But would the boy's interests be best served by such a move? The commitment would have to be at a state hospital, and those places are horrors. He'd end up on a back ward, which might be a death sentence in itself. If I take the case to trial and the diminished capacity defence is successful, there'd be more flexibility in arranging his subsequent care.'
I knew what he had in mind. Another private hospital, where the family's money would play a major role in influencing treatment and discharge decisions. There Jamey could be put away long enough for the furore to die down and then quietly released as an outpatient in the care of his guardians.
A chilling scenario ran through my head. Would he end up yet another psychological time bomb let out on the street with little more than a prescription for Thorazine and an appointment with a therapist because some expert had misread behavioural suppression as significant improvement? If so, the gradual fade to noncompliance was depressingly predictable - pills not swallowed, appointments not kept - as were its consequences: the inexorable return of the demons. Confusion, pain. Night walks. The sudden lashing out fuelled by paranoiac fury. Blood.
Up to this point I'd been able to involve myself in Jamey's case - to sit across from him and feel compassion -because I'd disassociated myself from the crimes of which he'd been accused, denying the possibility that he'd butchered eight human beings. But even Souza, it seemed, assumed he was guilty, and listening to him talking strategy and discussing flexibility of care was forcing me to confront the consequences of my involvement.
If Jamey had done what they said he had, I didn't want flexibility. I wanted him locked up forever.
Which made me a hell of a defence expert.
Mal Worthy had talked about the emotional balm that resulted from cutting off one's feelings, from detaching values from actions. But I was no attorney and could never be. I watched Souza slice a wedge of steak and pop it in his mouth and wondered how long I'd last on his team.
'I don't know,' I said. 'It's a tough question.'
'Well, Doctor' - he smiled - 'it's my problem, not yours.'
He pushed aside his plate, and the lower part of his face disappeared, momentarily, behind a cloud of white linen.
'I can ring the kitchen for something else if you'd like -some fruit or coffee?'
'No, thanks.'
There was a brass dish filled with after-dinner mints next to the water pitcher. He offered it to me and, after I'd declined, took a mint himself. A button under the table edge summoned a black-uniformed Filipino woman who cleared the dishes.
'Now then,' he said, when she was gone, 'what would you like to know about the Cadmus family?'
'Let's start with Jamey's caretaker history and the significant relationships in his life, including the details of his parents' deaths.'
'All right,' he said contemplatively. 'To understand all of that, it's best to go back a generation and start with his grandfather.'
'Fine.' I pulled out a notepad and pen.
'I met John Jacob Cadmus in Germany right after the war. I was a legal officer assigned to the War Criminals Investigation Section, and he was a field representative for the adjutant general's office in charge of processing the bastards. He'd begun the war as an infantry private, served heroically in several major battles, and ended up a colonel at the age of twenty-seven. We became friends, and when I returned to California, Black Jack - he was called that because of his black Irish colouring - decided to come with me. He was from Baltimore, but his roots were shallow, and the West was the land of opportunity.
'He was a visionary, foresaw the postwar baby boom and the housing shortage it would bring. Back in those days the San Fernando Valley was undeveloped - a few ranches and orchards, some federal acreage set aside for military bases that were never built, the rest dust and scrub. Jack set about buying up as much Valley land as he could. He borrowed himself heavily into debt but managed to stall the creditors long enough to educate himself about architecture and construction and hire work crews. By the time the boom arrived he'd built dozens of huge housing tracts -thousands of units, mostly five-room bungalows on forty-by-eighty lots. He made sure each one had a fruit tree -orange, lemon, apricot - and advertised nationally, selling the California dream. The houses sold as fast as he could put them up, and by the age of thirty he was a millionaire several times over. Eventually he expanded to commercial and industrial projects, and by 1960 Cadmus Construction was the third largest builder in the state. When he died, in 'sixty-seven, the company had initiated major projects in Saudi Arabia, Panama, and half of Europe. He was a great man, Doctor.'
It was a paean to a dead man, and I wasn't sure what the point was.
'How was he as a husband and father?' I asked.
Souza was annoyed by the question.
'He loved his boys and was kind to his wife.'
A strange answer. My expression reflected it.
'Antoinette was a troubled woman,' he explained. 'She came from an established Pasadena family that had lost its money but managed to maintain appearances and a foothold on the social ladder. Jack met her at a charity ball and was taken with her immediately. She was a beauty. Slender, very pale, very fragile, with huge, mournful blue eyes - the boy has those same eyes - but I always found her strange. Distant, extremely vulnerable. I imagine it was her very vulnerability that attracted Jack, but soon after the marriage the extent of her problems became evident.'
'What kinds of problems?'
'The kinds that fall within your bailiwick. At first it seemed like severe shyness, social withdrawal. Then it became clear that she was terrified of leaving the house, terrified of life itself. I'm sure there's a technical term for it.'
'Agoraphobia.'
'Agoraphobia,' he repeated. 'That was Antoinette's problem. Back then, of course, she was thought of as physically ill. Constitutionally weak. As a wedding present, Jack set her up in a glorious Spanish mansion on Muirfield, overlooking the country club, just a few blocks from here; a Pakistani surgeon owns it now. Once ensconced, she never left the place, not even to tour the gardens. In fact, she seldom ventured out of her room, staying in bed all day, scribbling verse on scraps of paper, sipping weak tea, complaining of all sorts of aches and pains. Jack had half the specialists in town on retainer, and each of them supplied nostrums and tonics, but none of it helped. Eventually he gave up and simply let her be, accepting her weakness.'
'She was strong enough to bear children,' I said.
'Amazing, isn't it? Peter - Jamey's father - was born ten months after the wedding, in 'forty-eight; Dwight, a year later. Jack hoped the joys of motherhood would pull her out of her depression, but she got worse and had to be sedated for the bulk of both pregnancies. After Dwight's birth her withdrawal deepened, and she rejected the baby, refused to nurse or even to hold it. Things deteriorated to the point where she bolted her door and wouldn't see Peter or Jack. For the next two years she stayed in her room, drinking her
tonics and swallowing her pills, writing poetry and napping. She'd cry out in her sleep, as if having horrible nightmares. Then she began to accuse everyone -Jack, the servants, even the children - of conspiring against her, plotting to kill her, the usual paranoid nonsense. When she stopped eating and grew downright skeletal, Jack realised she'd have to be institutionalised and made plans to have her flown to a place in Switzerland. It was supposed to be a secret, but she may have got wind of it because a week later she was dead, overdosed on one of her medications; apparently it contained some kind of opiate, and she ingested enough to stop her heart.'
'Who took care of the boys through all this?'
'Jack hired governesses. When they were older, they were sent to boarding schools. He did the 'best he could under the circumstances, Doctor, which is why I answered your question about what kind of father he was the way I did.'
I nodded.
'Schizophrenia is believed to be genetic nowadays, isn't it?' he asked.
'It runs in families. Probably a combination of heredity and environment.'
'I view Jamey as very much the product of his genes. The superior intellect is his endowment from Jack. The rest of it comes from the other side - antisocial tendencies, paranoia, a morbid preoccupation with fantasy and poetry. Saddled with such a chemistry, how could he have turned out normal?'
He tried to look empathetic, but his rhetoric had the studied passion of a prepared oration.
