My name is CB Green, and I’m color-blind. My
friends think I live in a strange, featureless world of black and white and
gray, dark and uninteresting. Mostly they’re wrong, but in one sense they’re
not so far off the mark. Strip out the noise of color, and the world is less
confusing, less wonderful. Less is always simpler, so I’m one of those guys
who doesn’t complicate things. Still, there are things so complicated they
make my head hurt. Bob Jackson, he’s one of those, though I’m sure to him
his life couldn’t be simpler.
How to explain? Well first, there’s us, the
normal people. We live our lives in the first person. Everybody else we know is constructed in our first person heads from what our eyes and ears
tell us. No one knows what any other person thinks about
anything. I sit across from my friends, I have no idea what they’re thinking,
how they’re thinking, or for that matter, even if they’re thinking. Maybe it’s
all some elaborate show staged to fool me. But no playwright, no matter how
devious, no matter how god-like, could have invented Bob Jackson.
I met Bob Jackson ten years ago in San
Francisco, in my pre-detective life. Bob is black, but he's never mentioned
it, since it isn’t his defining characteristic. Those who remember the
football player, Bo Jackson, can it be that long ago, well, they knew him to
say, "Bo doesn’t like that," or, "That’s not Bo’s way," or, "Bo runs to
daylight," but he was just substituting Bo for I. It’s called illeism. It’s
odd, but only a trick of speech.
Not Bob. Bob lives the present tense
in the first person, but his past tense life, that’s a third person event. If
Bob was writing an autobiography of his life, he’d use sentences like, "Bob,
he called his sister to discuss their mother’s new boyfriend." Bob can say
words like, "I’m going to the store," but an hour later it’s, "Bob, he went to
the store." And that doesn’t even start to describe it.
Sometimes I see a hint of it in celebrities.
Just the other day on television I saw some Billy Bob guy talking about his
wife, the love of his life, how he’d never been in love before. Then the Good
Morning America reporterette mentions the woman’s his fifth wife. I guess
the now-Billy Bob is the loving, sensitive guy, but the then-Billy Bob was
your typical rutting male, trading relationships for sex. But that’s
Hollywood, and I expect the story to play out the same for the sixth wife. Who
knows, maybe we all have a little third person in us. But nothing like Bob
Jackson.
Back when I first met him, I thought his
affliction was only a trait of speech, that illeism, or even that celebrity
thing, but it wasn’t long before I learned otherwise. In his head, Bob only
had the now. That’s not to say he didn’t have memories, because he did, but
some part of him said Bob-him, not Bob-me. Bob viewed this Bob-him as
someone he knew completely, but not intimately. I could ask Bob how he felt,
right then, and get a straight answer. I couldn’t ask him how he felt the day
before, because he didn’t know. Now-Bob didn’t have a yesterday, and then-Bob
was not the same man as now-Bob.
You think it confuses you? Ha! I was confused
from the first moment I got a handle on it. In fact, it was only once I
understood it that it got really confusing. Even now after all these years, I
can only grasp the outline of it, imagine its shape, but the reality eludes
me.
Bob and I share the same circle of friends,
that is, my friends are his. I’m pretty sure he didn’t have any other friends
since it’s almost impossible to get close to the guy, unless you first know
about his problem, and then take the time to get past it. I don’t know why I
took the time, but Bob intrigued me, and I really wanted to learn how his mind
worked. Well, I never found out, but somehow we became friends, the three of
us, me, now-Bob and then-Bob.
As you might guess, there are times when it can
be tough talking to Bob, even when you know him as well as I do. Imagine how
tough it was on the cops.
Bob called me in my office, mixing his now and
then, "CB, Bob’s in big trouble. I’m at the police station. Bob, you’ve got to
save him." No lawyer, just me, good friend of the first and third person.
On reflex, I called Denise Richards, queen
secretary for the lawyers of Whitman, Howard, Ormand, Masters and Edmonds, or,
as we in the know affectionately call them, WHO-ME. She said Walt Edmonds
would meet me at the station. I caught a cab downtown.
Detective Maureen McMartin, the most attractive
cop I know, collared me as I make my way to the interrogation room. We share a
good friend, homicide cop Dennis Doyle, and, to my disappointment, not much
else. She stood real close, craned her neck. She didn’t hide her irritation.
"Hey, Green, your friend there is running me around in circles."
I ignored her chagrin. "What are you holding
him for?"
She’s a good cop, good at maintaining the
assumption of innocence no matter what her brain tells her. "Suspicion of murdering his wife."
"Christa’s dead?"
She put some space between us. "Yes, shot in
the head, in the kitchen." She changed her voice to imitate Bob, and she
bobbed her head the way he does when he’s nervous. "Bob, he was at work,
alone."
I couldn’t help myself, I chuckled. "It’s the
way he talks."
She didn’t see the humor of it. "Well, it’s
confusing as all hell."
I shook my head. "You don’t know the half of
it, Detective."
She held up her hands, palms out. "Yeah, well I
can’t figure out what he’s saying."
"I can help. Let me talk to him."
She cocked her head and asked a question with
her light gray eyes.
"Hey, he doesn’t just talk that way.
Look, you sit in, just watch the show. Okay?"
There was the sound of hard heels on the tile
floor. She turned her head. "What about Edmonds there?" She doesn’t much care
for criminal lawyers, especially Walt.
Walt approached us wearing a practiced lawyerly
frown. I turned him around, said I was too quick on the trigger, that maybe it
wasn’t such an emergency after all. I told him I’d call if the status changed.
He wasn’t happy, but then it’s not my job to keep Walt happy.
"Okay, McMartin, let’s go and see Mr.
Jackson."
She started walking down the hall.
To her back, "I'll do the talking, don’t
interrupt."
She wasn’t happy either. I got over it.
We sat. I said, "Hi, Bob, the detective
say’s you’re giving her a tough time."
He pointed at me. "Bob, he just tells the
truth."
I said, "Bob, let’s start at the top." I looked
to McMartin, then back to Bob. "Tell me about Bob’s day."
Bob smiled, he finally had someone to talk to.
"Bob’s day was tough, CB, even before this. He was working real late, on the
new graphics, didn’t particularly want to go home to Christa. You know
she’s been crapping on Bob for a long time. Bob, he was getting ready
to leave."
I’d tell you how it was Bob ended up married
three years ago, but I haven’t figured it out myself. "Why did Bob stay around
so long?"
A look of skepticism settled on the pretty
detective’s face. She didn’t believe it. Bob was talking
about someone else. I recalled that first time I saw it for what it was. We
were playing poker, and Bob started to complain about how Bob played so badly,
lost all his money, the then-Bob, not the now-Bob. There seemed an at best tenuous connection between the two.
"Bob thought she would straighten up her act."
I knew Christa. "It wasn’t going to happen."
"Well, Bob, he’s not so bright maybe."
"Were Bob and Christa getting it on?"
He shook his head, but there was no
embarrassment, like it had nothing to do with him. "No, Christa wasn’t into
sex any more."
I needed to show the detective what we were
dealing with. "What do you think Christa was into?"
Now-Bob looked confused. "I don’t know --" a
pause, "-- directly that is."
That is where it always gets me, trying to
understand how the soon to be oblivious now-Bob assimilates life to construct
the third person then-Bob. I can’t imagine it, and, like I said, it makes my
head hurt.
I rephrased my question. "What did Bob think
Christa was into?"
"Bob, he thinks lesbians and drugs."
"Bob saw Christa using drugs?"
"No, Bob saw Christa selling drugs."
"What did Bob think of the lesbians?"
"Bob, he didn’t like it."
Then I asked the only question that mattered,
"Did Bob kill Christa?"
Matter-of-fact, "No, CB, Bob did not kill
Christa. Bob, he was at work."
"Anybody see Bob at work?"
I heard the detective let out a long breath. I
kept my eyes on Bob.
"Bob, he doesn’t think so. He used his key to
lock up when he left."
I stood up and walked the pretty detective out
of the room. I said, "I know you’d like it to your own satisfaction, but Bob
didn’t kill Christa."
Her head bobbed again, sarcasm dripped from her
words, "Right, you know that."
I steepled my fingers, pressed my lips to them,
then talked through them. "Listen Detective, we’re dealing with two people
here. I’ve been doing it a long time, I almost understand him. We got the
now-Bob, he’s the guy we’re talking to, then there’s the then-Bob, he’s the
guy everything more than ten minutes old happened to."
She ran her fingers through thick dark gray
hair I’m told is red. The wiry hair crackled with electricity. "You mean like
a split personality?"
"No." I paused. "Maybe. It’s like now-Bob is a
different guy. He doesn’t care much for then-Bob either."
Disbelief, "So how’s he function?"
"He works for a software company, does a lot of
now-stuff with then-knowledge. Not so tough. Anyway, he’s got a real special
knack with code, like something both Bobs can share. And he’s had the same
supervisor for twenty years. She asks the same question every day, ‘So, tell
me what Bob did?’ Now-Bob never lies about then-Bob’s progress. She and I, we
talk about it. It’s a beautiful thing."
The detective rubbed the disbelief from her
eyes. "Right."
I shrugged. "Now-Bob has no idea
what then-Bob thinks, really thinks, about anything. He knows nothing of
intent or motivation. He only knows then-Bob’s tone of voice, body language,
that sort of thing, like it was a character he saw in a movie, or a book he
read. Sure, he can draw conclusions about what then-Bob thought, but in
reality he doesn’t know that much more about what then-Bob thought than you or
I do."
Frustration marked the words, "So what am I
supposed to do?"
"Take a day, assume he didn’t do it, and see
where it leads you ..."
She shook her head.
"... unless you think more questions will clear
it up."
She sighed. "What do I tell the captain? He’ll
laugh me out of the office."
I couldn’t help her there. "I don’t know. Why
don’t you just wait for the evidence. You’re good at that. I’ll talk to Bob.
You can keep him for twenty-four hours. He’ll sign anything you need."
Begrudging, "I’ll give it a shot."
I smiled.
"But you only get one chance like this to put
my ass on the line, Green. If Bob, now-Bob, then-Bob, or any Bob killed his
wife, I’ll be toast."
"So blame me, Maureen."
"It’s McMartin, Detective McMartin to you, and,
for your information, it doesn’t work that way, Green." She didn’t much like
me using her first name, a little too familiar.
* * * * *
Detective McMartin called me at the office.
"Green, you better get Edmonds down here for your client. We’ve just booked
him for murder." No grays in her voice.
"Can I talk to Bob?"
I heard the hedging, "We’ve got a psychiatrist
set to talk to him, if it’s okay with Edmonds. And if Edmonds asks me nicely,
you can talk to him too."
I called Walt, then make my way to the police
station.
The detective took me to a little room off the
area where her cubicle was. There was a manila file on the corner of the
table. She didn’t look happy.
I was irritated too. "What, you couldn’t wait
one day?"
Her gray eyes blazed. "Yeah, right. I
said I’d wait for the evidence. Two hours and we had all we needed. I’m
sitting with the captain, telling him your story, when this file shows up."
She tapped the file.
I shrugged.
"How well do you know Mr. Jackson?"
I got one of those feeling I was about to learn
more, and I wasn’t going to like it. "I’ve known him for ten years."
"Did you know he hasn’t always been like
this?"
"No, but I guessed it. Can’t have made it
through high school or college like that."
Typical female incredulity, "You never asked
him?"
"No, I never got the right
opportunity."
She shook her head. "What is it with you men?
You know each other forever, and you don’t know a damn thing. Skin deep,
you’re all skin deep."
I needled her just because I could. "Problems
at home, Detective?" Fourteen year-old daughter, or her soon-to-be husband,
who knows, but no reason to take it out on me.
"Get off my case. It’s not me with the
problems." I’d struck home though. She rearranged her face. "Look, it says
here the man shot his first wife, eighteen years ago. They found him walking
the streets, didn’t know who he was, where he was. They found his car crunched
against a tree, and he’d banged up his head some. They took him to the
hospital, gave him a sedative. When he woke up, his entire past was third
person, like you said, then-Bob. His lawyers used it as a defense. He spent a
year in a loony bin. He got okayed to return to society, barely. His wife
wasn’t so lucky."
I was a little worried. "That
doesn’t prove anything about now."
McMartin frowned. "We found the gun in the
dumpster at the company where he works. It’s a secure
location."
I knew. I nodded.
"No prints on the gun or the bullets."
I waited her out.
"The gun was legal when he got it twenty years
ago. The file said he didn’t know where it went, lost it before his first wife
was killed."
"What does Bob say? Now."
She imitated him again, but there was a more
understanding feel to it. "Well, now-Bob said then-Bob bought the gun. Bob, he
didn’t know where the gun had gotten to."
"Let me guess."
She tapped the file. "No need to guess,
I got it all right here. It was faxed up from San Francisco. Very preliminary,
but eye-balling it, the bullet that killed his first wife, it’s markings match
the one we took out of Christa."
I had an empty feeling in the pit of my
stomach. "What’s Bob say?"
The girl was angry, but I couldn’t tell why.
"Which Bob? Anyway, who cares what Bob says. The evidence says he’s guilty."
"And?"
She pushed the file at me. "I’ve got one path
to follow."
I pulled the file to me. "And?"
She ran a short practical fingernail along
scarred light-gray lipstick. "I don’t believe in one path. It’s not good cop
work. You know that?"
She'd almost made a bad mistake once by
following one path. Now she was going to marry him. I nodded.
"Well, I’ve got my doubts, but ..."
I tapped my forefinger against my lips, waited.
"... the captain’s got a pipe up my butt for
even suggesting we go slow, what with all the evidence. You understand?"
She was speaking in grays, black and white
being a little too precipitous for such a cautious female. She was telling me,
case closed. It didn’t matter what she thought.
* * * * *
Walt asked, "You want me to sit in?"
I knew he didn’t want to. Sometimes a lawyer
can know too much, especially if his client is guilty. I shook my head. Walt
parked his two-hundred-and-sixty pounds at the bench outside the little
meeting room, across from the guard. He leafed through a stapled report.
Bob looked dejected. He nodded, but didn’t
offer his hand.
I got right to it. "Why don’t you tell me about
Bob’s past."
"Bob, he’s got a long history."
I let the vacuum between us work on him.
"And you never asked."
That’s right, I never asked. I was thinking the
detective had men pegged pretty well. Even then, I only cared about what I
needed. "Why don’t you start with the murder of your first wife, Betty."
Bob’s head rose and fell with the words. "Betty
was shot. They said Bob did it."
"Did Bob do it?"
He shook his head. "No, Bob, he didn’t do
it. If he did, I’d know."
"Tell me about it."
He was momentarily confused, then, "Bob, he
fell asleep at the wheel, hit a tree."
"And you’ve been like this ever since."
He frowned at the use of ‘you’.
My irritation bubbled over. "You know what I
mean, Bob, that’s when the third person Bob came into existence."
He raised his shoulders. "That’s what they tell
me. I just don’t see it."
I changed topics because I had to. "Tell me
about Bob’s first wife."
"Betty was a nice girl, but Bob, he had a
girlfriend, Candy Apple. She was really gone on him. Bob, he felt really bad
about it."
I hadn’t read about a girlfriend in the file.
"What happened to her?"
Bob seemed to look inside, at old memories.
"Bob, when he got out of the jail, he wouldn’t talk to her. He acted like he
didn’t know her." It is almost like now-Bob moment in the past tense.
"Why didn’t Bob tell the police about her?"
"By the time Bob remembered who she was, what
he’d done, he was already free."
"I don’t understand."
Bob explained a man he saw, but didn’t know.
"Bob, when he had the accident, he was all confused. The thoughts, his past,
it got put together in pieces. It took a long time to straighten it out. After
a while, Bob remembered everything."
"But not killing Betty?"
"No. Bob, he didn’t kill Betty."
"How come you kept the gun?"
"I don’t have the gun. Bob, he didn’t have it
either."
I thought about that. The cops, during their
interrogation, probably asked the same questions, might even have gotten the
same answers. The problem is believing. I believed. In fact, I never doubted.
It was all black and white to me. And that meant the gun followed Bob.
I got on the phone to a detective agency in San
Francisco and asked them to trace Candy Apple.
They got back to me the next day. They faxed me
a short report. It seemed Candy Apple entered a mental treatment facility in
San Ramon seventeen years ago. She was committed by her mother, Della. The
institution didn’t give them her file, so that was about the full scoop. Then,
seven years ago, Candy Apple hung herself in her room. The obituary said she
was survived by her mother.
The agency said the mother had remarried and
since divorced. Her new name was Crabbe. Della Crabbe, Bob’s supervisor for
twenty years. She’d brought him with her to Portland when she moved up from
the Bay area six years ago, two years after I got here.
Mine is a mean business, shaded in a noir-ish
black. Most of the people involved are bad guys, a few times none of them are.
I don’t know about then-Bob, or for that matter pre-then-Bob, maybe he wasn’t
a nice guy, but I can’t ever know enough to make that judgment. I knew Della,
though, and she was a nice woman. I thought she understood Bob, but then maybe
I just don’t understand people. Who knows what other people
think? Not me.
I talked to McMartin. The news made her happy,
and sad. She’s a woman, and she saw almost all sides of it from the git-go.
Men don’t do that.
Six hours later we were back in her cubicle,
waiting for Bob to process out. McMartin said Della confessed in the car on
the way to the station. Della told McMartin that her daughter, Candy, was scum. Somehow, over
the twenty years of being Bob’s boss, at least after the accident, Della came
to think of Bob as her child, disabled, needing her protection. When she
figured out her daughter killed Betty Jackson in a fit of obsessive jealousy,
she had her committed. She told the detective how her first husband stalked
her for years before cancer killed him, that she was a woman who understood
obsessions, and that Bob Jackson was the innocent victim of one. So she
developed an obsession of her own, she became his guardian angel. And she
killed Christa to save Bob. Who’d have thunk it.
The detective’s frown made me uneasy. "What’s
wrong?" I asked.
She had to push it out, "Bob got beat up by his
cell mate this morning."
"Is he okay?"
"No."
"What do you mean?"
"Then-Bob, he’s dead."
I knew exactly what she meant. Still, like an
idiot, I repeated myself. "What do you mean?"
"Bob doesn’t live in the third person anymore."
I took it in, rolled it around in my head.
"Maybe I should be happy for him?"
Like I said, she was a woman who saw all sides.
"I don’t know."
I saw her struggling with a idea. I waited.
"I got to like then-Bob, and now-Bob. They were
special."
I nodded. Again I knew what she meant.
I met Bob in the little waiting room. He was a
bit bruised around the eyes. He was straightening his tie. We shook hands. He
was a new guy, I saw it in his eyes. He was afraid, like all those stored up
third person memories might be reminders of what he hadn’t been, a picture
window on eighteen empty years.
Still, old habits died hard. Bob’s smile was
enigmatic. "Bob, he was innocent."
He didn’t seem all that happy about it.