Stories: All-New Tales

Jeffery Deaver. THE THERAPIST

One

I MET HER BY CHANCE, in a Starbucks near the medical building where I have my office, and I knew at once she was in trouble.

Recognizing people in distress was, after all, my profession.

I was reading over my patient notes, which I transcribe immediately after the fifty-minute sessions (often, as now, fortified by my favorite latte). I have a pretty good memory, but in the field of counseling and therapy you must be “completely diligent and tireless,” the many-syllabled phrase a favorite of one of my favorite professors.

This particular venue is on the outskirts of Raleigh in a busy strip mall and, the time being ten thirty A.M. on a pleasant day in early May, there were many people inside for their caffeine fixes.

There was one empty table near me but no chair, and the trim brunette, in a conservative dark blue dress, approached and asked if she could take the extra one at my table. I glanced at her round face, Good Housekeeping pretty, not Vogue, and smiled. “Please.”

I wasn’t surprised when she said nothing, didn’t smile back. She just took the chair, spun it around, clattering, and sat. Not that it was a flirtation she was rejecting; my smile obviously hadn’t been more than a faint pleasantry. I was twice her age and resembled-surprise, surprise-a balding, desk-and library-bound therapist. Not her type at all.

No, her chill response came from the trouble she was in. Which in turn troubled me a great deal.

I am a licensed counselor, a profession in which ethics rules preclude me from drumming up business the way a graphic designer or personal trainer might do. So I said nothing more but returned to my notes, while she pulled a sheaf of papers out of a gym bag and began to review them, urgently sipping her drink but not enjoying the hot liquid. I was not surprised. With aching eyes, head down, I managed to see that it was a school lesson plan she was working on. I believed it was for seventh grade.

A teacher…I grew even more concerned. I’m particularly sensitive to emotional and psychological problems within people who have influence over youngsters. I myself don’t see children as patients-that’s a specialty I’ve never pursued. But no psychologist can practice without a rudimentary understanding of children’s psyches, where are sowed the seeds of later problems my colleagues and I treat in our adult practices. Children, especially around ten or eleven, are in particularly susceptible developmental stages and can be forever damaged by a woman like the teacher sitting next to me.

Of course, despite all my experience in this field, it’s not impossible to make bum diagnoses. But my concerns were confirmed a moment later when she took a phone call. She was speaking softly at first, though with an edge in her voice, the tone and language suggesting the caller was a family member, probably a child. My heart fell at the thought that she’d have children of her own. I wasn’t surprised when after only a few minutes her voice rose angrily. Sure enough, she was losing control. “You did what?…I told you not to, under any circumstances…Were you just not listening to me? Or were you being stupid again?…All right, I’ll be home after the conference…I’ll talk to you about it then.”

If she could have slammed the phone down instead of pushing the disconnect button, I’m sure she would have done it.

A sigh. A sip of her coffee drink. Then back to angrily jotting notes in the margins of the lesson plan.

I lowered my head, staring at my own notes. My taste for the latte was gone completely. I tried to consider how to proceed. I’m good at helping people and I enjoy it (there’s a reason for that, of course, and one that goes back to my own childhood, no mystery there). I knew I could help her. But it wasn’t as easy as that. Often people don’t know they need help and even if they do they resist seeking it. Normally I wouldn’t worry too much about a passing encounter like this; I’d give a person some time to figure out on their own that they needed to get some counseling.

But this was serious. The more I observed, the more clear the symptoms. The stiffness of posture, the utter lack of humor or enjoyment in what she was doing with her lesson plan, lack of pleasure in the drink, the anger, the twitchy obsessive way she wrote.

And the eyes. That’s what speaks the most, to me at least.

The eyes…

So I decided to give it a try. I stood to get a refill of latte and, walking back to my table, I dropped a napkin onto hers. I apologized and collected it. Then laughed, looking at her handiwork.

“My girlfriend’s a teacher,” I said. “She absolutely hates lesson plans. She’s never quite sure what to do with them.”

She didn’t want to be bothered, but even people in her state acknowledge some social conventions. She looked up, the troubled eyes a deep brown. “They can be a chore. Our school board insists.”

Clumsy, but at least it broke the ice and we had a bit of a conversation.

“I’m Martin Kobel.”

“Annabelle Young.”

“Where do you teach?”

It was in Wetherby, a good-size town in central North Carolina about an hour from Raleigh. She was here for an education conference.

“Pam, my girlfriend, teaches grade school. You?”

“Middle school.”

The most volatile years, I reflected.

“That’s the age she’s thinking of moving over to. She’s tired of six-year-olds…You put a lot into that,” I said, nodding at the plan.

“I try.”

I hesitated a moment. “Listen, kind of fortuitous I ran into you. If I gave you our phone number and you’ve got a few minutes-I mean, if it’s no imposition-would you think about giving Pam a call? She could really use some advice. Five minutes or so. Give her some thoughts on middle school.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve only been a teacher for three years.”

“Just think about it. You seem like you know what you’re doing.” I took out a business card.

Martin J. Kobel, MS, MSW

Behavioral Therapy

Specialties: Anger Management and Addiction

I wrote “Pam Robbins” on the top along with the home phone number.

“I’ll see what I can do.” She slipped the card in her pocket and turned back to her coffee and the lesson plan.

I knew I’d gone as far as I could. Anything more would have seemed inappropriate and pushed her away.

After fifteen minutes, she glanced at her watch. Apparently whatever conference she was attending was about to resume. She gave a chill smile my way. “Nice talking to you.”

“The same,” I said.

Annabelle gathered the lesson plan and notes and stuffed them back into her gym bag. As she rose, a teenage boy eased past and jostled her inadvertently with his bulky backpack. I saw her eyes ripple with that look I know so well. “Jesus,” she whispered to him. “Learn some manners.”

“Hey, lady, I’m sorry-”

She waved a dismissing hand at the poor kid. Annabelle walked to the counter to add more milk to her coffee. She wiped her mouth and tossed out the napkin. Without a look back at me or anyone she pointed her cold visage toward the door and pushed outside.

I gave it thirty seconds then also stopped at the milk station. Glancing into the hole for trash, I spotted, as I’d half expected, my card, sitting next to her crumpled napkin. I’d have to take a different approach. I certainly wasn’t going to give up on her. The stakes for her own well-being and of those close to her were too high.

But it would require some finesse. I’ve found that you can’t just bluntly tell potential patients that their problems are the result not of a troubled childhood or a bad relationship, but simply because an invisible entity had latched onto their psyches like a virus and was exerting its influence.

In a different era, or in a different locale, someone might have said that the teacher was possessed by a demonic spirit or the like. Now we’re much more scientific about it, but it’s still wise to ease into the subject slowly.

ANNABELLE YOUNG HAD COME under the influence of a neme.

The term was first coined by a doctor in Washington, D.C. James Pheder was a well-known biologist and researcher. He came up with the word by combining “negative” and “meme,” the latter describing a cultural phenomenon that spreads and replicates in societies.

I think a reference to meme-“m” version-is a bit misleading, since it suggests something rather more abstract than what a neme really is. In my lengthy book on the subject, published a few years ago, I define a neme as “a discrete body of intangible energy that evokes extreme emotional responses in humans, resulting in behavior that is most often detrimental to the host or to the society in which he or she lives.”

But “neme” is a convenient shorthand and every therapist or researcher familiar with the concept uses it.

The word is also beneficial in that it neutrally describes a scientific, proven construct and avoids the historical terms that have muddied the truth for thousands of years. Words like ghosts, spirits, Rudolf Otto’s numinous presences, revenants, Buddhism’s hungry ghosts, rural countrysides’ white ladies, Japanese yurei, demons. Dozens of others.

Those fictional legends and superstitions were largely the result of the inability to explain nemes scientifically in the past. As often happens, until a phenomenon is rationally explained and quantified, folklore fills the gaps. The old belief, for instance, in spontaneous generation-that life could arise from inanimate objects-was accepted for thousands of years, supported by apparently scientific observations, for instance, that maggots and other infestations appeared in rotting food or standing water. It was only when Louis Pasteur proved via controlled, repeatable experiments that living material, like eggs or bacteria, had to be present for life to generate that the old view fell by the wayside.

Same thing with nemes. Framing the concept in terms of ghosts and possessing spirits was a convenient and simple fiction. Now we know better.

Growing up, I’d never heard of these things that would later be labeled nemes. It was only after a particular incident that I became aware: the deaths of my parents and brother.

You could say that my family was killed by one.

When I was sixteen we went to one of Alex’s basketball games at our school. At some point my father and I hit the hot dog stand. The father of a player on the opposing team was standing nearby, sipping a Coke and watching the game. Suddenly-I can still remember it perfectly-the man underwent a transformation, instantly shifting from relaxed and benign to tense, distracted, on guard. And the eyes…there was no doubt that they changed. The very color seemed to alter; they grew dark, malevolent. I knew something had happened, something had possessed him, I thought at the time. I felt chilled, and I stepped away from him.

Then the man suddenly grew angry. Furious. Something on the court set him off. A foul maybe, a bad call. He screamed at Alex’s team, he screamed at our coach, at the ref. In his rage, he bumped against my father and dropped his soda, spilling it on his shoes. It was his fault but he seemed to blame my father for the mishap. The men got into an argument, though my father soon realized that the man was out of control, consumed by this odd rage, and ushered us back to the bleachers.

After the game I was still troubled but assumed the matter was over. Not so. The man followed us out into the parking lot and, screaming, bizarrely challenged my father to a fight. The man’s wife was crying, pulling him back and apologizing. “He’s never behaved like this, really!”

“Shut up, bitch,” he raged and slapped her.

Shaken, we climbed into the car and drove off. Ten minutes later, driving down I-40, we were sitting in troubled silence when a car veered over three lanes. The man from the game swerved right toward us, driving us off the road.

I remember seeing his face, twisted with anger, over the steering wheel.

In court he tearfully explained that he didn’t know what happened. It was like he was possessed. That defense didn’t get him very far. He was found guilty of three counts of first-degree manslaughter.

After I got out of the hospital following the crash, I couldn’t get out of my head the memory of what had happened to the man. How clear it was to me that he’d changed, in a flash. It was like flipping a light switch.

I began reading about sudden changes in personality and rage and impulse. That research led eventually to the writings of Dr. Pheder and other researchers and therapists. I grew fascinated with the concept of nemes, considered a theory by some, a reality by others.

As to their origin, there are several theories. I subscribe to one I found the most logical. Nemes are vestiges of human instinct. They were an integral part of the psychological makeup of the creatures in the chain that led to Homo sapiens and were necessary for survival. In the early days of humanoids, it was occasionally necessary to behave in ways we would consider bad or criminal now. To commit acts of violence, to be rageful, impulsive, sadistic, greedy. But as societies formed and developed, the need for those darker impulses faded. The governing bodies, the armies, the law enforcers took over the task of our survival. Violence, rage, and the other darker impulses became not only unnecessary but were counter to society’s interests.

Somehow-there are several theories on this-the powerful neuro impulses that motivated those dark behaviors separated from humans and came to exist as separate entities, pockets of energy, you could say. In my research I found a precedent for this migration: the same thing happened with telepathy. Many generations ago, psychic communication was common. The advent of modern communication techniques eliminated the need for what we could call extrasensory perception, though many young children still have documented telepathic skills. (However, it’s interesting that with the increased use of cell phones and computers by youngsters, incidents of telepathy among young people are dramatically decreasing.)

But whatever their genealogy, nemes exist and there are millions of them. They float around like flu viruses until they find a vulnerable person and then incorporate themselves into the psyche of their host (“incorporate” is used, rather than a judgmental term like “infest” or “infect,” and never the theologically loaded “possess”). If someone is impulsive, angry, depressed, confused, scared-even physically sick-nemes will sense that and make a beeline for the cerebrum cortex, the portion of the brain where emotion is controlled. They usually avoid people who are emotionally stable, strong willed, and have high degrees of self-control, though not always.

Nemes are invisible, like electromagnetic waves and light at the far end of the spectrum, though it’s sometimes possible to tell they’re nearby if you hear distortion on a cell phone, TV, or radio. Usually, the host doesn’t sense the incorporation itself; they only experience a sudden mood swing. Some people can outright sense them. I’m one of these, though there’s nothing “special” about me. It’s simply like having acute hearing or good eyesight.

Do nemes think?

They do, in a way. Though thought is probably the wrong word. More likely they’re like insects, with a sense of awareness and instinct. Survival is very strong within them, too. There’s nothing immortal about nemes. When their host passes away, they seem to dissipate also. I myself don’t believe they communicate with one another, since I’ve never seen any evidence that they do.

This isn’t to minimize the damage they can do, of course. It’s significant. The rage, the impulsive behavior that arises from incorporation leads to rape, murder, physical and sexual abuse, and more subtle harm like substance overuse and verbal abuse. They also affect the physiology and morphology of the host’s body itself, as a series of autopsies several years ago proved.

After my devastating personal encounter with nemes, I decided I wanted to work in a field that would help minimize the damage they could do. I became a therapist.

The thrust of my approach is behavioral. Once you’re under the influence of a neme, you don’t “cast it out,” as a practitioner (now former) unfortunately joked at a psychotherapy conference in Chicago some years ago. You treat the symptoms. I concentrate on working with my patients to achieve self-control, using any number of techniques to avoid or minimize behaviors that are destructive to them or others. In most cases it doesn’t even matter that the patient knows he or she is a host for a neme (some patients are comfortable with the reality, and others aren’t). In any case, the methods I use are solid and well established, used by all behavioral therapists, and by and large successful.

There’ve been occasional defeats, of course. It’s the nature of the profession. Two of my patients, in which very potent nemes had incorporated, killed themselves when they were simply unable to resolve the conflict between their goals and the neme-influenced behavior.

There’s also something that’s been in the back of my mind for years: risk to myself. My life has been devoted to minimizing their electiveness and spread and so I sometimes wonder if a neme senses that I’m a threat. This is probably according them too much credit; you have to guard against personifying them. But I can’t help but think back to an incident several years ago. I was attending a psychology conference in New York City and was nearly mugged. It was curious since the young attacker was a model student at a nice high school near my hotel. He’d never been in trouble with the police. And he was armed with a long knife. An off-duty policeman happened to be nearby and managed to arrest him just as he started after me with the weapon.

It was late at night and I couldn’t see clearly, but I believed, from the boy’s eyes, that he was being influenced by a neme, motivated by its own sense of survival to kill me.

Probably not. But even if there was some truth to it, I wasn’t going to be deterred from my mission to save people at risk.

People like Annabelle Young.

THE DAY AFTER RUNNING into her in Starbucks, I went to the North Carolina State University library and did some research. The state licensing agencies’ databases and ever-helpful Google revealed that the woman was thirty years old and worked at Chantelle West Middle School in Wetherby County. Interestingly, she was a widow-her husband had died three years ago-and, yes, she had a nine-year-old son, probably the target of her anger on the phone. According to information about the school where she taught, Annabelle would generally teach large classes, with an average of thirty-five students per year.

This meant that she could have a dramatic and devastating impact on the lives of many young people.

Then too was the matter of Annabelle’s own well-being. I was pretty sure that she’d come under the influence of the neme around the time her husband died; a sudden personal loss like that makes you emotionally vulnerable and more susceptible than otherwise. (I noted too that she’d gone back to work around that time, and I wondered if her neme sensed an opportunity to incorporate within someone who could influence a large number of equally vulnerable individuals, the children in her classes.)

Annabelle was obviously a smart woman and she might very well get into counseling at some time. But there comes a point when the neme is so deeply incorporated that people actually become accustomed or addicted to the inappropriate behaviors nemes cause. They don’t want to change. My assessment was that she was past this point. And so, since I wasn’t going to hear from her, I did the only thing I could. I went to Wetherby.

I got there early on a Wednesday. The drive was pleasant, along one of those combined highways that traverse central North Carolina. It split somewhere outside of Raleigh and I continued on the increasingly rural branch of the two, taking me through old North Carolina. Tobacco warehouses and small industrial-parts plants-most of them closed years ago-but still squatting in weeds. Trailer parks, very unclosed. Bungalows and plenty of evidence of a love of Nascar and Republican party lines.

Wetherby has a redeveloped downtown, but that’s just for show. I noted immediately as I cruised along the two-block stretch that nobody was buying anything in the art galleries and antiques stores, and the nearly empty restaurants, I suspected, got new awnings with new names every eight months or so. The real work in places like Wetherby got done in the malls and office parks and housing developments built around new golf courses.

I checked into a motel, showered, and began my reconnaissance, checking out Chantelle Middle School. I parked around the time I’d learned classes were dismissed but didn’t catch a glimpse of Annabelle Young.

Later that evening, about seven thirty, I found her house, four miles away, a modest twenty-year-old colonial in need of painting, on a cul-de-sac. There was no car in the drive. I parked under some trees and waited.

Fifteen minutes later a car pulled into the drive. I couldn’t tell if her son was inside or not. The Toyota pulled into the garage and the door closed. A few minutes later I got out, slipped into some woods beside the house, and glanced into the kitchen. I saw her carting dishes inside. Dirty dishes from lunch or last night, I assumed. She set them in the sink and I saw her pause, staring down. Her face was turned away but her body language, even from this distance, told me that she was angry.

Her son appeared, a skinny boy with longish brown hair. His body language suggested that he was cautious. He said something to his mother. Her head snapped toward him and he nodded quickly. Then retreated. She stayed where she was, staring at the dishes, for a moment. Without even rinsing them she stepped out of the room and swept her hand firmly along the wall, slapping the switch out. I could almost hear the angry gesture from where I was.

I didn’t want to talk to her while her son was present, so I headed back to the motel.

The next day I was up early and cruised back to the school before the teachers arrived. At seven fifteen I caught a glimpse of her Camry arriving and watched her climb out and stride unsmilingly into the school. Too many people around and she was too harried to have a conversation now.

I returned at three in the afternoon and when Annabelle emerged followed her to a nearby strip mall, anchored by a Harris-Teeter grocery store. She went shopping and came out a half hour later. She dumped the plastic bags in her trunk. I was going to approach her, even though a meeting in the parking lot wasn’t the most conducive place to pitch my case, when I saw her lock the car and walk toward a nearby bar and grill.

At three thirty she wouldn’t be eating lunch or dinner and I knew what she had in mind. People influenced by nemes often drink more than they should, to dull the anxiety and anger that come from the incorporation.

Though I would eventually work on getting her to cut down on her alcohol consumption, her being slightly intoxicated and relaxed now could be a big help. I waited five minutes and followed. Inside the dark tavern, which smelled of Lysol and onions, I spotted her at the bar. She was having a mixed drink. Vodka or gin, it seemed, and some kind of juice. She was nearly finished with her first and she waved for a second.

I sat down two stools away and ordered a Diet Coke. I felt her head swivel toward me, tilt slightly as she debated whether she’d seen me before, and turn back to her drink. Then the pieces fell together and she faced me again.

Without looking up I said, “I’m a professional counselor, Ms. Young. I’m here only in that capacity. To help. I’d like to talk to you.”

“You…you followed me here? From Raleigh?”

I made a show of leaving money for the soda to suggest that I wasn’t going to stay longer than necessary, trying to put her at ease.

“I did, yes. But please, you don’t need to be afraid.”

Finally I turned to look at her. The eyes were just as I expected, narrow, cold, the eyes of somebody else entirely. The neme was even stronger than I’d thought.

“I’m about five seconds away from calling the police.”

“I understand. But please, listen. I want to say something to you. And if you want me to leave, I’ll head back to Raleigh right now. You can choose whatever you want.”

“Say it and get out.” She took another drink.

“I specialize in treating people who aren’t happy in life. I’m good at it. When I saw you the other day in Starbucks, I knew you were exactly the sort of patient who could benefit from my expertise. I would like very much to help you.”

No mention of nemes, of course.

“I don’t need a shrink.”

“I’m actually not a shrink. I’m a psychologist, not a doctor.”

“I don’t care what you are. You can’t…can’t you be reported for this, trying to drum up business?”

“Yes, and you’re free to do that. But I thought it was worth the risk to offer you my services. I don’t care about the money. You can pay me whatever you can afford. I care about helping you. I can give you references and you can call the state licensing board about me.”

“Do you even have a girlfriend who’s a teacher?”

“No. I lied. Which I’ll never do again…It was that important to try to explain how I can help you.”

And then I saw her face soften. She was nodding.

My heart was pounding hard. It had been a risk, trying this, but she was going to come around. The therapy would be hard work. For both of us. But the stakes were too high to let her continue the way she was. I knew we could make significant progress.

I turned away to pull a card from my wallet. “Let me tell you a-”

As I looked back, I took the full tide of her second drink in the face. My eyes on fire from the liquor and stinging juice, I gasped in agony and grabbed bar napkins to dry them.

“Annie, what’s wrong?” the bartender snapped, and through my blurred vision I could just make out his grabbing her arm as she started to fling the glass at me. I raised my own arm to protect myself.

“What’d he do?”

“Fuck you, let go of me!” she cried to him.

“Hey, hey, take it easy, Annie. What-?”

Then he ducked as she launched the glass at him. It struck a row of others; half of them shattered. She was out of control. Typical.

“Fuck you both!” Screaming. She dug a bill out of her purse and flung it onto the bar.

“Please, Ms. Young,” I said, “I can help you.”

“If I see you again, I’m calling the police.” She stormed out.

“Listen, mister, what the hell d’you do?”

I didn’t answer him. I grabbed some more napkins and, wiping my face, walked to the window. I saw her stride up to her son, who was standing nearby with a book bag. So this was the rendezvous spot. I wondered how often he’d had to wait outside for mom while she was in here getting drunk. I pictured cold January afternoons, the boy huddled and blowing breath into his hands.

She gestured him after her. Apparently there’d been something else on the agenda for after school, and, disappointed, he lifted his arms and glanced at the nearby sports store. But the shopping was not going to happen today. She stormed up and grabbed him by the arm. He pulled away. She drew back to slap him, but he dutifully walked to the car. I could see him clicking on his seat belt and wiping his tears.

Without a glance back at the bartender, I too left.

I walked to the car to head back to the motel to change. What had happened was discouraging, but I’d dealt with more difficult people than Annabelle Young. There were other approaches to take. Over the years I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t; it’s all part of being a therapist.

THE NEXT MORNING AT six I parked behind Etta’s Diner, in a deserted portion of the lot. The restaurant was directly behind Annabelle’s house. I made my way up the hill along a path that led to the sidewalk in her development. I had to take an oblique approach; if she saw me coming she’d never answer the door, and that would be that.

The morning was cool and fragrant with the smells of pine and wet earth. Being spring, the sky was light even at this early hour and it was easy to make my way along the path. I wondered how different Annabelle’s life had been before her husband died. How soon the neme had incorporated itself into her afterward. I suspected she’d been a vivacious, caring mother and wife, completely different from the enraged out-of-control woman she now was becoming.

I continued to the edge of the woods and waited behind the house in a stand of camellias with exploding red blossoms. At about six thirty her son pushed out the front door, carting a heavy book bag, and strolled to the end of the cul-de-sac, presumably to catch his bus.

When he was gone, I walked to the porch and climbed the stairs.

Was I ready? I asked myself.

Always those moments of self-doubt, even though I’d been a professional therapist for years.

Always, the doubts.

But then I relaxed. My mission in life was to save people. I was good at that task. I knew what I was doing.

Yes, I was ready.

I rang the doorbell and stepped aside from the peephole. I heard the footsteps approach. She flung the door open and had only a moment to gasp at the sight of the black stocking mask I was wearing and the lengthy knife in my gloved hand.

I grabbed her hair and plunged the blade into her chest three times, then sliced through her neck. Both sides and deep, so the end would be quick.

Lord knew I didn’t want her to suffer.

Two

THE JOB OF MAKING sure that Martin Kobel was either put to death or sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Annabelle Young fell to Glenn Hollow, the Wetherby County prosecutor.

And it was a job that he had embraced wholeheartedly from the moment he got the call from county-police dispatch. Forty-two years old, Hollow was the most successful prosecutor in the state of North Carolina, judging in terms of convictions won, and judging from the media since he had a preference for going after violent offenders. A mark of his success was that this was to be his last year in Wetherby. He’d be running for state attorney general in November and there wasn’t much doubt he’d win.

But his grander plans wouldn’t detract from his enthusiastic prosecution of the murderer of Annabelle Young. In big cities the prosecutors get cases tossed onto their desks along with the police reports. With Glenn Hollow it was different. He had an honorary flashing blue light attached to his dash and, ten minutes after getting the call about the homicide, he was at Ms. Young’s house while the forensic team was still soaking up blood and taking pix.

He was now walking into the Wetherby County Courthouse. Nothing Old South about the place. It was the sort of edifice you’d find in Duluth or Toledo or Schenectady. One story, nondescript white stone, overtaxed air-conditioning, scuffed linoleum floors, and greenish fluorescents that might engender the question, “Hey, you feeling okay?”

Hollow was a lean man, with drawn cheeks and thick black hair close to a skullish head-defendants said he looked like a ghoul; kinder reports, that he resembled Gregory Peck in Moby Dick, minus the beard. He was somber and reserved and kept his personal life far, far away from his professional life.

He now nodded at the secretary in the ante-office of Judge Brigham Rollins’s chambers.

“Go on in, Glenn.”

Inside were two big men. Rollins was midfifties and had a pitted face and the spiky gray hair of a crew cut neglected a week too long. He was in shirtsleeves, though noosed with a tie, of course. He wore plucky yellow suspenders that hoisted his significant tan pants like a concrete bucket under a crane. Gray stains radiated from under his arms. As usual the judge had doused himself with Old Spice.

Sitting opposite was Bob Ringling-the circus jokes all but dead after these many years of being a defense lawyer in a medium-size town, and, no, there was no relation. Stocky, with blondish brown hair carefully trimmed, he resembled a forty-five-year-old retired army major-not a bad deduction, since Fayetteville wasn’t terribly far away, but, like the circus brothers, not true.

Hollow didn’t like or dislike Ringling. He was fair, though abrasive, and he made Hollow work for every victory. Which was as it should be, the prosecutor believed. God created defense lawyers, he’d said, to make sure the system was fair and the prosecution didn’t cheat or get lazy. After all, there was that one-in-a-hundred chance that the five-foot-eight black gangbanger from Central High presently in custody wasn’t the same five-foot-eight black gangbanger from Central High who actually pulled the trigger.

Judge Rollins closed a folder that’d he’d been perusing. He grunted. “Tell me where we are with this one, gentlemen.”

“Yessir,” Hollow began. “The state is seeking special-circumstances murder.”

“This’s about that teacher got her throat slit, right?”

“Yessir. In her house. Broad daylight.”

A distasteful grimace. Not shock. Rollins’d been a judge for years.

The courthouse was on the crook of Route 85 and Henderson Road. Through one window you could see Galloway-belted cows grazing. They were black and white, vertically striped, precise, as if God had used a ruler. Hollow could look right over the judge’s shoulder and see eight of them, chewing. Out the other window was a T.J. Maxx, a Barnes amp; Noble, and a multiplex under construction. These two views pretty much defined Wetherby.

“What’s the story behind it?”

“This Kobel, a therapist. He was stalking her. They met at a Starbucks when she was in Raleigh at an educational conference. Got witnesses say he gave her his card but she threw it out. Next thing he tracked her down and shows up in Wetherby. Got into a fight at Red Robin, near Harris-Teeter. She threw a drink in his face. One witness saw him park at Etta’s, the diner, the morning she was killed-”

“Tonight’s corned beef,” the judge said.

“They do a good job of that,” Ringling added.

True, they did. Hollow continued, “-and he hiked up into those woods behind her place. When she opened the door, he killed her. He waited till her boy left.”

“There’s that, at least,” Rollins grumbled. “How’d the boys in blue get him?”

“Unlucky for him. Busboy on a smoke break at Etta’s saw him coming out of the forest, carrying some things. The kid found some blood near where he’d parked. Called the police with the make and model. Kobel’d tossed away the knife and mask and gloves, but they found ’em. Fibers, DNA, fingerprints on the inside of the gloves. People always forget that. They watch CSI too much…Oh, and then he confessed.”

“What?” the judge barked.

“Yep. Advised of rights, twice. Sang like a bird.”

“Then what the hell’re you doing here? Take a plea and let’s get some real work done.”

The judge glanced at Ringling, but the defense lawyer in turn cast his eyes to Hollow.

Rollins gripped his ceramic coffee mug and sipped the hot contents. “What isn’t who telling who? Don’t play games. There’s no jury to impress with your clevers.”

Ringling said, “He’s completely insane. Nuts.”

A skeptical wrinkle on the judge’s brow. “But you’re saying he wore a mask and gloves?”

Most insane perps didn’t care if they were identified and didn’t care if they got away afterward. They didn’t wear ninja or hit-man outfits. They were the sort who hung around afterward and fingerpainted with the blood of their victims.

Ringling shrugged.

The judge asked, “Competent to stand trial?”

“Yessir. We’re saying he was insane at the time of commission. No sense of right or wrong. No sense of reality.”

The judge grunted.

The insanity defense is based on one overriding concept in jurisprudence: responsibility. At what point are we responsible for acts we commit? If we cause an accident and we’re sued in civil court for damages, the law asks, would a reasonably prudent person have, say, driven his car on a slippery road at thirty-five miles per hour? If the jury says yes, then we’re not responsible for the crash.

If we’re arrested for a crime, the law asks, did we act knowingly and intentionally to break a law? If we didn’t, then we’re not guilty.

There are, in fact, two ways in which sanity arises in a criminal court. One is when the defendant is so out of it that he can’t participate in his own trial. That U.S. Constitution thing: the right to confront your accusers.

But this isn’t what most people familiar with Boston Legal or Perry Mason think of as the insanity defense and, as Bob Ringling had confirmed, it wasn’t an issue in State v. Kobel.

More common is when defense lawyers invoke various offshoots of M’Naughten rule, which holds that if the defendant lacked the capacity to know he was doing something wrong when he committed the crime, he can’t be found guilty. This isn’t to say he’s going scot-free; he’ll get locked up in a mental ward until it’s determined that he’s no longer dangerous.

This was Bob Ringling’s claim regarding Martin Kobel.

But Glenn Hollow exhaled a perplexed laugh. “He wasn’t insane. He was a practicing therapist with an obsession over a pretty woman who was ignoring him. Special circumstances. I want guilty, I want the needle. That’s it.”

Ringling said to Rollins, “Insanity. You sentence him to indefinite incarceration in Butler, Judge. We won’t contest it. No trial. Everybody wins.”

Hollow said, “Except the other people he kills when they let him out in five years.”

“Ah, you just want a feather in your cap for when you run for AG. He’s a media bad boy.”

“I want justice,” Hollow said, supposing he was sounding pretentious. And not caring one whit. Nor admitting that, yeah, he did want the feather, too.

“What’s the evidence for the looney tunes?” the judge asked. He had a very different persona when he was in chambers compared with when he was in the courtroom, and presumably different yet at Etta’s Diner, eating corned beef.

“He absolutely believes he didn’t do anything wrong. He was saving the children in Annabelle’s class. I’ve been over this with him a dozen times. He believes it.”

“Believes what exactly?” the judge asked.

“That she was possessed. By something like a ghost. I’ve looked it up. Some cult thing on the Internet. Some spirit or something makes you lose control, lose your temper and beat the crap out of your wife or kids. Even makes you kill people. It’s called a neme.” He spelled it.

“Neme.”

Hollow said, “I’ve looked it up too, Judge. You can look it up. We all can look it up. Which is just what Kobel did. To lay the groundwork for claiming insanity. He killed a hot young woman who rejected him. And now he’s pretending he believes in ’em to look like he’s nuts.”

“If that’s the case,” Ringling said gravely, “then he’s been planning ever since he was a teenager to kill a woman he met two weeks ago.”

“What’s that?”

“His parents died in a car crash when he was in high school. He had a break with reality, the doctors called it. Diagnosed as a borderline personality.”

“Like my cousin,” the judge said. “She’s awkward. The wife and I never invite her over, if we can avoid it.”

“Kobel got involuntary commitment for eight months back then, talking about these creatures that possessed the driver who killed his family. Same thing as now.”

“But he had to go to shrink school,” the judge pointed out. “He graduated. That’s not crazy in my book.”

Hollow leaped in with, “Exactly. He has a master’s in psychology. One in social work. Good grades. Sees patients. And he’s written books. For God’s sake.”

“One of which I happen to have with me and which I will be introducing into evidence. Thank you, Glenn, for bringing it up.” The defense lawyer opened his briefcase and dropped a 10-pound stack of 8½-by-11 sheets on the judge’s desk. “Self-published, by the way. And written by hand.”

Hollow looked it over. He had good eyes but it was impossible to read any of the text except the title because it was in such tiny handwriting. There had to be a thousand words per page, in elegant, obsessive script.

Biblical Evidence of Malevolent

Emotional ENERGY Incorporated into Psyches

By Martin Kobel

© All rights reserved

“All rights reserved?” Hollow snorted. “Who’s going to plagiarize this crap? And what’s with the capitalization?”

“Glenn, this is one of about thirty volumes. He’s been writing these things for twenty years. And it’s the smallest one.”

The prosecutor repeated, “He’s faking.”

But the judge was skeptical. “Going back all those years?”

“Okay, he’s quirky. But this man is dangerous. Two of his patients killed themselves under circumstances that make it seem like he suggested they do it. Another one’s serving five years because he attacked Kobel in his office. He claimed the doctor provoked him. And Kobel broke into a funeral home six years ago and was caught fucking around with the corpses.”

“What?”

“Not that way. He was dissecting them. Looking for evidence of these things, these nemes.”

Ringling said happily, “There’s another book he wrote on the autopsy. Eighteen hundred pages. Illustrated.”

“It wasn’t an autopsy, Bob. It was breaking into a funeral home and fucking around with corpses.” Hollow was getting angry. But maybe it’s just a neme, he thought cynically. “He goes to conferences.”

“Paranormal conferences. Wacko conferences. Full of wackos just like him.”

“Jesus Christ, Bob. The people who cop insanity pleas’re paranoid schizos. They don’t bathe, they take Haldol and lithium, they’re delusional. They don’t go to fucking Starbucks and ask for an extra shot of syrup.”

Hollow had used the f word more times today than in the past year.

Ringling said, “They kill people because they’re possessed by ghosts. That’s not sane. End of story.”

The judge lifted his hand. “You gentlemen know that when the earth was young, Africa and South America were right next to each other. I mean, fifty feet away. Think about that. And here you are, same thing. You’re real close, I can tell. You can work it out. Come together. There’s a song about that. It’s in your interest. If we go to trial, you two’re doing all the work. All I’m gonna be doing is saying ‘sustained’ and ‘overruled.’”

“Bob, he killed that girl, a schoolteacher. In cold blood. I want him away forever. He’s a danger and he’s sick…What I can do, but only this, I’ll go with life. Drop special circumstances. But no parole.”

The judge looked expectantly toward Bob Ringling. “That’s something.”

“I knew it’d come up,” Ringling said. “I asked my client about it. He says he didn’t do anything wrong and he has faith in the system. He’s convinced there’re these things floating around and they glom onto you and make you do bad stuff. No, we’re going for insanity.”

Hollow grimaced. “You want to play it that way, you get your expert and I’ll get mine.”

The judge grumbled. “Pick a date, gentlemen. We’re going to trial. And, for Christ sake, somebody tell me, what the hell is a neme?”

THE PEOPLE OF THE State of North Carolina v. Kobel began on a Wednesday in July.

Glenn Hollow kicked it off with a string of witnesses and police reports regarding the forensic evidence, which was irrefutable. Bob Ringling let most of it go and just got a few errant bits of trace evidence removed, which Hollow didn’t care about anyway.

Another of Hollow’s witnesses was a clerk from Starbucks in Raleigh, who testified about the business card exchange. (Hollow noted the troubled looks on the faces of several jurors and people in the gallery, leaving them wondering, he supposed, about the wisdom of affairs and other indiscreet behavior in places with observant baristas.)

Other witnesses testified about behavior consistent with stalking, including several who’d seen Kobel in Wetherby on the days before the murder. Several had seen his car parked outside the school where Annabelle Young taught. If there’s any way to put your location on record, it’s to be a middle-aged man parked outside a middle school. Eight concerned citizens gave the police his tag number.

The busboy at Etta’s Diner gave some very helpful testimony with the help of a Spanish translator.

As for Kobel himself, sitting at the defense table, his hair was askew and his suit didn’t fit right. He frantically filled notebook after notebook with writing like ant tracks.

Son of a bitch, thought Hollow. It was pure performance, orchestrated by Bob Ringling, Esq., of course, with Martin Kobel in the role of schizophrenic. Hollow had seen the police interview video. On screen the defendant had been well scrubbed, well spoken, and no twitchier than Hollow’s ten-year-old Lab, known to take naps in the middle of tornados.

Any other case, the trial would’ve been over with on the second day-with a verdict for the People, followed by a lengthy appeal and an uncomfortable few minutes while the executioner figured out which was the better vein, right arm or left.

But there was more, of course. Where the real battle would be fought.

Ringling’s expert psychiatrist testified that the defendant was, in his opinion, legally insane and unable to tell the difference between right and wrong. Kobel honestly believed that Annabelle Young was a threat to students and her son because she was infested by a neme, some spirit or force that he truly believed existed.

“He’s paranoid, delusional. His reality is very, very different from ours,” was the expert’s conclusion.

The shrink’s credentials were good, and since that was about the only way to attack him, Hollow let him go.

“Your Honor,” Ringling next said. “I move to introduce defense exhibits numbers one through twenty-eight.”

And wheeled up to the bench-literally, in carts-Kobel’s notebooks and self-published treatises on nemes, more than anybody could possibly be interested in.

A second expert for the defense testified about these writings. “These are typical of a delusional mind.” Everything Kobel had written was typical of a paranoid and delusional individual who had lost touch with reality. He stated that there was no scientific basis for the concept of neme. “It’s like voodoo, it’s like vampires, werewolves.”

Ringling tried to seal the deal by having the doctor read a portion from one of these “scientific treatises,” a page of utterly incomprehensible nonsense. Judge Rollins, on the edge of sleep, cut him off. “We get the idea, Counselor. Enough.”

On cross-examination, Hollow couldn’t do much to deflate this testimony. The best he could do was: “Doctor, do you read the Harry Potter books?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, yes, I have.”

“The fourth was my favorite. What was yours?”

“Umm, I don’t know really.”

“Is it possible,” the prosecutor asked the witness, “that those writings of Mr. Kobel are merely attempts at writing a novel? Some big fantasy book.”

“I…I can’t imagine it.”

“But it’s possible, isn’t it?”

“I suppose. But I’ll tell you, he’ll never sell the movie rights.”

Amid the laughter, the judge dismissed the witness.

There was testimony about the bizarre autopsy, which Hollow didn’t bother to refute.

Bob Ringling also introduced two of Kobel’s patients, who testified that they had been so troubled by his obsessive talk about these ghosts or spirits inhabiting their bodies that they quit seeing him.

And then Ringling had Kobel himself take the stand, dressed in the part of a madman in his premeditatedly wrinkled and dirty clothes, chewing his lip, looking twitchy and weird.

This idea-insane in its own right-was a huge risk, because on cross-examination Hollow would ask the man point-blank if he’d killed Annabelle Young. Since he’d confessed once, he would have to confess again-or Hollow would read the sentence from his statement. Either way the jury would actually hear the man admit to the crime.

But Ringling met the problem head-on. His first question: “Mr. Kobel, did you kill Annabelle Young?”

“Oh, yes, of course I did.” He sounded surprised.

A gasp filled the courtroom.

“And why did you do that, Mr. Kobel.”

“For the sake of the children.”

“How do you mean that?”

“She was a teacher, you know. Oh, God! Every year, thirty or forty students, impressionable young people, would come under her influence. She was going to poison their minds. She might even hurt them, abuse them, spread hatred.” He closed his eyes and shivered.

And the Academy Award for best performance on the part of a crazed murder suspect goes to…

“Now, tell me, Mr. Kobel, why did you think she would hurt the children?”

“Oh, she’d come under the influence of a neme.”

“That’s what we heard a little about earlier, right? In your writings?”

“Yes, in my writings.”

“Could you tell us, briefly, what a neme is?”

“You could call it an energy force. Malevolent energy. It attaches to your mind and it won’t let go. It’s terrible. It causes you to commit crimes, abuse people, fall into rages. A lot of temper tantrums and road rage are caused by nemes. They’re all over the place. Millions of them.”

“And you were convinced she was possessed?”

“It’s not possession,” Kobel said adamantly. “That’s a theological concept. Nemes are purely scientific. Like viruses.”

“You think they’re as real as viruses?”

“They are! You have to believe me! They are!”

“And Ms. Young was being influenced by nemes.”

“One, just one.”

“And was going to hurt her students.”

“And her son. Oh, yes, I could see it. I have this ability to see nemes. I had to save the children.”

“You weren’t stalking her because you were attracted to her?”

Kobel’s voice cracked. “No, no. Nothing like that. I wanted to get her into counseling. I could have saved her. But she was too far gone. The last thing I wanted to do was kill her. But it was a blessing. It really was. I had to.” Tears glistened.

Oh, brother…

“Prosecution’s witness.”

Hollow did the best he could. He decided not to ask about Annabelle Young. Kobel’s murdering her was no longer the issue in this case. The whole question was Kobel’s state of mind. Hollow got the defendant to admit that he’d been in a mental hospital only once, as a teenager, and hadn’t seen a mental health professional since then. He’d taken no antipsychotic drugs. “They take my edge off. You have to be sharp when you’re fighting nemes.”

“Just answer the question, please.”

Hollow then produced Kobel’s tax returns for the past three years.

When Ringling objected, Hollow said to Judge Rollins, “Your Honor, a man who files a tax return is of sound mind.”

“That’s debatable,” said the ultraconservative judge, drawing laughter from the courtroom.

Oh, to be on the bench, thought Glenn Hollow. And maybe after a few years’ stint as the attorney general I will be.

Rollins said, “I’ll let ’em in.”

“These are your returns, aren’t they, sir?”

“I guess. Yes.”

“They indicate you made a fair amount of money at your practice. About forty thousand dollars a year.”

“Maybe. I suppose so.”

“So despite those other two patients who testified earlier, you must have a much larger number of patients you treat regularly and who are satisfied with your services.”

Kobel looked him in the eyes. “There’re a lot of nemes out there. Somebody’s gotta fight ’em.”

Hollow sighed. “No further questions, Your Honor.”

The prosecutor then called his own expert, a psychiatrist who’d examined Kobel. The testimony was that, though quirky, he was not legally insane. He was well aware of what he was doing, that he was committing a crime when he killed the victim.

Ringling asked a few questions, but didn’t belabor the cross-examination.

Toward the end of the day, during a short break, Glenn Hollow sneaked a look at the jury box; he’d been a prosecutor and a trial lawyer for a long time and was an expert not only at the law but at reading juries.

And, goddamn it, they were reacting just the way Bob Ringling wanted them to. Hollow could tell they hated and feared Martin Kobel, but because he was such a monster and the things he was saying were so bizarre, he couldn’t be held to the jury’s standards of ethics and behavior. Oh, Ringling had been smart. He wasn’t playing his client as a victim, he wasn’t playing him as somebody who’d been abused or suffered a traumatic childhood (he barely referred to the deaths of Kobel’s parents and brother).

No, he was showing that this thing at the defense table was not even human.

Like his expert said, “Mr. Kobel’s reality is not our reality.”

Hollow stretched his skinny legs out in front of him and watched the tassels on his loafers lean to the side. I’m going to lose this case, he reflected. I’m going to lose it. And that son of a bitch’ll be out in five or six years, looking for other women to stalk.

He was in despair.

Nemes…shit.

Then the judge turned away from his clerk and said, “Mr. Hollow? Shall we continue with your rebuttal of Mr. Ringling’s affirmative defense?”

It was then that a thought occurred to the prosecutor. He considered it for a moment and gasped at where the idea led.

“Mr. Hollow?”

“Your Honor, if possible, could we recess until tomorrow? The prosecution would appreciate the time.”

Judge Rollins debated. He looked at his watch. “All right. We’ll recess until nine A.M. tomorrow.”

Glenn Hollow thanked the judge and told his young associates to gather up the papers and take them back to the office. The prosecutor rose and headed out the door. But he didn’t start sprinting until he was well out of the courthouse; he believed that you never let jurors see anything but your dignified self.

AT A LITTLE AFTER nine the next morning, Glenn Hollow rose to his feet. “I’d like to call to the stand Dr. James Pheder.”

“Objection, Your Honor.” Bob Ringling was on his feet.

“Reasons?”

“We received notice of this witness last night at eight P.M. We haven’t had adequate time to prepare.”

“Where were you at eight?”

Ringling blinked. “Well, Your Honor, I…the wife and I were out to dinner.”

“At eight I was reading documents in this case, Mr. Ringling. And Mr. Hollow was-obviously-sending you notices about impending witnesses. Neither of us were enjoying the buffet line at House O’Ribs.”

“But-”

“Think on your feet, Counselor. That’s what you get paid those big bucks for. Objection overruled. Proceed, Mr. Hollow.”

Pheder, a dark-complexioned man with a curly mop of black hair and a lean face, took the oath and sat.

“Now, Mr. Pheder, could you tell us about your credentials?”

“Yessir. I have degrees in psychology and biology from the University of Eastern Virginia, the University of Albany, and Northern Arizona University.”

“All of which are accredited four-year colleges, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And what do you do for a living?”

“I’m an author and lecturer.”

“Are you published?”

“Yessir. I’ve published dozens of books.”

“Are those self-published?”

“Nosir. I’m with established publishing companies.”

“And where do you lecture?”

“All over the country. At schools, libraries, bookstores, private venues.”

“How many people attend these lectures?” Hollow asked.

“Each one is probably attended by four to six hundred people.”

“And how many lectures a year do you give?”

“About one hundred.”

Hollow paused and then asked, “Are you familiar with the concept of neme?”

“Yessir.”

“Is it true that you coined that term?”

“Yessir.”

“What does it refer to?”

“I combined the words ‘negative’ and ‘meme.’ ‘Negative’ is just what it sounds like. ‘Meme’ is a common phenomenon in society, like a song or catchphrase, that captures the popular imagination. It spreads.”

“Give us the gist of the concept of neme, that’s n-e-m-e, if you would.”

“In a nutshell?”

“Oh, yessir. I got Cs in science. Make it nice and simple.”

Nice touch, Hollow thought of his improvisation. Science.

Pheder continued. “It’s like a cloud of energy that affects people’s emotions in destructive ways. You know how you’re walking down the street and you suddenly feel different? For no reason at all. Your mood swings. It could be caused by any number of things. But it might be a neme incorporating itself into your cerebrum.”

“And you say, ‘negative.’ So nemes are bad?”

“Well, bad is a human judgment. They’re neutral, but they tend to make us behave in ways society characterizes as bad. Take a case of swimming in the ocean. Sharks and jellyfish aren’t bad; they’re simply doing what nature intended, existing. But when they take a bite out of us or sting us, we call that bad. Nemes are the same. They make us do things that to them are natural but that we call evil.”

“And you’re convinced these nemes are real?”

“Oh, yessir. Absolutely.”

“Are other people?”

“Yes, many, many are.”

“Are these people scientists?”

“Some, yes. Therapists, chemists, biologists, psychologists.”

“No further questions, Your Honor.”

“Your witness, Mr. Ringling.”

The defense lawyer couldn’t, as it turned out, think on his feet, not very well. He was prepared for Hollow to introduce testimony by experts attacking his client’s claim of insanity.

He wasn’t prepared for Hollow to try to prove nemes were real. Ringling asked a few meaningless questions and let it go at that.

Hollow was relieved that he hadn’t explored Pheder’s history and credentials in other fields, including parapsychology and pseudoscience. Nor did he find the blog postings where Pheder claimed the lunar landings were staged in a film studio in Houston, or the ones supporting the theory that the Israelis and President George Bush were behind the 9/11 attacks. Hollow had particularly worried that Pheder’s essay about the 2012 apocalypse might surface.

Dodged the bullet there, he thought.

Ringling dismissed the man, seemingly convinced that the testimony had somehow worked to the defense’s advantage.

This concluded the formal presentations in the case and it was now time for closing statements.

Hollow had been writing his mentally even as he’d fled the courthouse yesterday, in search of Pheder’s phone number.

The slim, austere man walked to the front of the jury box and, a concession to camaraderie with the panel, undid his suit jacket’s middle button, which he usually kept snugly hooked.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. I’m going to make my comments brief, out of respect to you and respect to the poor victim and her family. They-and Annabelle Young’s spirit-want and deserve justice, and the sooner you provide that justice, the better for everyone.

“The diligent law officers involved in this case have established beyond a reasonable doubt that Martin Kobel was, in fact, the individual who viciously and without remorse stabbed to death a young, vibrant schoolteacher; widow; and single mother, after stalking her for a week, following her all the way from Raleigh, spying on her, and causing her to flee from a restaurant while she waited to meet her son after school. Those facts are not in dispute. Nor is there any doubt about the validity of Mr. Kobel’s confession, which he gave freely and after being informed of his rights. And which he repeated here in front of you.

“The only issue in this case is whether or not the defendant was insane at the time he committed this heinous crime. Now, in order for the defendant to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, it must-I repeat, must-be proven that he did not appreciate the difference between right and wrong at the time he killed Annabelle. It must be proven that he did not understand reality as you and I know it.

“You have heard the defendant claim he killed Annabelle Young because she was infected by forces called nemes. Let’s think on that for a moment. Had Mr. Kobel been convinced that she was possessed by aliens from outer space or zombies or vampires, maybe that argument would have some validity. But that’s not what he’s claiming. He’s basically saying that she was infected by what he himself described as a virus…not one that gives you a fever and chills but one that makes you do something bad.”

A smile. “I have to tell you, when I first heard this theory, I thought to myself, brother, that’s pretty crazy. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered if there wasn’t something to it. And in the course of this trial, listening to Mr. Kobel and Dr. Pheder and spending all last night reading through Mr. Kobel’s lengthy writing, I’ve changed my mind…I too now believe in nemes.”

The gasp throughout the courtroom was loud.

“I’m convinced that Martin Kobel is right. Nemes exist. Think about it, ladies and gentlemen: what else can explain the random acts of violence and abuse and rage we find in people who were previously incapable of them.”

Yes…some of the jurors were actually nodding. They were with him!

Hollow’s voice rose. “Think about it! Disembodied forces of energy that affect us. We can’t see them but doesn’t the moon’s gravitation affect us? Doesn’t radiation affect us? We can’t see them either. These nemes are the perfect explanation for behaviors we otherwise would find impossible to understand.

“There was a time when the concept of flight by airplane would have been considered sorcery. The same with GPS. The same with modern medical treatments. The same with lightbulbs, computers, thousands of products that we now know are rooted in scientific fact but when first conceived would seem like black magic.”

Hollow walked close to the rapt members of the jury. “But…but…if that’s the case, if nemes exist, as Mr. Kobel and I believe, then that means they’re part of the real world. They are part of our society, our connection with one another, for good or for bad. Then to say that Annabelle Young was infected with one is exactly the same as saying that she had a case of the flu and might infect other people. Some of those infected people, the elderly or young, could die. Which would be a shame, tragic…But does that mean it would be all right to preemptively murder her to save those people? Emphatically no! That’s not the way the world works, ladies and gentlemen. If, as I now believe, Annabelle Young was affected by these nemes, then as a trained professional, Martin Kobel’s responsibility was to get her into treatment and help her. Help her, ladies and gentlemen. Not murder her.

“Please, honor the memory of Annabelle Young. Honor the institution of law. Honor personal responsibility. Find the defendant in this case sane. And find him guilty of murder in the first degree for taking the life of a young woman whose only flaw was to be sick, and whose only chance to get well and live a content and happy and productive life was snatched from her grasp by a vicious killer. Thank you.”

His heart pounding, Glenn Hollow strode to the prosecution table through an utterly quiet courtroom, aware that everyone was staring at him.

He sat. Still, no voices, no rustling. Nothing. Pin-drop time.

After what seemed like an hour, though it was probably only thirty seconds, Bob Ringling rose, cleared his throat, and delivered his closing statement. Hollow didn’t pay much attention. And it seemed no one else did either. Every soul in the courtroom was staring at Glenn Hollow, and, the prosecutor believed, replaying in their minds what was the most articulate and dramatic closing argument he’d ever made. Turning the whole case on its ear at the last minute.

If, as I now believe, Annabelle Young was affected by these nemes, then as a trained professional, Martin Kobel’s responsibility was to get her into treatment and help her. Help her, ladies and gentlemen. Not murder her.

Glenn Hollow was inherently a modest man but he couldn’t help but believe he’d pulled off the coup of his career.

And so it was a surprise, to say the least, when the good men and woman on the jury panel rejected Hollow’s argument completely and came back with a verdict finding Martin Kobel not guilty by reason of insanity after one of the shortest deliberations in Wetherby County history.

Three

I AVOIDED THE SUNROOM as much as I could.

Mostly because it was full of crazy people. Lip-chewing, Haldol-popping, delusional crazies. They smelled bad, they ate like pigs at a trough, they screamed, they wore football helmets so they didn’t do any more damage to their heads. As if that were possible. At my trial I was worried that I was overacting the schizo part. I shouldn’t have worried. My performance in the courtroom didn’t come close to being over the top.

The Butler State Hospital doesn’t include the words “for the criminally insane” in the name because it doesn’t need to. Anybody who sees the place will get the idea pretty fast.

The sunroom was a place to avoid. But I’d come to enjoy the small library and this was where I’d spent most of my time in the past two months since I was committed here.

Today I was sitting in the library’s one armchair, near the one window. I usually vie for the chair with a skinny patient, Jack. The man was committed because he suspected his wife of selling his secrets to the Union army-which would’ve been funny except that as punishment for her crime he tortured her for six hours before killing and dismembering her.

Jack was a curious man. Smart in some ways and a true expert on Civil War history. But he’d never quite figured out the rules of the game: that whoever got into the library first got the armchair.

I’d been looking forward to sitting here today and catching up on my reading.

But then something happened to disrupt those plans. I opened this morning’s paper and noticed a reference to the prosecutor in the case against me, Glenn Hollow, whose name, I joked with my attorney Bob Ringling, sounded like a real estate development. Alarming Ringling somewhat since I wasn’t sounding as crazy as he would have liked-because, of course, I’m not.

The article was about party officials pulling all support for Hollow’s bid for attorney general. He’d dropped out of the race. I continued to read, learning that his life had fallen apart completely after failing to get me convicted on murder one. He’d had to step down as county prosecutor and no law firm in the state would hire him. In fact, he couldn’t find work anywhere.

The problem wasn’t that he’d lost the case, but that he’d introduced evidence about the existence of spirits that possessed people and made them commit crimes. It hadn’t helped that he was on record as stating that nemes were real. And his expert was a bit of a crackpot. Though I still hold that Pheder’s a genius. After all, for every successful invention, da Vinci came up with a hundred duds.

In fact, Hollow’s strategy was brilliant and had given me some very uncomfortable moments in court. Bob Ringling, too. Part of me was surprised that the jury hadn’t bought his argument and sent me to death row.

These revelations were troubling and I felt sorry for the man-I never had anything personal against him-but it was when I read the last paragraph that the whole shocking implication of what had happened struck home.

Before the Kobel trial, Hollow had been a shoo-in to become the attorney general of the state. He had the best conviction record of any prosecutor in North Carolina, particularly in violent crimes such as rape and domestic abuse. He actually won a premeditated murder case some years ago for a road rage incident, the first time any prosecutor had convinced a jury to do so.

Reading this, I felt like I’d been slugged. My God…My God…I literally gasped. I’d been set up.

It was suddenly clear. From the moment Annabelle Young had sat next to me in Starbucks, I was being suckered into their plan. The nemes…they knew I’d take on the mission of trying to become her therapist. And they knew that I’d see that the neme within her was so powerful and represented such a danger to those around her that I’d have to kill her. (I’d done this before, of course; Annabelle was hardly the first. Part of being a professional therapist is matching the right technique to each patient.)

And where did the nemes pick their host? In the very county with the prosecutor who represented perhaps the greatest threat to them. A man who was winning conviction after conviction in cases of impulsive violence-locking away some of their most successful incarnations in the country: abusers, rapists, murderers…

Well, that answered the question that nobody had been able to answer yet: yes, nemes communicate.

Yes, they plot and strategize. Obviously they’d debated the matter. The price to eliminate Glenn Hollow was to get me off on an insanity plea, which meant that I would be out in a few years, and back on the attack, writing about them, counseling people to guard against them.

Even killing them if I needed to.

So, they’d decided that Glenn Hollow was a threat to be eliminated.

But not me. I’d escaped. I sighed, closing my eyes, and whispered, “But not me. Thank God, not me.”

I saw a shadow fall on the newspaper on my lap. I glanced up to see my fellow patient Jack staring down at me.

“Sorry, got the chair first today,” I told him, still distracted by the stunning understanding. “Tomorrow…”

But my voice faded as I looked into his face.

The eyes…the eyes.

No!

I gasped and started to rise, shouting for a guard, but before I could get to my feet, Jack was on me, “My chair, you took my chair, you took it, you took it!..”

But then, as the razor-sharp end of the spoon he clutched slammed into my chest again and again, it seemed that the madman began to whisper something different. My vision going, my hearing fading, I thought perhaps the words slipping from these dry lips were, “Yes you, yes you, yes you…”