BY REASON OF INSANITY by Edward L. Woodyard

By Reason of Insanity Chapter Sixty-Nine

Most of the police activity was waning when Willie drove his Jeep past news crews and gawkers at the end of the driveway. He was still in a bathing suit and tee shirt.

"Hey, Dad. I got Mom's text. What's up?"

"The sun. Sky. Clouds."

"Lame, Dad."

"What's up with you, Willie?"

"Sirens. Cops. Flashing lights. . ." he said, scanning the end of the driveway.

"And they're not in my head anymore," I assured him.

"So, I guess things are back to normal around here."

To which Mara said, "Depends on your definition of normal."

Willie looked at me and smiled, "Nothing with poodles and little bows in their hair."

Mara didn't get the reference. She changed the subject, "So, how was your weekend?"

"I think I want to go to med school."

I was quite surprised by his statement, asking "What specialty? Psychiatry?"

"Obstetrics. Maternity wards are always filled with flowers and balloons and lots of happy people."

Mara instantly agreed, "Good idea! Leave your mind alone."

I concurred, "You turned out to be well-adjusted. Your mother did all right."

"You both did the best you could."

"There's no such thing as a perfect parent," I added.

Willie then confessed, "Know the best thing you two did as parents? You didn't get divorced."

I could only answer, "Divorce is easy. Marriage is hard."

Mara nodded her head, "I'll say. Men expect things they never ask for."

Willie and I rolled our eyes at each other. Suddenly, he threw his arms around me. "Welcome back, Dad. I missed you."

I hugged my son and saw Mara wipe a tear from her cheek. Stuart, Cameron and Barbara enjoyed the reunion of the Holliman Trinity.

Phyllis consulted her Fitbit and started jogging down the driveway. "No pain. No gain."

She was going to run down Kenter to San Vicente where she'd join hundreds of other joggers who thought that death was merely an alternative lifestyle; however, I envisioned Phyllis, being as large and as zaftig as she was, jogging with a yellow "Oversize Load" banner across her chest and preceded by a small car with an amber signal light on its roof.

When Phyllis began her run, I caught something in my line of sight beyond the hillside toward Kenter. It was a red BMW coupe. It must have belonged to Geoffrey Landis. I later learned that he had owned three of them: one he drove, one he sold to Barbara Gould the prior week, and one he got for Elaine Bishop long before that.

That wasn't the only thing that I later learned; our quick theories about Geoffrey Landis' motivations had been wrong. We didn't yet know all the facts, but we eventually would: Geoffrey Landis did not act alone.

The information we got would be sporadic and piecemeal about what happened since the LAPD withheld reports and evidence from Cameron Whitaker who had tried to access their documents before any case was filed. Even with the help of a detective he hired, Cam found the information sketchy. In short, we would later learn, Geoffrey Landis and Elaine Bishop were in league to get something which each other wanted, and then to set the blame for both of their actions squarely on Barbara Gould.

Both Geoffrey Landis and Elaine Bishop were tabloid fodder and each had been invited to participate in a charity event held months earlier in L.A. that promoted "gorilla welfare," a clever conversion of the term guerilla warfare. The gorilla guerilla group sought publicity to protect silverback gorillas in the wilds of Africa. Geoffrey Landis was revving up his publicity machine in his lawsuit against his step-mother, the Merry Widow, so he wanted to be seen – as did Elaine who was seeking her own identity beyond being the punk girlfriend of a famous rock star. They either drank too much, smoked too much, snorted too much (or all three) at the event and began an affair that night, the post-coital pillow talk eventually revealing secrets which would advance each's personal purposes. It confirmed a tenet of mine that no one does anything from which he or she doesn't benefit in some shape or form.

At that time, which was prior to the trial, Landis was losing confidence in his attorney Hilary Albertini, so he sought an excuse if the trial did not go his way or a verdict wasn't in his favor. At the same time, Elaine sought revenge against Duke Grissom for his dalliance with a more svelte and appealing college student named Denise.

Having seen the witness list provided by the defense and learning from Elaine that Duke was a patient of the primary expert witness against him, me, Geoffrey Landis set a plot in motion. First intended as an insurance policy, the Landis-Bishop conspiracy was essentially simple, as we had correctly deduced earlier when we stood in the driveway: if Geoffrey Landis lost his case and had to appeal, he had to discredit me as the primary expert witness against him in order for the appeal to have a chance at overturning any possible judgment against him. How to do that? Make the forensic psychiatrist crazy, thus invalidating my prior testimony. How to do that? Have a patient of mine commit suicide.

As Barbara had suggested, they perceived that patient suicides would be the utmost failure of therapists who would then succumb to unbearable guilt and shame, thus driving them to the nearest psych ward and providing Landis with prima facie evidence of incompetence to disavow any harmful testimony on my part and thus overturn any unfavorable judgment. At the same time, Elaine Bishop feared losing her power of attorney to oversee millions of dollars at her ready disposal through her relationship with the philandering and cheating Duke Grissom. Her solution was to make Duke's murder appear to be a suicide and then blame it on someone else.

Irony and fate intervened when Geoffrey Landis was following me and saw Barbara Gould collapse in the parking lot of the Out 'N Inn off of Barrington. Extensive background research into both Barbara and me gave them ample opportunities. Landis bankrolled the three red BMW coupes they'd need, he and Elaine alternating duties to follow me so to effectively create a paranoia at both seeing the car everywhere on the road – and then enhance it by my seeing scepters and apparitions dressed in black everywhere at my home and office.

I was almost able to Humpty-Dumpty all the plot pieces together, but the nicely wrapped package of the lost sunscreen delivered to my house had me confused. Elaine later admitted to being at the beach and paying the beachcomber for the sunscreen which he found in the sand where we'd been sitting. The volleyball player had inadvertently buried it when he stepped on the towel to retrieve the out-of-bounds ball. She also admitted that she injected Duke with all those drugs but said that it was Landis who dropped him off at the hospital emergency room and gave him the Ruger. However, when Duke didn't shoot himself in the entrance to the ER, it was Elaine who suffocated Duke with the Galahad clear plastic bag – which was again serendipitous when they found out through hacking the hospital's records that it was the same method with the same bag that my twin brother had used. They thought their skill and luck had made them winners at this game.

Not. 

Kōan as vengeful karma.

Elaine also admitted to pushing the lounge chair into the pool while Landis distracted me by shaking the bushes. They were confident at that point, but when I started getting better, they both feared that I would ruin their plans, so Landis decided that he had to terrorize Mara and me inside the house in order for me to dive into the abyss and be committed. However, Barbara showed up and the rest, as they say. . .

I will admit, however, that stabbing someone for the first time did not bother me as much as I thought it should. It was like testing a thick sirloin on the grill with a fork to see if it was done. Even with my adrenaline roaring at Mach 1, I knew that protecting my family and defending others and myself would not make me doubt any of my actions.

I had to do what I had to do; it was that simple.

No guilt. No remorse. I will never allow myself to be a victim.

Elaine Bishop was arrested on murder charges later that morning.