Dr Benjamin Attlee is being escorted into court to be charged with the murder

of one of his patients. His constant trash-talking to his long-suffering guards betrays

his sense of intellectual superiority, and when an assailant leaps out of the

crowd and punches Attlee in the face we can't help but feel a sense of satisfaction. 

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Once in court, Attlee starts to confront the Judge with the same arrogance he

showed towards the guards, but this time he is up against his intellectual equal.

Judge Macy Collins is a sharp-speaking, hard-edged woman who is just as

comfortable throwing Latin phrases around as Attlee, and when she finally shuts

him down his frustration is almost beyond his control. 

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                                                                                                                           While the Judge consults with the lawyers, Attlee is left to look at the                                                                                                                             photographs of his alleged victim, Esterline, and it brings back                                                                                                                                           memories of a therapy session with the girl. Watching this we realize                                                                                                                               that, despite all his flaws, Attlee is actually a brilliant psychiatrist, and                                                                                                                               we learn that Esterline's psychiatric issues are due in large part to the                                                                                                                               actions of her birth mother - a woman who adopted her out at a                                                                                                                                       young age.

 

                                                                                                                          When we return to court, Attlee seems intent on forcing the Judge to                                                                                                                            reveal a secret she has long kept hidden: to take her place at Duke                                                                                                                                    University she adopted out her young daughter. "Being a single mother was a little too Kentucky for Duke, " he says and the shocked Judge's fury is stunned into silence by his next revelation. Dr. Attlee is not in this court by accident. He contrived to get himself there, tracking down the mother of his patient, the girl that he's accused of murdering, a girl who had spent her childhood recovering from the effects of some kind of childhood abuse. As he speaks the Judge looks down at the trial paperwork, sees the victim's birth date, and finally realizes the awful truth. This girl was her daughter.

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As Attlee is taken out of court, shackled and dragged by his guards, he fixes his stare on the woman who is supposedly there to serve him justice. Yet in this moment, both realize who is actually there to serve justice on the other...

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The Poison of Grapefruit

Full Story

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A heavily-shackled prisoner is escorted down the hallway of a courthouse, his stoney-faced guards weathering the prisoner’s trash talk with commendable professionalism. Onlookers press themselves against the wall when they realize who’s passing, and when members of the Press catch up with the entourage, they pepper him with questions: “Why did you kill her, Attlee?”

 

Before the prisoner even gets to the courtroom, an assailant leaps at him and pummels him mercilessly, until police drag the prisoner away.

 

A battered Dr Benjamin Attlee finally appears before a judge, and we quickly realize why he is so reviled. Not only is he accused of killing one of his own patients - a seventeen year old girl in a comatose state - but he treats everyone he meets with withering contempt. As soon as Judge Collins starts outlining the case, Attlee confronts her and insists that he be allowed to address the court or, at the very least, have a private meeting in the Judge’s office. Before the proceedings have officially started, Judge Collins is already exasperated, and threatens to cite Attlee for contempt of court.

 

When the trial finally gets underway, the tragic facts of the case become clear. As a high-flying psychiatrist, Attlee had been flown down to Beaufort, South Carolina, to work with Esterline Dray, a girl who had been unable to communicate with anyone for the last ten years. Within days of having arrived, Attlee announces that Esterline is now talking, although only to him, and only in private. To say that the townsfolk are skeptical would be an understatement. The precocious young doctor already has a reputation for being an obnoxious snob, and it doesn’t seem a stretch to believe he’s also a self-aggrandizing liar.

 

The only stand-out is Sheriff Dray, Esterline’s father, who encourages the community to keep their guest feeling welcomed in the town. Sheriff Dray is the polar opposite of Attlee. Charismatic, gregarious, and universally respected, the Sheriff has a particular interest in keeping Attlee embedded within the Beaufort community: Attlee has been appointed by the courts to treat his daughter, and the Sheriff is becoming  concerned about the amount of time that the psychiatrist is spending alone with Esterline at his cabin in the woods.

 

And then, one night, everything changes. Through courtroom testimony and flashbacks, we join Sheriff Dray as he races down a forest road. The Sheriff has been alerted to an incident at Attlee’s cabin, where his daughter is undergoing ‘intense therapy’. When the Sheriff arrives he hears a gunshot and, by the time he gets upstairs, the Sheriff finds his daughter lying on Attlee’s bed with a bullet-hole in her forehead. Attlee has disappeared into the woods, and as soon as backup arrives a massive search is initiated. But it is too late: Attlee has disappeared, and Esterline is dead.

 

Through his grief, the Sheriff throws himself into the manhunt, earning the respect of his colleagues and the national press for his dedication to the mission. But as the days turn into weeks, the trail goes cold, and the Sheriff’s frustration spills over into some some testy exchanges with his colleagues. It doesn’t help that the media are giving the search blanket coverage, and we periodically cut away to salacious news reports that analyze every false lead, and turn Benjamin Attlee into an almost mythical presence.

 

Meanwhile, Attlee has gotten himself to the mountains of Tennessee, and he holes up for a few days in an empty holiday home. Finally with access to the Internet, Attlee reads accounts of the manhunt, and of Esterline’s killing. Photos of of the teenage girl take his mind back to the sessions he spent with her, and through flashbacks we see Esterline’s break-though session, where she speaks for the first time. The simple act of cutting fruit prompts Attlee to describe a strange, poisonous side-effect of eating grapefruit. Without warning, Esterline asks, “Why?”

 

Over the following days, Esterline begins to talk, revealing that she has had an imaginary companion for all these years: her birth mother. Although such ‘ghost companions’ are apparently common in comatose patients, Esterline’s is particularly striking - not least because her companion is chosen from so early in her childhood, before she was adopted by the Sheriff and his wife. Most significantly, she makes Attlee promise that he’ll help Esterline find her birth mother again, and tell her what happened to her lost daughter.

 

But what did happen to Esterline? Her speech is sporadic and unclear, but it emerges that Esterline was hurt by someone close to her. Whatever the nature of this abuse was, it was severe enough to make Esterline withdraw from her body, close down her mind, and sink into a state of Catatonic Schizophrenia.
 

Back in the vacation home, Attlee renews his vow to Esterline: he will find Esterline’s birth mother, and tell her what happened to the daughter she gave away. His final promise to Esterline had been a rare moment of human connection for Attlee, and it now becomes his mission to live it out. Just as Attlee prepares to embark on his quest, armed with information gleaned from the computer, there is the sound of a key in the door. The home’s owners have turned up.

 

The conversation between the three takes compelling and unpredictable turns. The Floyds are an interesting couple in their own right; both doctors, both intuitively smart, and with an appetite for mischief. At first, Attlee’s excuse for being in their holiday home seems plausible, but the Floyds become increasingly suspicious about the intruder’s story. They gradually realize who the intruder actually is, although far from being frightened by their predicament, the Floyds seem to relish the real-life campfire story they find themselves in. Deciding to call the police, the Floyds make an oddly sporting gesture, agreeing to give Attlee a fifteen minute head-start before they make the call.   

 

Now the police have a confirmed sighting, they throw huge resources into the area. But Attlee proves to be an oddly resourceful quarry, and the psychiatrist’s skills at reading human nature allow him to navigate through the middle of the very people who are trying to capture him.

 

Attlee now has a destination in mind, and as he approaches Warren County, Kentucky - the home of Esterline’s birth mother - he makes increasingly desperate moves to avoid capture as the police close in on him. He must get to Warren County before being arrested, and his final sprint for the border is one of fierce desperation and mind-numbing audacity.

 

Finally Attlee makes it across the County line, where he is instantly arrested by local officers. Far from being frustrated by his situation, Attlee seems content to be taken into custody, and awaits a hearing before the local magistrate.

 

We return to the court hearing where we’d left it, and now Attlee’s supervisor is on the stand. The state prosecutor fully expects to force an apology from him - after all, this is the man who allowed Attlee to take Esterline away to the cabin where she was killed - but far from being apologetic, Attlee’s supervisor takes credit for telling Attlee to remove Esterline from her home. In a dramatic confrontation, the witness accuses Sheriff Dray of abusing his own daughter. The courtroom erupts in shock, and Sheriff Dray appears blindsided by the allegation. But from this point on, the Sheriff is fighting a changing tide of public opinion, as more and more evidence mounts against him.

 

Most dramatic among this evidence is the tape recording of a conversation between Attlee and the Sheriff. As happens periodically in The Poison of Grapefruit, we revisit a conversation we saw earlier, but armed with fresh knowledge, and focusing on dialogue that had earlier been in the background. We now see that Sheriff Dray was actually trying to bribe Dr Attlee to be quiet about Esterine’s revelations, and when the recording of his sordid offer is played in court, it is clear that it’s all over for Sheriff Dray.

 

We revisit the night of Esterline’s death. The Sheriff is driving fast towards Attlee’s house, as he was when we saw this scene earlier. But now we see the Sheriff take his daughter at gunpoint to Attlee’s bedroom. We see Attlee’s stunned reaction as he wakes up to the sight of Esterline standing in the moonlight, petrified. The Sheriff taunts Attlee, and Esterline gets increasingly agitated, building into a scream that pierces the forest night. In a final desperate act of vengeance, Esterline charges at her father, the Sheriff instinctively pulls the trigger, and Esterline is hit in the forehead. She dies, lying on Attlee’s bed, as the two men stare at her, helpless.

 

Realizing he is about to be framed for the killing, Attlee escapes into the forest. Sheriff Dray desperately searches through Attlee’s notes for potentially incriminating evidence, and once the backup officers arrive, the Sheriff initiates a manhunt that seems more intent on killing Attlee than capturing him. We now understand that the Sheriff’s passion in hunting down Attlee is primarily fuelled by the fear of seeing Attlee tell his own account of events.

 

In the midst of this intense scrutiny, the Sheriff leaves court unexpectedly and returns to his grotty motel room on the outskirts of town. Watching his reputation being torn to shreds on the TV, the Sheriff slowly takes off his tie and fixes it to an overhead pipe. He ties a noose and, taking one last look at the tawdry squalor where his life has ended up, he puts his head through the noose and kicks away the stool.

 

There is little for the prosecuting attorney to do at this point except try to throw whatever he can at Benjamin Attlee, and hope something sticks. But now we see Attlee’s quick mind and sharp tongue being used for a positive purpose. Unleashing a blitzkrieg of arguments and counterpunches that leaves the prosecuting attorney reeling, Attlee sets a series of rhetorical traps. And the prosecuting attorney walks right into them. In desperation, he asks:

 

“Dr Attlee, why didn’t you just turn yourself in, and tell the police all this back in Beaufort?”

 

Because I had to see someone first, he tells them. I made a promise to Esterline to tell her birth mother what happened to her daughter, and to do that I had to be here. In Warren County. In court.

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Although the attorney is bemused by this strange answer, there is one person in the room who suddenly realizes the implication. Judge Collins turns to face the witness, and now, for the first time since their initial confrontation, he turns to face her. Yes, your Honor. Esterline was your daughter.

 

The courtroom is stunned into silence. Both attorneys sit in dumb shock as Attlee explains the long, hard road that brought them to this moment. It is almost too much for the Judge to bear, who now realizes that this whole hearing was Attlee’s way of fulfilling his promise to Esterline - when Attlee found out that Esterline’s birth mother was a judge, he realized that the only way he could speak to her face to face was to be arrested within her county. He had kept his promise, and now would accept the consequences of the law.

 

The Judge recalls Attlee first being brought into court and asking if he could speak to the Judge in private; she asks if they can have that meeting now. Attlee agrees, and he is escorted to the Judge’s chambers.

 

At a press conference, the District Attorney announces that, in light of the evidence against Sheriff Dray, the charges against Attlee have been dropped. The Press crowd around Attlee as he walks from the court building, a free man. But Attlee is not interested in their questions. He gets into a waiting car and is driven away into a different world from the one he had known. A world that is no longer hunting him down, but that is strangely more dark and sinister than he’d ever realized.