‘He says the voices began right after the baby was born,’ Dr Barakat explained, after the coffee was poured and the conference room had settled down. He slipped on reading glasses as he spread out his notes on the oblong cherry conference table, around which sat Julia, John Latarrino, Steve Brill, the Coral Gables Police Chief, Elias Vasquez, Bob Biondilillo, the Director of the Miami-Dade PD, and the Chief of Legal, Penny Levine. Charley Rifkin and Rick flanked Jerry Tigler at the head of the table, and the three senior investigators from the SAO Investigations Unit upstairs were left holding up the back wall.
‘Medical records confirm Sophie Marquette had what’s known as a strawberry hemangioma on the left side of the skull,’ Dr Barakat continued, ‘about twenty centimeters above the eyebrow. It’s a non-cancerous vascular tumor that looks like the lump on a cartoon character’s head after he’s been hit with a frying pan. As is typical with hemangiomas, the bump grew and became more discolored in the weeks after her birth. That was when Dr Marquette says he noticed it began to take the shape of a horn.’
‘A horn?’ asked the State Attorney with a skeptical frown.
‘Like the devil, Jerry,’ scoffed Rick, holding his two index fingers up behind his ears. The room tittered.
‘He claims his wife began to act strange almost immediately after Sophie’s birth,’ the doctor continued. ‘Jennifer stopped going to Mass on Sundays, and he says she wouldn’t even drive by the church anymore, going out of her way just to avoid it. Emma and Danny had each gotten a Precious Moments Bible when they were baptized, but he couldn’t find either in the house. Same with rosary beads, crucifixes. Not even a dried palm from Palm Sunday. He claims that all religious artifacts had been mysteriously removed from the home. Although their other two kids had had lavish christenings, Jennifer refused to even discuss baptizing Sophie, and he says he became concerned that something was very wrong. Fundamentally wrong.’
‘Who is this guy? Jimmy Swaggart?’ asked Rifkin, scratching at his head. ‘I’m Jewish, so what do I know, but who the hell keeps tabs on where the little woman’s been stashing the family Bibles and palm fronds?’
‘Delusions with religious undertones or themes are experienced in almost half of all people with schizophrenia,’ Dr Barakat explained. ‘Most organized religions require a person to believe in things they can’t see, taste, hear, smell, feel. Biblical stories speak of heaven and hell, damnation and the devil, God revealing Himself to Moses through a burning bush. It’s acceptable in society to believe such things in the name of religion, so when you think about it, it’s really not so far a leap for a delusional person to light the rhododendron bush up in an attempt to open a repartee with Jesus.’
‘We spoke with over two hundred people about this guy,’ Lat said. ‘Nobody mentioned Marquette was a zealot.’
‘Let’s make sure we interview the pastor of the church that Marquette and the missus were regular customers at,’ Rick replied, ‘just in case you missed something.’
Lat caught the use of pronouns, as he was sure everyone else did. Instead of reaching across the table and rearranging the man’s over-bleached whites, though, he decided to take the high road and let it go. For now. It was only a few more weeks until this case and Rick Bellido were far behind him. Then it was time for a long vacation on a small boat somewhere in the Bahamas.
‘It was around this time,’ Dr Barakat continued after the awkward moment had passed, ‘when Sophie was maybe a couple of weeks old, that he says the voices started up, followed soon after by visual disturbances. Dr Marquette claims hearing angry voices, sometimes speaking in rhymes, that would explain in graphic detail just what was happening to his family, both physically and spiritually – what the signs were, what changes were taking place in their souls and in their bodies. He claims that he knew these demons were like tapeworms feeding off a host, sucking the life out from the inside out so that, I think it’s important to note, Dr Marquette stressed they were not human beings anymore.’
‘So he had no intent to kill a “human being” as it is defined in the homicide statute. Very clever,’ Penny remarked.
Dr Barakat smiled. ‘That was my thought, yes.’
‘This guy has all the right answers,’ said Rick, shaking his head. ‘He’s smart as hell.’
‘School records place his IQ at 149,’ Dr Barakat replied.
‘He’s a genius,’ said Julia softly.
‘Don’t be too impressed,’ Rick remarked. ‘So were Ed Kemper and Nathan Leopold of Leopold and Loeb fame. You know what they say – there’s a fine line between genius and madness.’
‘The voices would tell him when to look at just the right moment to see his children in their real forms, so he would know the voices weren’t lying to him. That’s when he’d catch the flash of a yellow smile on his toddler son. Glowing red eyes, gone in a blink on Emma. Fangs on his wife.’
‘I had a wife like that once,’ Brill piped in. ‘Sucked the life right out of me, too.’ The room laughed again.
‘So he’s not possessed, it was the wife and kids?’ Lat asked. ‘Is that it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Usually we hear it the other way around. But that doesn’t work in court and our boy knows it,’ Rick said. ‘Did he tell anyone what he was thinking, Chris? That he was having these thoughts? Of course not.’
Barakat shot him a look. ‘I would have been surprised if he did. He claims, of course, that he couldn’t discuss his suspicions with anyone, because he says he knew no one would believe him. “I’m a doctor. A surgeon,” he said to me, “people would think I’m totally crazy.” He reports hearing his own thoughts broadcast over all the radios in the house whenever he was home – night, day, whenever. He says he knew they were always listening to him, that that was a form of intimidation practiced to keep him subservient, to torture him, and make sure he didn’t tell anyone outside the home what was happening.’
‘Anybody got him acting looney, agitated, speaking to the empty chair next to him in the OR?’ Rifkin asked.
‘He certainly wasn’t speaking in tongues, but we do have that flare-up with the nurse he fired,’ Brill replied with a shrug. ‘But that was nothing more than an irritating subordinate versus a demigod in the operating room. She talked back and he’d had enough.’
‘She’s on Marquette’s witness list,’ said Penny. ‘Guaranteed Mel’s gonna use her to support his argument that Marquette was losing it.’
‘That’s friggin’ bullshit,’ said an exasperated Brill. ‘You can’t believe this crap might actually work?’
‘I haven’t met a jury yet that Itrusted to do the right thing. Make sure when you cross her, that you play up her incompetence,’ Rifkin added with a nod at Rick.
‘How does he explain being the only one in his family not possessed?’ asked Julia.
‘He doesn’t. He says he believes he was spared for one reason and one reason only – to save the souls of his family. Their bodies were devoured already on the inside, so that they were just occupying empty shells of skin. Dr Marquette says he knew he had to intervene, had to stop them, or their souls would be damned for all eternity, like vampires. And “the presence”, as he calls it – the demons – would move on to feast on others.’
‘So he killed them,’ Rick said.
Barakat shook his head. ‘That’s the interesting part, he doesn’t actually admit to killing his family. He stops short of describing what happened on the night of the murders, by claiming he can’t remember.’
‘Why?’ asked Lat. ‘Why would he say he can’t remember when he’s already admitted it by pleading insanity as the reason he did it?’
‘Two lines of thinking,’ Barakat offered. ‘Three, actually. One is he’s truly schizophrenic and he can’t actually face what he’s done yet in his mind. The psychotic break he suffered has effectively enabled him to stay in a deluded state of denial about the actual murders themselves.’
‘Or?’
‘He’s a psychopath and doesn’t want to take responsibility yet. He’s playing a game with you all. He’s in check, but not checkmate, and he doesn’t want to give up on a way out. Once he admits to certain facts, the jig is up and he’s locked in to a story. Ted Bundy, a classic sociopath, played that cat and mouse game for years with investigators, frustrating them with promises of confessions that never materialized.’
‘Obviously you are choosing what’s behind door number two,’ said Rick.
‘Obviously. I already told you he’s not schizophrenic and that he was sane,’ replied Dr Barakat as he slid his report into a file. ‘As a matter of fact, Itold you from the moment Ifirst met the guy he’s a malingerer. A damn good one. Don’t you have Pat Hindlin as a second on this? What did he say?’
‘That he’s a sane, calculating psycho. The score’s tied two-all. Levenson has Koletis and some woman out of California. Margaret Hayes.’
‘Hayes? Never heard of her,’ Barakat said.
‘No one has. But everyone knows that for fifteen or twenty grand a pop, Levenson Grossbach & Associates can buy whatever opinion it wants to hear.’
‘And the third?’ asked Julia as Christian Barakat stood to leave.
‘Third?’
‘You said there were three possible reasons for Marquette to not cop to the specifics of what he did on the night of the killings.’
‘Well, that one’s rather obvious, isn’t it?’ Dr Barakat replied with a dry smile. ‘He didn’t do it.’
The room fell silent.
‘Excuse me?’ asked Lat.
‘I’m not saying that’s the case. What I am saying is that we have a man who is either schizophrenic, or is smart enough and cunning enough to convincingly pretend to be. If he’s the latter, he’s a complete sociopath. If he’s the former, well, he’s obviously a very, very sick man. And I’m just advising you what you probably already know, Detectives: mentally ill people make false confessions to crimes all the time. Statistically, schizophrenics top that list.’
‘Could be another angle that Mel’s gonna spring later, Ricky,’ Rifkin added when no one said anything. ‘Two theories of the case. The jury can pick and choose their sympathy verdict for our wholesome farm boy: he didn’t do it. But if you think he did, then he was sick and didn’t know what he was doing.’
‘You know, defense attorneys are just pieces of shit,’ Brill said after a moment with a bewildered shake of his head. ‘So this “the devil made me do it” defense might let this guy actually walk free?’
Again the room stayed quiet.
‘The devil made me do it,’ Rick scoffed as he tossed his pencil into the middle of the table and stood up. ‘I wonder if we’ll have to name him in the conspiracy.’