In Self Defense

by Susan R. Sloan

  “Have you had much experience with arsenic poisoning, Doctor?” David inquired.

  “As it happens, my brother died at the age of six from eating rat poison,” Ahrens told the jury. “So toxic contamination has always been of special interest to me. In 1998, I took a leave of absence from my practice to go to Bangladesh, where I spent the better part of a year working with doctors and scientists who were trying to find remedies for the arsenic poisoning of that country’s drinking water.”

  “In your opinion then, Dr. Ahrens, given your personal experience and your professional expertise,” David asked, concluding his direct examination, “could the levels of arsenic found in Clare Durant’s body have led to her death?”

  “Most certainly,” the physician confirmed. “She was already well on her way.”

  ***

  “Was there anything in your analysis, Dr. Ahrens, that conclusively established that the arsenic found in Clare Durant’s body, and attributed to the bottled water she drank, was deliberately put in that water by her husband -- or by anyone else, for that matter?” Sundstrom inquired on cross.

  “No,” Ahrens replied, “there was nothing in my analysis to indicate how the poison got into the water, only that it was there, in quantities far exceeding normal.”

  “Did you analyze the bottle itself, for any sign of tampering, or any indication of how the arsenic might have gotten into it?”

  “I’m afraid not,” the physician admitted. “At the time, we had no idea there was going to be a murder investigation. We were concerned only with getting to the bottom of the problem and resolving it.”

  “Well then, let me ask you this -- could this contamination have been self-inflicted?”

  “What are you asking?” Ahrens countered.

  “Come now, I’m sure you’ve known instances where people have purposely made themselves sick, haven’t you, Doctor?”

  “Yes, I’ve known such instances. But if you’re asking me whether I think Clare poisoned herself, the answer is no.”

  “But we know Richard Durant was about to divorce his wife,” Sundstrom pressed. “Is it not possible that this whole episode was nothing more than a wounded woman’s cry for help?”

  “I’ve known Clare her entire life,” Ahrens declared. “The answer is emphatically no.”

  “It’s not even possible?”

  “Not in my opinion.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Sundstrom said. “Mrs. Durant is fortunate to have such a strong supporter.”

  ***

  “I can’t believe the prosecutor thinks I would have poisoned myself just to save my marriage,” Clare said, shaking her head. “Would anyone really do that sort of thing?”

  “I don’t know,” David told her. “But I guess there must be some in Mark Sundstrom’s life that would.”

  They were eating lunch in the little room adjacent to the courtroom that was theirs for the duration of the trial.

  “How much longer do you think this is going to go on?” Clare wanted to know.

  “Probably not much longer,” David replied.

  “I’ve been thinking about asking Elaine to take the children,” she told him.

  “You mean until the end of the trial?”

  “No,” she told him. “I’ve been thinking about asking her to take custody of them.”

  David was genuinely surprised. “Now why would you do that?” he asked. “The case isn’t over yet. It’s way too soon to give up hope. And besides, such a move wouldn’t say very much for your confidence in me, now would it?”

  Clare shrugged. “If the prosecutor thinks I could poison myself because my husband was going to divorce me, and then blame my husband for it, the jury could think it, too. I don’t want my children to have to live with that one minute longer than necessary. If they’re with Elaine, they can start over, with a different life.”

  David was about to say something, but then decided against it. “Let’s not worry about that just yet,” he said instead.

  ***

  “You live right,” Eddie Ridenour informed Erin when he met her outside the courthouse during the lunch recess.

  “Oh my God, what did you find?” the detective asked, holding her breath.

  “A partial, under the driver’s seat, on the adjustment lever. They’re running it as we speak.”

  The detective threw a bear hug around the analyst. “Eddie, I love you,” she cried.

  “Yeah, well don’t tell my wife, or there could be hell to pay,” he said with a grin. “You know -- a divorce, or a murder, or who knows what else.”

  ***

  David rose slowly from his seat when court resumed. “Defense calls Julie Durant to the stand,” he said.

  Beside him, Clare’s head snapped around. “No!” she cried, jumping up. “Wait a minute. Stop! You can’t do this. We never talked about this. I never said you could do this. I won’t allow it!”

  “Mr. Johansen, please restrain your client,” the judge cautioned.

  “Yes, Your Honor,” David said.

  He turned to Clare. “You have to let her do this,” he whispered, putting his hand firmly on his client’s shoulder and pushing her back into her chair. “She wants to do this. She needs to do this. Not just for you, but for herself. So trust her. And trust me.”

  “But why would you put her through this?’ Clare demanded. “She doesn’t know anything.”

  “I didn’t go to her, she came to me,” David told her. “So why don’t we hear what she has to say?”

  The door to the courtroom opened and Julie Durant entered, following a guard all the way down the aisle to the witness stand. The slip of a girl was wearing a blue pleated skirt and a white blouse and looked, for all the world, like she was on her way to school. She put her hand on the bible and swore to tell the truth in a voice that was almost a whisper. Everyone in the courtroom leaned forward in order to hear her.

  “How old are you, Julie?” David asked.

  “I’m thirteen,” the girl replied.

  “Is that old enough to know the difference between telling the truth and telling a lie?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know the difference, and I’m not going to lie. This is too important.”

  “Julie, your mother didn’t know you were going to come here today,” the attorney began. “Do you know why?”

  “Yes,” the girl said. “Because I asked you not to tell her.”

  “Why didn’t you want me to tell her?”

  “Because she wouldn’t have let me do this, and it’s important that I do it.”

  At the defense table, Clare bit down hard on her lower lip to stifle a cry.

  “But if it’s important that you be here, why do you think your mother would have objected?” David asked.

  “Because she wants to protect me,” Julie said. “She doesn’t want me to be involved.”

  “But isn’t that reasonable -- that she would want to protect you?”

  Julie shrugged. “I guess so, but the thing is -- I am involved,” she said. “It’s just that she doesn’t know it.”

  “How do you mean, you’re involved but your mother doesn’t know it?”

  “That day -- Father’s Day, when we went to the mountains and we were coming down that steep trail, I was just turning around to tell Peter something when my mother went over the side of the mountain. I saw what happened.”

  “Tell the court what happened, Julie.”

  “She didn’t slip and fall by herself. I saw my father put out his foot and trip her so she would fall.”

  Clare let out a little cry and her hands flew to her mouth. A collective gasp ran through the courtroom.

  “Do you mean your father did it deliberately, or that he just maybe lost his balance and fell into her?”

  “He didn’t lose his balance,” Julie said flatly. “I saw him stick his foot out on purpose to trip her up.”

  “And you never told anyone?”

  “I told Doreen. She’s our housekeeper
. I told her what I saw as soon as we got home. And I told Peter, too. He’s my brother. But I didn’t tell anyone else. I was scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Scared of what would happen if I told. Scared the police might come and take my dad away. Doreen said we shouldn’t say anything for the tine being, but we should keep our eyes open.”

  “Why do you think she said that?”

  The girl shrugged. “I’m not sure, but I think maybe she didn’t believe me.”

  “Do you think she thought you were lying?”

  “No, not lying,” the girl replied, “but that maybe I was just mistaken about it.”

  “So what did you think?” David inquired. “That if Doreen didn’t believe you, maybe no one else would, either?”

  Julie nodded. “I tried to do what Doreen said. I tried to keep my eyes open. I tried to keep my eyes on my mom. But then I went to art class, and I wasn’t there when the truck hit her.”

  At the defense table, Clare was sobbing uncontrollably into her hands, and for several seconds, it was the only sound that could be heard in the courtroom. Because now she understood -- she understood Julie’s behavior after that day, and she cried because she hadn’t been able to help her daughter.

  “You wouldn’t come here and say what you just said just to help your mother, would you?”

  “You mean if it wasn’t true?” Julie asked.

  “Yes.”

  “No,” the girl replied, shaking her head. “I don’t tell lies. I know better. The thing is, lies never really help anyone. In the end, they always come out, and then it just makes things worse. That’s what Mom always says, and I know it’s true.”

  “Could you have been mistaken then, as Doreen probably thought you were?” David pressed. “You had -- what -- a split second to see what happened? Is it possible you just thought you saw your father trip your mother?”

  “I don’t think you mistake seeing something like that,” Julie responded. “Do you?”

  “But people think they see things all the time that later turn out to be absolutely not what they actually saw at all. Couldn’t this be one of those times?”

  Julie thought about that for several seconds, and then she shook her head decisively. “When you see something like that, it’s so unexpected that it’s kind of like it takes a photograph that stays in your brain. I don’t think you get it wrong. I mean -- whoever expects to see their father try to kill their mother?”

  “Thank you, Julie,” David said.

  ***

  Great, Mark Sundstrom thought to himself. Now all he had to do was go after a teenager -- and not just any teenager, but one who had already lost her father and was in real danger of losing her mother. She was a late addition to the witness list, and he knew he could have objected, but he probably would have lost the argument. He sighed heavily. Being a bully, especially when it meant beating up on kids, was his least favorite part of the job.

  “This is all pretty convenient, wouldn’t you say?” he suggested right off the bat. “An eleventh hour witness to corroborate your mother’s story. Who’s idea was it for you to come forward with this totally off-the-wall story?”

  “It was my idea,” Julie said. “I heard on the television when you tried to make my mom out to be a cold-blooded killer, and I knew I had to come here and say what I saw.”

  “And you expect this jury to believe you?”

  Julie looked over at the twelve jurors and four alternates who were fixed on her every word. “I don’t know any of these people,” she said with the reality of a thirteen-year-old. “And they don’t know me. If I knew them, then I could probably answer that question. If they knew me, then they’d know I’m telling the truth.”

  ***

  Doreen Mulcahy was the next witness to take the stand. “Julie talked to me the night of her mother’s fall,” the housekeeper confirmed. “She came to me shortly after we got home from the hospital in Port Angeles. I’d driven out to pick the children up, as Mr. Durant was staying with his wife. Julie was so worried that something would happen to her mother while she wasn’t there, she didn’t want to leave.”

  “Did she say why she was so worried?” David inquired.

  Doreen nodded. “She said it wasn’t an accident. She said her father made her mother stumble and fall off the mountain. She said she saw him do it. And she didn’t understand why.”

  “Did you believe her?”

  “Well, at the time, with everything that was going on, I thought she was probably mistaken about what she saw. Children can have very vivid imaginations, you know. It wasn’t until after that truck ran Mrs. Durant off the road that I started having second thoughts.”

  “And do you remember what the date of this conversation was that you had with Julie?”

  “I remember exactly when it was,” Doreen said without hesitation. “It was Father’s Day night of last year.”

  “Thank you,” David said.

  ***

  “Did you like Mr. Durant?” Sundstrom asked, rising from his seat and approaching the witness.

  “He was a good man to work for,” Doreen replied. “He paid well and he treated me fairly.”

  “You worked for the Nicolaidis family before coming to work for the Durants, didn’t you?”

  “For Mrs. Nicolaidis, until she died.”

  “And then you moved from Ballard to Laurelhurst?”

  “Yes.

  “Quite a step up, wasn’t it?”

  “Housekeeping is housekeeping, wherever the house is,” Doreen said. “Truth be told, I liked Ballard better -- smaller house.”

  More than several of those in the courtroom giggled at that, and one of the jurors even nodded in understanding.

  “I take it you like your job?”

  “Yes, yes I do.”

  “And you’d like to keep it?”

  “I have no plans to leave.”

  “But if Mrs. Durant is convicted here, she’ll go to prison, and there won’t be any need for you.”

  Doreen frowned. “That would be a pity.”

  “So you have every reason to want to keep your employer out of prison, don’t you?”

  “I have to admit, I never thought of it in quite that way,” the housekeeper replied, “but yes, I’d like to see Mrs. Durant cleared of all this nonsense.”

  “Enough to lie to this court about a conversation with her daughter?” the prosecutor suggested.

  Doreen Mulcahy was nobody’s fool. “To be honest, I don’t know how anyone would be able to answer that question,” she replied. “And luckily, it doesn’t matter, since the conversation with Julie did take place, exactly as I’ve testified that it did.”

  “Redirect, Mr. Johansen?” the judge inquired as Sundstrom took his seat.

  “No, Your Honor,” David said. “The defense rests.”

  Twelve

  Julie Durant’s testimony was the lead story on the evening news, and the headline in the morning papers. It was the topic of conversation around office water coolers, in neighborhood bars, and on commuter ferries.

  But Clare didn’t care about any of that. It had been months since she read the papers or turned on the television.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked her daughter. “Why didn’t you tell me you saw what happened?”

  “I was scared,” Julie admitted.

  “Scared of me?”

  “No . . . scared of Dad.”

  Clare put her arms around her daughter and pulled her close, rocking her slowly back and forth, letting her cry, saying nothing.

  After all, what was there to say?

  ***

  Erin’s phone was ringing as she entered her apartment.

  “We got a match,” Eddie Ridenour said without preamble.

  “Who is it?”

  “Some two-bit loser from Lacey. His rap sheet’s pretty long, but it’s mostly petty stuff.”

  “Lacey,” Erin murmured. “Richard Durant grew up in Lacey.”
/>   “Interesting, perhaps,” Eddie suggested.

  “Thanks.” Erin said. “I owe you.”

  “Don’t worry,” the analyst said with a chuckle as he hung up. “I’ll collect.”

  ***

  Erin rang the bell at her partner’s West Seattle home at eleven o’clock in the evening. “I’m so sorry to bother you this late,” she apologized to Jean Grissom when Dusty’s wife answered the door.

  “That’s okay,” Jean assured her. “He’s just getting ready for bed. Come on in. I’ll get him.”

  “Sorry to bother you so late, partner,” Erin said, when Dusty, in bathrobe and slippers, shuffled into the living room, “but this was important.”

  “That’s okay,” Dusty said. “What’s up?”

  Erin pulled the booking card of one Ryan Purdue out of her briefcase. “Take a look,” she said.

  Dusty eyed the photo. “Why do I know I’ve seen this guy before?” he muttered.

  Erin pulled another sheet out of her briefcase. “You tell me,” she said, thrusting the police sketch made from Clare Durant’s description of the man in the black truck under her partner’s nose.

  He whistled softly. “I’ll be damned,” he murmured. “Right down to the sideburns.”

  “Comes from a trailer park in Lacey,” Erin told him. “And guess who he went to high school with?”

  Dusty heaved a sigh. “We better have a little talk with the captain,” he said. “And then maybe a chat with Mark Sundstrom.”

  ***

  “The hell you say,” Sundstrom cried the following morning. “Closing arguments start in an hour, and then this case is on its way to the jury.”

  “But she may be telling the truth,” Erin argued.

  “I’m perfectly willing to let the jury decide,” the prosecutor declared.

  “Without this information?” Dusty pressed.

  Sundstrom sighed. “Even if her husband was trying to kill her, it doesn’t necessarily mean she killed him in self-defense. He had no weapon and she was in no imminent danger, and that’s what I’m going to argue.”

  “He has a point,” Dusty said as they left the prosecutor’s office and the courthouse.

  “I know,” Erin conceded with a realistic sigh. “Maybe I just feel sorry for her. Knowing her husband wanted her dead is an awful thing to have to live with.”