The warden came back a half hour later and saw Durkin frowning dourly as he sat on his cot wearing his new shirt but still wearing the same soiled and filth encrusted dungarees as before.
“How come you haven’t changed your pants?” the warden asked.
“I can’t get my work boots off.”
“What do you mean you can’t get them off?”
Durkin shrugged, his frown turning more dour. “I hurt my ankle a few weeks back and I can’t get the boot off my foot.”
The warden had one of the guards enter the cell to pull off the boots. When Durkin passed out from the pain, the warden decided he’d better have him taken to the hospital.
The emergency room doctor who cut off Jack Durkin’s boot blanched when he rolled off the wool sock and saw the severely blackened foot underneath it.
“Your ankle’s broken,” he said in a voice that sounded too calm to Durkin. “When did you hurt yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe four weeks ago.”
The doctor told him he’d be back and then left to consult with the warden who had accompanied Durkin to the hospital. “This is a very sick man,” he told the warden. “It’s a miracle he’s still alive. Along with being dehydrated, malnourished and carrying a high fever, he has one of the worst cases of gangrene I’ve ever seen. He needs to be admitted for surgery right away. How long has he been in police custody?”
“Since last night.”
“He should’ve been brought here immediately. There’s no excuse for this.”
The warden made a face. “I agree. Jesus, the guy’s nothing but skin and bones, and with the story he was telling them they should’ve realized he wasn’t right. So what do you need to do to him?”
“We need to cut off his foot and get him on some serious antibiotics.” The doctor left the warden to arrange for the emergency surgery. Twenty minutes later when Durkin was on the operating table, the anesthesiologist told him to count down from ten.
“Someone’s got to weed that field,” Durkin warned, his voice barely a whisper, his eyes rolling wildly.
“Please, just count down from ten.”
By the time Durkin reached six he was out.
During the next three days, Durkin flitted in and out of consciousness. When he woke up, his fever had broken and he found his left wrist chained to the hospital bed and his injured ankle throbbing worse than ever. For a long moment he stared blinking, with no clue where he was. Slowly the cloud fogging up his head lifted a bit and he realized what was on his wrist, then he remembered where he was. He also knew that it must’ve been days since the Aukowies had been weeded. Unless first frost had come early, it was already too late.
A nurse came by a short time later and noticed he was awake. “You’re finally back among us,” she said, her tone flat, her eyes and mouth plastic and expressionless. “And how are you feeling?”
He tried to talk but his lips and throat were too dry for him to do anything but croak out a hoarse whisper. She held a plastic water glass for him so he could suck on the straw. With his lips and throat wetted, he tried to talk again and whispered that his ankle hurt.
“If you press the button next to you, you can control your pain medication,” she told him.
Durkin reached blindly as he searched for the button. When he finally got his hands on it he pressed it several times. He caught her looking at him no differently than the way a snake might. “How come I ain’t seen my lawyer yet?” he demanded.
“I’ll let the doctor know you’re awake,” she said without emotion as she turned and left the room.
It was hours later when the lawyer from the public defender’s office showed up. He looked like a kid, wearing a cheap suit that was two sizes too big, with a thick mop of unruly brown hair covering his head. He introduced himself as Brett Goldman and sat hunched over, grinning a lot, though he had trouble making eye contact. Durkin explained to him the history of Lorne Field, what happened that night with Dan Wolcott, and why it was so important for him to be let go. Goldman nodded regularly, grinning down at his hands as he rubbed them together as Durkin might if he wanted to start a fire with sticks.
“Why do they got to keep me chained to the bed like this?” Durkin complained bitterly. “With my foot cut off how the hell can I run off?”
“They have to, Jack. They’re just following regulations.”
“It’s Mr. Durkin to you. And quit rubbing your hands like that! You’re making me nervous.”
Goldman gave a lopsided grin and moved his hands awkwardly to his sides.
“Sorry, Mr. Durkin,” he said, sneaking a peek at his client before lowering his eyes. “I guess I’m a little nervous, too. Now, I’ve spoken to the doctor you saw when you were brought to the emergency room. He told me that you were a very sick man. Do you realize you almost died?”
“I realize I ain’t got my foot no more. That’s what I realize!”
Goldman smiled sympathetically. “I know, Mr. Durkin, and I’m truly sorry about that. According to Dr. Brennan you were very sick that day, and quite likely delusional. I know you think you know what happened at that field with Sheriff Wolcott, but the reality is that as sick as you were you didn’t know what you were doing and you didn’t know what you were seeing. We have a very strong case for temporary insanity.”
Durkin sat quietly while the lawyer spoke, a deep scowl folding his face. “I ain’t crazy,” he said.
“I’m not saying you are.” Goldman brought his hands together and absentmindedly started rubbing them together again. He caught Jack Durkin glaring at them and he shoved his hands into his pockets. “The important thing now is to get you released so you can go back to that field, right?”
“I know what I saw,” Durkin said slowly, “I ain’t delusional. And I ain’t letting you say that I’m crazy.”
“How about this,” Goldman said. “You keep telling people what you saw and let me take care of the rest.”
Durkin was going to argue with him that it was important for people to believe what happened, but the morphine and antibiotics had wiped him out. He sank back into his bed and closed his eyes. Before drifting off, he murmured to the lawyer to find out if first frost had come yet. That the fate of the world depended on him learning that.
Later that night Goldman was at a local brewery slowly working through his second nut-brown ale when he was clapped on the shoulder from behind. He turned with his lopsided-grin in place for William McGrale, the state’s attorney who was going to be prosecuting Jack Durkin.
“Goldman, how’d you get in here?” McGrale asked. “Let me guess, you used a fake ID?”
Goldman shook hands with McGrale. “Nah, I threw my fake one out years ago. I’ve been legal six years now. How are you doing, Mr. McGrale?”
“After three scotches, pretty damn good.” A slight sheen showed over the prosecutor’s eyes. “What do you say you grab that soda pop you’re drinking, and the two of us move over to a table and discuss your client.”
“Are you buying dinner?”
“Anything for a deserving young attorney.”
Goldman took his glass with him and followed McGrale to his table. When the waitress came over, McGrale ordered another scotch, Goldman another beer, along with a cheeseburger and onion rings.
“Maybe when you grow up you’ll start ordering a big boy’s drink,” McGrale said, smiling pleasantly.
Goldman shrugged off the dig. “You realize that I have a strong temporary insanity defense,” he said.
“And how’s that?”
“Have you talked to his doctor? Durkin was at death’s door when he was brought in. A hundred and two fever, gangrene throughout his foot and ankle. Shit, he was hobbling around on that broken ankle for four weeks, pulling out weeds because he thought if he didn’t the world was going to come to an end. He was absolutely delusional, with no idea even which way was up.”
“All that may be true, but juries hate the temporary insanity defense. All my years as a prosecutor, I never once saw a jury buy it.”
“Forget temporary, my client’s insane. It scared the hell out of me just sitting with him. And that was with him chained up!”
“He’s as crazy as a loon,” McGrale agreed. He stopped to take his drink from the waitress and offer her a smile. After she walked away, he studied his drink for a moment before sipping it and looking back at Goldman. “There’s a big difference, though, between insane and criminally insane. No, Goldman, your client knew what he was doing. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there were charges filed against him earlier this summer for cutting off his son’s thumb. I talked to Jill Bracken already about it. He did that solely as a ploy to convince that town of his that those weeds were monsters. Same reason he killed Sheriff Wolcott.”
“And that’s not insane?” Goldman asked.
“Not criminally insane, no.”
The waitress came back with Goldman’s food and ale and placed it in front of him. His grin was halfhearted at best as he picked up the burger and took a bite.
“I thought your office was floating the theory that my client blamed the sequence of events leading to his younger son’s death on Sheriff Wolcott. That the murder was done for revenge,” Goldman concluded decisively.
“A little bit of both,” McGrale admitted.
Goldman considered this as he took another halfhearted bite of his food. “Mr. Durkin really does believe that monsters grow in Lorne Field,” he said. “And not just him either. That town has been paying his family for over three hundred years to weed that field.”
McGrale rolled the last sip of scotch around his mouth the way a wine connoisseur might do with a fine burgundy before swallowing it. “I heard something about that. Doesn’t surprise me. They always seemed a bit inbred over there. But again, there’s a big difference between insanity and criminal insanity. It all comes down to whether your client understood his actions, and he clearly did. As insane as his motives might’ve been, he fully understood his acts.”
Goldman put his burger down so he could dip an onion ring in some ketchup. “Mr. McGrale,” he asked. “What exactly do you want?”
McGrale held up a finger to the waitress to signal for another scotch before turning back to Goldman. “I have a family that’s grieving right now,” he said. “They want to bury their loved one, but they can’t because there’s no body. If your client discloses where he hid the rest of Sheriff Wolcott, I can offer man-two, with a minimum of ten years.”
“Quite a deal,” Goldman said.
“Given what he did, I’d say so.”
Goldman’s lopsided grin showed again. He took a long drink of his ale and laughed sourly to himself. “I’ll talk to him, but I don’t think he’s going to take it. I don’t think he’s going to let me plead insanity either. I think he’s going to force me to argue that there are monsters growing in Lorne Field.”
“There are ways around that. Have him declared incompetent.”
“I could try to do that, but what if he’s right?” Goldman said, his grin fading. “According to the forensics report there was no blood found on the machete.”
“So?”
“Why cut off Sheriff Wolcott’s foot and leave it in the woods, but wipe the machete clean? And even if he wiped it clean, there still should’ve been traces of blood found.”
“Not necessarily,” McGale countered. “There are chemicals you can use to remove blood traces.”
“And how exactly would my client get his hands on those, living out there in the middle of that field? And what bothers me even more is the report that the foot was sliced and not hacked off. My client was deathly ill, his weight had dropped from one hundred and seventy pounds to one hundred and thirty in about a month, and yet he was able to cut off that foot with a single blow from the machete?”
“Ah, Goldman, you’re making this so damn complicated. The insane can show amazing strength sometimes.” McGrale held up a finger for emphasis. “But let me repeat, insane, not criminally insane.”
Goldman let out a sigh. “I’ll talk to my client tomorrow. If I have to get the ball started on competency hearings, I’ll do it.”
“That’s fine, Goldman. Remember, though, I’m going to need the location of the body before I can agree to any deal.”
Goldman shook his head and laughed softly to himself. “You realize how nuts this is? To go to court to prove my client is mentally incompetent, but still not criminally insane?”
The waitress brought McGrale another scotch. He smiled sadly at it, knowing he had reached his limit. “If our office’s psychiatrist considers him criminally insane, I won’t fight a lifetime confinement to one of our fine mental institutions.”
Goldman finished his dinner, but stopped himself at three ales. He knew there were a number of police officers unhappy with him taking this case-as if he had any choice -who would be looking for a chance to pull him over for a DUI charge. After leaving McGrale, he sat in his car trying to make up his mind about something, then finally took out his cell phone and called his mother.
“Have we had first frost yet?” Goldman asked.
His mother sighed heavily. “I had just gotten into bed,” she complained. “You’re calling me at ten o’clock at night to ask me that?”
“Mom, please.”
“Well, if you had your own garden you’d already know the answer.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“Yes, I know, you’re too busy as a hotshot lawyer to bother with a simple activity like gardening.”
Hotshot lawyer. He wanted to laugh. Public defender was nearer the bottom rung of the ladder, although this case could get his name in the paper. If it went to trial.
“Mom, please, can you just answer the question?”
“The answer is no. There hasn’t been a frost yet. But I’ll call you when we have one.”
“Thanks.”
After hanging up, he headed home. Before he had driven more than a few blocks, he turned his car around.