The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club 6)

“Yes. In my opinion, Mr. Brinkley has schizoaffective disorder.”

“Could you tell us what that means?”

Friedman leaned back in his chair as he organized his response. Then he said, “Schizoaffective disorder is a thought, mood, and behavioral disorder that involves elements of paranoid schizophrenia. One can think of it as a kind of bipolar disorder.”

“ ‘Bipolar’ meaning ‘manic-depressive’?” Sherman asked.

“ ‘Bipolar’ in the sense that people with schizoaffective disorder have ups and downs, despair and depression — and hyperactivity or mania, but they can often manage their illness for a long time and more or less fit in on the fringes of society.”

“Would they hear voices, Dr. Friedman?”

“Yes, many do. That would be one of the schizoid aspects of this disease.”

“Threatening voices?”

“Yes.” Friedman smiled. “That would be the paranoia.”

“Did Mr. Brinkley tell you that he thought people on television were talking to him?”

“Yes. That’s also a fairly common symptom of schizoaffective disorder — an example of a break from reality. And the paranoia makes him think that the voices are aimed at him.”

“Could you explain what you mean when you refer to a ‘break from reality’?”

“Certainly. From the onset of Mr. Brinkley’s disease in his teens, there has always been a distortion in the way he thinks and acts, in how he expresses his emotions. Most important, in how he perceives reality. That’s the psychotic element — his inability to tell what is real from what is imagined.”

“Thank you, Dr. Friedman,” Sherman said. “Now bringing us up to the recent events that brought Mr. Brinkley to trial. What can you tell us about that?”

“With schizoaffective disorder, there is generally a precipitate that causes an increase in crazy behavior. In my judgment, that precipitate for Mr. Brinkley would have been when he got fired from his job. The loss of his routine, the subsequent eviction from his apartment, all of that would have exacerbated his illness.”

“I see. Dr. Friedman, did Mr. Brinkley tell you about the ferry

shooting?”

“Yes. I learned in our sessions that Mr. Brinkley hadn’t been on a boat since his sister died in a sailing accident when he was sixteen. On the day of the ferry incident, there was an additional precipitate. Mr. Brinkley saw a sailboat. And that triggered the event. In layman’s terms, that sent him over the edge. He couldn’t distinguish between illusion and reality.”

“Did Mr. Brinkley tell you that he was hearing voices on the ferry?”

“Yes. He said that they were telling him to kill. You have to understand that Fred has a fierce underlying anger about his sister’s death, and that manifested itself in this explosive rage.

“The people on the ferry weren’t real to him. They were only a backdrop to his delusions. The voices were his reality, and the only way he could stop them was to obey.”

“Dr. Friedman,” Sherman said, touching his upper lip with the tip of his forefinger, “can you state with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that when Mr. Brinkley obeyed those voices and shot the passengers on the ferry, he did not appreciate the difference between right and wrong?”

“Yes. Based on my interviews with Mr. Brinkley and my twenty years of experience working with the severely mentally impaired, it is my opinion that at the time of the shooting, Alfred Brinkley suffered from a mental disease or defect that prevented him from knowing right from wrong. I am absolutely convinced of it.”

Chapter 94

DAVID HALE PUSHED A NOTE over to Yuki — a cartoon drawing of a large bulldog with a spiked collar and drool dripping from its jowls. The voice balloon said, “Go get ’em.”

Yuki smiled, thought about Len Parisi taking a wide-legged stance in the middle of this oaken courtroom and shredding Mickey Sherman’s hired shrink to ribbons.

She drew a circle around the cartoon, underscored it. Then she stood, speaking before she reached the podium.

“Dr. Friedman, you’re quite well known as an expert witness, isn’t that right?”

Friedman said that he was and that he’d testified for both prosecution and defense teams over the past nine years.

“In this case, the defense hired you?”