Stranglehold (25 page)

"Where do you see him? Where is he?"

"Over there."

He pointed to the old elm tree near the center of the lawn. "I woke up and saw him from my window and I came downstairs."

He sounded calm enough. But his eyes were wide.

"
He's hiding
," he said.

"Wait here."

In the hall closet she found a pair of boots. She took a coat off the coat rack and slipped it on. Robert remained staring out the window. She transferred the gun to her coat pocket, unlocked the door and stepped outside.

As quietly as possible she closed the door behind her.

She stuffed both hands into her pockets and walked toward the tree. The boots and coat were no match for the cold but her face felt flushed and the hand on the gun felt greasy now with sweat. She approached quickly at first and then as she got closer slowed her pace.

She walked wide of the tree to the right until she could see around it to the other side.

Nothing.

To be absolutely certain she walked all the way around it. Circled it.

She felt limp with relief.

He wasn't there.

She wondered what she'd have said to him or done to him if he had been.

She walked back to the house remembering what Robert had said.

He's hiding
, he'd said.

It wasn't true, not literally, not this time. Robert had imagined him out there behind the tree, dreamed him there no doubt and then come downstairs still frightened and half asleep. But in a less literal sense it was completely true.

Of course he was hiding.

And Robert saying that, acknowledging that, was probably as close as he was ever going to come to telling the truth about his father.

And accusing him.

Waiting for Owen
Sansom
in the courtroom, sitting across from Andrea Stone, she tried to read a newspaper. It had been days since she'd seen one but now her attention kept slipping away. The stories took on the patchwork quality of a dream, one slipping into the other, none of them coming to any real conclusion.

One story managed to hold her though. In New York, a twenty-seven-year-old suburban woman had been arrested for leaving her children at home unattended while she drove to a nearby town to engage in acts of prostitution. The woman had been abandoned by her ex-husband—a lawyer—over a year ago and since that time had received no child-support payments from him and had no training and was unable to find a job. Her two boys, aged seven and nine, had been placed in foster homes following her arrest. The woman said she had involved herself in prostitution only to support them.

She thought how horrible it must be to become so desperate as to feel that this was your only option. That if her story were true then this woman had felt backed into the kind of corner in which responsibility and irresponsibility were all but indistinguishable.

The story troubled her.

"
Where is he?
Where's Owen?"

Andrea Stone was standing over her.

Lydia was aware of her cologne.
Georgio
, she thought. She was dressed in a dark blue tailored suit and white blouse, wearing a single string of pearls. She looked keyed-up, nervous.

Lydia put the paper aside.

"I don't know," she said.

"
Burke'll
be here any minute."

Lydia looked at the clock. It was ten after nine. Where the hell was he?

Andrea Stone turned abruptly and walked back to her desk.

"The Honorable Thomas J. Burke. All rise."

Burke crossed to the bench just as the double doors flew open behind her and
Sansom
appeared hurrying down the aisle.

The fact that he was late wasn't lost on Burke. He didn't comment.

Sansom
looked awful.

His suit didn't exactly look as though he'd slept in it, but it did look uncomfortably close to that. The tie was crooked, the collar in need of pressing. His glasses were water-spotted again.

She glanced at Edward Wood standing next to Arthur. She didn't like the contrast she was seeing.

"Are you all right?" she whispered.

He nodded. "Late start," he said. "Sorry if I worried you."

You're worrying me now
, she thought.

"Be seated," said Burke. And so the day began.

Bromberg seemed ill at ease, shifting in his seat and sipping from a glass of water as
Sansom
questioned him about Robert's symptoms. His shyness and his stuttering, his clumsiness, his incontinence, his dreams.

"And are all these consistent with what you'd see in a case of child abuse, Doctor?"

"At Robert's age the onset of
stuttering's
somewhat unusual. Otherwise I'd say yes."

He took him through an explanation of his treatment—the "play therapy" that was designed to open Robert up. "Would you say he's responding well or badly?"

Bromberg smiled. "Not too well, sorry to say."

"He's uncommunicative?"

"Yes, mostly."

"And is this consistent, in your opinion, with a child who's ... with ah, with an abused child?"

"An abused child would tend to be secretive and withhold information, especially from adults. Yes."

"Doctor, based on your knowledge of him, do you believe it
likely
that Robert's been abused?"

"Likely?"

"Yes. Couldn't these symptoms all be accounted for by some other means? His parents' divorce, maybe?"

She saw what he was doing. He was heading Wood off at the pass with that one.

Bromberg thought it over.

"No, I'd have a problem with that explanation. It's what we've been calling his clumsiness, you see, which isn't really clumsiness at all. The boy's hurting himself—and he's doing it frequently. To me, that's the most significant indication that someone else is hurting
him
. That and his incontinence, of course."

"So you'd say it
is
likely."

"Yes."

On cross-examination Wood took him carefully over the same terrain—at first going nowhere in particular that Lydia could see. But Bromberg seemed more relaxed now and she had to wonder to what extent the two men had talked together prior to the hearing.

Then that became apparent.

"So this is your conclusion, Doctor. That Robert's been sexually abused."

"Yes."

"And did you also conclude that the abuser was definitely his father?"

"No, I did not conclude that. Not necessarily."

"Couldn't it just as likely have been his
mother
, then? Didn't you in fact
tell
Mrs.
Danse
that you hadn't yet ruled her out on that?"

"I did mention the possibility, yes."

"Exactly what did you say?"

"I said I had suspected abuse for some time. She asked why I hadn't reported it to her. I told her that one did not discuss this sort of thing casually, especially when it had been known to happen that a parent would bring his or her child in for therapy as a kind of smoke screen, to disguise their culpability in the abuse or perhaps even, subconsciously, in the need to be discovered."

"And how did she respond to that?"

"She became ... quite angry."

"How do you know she was angry?"

He smiled. "You only had to look at her, Mr. Wood. Or listen to her."

"She was hostile toward you?"

"She became quite curt with me, yes. And I'd say, sarcastic."

She was aware that Andrea Stone across the aisle was glancing at Owen
Sansom
. Her expression seemed puzzled. And Lydia thought she had a pretty good notion why.

"Shouldn't you be objecting to this?" she said. "I mean, isn't he calling for an opinion or something?"

He waved her off and continued writing whatever he was writing in his pad. "Means nothing," he said.

He was starting to scare her.

"Let me ask you this, Dr. Bromberg. Have you ruled out Mrs.
Danse
as the boy's abuser
to this day
?"

"How could I? The boy won't say."

"Nothing further, Your Honor."

She looked at
Sansom
.

"I have nothing for this witness, Your Honor," he said.

No
, she thought.
Get up. Do something
for god's sake.

Sansom
just kept writing.

What in the hell was wrong with him?

Was she overreacting? She felt suddenly as though she were drowning. Bromberg had just told the court that there was every possibility that
she
was the one who was hurting Robert—a lie as outrageous as it was frightening.

She saw a look of displeasure cross Andrea Stone's face as she glanced at them once again and then stood up.

"Doctor," she said, "do you have any reason to seriously
believe
that Mrs.
Danse
is the abuser here?"

"Objection."

"I'll allow it. Objection overruled."

"No. I have no real reason to believe that at all."

"Do you find it likely?"

"One can't be certain. Not without the boy's saying."

"But do you find it
likely
, Doctor?"

"Not really. No, I tend to doubt it."

"And her response to you. Isn't an angry response from a worried mother completely within the scope of what you'd call perfectly normal behavior under the circumstances?"

"I suppose it is, yes."

"I should think so. Thank you, Doctor."

"We call Lydia
Danse
, Your Honor."

There was never any question that she'd have to go through with this, but knowing that didn't make it any easier. She had nothing in her experience to compare it to. Both divorces had been relatively easy, uncontested. Now she felt a sick hollow empty feeling in her stomach and her hands were shaking as she walked to the witness stand, her mouth dry and sour-tasting. She asked for a glass of water and drank it down immediately.

She began to relax a little as she felt Owen more or less regain control of the situation, questioning her carefully but gently about Robert's symptoms in general and his behavior up to the night he'd come home from Arthur's fouled and hurting. He referred to the notepad frequently. He took a good deal of time going over the once-mysterious knees-to-chest position, getting her to describe it in detail and estimate its frequency and finally, over Wood's objections, establishing its meaning.