The Best Defense (27 page)

Judge Paltz rapped his gavel.

“Mrs. Dodgson, you must remain silent. Mr. Fierst, do you wish to redirect at this time?”

“No, sir. I’ll hold my redirect for her recall.”

“Very well. Court is adjourned until nine tomorrow morning.”

The courtroom buzz sounded like a wasp nest, with her on the inside, Barbara thought, after the judge left and the jury was escorted out. She did not turn to look behind her. The noise rose and rose, with whispers, and hisses, and indignant shrill cries.

“I’ll come around to see you later,” Barbara told Paula as the matron approached.

“You okay?”

Paula didn’t look okay; she was far too pale and had become thinner.

“I’m okay,” she said in a low voice.

“As long as they can’t get to me.”

“No one’s going to get near you,” the matron said firmly.

“Don’t you worry about them. Riffraff, that’s all they are.”

Barbara still didn’t make a motion to rise. Behind her, Frank was gathering his things, making rustling sounds. She felt his hand on her shoulder and shook herself and shuffled her own things together, back into the briefcase. Paula had walked out ramrod stiff, and she would do no less.

“Home?” Heath Byerson asked when they were escorted to his car. Before he could engage the clutch, a tomato splattered against the windshield. Wordlessly he turned on his windshield wipers; the blades made streaks as they moved back and forth. He started to drive.

“Home,” Frank said heavily.

“Then I have to come back to see Paula,” Barbara said, watching the blades move back and forth.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Heath Byerson said.

“They’ll grab that bozo who tossed the tomato, but there are others. Yesterday they hung out around the jail, too.”

“Jesus,” she muttered.

“It’s a state of siege. I have to talk to my client, no matter what they are doing.”

In the end he drove them to the jail, around to the back entrance, and Frank stayed out to keep him company when she went in to talk with Paula.

“The state will wrap it up tomorrow,” she said.

“But it’s going to be bad again. I doubt they’ll call Carrie Voight, and we’ll call her later if they don’t. I don’t think they want to hear any more about spies and motion sensors. But your ex will tell lies about you, and Craig Dodgson will, and then they’ll have the psychiatrist on hand to explain your mental state. It will be tough going.”

“All those people out there,” Paula whispered.

“They hate me so much! They all think I did it, and they want me to die.”

“They think whatever Rich Dodgson tells them to think,” Barbara said.

“Pull yourself together, Paula.

Think of them as puppets, with him pulling their strings. That’s all they are.”

“Are you going to make me testify?” Paula asked then.

“I’ll have to see them, face them….”

“Undecided. It depends on what the shrink says. I don’t want you on the stand, you know. That’s an ordeal I’ll spare you if I possibly can. What I’ll want you to do tomorrow is make notes when your ex is talking. Every time he lies, I want you to make a note of it. Will you do that?”

Paula nodded, and some of the despair faded from her face. The first day, during jury selection, Paula had said wonderingly that she was the least important per son in the courtroom; in a sense she had been right. Everything was out of her hands at this point, but she needed to do something, anything, not just sit there day after day and listen to people who wanted her convicted. After Dodgson’s puppets had appeared, Barbara had asked Lucille not to attend the trial until she had to testify. No incidents, she thought. Someone was certain to know that Lucille was Paula’s sister, and she might be targeted. Instead, she had suggested, Paula could tell her everything that happened, everything that was said;

and that had given Paula a little bit of responsibility, something to do. But most of all, Barbara wanted her occupied tomorrow when her ex-husband began to lie about her, about their relationship, about their dead child.

She stayed for half an hour, and then went out to find her father and Heath Byerson in a conversation about roof shingles.

“What we thought would be a good idea,” Frank said, too casually, “would be to go to your place, let you pack up your things, and move you into my house for the rest of the trial. Just a precaution.”

“Dad,” she started, but Heath Byerson turned in the front seat and gave her a long serious look, and she didn’t finish her protest.

“They know your place,” he said.

“You’re too easy to find. Not many know the house your father has now.”

He had cleaned the windshield; no trace of tomato remained.

They were right, she admitted to herself. Gallead had known where to find her. Spassero knew where she lived. It seemed that everyone knew where she lived.

With reluctance, hating the feeling of defeat she had to acknowledge, she nodded and then said to her father, “So you win.”

He shook his head.

“Just until this thing is over. I don’t want you because you have to move in. I want you to want to move in. There’s a difference.”

she had not slept well; all night dreams had brought her near the wakeful state, and then let her slip back into sleep, but when she came wide awake, it was the dreams that bothered her even if she couldn’t remember the context. She blamed the bed: the same bed she had slept in as a child, then as a teenager, when she was home from school, and, finally, in the river house. The same bed she had slept in with Mike.

“Right back,” she said at the breakfast table after toying with her eggs and toast, and drinking coffee. She ran upstairs to finish her makeup, gather her purse and briefcase, give a final scowling glance at her image in the mirror, and then went down again to find her father and Heath Byerson in a solemn conversation. Roof tiles? Floor tiles? Sump pumps? They broke it off when she entered.

“Ready?” Heath asked, his cheerful countenance in place again.

“As ready as I get,” she muttered.

“Let’s do it.”

When they stopped at the courthouse her father said he would go on to the office, see if Bailey needed a nudge, see what was up.

“Won’t be long,” he said as she got out of the car.

She nodded to her police escort, ignored the shouted questions of reporters, the eye of the television camera, the hisses and hoots, the names being yelled by the many people with their evil signs, and entered the courthouse.

Almost instantly she was plunged back into the melodrama being enacted in the courtroom. It was as if this was the only reality; all else outside this room was simple busywork, no more than a distraction.

Fierst called Craig Dodgson, and this was the reality, seamlessly attached to yesterday’s reality.

Craig Dodgson appeared younger than he did in the photographs she had seen; he was tanned to a dark handsome shade, sunlamp tan, not the uneven, leathery tan of an outdoors man. He had dark, wavy hair neatly cut and natural-looking, not coiffed to any noticeable extent. He was dressed in a sports coat, nice slacks, loafers, well dressed without the show of ostentatious wealth his mother had exhibited. He looked handsome and healthy, the ideal son that a mother could be very proud of.

Today Pierst acted like a man in a hurry. He did not linger over Craig’s background, but led him quickly to the case.

“You stated that you were kidding around with the defendant, Paula Kennerman, and you asked her to go out on your boat. Is that correct?”

“Something like that,” Craig said.

“It wasn’t a real invitation. But she seemed to think it was.”

“Tell us in your own words about this incident, Mr.

Dodgson,” Fierst said.

“Well, I liked to go to the Olympus and listen to the jazz. And I kidded around with the waitresses, most of them, not just her. You know, they wear those cute little skirts and heels and they’re fun to kid with. A little flirting, that’s all.” He shrugged and looked almost bewildered as he continued.

“So I said something to her about going out on the boat; but no kids, I said, and no husband. That’s what I always said. She laughed, and I thought that was that. I never gave it a second thought until a couple of weeks later, near the end of March, I think, the next time I was in there, and she came to my table and said, “When?” Just like that, when. And I didn’t know what she was talking about. I said some thing like, “Any time,” but I was uneasy because she wasn’t laughing. She looked serious and came back a few minutes later even more serious, and she said if she got rid of the old man and the kid, she’d hold me to my word. She put her hand on my arm and said, sort of in a whisper, it would be great, just the two of us. Then she got busy and I left. I didn’t go back.”

“I see,” Fierst said with a sober expression.

“Mr.

Dodgson, did you offer to take other waitresses out on your boat?”

“Yes I did. Just kidding. You know, it was a little flirtation, that’s all. They knew it wasn’t serious.”

“You had a picture of the boat with you?”

“Sure,” he said with a grin.

“I’d bring it out and say, “Hey, honey, want a little ocean cruise? Isn’t she a beaut!” And I’d show them the boat, and they’d laugh or pretend to be interested, and we just had fun.” He spread his hands in a way that seemed to imply helplessness

“And you said Paula Kennerman didn’t take it as fun and games? She was serious?”

“Yes, sir. When she put her hand on my arm, she re ally dug in. I mean, she gripped hard. She was serious, all right.” All traces of boyishness, of helplessness, of bewilderment vanished, and he was more like the grim-faced man in the photographs.

Fierst had a few more questions and then nodded to Barbara and sat down.

“Mr. Dodgson,” she said, “how old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“And you own the boat we’re talking about?”

“No. My dad owns it; he lets me use it.”

“Something like the family car?” Barbara suggested with a slight smile.

“Yeah, about like that.”

“How many people will the boat sleep, Mr. Dodgson?”

“Eight.”

“Is it an oceangoing ship?”

“It could be,” he said more cautiously.

“Well, have you taken it to Hawaii, for example?”

“Yes.”

“Can one person run the yacht?”

“Yes.”

“How often do you take the ship out, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I don’t know. Two, three weekends a month in the summer.”

“Do you take groups of people with you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you ever take a single woman companion out with you?”

“No! Dad wouldn’t let me even if I wanted to.”

“I see. The family car again. Do you always inform him when you are going out and tell him who is going with you?”

“Yes, every time. It’s his boat.”

“And you have his approval for your various cruises?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever go out alone, Mr. Dodgson?”

“Yes. I like to go out alone.”

“Where do you go alone, Mr. Dodgson?”

“No place in particular. Sometimes up to Seattle and pick up my brother and we cruise the inland waterway up there.”

“Where else?”

“Just up and down the coast, not too far out.”

“All the way down to Mexico, for example?”

“Yeah, or up to Alaska, if I feel like it.”

“What do you do for a living, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I work for the Dodgson Publishing Company.”

“That’s who pays your salary, I believe,” Barbara said.

“But what do you actually do?”

“Objection,” Fierst said with annoyance. He had started so briskly, and now she was delaying everything again, he seemed to be complaining.

“Irrelevant.”

“I am simply exploring areas already touched upon by Mr. Fierst,” Barbara said, “in order to test whether this witness, at his age, has had enough experience to evaluate the reactions of waitresses to his advances.”

When Judge Paltz allowed her to continue, his face revealed nothing. She never had worked before a judge who could hide himself so thoroughly, she thought, and turned again to Craig Dodgson, and proceeded to take him step-by-step through his duties at the press.

“You don’t do any of the writing or editing,” she said, “but do you agree with the paper’s editorial content?”

“Absolutely. One hundred percent.”

“Do you draw a salary from anyone else? Any other group?”

“No.”

“Do you volunteer your efforts for the national pro-life groups?”

He hesitated and Fierst objected again, this time jumping to his feet and even raising his voice.

“Your Honor, counsel for the defense knows this is irrelevant. What Mr. Dodgson does outside the confines of this case is entirely irrelevant.”

“Ms. Holloway, do you have a point to make?” Judge Paltz asked courteously.

“Yes, sir, I do. I intend to demonstrate that Mr.

Dodgson is highly biased, that his testimony here is so prejudicial that it may be without value.”

“For heaven’s sake!” Fierst burst out.

“Is everyone who might testify against the defendant to be labeled prejudiced?”

“Mr. Fierst, please,” Judge Paltz said, just a touch more sharply than he had done up to this moment.

“Ms.

Holloway, you may proceed. Overruled.”

“Exception,” Fierst snapped.

Judge Paltz nodded.

“It will be noted.”

“Mr. Dodgson, do you volunteer your services for pro-life organizations?”

“Sometimes. It’s something I am very concerned about.”

“Is this your picture, taken in October of last year?”

She had nine newspaper photographs from a year ago to April of this year. One by one she produced them and he admitted that it was his picture.

“That’s nine,” Barbara said.

“Were there other demonstrations in which you participated?”

“There might have been,” he said, and added, “It’s a deep moral issue with me. I care enough to try to do something.”

She asked that everything following “there might have been” be stricken. Craig Dodgson moistened his lips, and she thought. At last.