by Kate Wilhelm
Finally she demanded: “So, when you write these editorials in which you make claims about the dangers of the birth-control pill, you are simply relying on your network. Those words are not yours; you did not write them; you did not check the sources; you accepted the networks you subscribe to for your information. Isn’t that correct?”
“There’s no need to cross-check—”
“You accepted without question whatever information came through the network, isn’t that correct?”
“I’m trying to explain—”
“I don’t want any explanation,” she snapped. “Did you simply accept whatever they told you? It’s a simple question.”
“Objection,” Fierst said. “This is not proper examination of a witness. Counsel is trying to browbeat the witness into making unwarranted statements.”
Judge Paltz looked at him thoughtfully and then said, “Overruled. I think the witness can answer the question directly.” He turned to Dodgson. “Sir, do you recall the question?”
Dodgson’s expression was murderous. “I recall it,” he said. “I accepted what my sources told me.”
“Did you ever inform your readers that many of your editorials and articles were not your original thoughts, that you were simply repeating what distant and unknown masters were dictating?”
Fierst objected violently this time and was sustained.
“Mr. Dodgson, do you agree with your son that there is never any acceptable reason to resort to abortion?”
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“Did you believe the Canby Ranch was being used for abortion counseling, possibly for abortions?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you write an editorial, a series of articles denouncing it?”
“A reasonable man doesn’t act without proof of some kind,” he said. “I was waiting for proof.”
“Did you ever demand proof for any of the information you accepted from your computer network affiliations?”
He hesitated, as if expecting Fierst to intercede; when Fierst didn’t, he said, “No. I knew those people.”
“Did Mrs. Canby warn you that if you published any unwarranted accusation about her property and its use as a refuge for battered women, she would have you and your family investigated from the day of your birth?”
“No! She did not!”
“Did you know the Canby Ranch property was being used as a refuge for battered women? Didn’t Mrs. Canby inform you of that?”
“Yes, we talked about it.”
“You printed a number of articles and editorials denouncing the use of Safe Houses, denouncing the principle of providing a haven for women fleeing their husbands, did you not?”
“Yes. I believe such action—”
“The answer is yes,” Barbara said. “You printed articles advising neighbors to spy on neighbors, to inform, to demonstrate, and yet you tolerated such a house on the property next to yours without a murmur. Why?”
“I suspected there was more to it than merely providing a haven,” he said. “I was gathering information.”
“For over two years?”
“Yes.”
“You were being cautious, is that what you mean?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Did you personally write this article and this editorial, calling Paula Kennerman a baby killer, the fire an arson fire, an attempt to hide the murder?” She read the opening of the article.
“Yes, I did.”
“This newspaper is dated April twenty-first, the Monday following the death of Lori Kennerman and the arson fire at the Canby Ranch. That was ten days before the police released a statement that there had been a murder and arson. Who gave you that information, Mr. Dodgson?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember. Maybe I figured it out myself.”
“I see. Days before there was an autopsy, before the fire marshal made his report, you just figured it out yourself, that a murder had been done. And you printed your opinion as if it were factual. Is that what you are saying?”
“I was right, wasn’t I?”
She turned to Judge Paltz. “I ask that the witness’s comment be stricken and that he be ordered to answer the question directly.” When this was done, she repeated: “Did you print your opinion as if it were factual?”
“Yes, I did. It was.”
“The words following ‘Yes, I did,’ will be stricken,” Judge Paltz said. “Mr. Dodgson, you are required to answer the questions without further comment. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Did you send, or arrange to have sent, copies of your paper to Jack Kennerman?”
“No.”
“Did you arrange a cash payment to him of three thousand dollars?”
“Of course not. I don’t even know him.”
She asked that his comment be stricken. He was staring at her through narrowed, glinting eyes as cold as death.
“Were you aware that four other newspapers through the state ran your original article and editorial verbatim in the weeks of early May?”
He shook his head. “Sorry, the answer is still no.”
“On Saturday, April nineteenth, where were you all morning?”
“Cutting the grass with the tractor mower.”
She led him through the morning. He had seen Angela driving out and had started to go in when Craig came waving him down. He returned to his house at about twenty minutes past eleven, just about when the fire engines arrived.
“Then what did you do?”
“Nothing. There was nothing any of us could do. We stayed home, out of the way.”
“Did Mrs. Doderson tell you she had called Mr. Gallead?”
“No.”
“Did she mention seeing, or possibly seeing, a figure crossing the private road?”
“No.”
“It has been stated that you usually went to the office on Saturday afternoon to prepare the paper for Monday morning distribution. Why didn’t you do that on that Saturday?”
“My wife was not feeling well. She was upset by the death of the child.”
“So you stayed home the rest of the day?”
“Yes,” he snapped. He looked at his watch and then checked it against the clock on the rear wall.
“And you remained home all day Sunday?”
“What difference does that make?” he demanded. “Yes. So what? I was rethinking my front page and my editorial.”
Again she asked that his comments be stricken from the record.
“Had Mrs. Melrose left yet when you returned to the house?”
“I don’t know.”
“So if she was still there she might have overheard something you or your wife or son said. Is that true?”
“Objection,” Fierst said. “That’s a hypothetical question.”
It was sustained.
“Why did you fire her, Mr. Dodgson?”
“She was incompetent.”
“She was with you for fourteen months. Was she incompetent all that time?”
“She was.”
“But you waited until you had proof of her incompetence? Was that it?”
“I fired her when I got tired of her messing things up,” he said. “Fouling the swimming pool was the last straw.”
“When did you first discover the empty floor stripper container in the pool?”
“Sometime on Monday. I left it there to show her why I was firing her.”
“And it floated around from Saturday until Tuesday,” Barbara murmured. “Did you find that strange?”
“Objection,” Fierst said. “Isn’t all this rather irrelevant?”
“It is not irrelevant,” Barbara said. “Mr. Dodgson possibly has manufactured an excuse to fire his housekeeper who might have overheard something he did not want repeated.”
“You’re crazy,” Dodgson said in a soft voice that sounded menacing. “There are many ways to get rid of someone; you don’t have to go to the expense of cleaning o
ut a damn swimming pool.”
Judge Paltz rapped his gavel and admonished Rich Dodgson once more. He sustained the objection.
“Or maybe,” Barbara said, going to her table to pick up a piece of paper, “Mr. Dodgson fired his housekeeper as an excuse to clean out his pool.”
Fierst objected and was upheld.
During this brief period, she watched Rich Dodgson, who had become very still, the way a predatory cat is still just before it leaps, she thought. “Mr. Dodgson, is this the invoice from the Sweet Waters Pool Maintenance Company?” She placed the paper in front of him. His eyes were like pale ice.
“I will not answer any more of this woman’s questions. I object to allowing this woman to meddle in my private affairs. I object to having been called to testify in a matter that I know nothing about. I object to this public persecution. This woman is on some sort of personal feminist crusade to obliterate truth and decency. What is happening here is a travesty of justice, a mockery—” He had started in a low, intense voice that gradually rose until he was shouting. He was drowned out by the furious banging of Judge Paltz’s gavel.
“Sir,” Judge Paltz said, “the court will adjourn at this time until one-thirty. At that hour, you will present yourself in the witness chair and conduct yourself properly. You may consult with your attorney if you choose, but, sir, you have been called as a witness, and you will testify.”
The noise in the courtroom was like an explosion when the judge left.
He had cut the luncheon recess short, but it was too long, Barbara thought, pacing, too restless to sit still, too restless to consider food. She wanted to walk in the woods, by the river, in her old neighborhood, anywhere. On the beach. That was what she wanted, to walk on the beach, for hours and hours.
“That’s how he must be before he hits her,” she said with a shudder. “Remote, icy, monstrous.” She went to the window. “He put on that last performance on purpose,” she added. “Controlled all the way. Buying time to think, to plan.”
“You rattled his cage, all right,” Frank said. “He must be going nuts trying to figure out where you’re leading him.”
She turned away from the window—she had not seen a thing out there—and faced him again. “I’ll nod when I want the stuff,” she said. She had told him this already. She bit her lip and went to the rest room to wash her face.
“Mr. Dodgson,” she said, “I showed you the invoice from the pool-cleaning company and asked if you recognized it. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s correct to your knowledge?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you paid the bill; you must have accepted it at the time. Didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
She held up the invoice. “The man who did the work reported here that he started the pump on Tuesday and returned when the pool was empty on Wednesday and scrubbed down the sides with detergent to remove an oily residue. Mr. Dodgson, a floor stripper chemical is not oil based, is it?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
She handed the invoice to the clerk. “When you lived in Las Vegas, were you acquainted with Royce Gallead?”
“No.”
“Did you know that your wife danced in the club where he was assistant manager?”
“No.”
“Did you know she continued her professional dancing while you were away from home?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “We have no secrets.”
“Is Mr. Gallead a business associate of yours?”
“No.”
“Do you speak French, Mr. Dodgson?”
Fierst objected and she withdrew the question. Dodgson’s eyes were narrowed, his jaw hard and tight again.
“Is your printing company capable of printing in foreign languages?” she asked.
While Fierst was objecting, she glanced at her father and nodded. He was at the defense table, not behind it as he had been throughout the trial until now. She faced Dodgson again, aware of the rustle of paper behind her.
“Is it possible that Mr. Gallead is not a real associate of yours, that he is instead merely a customer? Someone you do printing jobs for?”
He was watching Frank with an intense stare. His lips had all but vanished.
“Mr. Dodgson,” she said. “Did you not hear the question?”
He moistened his lips and then said in a low voice, “I’ve done printing work for him.”
“And you wouldn’t necessarily know what the work was, especially if it was in a foreign language. Is that right?”
He turned his gaze to her, and then looked past her. There was a slight commotion. She turned to see Craig Dodgson pulling away from Kay Dodgson’s hand. Craig hurried from the courtroom.
“Mr. Dodgson,” she said. “Did you hear my question?”
“I heard it,” he said with a hash of fury. “I don’t know what the work was. It was in a foreign language, on a computer disk. I just did the printing.”
“Ah,” she said. She walked to the table and regarded the pyramid Frank had constructed, the cardboard carton on the bottom, the case-size box on top of it, the small box on top of that. She turned and approached him again with her hands in her pockets. “Mr. Dodgson, do you recognize these?” She withdrew her hand and opened it. Dodgson turned the color of wet putty.
“Objection!” Fierst yelled. “Your Honor, this is a fishing expedition pure and simple. What is counsel doing playing games with boxes, hiding something in her hand?”
Paltz glanced at him almost absently. “Overruled. Mr. Dodgson, did you hear Ms. Holloway’s question?”
“I don’t know what they are,” he said in such a low voice, Judge Paltz asked him to repeat it.
Barbara approached the bench and said, “It’s baby aspirin and a time-release decongestant, Your Honor. But it looks very much like the combination drug RU-486.”
There was a cry behind her; she turned to see Kay Dodgson running from the courtroom, closely followed by half a dozen other people. Reporters, she thought, and looked at Dodgson again. He was stone-faced and very pale. She read murder in his expression, cold, merciless murder.
“Mr. Dodgson, did you print labels for boxes similar to those on the defense table for Mr. Gallead?”
“Yes.”
“How many did you print?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Well, was it in the hundreds? Thousands?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “In the thousands.”
“Did you print information sheets for him?”
“I don’t know what it was.”
“Was it in French?”
“Yes. I don’t read French.”
She walked to her table, thinking, Here goes. She had warned him, had coached him, had led him all the way to the next question. Enough? She hoped so. She faced him again.
“When you were cutting the grass at your house on Saturday morning, April nineteenth, did you see anyone on your property who didn’t belong there?”
He hesitated briefly, then nodded. “I thought I did.”
“What did you see?”
“Just a shadowy figure dart across the road, go behind the trees, out of sight.”
“Did you recognize that figure?”
He was hesitating between every question now. This time the pause was longer. “No,” he said.
“Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know. I just caught a glimpse of someone on the road.”
“Across the road from your property is the Gallead property, isn’t it? Did he come from that direction?”
He drew in a long breath and said yes.
“Did you simply continue to cut the grass?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Dodgson, you hired spies to keep an eye on your property, you were so alarmed at the thought of intruders, yet when you saw a strange shadowy figure, you simply kept mowing the grass? Is that what you did?”
“Yes!” he yelled. “Yes, that’s what I did! I t
hought I’d been mistaken, and I cut the grass.”
“Before the fire, did Mr. Gallead pressure you to try to get the Canby Ranch closed as a refuge for women?”
“No.” He ran his hand over his face, and then said, “Yes, he did. He asked me repeatedly to call Mrs. Canby. I don’t know why.”
“But you obeyed him. Why was that, Mr. Dodgson?”
“I wanted them out, too.”
She felt almost sorry for Fierst when it was his turn. He stood up and then sat down again. “No questions,” he said tiredly.
TWENTY-SIX
The summations had been brief. Fierst had reconstructed the prosecution’s case and stated that all the other material that had been introduced was irrelevant, but his performance was lackluster, spiritless. Barbara had also reconstructed the state’s case, and item by item destroyed it, and the jury was out.
Now Frank and Barbara were being ushered into Judge Paltz’s chambers, where others had already gathered. The district attorney, Larry Coltrane, was there, along with Fierst and another assistant. Carter Heilbronner and an assistant were there. Judge Paltz was behind his desk, his senior clerk at his side and a stenographer in a chair pulled back a few feet.
“Come in, come in,” Judge Paltz said. He made the introductions, and then said, “Barbara, please sit over there.” He indicated a chair, and then waved Frank to another one. He peered at Barbara. “You asked for this meeting, so I turn it over to you at this time. Since this is irregular, notes will be taken.” He leaned back in his big handsome chair.
“Before we start,” Larry Coltrane said, “I want it on record that my office is very aware of the leading nature of counsel’s questions, and we are considering action. We believe she deliberately led witnesses to make statements that she knew were lies.” He folded his arms over his chest and glared at her.
She shrugged. “People on the stand lied from day one. Are you objecting because a few of the lies helped my client instead of hurt her? Where do we start examining the lies given as evidence?”
“Not here, and not now,” Judge Paltz said. “This is not a good beginning. Barbara, what is RU-486?”
She glanced at Heilbronner. “Will any of them have a chance to wipe computer disks, flush stuff down the drain?” He shook his head.
