Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “She was a mother! She had to take care of it!”

  His voice was outraged, almost trembling. Carolyn looked up, curiously. Here was the Hail Mary Assumption in spades. What would Jessamine do with it?

  “No,” Jessamine said at last. “That rule was made by men. Men have no experience of childbirth or pregnancy; few of them have experienced rape, but they believe their seed is somehow so important that women must not only submit to it but also honor and serve it impeccably. Men make laws saying so. Notwithstanding, the law can’t make a woman accept a pregnancy she hasn’t wanted and agreed to. She may choose to accept it, of her own will, but merely being impregnated doesn’t make a mother. It never has.”

  She took a breath; then, moved by some obscure impulse, she blurted, “As for fathering, raping a woman sure doesn’t make a father.”

  His eyes blazed at her. “You’re aware that courts have repeatedly held the rights even of biological fathers who were unaware of the pregnancy.”

  Jessamine met his eyes calmly, refusing to be browbeaten. “In 1999, however, the Supreme Court let stand a state law that says no man can ever assert parental rights to a child unless he was legally married to the mother of the child at the time of the conception and at the time of the birth. Human parenting is done by intention. Without that intention human parenthood doesn’t happen. Cells don’t make a parent. Being there does.”

  Jagger was ashen, almost immobilized by fury.

  “Counselor?” asked the judge, eyebrows raised. “Mr. Jagger?”

  For a moment he merely stood. “No further questions,” he grated, almost unintelligibly.

  “Ms. Crespin?” said the judge.

  There were a dozen questions Carolyn wanted to ask, but not here, not now. Why was Jagger in a rage? It was more than anger at her for having tricked him. More than annoyance. Something primal, some age-old grievance he had with the world.

  “No further questions of this witness, Your Honor. I call Gilbert Devaca.”

  Lolly reached up and clutched her sleeve, whispering urgently, “What you doin’ with him? You don’t want to talk to him!”

  Carolyn leaned down. “Lolly, take it easy. He’ll be a good witness for you—just hush. I’ll take care of you.”

  Gilbert Devaca was sworn, a stocky boy in his midteens, who gave an address just down the block from the Ashaler apartment.

  “Mr. Devaca, on the Fourth of July last year, 1999, did you and a group of boys take Lolly Ashaler over to the area behind El Camino machine shops?”

  “Yeah. We was just foolin’ aroun’.”

  “When you got there, was Lolly Ashaler raped?”

  “Well, yeah, I suppose. Crank, he had her. An’ Henry B., he stuck a bottle in her.”

  “You didn’t do either of those things?”

  “No.”

  “Did she object? Did she fight?”

  “She was yelling and there was blood all over.”

  “Why was Lolly raped?”

  “She was … it was kind of a test, like.”

  “A test.”

  “Henry B. said Crank couldn’t do it no more, and Crank said Henry B. couldn’t, so they got Lolly over there to show they could. Me ’n’ the others, we was just there.”

  “No further questions, Your Honor,” said Carolyn.

  Jagger declined to ask any questions at all. He sat in his chair, ruminous with anger, staring at two members of the jury, his face clearing as they nodded to him very slightly—so slightly, no one should have noticed.

  Carolyn, however, had seen it. Taking a deep breath, she rested her case, saying, “Before summation, Your Honor, may I have a brief recess?”

  “Court will reconvene in fifteen minutes.”

  Carolyn slipped down the aisle and out into the corridor. Where in hell was her investigator? He’d said he’d be here! She looked around for a phone. He had a beeper, if she just had time to …

  Then she saw him, coming up the stairs. He caught sight of her and nodded.

  “What?” she whispered when he came closer.

  He handed her several photostats. “They’ve been arrested two or three times each, in Albuquerque and elsewhere. Clinic blockading. Those are copies of the indictments. They haven’t even lived in Santa Fe County long enough to be called for jury duty. They moved in after they were selected. Somebody played games.”

  “Bless you,” she said.

  A few moments later the bailiff called for order. Carolyn stood. “Before summation, Your Honor, may I approach?”

  Judge Rombauer beckoned to her and to Jagger. Carolyn leaned on the desk, passing over the copies.

  “What is this?” the judge asked.

  “I have been made aware,” Carolyn replied, “that these two jurors lied during jury selection. I specifically asked the panel if they held strong opinions about birth control and abortion. I am now informed that these two people, who answered negatively, have both been arrested for such activities in Albuquerque. These are copies of the indictments.”

  “I can’t see that it makes any difference,” grated Jagger, his voice no angrier than his eyes.

  Carolyn murmured, “To the contrary. We would assume such persons were prejudiced against the defendant. In any case, they lied. They’re guilty of perjury. Also, I have been informed that these people are residents of Bernalillo County. They never should have been called for this jury panel.”

  “We’d have to check that,” snarled Jagger.

  “You’re asking for a mistrial,” said the judge, almost hopefully.

  “The alternates haven’t been named yet,” Carolyn said. “It would be possible to take these two out. It would leave us with no alternates, but on the other hand, deliberations are unlikely to be lengthy and alternates are unlikely to be needed.…”

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” said Rombauer, his eyes moving down the copies, from one to the next. “Ah, um, since it’s already four-thirty, I think we’ll leave summation until morning. That’ll give me time to consider this.”

  Carefully not looking in Jagger’s direction, Carolyn gathered up Ophy and Jessamine and departed.

  “Jagger was mad,” whispered Jessamine.

  “He looked like a stroke about to happen,” Ophy agreed.

  “I know,” Carolyn murmured, glad she had parked some distance from the courthouse that morning. At least her car hadn’t been sitting right there, inviting someone to put a bomb in it.

  When they arrived at the farm, they found the kitchen busy, with Faye, Bettiann, and Agnes much in charge.

  “How’d it go?” Hal whispered into Carolyn’s hair when she went to the bedroom to change.

  “Like yesterday, the courtroom all but empty. If it had just been some other judge. Any other judge. Oh, Hal, I don’t know what Jessamine said that did it, but Jagger got so angry at her testimony, he’s almost boiling.…”

  “He’s dangerous, Carolyn.”

  “You don’t know how dangerous.” She told him about Swinter. “When we came out of the courthouse, I actually worried about whether there might be a bomb in my car!”

  “Tomorrow somebody should drive you and pick you up.”

  “That may get us through tomorrow. What do we do afterward? If we win, he’ll come after us. If we lose, he’ll come after us. He won’t forget this.” She wiped at her eyes, which had overflowed. “Hal, I’ve been feeling this sense of … menace, I guess. I’d thought it was the trial, but it wasn’t. Isn’t. I thought it was Jagger, but it’s more than that. I can’t shake it!”

  “My fault,” he murmured. “I brought up Webster’s connection.”

  “Is it Webster that’s bothering me? I really don’t know for sure. All I know is, I keep wanting to look over my shoulder. I keep feeling like I’m being watched.” She shuddered.

  “You need to get away from here,” he said. “We both do. As soon as this case is over, we’ll take a vacation.”

  Jessamine and Ophy offered to drop Carolyn off at the cou
rthouse Wednesday morning, and then to go elsewhere within range of Carolyn’s beeper. Protective paranoia, as Ophy defined it, which was preferable to passive paranoia. Accordingly, the three of them rose early. While Jessamine made coffee and Ophy toasted muffins, Carolyn found a stick and went down the drive to pick up the paper. Her state of mind was measured by the length of the stick she carried to fish the paper out of the box, in case there was a bomb inside. The paper fluttered to the ground, and she turned it over with the stick before picking it up. She didn’t look at it until they were at the table. Even then she almost missed the item, not a large one, at the bottom of the front page.

  “They got him,” she blurted.

  “What?” Jessamine asked.

  “Rombauer. They’ve arrested him!”

  Almost whispering, she read it aloud. Deactivation vaults had been opened at the behest of the attorney general’s office. Three juveniles, restored to movement and sense, testified they had been molested by the judge in return for promised lighter sentences. The setting on their vaults had been life, though the sentence had actually been only two years.

  “What will they do?” Ophy asked. “About the trial?”

  “I haven’t a clue.” Carolyn picked up her cup, feeling her hand shake. “One thing I do know. Rombauer won’t be on the bench.”

  “What do we do?”

  Carolyn stared at the clock, almost without seeing it. “There’s no one at the courthouse this early, so we can’t call. Probably the best thing to do is go on into town as planned. We’ll find out when we get there.”

  She went to wake Hal, who had his head buried under the pillow, resolutely unconscious. She had to tell him three times before he opened his eyes.

  “So it came off.” He grinned sleepily, the grin of an old wolf who hadn’t forgotten anything he’d ever known about wolfing. “Your friend Josh is quite a guy.”

  “You had him in on it?”

  “I had the pictures, but they weren’t enough by themselves. So I found Josh, and he gave me a statement, and I faxed the statement to Mike, along with the pictures, and Mike said he’d push the AG’s office to release the three kids and get statements from them. A local reporter got the copies of the pictures from, need I say, an anonymous source, and if it went the way we planned, he and the photographer were waiting when they untanked the kids. My bet is the kids told their story, and why not? They’ll probably sell their life histories to make a TV movie.”

  “Lord, we may actually have a chance with this case! Jagger will be apoplectic!”

  He yawned, almost chuckling. “A better chance than I thought you had yesterday.”

  She shook her head, trying to get whirling thoughts to settle. “Jessy and Ophy are driving me to town. Chances are the trial will be delayed. If it is, we can’t afford to waste the day. As soon as it’s a reasonable hour, would you call the McCrackens and ask if I can borrow their Land Rover? They offered last time we dog-sat for them while they were in Jamaica. Maybe there’ll be time for the DFC to go hunting Lizard Rock.”

  He pushed himself up against the head of the bed, frowning thoughtfully. “You don’t want me to go along?”

  “Hal, I can’t imagine a seven- or eight-hour drive plus several miles’ walk would do a thing for your leg! Besides, someone needs to be here, and …” Her voice trailed off. And, she’d been going to say, she had a feeling this was DFC business—among them, only among them.

  “I don’t like the idea of your going off alone,” he said firmly.

  “I won’t be alone. There’s six of us. And here we’re sitting ducks. At least on the road we’ll be a moving target.”

  She hurried through dressing, chivvying Jessamine and Ophy into the car and giving them her beeper. “Stay within range. I’ll call as soon as I know something.” She was in the courtroom by a quarter to nine. The door to the judge’s chamber was open, and Judge Loretta Frieze stood in the doorway, talking with the clerk. Seeing Carolyn, she nodded and raised her hand, summoning.

  “When Mr. Jagger arrives, I’ll have an announcement,” she said. “Meantime, I can’t see leaving the accused in jail. She’s … subject to … well, she’s simply been there far too long.” She glared at Carolyn, who had never raised the subject of bail.

  “I didn’t ask for bail, because she’d been threatened,” Carolyn explained. “There was no one to help her on the outside. She was safer where she was.”

  “Given the current situation, she should be quite safe, don’t you think? May I release her in your custody?”

  Carolyn fought down an urge to scream. It was the worst possible time for such an arrangement. Judge Frieze had obviously made inquiries into Lolly’s welfare, however, and any such gesture should be received generously. She nodded, trying to sound accepting as she said, “Of course, Judge Frieze. She can stay out at the farm.” All the beds were taken, but there was a comfortable couch in the study. Probably as comfortable as any other place Lolly had ever slept. But then she couldn’t saddle Hal with Lolly while the rest of them went off on this wild-goose chase. They’d have to take Lolly with them.

  Carolyn brought up the matter of the perjured jurors. The judge said something brief and unexpectedly obscene, then moved back to her discussion with the clerk. They were obviously trying to rearrange the court calendar, as there was much flicking of pages and penciling of notes.

  The double doors at the rear of the courtroom banged open, and Jagger, his anger preceding him like a hot wind, burst into the room with a couple of flunkies in tow. He snarled at Carolyn, grinned viciously in the judge’s direction, and threw himself into a chair as though he wanted to destroy it. Judge Frieze gave him an admonishing look and beckoned him to join her and Carolyn.

  “I’ve reviewed the court reporter’s transcript. I don’t see anything obviously leading to mistrial, though closer reading may bring something to light. Neither of you is precluded from moving for a mistrial.”

  Jagger merely glared.

  Carolyn shook her head. “Not if that jury matter is taken care of.”

  The judge nodded. “There’s no way to proceed with the case today, however. No one’s available. In five minutes I’m due to hear another case, but it should be over by the end of the week, and we could continue this case on Monday. There’s only summation, right?”

  They agreed on Monday. The bailiff went to inform the jurors. Jagger left, glaring straight ahead, not sparing Carolyn a glance. Carolyn called her pager, and Ophy said they’d be back within minutes. They had a few minutes’ wait before a guard brought Lolly in, clad as she had been on the previous day, her face blank. The clerk made note of Judge Frieze’s order concerning her, and Ophy took her in tow while Carolyn stopped to call Hal and see if he’d arranged for the car. It was in the drive, he said. Fully gassed and ready to go. He’d even started putting together the camp stuff.

  Jagger, raging, received a phone call from Martin.

  “Checked it out, like you said. I took a look from the hill across the road. They had a big cross-country kind of vehicle in the drive, and the man was packing stuff. I came back here to the office and ran all the tapes. The Crespin woman just got back to her place a few minutes ago. The other women are all there, including the girl. They’re mostly moving around outside, so I can’t hear what they’re saying, but they’re going somewhere.”

  “A cross-country vehicle would indicate someplace remote?”

  “That’s how I’d see it.”

  “All of them?”

  “They’re all packing up. Hunting the one that disappeared, maybe?”

  “I want to follow them, Martin. Can you arrange that?” If the women went somewhere remote, he should be able to overtake them, follow them until they found the missing one, then pick them off one at a time, like shooting deer, overpower the last one or two, and get the real information. He’d do it alone, no witnesses. When he got the information, Webster would give him a gold star. He felt the accolades, like champagne in his blood.
r />   Martin said, “I can follow them in my car, put a transmitter on their car when they stop along the way somewhere. Women always do.”

  “A transmitter I can follow from the helicopter?”

  “Sure. I’ll send somebody to the airport with the receiver, have them put it in your chopper.”

  “Thank you, Martin. As usual, you’re very helpful.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Jagger. Always happy to be of service.”

  Jagger hung up, pleased with the information. If that bitch lawyer and her bitch feminist friends thought she was going to prevail over him, they had another think coming. Webster didn’t need to know the details. He would take care of the details himself, very quietly, no one the wiser!

  Martin, in his office, hung up the phone and turned to the men seated across from him. “He wants to go after them.”

  Raymond Keepe waited for Webster to speak. Ever since he had met Webster this morning, he had waited for Webster to speak, to move, to gesture, to indicate what was to be done.

  Webster spoke. “I see. Will his machine hold three or four?”

  “No, sir. It’s a two-seater.”

  Another wait, then the calculated question: “Can we get a machine large enough for three or four? With you as pilot?”

  Martin bit down his feelings about this suggestion. He did not want to go anywhere with Keepe or Keepe’s boss. Still, he managed to get the words out: “I’ve got a friend who’s got one, if it’s not out on charter. But if you want me to pilot, I’ll have to get hold of a man quick to follow those women and put a transmitter on their car—”

  “Do so. Shall we meet you at the airport?”

  Martin asked, “You two and Mr. Jagger?”

  Webster said, “No, Martin. You and Jagger and Keepe. I may or may not join you. But you don’t need to advise Mr. Jagger you’re going with him. We’ll let it come as a surprise.”

  Martin went with them to the door. When he came back to the desk, he opened a bottom drawer and rummaged around for a half-empty bottle before he picked up the phone. He normally didn’t drink on the job. He supposed he was on a job, though it was no longer Jagger’s job. With Jagger he’d always known right where he was, known exactly what Jagger wanted, known exactly how to satisfy him. With this new man …