Melrose was sorry she had had to die. It was just that the crucial charge against Detweiler was for Billie’s murder. Crews would try to pack the jury with men, unattractive men who never had access to a Billie Starr except in the torn pages of a barber-shop magazine, sensible men who would not forgive Detweiler for the madness in which he strangled and did not make love to her.
On the other side, Melrose would want women jurors, to hate Billie in the grave and feel compassion for the boyish Detweiler. But whatever the composition of the panel, Melrose would horrify them. In this he would be quite sincere, for he was himself horrified by Detweiler. The defense psychiatrists, Brixton and Metcalfe, practitioners of the most simple-minded of the professions, the fools’ science, saw Detweiler as the victim—of a self-castration complex, of religious delusions, of mythological terms, obliteration-yearnings, infantile power-dreams, of fantasies, disordered desires, warped communications, but ultimately, of course, of Society. Had he only been treated at an early age So with them too, Time was of the essence. In effect they agreed with Detweiler that he had no choice on Christmas Eve last but to kill three persons.
Inevitability conditioned by chance: that was Time, that was death, that was Detweiler, that was reality, and that was horrifying. Adequately to represent Detweiler one must be divine. Melrose, relentlessly human, intended to win this trial, but it would be sacrilegious to say in so doing he would conduct an appropriate defense. The murder of defenseless Billie was indefensible. He could only plead that Detweiler was mad, as in representing a tubercle bacillus he could but asseverate that it was lethal.
No, no example sufficed. Detweiler could not be likened to a germ, or a deadly weapon, or a wild animal, or a hurricane. He did not seek to degenerate, was not an inanimate thing, or hungry, or an inchoate force. He was a human being without definable purpose or profession or motive.
Detwelier was a man. He was mad. He was a madman. What Melrose found most horrifying was that his own high art would be to no avail: he must simply, even humbly, present the truth.
With this recognition Melrose was claimed by a strange serenity. Usually as a trial opened he perspired adrenalin as he waited to put his fangs into living flesh, his eyes and ears were hyperesthetic though his head was buried in briefs and jury lists: he could identify all significant persons throughout the courtroom and translate their whispers, read the judge’s mood in the reflection of light from His Honor’s glasses and anticipate the prosecutor’s case in such detail he might have conducted it for him.
But now the defense counsel sat calmly awaiting the descent of the clerk’s hand into the receptacle from which he would withdraw the name of prospective juror number one. If acceptable to defense and prosecution this person would probably become foreman. The panel could elect another member for the job, but rarely did, preferring that fate choose the individual who must finally stand erect and announce the verdict. This man, or woman, then, was most important of the twelve, the only one with a title and not a number. Melrose had been known to spend hours and exhaust all his challenges to get the right foreman. He knew the precise weight of any authority.
Now, for once, he would not strain to hear the name, to watch the man walk into the box—you could learn a lot from a walk and a taking of a seat and the riding up of a suit jacket, throat-clearing, lip-licking, arrangement of hands—he would see but not peer, appreciate but not press, question but not grill, and accept whomever. Detweiler was insane. Any citizen would understand that, irrespective of his temporal prejudices, in view of the terrible alternative: that he himself did not exist.
The clerk brought up a slip and began to read it aloud: “Wilfred T.—”
Detweiler stood up again. Melrose observed this without anxiety, as if he had no responsibility in the matter.
Detweiler said, addressing the court: “I have done it! Do you hear me? I have succeeded.”
“No,” said the judge, “you must observe the proper procedure here.” He waved a finger at the ceiling. “Mr. Melrose, will you please advise the defendant…”
Undoubtedly he supposed this a trick of Melrose’s and refused to be excited by it—such was Melrose’s interpretation, for the lawyer’s mind continued active though his will was quies cent. But at last he took Detweiler’s elbow, saying: “Joe, you must sit down.”
“I am sorry I forgot to say ‘Your Honor,’” Detweiler told the judge. “I don’t want to do the wrong thing. I respect procedures and institutions. Without them we would all be adrift. I have reason to appreciate this in the most personal way. Until I was put into jail I was never able to collect my thoughts, and until I was brought to this trial I never accomplished anything of a positive nature despite grievous efforts.
“God knows, I even killed three people. But the legal system is extraordinary. To be brought to justice! All this marvelous organization, so reasonable and yet compassionate, serious, grand, and precedented. Men live and die, laws change, civilizations rise and fall in the inexorable movement of Time. But justice is not transitory in concept though particulars alter through the centuries. In ancient times thieves were executed, traitors drawn and quartered, murderers beheaded. Today our punishments are not so severe, but we have not ceased to believe that theft, treason, and murder are wrong and that their perpetrators should be brought to justice!”
Detweiler spoke intensely, but his voice had no resonance and Melrose doubted that the prospective jurors, seated in the first rows, could hear him. The judge leaned forward and cupped his right ear. He was sixty-five years old and still touched up his light-brown hair so that no gray showed, which indicated more patience than vanity. Melrose had appeared before him on other occasions and tested this patience; it was not indifference.
But he was not ready as yet to lower the boom on Detweiler. The district attorney had been caught unprepared. His assistants were staring at him, but his own head was cocking first towards Detweiler, then at the bench. Finally he rose in almost innocent astonishment and wailed: “Your Honor!”
Melrose’s thumb and forefinger met each other through Detweiler’s elbow; but he was clutching only the arm of the coat.
Detweiler went on: “Out in the world, try as I would, I could not get a firm grasp on experience. I was incessantly distracted by the spectacle of mankind in motion, noise, color, the flow of all the different kinds of energy. I really started choking Mrs. Starr so that I could gain a moment’s peace in which to think. But she was urgent…. Well, you know the rest. Desoire what Mr. Melrose says, I believe I should be punished for that.”
Judge Hardesty removed his glasses. “Son, if you want to change your plea you must do it in the proper way. I cannot allow you to deliver a monologue in this court. Now, if you so admire the process of justice, I ask you to sit down and let it take its course.”
“I will, Your Honor. I just want to say that I did it here, only here. It is a great moment for me. I Realized M’Naghten and his trial—incomplete but authentic. And it was not memory or merely imagination based on something I read, because I had never heard of him before Mr. Melrose explained the position of the law on insanity. The recovery of reality! I can do it now at will. I have much work before me, but I can do it. Do you see what that means? I can bring them back: Mrs. Starr, Billie, and Appleton. On the one hand I killed them, but on the other, they are not beyond recall. This is an overwhelming joy.”
At this point Melrose found it possible to get Detweiler back into his chair. Then he apologized to the court.
The judge asked Crews and Melrose to approach the bench.
“Mr. Melrose,” he said, “I think I don’t have to say I cannot tolerate this sort of thing. But I’m saying it anyway in the event that you were as embarrassed by it as the court, that it was not a calculated device of yours.”
“I give you my word it was not,” Melrose said.
“I accept it. Now I want to ask whether you can henceforth control the defendant.”
“Your Honor, he is mad.”
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“You are saying you cannot?”
“I say I don’t know. If he could kill three persons on the spur of the moment—”
The district attorney interrupted, speaking so indignantly that at first Melrose could not appreciate the sense: “Yes, and if he is acquitted by reason of insanity and committed to an institution, you’ll have him out next year on a writ, maintaining he has regained his sanity under treatment. This murderer will be back walking the streets and we won’t be able to touch him until he kills again.”
“As God is my witness, I do not want that,” said Melrose. “I would rather see him executed.”
Crews stared at Melrose in amazement. “So you can be human?”
“Human?” Melrose asked in his own astonishment. “What a choice of words. Is it ‘human’ to send a poor lunatic to be burned?”
“I have an obligation to the people of this state. I know you view that with your customary cynicism, but I have it, I’m sorry. I believe in it sincerely. The lunacy commission reported that Detweiler is sane insofar as the term has legal application.”
“Without examining him in person,” Melrose replied. “You saw him in action just now, John. Do you really believe the jury will think he is in his right mind? Look at him, sitting there. He is back in his Realization, as he calls it. I don’t know what he’ll do next. He might try to strangle me, if he decides I need it. He tried once before. He believes he is God, or at least divinely directed. Do you really want to have him electrocuted?”
Crews did not turn to look at Detweiler. When the D.A. had referred to the alleged humanity of Melrose, he had meant his own, to which he was working up. It had taken Melrose a while to perceive this. And even yet the defense counsel was not prepared for Crews’s magnanimity. He listened wearily to the routine expression of academic indignation, with no suspicion that it might be but the prelude to a kind of surrender.
Crews was saying: “I resent the implication that I am a sadist and enjoy executions. I merely try to do my duty. As it happens, I am opposed to capital punishment, but so long as the law stands, I will, I must—”
“When you are governor,” Melrose said, “you can put through a bill for its abolition.”
“Gentlemen,” said Judge Hardesty, “may I suggest you get off the ad hominem pot?”
“All right,” Crews said. He would not look at Melrose. Nevertheless he colored as he spoke. “I will accept a plea to second-degree murder.”
The judge shrugged. “And how do you feel about that, Mr. Melrose?”
Melrose had an almost sexual loathing of favors done to or for him. Now that he had this unprecedented evidence of Crews’s humanity, he was inclined to question it, label it as expediency or cowardice. Honoring little that had not been won in battle, he preferred to interpret the compromise as Crews’s bleating admission that the state had a feeble case for Murder One.
Melrose smiled sardonically. “I’ll have to talk to my client.”
The judge called a recess, and Detweiler and Melrose went into a conference cell behind the courtroom and discussed the proposition.
“Well, this is something new,” said Detweiler.
“You understand it then,” Melrose said. “You are back with us and not in 1843?”
“Oh yes. Realization doesn’t occur automatically. It requires the full force of the will. One doesn’t just go into it without preparation. Sure, I am Joe Detweiler and you are Mr. Melrose, and you are proposing that I make still another compromise. First I agreed to plead not guilty because of insanity, and now I am asked to plead guilty to a lesser charge. The killings, however, haven’t changed. So why do the accusations? I haven’t changed, at least as I existed at the time of the killings, because any moment of Time is immutable. If I Realize that time, it will be repeated exactly as it happened originally. If insane, then insane. If sane, then sane.
“You made every effort until now to establish my insanity. I don’t hear any mention of that in this new proposal. Now I am to be considered in my right mind, but guilty of something else.”
Melrose knew he could not win an argument from Detweiler. He, the great advocate, had never scored a point on his own defendant. He could not control him, he could not advise him, he could not defend him in any sense of the word.
“What can I say, Joe? That is Law. Men do what they can with it. It’s not like the multiplication tables, in which five times eight is forty every time, all times. Because men aren’t numbers—” He broke off, regarded Detweiler for a moment, and resumed angrily: “No, that isn’t correct. Often they are numbers, of course. The law is supposed to represent the interests and needs of the public, the common good, but that is to speak in numbers. More people oppose murder than favor it, so it is wrong. It is wrong to drive without a license plate on your car because more legislators voted for the bill that made that requirement law than opposed it. And those men are in office because more citizens voted for them than for their opponents.
“Civilization as we know it is statistical. I once heard that explained as having its origin in the Renaissance, when values became quantitative and secular.”
He scowled at Detweiler and resumed: “To hell with that subject, and to hell with you. I’m sick of trying to save your life. I’m sick of discussing the matter with you. I’m sick and I’m tired and I’m old. The only thing that would save me at this moment is to go into that courtroom and make such an ass of Crews that his political career will be set back ten years. He is an utter mediocrity, a vain, pompous, sanctimonious idiot whom I wouldn’t hire as a law clerk. Yet he will inevitably be the next governor of this state. I could do it. I have that God-given opportunity. He has no case. He is suggesting this change of plea to make the best of a bad job.”
Detweiler said: “But you think we should take his advice?”
Melrose continued to look angry. “I labor under an awful obligation, Joe. I am obliged to look after the best interests of my client. I take this as my divine duty, the execution of which will save my immortal soul. It is something beyond good and bad, love and hatred, and even death. It is my profession.”
“Yes,” Detweiler said, “a man’s work is holy. I agree with that.”
“The judge will sentence you to prison. You can work there. You’ll like it.”
“But what gets me is if you are so sure you could win as it stands, why don’t you want to go ahead with first-degree?”
“Because I’m not God,” said Melrose. “I might drop dead before the trial was finished.”
Representing the defendant, Melrose entered a plea of guilty to second-degree murder. He spoke briefly and not at all passionately of the crimes, of the psychiatrist’s assessment, of Detweiler’s theories and of his history. He made no general remarks about lunacy in or out of the legal meaning, but stayed ruthlessly particular. He asked justice for this one man, his only client on trial.
Crews then spoke of the heinousness of the murders, of Detweiler’s signed confession, of the learned judgment of the lunacy commission that he was sane in the terms of the statute. He talked at length of his duty towards the people of the state who had entrusted to him his office. They must not be condemned to walk their streets in fear and trembling, to celebrate their holidays in the shadow of the lurking murderer.
Melrose remembered that Judge Hardesty had a kidney condition as he watched the jurist shifting about on the bench. Apparently he had not relieved himself during the recess. Finally the judge chose a moment when Crews was taking a breath to ask whether the prosecutor intended to move for denial.
Crews assumed an injured look and reluctantly recommended that the court accept the plea.
Then the judge looked down at Detweiler. “Son,” he said, “you may say something now if you wish. But I hope you will be brief and succinct. We do not have time for a long speech.”
Detweiler sprang to his feet. “The way I see it, Your Honor, well, it all boils down to this.” He seemed to wait for a signal to go on.
&n
bsp; “All right,” the judge said, squirming. “Make your point.”
Detweiler nodded. “To this,” he repeated. “Each man kills Time in his own way.”
Chapter 21
A WEEK LATER Detweiler was sentenced to life imprisonment. At prison he was given an immediate and thorough examination by the staff psychiatrists and, found to be insane by their standards, was transferred to an institution for the confinement of felonious lunatics.
Melrose got a letter from him at Christmas time.
Dear Mr. Melrose,
Forgive me for not writing sooner. As you might suspect, I have been very busy here, and not just with basketry, bead-work, etc.—have done no modeling in clay because as you know I am finished with image-making. The doctors are kind and generous though of routine mentality.
I want to thank you for putting up with me so long, and to apologize for the trouble I caused you. You are the most intelligent man I have ever known and I am better for our conversations. Your remark about quality versus quantity, for example, and the change brought about during the Renaissance. That is the crux of the matter. Time is qualitative, not quantitative. That is the key to Realization.
So at this Yuletide my fondest wish for you is that someday your brilliance might be accompanied by Hope. Time is old, but it is also forever new.
Killing Time: A Novel Page 31
