking, and I could almost relate. There were times when I’d felt like there was a hot breath on the back of my neck. Usually that feeling came when I was falling into bed after a binge. I always chalked it up to inebriated paranoia.

  Lindsay said, “Why do we think we know so much more than the ancients? Maybe we know less. Sure, we can measure better than they can, but is that all life is based on, measuring things?”

  “How else do we know?”

  “Experience, wisdom, intuition. A materialist sucks all the juice out of life and leaves a dry husk.”

  “Where did you get all this? Materialist?”

  “Am I not supposed to know that word?”

  “No, I—“

  “Look, on that shelf over there. What do you see?”

  “You mean books?”

  “They’re the latest thing.”

  “Okay, maybe I deserved that.”

  “The point is, I don’t think we’re any wiser for being materialists. I think we’re more foolish than ever.”

  “I’ll give you an example. Our church helps support a missionary couple in Kenya. These people are the most levelheaded people you’ll ever meet. The husband used to be a marketing executive, and his wife was a consultant. They dropped everything to train and to work with people of a very ancient culture.”

  I wondered what might have driven a couple to make that sort of irrational decision, but I listened closely.

  “There is no separation over there between the natural and the supernatural. Spiritual activity is seen as normal and inevitable. This couple has confronted actual demon possession, talked directly to demons, and cast them out of people. But in our Western culture, we have created an artificial distinction, and then we rule out the supernatural.”

  She was so sure about what she was saying that it was disconcerting. Suddenly I felt like a lawyer arguing a case and came back with, “Maybe they buy that in Africa. But we’re a bit more advanced, you know? We have explanations for phenomena. We don’t need to believe in devils.”

  “I know it’s difficult for you to believe,” Lindsay said, “because you haven’t looked into it before.”

  I bristled but couldn’t protest because she was right. I started thinking what a good lawyer she would have made.

  “So you think Howie is dealing with some sort of demon -possession?”

  “I think it’s better to call it demon oppression.”

  “Okay, why would a demon or the devil be so interested in Howie? He never did anything to anybody.”

  Lindsay took a long, slow breath. She leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees. The room seemed to get smaller. “I’m going to tell you why,” she said. “Will you listen?”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I answered.

  “All right, then,” she said. “It was when my parents first moved to Orlando . . .”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  . . . AND HOWIE WAS just five years old. Disney World was a blueprint then. Orlando still had a small-town feel. Fred Patino had taken a job with a big lumber and building outfit because along with Mickey Mouse would come boom times.

  Janet Patino was pregnant and about to give birth to Lindsay, their third child.

  “Third child?” I interrupted.

  “I was number three,” said Lindsay, “after Howie and my other brother, Mike.”

  “I didn’t know you had another brother.”

  “He died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I only learned about it later on, of course. I had to piece it together bit by bit. Most of it I finally got from Mom after years of her not wanting to talk about it. The pain was just too great. Mike was three years old when I was born.”

  Howie doted on both of them—Mike and baby Lindsay. This was finally something Howie was good at, being a big brother. If other kids made fun of him for being a little slower than they were, he could always go home and have his two little siblings to play with. Mike was like a puppy, and Lindsay gurgled and smiled at him. It was unconditional love.

  Howie always had a vivid imagination. Sometimes too vivid. He woke the family up more than once with visions of boogeymen under the bed, slipping out in the darkness to get Mike, who slept in the same room. Howie was never afraid for himself. He always thought it was some malevolent creature trying to take his little brother away.

  He also used his imagination to make up elaborate games to play. At five, Howie’s worldly experiences were limited to television’s boundaries. Howie liked cartoons about action heroes. He would lead Mike around the yard, searching out bad guys and removing them with extreme prejudice, just like the heroes on the shows he watched.

  Mike was a good soldier, always ready to do what his captain told him. Howie made up a code name for their invasion force—Lightning. It sounded fearsome.

  Howie eventually began to lay plans for expanding the reach of their missions. Next door to them lived an old man—Howie’s parents called him “retired.” Howie thought that meant he was extra tired and so he must sleep a lot. In Howie’s imagination, that made him vulnerable to bad guys.

  One day he led Mike through a loose board in the fence and took a look around the old man’s yard.

  It was an eerie and wonderful place, full of potted palms and ferns and other plants that made it seem like a jungle. A place where lots of bad guys might hide. Howie made sure he and Mike each had sticks—or rather, high-powered rifles that never ran out of ammo.

  The first few
times Howie led Mike on an expedition into the yard, they didn’t stay long. Mom would be sure to find out, and it was a little scary in this unfamiliar terrain. But each time they returned, they stayed just a little bit longer.

  And then one day they stayed too long.

  They were on the far side of the old man’s yard when Howie heard his mother’s voice. It had a sense of panic and urgency. She was calling out for both of them as if they were missing. Trouble was ahead. “Come on!” Howie ordered, and he took off running. He was sure Mike was right on his heels.

  Howie ripped his tee shirt slipping back through the fence. His mother was right on top of him, a little angry now, telling Howie he shouldn’t have been over there and asking where Mike was.

  Howie pointed to the fence, expecting Mike to come through any second.

  He didn’t.

  “Mike!” Janet Patino screamed.

  That’s when Howie’s body filled with a fear and dread he had never known—and would never forget.

  His mother ran out of their yard, heading for the old man’s house. Howie poked his head back through the fence, yelling for Mike. He was lost, and it was Howie’s fault. He knew it. He just had to find Mike and bring him back.

  Howie called out “Lightning! Lightning!”

  Mike didn’t answer the call.

  The old man’s yard was on a slope. Howie slid on his pants downward toward a fence. He could hear his mother yelling Mike’s name, getting closer and closer. He saw her charge into the backyard through the old man’s gate.

  Howie hit the fence the same time his mother did on the other side. He heard her scream.

  Then he saw Mike. He was floating, facedown, in the swimming pool.

  “They tried to revive him,” Lindsay said. “But he was gone. The old man, I think his name was Harrington, almost died because of it. He had left the pool gate open. My parents never blamed him, but apparently one day he just up and drove away. The house was sold later, and no one ever found him.”

  “That’s awful,” I said, shaking my head.

  “My parents dealt with it as best they could, I guess. I was never aware that there was any great tragedy that marked them for life, but I didn’t have anything to compare it with. When I finally heard the story, I guess I was around twelve or thirteen. That’s when Howie told me he’d talked to Mike.”