The Best Defense (29 page)

“When your house was built it was featured in the local newspapers, with photographs, the layout…. Ah, here it is.”

She picked up the printed floor plan and took it back to him.

“Is this your house?”

She had the photographs and the house plan admitted, and then she said, consulting the plan, “The pool is forty feet long, with a twelve-foot apron on three sides and fifteen feet on the side that has doors to the dressing rooms. So, you went into the pool room, turned on the music, walked back to the dressing room and got ready to swim, and then, naked, you walked back fifty-two feet to the door to look out. Is that what you did?”

“If you say so,” he said sullenly.

“No, Mr. Dodgson, not what I say. Is that what you did?”

“Yes. So what of it?”

“Why didn’t you dive into the deep end of the pool , when you came out of the dressing room?”

“I told you already. I thought I heard my mother call me.”

“Over the music? At the far end of the room?”

“Yes! So I was wrong.”

She nodded.

“Then you say you went to the hall door and opened it to look out and saw her at the end of the hall at the back door. Is that right?”

“Yes. How many times—” “Mr. Dodgson, please, just answer the questions. Was her hand on the doorknob? Was she opening it already when you saw her?”

“Yes. She had started to open it.”

“And you left the hall door open to the pool room, raced across the twelve feet to dive into the shallow end. Is that right?”

“I didn’t race,” he muttered.

“I know your mother says she is a slow walker,” Barbara said scathingly, “but how long could it take her to open a door and step out? She says she heard you splash.”

“Objection!” Fierst yelled.

“Sustained. The jury will disregard counsel’s remarks.

Ms. Holloway, confine yourself to proper questions.”

And that, she knew, was a rebuke. There was no mistaking it. She said, “Yes, Your Honor. Mr. Dodgson, was your mother always very particular about keeping the door to the pool room closed?”

He shrugged.

“Not really.”

“Did she complain about the smell of chlorine penetrating the rest of the house?”

“Not seriously. Sometimes we forgot to close it, that’s all.”

“You estimated that you were in the water no later than five minutes before ten and she was outside by then. Is that right?”

“Yes. I looked at my watch, and nothing took even five minutes after that.”

“And you were still in the pool at eleven-fifteen when Angela Everts arrived. Were you swimming laps all that time, Mr. Dodgson?”

“Yes,” he said. Then quickly he said, “No, I mean.

Not that long. I was practicing some strokes part of the time.”

“An hour and twenty minutes is a long time for laps and practice, isn’t it? Do you work out that hard often?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

“I try to keep fit.”

“Where did you leave your robe that morning?” She asked it almost casually, and was startled to see him stiffen even more.

“I don’t know.”

“Did your mother bring it to you in the pool room?”

He hesitated and moistened his lips.

“I don’t remember.”

“When you got out of the pool, did you shower and get dressed?”

“Not right away.”

“Did you get out of the pool and put on a white terry-cloth robe?”

He shrugged.

“Yes. I remember. I had it in the pool room, on a chair.”

“When did you put it there?”

“Before I got in the water.”

“You mean after breakfast you went back to your room and collected your robe?”

“Yes!”

“Mr. Dodgson, did your parents ever tell you not to swim for an hour after a heavy meal?”

His look was murderous now.

“I didn’t eat that much,” he said.

“Waffles and sausage, juice, coffee. That’s a heavy meal just before you swim laps. Isn’t it more likely that you sat at the table reading the paper for nearly an hour after breakfast, and then you took your swim?”

“No! It wasn’t like that.”

“Did you actually see your mother leave the house?”

“She was opening the door to go out.”

“Ah, yes. She heard you splash and you saw her at the door. But, Mr. Dodgson, my question is: Did you see her leave the house?”

“No. She was opening the door to leave.”

“Mr. Dodgson, just a simple yes or no! Did you see her go out?”

“No!”

“Thank you. No more questions.”

While Fierst took him back over the few points he wanted the jury to hear again, she wrote robe and circled it. She had hit a sore spot and had not even a clue about why it was there or what it meant.

jack khnnerman was a frightened man that afternoon;

he was thinner-faced than Barbara remembered, neatly dressed in a suit and tie, polished shoes, but he acted as if the clothes were not his, did not quite fit. He stretched his neck repeatedly to ease the constraint of his shirt; he worried a hangnail; his gaze flicked here, there, everywhere except at Paula. He had had his hair cut, but now it was too short, where it had been down over his collar before.

In a brisk, businesslike manner Fierst had Kennerman give some background, details about his marriage, where he was employed now—as a pizza delivery man—and then describe the last evening he had seen his wife and daughter at home.

Paula was screaming at Lori, Jack Kennerman said, throwing things around, tossing stuff into a suitcase, and when he tried to get her to tell him what was wrong, she pushed him and started screaming harder at Lori, who was crying and scared. He tried to pull her away from the baby and she hit him and he pushed her away harder than he meant to and she fell over a chair. He left, hoping she’d cool down and talk to him later. When he got home again about eleven, she was gone.

“You had a scene like that with your former wife and you just left her alone? Is that right?”

He ran his finger under his collar, his gaze shifting rapidly from Fierst out over the courtroom and back.

“Yeah, it wasn’t the first time. Usually she just cooled off and that was the end of it.”

“Did you fight with her often?”

“Yeah, I guess so. She had a temper, and she’d start in on me, and we’d yell, and sometimes she pushed me and I pushed back.”

“You said she was yelling at your child, Lori. Did she do that often?”

“Yeah. She’d yell at her.” Now he was picking at the hangnail.

“Did she hit the child?”

“Not much. She’d say things like she was going to leave her in the woods and let the bears eat her, scare her like that. She’d make her sit on a spot on the floor and if she moved, sometimes she slapped her pretty hard.”

“Mr. Kennerman, did she ever threaten to leave you?”

“Yeah, in the last year she did. She met this other guy, she said, and he was rich, and he liked her a lot, and as soon as she had some money saved up, she was taking off.” He seemed absorbed now in the wood grain of the witness stand.

“Did you believe her?”

“Not at first. But I got to thinking about it and then I did. And when I seen how much money she was stashing away, I knew it.”

“What do you mean?”

“See, I was out of work and we were doing without stuff,” he said in a rush.

“Lori was doing without stuff that she needed and Paula had all this money in the bank. She was saving up to take off.”

Paula was scribbling furiously. Barbara didn’t inter fere with the examination; now and then she glanced at the scrawling words Paula was writing so hastily. Finally Fierst got to his last questions.

“Where were you all day Saturday, April nineteenth, Mr. Kennerman?”

“Fishing. I went up early on Saturday morning, and me and three other guys were up the North Fork of the Willamette for the opening of trout season. We came back Sunday night.”

“And you were with three other men all weekend?

Who were they, Mr. Kennerman?”

He named them, and Fierst said he was finished.

“Mr. Kennerman,” Barbara began, “isn’t it true that your former wife supported you and your child for the last five years?”

“No! That’s a lie. I worked, too.”

“You were unemployed in April. Were you collecting unemployment insurance?”

“No. They wouldn’t give it to me.”

“Why not, Mr. Kennerman?”

“That’s how the system works,” he said.

“They make you quit and then you can’t collect. It happens all the time.”

“So you quit your last job. How long were you out of work?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled, looking everywhere but at her.

“Well, make a stab at it,” she suggested.

“A month, three months?”

“Maybe four or five months. I couldn’t find any thing.”

Fierst objected often, but she was allowed to take Kennerman back over his work experience.

“So you quit every job you had over the past five years,” she said.

“And out of that period you worked a total of sixteen months. Doesn’t that mean that your former wife supported you?”

“I worked when I could,” he said, almost whining.

“Five years ago when you quit your job delivering flowers, did you try to start your own business? A salvage business?”

“Yes,” he said too eagerly.

“That’s right. It was a chance I couldn’t pass up.”

“And did you buy twenty-five hundred dollars’ worth of scuba equipment and take scuba lessons to further that business?”

“Yeah, something” like that.”

“Did you start the business?”

He looked past her, at Fierst, at the ceiling.

“It didn’t work out. The other two guys chickened out on it.”

“Did you charge the equipment on a credit card?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Who paid for the equipment, Mr. Kennerman?”

“We paid it off. Me and Paula.”

“But you were out of work. How did you pay any thing?”

“When I got another job, I helped pay,” he said, clearly whining now.

“I sold the stuff to a guy and used that.”

“Three years ago did you try to start another business of your own? A photography business?”

Fierst objected, and Barbara said, “One side of their domestic problems has been shown by the prosecution;

the defense is entitled to show the other side.”

“Overruled,” Judge Paltz said.

Painstakingly she forced Jack Kennerman to admit to the four times he had gone deeply in debt with one venture after another that never came off. When a recess was called, she felt as weary and haggard as Jack Kennerman looked.

Today her father did not comment, but produced a small box that he handed to her. It was filled with expensive chocolates. She wanted to cry. They shared the candy and coffee in silence.

“How long have you had your present job, Mr. Kennerman?”

He hesitated, then said, “About three weeks.”

“Are you still living in the same apartment you shared with your former wife and child?”

“Yeah.”

“Paula Kennerman wrote a check to pay for the rent in April, but who paid the rent from May until September?”

“I did,” he said, working with the hangnail again.

“How did you manage that after being unemployed for so long?”

“Some guys helped me out. I borrowed a little. I got by.”

“How much is your rent every month?”

“Three eighty-five.”

“You mean three hundred eighty-five dollars a month?”

“Yeah.”

“So for four months that comes to over fifteen him dred dollars. What about your utility bills, your food?”

“I said some guys helped me out, and I worked a little. Odd jobs here and there. I sold some stuff.”

“What guys, Mr. Kennerman?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“I never seen them.”

“Then how did you receive donations from them?”

“A guy came over and said these guys wanted him to take the collection for them, and he brought it to me.”

“Who paid for your divorce, Mr. Kennerman?”

“Nobody. He said he’d do it as a favor, that he had to do something now and then for free.”

“An attorney did you the favor. Was he the same one who collected from your benefactors?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did he collect the donations and give you the money?”

“Yeah. They got in touch with him and he came around.”

“Who was that man, Mr. Kennerman? What was his name?”

He looked around desperately.

“I don’t know. Don something. He said it too fast.”

Barbara walked to the defense table and then back to the stand, thinking hard.

“So a strange man came to you with money from other strange men and you simply accepted it. Did this ever happen before, Mr. Kenner man?”

“No. Nobody ever gave me nothing before. He said they did this, a bunch of guys who thought a guy was getting the shaft. They helped him.”

“Getting the shaft? What does that mean, Mr.

Kennerman?”

“A guy whose wife was giving him a hard time, running around, playing him for a dope, stuff like that.”

“How much money did they give you?”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled.

“Thousand, a little more.”

“Did they give you enough to pay your rent for several months?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it enough to pay your utility bills? Electricity, water, things like that?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t find a job right off.”

“Was it over two thousand dollars?”

“Maybe. I don’t remember.”

“Did you ask what they wanted in return?”

“Nothing. He said they didn’t want nothing.”

“But he was friendly, talked to you?”

“Yeah, some. Not much.”

“Mr. Kennerman, do you remember what he talked about with you?”

“No! Nothing much, like I said.”

She walked away, and only glanced at the jury. Some of the jurors were regarding Kennerman as if he were an alien insect found in the garden.

“Did he talk about Paula?”

“No! Just about women, how they treat their men, stuff like that. And these guys were fed up with it.”

Enough, she decided, and changed the subject.

“Mr.

Kennerman, are you an avid fisherman?”

“I guess so. I like to fish.”