Solomon versus Lord

Forty-three
THE MEANING OF SYNERGY

“Charles discovers Katrina's affair, so he kills himself?” Victoria said. “What sense does that make?”

“Victoria's right,” Katrina said. “If he was gonna kill anybody, it would have been me.”

“Are you two listening to me?” Steve said. “This is a great defense.”

They were sitting in the empty courtroom. Minutes earlier, the jury had been sworn, standing at attention with hands raised, good little Scouts, promising to determine the case solely on the evidence and the judge's instructions. Steve had taken a peek to see if they had their fingers crossed.

Then Judge Hiram Thornberry cleared his throat and said: “Noting the lateness of the hour, we'll stand in recess until tomorrow morning.”

Steve noted the hour was only three-thirty P.M. but His Honor liked to beat the traffic home and play nine holes before dark. After the courtroom emptied, Steve told Victoria and Katrina that Charles had committed suicide. The two women spent the next ten minutes trashing his theory.

“Charlie never did anything without help,” Katrina said, “including jerk off.”

“You're basing all this on the poem?” Victoria shook her head.

“Charles was a literary guy,” Steve argued. “He collected books. He sponsored seminars: ‘Women Poets, Tortured Souls.'”

“Extremely flimsy evidence,” Victoria said.

“C'mon, Vic. What's the first thing you told me about Charles?”

“That he always had to prove he was the smartest guy at the table.”

“Exactly. Don't you see how it all fits together? Charles makes an anagram out of a line Sylvia Plath wrote just days before she took her own life. He quotes Virginia Woolf's suicide note, then strangles himself in a contraption where he could control the pressure on his throat.”

Victoria was biting her lower lip, thinking it through. “It doesn't make sense. Charles is furious with Katrina. If he dies while they're still married, she inherits her share of the estate.”

“Not if she's convicted of murder,” Steve said.

“So Charlie framed me?” Katrina said. Her head was swiveling back and forth watching her lawyers' tennis match.

“That's my guess,” Steve said. “Some murderers try to disguise their crimes as suicide. Charles flipped it around. He committed suicide and disguised it as murder.”

“Then why write a note that might give it all away?” Victoria said.

“He doesn't exactly give it away. Three anagrams that lead to a source gram that still has to be connected to a poem. Who would figure it out?”

“Not me,” Katrina said with a shrug.

“One last chance to prove he was smarter than everyone else,” Steve said. “He's laughing from the grave.”

“I'm still not buying it,” Victoria said. “No man ends his life just to cheat his wife out of some money.”

“That's not why he did it. That's just the cream cheese on the bagel.”

“And the lox? What's that?”

“Once Katrina broke his heart, Charles had nothing to live for,” Steve said. Sending up a trial balloon.

“Charlie wasn't like that,” Katrina said, bursting it. “I mean, he'd just divorce me and find someone else.”

“Okay, he was suicidal for another reason,” Steve said, refusing to give up. “But as long as he was gonna do it, he was gonna nail you.”

“What reason?” Victoria demanded. “We keep coming back to the same place.”

“I don't know! I just know he did it.”

“We'll never prove it without a reason he'd kill himself,” Victoria said.

“Mental illness, maybe,” Steve said. “Bipolar disorder. Depression.”

“No way.” Katrina shook her head, her dark tresses swaying. “Not good-time Charlie.”

“Financial reasons,” Steve suggested.

“He was stinking rich,” Katrina pointed out.

“Medical problems.”

“Not once they invented Viagra.”

“Did he abuse drugs?”

Another shake, another hair swoosh. “Nothing without a doctor's prescription, and that includes the painkillers.”

“What painkillers?” Victoria said.

“Vicodin. A couple of others. I don't remember their names.”

“Why was Charles taking them?”

“A couple of weeks before he died, he came down with a stomach virus.”

“They don't give you painkillers for a stomach virus,” Victoria said.

Katrina wrinkled her forehead. “That's what Charlie brought home from the doctor. I'm sure of it.”

“What doctor?” Steve asked.

Philip Atherton, MD, didn't play a doctor on TV, but he sure looked like one. Handsome, early fifties, salt-and-pepper hair carefully swept back, crisp lab coat with his name stenciled above the pocket, the obligatory stethoscope slung around the neck. There was something proper and vaguely British about him. Victoria expected him to sound like Masterpiece Theatre.

“I fucking hate lawyers,” Dr. Atherton barked in a harsh New York accent. “Bloodsucking parasites.”

“I couldn't agree more,” Victoria said. She was determined to find common ground. They needed this guy's help, and quickly. She shot a look at Steve, who was scowling.

They were sitting in Atherton's upscale medical suite just off Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. The office had a marble-floored waiting room with a burbling fountain and vases of fresh lilies on glass pedestals. The seven-story building was earth-toned stucco with orange tile terraces. An architect's attempt to make the place look like a Mediterranean villa instead of home to proctologists, podiatrists, and internists.

It was a few minutes before five o'clock. In an hour, Steve and Victoria were due in kiddie court for the start of Bobby's trial. They had thirty minutes, tops, to get what they needed and hit the road.

“Lawyers are lower than pond scum,” the doctor said. “Lower than whale shit.”

“It's amazing,” Victoria agreed, “the lack of ethics one sees.” She forced a smile. Next to her, Steve fidgeted. She could see he hated the guy.

“Some things even a whore won't do for money,” Dr. Atherton said. “But lawyers…”

“Now, about Charles Barksdale,” Victoria purred, feeling the minutes tick away.

“What's black and brown and looks good on a lawyer?” the doctor said.

“A Doberman pinscher.” Victoria knew that old chestnut had been roasted long before she went to law school.

“That's bullshit,” Steve said.

“Steve, I'll handle this.”

“Some of us spend a lot of time working pro bono,” Steve said.

“To salve your guilty conscience?” the doctor said.

“When's the last time you took a patient without insurance?”

“Steve, please,” she said. Dammit! Bobby has more self-control.

“Do you know why my malpractice premiums are six figures?” Dr. Atherton said.

“Because doctors screw up,” Steve said.

“Because lawyers are leeches,” the doctor said.

“I don't have to listen to this shit.”

“Stephen,” Victoria said, her irritation showing. “We need Dr. Atherton's help, and we need it now.”

“That'll be five hundred dollars for fifteen minutes,” the doctor said. “Payment up front. Cash or MasterCard. No American Express.”

“Isn't that a little steep for a consultation?” Victoria said.

“You have thirteen minutes left,” the doctor said, glancing at his watch.

Steve shot a look at Victoria. “I'm maxed out on the plastic.”

Naturally, she thought, opening her purse, as Dr. Atherton buzzed for his bookkeeper.

It only took four minutes, and Dr. Atherton didn't reduce the bill. He said he'd been Charles Barksdale's primary care physician for a dozen years. Never a serious problem. Blood pressure and cholesterol under control, some tennis at the club to stay in reasonable shape. Minor knee surgery two years ago to scrape out some loose cartilage. A few weeks before he died, Charlie came in, complaining of abdominal pain and nausea. He'd been vomiting on and off for a week.

“Stomach virus?” Victoria asked.

“I wish,” Atherton said. “A CT scan showed a thickening of the stomach wall. I sent him over to Cedars for an exploratory laparotomy. They did a biopsy. Unresectable gastric carcinoma with carcinomatosis.”

“Cancer,” Victoria said.

“A really nasty one. Linitis plastica. Advanced, inoperable, and fatal. I gave him some painkillers along with the bad news.”

Victoria took a deep breath.

Steve's gut was right.

The Human Polygraph had told her Katrina was innocent, and she'd scoffed. Then he'd said Charles had committed suicide, and she'd scoffed again. But here was Barksdale's motive for taking his own life. So why not cut his unfaithful wife out of the estate while he was at it?

Solomon's really good at this.

“What exactly did you tell Mr. Barksdale?” she asked the doctor.

“That he had six weeks to six months to live, and he should get his affairs in order.”

“Starting with paying your bill?” Steve asked.

“Steve, stop it.” Victoria turned back to the doctor, who was studying his watch. “What was Mr. Barksdale's reaction to his diagnosis?”

“Quiet. He said I shouldn't tell Katrina if I ran into her at the club. He was going to handle that himself.”

“But he never did. Charles lied to her, told her he had a stomach virus.”

“So she killed him for nothing,” the doctor said, amused. “All she had to do was wait for nature to take its course.”

Victoria let that one go. Something was buzzing in her mind, the flutter of a mosquito's wings. What was it? “This tumor,” she said. “Would it have been visible to the ME doing the autopsy?”

Dr. Atherton snorted. A little puff of condescension. “If you can identify the cancer through a scope, you sure as hell can see it if you split the guy open from stern to stern.”

“Even if the ME isn't an oncologist?” she asked, pressing him.

“Linitis plastica looks like somebody planted sod in your stomach. Long, wavy fibers like blades of grass. Even if the ME was half blind and dumb as a lawyer, he couldn't miss it.”

Waiting for the elevator, Steve pounded the DOWN button. They had twenty minutes to get to court in rush-hour traffic.

She said: “Why wasn't the cancer-?”

He said: “In Dr. Yang's autopsy report.”

She said: “Yang's competent and honest-”

He said: “Which leaves Sugar Ray Pincher.”

“Something's wrong,” they said in unison.

Okay, he thought. We're on the same page now.

Okay, she thought. This is the meaning of “synergy.”

The elevator door opened. They went in and headed down to the parking garage.

Steve said: “Why would Pincher screw around with the autopsy-?”

“When killing a sick man is just as much murder as killing a healthy man?” she said, completing his thought.

“Damned if I know,” Steve said, “but if I'm half the cross-examiner I think I am, Dr. Yang will tell us.”

“A bit of advice: Use a rapier instead of a sledgehammer.”

“You're telling me how to cross, Lord?”

“Sweet Jesus,” she said, using one of her mother's expressions. You tell a man to use his turn signals, he thinks you're castrating him. “Don't be so touchy, Solomon. You're a terrific lawyer.”

“Don't patronize me.”

“All I'm saying, sometimes you come on a little strong.”

He bristled. “That's my style. I mug the opposition. You hug them.”

“Okay, keep doing what you do. I'll do what I do. Maybe that's what makes us a good team.”

“You just figuring that out, Victoria? All this time and you're just figuring that out?”

The elevator door opened and he walked out ahead of her, shaking his head.