[Barbara Holloway 02] - The Best Defense

by Kate Wilhelm

  “Yes, I did. I read them all.”

  “In each one he asked the defendant to tell exactly what she did that morning, and six times she told him that. On the seventh time, she became silent after saying, ‘What’s the use.’ ” She looked at Palma. “Did you read that report, the notes and everything?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Will you please tell us your name again?”

  He glared at her and turned to look at Fierst, who was already on his feet to object.

  “Your Honor, counsel is trying to provoke the witness.”

  “Sustained. Ms. Holloway, please get on with it.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Dr. Palma, did it render you speechless to be asked the same question only three times? Did you begin to feel it was hopeless?”

  “Objection!” Fierst yelled.

  “Sustained,” Judge Paltz said. “The jury will disregard all the questions involving the witness’s name. Ms. Holloway, you will cease this form of questioning.”

  Barbara did not look at him for fear he would see the gleam in her eye. Tell them not to think of elephants.

  “Did you talk to the defendant’s sister, Dr. Palma?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Or her ex-husband, Jack Kennerman?”

  “No, I did not.”

  He wasn’t being paid by the hour, she thought distantly, but by the word. “You have told us in great detail about her childhood, her marriage, her entire past history; you have even quoted her, and you got your information from the defendant. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Did she tell you about the day her child was killed, about the fire?”

  “Yes, she did, up to a point.”

  “Did she describe her actions of that day, Dr. Palma? Please, sir, just yes or no.”

  “Yes, she did,” he said.

  “Did you ask her to repeat the various incidents with her ex-husband?”

  “No,” he said.

  He knew exactly where she was going, she thought as she pressed on. “Did you ask her to repeat the various incidents with her father?”

  “No.”

  “But you asked her to repeat the most tragic story of her life, didn’t you? How many times? Was it more than three, sir?

  “Objection! Counsel must ask one question at a time.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Did you have her repeat an account of her actions of that day, Doctor?”

  “Yes, of course. Sometimes—”

  “Dr. Palma, please just answer the questions,” Barbara snapped. “How many times did you ask her to tell you about that day?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t—”

  “Your answer is that you don’t know,” Barbara said. “Is that correct?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Did she tell you about it more than once?”

  “Yes.”

  “More than twice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dr. Palma, did you explain to Paula Kennerman that it was not your duty to treat her in any way, but that you had been hired by the district attorney’s office to evaluate her mental condition?”

  “Of course! Yes, I did.”

  “And she talked about her past, whatever you asked her?”

  “Yes. Up to a point,” he said with determination.

  “What did she tell you about that day?” she asked almost casually.

  Fierst objected.

  “On what grounds?” Judge Paltz asked.

  “Privileged information between a doctor and patient. He can’t be forced to reveal what the defendant may have told him. She is trying to turn this witness into a witness for the defense.”

  Barbara shook her head and approached the bench. “Your Honor, Dr. Palma is not and has never been my client’s physician or psychiatrist. He was acting as an agent of the district attorney’s office. He has repeated verbatim what she told him in many instances. The prosecution cannot make an arbitrary decision now that he cannot continue to reveal what he learned.”

  Judge Paltz nodded and overruled.

  Dr. Palma told what Paula had said to him, that she had gone to the back door and had seen flames, had run around the front and upstairs, searching for her child. The jury appeared to be frozen with concentration.

  “Is that what she said to the investigating officers?”

  “Objection!”

  “The witness has testified that he read all the reports. He based his interrogation on them. The reports are stipulated as exhibits. He knows what he read or didn’t read in them.”

  Dr. Palma was instructed to answer the question.

  “Substantially,” he said.

  “What do you mean, ‘substantially’? Was it the same story?”

  “I mean there might have been some variation,” he said.

  “Dr. Palma, we have the police officers’ reports. Shall we read them and compare them to your account? Or can you recall in what respects they vary?”

  “A matter of wording,” he said. “It was basically the same.”

  “Thank you,” Barbara said. “Dr. Palma, what do the letters BWS mean on your report?”

  “It was a technical note to myself,” he said, “to remind me to examine for battered-wife syndrome.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It is a complex system of behavior that includes violent interactions when a woman is emotionally dependent on the man she is living with.”

  “What do you mean by ‘violent interactions’?”

  “Most often the couple quarrels and that leads to physical violence during which the man beats the woman. Sometimes severely.”

  “When you use the letters BWS as a memo to yourself, does that imply you are searching for a pattern of behavior, predictable behavior, that is?”

  “Generally that would be true.”

  “Does seeking help from a marriage counselor fall into that predicted pattern?”

  “No, it does not.”

  Barbara started back to the table, then paused to ask, “Dr. Palma, is there a term comparable to BWS used for men?”

  He hesitated, then said, “No, there is not.”

  “No more questions,” Barbara said.

  Fierst was already on his feet to repair some of the damage. “Dr. Palma, was the defendant dissociative?”

  “No, she was not.”

  “Delusional?”

  “No, she was not.”

  “How would you describe her mental condition?”

  “Absolutely normal, completely rational.”

  “Your report described her as uncooperative. Is that correct?”

  “She became highly uncooperative.”

  “Doctor, is it standard procedure to ask a patient, or an accused person, to repeat a statement several times?” Fierst asked.

  “Yes, it is. Absolutely.”

  “Why is that. Doctor?”

  “Sometimes people simply forget part of the significant series of acts. Talking about the events might free something that has been deeply repressed. Sometimes they omit something because they think it has no significance. Sometimes, of course, they have lied, and there is a very high probability that they will contradict what they said earlier.”

  When Fierst finished with Dr. Palma, he said the state rested its case. Barbara, as a matter of form, requested that the case be dismissed, and was denied.

  “Is the defense ready to proceed?” Judge Paltz then asked.

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Very well. Court will recess for twenty minutes, at which time the defense will present its case.”

  Barbara remained at the table to speak with Paula after the courtroom had been cleared. “Did he leave out anything important?”

  Paula shook her head. “I don’t think so, but he made it all sound so textbookish, like a statistic.”

  “That’s his job, and he’s a pro. But he presented your side thoroughly and that means you don�
�t have to.”

  “You made him do that somehow, didn’t you?” Paula said wonderingly, and then she said, “Oh. That’s why Janey came to visit me, isn’t it? They thought— Oh.”

  “Exactly. Go on now and get some coffee, do some breathing exercises or something. See you in a few minutes.” She nodded to the matron who had started to shift from foot to foot, just out of hearing distance.

  “Everyone in the business knows that character witnesses don’t mean a damn thing,” Frank had said many times over the years, but he always had called them. The jury didn’t know what a meaningless ritual it was. He also said that cross-examination of character witnesses was no more than a test of the intelligence of the prosecutor; he’d be a damn fool if he went after them with spurs and whips.

  Barbara had character witnesses lined up for the rest of the afternoon, for most of the next day, and she planned to wind up on Friday with Carrie Voight, to let the jurors mull over the Dodgsons and their spy all weekend.

  And give Bailey time to find and bring home the migrant worker.

  And to reveal as little as possible about her defense before a long weekend set in.

  And give her time to consider Rich Dodgson; consider the direction this case would take next week, time to discover what the best defense would be.

  NINETEEN

  On Friday the parade of character witnesses continued with few interruptions from Gerald Fierst, who knew as well as Barbara that his best policy was silence now. When one of the waitresses from the Olympus restaurant was on the stand, he asked her if Fridays and Saturdays were very busy, and she admitted they were. So the fact that she had not seen Craig Dodgson for several years did not mean he hadn’t been there, only that she hadn’t seen him. She admitted that was correct. She had come to court dressed in the uniform the lounge waitresses wore—a knee-length black skirt, long-sleeved white blouse.

  Cindy Truman, the manager of the restaurant, followed her. She was a statuesque woman, broad in the shoulders, beautifully proportioned, with satiny skin and dark hair streaked with gray.

  After establishing that Paula had worked there for four years and had an excellent work record, Barbara asked where she had worked in the restaurant.

  “In the dining room.”

  “Will you describe the layout of the restaurant, please?”

  She did so succinctly, and when she was finished, Barbara asked, “So the dining area is completely separate from the lounge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did Paula Kennerman ever work in the lounge?”

  “No. She was an excellent food server; she would have been wasted in the lounge.”

  She said she knew who Craig Dodgson was and that he had not been in for several years.

  “How can you be certain?” Barbara asked.

  “About four years ago he came to the lounge with his younger brother, who was a minor at the time. I had to ask him to leave, and Craig Dodgson made a scene. In our business you remember those who make trouble.”

  Barbara asked her what the food servers wore, and she stood up to show her uniform—a black skirt that came to mid-calf, and a white blouse. She tied on a white apron to complete the outfit.

  “Do you know Jack Kennerman?”

  “Yes. He used to come in sometimes and wait in the lounge for Paula to finish work.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “On Friday, April eighteenth.”

  “Will you tell us about that, please?”

  “At first he said Paula had sent him,” she said, “and I told him I couldn’t release her check without written authorization from her. He said he wanted to put it in the bank to cover checks they had written. Then he demanded to know where she was, if she was hiding somewhere. I told him to get out.”

  “What was his attitude, his manner?”

  “He was loud and almost incoherent at times, contradicting himself again and again. He looked and behaved like a madman,” she said flatly.

  “When was the last time you saw Paula Kennerman?” Barbara asked, standing by the jury box.

  “On Wednesday night of that same week,” Cindy Truman said. “She came looking for me because a gentleman at her table wanted to see the manager. When I went to the table, a party of eight, the gentleman said that they had paid the tab with a credit card and added a generous tip, but that they wanted to give Paula a special tip, just for her. He gave her twenty-five dollars in addition to the tip on the credit card.”

  “Was he flirting with her? Was that his reason?”

  Cindy Truman smiled slightly. “I hardly think so. He and his wife were there with their three sons and their wives to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. He was simply happy with the service.”

  “Did Paula keep the twenty-five dollars?”

  “Yes indeed. She offered to put it in the pool to share the way all tips are shared, but I told her she had to honor his wishes and keep it for herself. She said she would put it in the special savings account for Lori’s education. She was very happy because that would take it to five hundred dollars.”

  When Barbara was finished, Fierst hacked away at Cindy Truman. She couldn’t be in the lounge, in both dining rooms, in her office, and the kitchen simultaneously, he pointed out, and she couldn’t know what was happening in any of the rooms where she was not present. Could she?

  She said quietly that she knew what was happening in her restaurant.

  “Mrs. Truman,” he said, “on a Friday night you get an influx of customers when the performing arts center closes, don’t you?”

  “Yes, quite often.”

  “What does the lounge look like then?”

  “People are standing at the bar, others clustered around the piano, or the trio, whoever is performing jazz, and every table is filled, every chair, with other people standing around, moving around. It settles down again after a bit.”

  “Yet you claim that you know who is in a crowded room like that. Do you have X-ray vision, Mrs. Truman, that lets you see through people, or magical vision that permits you to see around people?”

  Barbara objected vehemently and was upheld, and she thought, Touche, Mr. Fierst.

  “No more questions,” Fierst said with overly theatrical disgust.

  Day-care people, kindergarten teacher, baby-sitter, people from the apartment complex, even a librarian who had known Lori and Paula, a woman who worked at the Polk Street safe house, all drew hardly a comment from Fierst. Then, at three-thirty, Barbara called Carrie Voight. It was earlier than she had wanted, but Fierst was acting as if it were his mission today to demonstrate how a trial could be expedited.

  Carrie Voight weighed more than three hundred pounds. It was painful to watch her slow progress down the aisle of the courtroom, and it was evident that she could not possibly be seated at the witness stand. Instead a bench was provided, and she sat down at eye level with the jurors.

  Her face seemed to have been mashed in, with a protruding forehead and chin, receding nose and mouth. Her hair was cut short and hung straight on both sides of her face, with bangs that covered her eyebrows. She was dressed in a green tent—Barbara could think of nothing else to call her garment.

  She was a querulous witness, and Barbara gave her the freedom to talk about herself for a good while. She and Hermie, her husband, had lived in the Farleigh Road house twenty-four years, and today was the first time in six years that she had been outside.

  When she had gone on long enough, Barbara interrupted her to ask, “But in spite of your infirmities, you managed to hold a job, too, didn’t you? Will you tell us about it?”

  She was happy to. “It was like this, see. Mr. Dodgson came by one day and said he heard about me and my troubles, and he wanted to give me something to do, let me feel useful again. He said him and his wife came out to the country for the peace and quiet after living most their lives in big cities, and he didn’t want to see that go, the peace and quiet. And he said Mrs. Canby was going to let a lot of women
start living in her house and he hated the idea of a lot of loose women making trouble in the neighborhood. And I said Mrs. Canby wouldn’t let nothing like that go on. She used to bring me fruit from the trees over there. I said she was a nice lady and he said maybe she was, but she wouldn’t be there and who knew about the women who would be there, and I said I was sure I didn’t. He was afraid they’d be doing bad things, like abortions maybe, or fighting with men, or screaming and carrying on, or noisy parties, or something. He said alls he wanted me to do was let him know who went in and out, that’s all. And I said that I could look over there now and then, but I didn’t see what good that would do, and he said, no, they’d rig up something so I could really tell. And they brought this little light that sat on top of my dresser, and when anyone went in the road over there, the light come on. And they brought me this telescope that was on a stand at the window and I could see license plates and everything. I liked that telescope. You know, it kind of opens the world wide open. And he paid me two hundred fifty dollars a month just to tell him who went in there. Just that.”

  “What did you do when the light came on?”

  “I’d write down the license number, if it was a car or truck, something like that, or write down what it had on it, like the telephone company truck. And if it was a person, I’d just write down something like a girl with long hair, or two women, or whatever come to mind, and say if they was just taking a walk and going back, or going out to the orchard, or on his place. You know, sort of what they were doing.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  “Well, if it was daytime, I’d call him on the telephone and tell him what I seen. If it was late, I’d wait until the next day and call him up and tell him.”

  “Just him? Did you ever call Mrs. Dodgson?”

  “He said not to call her, just him, and that’s what I did.”

  “Do you know what turned on the light in your room?”

  “I figured it out,” she said with a nod that sent her flesh quivering. “I seen that Mrs. Dodgson never went past that sign they put up; No Trespassing sign it is, first one ever on any of that property. And one day I watched one of the girls go past it and sure enough the light come on, so I knew.”