by Wick Downing
“What?” But then he thought about it, and looked at the court reporter. “Very well. Miss. Hope. You may proceed.”
“I have a motion, sir. May I tender it to the Court?”
“A motion,” he said, as fire shot out of his nose. “Give it to me, please. It would have helped, you know, if you’d gotten here early enough this morning to go over this with me and the city attorney.”
“I know, sir, and I’m very sorry, and apologize to you both.” I dug the motion out of my briefcase and handed him the original and gave a copy to Mr. Thomas. I could smile at them with ease now. Anyone as sensitive as they were about a girl in a miniskirt would never fill my heart with terror again.
“Miss Hope,” the judge said in a voice weary with exasperation, “this needs to be signed.”
“Uh-oh,” I said, trying to make light of it. “Not a good start for me, is it, sir?” I asked, taking the motion to the table to sign it. My pen didn’t work. “Judge, can I borrow your pen?”
He laughed! “You may,” he said as he handed me his pen. “Please do me a favor, Miss Hope. Don’t break it?”
“No, sir.”
Way to handle the old fuddy-duddy, Grandfather’s voice said.
“What is it you’re asking for?” the judge asked as I handed him the motion and his pen.
“A demonstration, sir. Demonstrative evidence?”
“Really,” he said, reading aloud with interest that wasn’t an act. “You want to stage a demonstration for the jury, using the dog. You say you can re-create the conditions that, according to your evidence, the dog was faced with. You want the jury to watch the dog’s reaction. And we don’t have to go to City Park Lake, you say, because you can stage your demonstration across the street, on the Civic Center lawn.” He nodded at me with something like respect. “How long will it take you to get ready?”
“If my assistant is here . . . ,” I said, looking into the mass of humanity for Mike—and spotting my mother! She was way in the back of the courtroom and tried to duck her head out of the way, then realized she’d been caught, and blessed me with her smile. “Hi, Mom,” I mouthed. Having her there with me in the courtroom that morning felt like being wrapped up in a warm blanket on a cold night.
But where was Mike?
He’d been hiding too, sort of, behind two tall boys who were standing along the wall near the door. He blushed, raised his hand, and stepped away from them into the aisle. I waved at him with a huge sense of relief because he wasn’t still crashed in his bed at home. “Judge, the person with his hand in the air,” I said, “is Mike Doyle, my assistant. He can answer your question better than I can, sir.”
“Young man,” the judge called out. “How long will it take?”
Mike didn’t do as I expected and collapse, but came through with a guess as good as any. “An hour?”
“What’s your position, Mr. Thomas? Do you need time to look up the cases she’s cited?”
“I’m familiar with the law, Judge,” he said, standing, “but how do we know this isn’t something they’ve rehearsed?”
“How could we?” I asked. “Herman was in dog jail last night and he’s still there.”
Mr. Thomas ignored me, but that didn’t matter. I knew I’d made my point. “Your Honor,” he said, “the evidence the defense has put before this jury to justify this motion is the testimony of a man who is mentally unstable. It isn’t credible evidence, sir. It should be ignored. This so-called demonstration won’t prove anything. Instead of wasting half the morning, we’ll waste all of it. How much time should this Court give to this case?”
“Well now. It’s true Mr. Phipps has a history of seeing things that aren’t there, but it’s nevertheless possible he saw what he claimed. I certainly can’t rule, as a matter of law, that his evidence should be excluded. It may not be the best evidence in the world, but my ruling is that it’s enough to support Miss Hope’s motion.”
Mr. Thomas shrugged. “Very well then, Judge,” he said, smiling at me a bit like Dracula before the kiss of death. “We shall see what we shall see.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
MOM BLEW ME A KISS AND DISAPPEARED, but I knew she’d be back to watch the show. With Mike in charge of the Alvarez family and help from three sheriff’s deputies and two animal-control officers, the demonstration was ready to go at a few minutes after ten. It was an absolutely gorgeous day. The temperature was in the seventies, a cool breeze carried the scents of blooming flowers, and a few white puffy clouds floated in a sky that was so blue it throbbed.
The Civic Center, where the action would take place, was a large, open park across the street from the courthouse. Its big lawns with gardens and trees stretched east to west from Broadway to Bannock, and south to north from Fourteenth to Colfax. An amphitheater at the south end of the big park was connected to a sizable fountain at the north end by a sidewalk as wide as a road.
A path at right angles to the sidewalk started near a larger-than-life bronze statue of an Indian on horseback. The path went fifty yards to the east, then arced slowly back to the sidewalk sixty yards north of the statue, kind of marking off a large piece of lawn. That was where the demonstration would take place. Yellow caution tape had been strung all the way around it.
The judge, the jury, and Mr. Thomas sat in folding chairs on the path along the north boundary of the enclosure, under some trees to shade them from the sun. Kids and spectators gathered to the east of the enclosure, where there was a low stone wall, waist high. A lot of them sat on the wall to have a great view of the action. I waited with Mike, Miss Willow, Officer Milliken, two sheriff’s deputies, and Herman on the path at the south boundary near the statue. Herman was cooped up in a cage so small he couldn’t stretch all the way out.
The piece of lawn needed for the demonstration waited like an empty stage. With a pulse rate in the low two hundreds, I walked onto the stage and faced the judge and the jury, who were more than thirty yards away. It was as though the curtain had been raised, dropping stillness—except for the sounds of traffic in the distance. “Shall I start, sir?” I shouted at the judge.
“The sooner the better, Miss Hope.”
“Can you hear me, ladies and gentlemen?” I asked the jurors in the same loud voice that proved my existence.
“Yes,” a few of them chorused.
“Judge Steinbrunner has allowed me to put on a demonstration,” I explained as Mike, right on cue, spread a blanket at the center of the stage and put a picnic basket on a corner of the blanket. “You’ll have to use your imaginations, though. We’re really at City Park, and it’s Sunday, May twenty-seventh, but the year is the same. We’re still in 1973. Okay?”
They nodded their willingness to use their imaginations.
“Miss Willow?” I said, gesturing to her as Mike led her over to Herman’s cage. Officer Milliken opened it while the sheriff’s deputies watched, holding pistols in their hand. Mike handed a chain leash to Miss Willow, who clipped it on Herman. The dog looked around with his senses on high alert, then cautiously crept out of the cage and placed himself between the men with drawn guns and Miss Willow.
She looked sweet in her yellow dress. Herman saw the blanket on the grass with the picnic basket and pulled her toward it with his tail wagging. “As you may have guessed, Miss Willow has brought her dog Herman to the park for a picnic. Tether him, please, Miss Willow?”
She tried pushing a metal spike, six inches long that was hooked to the end of the chain leash, into the ground. But it wouldn’t go in. With Herman stretched out on the blanket, she stepped on the spike with her foot, and this time it grudgingly slid into the lawn. “We haven’t re-created all the conditions as they existed that day,” I said as she sat on the blanket and tucked her skirt under her legs. “For example, there isn’t any lake nearby.” Herman sidled over to her and she rubbed his ears, as his tail thumped on the ground. “But the basket has fruit inside, and a sandwich, and . . .”
Herman pulled away from Miss Wi
llow and started growling! His ears flattened, and he sat up like a loaded spring aimed like the needle of a compass at someone perched on the stone fence. Ron Benson! In a Penn State T-shirt, he looked ready to leap at Herman and attack. He grinned at me, then glared and kind of growled at Herman. They locked up in a staring contest, but the difference was, Herman bared his teeth.
There was nothing I could do about Ron without straying from the script that the judge had approved, and straying from the script was not an option. “It’s a different baby, too,” I said to the jury, pointing at Manuel Alvarez. He stood next to a baby carriage on the sidewalk with a baby in his arms. “This is Mr. Manuel Alvarez, who donated a baby for the demonstration.”
People laughed, as I had expected. “The distance between Herman and the baby carriage is forty yards, the same as the distance between Herman and the carriage little Monica was in.” How could I get Herman to look at the baby? “Miss Willow, can you make Herman watch what Mr. Alvarez is doing?”
She had to grip the dog’s face in her hands and turn him around, forcing him to take his eyes away from Ron Benson, but she managed as Mr. Alvarez lifted his baby high enough for everyone to see. Herman let off a little bark and wagged his tail. “Put her in the carriage, please,” I said as the dog squirmed, trying to check his back, while Miss Willow used all her strength to make him watch. Mr. Alvarez gently placed the tiny girl in the carriage. “Good, Miss Willow,” I said, and she let go of his face. The big dog snapped back into his staring duel with Ron Benson, with nothing moving other than the fur on his back that ruffled like a wheat field in the wind.
“Now we wait for a minute,” I said, “while Mr. Alvarez takes his baby out of the carriage and gives him to his mother. My assistant’s idea,” I continued, “who didn’t think we should use a real baby.” I encouraged the ripple of laughter with a smile. “Later, Mr. Alvarez will put a Raggedy Ann doll in the carriage. With five children, he has dolls to spare.”
The jurors seemed to be enjoying themselves, making it easy to fill up enough time for Mr. Alvarez to do what he had to do. “The idea is to let Herman think there’s a real baby in the carriage,” I said as Mr. Alvarez found his wife and handed her the infant, then climbed into his battered pickup truck. It had been parked on the sidewalk behind the statue. “Will the deputies take their places?” I asked, as one walked over to a spot near the jury, and the other patrolled the path on the east. “These men are armed. If something goes wrong with Herman, they’ll protect us from him.”
Then Pablo Alvarez, Manuel’s oldest son, lifted a Sting-Ray minibike out of the bed of the truck, aimed it at the baby carriage, and sat on it. All I could do was hope that Herman was not so locked up by the sneering face of Ron Benson that he couldn’t see Pablo. As Mr. Alvarez started the truck, sweat popped off my forehead. “When I give the signal,” I told the jurors, “Mr. Alvarez will drive on the sidewalk going north. At the same time, his son on the minibike will ride as fast as he can toward the carriage. He will push it into the sidewalk, directly in the path of the truck. From Herman’s point of view, it should look very bad for the baby in the carriage. It should look as bad to him as it did a month ago, when—according to our evidence—the carriage with Monica Pearsan was rolling into City Park Lake.”
My knees hanging beneath my miniskirt trembled so horribly that I pressed them together, hoping no one had noticed. “There won’t be any reruns like they have on TV when the umpire makes a questionable call. The whole point is to see if Herman will try to save the baby.” I raised my hand at the same time my heart stopped, then dropped my hand. “Go!”
Pablo started riding toward the baby carriage on his Sting-Ray, picking up speed. Herman didn’t want to, but he pulled his eyes off Ron Benson and watched. His ears lifted when the truck started creeping forward. Then Pablo found the carriage with one hand and shoved it into the sidewalk, right into the path of the truck.
Mr. Alvarez gunned the truck so that it bore down on the baby carriage like a freight train . . . and Herman took off! The tether that Miss Willow had struggled to punch into the lawn was yanked out as Herman raced across the lawn and smashed into the baby carriage, knocking it out of the way before the truck could hit it. Mr. Alvarez slammed on the brakes and swerved, barely missing the big dog.
It worked! Mike ran for Herman to make sure he hadn’t been hit, and the dog climbed all over him, licking his face . . . and I heard cheering! The jury, the judge, and all the kids and people were cheering!
Grampa’s old face grinned at me from a place inside my head. Now! his voice said. Do it now!
“If it please the Court!” I screamed with all my breath to make myself heard above the din. “I rest my case!”
Chapter Thirty
CITY PARK WAS CROWDED with people when Mike and I found Miss Willow at her picnic spot, wearing her yellow dress and sitting on a blanket with Herman stretched out on the grass. He barked when he saw us, bounding out as far as the chain would allow, his tail whipping back and forth so hard it wagged his whole body. When the hellos were over we sat on the blanket with Herman tending Mike’s black eye like a nurse, examining it then probing it with his tongue.
“Thank you for your help, dear,” Miss Willow said to Mike. “Kate told me she couldn’t possibly have put on that demonstration without you.”
“She did?” Mike asked. “She didn’t say anything to me.”
“I bought you a pizza, didn’t I?” I told him. “I was hoping you might share some of it with me but you didn’t, which was no surprise.” He grinned at me. He actually has a very nice grin. “I also let you carry my briefcase.”
“Big deal.”
“Will you children have an apple?” Miss Willow asked, poking around in her picnic basket and pulling out two of them. “I brought extra food in case . . . well.” She blushed. “One never knows who might come by unexpectedly.”
I shook my head at the apple, but Mike took one that didn’t have a chance. It was gone within seconds.
“That was an awfully nice article about you in the paper, wasn’t it?” Miss Willow said to me. “Did you like it?”
“I . . . well . . . I didn’t really read it,” I said.
“Oh-h-h!” Mike said. “You framed it! It’s hanging on your wall!”
“Your grandfather must be awfully proud of you.”
“I guess,” I said, “but he doesn’t say much.” Actually, he’d said a lot, but I wanted to be modest.
“Well. You tell him for me that you were worth every penny of the twenty dollars he charged me, and that if I ever have another legal problem, I’ll just bring it right to you.”
Was twenty dollars all Grandfather charged for all that work, sweat, and tears? “I’ll tell him, Miss Willow, and thank you for your confidence in me, but the truth is, Herman’s the real hero.” The big dog had been listening and barked, letting us know he was in on the conversation.
A heavy man wearing Leva’s and cowboy boots, with long black hair and skin the color of stained wood, walked toward us carrying a neatly folded stack of clothes. “Herman,” he said in a deep voice that resonated like a bugle as he bent down so Herman could smell his hand. “The wolf-dog.”
I recognized his voice from our telephone conversation at five in the morning. “You’re Bearclaw, aren’t you?” I asked him. “Spence’s friend?”
“I am Bearclaw,” he said. “I know Spence, but not his friend. He drinks too much.” He put the clothes down on the blanket. “He said these belong to you,” he said to Miss Willow.
“Why yes, they do. That was an old suit of my father’s, and it’s been cleaned and pressed. How nice of him! But . . . why did he send you?” she asked, suddenly anxious. “Is he hurt, or in the hospital? Couldn’t he come himself?”
Bearclaw shook his head slowly. “‘Tell her I’m too busy,’ he said.”
The words weren’t at all what I would expect from Spence and I felt terrible, watching Miss Willow crumple under their coldness. “Did he tel
l you to say that, Mr. Bearclaw?” Mike asked. “I mean, he didn’t get a job and go to work or anything, did he?”
Bearclaw frowned at Mike. “Who are you?”
“He’s my investigator,” I said, realizing that Mike was getting better at his job. “It’s perfectly okay for you to talk to him.”
“That’s right, what you say,” Bearclaw said to Mike. “Spence don’t want important people to see him now. Important people who will laugh at him behind their faces.”
“What does he mean by that?” I asked. “Who’s so important to him?”
“You. A young girl, but a big lawyer. Her.” He pointed at Miss Willow. “Important people laugh at crazy drunks.”
Miss Willow couldn’t keep her hands still. “Oh dear,” she said as they held each other for comfort.
“Is Spence with you now, Mr. Bearclaw?” Mike asked.
“He don’t want me to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Mike told him. “Just point.”
He pointed at the lilac hedge near the edge of the lake. Mike had figured that out? “I’ll go get him,” I said, standing and starting to run over there.
“No!” Bearclaw said, stopping me. “He would run away.”
I sat down. “You get him then, Mr. Bearclaw,” I said. “Tell him Miss Willow would love to see him so she can thank him personally for his help.”
Bearclaw shrugged, then ambled off for the hedge.
“Dear, you shouldn’t have done that,” Miss Willow said as her hands fluttered to her hair, “but I’m awfully glad you did. Will he come over?” She opened the lid of her basket and closed it. “I just know he won’t.”
I got up. “It was very nice seeing you again, Miss Willow, and Herman too, but Mike and I have to go. He’s working on another case for me. Let’s go, Mike.”
“I am?”
How can anyone be so smart and so incredibly dumb at the same time? “Come on,” I said, walking off in a hurry in the hope that it might make him walk in a hurry too. “We’re leaving.”
