The Best Defense (11 page)

The clippings were three times as long as the grass they would surely smother. She regarded the geranium sourly; she had thought that being in a pot brought protection.

Each time the phone rang, willing it to be her father 91 on the line, she ran to her office to listen to her own message, and the caller’s message. Nothing.

Thursday. She considered answering a few letters, and put them aside. She filed her fingernails; if she was going to do weeding, it seemed best to start with them short. The dandelions out back had turned into ephemeral, glistening puffs. The phone rang twice; one time the caller hung up as soon as her machine came on, the next time it was Sears wanting to know if she could use a credit card. She took out the garbage, and at one-fifteen she left for Martin’s restaurant.

Again, there were only two drop-in clients, whom she dispatched quickly. She had wondered if business would slow down in the summer. Then Lucille came in to report.

Paula never heard of that guy, Royce whatever, and her lawyer said she could talk with anyone she wanted to, but probably she shouldn’t discuss her case with them. Lucille seemed disappointed when Barbara said there was nothing else for her to do.

She was chatting with Martin at three-thirty, thinking of going on home since it appeared that no one else was coming by. She had to transfer money from savings to checking, she thought distantly, half-listening to Martin talk about a new dish he was experimenting with. He left to answer the telephone and she gathered her things together.

“For you,” he said from a little table that held a cash register, the telephone, and a calculator. He put the receiver down, waved, and vanished into the kitchen.

She crossed the room, picked up the telephone, and said hello.

“Gallead. Listen, bitch, and listen good because I don’t intend to repeat myself. You try to connect me with that Kennerman case and I’ll come after you.” The phone clicked.

Well, she thought almost absently, that’s how he pronounced it: Gulee-ed. Although her movements were slow, somewhat dreamlike, as she returned to her table and finished packing up, her heart was hammering.

She walked home slowly, deep in thought. That call was not what she had expected, she admitted. Royce Gallead had been far from her mind. What she had thought might happen was another diatribe in the Mon day edition of Dodgson’s paper, with enough said to let her know he had been informed of her continuing prying But not this. And Gallead had called her at Mar tin’s; he had known where to reach her, when. Possibly he had been the caller earlier who had hung up without speaking, taking no chances of having his call taped.

At home, she stood, with her hand above the tele phone. More than anything right now, she wanted to talk to her father, but he had to call her. What if he had been really wounded? Offended? What if he had his stubborn mode in full gear? He might never call. He could well have gone back out to the country house in tending to stay there for a week, a month. She bit her lip and turned away from the phone. He had to call her.

Then she picked up her purse and left again, this time heading for the courthouse records room. Forty minutes later she knew a little more about Royce Gallead, knew that he had a gun shop on Coburg Road, and that he had the range out on Spring Bay Road, and that he had acquired the land nine years ago from Richard Dodgson.

She looked up Richard Dodgson and found that he had bought the acreage from Grace Canby thirteen years earlier, and that the deed had a covenant attached, a stipulation that he not develop, sell, or fence the lower meadow.

She was forced to leave then because the courthouse was closing shop for the day. More thoughtfully than ever, she got in her car and sat for several minutes trying to make sense of it.

Canby, Dodgson, Gallead. An unlikely trio. A more-than-benevolent benefactress who had turned over a valuable piece of property for the use of women who were hiding from a world they no longer could cope with. Dodgson, a bigot, a zealot, a misogynist, a liar, a man who claimed to be a born-again Christian and exuded hatred with every stroke of the pen. And Gallead?

All she knew about him was that he was menacing, arrogant, and apparently fancied himself a Lothario. An unlikely trio, she repeated as she started to drive.

That evening she made herself a sandwich for dinner, and then, feeling guilty about the diet she was too lazy to correct, she boiled an egg to go with it. The egg overcooked and was leathery. She ate it anyway.

All through the scratch meal, off and on until she went to bed, she mulled over her next move. She had few options. She had about two hundred in her checking account and twenty-one thousand in the savings account her father claimed she was spending down to nothing on purpose. She had not denied it, or admitted it either, but she was going through it. And so little came in that she figured in two years she would have exactly zilch.

“You act like it’s dirty money!” Frank had stormed at her.

“It’s not. You earned it, every penny.

And you saved a life.”

And lost two, she had added silently.

Her father could be altogether too perceptive, she thought as she wandered aimlessly about her small house. Dirty money. So why was she working like the devil on a case that wasn’t even hers? Again, Frank had been partly right: Dodgson had got her back up, had made her as furious as she had been in years. But it wasn’t only that. She thought of Paula Kennerman driven to a suicide attempt by her grief, or possibly her guilt. Whatever she had done, or had not done, she deserved a fair trial, and would not get it from any public defender as long as Bill Spassero was around.

And finally, she had been discredited in the eyes of Judge Paltz; what integrity she possessed had been destroyed as far as he was concerned. For years she had claimed, and believed, that she didn’t care what people thought about her. What most people thought about her, she now amended. She cared what Judge Paltz thought because to her he represented what was decent in the system: He was a good judge; he cared about the law, about the rights of the people brought before him, about the people themselves. It mattered more than she had known, until now, that he not consider her to be dishonorable.

And she couldn’t go to him with the yes he did, no I didn’t bickering of children.

To regain credibility she had to be able to demonstrate that Spassero had betrayed the trust placed in him by his appointment as Paula Kennerman’s attorney. And to do that she had to find answers to the mystery of why Dodgson was involved, why his son was involved, why Gallead was involved.

She couldn’t do it alone, she knew. There was too much. She needed Bailey Novell, who was the best private investigator on the coast and was not cheap. She needed a law clerk, and secretarial help, an office

to op m crate from, to have people come to. She needed the backing of a rich law firm that could absorb the costs if it turned out there would be no compensation.

And if he said no and couldn’t be budged? She had no answer.

Friday. By eight-thirty Barbara was showered, breakfasted, and restless. She had not yet dressed, but was wearing a short duster and was barefoot, trying to decide.

Skirt and blouse? Jeans? Shorts? To the coast, or the backyard and do some weeding? The courthouse?

The library? Too soon, she knew. The questions that needed answers were not yet formed in her head. Visit Paula? Wash windows, clean the stove, wax the kitchen floor … ?

Bessie, she decided finally. He had told her he never got to the office before one or two in the afternoon; she could use his space, read his newspapers all she wanted before that. She dressed and went downtown. Before, she had concentrated on the Dodgson articles that followed the April murder of Lori Kennerman, and the destruction of the Canby Ranch dwelling. This time, when she arrived at Bessie’s office, she decided to read all the Dodgson papers he had, six months of newspapers.

January: a long hate piece about the paganization of Christmas, the most sacred day of the year. Paganization?

Barbara mouthed the word and continued to read.

A long piece about the Brady bill and who really was behind it—the satanic hordes who were desperate to disarm the country and seize control. Registration of guns was their first step, it claimed. There were letters to the editor: “Dear Rich, Right on! Thank God we have someone telling it like it is. Keep up the good work. Rich!” And on the back page there was a list of the abortion clinics to be targeted in the coming month, complete with dates and addresses.

The next week had a list of the new books to be included in an ongoing campaign to clean up the school libraries. The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss. All fairy tales. Anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons, anything to do with magic in any form…. The headline of the article was in large black type: kids minds at risk!

“Have you checked out your library? If you haven’t looked over the books your children are reading, it is your duty to do so immediately. Witchcraft, satanism, homosexuality, feminism, socialism and even communism are the messages the New York elite is feeding your child! Send a stamped self-addressed envelope for the complete list of banned books.”

Barbara frowned more intently at one of the articles on the hidden agenda of feminists: “How long since you heard anything about the ERA? Remember? Equal Rights Amendment. That’s all they talked about a few years back. Sounds okay, doesn’t it, but why have they dropped it? Recently discovered documents from the secret files of NOW lay it out there on the line. First, feminization of the male. Make him feel guilty about not doing a share of women’s work—house-cleaning, babysitting, cooking. Then, take over his jobs. Women in the armed forces, in the police forces, doctors, lawyers, politicians, in construction. You name it, they’ve got quotas. And they’ve got the money to back up their demands, to buy a senator here, a representative there, ads, slanted news stories, television, books, magazines, they control them all, or are working at getting control. And the final goal they are pressing for? Complete emasculation of the American male. A revolution without guns. A takeover of the entire American economy and government. Equal rights? Forget it. Absolute power is the ultimate goal. The American male is in a war for his life, and the sap doesn’t even know war was declared.”

Barbara left the table and walked to the window. Was he insane? A paranoid psychotic? She shivered, more afraid of insanity than almost anything else she could think of. Reluctantly she returned to the same issue of the paper, which seemed to be entirely about women.

The following article claimed that women who took the “so-called ‘morning-after pill ” were at grave risk.

Sixty percent of them required medical treatment for six months or longer; thirty percent required hospitalization.

Fifty percent required therapy that was without end. Fifteen percent attempted suicide.

“God is speaking to those women who have murdered their babies.

He is passing judgment on them, and they refuse to hear His words. What they are guilty of is murder. They pay a penalty under God’s judgment.”

Another article was about the French abortifacient, RU-486. Here the “statistics” bore on heart attacks, liver problems, kidney failure, death, and madness.

“Feminists are clamoring for this deadly weapon of death. They must be stopped. Call your representative, your senator.

Call today! Call the White House. Write to the drug manufacturers. You and only you can stop this newest threat to the human race. Don’t let them introduce yet another way to kill our children and destroy the health of our women!”

Barbara found herself wiping her hands on a tissue, and realized there

was a pile of such tissues at her el 9 bow. Not good enough, she thought then; what she needed was a thorough scrub-down after handling these newspapers.

She continued to read, and suddenly stopped in mid-sentence and went back to the beginning of this diatribe.

“All over the country so-called “Safe Houses’ are springing up. Women are luring women away from their husbands, away from their responsibilities, away from their children in some cases. In other cases, women are stealing the children away from their fathers. Kidnapping children.” Then the tone changed, Barbara realized. The article continued: “A vast under ground network has grown, maintained by ‘sisters’ for ‘sisters,” funded by ‘sisters’ for ‘sisters,” as secret as the vast underground railway system that operated during the Civil War, when otherwise law-abiding citizens be came criminals and aided and abetted the escape of slaves from their legal owners. This is a nation of law, a nation that lives under the law of the land, and it is a criminal activity to kidnap a child, even if the perpetrator is the mother of that child. It is criminal activity to deny the visitation rights of the father. The child has no recourse under the law because that child is hidden away, is silenced, while the band of ‘sisters’ strives to indoctrinate a new member into their ranks.”

It changed again here, back to what Barbara thought of as Rich’s style: “What can you do? Be alert! Maybe there’s a so-called “Safe House’ on your street. May be there’s a little kid who wants his daddy, not a bunch of witches and pagans all around. Visit the house, demonstrate against this assault on every family value you hold dear. Write a letter to the editor, talk to your neighbors Demonstrate. Don’t let them get away with it!”

She plugged on doggedly, ignoring the spasms in her stomach and the rigidity of her muscles, ignoring the mounting anger that took her away from the table again and again. Each time she returned until she felt she had seen enough to know they were all alike. And now that she was aware of that stylistic change, she found it easy to spot over and over. Dodgson and his wife taking turns? Dodgson being fed the lines from an outside source? Dodgson on drugs? Something else?

She restored the papers to the bins and left Bessie’s office before he turned up this time. In the wide corridor, heading toward the reception room, she was stopped by her father’s voice. She turned to see him at his open door.