Free Mind Games by William Deverell Page A

them – their only intention was to help me. I was so offended by this patronizing that I snapped something to the effect that I didn’t need a unit from the medical Gestapo breathing down my neck.
    Irwin felt it necessary to reprimand me. “Now, now, Tim, accommodate these people, they’re doing a thankless job.”
    I decided to sit back and let them do their shtick, but just as Irwin was being called upon to describe his archaeological dig through my office, my cellphone rang. When I took the call, Schulter allowed himself a frown of impatience.
    On the other end of the line was Melissa Leung, a legal aid lawyer. She urgently required my services in Provincial Court to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice. A seemingly sane man was about to be thrown into a mental institution by an alcoholic judge.
    “Give me fifteen minutes.” I rose. “Gentlemen, I’m sorry, I have an emergency. Please carry on without me.”
    I remembered to grab my helmet as I left. I heard no protests, though in the sullen faces of the panel I could read the suspicion that I’d prearranged my emergency. I learned later that Schulter recessed the hearing for several weeks – he is a patient hunter, and will stay in the chase.
    The Provincial Courts were about two klicks away, on seedy lower Main. The quick route to the Downtown East Side is over the Cambie Bridge, swooping around the behemoth that is B.C. Place Stadium, gliding downhill past Pigeon Park, where the homeless huddle on benches, then quickly to Cordova and Main, skid row, to the fortresslike bunker that houses our criminal courts.
    The miscarriage of justice was in recess as I entered the court. Melissa Leung, a short-haired waif not turned thirty, was at a table struggling through a ten-pound medical text.
    “I’m lost somewhere between catatonic immobility and inappropriate affect.”
    Those terms had been used in evidence by Dr. Endicott Sloan, a trencherman to the Crown who bills for three or four opinions a day. He was in the gallery, looking uncomfortable at my unexpected presence, as he awaited cross-examination.
    Melissa’s client, a street person in his fifties, was charged with assault, though witnesses said he was defending himself from bullies. Sloan had typed him as schizophrenic, therefore unfit to stand trial. Were his opinion to hold, the accused, despite a compelling defence, could find himself lost forever in the bowels of Riverview, his trial held in abeyance until, if ever, he’s pronounced cured.
    Melissa looked weary. “I just walked in on this today. They wouldn’t give him legal aid and I felt sorry for him. We can’t pay you anything, he’s just a drifter.”
    “No problem.”
    “He can’t seem to respond to anyone. I had fifteen minutes with him, and he refused to say a word. Maybe he’s not too aware of what’s going on around him, and maybe he’s slow – but I don’t think he’s crazy.”
    Harvey Bigelow, a pink-nosed judge whose career has stopped giving meaning, is never one to doubt the word of Crown experts, and was reluctant to let me see the alleged offender. “I’m anxious to get on with this.” Meting out justice was interfering with his more liquid activities.
    But I was permitted a few minutes with the accused, in the courtroom. This gentle giant, as he shambled in, seemed about as catatonic as Dr. Sloan. He was confused, though, and it took me a few minutes to determine his real difficulty – he was both hearing and speech disabled, and when presented with a writing pad could only crookedly write his name. But he responded eagerly to my hand signals, knew some rudimentary sign language, and showed no signs of illness beyond a below-median intelligence – and given that he’d survived so long on the street I wasn’t sure of that.
    Sloan, watching, must have realized his error. He is one of those doctors who lard their scripts with jargon: any inappropriate ornate phrase will do. But I avoided embarrassing him, and after