BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Sixty-Eight

It took ten minutes for the police and an ambulance to get there. Barbara stood over Geoffrey Landis and recognized him immediately as the person who had sold her a red BMW coupe. Now was not the time to discuss what his intentions were.

I untied Mara and tried to get her to stop trembling. We held onto each other until she stopped shaking enough so that we could walk to the foyer arm-in-arm. Once I got Mara seated on the couch in the living room and had entered the kitchen, Barbara shifted her protective duties from sheriff to nurse.

I tied Landis' hands behind his back with the same clothesline he'd used on Mara. He was in agony and wasn't going anywhere. Mara wanted every light in the house on. From outside, Chrystalis must have looked like an alien spaceship on ascent. Barbara was reassuring Geoffrey Landis that he wasn't going to die, just as the first patrol cars came up the driveway. We had heard their sirens inside the house when they came up Kenter.

I opened the front door and let the authorities in. An ambulance had been right behind the police cars; the paramedics were the same two who had tended to Barbara in the Out 'N Inn parking lot.

Faint pinks and oranges of a morning sun were dissipating in the smog over Bel Air and the 405, but Mara still insisted that all the electric lights be on in and around the house. A police sergeant wanted everyone outside so that the crime scene could be cordoned off and Landis removed to a hospital. While Mara and I waited with Barbara by the pool, we let people who knew what they were doing do what they knew best how to do.

I still wasn't allowed to use my eFone, so Mara texted Willie to see if he was on his way home and then she called Phyllis. While Mara was calm, Phyllis wasn't; she first wanted to call her therapist but then said she would be right there.

The three of us sat around the pool in psy-lence, each of us lost in thought. What could we say that we hadn't already felt. Words were inadequate.

The feral cat then appeared from behind the chaparral on the hillside. She circled the pool and jumped purposefully into Mara's lap. Thinking that Mara would dismiss the cat, I reached for her, but Mara began to rub her back. "She needs a name, Adam."

None of the ones that I had been considering seemed appropriate. I wanted to think that maybe the cat had wanted me to step on her tail so that Landis would be startled and distracted. It was her screech that had allowed us to survive his attack.

"Screech. I think we should call her Screech."

"Hi, Screech," Mara said, scratching behind her ears, "Welcome to your new home."

Mara placed Screech on the patio flagstones when the police sergeant moved us from the pool area to the driveway. We watched Stuart walk up the driveway ahead of Phyllis who drove her Prius past the police barricade holding back a media circus that was forming fast with its news vans, satellite trucks and clown cars.

We all hugged each other and said little, the three of us nodding and saying we were fine.

Phyllis introduced herself to Barbara. "We met at Vicente Foods not too long ago. You recommended the plastic trash bags to me."

"That's right. We use them at the hospital."

Phyllis confronted Barbara, "So, what were you doing here in the early morning?"

"My shift at the hospital was over and I was worried about things here."

"You could've called," she insisted.

I interrupted, "She doesn't have our cell numbers."

"Actually, Adam, you gave me yours and I tried," Barbara said, "but your landline was also out of service. That's when I drove over here. Someone must have cut the line."

Cameron Whitaker weaved through the mass of media and spectators collected at the end of the driveway. "This is as bad as the Merry Widow trial at the Beverly Hills courthouse," he remarked. "I'm here as your pro bono lawyer, Adam."

"Just as long as it's not pro boner," I joked.

Cameron deflected the comment and asked, "Okay, the most renowned and respected forensic psychiatrist in the state, what was it?"

Stuart immediately answered him, "Well, I think. . ."

"Funny, Stu. Funny," said Cameron. "By the way, how'd you hear about this?"

"A patient called me first thing."

I then realized that Stuart was Phyllis' therapist. Better him than me. I knew she was now getting excellent help.

"So, Adam," Cameron continued, "and I won't feed your ego any further, what was it?"

"As a diagnosis, it seems simple. Once again, transference works. Geoffrey Landis transferred his anger and hatred for his father to me when he lost his case."

"And all his funds were transferred into his former step-mother's account," Stuart added.

Cameron was emphatic, "It was your expert testimony which cost him twenty-six million dollars, Adam."

Stuart then said to me, "Geoffrey Landis held you most responsible for taking that money away from him, just as his father had done earlier when he left everything to the Merry Widow."

I had to tweak Cameron. "You know her."

But then he gave me the latest update, "We broke up last night. So, go on, Adam."

"Landis figured that if he could challenge my credibility and discount my testimony by making me paranoid and crazy, like his father had been before he met 'Young and Sexy' and wrote his son out of the will, then the case would have been thrown out on appeal. And he'd have his twenty-six million dollars back."

Barbara offered, "And to start making you crazy, he had to make you a failure. He knew your ego couldn't tolerate it. And he used one of your patients to do it."

Stuart agreed, "It didn't matter which one. He'd probably been stalking your office for some time before he chose which one."

I theorized, "He drugged Duke and let him off at the hospital. With the Ruger."

"But when Duke started getting better," Stuart said, "he suffocated him, making it look like a suicide."

I knew there had to be more to it than that. Duke's murder was something much more personal.

Barbara chimed in, "For a psychiatrist, to have a patient kill himself is the ultimate act of failure."

Mara put her arm around me, saying, "Just the thing you needed to force you over the edge."

"Throw in paranoia, and . . ." Stuart observed, letting us make our own conclusions.

To which I added, "And the professional stigma which could ruin me." 

"But only if you let it," Mara interjected.  "If you choose to be stigmatized, then you are.  You can't let it smother you in secrecy and prejudice, Adam.  Don't give it the power to harm you any further."

"Are you analyzing my psychosis, Mara?"

"It's merely a symptom associated with several diagnoses, Adam," she responded.  "Would you like me to continue?"

"No, but Stuart can."

"Your internal chaos was created by external factors and it thankfully did not have a biological predisposition," said Stuart, "which can go far in helping you to recover more quickly and let you return to work."

I was relieved that Stuart shared my self-diagnosis and prognosis.  

Then Cameron became lawyerly, inquiring, "You knew all along, Adam. Didn't you?  You knew that it was Geoffrey Landis and what he was trying to do to make you crazy."

I decided to have some fun with everyone. "He'll never tell. . ."

Maya cautioned me about referring to myself in the third person, but she was just as curious. "Adam. . ."

"You think it was all a charade? He thinks you're all wrong," I remarked.

Mara pursued, "Which he? The psychiatrist or the husband?"

I put my arms around Mara and hugged her. "Me. Your husband."