Guilt by Association

by Susan R. Sloan

  Robert turned toward the jury with a look of sincere regret etched into his handsome face, and throughout his recital the aquamarine eyes fastened on first one and then another of the five men and seven women who would be deciding his fate.

  “I came home to San Francisco at the beginning of April to make some speeches, to raise some money, and to get out among you, and listen to what you had to say,” he began. “After three very strenuous months of campaigning, I found myself physically, mentally, and emotionally drained. This city is where I was born and raised, it has always been the fountain of my strength, and it will always be the place I’ll come home to.”

  Here, he took a deep breath and slowly let it out.

  “On April seventh, a woman from San Jose asked me why this country destroys so much of the food it produces when there are Americans who go to bed hungry every night. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t have a very good answer. But I decided, then and there, that our agribusiness policy had to change. We talk a lot about the sad state of the economy and health care and education, but we are all suddenly silent when the conversation turns to a child crying in the night because his stomach is empty, or an old man sleeping on a park bench because he has no place else to go.”

  The jury shifted a bit under the direct aquamarine gaze.

  “I realized that these issues could no longer be shoved under a rug and I directed my staff to prepare a start-up document that I could use as the basis for serious change.”

  “Someone should tell him he’s already won the California primary,” Mitch muttered.

  “Look at that,” Janice Evans murmured to Randy. “He’s got the jury by the tits and balls.”

  “I returned from San Jose at about eight o’clock that evening and made the unfortunate mistake, as it turned out, of letting my security people go. They’d been working very hard and I thought they deserved a break. It was afterward that I decided to go down to the office to get a look at the press material my staff had prepared.”

  He reasoned it wasn’t necessary to mention that his mother had already retired for the evening and the big house on Jackson Street was empty and depressing.

  “Mrs. Doniger was at the office and she had obviously spent a great deal of time putting the information together. On the spur of the moment, I invited her out for a drink as a simple expression of appreciation. When she refused, I didn’t argue. I took a copy of the packet she had prepared, read through it to make sure it was accurate and complete, put it in my briefcase, and left.”

  “Were you aware that Mrs. Doniger had already left the office?” Sutton inquired.

  “Yes,” Robert replied. “She had said good night, and asked me to lock the door on my way out.”

  “Did you go directly to the parking garage?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “For what purpose?”

  “For the purpose of getting into my car and going home.”

  “What did you find when you reached the garage?”

  “I found Mrs. Doniger having trouble with her car.”

  Robert’s account of the following few moments did not differ substantially from the testimony Karen had given.

  “What happened then?”

  “We went to a bar across the street for a drink.”

  “She seemed in no hurry to get home?”

  “No.”

  “And how did she seem at the bar?”

  “She was very animated and she seemed quite impressed by all the people who stopped by the table to wish me well. She laughed a lot and I remember she brushed her leg against mine several times.”

  “Did this continue once you left the bar?”

  “No. As I recall, she didn’t have very much to say at all, once we were in the car. She sat very close to the door. Then, as we were crossing the park, she suddenly said she was sick and asked me to stop the car. I was driving in the left-hand lane and I couldn’t very well stop in the middle of the road, so I said I’d pull over as soon as we were out of the park. But she said she couldn’t wait that long.”

  “She said she couldn’t wait until you left the park?”

  Robert nodded. “I thought she was going to be sick any second, so I did the only thing I could. I turned left onto King Drive. I was about to stop the car when she said that, if she was going to be sick, she wanted more privacy, so would I please drive on a little further. When I came to the road that goes up to Stow Lake, she told me to turn there. I must have driven several hundred yards before she said it was all right to stop.”

  “She asked you to drive up to Stow Lake?”

  “Yes, she did,” Robert asserted with a sincere glance at the jury. “Then she got out of the car and disappeared. I waited for perhaps five minutes, and then, when she didn’t come back, I naturally got a little worried, so I got out and went to look for her. She was over by some bushes and she looked like she was shivering, so I took off my jacket and put it around her. But then she laughed and said she wasn’t cold, the fresh air had fixed her up just fine, and it was such a great night, she thought it would be fun to go for a walk around the lake.”

  “A walk around the lake?”

  “That’s what she said. I said that sounded nice but I really had to get home and I started back to the car. But just as I got there she comes flying out of the dark and she’s all over me— she actually had me pinned against the hood. And she starts telling me how she’s been dreaming of this moment ever since she first saw me, and that she just couldn’t stand it any longer, to see me and not be able to have me, and no one ever had to know, it would stay between the two of us because she wouldn’t want her husband to find out any more than I would want my wife to.”

  “Are you telling this court that Mrs. Doniger approached you?” Sutton asked slowly, deliberately. “Suggested intimacy to you?”

  “Approached me? She attacked me,” Robert declared. “I swear to God—and this court—it was all her idea.”

  “But you didn’t resist?”

  The senator sighed deeply. “I wish I could say I did. How I wish I had. But no, after my initial surprise, I didn’t resist. I’m not normally much of a drinker and I’d had three highballs, I was exhausted and I hadn’t slept in days. No, I’m ashamed to say, I didn’t resist. She dragged me off into the bushes—she was like a tiger, ripping at her clothes, tugging at mine. And she kept crying things like ‘Hurt me, hurt me,’ and ‘The rougher you do it, the better I like it.’ Then she scratched me down the chest to prove the point. And all the time she was moaning and groaning and saying things like ‘You’re irresistible. You’re incredible. You’re fantastic. I’ve never had it so good.’“

  “Can you believe this garbage?” Ione hissed.

  “Anyone who knows Karen knows how ridiculous it is,” Jenna retorted.

  “Sure,” Demelza observed. “But the jury doesn’t know Karen.”

  Janice Evans leaned toward Randy. “I can certainly testify to the senator’s irresistibility.”

  “What happened then, Senator?” Sutton pressed.

  “I… well… I wasn’t able to respond very well at first, because of the fatigue and the Scotch and all, but she said she knew how to get me going, and then she started performing oral sex on me.”

  Here, Sutton urged his client to provide explicit details, while the jury shifted in their seats, the women trying not to look too embarrassed, the men trying not to look too interested.

  “After a while,” Robert concluded with a properly chagrined expression, “what she was doing began to work and I achieved an erection. As soon as that happened, she said something like ‘Great, let’s go!’ But she wasn’t exactly as ready as she led me to believe.”

  “What do you mean?” the Silver Fox inquired.

  The witness replied in even more graphic detail. The jury continued to look uncomfortable. So did the senator.

  “I tried to tell her it wasn’t working, but she wrapped her legs around me and wouldn’t let me stop. Finally, I managed to penetr
ate her and then, before I knew it, well, it was over.”

  “You climaxed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she?”

  “She may have—I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “Was she upset by your … quickness?”

  “She didn’t seem to be. I apologized, rather profusely, as I recall, but she just smiled and said it was exactly how she expected it to be.”

  “Then what?”

  “I got up and put on my clothes and said it was time to go, but she didn’t move. She said she thought she’d stay for a while and maybe take that walk around the lake. I told her it was getting late, but she said she didn’t want to see her husband just yet, or maybe she didn’t want him to see her, I don’t know. I explained that I couldn’t wait around, I had to get home. But she waved me away and said it was all right, she would find a taxi when she was ready. I tried to argue with her, I really did. I even tried to grab her to force her into the car, but she pulled away from me. I mean, I didn’t want to leave her there all by herself in the park in the middle of the night, but she wouldn’t listen. She just ran off. I tried to find her, but she was either gone or hiding. So, finally, I got into my car and left.”

  “A real gentleman,” Felicity drawled.

  “He never apologized to me for coming too fast,” Janice muttered under her breath.

  “Senator Willmont,” Sutton continued, “you saw People’s exhibits sixty-six through seventy-two, the photographs taken of Mrs. Doniger when she was admitted to the hospital on the morning of April eighth. I ask you now, under oath, are you responsible for the injuries depicted in those photographs?”

  “No, I am not,” Robert stated emphatically. “She encouraged me to be rough with her, she said that was the way she liked it, but I never did any of those other things.”

  “She looked perfectly all right when you got into your car and drove away?”

  “Well, her clothing was torn a bit, mostly by her own doing, I might add, and there may have been a few bruises on her arms and legs, but that was all.”

  “Then how do you account for what we saw in those seven photographs?”

  “I can’t. It was horrible, how she looked, all beat up that way. But I swear she didn’t look anything like that when I left her.” Here, Robert turned and faced the jury. “I made a mistake, I admit it. Unfortunately, it was a big mistake, and I’ll spend the rest of my life regretting it. But I’m not a sadist, I’m not a maniac, I’m not a pervert—why would I do such a thing to anyone?”

  “Senator Willmont, did you rape Karen Doniger?”

  “No, I did not,” Robert replied, again looking straight at the jury. “I engaged in consensual sex with her—at her suggestion—no, at her insistence.”

  “Did you, in the course of that intimacy, beat her, slap her, punch her, and leave her, barely conscious, in Golden Gate Park?”

  “No, I did not beat her, slap her, or punch her, and she was fully conscious when she insisted that I leave her in Golden Gate Park.”

  “Do you know of any reason why Karen Doniger would claim that you did these things to her?”

  “No,” Robert admitted. “She seemed like a very nice person. Maybe she was afraid to tell her husband the truth. Maybe she was being manipulated by some political group. I don’t know. But I do know that she lied to this court. I’m a candidate for President of the United States, for God’s sake.

  Why would I deliberately risk destroying my chances of being elected by raping and beating a volunteer worker on my own staff? It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Thank you, Senator,” Hal Sutton said. “I have nothing more.”

  “Ready?” Janice Evans called.

  She stood on the steps in front of the Hall of Justice, straightening her skirt and buttoning her jacket, and then running a quick hand over her hair to smooth it down in the gust-ing wind.

  “Ready,” the Minicam operator replied.

  “Ready,” the engineer echoed.

  “Okay, roll.”

  The cameraman hit the button.

  “I’m standing in front of the Hall of Justice here in San Francisco,” Janice said in her best on-air voice, “where not just the fate of Robert Drayton Willmont is going to be decided, but perhaps the fate of America, as well. A few short months ago, the remarkable senator was a rising political star, streaking toward a first-ballot nomination. Now, rather than the voters, his political career will depend on just five men and seven women who, very soon now, must choose a side in what is perhaps the most celebrated he-said/she-said controversy of our time.”

  She began to walk slowly down the steps, into the camera.

  “But whose side will they take? That’s the question that has the entire country glued to the evening newscasts and embroiled in endless arguments. No cameras have been allowed inside Judge Oliver Wendell Washington’s courtroom, and the outside world has heard only filtered accounts of the proceedings from those who are witnessing this high drama. I’ve been sitting in the gallery, peering through the ominous bulletproof shield that separates the spectators from the participants, trying to separate fact from fiction. It’s a monumental task, and as each day unfolds, I wonder, more and more, how the jury will be able to do it.”

  Janice stopped at the bottom of the steps.

  “Okay, that’s a wrap for here,” she told her crew. “Let’s pack up and get over to Jackson Street.”

  “I’ve never heard such a load of crap,” Mitch declared in the cab they had squeezed themselves into to get over to Campton Place. “Not even back when the politicians were still trying to defend being in Vietnam.”

  “And the jury was just eating it all up,” Felicity said.

  “Because, deep down in their hearts, they want to believe him,” Demelza observed. “They want any excuse to acquit him.”

  “The sad truth is,” Ione commented with a sigh, “you don’t have to know how to govern to get elected in this country— you just have to know how to lie.”

  The senator sat next to his wife on a rich leather sofa in the dignified Willmont library that had been his father’s favorite room, the unblinking television lights illuminating every wrinkle, every blemish.

  “One might be able to fool a live audience,” he said wryly, “but it’s impossible to lie to a camera, isn’t it?”

  “Were you thinking of lying?” Janice asked from the sofa facing him.

  “No,” he replied simply. “I was just wondering why so many people think they can get away with it.”

  The newswoman crossed her ankles, licked her lips, and nodded to the half dozen technicians.

  “The last time we spoke, Senator Willmont,” she began in her on-air voice, “you were planning for your future to be decided by the majority of voters in this country. How do you feel now—about it being decided by a handful?”

  “Sad,” Robert said thoughtfully. “Sad for my family and sad for America, that such an outrageous charge was allowed to be brought into court in the first place. But I also feel confident—confident that this jury is not going to let itself be taken in by so blatant an attempt to smear me.”

  “Then you think you’ll be acquitted of all charges?”

  “I believe in the system,” the senator replied. “I believe that the innocent are protected under the law. I believe the jury will exonerate me.”

  “Even though your story of being attacked like a tiger by a middle-aged woman half your size sounds awfully farfetched?”

  “But that’s the whole point, isn’t it?” Robert exclaimed earnestly. “The truth is too bizarre for me to have made it up. If I were going to lie my way out of this, I assure you I would have come up with something a lot more plausible.”

  “If you are acquitted,” Janice observed, “you will in all likelihood receive the nomination for President. Do you think you’ll be elected in November?”

  Robert considered for a moment. “I think so, yes,” he said with the confidence of a man who has neve
r learned to accept rejection.

  “Even though you’re a confessed adulterer?”

  “I believe I may be elected in part because I confessed, because I didn’t deny it or try to lie to the people. I came right out and admitted my mistake, whopper though it was. There are precious few perfect people in this world, Miss Evans, and I’m obviously not one of them. There’ll be some pure souls who will feel they have to turn away from me, but I hope that most of the people will respect me for being honest about my imperfections.”

  “If you are acquitted, will you sue Karen Doniger for character defamation?”

  “Why?” Robert sighed. “The verdict is all that matters to me. I have no interest in humiliating the woman or her family any further. My only hope is that they use whatever money I would have won from them in a lawsuit to get her the psychiatric help she so desperately needs.”

  eight

  Senator Willmont,” Tess began on Thursday morning, the thirteenth day of the trial, “I would like to go back over certain portions of your testimony from yesterday, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind, Miss Escalante,” the senator responded with a pleasant, confident smile.

  “Beginning with your glowing tribute to your marriage.”

  Robert produced a boyish grin. “I could probably talk forever on that subject.”

  “I don’t think forever will be necessary,” Tess replied. “I’m interested only in the basics of your relationship with your wife. You testified yesterday that you and she discuss every decision before you make it and examine every action before you take it; is that correct?”

  “Yes, I said that. Yes, it’s correct.”

  “Did you and your wife discuss your having sex with Karen Doniger before you had it?”

  “Well, no, of course not,” Robert replied. “As I said, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing.”

  “Does that mean you would have discussed it with her had it not been a spur-of-the-moment thing?”

  The senator sighed. “Had I stopped to think about what I was doing that night, Miss Escalante, I wouldn’t have done it. So there would have been nothing to discuss.”