Sudden Death - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,86
the question again. “How did you get to court today, Mr. Pollard?”
His voice is soft, his teeth clenched. “I drove.”
“Using the set of hand controls you described earlier?”
“Yes.” He has the look of a man being dragged closer and closer to a cliff. All the while his mind must be racing, trying to figure out if I can prove that he’s lying. If I can prove it, he’ll stop lying and try to lessen the damage. If I can’t, there’s no reason for him to stop.
“And that statement is as truthful as every other one you’ve made today?”
“Yes.”
I let him off the stand, asking that he remain in the court, subject to recall. Harrison grants the request, and Dylan doesn’t object. Dylan looks like he’s planning to follow Pollard over the cliff.
Pollard takes a seat near the back of the room, and I call Lester Mankiewicz, a client of Sam’s. Mankiewicz was a computer technician for the Ford Motor Company at their Mahwah, New Jersey, plant. He worked there for eleven years, installing and operating the computers that exist in every car made today.
Lester agreed to Sam’s request for help in this case because it sounded like fun, and Sam says there’s pretty much nothing that Lester won’t do for fun. I had explained to Lester that what he would be doing was technically illegal, but that I could guarantee that he would not be charged with a crime. Once I told him what we wanted him to do, I think he would have paid us for the opportunity.
I have a television and VCR brought into the courtroom and take Lester through his story. He and Sam taped every aspect of it, so his words are like televised voice-over.
“Last night at three A.M. I entered Bobby Pollard’s unlocked vehicle, which was parked on the street in front of his neighbor’s house. I installed a device that is technically a small computer chip but really operates like an alarm clock. In this case it was set to go off five minutes after the car was started.”
“What would happen when it went off?” I ask.
“It would disable the hand controls… neither the brakes nor gas would work, other than by using the foot pedals.”
He continues to describe the rest of the operation. He installed another device to measure pressure on the foot pedals, and both devices could be monitored at a remote location.
“Please take us through what happened when Mr. Pollard started driving,” I say.
His presentation is devastating. I expected that when the hand controls lost power, Pollard would be forced to use his legs to control and drive the car, secure that no one would ever know the difference, since he was alone. Amazingly, Pollard never used the hand controls at all, using the foot pedals the entire time. Every bit of this is measured by computer.
I let Lester off the stand and try to introduce copies of Pollard’s medical records. They show that he was in fact in an accident in Spain but that it was relatively minor. The accident left him paralyzed, but the attending physician found no medical explanation for it.
Dylan objects to the introduction of the medical records, on the grounds that there is no one in the court qualified to authenticate them. Harrison agrees, as I figured he would, and we don’t get to use them.
Next up is Carlotta Abbruzze, a shrink I went to for a while when my marriage was breaking up. I decided I didn’t want to be shrunk, and my marriage broke up, but Carlotta and I remained friends. She has more Ph.D.’s than anyone I know, and she is easily qualified to testify in this case.
I ask Carlotta to explain psychosomatic paralysis. In layman’s terms she explains that while there is no physical reason for it, the paralysis itself is real. She also describes how the human mind, if it leans toward such a syndrome, can be incredibly opportunistic. A minor car accident such as Pollard had could have triggered the immediate mental response to develop the syndrome.
“How long might it last?” I ask.
“Anywhere from a few minutes to a lifetime. When it disappears, the patient might intentionally continue to fake the paralysis, if it is providing some mental comfort for him.”
“Just hypothetically, if a young man whose entire life was dedicated to football came to believe that he was not good enough to make it in the NFL, might even that subconscious realization bring on the syndrome?”
“It’s certainly possible,” Carlotta