Stories: All-New Tales

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 MalevolentEmotional ENERGY Incorporated into PsychesBy 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.