“What happened when you spoke to the other people on your own initiative?”
“It all started with the interview of Mr. Jaworski at his condo. At first, he said he didn’t want to talk to me, which was not surprising, but then, after he agreed to talk, he started volunteering information I knew was false.” Patterson hiked his body up, getting more comfortable. “He lied to me at the beginning of our interview about even knowing Professor Cranmer. Then he admitted, when I pressed him, that he’d actually taken a class with him. He also lied about the grade he’d gotten from Professor Cranmer, which I knew was a C-minus, the lowest grade on his transcript by far. He told me he’d gotten a B or B-plus.”
This was too much. Campanella clutched the podium to anchor himself. “Your Honor, could I point out that—”
“You’ll have your chance in a minute, Mr. Campanella.”
“I only want to point out—”
“I’ve told you several times now, Mr. Campanella. Now I’m instructing you to take your seat.” Judge Norcross nodded at Campanella’s empty chair and took a moment to complete another note. Campanella stepped away from the podium and sat, tossing his yellow pad on the table a bit harder than necessary. Norcross looked up at him sharply. “I want my questions answered right now, Mr. Campanella. I’ll hear what you want to point out in a minute.”
Norcross turned again to Patterson. “Did you reach any conclusions as a result of your interview with Mr. Jaworski?”
“I was confident that he was hiding something, that he might somehow be involved.”
“Did you tell Assistant U.S. Attorney Campanella about this?”
“I tried to.”
“What happened?”
“He asked me to put nothing in writing and not to pursue this any further.”
“Did he say anything else?”
“Well …” Patterson looked to the side, frowning.
“Did he say anything else?”
“Early on, we talked about the possibility of checking out other suspects. This was before I’d even spoken to Jaworski. Mr. Campanella asked me not to do it. And he also said …” Patterson stopped and looked at Campanella.
Norcross pressed the question. “What did he say?”
“He said, if anyone ever asked me, I should be careful not to reveal his instructions to me.”
“About not pursuing other suspects?”
“Yes. He said it might get him into trouble. It was kind of a joke, really. We were laughing.”
“It was a joke?”
“It was kind of a joke. About red herrings.”
“What was the joke?”
“That the red herrings might swim up our behinds.”
No one laughed. Campanella made an impatient noise and started to stand, but Norcross waved him down. Then Ames began to get up, but Norcross shook his head.
“No, not yet.” The judge’s mouth had gone taut. Campanella had not seen this expression before. “Did anything else come out of your further inquiries?”
“I spoke to Professor Graves and also Professor Mattoon. Halfway through the interview with Mattoon, I began to suspect he might be hiding something, too. He made it clear he didn’t like Professor Cranmer. He knew Ryan Jaworski. I thought there might be some connection.”
“Did you mention this to Mr. Campanella?”
“No. No, I didn’t say anything about Mattoon. I wasn’t sure about my suspicions, and by that time, I knew Paul would be very unhappy about my even talking to him.”
“But you had, as you say, suspicions?”
“Yes.”
“And now we know that Professor Mattoon had a role in persuading Ryan Jaworski to send in the flyer?”
“It appears so, yes. That’s what Mr. Jaworski says.”
Judge Norcross spent some time writing on his yellow pad, probably outlining something that was not going to help the government. The silence in the courtroom drew out for at least thirty seconds before Norcross stopped writing and continued.
“A couple more questions, Agent Patterson. You say Mr. Campanella told you not to reveal his instruction to you not to broaden this investigation, and you told him you’d keep your activities secret. Is that correct?”
“Yes. I told him that.”
“Yet you’re revealing your conversations with him in court now. Why is that?”
Patterson looked over at Ruby Johnson, who’d placed him under oath. “I’ve sworn to tell the truth here. The whole truth.”
“Thank you.”
After this, things from Campanella’s viewpoint descended from catastrophe to nightmare. Norcross said that, before he allowed Campanella to take up his questioning of Patterson, he had a few questions for Campanella himself. Campanella, Norcross noted, was not under oath, but as an assistant United States attorney, he was an officer of the court and ethically obligated to respond truthfully.
Campanella returned to the podium, which felt more like a very hot witness box at this point. He had heard that David Norcross, when he’d practiced law, had been a fierce cross-examiner, and now he got painful proof of this. In response to the judge’s tightly phrased questions, Campanella was forced to admit that he had, in fact, probably used the phrase, “I don’t want to hear about it,” when Patterson raised concerns about other possible suspects. He had to concede that he’d told Patterson not to pursue other lines of investigation, and not to draft any reports or witness statements that might have to be turned over to Linda Ames. He confessed that he had said something about not wanting to get in trouble and that he and Patterson had laughed about red herrings.
“And you instructed him not to reveal the fact that you’d restricted his investigation?”
“Well, I thought that—”
“Did you, or did you not, tell him that he was not to disclose your conversation?”
“I told him I’d prefer that.”
By the time Norcross concluded his questioning, and Campanella got a chance to try to put his conversations with Patterson in context, it was like blowing bubbles against a granite wall. Half the time, Judge Norcross wasn’t even looking at him. He just stared out the windows over the jury box at the black branches of the trees rocking against the winter sky.
When Campanella finished up and sat down, Ames rose to her feet, boiling. But Norcross just waved her down and took the floor himself.
“I will be brief. The motion to dismiss is allowed based on prosecutorial misconduct. The evidence is crystal clear. I commend Agent Patterson on his forthright testimony, which could not have been easy.”
By this time, Agent Patterson was back at the counsel table, sitting next to Campanella with his arms folded. Campanella couldn’t imagine what he was going to say to Patterson when they left the courtroom. Rage at Patterson’s betrayal was finally working its way up through his confusion and shock.
Norcross continued. “Gross negligence on the part of the government has created a situation where this case cannot be fairly tried before the current jury. Retrial, under these circumstances, would be a violation of the defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights. I will be issuing a written memorandum shortly, citing the applicable authorities in detail, but my basic rationale will not change. This case is dismissed with prejudice and without possibility of retrial.”
Campanella rose. “Your Honor, for the record, the government strongly, very strongly, objects to this ruling. I ask that the court reconsider and, at a minimum, provide the government with an opportunity for a hearing at which its supposed responsibility for this situation can be ventilated properly. I expect another assistant U.S. attorney will take over handling that hearing, since I will be a witness.”
“Is that an oral motion?”
“Yes.”
“The motion’s denied. The record is clear.”
“Then I’d ask that our rights b
e saved to allow us to pursue an appeal.”
“Your rights are saved, Mr. Campanella. Your objection is on the record. The indictment is dismissed for the reasons I have already stated in summary, which will be further expanded in my written memorandum. Ms. Ames, would you like to put anything on the record before the court adjourns?”
Ames restricted her response to six words: “Thank you, Your Honor. Nothing else.”
As Judge Norcross was making his way out of the courtroom, Campanella overheard Professor Cranmer speaking to his lawyer.
“What do I do now?”
Linda Ames put her hand on his shoulder. “You go home, Sid. You’re a free man now.”
It was a bush-league thing to do, and something he was embarrassed about afterward, but as he strode toward the courtroom door, Campanella pointed back at Cranmer. “Enjoy your freedom while you’ve got it, Professor. You won’t have it for long.”
Then he hurried back to his office to begin drafting his notice of appeal.
46
Two weeks after Sid’s trial collapsed, Claire Lindemann was sitting alone in her living room, cross-legged on the rug in front of her fireplace. A vigorous blaze was crackling up the chimney, and on her lap, she held Sid’s secret file of Charles Dodgson’s published and unpublished prints. She’d decided to burn them.
This was painful to do, of course. But she couldn’t return the file to Sid without revealing Elizabeth Spencer’s theft and her own connivance in it. Beyond that, she didn’t want to expose Sid to the danger he might face by having the photographs around, or maybe just by knowing where he could put his hands on them.
The dismissal of the charges against Sid had provoked a Category 5 shitstorm at the college. Half the community was furious that Sid had been charged, locked up, and nearly beaten to death for a crime he apparently hadn’t committed. The other half was outraged that Professor Cranmer had dodged justice on a legal technicality. Throughout the gale, Ryan Jaworski stayed put in Illinois, and Professor Mattoon pushed on with his classes, denying everything. Ryan Jaworski was a liar, Mattoon said, and he was a victim as much as Sid was. Despite these protestations, Professor Mattoon was rumored to be angling for a new position out west somewhere.
Claire held Dodgson’s most famous photograph up to the fire. It was the portrait of Alice Liddell, the inspiration for his fictional Alice, bare shouldered and tricked out as what Dodgson called “The Beggar Child.” As Claire prepared to place the image onto the grate, she could see the flames licking up eagerly behind it, visible through the translucent paper. In the photo, Alice was exhibiting herself provocatively, her tattered clothes barely clinging to her. One hand sat on her hip; the other reached out for money. Someone had coaxed a salacious boldness into her eyes. What had really gone on between this child and Dodgson? Probably nothing.
Claire let her hand fall back into her lap, hesitating. Probably nothing, but Dodgson took the photograph in 1858, when Alice was six years old. He saw her frequently, often alone, until 1863, when her parents abruptly cut off contact. After his death in 1898, Dodgson’s diaries covering the years 1858 to 1862 were found to be missing.
Claire set the Liddell photograph to one side and spread some of the other prints out on the rug around her. The group included one of the few surviving prints of Evelyn Hatch at about the same age as Alice, lying entirely naked with her arms behind her head. This wasn’t Claire’s field, but Sid’s catastrophe had inspired her to read the basic biographies. She knew that sometime in the 1880s Dodgson had destroyed a number of plates containing other photographs of the Hatch girl, and that these were now permanently lost. He had commented in a letter that he had destroyed them because they “so entirely defy conventional rules.”
Most scholars agreed that Dodgson had an intense obsession with little girls but found no convincing evidence of actual abuse. His child models maintained amiable relationships with him well into adulthood; none, including Alice, ever publicly complained of anything improper.
After his case’s dismissal, Sid persisted, as profanely as ever, in rejecting the accusations of pedophilia leveled against Dodgson, but he was less generous to himself. Over a long dinner, despite protests from Claire, he described himself as a “disgusting fuckup” and announced that he would be retiring. He needed a quiet year, maybe two years, to recover. He might go to Europe. Of course, any plan depended on the court of appeals affirming Judge Norcross’s dismissal of the charges against him. Until then, he didn’t know what part of Wonderland he would be living in.
The fire was beginning to die down, and still the photographs lay piled in Claire’s lap or scattered around her. Time to do this. She had a nine a.m. class the next morning. She looked over the pictures one last time. The images of these children were so touching, their little lives long vanished now, obliterated by the passing decades.
A sharp double knock at the front door brought Claire back to the present, and she leaped up, grateful to be off the hook even for a minute. A car sat in her driveway, but it was too dark to make out whose it was. Most of the snow had melted. In the murk by her extinguished light pole, only pale scraps remained of the mounds plowed up after the last blizzard.
When she opened the door, she was astonished to see David. He was supposed to be at a judicial conference in New Orleans for at least another day.
“David!” A smile burst onto her face, and as she kissed him, a wave of helium lifted her onto her toes. “You skipped out!”
Standing in the doorway, David gave her a truant’s grin. “They’re doing an entire morning tomorrow on the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.” He shook his head. “I just couldn’t take it.”
“Wow!”
“May I come in?” He peered around her into the house. “Or is Professor Mattoon here?” He lifted his nose and sniffed. “Do I smell expensive Italian cologne?”
A thin rain was misting the tops of Claire’s rhododendrons and baptizing the shoulders of David’s London Fog. The weather sites were predicting a 50 percent chance of a thunderstorm, possibly the first of the spring.
Claire was so happy. She gestured with her thumb over her shoulder. “Poor Darren’s escaping through the backyard at this very moment, hauling up his underwear. Come in. Come in.”
“I left my overnight bag in the car.”
“We’ll manage.”
In the front hallway, she helped him off with his coat. “What’s up with Lindsay and Jordan? I stopped by this afternoon to make sure that Madison was all set.”
“God bless that girl! She belongs in the nanny Hall of Fame.” David sniffed and pulled on the end of his nose. “Tell the truth, I feel kind of guilty taking advantage of her.” He kissed Claire again. “I decided not to mention that I was coming back early. They’re still not expecting me until tomorrow.”
Claire waggled a finger at him. “Such a bad man.”
“I know.” He beamed at her delightedly. “It’s terrible.”
Claire was hanging up David’s coat as he walked into the living room. Her stomach dropped when she heard him saying, still jaunty but puzzled, “My goodness, what do we have here?”
When she saw him next, he was standing by the fire with a photograph in each hand, and his smile dying on his face. She’d been so overjoyed, she’d lost track of what she’d been up to before his knock. Lingering in the foyer, she felt half sick, not knowing what to say.
David dropped his hands to his sides, holding the two pictures, and gazed around the floor where the rest of the contents of Sid’s file lay scattered. A serious, focused expression fell over his face.
He took another look at the photographs in his hands. “I see.”
“David …”
He bent his knees and leaned to get a better look at the pictures of Beatrice and Evelyn Hatch. The shadows of the fire flickered over his face. “Uh-huh.” When he looked up at Claire, his exp
ression was half disbelief, half despair. “How could you?”
“David, I didn’t …”
He spoke louder, waving at the floor. “I take it these are the photographs the FBI didn’t find? The ones that Linda Ames convinced me never existed?”
Claire took a breath and swallowed. “Yes.”
He let the prints in his hands drop onto the carpet. “How could you? How could you do something like this?” He pointed at the floor.
“David, I …”
“I knew you were upset about your friend, and you wanted to help him, but I guess I assumed that you would be … I mean, that you and I would be …”
“Of course, David, I …”
His face closed, and he stepped over the photographs toward the front door. “I need to get out of a here for a little bit, okay? I need to take a walk.”
“David, it’s …” But he’d moved quickly and was already opening the front door, ready to step out. “Let me at least get your raincoat.” She hurried toward him.
“I don’t …” He flapped his hand back at her. “I don’t need it.” Then the door closed, and he was gone.
The next ten minutes were among the longest in Claire’s life. She was determined not to burst into tears—David might see it as a play for sympathy—but she couldn’t get herself to think coherently. She had nothing to say, really, in her own defense, and she couldn’t get her heart to slow down. What she’d done couldn’t be undone. It might be the end of them. In a fog, she got up, retrieved a towel from her linen closet, and sat on the sofa holding the towel in her lap, waiting.She breathed and watched the fire die down. Once or twice, there was distant thunder.
The door, at last, rattled and opened, and David stepped back in. His hair, shoulders, and face were wet. Claire didn’t say anything, merely got up and handed him the towel.
David took his time drying off, starting with his face and the back of his neck.
“It’s chilly out there.”
“David …”
“Give me a second here, okay?” He walked toward the sofa, picking up two of the prints on the way, and sat down. He placed the photographs on the coffee table and stared at them, frowning. Then he looked at Claire and shook his head. “Boy, did I ever make a mess of this case.”
The One-Eyed Judge Page 36
