Deadlock

by James Scott Bell

  “No, sir.”

  Winsor paused to look at the jurors. They seemed transfixed by him. Charlene fought to keep her heart steady.

  “Doctor, this supposed syndrome after abortion, is it recognized in any of the standard texts as such?”

  “Well, there have been some articles in – ”

  “Doctor, please. My question is about the standard reference texts in the field. Will we find this syndrome listed in any one of these?”

  “I do not believe so.”

  “Fine. Just so we’re clear on that. One last thing, Dr. Hutchinson. Are you being paid for your testimony here today?”

  With a slightly victorious smile, Dr. Hutchinson said, “No, sir.”

  “Isn’t that a bit unusual, Doctor? Don’t expert witnesses get compensated for their time so they can come to court?”

  “I think that’s the usual practice, yes.”

  “And you chose not to be paid, correct?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is it because you are an anti-abortion activist?”

  “Objection,” Charlene heard herself say, and immediately knew it was a mistake. It would seem she was hiding the truth about her witness from the jury. Once again, Winsor had played her like a violin.

  “Overruled,” said Lewis.

  “Do you need the question repeated?” Winsor said.

  “No, sir,” said Hutchinson. “I have been associated, proudly, with the pro-life cause.”

  “In fact, you were listed on the letterhead of the American Rescue Foundation, were you not?”

  Hutchinson looked like he’d been hit with a bucket of cold water. Charlene could almost feel the jurors changing their opinion of him on the spot.

  “I was for a time, yes,” Hutchinson said.

  “Was that the same time that family planning center in Minnesota was bombed?”

  “Objection,” Charlene said.

  “Sustained,” Lewis said.

  Winsor looked unconcerned. Of course it didn’t matter what the answer was, or that the judge had sustained the objection. The question had been asked, and it was in the minds of the jurors. Charlene considered asking the judge to admonish the jurors not to take any of that into consideration, but knew that would only play into Winsor’s hands again. Telling a jury to disregard something was almost a guarantee they’d consider it.

  Suddenly, Winsor’s tone turned cold and sharp. “So you would have us all believe that your unpaid testimony here is not biased in any way, is that right, Doctor?”

  “Objection.” Charlene had no other choice. The question was clearly argumentative.

  “Sustained,” said the judge.

  She’d won the point, but the big picture was cloudy. When Winsor said, “No further questions,” it seemed to Charlene that the jury was suddenly in his corner.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1

  The Santa Lucia Community Church had a homey feel to it, built as much by memories as materials. The people knew her as Ethel Hollander’s little girl, the one who became one of the most powerful women in the country. She saw a few old faces who knew her way back when. The newer people sort of stared at her, like she was a rare fish in an aquarium.

  Why had she consented to come? To keep her mother from harping about it, sure. Maybe this one time would be enough to appease Ethel’s crusade for her daughter’s soul.

  But she also had more than a little curiosity about the pastor. What he might say. How he presented himself in the pulpit. Maybe she wanted, in her own mind, to check this man’s intellectual bona fides. He had said he disagreed with her judicial opinions. Was there any real firepower in his thoughts?

  Ethel, as if sensing her daughter’s discomfort, settled with her in the back row. That was fine with Millie. Easy exit.

  A few people came by to say hello to Ethel and perhaps gawk at Millie. She smiled politely and tried to seem human. She felt anything but.

  A short, intense-looking man in a suit that didn’t quite fit slipped into the chair in front of them.

  “Morning,” he said.

  Ethel said, “Good morning to you, too. Happy to have you visit.”

  “Thank you,” the man said. Millie had the feeling she’d seen him before. But where? Something told her he wasn’t a local.

  “And hello to you, Madame Justice,” the man said, reaching his hand to Millie. “My name is Dan Ricks.”

  Millie shook his hand. It was sweaty.

  “Sure would like to have a chance to talk with you afterward,” Ricks said.

  “My daughter has come here to rest,” Ethel said. “I’m sure you understand.”

  He was a reporter. Millie was sure of it. And then she remembered him. It was at the hospital, the day she was released. He had poked his face out of the crowd of reporters and shouted a question at her.

  “Well,” Ricks said, “your daughter is a famous person. No getting around that now, is there?” He snorted a laugh. “I have an obligation to my readers, Madame Justice. I’m a gentleman of the press.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Ricks,” Millie said. “But as I have consistently told reporters, I do not want to give any interviews at this time. If you’ll give me your card, I’ll make sure you get a copy of any official statements.”

  The man made no move for a card. “I’m into exclusivity, Madame Justice. That’s my stock in trade.”

  “What paper do you write for?”

  The man smiled, his teeth looking like they could gnaw wood. “The National Exposure.”

  “Oh, my,” Ethel said.

  “News you can use and won’t make you snooze,” Ricks said. “You read our stuff?”

  “I see it in the store,” Ethel said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  He laughed. “Now if I was ashamed of myself, I wouldn’t be a good newspaperman, would I? After all, I’m protected by the First Amendment, isn’t that right, Justice Hollander?”

  For a moment he just stared at her, then he winked. “Be seeing you,” he said. He slipped out of the row and walked toward the exit.

  “What a disagreeable little man,” Ethel said.

  Before Millie could answer, a young man at the front holding a guitar said, “Good morning, everyone. Please stand as we praise the Lord.”

  After what seemed like an eternity of singing and announcements, Jack Holden took the pulpit for his sermon.

  Millie studied him. He was dressed in a suit and tie and held a Bible. It looked as natural in his hand as a hammer in the hand of a carpenter. Millie wondered if he was still wearing those beads under his shirt.

  “I have a cheery topic this morning,” Holden said. “I’d like to talk to you about death.”

  The word hit Millie like a slap. In fact, a slap to the face might have been less intrusive. And then she had a terrible thought. He was preaching to her. He must have seen the book she’d been reading.

  “You know what Woody Allen once said about death?” Holden continued. “He said he didn’t fear it. He just didn’t want to be there when it happened.”

  A smattering of laughter rose from the congregation. Millie thought about walking out, but her mother would be mortified. No, she had to stay, like a prisoner forced to listen to the warden’s inspirational speech.

  “Well, we’re all going to be there when it happens. And we have to think about that. It’s crucial that we think about it. Because as morbid as it sounds, our life is really about how we prepare for death.”

  Holden, Millie noticed, was speaking without notes. He made eye contact with his audience. She couldn’t help thinking that as a lawyer he would make a great impression on the justices of the Court.

  “But in today’s world, we seem to spend most of our time trying not to think about death. In a famous book from the 1970s called The Denial of Death, the author said we are so afraid of death that this denial was the central fact of our lives. Furthermore, he said, since we have no way of knowing our purpose on earth, we just have to act as though we h
ave one.

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? People do not know where to look for the answer. So they don’t think about death. They play games, watch television shows, drink themselves into oblivion, take drugs, seek extreme experiences. Anything to keep from thinking about the reality of this thing called death.”

  Holden opened his Bible and started turning pages.

  “But the Bible tells us that we need to think about death, because it is going to happen to us. The psalmist says each man’s life is but a breath. And listen to what James says in chapter four: ‘Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.’

  “Now James may not have been the life of the party,” Holden said, “but he is telling it like it is. So, too, does the writer of Hebrews. ‘A man is destined to die once,’ it says in chapter nine, ‘and after that to face judgment.’

  “What happens after death is, you’ll pardon the expression, of grave import to us now. One either believes there is life after death, or one does not. Those in the middle, whom we call agnostics, don’t feel there is enough information to make up their minds. The tombstone of an agnostic reads, ‘All dressed up and nowhere to go.’ ”

  Again, the congregation laughed. Millie didn’t find the comment funny.

  “The truth is, however, we all go. Where is up to us. I love the book of Ecclesiastes. It’s a book I wish everyone would read. If you want to think about death, think about what Solomon had to say. When he considered death in this world, without regard to the next, he found that all was vanity, a chasing after the wind. That word vanity, in the original language, means ‘vapor’ or ‘breath.’ And all of our striving on this earth, if there is no immortality, is vanity. A chasing after the wind.

  “In our day, we think we have become sophisticated about death. A school of psychology became popularized in the works of a Swiss-born psychiatrist named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. Some of you may have heard of her book, On Death and Dying.”

  Millie bristled and felt her hands clenching. He was preaching at her! And in the most personal of terms. If she had been stripped naked she couldn’t have felt more exposed.

  “Kübler-Ross and others believe that a dying patient goes through a series of stages, beginning with denial. After that comes anger and then a bargaining with the prospect of death. When that doesn’t work, depression follows and then, if the right conditions exist, acceptance. But I do not believe the human soul can ever accept death unless it is convinced that death can be overcome.”

  Millie was going to leave. Right then. Slip out and deal with her mother later. But Holden brought her up short.

  “You have all heard accounts of the so-called near-death experience. They’ve had TV shows about it. People report that they have died, and seen a great light, sometimes at the end of a tunnel, sometimes all around them. And it has been pure ecstasy. So it has been reported.

  “But you may not have read much about the other side of the coin. For those who have almost died and reported something like a vision of hell.”

  How did he know about her vision? Millie was almost trembling with anger and shock.

  “We are not being wise if we do not look at death square in the face, like the Bible does. Jesus talked about death in terms of eternity. And make no mistake. When he talked about men dying without God it was a horror of immense proportions. I sort of wish that stuff wasn’t there, but I can’t close my ears to what Jesus says.

  “But in the New Testament, the Greek word for dead is used mostly in connection with another word – resurrection. Yes, the Bible compels us to think about death, but it shows us that for those who are in Christ death is not a period. It is a comma.

  “One of my favorite passages of Scripture is in Romans, chapter eight. ‘In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

  “Or as it says in the old hymn:

  ‘Crown Him the Lord of life,

  Who triumphed o’er the grave,

  And rose victorious in the strife

  For those he came to save;

  His glories now we sing

  Who died, and rose on high,

  Who died eternal life to bring,

  And lives that death may die.’ ”

  Jack Holden bowed his head then and began to pray. All around her, Millie saw heads bowing.

  She did not bow.

  She glared.

  2

  Charlene Moore had nowhere to run.

  If she tried, she would have to mow down at least a dozen departing churchgoers – a teeming mass of upper-class evangelicals. This was not like her home church back in Dudley. This was a city church, the one closest to her hotel. It must have seated three thousand people.

  The service had been a good one. The music was upbeat, a balm for her soul. It had been a tough week in court. The trial was taking more out of her than she had thought it would. Singing helped, and Charlene belted out the tunes as if Patti LaBelle were right there by her side.

  And the sermon was first rate. The youngish minister had preached on the comfort of the Holy Spirit. She needed that, too. But afterward, as people streamed from the church, she saw Beau Winsor making his way toward her. And all of the good feelings drained from her.

  He made eye contact with her and smiled. She could not avoid him.

  “Miss Moore,” he said, extending his hand. He wore an ostentatious three-piece suit, with a gold watch fob dangling from the middle of his torso. In front of a jury he would never have worn such a thing. It screamed rich lawyer. Winsor had made a career out of painting himself as just the opposite.

  “What a surprise,” Charlene said.

  “For me, too. Imagine bumping into you at my home church.”

  “Yes, imagine.”

  “You must be staying nearby.”

  “At the Madison.”

  “Fine old hotel. Been here since the Civil War, did you know that?”

  “So it says on their brochure.”

  “I’m glad I ran into you. What would you say to a cup of coffee?”

  “Thank you, but – ”

  “Come on along, there’s a nice café just around the corner.”

  “I really should – ”

  “We need to talk.”

  The café he walked her to was called the Somber Reptile. It was one of those upscale places that were popping up in old downtown areas. It had a yellow and black awning with tables outside near the sidewalk. Each table had a yellow and white umbrella with a pattern of little black alligators.

  Winsor sat them at one of the outdoor tables and ordered two coffees. His hair, as usual, was perfect. Charlene suddenly felt like a pair of old shoes with a new tuxedo.

  “I want to say right off the bat what a great job I think you’re doing for your client,” Winsor said. “Yes, indeed. A fine, admirable job for your first big trial.”

  “Thank you,” Charlene said, feeling set up.

  “I remember when I was about your age,” Winsor said. “And had my first big trial. A terrible accident involving a power saw. Man got his hand sawed off clean. Young man, too. Had his whole life ahead of him.”

  That was curious. “You were a plaintiff’s lawyer?”

  Winsor smiled, showing his perfect teeth. “No, I represented the insurance company. The injured man claimed the saw was defective in design. Had a pretty good lawyer, too. But when it was all over, the jury came back unanimously against him.” He leaned forward. “See, not every injury gets compensation. The jury found that the man was responsible to read the directions and use the saw the right way. He didn’t.”

  Charlene looked at him. “Are you suggesting, Mr. Winsor, that my client is in the sa
me position? That she is somehow responsible for what happened to her?”

  “Just an illustration, that’s all. But today’s juries do believe people have to be responsible for their actions. There’s a real distrust of plaintiff actions like this one. And my intuition is this jury of ours has that feeling. Don’t you feel it too?”

  In truth, she did. She felt the jury, especially after seeing Winsor at work, slipping slowly away.

  “But I’m not one to harp on the negative,” Winsor said. “I’m gonna offer you eight hundred thousand dollars to settle this thing right here and now. Eight hundred thousand, Miss Moore. Now that’s not bad for a case that might be worth zero after the verdict. Ah, here’s the coffee.”

  Charlene hardly noticed the waiter placing the steaming cup in front of her.

  “Let me grease the tracks a little for you,” Winsor said. “I know how much you have put into this case. I know what it costs to conduct discovery, to put you and your client up in a hotel, to take time away from other cases you could be handling. I know what that’s like.”

  She wondered if he did, really. Had he ever been on the side of the little guy? Or had his entire career been funded by checks signed by insurance companies?

  “So settlement would not only clear up those expenses,” Winsor continued, “but also let you go home with a nice chunk of change. Now how about it?”

  Something in the way he said “chunk of change” set her off. She could hear part of her mind telling her not to say anything. But another part, a deeper part, could not turn back.

  “May I ask you a personal question, Mr. Winsor?”

  “Feel free,” he said.

  “How can you defend what these clinics are doing? How can you, as a Christian, defend a system that encourages the taking of human life?”

  The words came out in a rush, and Charlene saw an immediate reaction in Winsor. For a long, uncomfortable moment he just stared into Charlene’s eyes. Finally he said, “Are you questioning my faith?”

  With her heart flitting like a bird in a cage, Charlene said, “I am asking you, a lawyer, to defend a position that goes against God’s will.”