Bloody Mary

Thankfully, Mom and Mr. Griffin were fully dressed when I returned. They were in the kitchen, sipping coffee. Mom’s hair was a mess, and her cheeks were flushed.

“Nice to see you again, Jacqueline.” Mr. Griffin was a student of the old school, meaning he stood up when I came into the room and offered his hand.

I shook it, and he winced.

“Are you okay?”

“Yes. My back is acting up a little.”

I wonder why.

“We’ve got a pizza coming, if you’re hungry.”

“No, I ate. I’m going to turn in. Did Alan call?”

“He told me earlier he was going out with some old buddies, wouldn’t be back until late.”

I said my good nights, slipped in and out of a hot shower, and climbed into bed, determined not to take a sleeping pill.

After forty minutes of staring at the ceiling, I heard a deep moan come from the living room.

I took two pills, and fell asleep with the pillow over my head.

CHAPTER 36

Fuller lies awake in his cell. It’s past midnight, and he needs to sleep. He has to look good for court. Appearance is everything.

He knows the jury watches him constantly. Looking for some trace of guilt or deceit. He’ll only show them what he wants them to see.

The vomiting was a masterstroke. The piece of beef had been rotting in his mattress for days. Less than the size of a grape, the smell alone was enough to make him gag. Popping it in his mouth produced instant nausea. Disgusting, but effective.

The real show will begin when he takes the stand. He’s hidden some red peppercorn flakes in his mattress – much more effective for bringing on tears than onions.

He knows the case will wrap up soon. Garcia wants to finish it before Thanksgiving, betting on the fact that the jurors will want to get the verdict in before the holiday. That leaves two days for testimony, and one for closing statements.

So far, everything is progressing smoothly.

There had been a bad moment, when Garcia told him about the tape. Some guard at Cook County jail had contacted Fuller’s attorneys, willing to sell them a recording of his conversation with Jack at the prison. Blackmail, is what it boiled down to. Pay me, or I’ll give this to the prosecution.

Fuller paid. He had to give power of attorney to Garcia, and authorized him to liquidate several things around the house – Holly’s jewelry, a signed Dali litho she’d bought with her modeling money, the Lexus.

Fuller had been worried that Garcia might turn on him, once he found out about Fuller’s deception. But the smarmy little bastard didn’t bat an eyelash. In fact, he ingeniously used the tape to discredit Daniels.

Who says money can’t buy a verdict?

The only problem at the moment is these damn headaches. They’re getting worse. He hasn’t explained to his doctors about how bad they’ve gotten, because he needs to give the impression that he’s cured. If headaches made him kill, and he’s still got headaches, they won’t let him out.

So he makes do with Tylenol and sheer will.

But he can’t hold out much longer.

There’s only one thing that helps him when the pain gets this bad.

“Just a few more days,” he whispers to himself. “Then I’ll be free.”

Fuller has Thanksgiving plans. He’s going to drop by the Daniels household. Get a little pain relief. He’s heard that Jack is living with her mom and ex-husband. What fun it will be to kill them both, in front of Jack, before ripping off her arms.

“Murder. The headache medicine.”

When he finally falls asleep, it’s with a smile on his face.

CHAPTER 37

“Dr. Jurczyk, in your eighteen years’ experience as a brain surgeon, how many operations have you performed?”

Dr. Robert Jurczyk answered in a deep, resounding tone that radiated authority. “I’ve performed several hundred.”

“Was one of them on the defendant, Barry Fuller?”

“Yes. I was in attendance at Northwestern when they brought him in.”

“In technical terms, what was the defendant’s condition?”

“He was brought in with a extradural hemorrhage caused by a bullet wound to the top right quadrant of the frontal bone, and after a CT scan it was determined the subject also had a neoplasm on the frontal lobe.”

“Now in layman’s terms.”

“The bullet wound caused the outermost meninges to rupture. Meninges are the membranous layers that cover the brain. When this ruptured, it began to bleed, and the blood leaked into the space between the brain and the skull. Since the skull is a closed structure, this blood was pushing against the brain and would have resulted in death if a craniotomy wasn’t performed.”

“So you opened up the patient’s skull to release the pressure?”

“Yes.”

“Then you also removed the tumor on Barry Fuller’s frontal lobe?”

“Yes.”

“How big was that tumor, Doctor?”

“Approximately forty grams, about two centimeters in width.”

“Your honor, and members of the jury, I’d like to present defense exhibit F, the tumor removed from Barry Fuller’s head.”

From the defense table came a glass jar containing a small gray thing floating in formaldehyde. The courtroom did its customary rumbling and the bailiff began to pass the jar around.

“Is that the tumor you removed from the defendant’s brain, Doctor?”

“It appears to be. Yes.”

“And how many of that type of operation have you done? Craniotomies, I believe you called them.”

“Hundreds.”

“Have there been any cases where a patient has had a craniotomy to relieve the pressure from an extradural hemorrhage, and later the patient experienced amnesia?”

“Yes. Almost eighty percent of patients with extradural hemorrhages experience some amnesia. In fact, after operations of this type, it’s necessary to keep a constant watch on a patient in recovery because they usually wake up not knowing where they are or what happened to them.”

“Have there been instances where the amnesia went back a few days, or even a week?”

“Yes. And further than that. I had one patient, brought in with a severe extradural hemorrhage caused by a car accident, and he completely forgot the last five years of his life. He didn’t remember that he was married, and didn’t know he had kids.”

“Did those memories ever return to him?”

“Bits and pieces returned, but he never regained a significant amount of his memory back.”

Things weren’t looking good for the home team.

“How about personality changes? In your esteemed opinion, Dr. Jurczyk, could an intracranial neoplasm of the frontal lobe be sufficient enough to cause such a massive personality change that even murder could result?”

“Yes, it could.”

Murmurs from the courtroom. Garcia faced the jury, smug. Libby gave me the briefest of sideways glances.

“Please elaborate, Doctor.”

“The frontal lobe is the personality center of the brain. I’ve reviewed dozens of cases where damage to a patient’s frontal lobe, either by an accident or by neoplasms, altered a person’s personality to such a degree that even their own family members no longer recognized them.”

“Are there any cases where a head trauma was associated with a personality change so dramatic that murder resulted?”

“There are many. Henry Lee Lucas, the notorious serial murderer who claimed responsibility for over one hundred victims, sustained several severe head injuries as a youth. John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, Charles Manson – all had records of serious head injuries.”

“So it is possible that a normal, upstanding member of society like you or me, if afflicted with a meningioma of the frontal lobe, could undergo such a dramatic personality change that murder may be committed?”

“Assuming that the part of the brain dealing with morals and values was affected, which is also part of the frontal lobe, yes, it is possible.”