The Best Defense (28 page)

“How many others, Mr. Dodgson?” she asked.

“Several. Three or four.”

“Making it twelve or thirteen demonstrations in the six months from October through April. Is that all?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Do you fly first class, Mr. Dodgson?”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.”

“Do you organize the demonstrations?”

“No. I just go to them.”

“And how do you know about them in advance?”

“People tell us things. We know a lot of people. We keep in touch.”

“Mr. Dodgson, isn’t there a national network that issues such information?”

“There might be.”

“Do you know if there is?”

“Yes. I think there is.”

“Do you know there is?”

“Yes. I said yes.”

“Do you subscribe to such a service?”

“Me? No.”

“Does your company, the Dodgson Publishing Company

“Yes. I think so.”

“Does your company, the Dodgson Publishing Company, subscribe to such a service?” she asked.

“I said yes.” His answer was even sharper than her question.

“How long are you gone from home when you attend the various demonstrations?”

“A few days, maybe a week.”

“So in a six-month period you devoted up to twelve or thirteen weeks of your time to this cause. Is that right?”

“Maybe. I wasn’t keeping track.”

“Did you accompany your father to the Canby Ranch and accuse Emma Tidball of running an abortion clinic?”

He moistened his lips again and nodded, then said, “Yes. We thought it was true.”

“Had you thought they were running an abortion clinic for a long time?”

“We suspected it from the beginning,” he said, his voice harsh and even menacing.

“Did you think you had confirmation finally?”

“Yes we did.”

“How did you know a woman had been taken to the hospital with a miscarriage, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I don’t know. Mrs. Voight said something about it.”

“But all she knew was that an ambulance had taken someone away. Did you leap to the conclusion that it was for an abortion mishap?”

“I don’t remember why we thought that,” he said.

“It just seemed the likeliest thing.”

“In those newspaper articles,” Barbara said, “it states again and again that many of the clinics you were picketing did not perform abortions. Yet you demonstrated against them. Why?”

He was starting to look about the courtroom, as if seeking help or relief from some quarter. Mercifully, Fierst was staying quiet. Barbara was grateful that he was a methodical plodder who would not force a confrontation with the judge who had agreed to this line of questioning. In his place, she would have been raising holy hell.

“Why; Mr. Dodgson?” she prodded.

“Because they were advising women to have abortions, to commit murder of innocent unborn children,” he said in a rush, as if to get it in before she could object.

“Did you believe anyone at the Canby house was advising women about abortions?”

“Yes. We know they were.”

She was walking slowly back and forth from the witness stand to the defense table, back to the stand, forcing him to move his head to keep his gaze on her.

She stopped midway, at the center of the jury box.

“How do you know that, Mr. Dodgson?”

“We just did, from the start.” Now he looked like the hate-distorted man captured in the newspaper photo graphs.

“That’s a serious accusation, Mr. Dodgson,” she said.

“Did you have some evidence, some proof? Or did you just make an assumption?”

“We know the kind of women who went there.

Women who swim naked out in the open are the kind of women who’d have abortions. We knew that.”

“Did you see any women swimming naked, Mr.

Dodgson?”

“No. But they did.”

“So you assumed that the Canby Ranch was provided for the kind of women who would have abortions. Is that correct?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“And you assumed that a woman who had been severely beaten and suffered a miscarriage was in fact having an abortion. Is that right?”

“I said we were wrong about that. I admit we were wrong that time.”

“But that was your original assumption, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” He ran his hand through his hair and fidgeted and now he was wetting his lips frequently.

“Did you agree to back down that time and wait for a more telling incident to occur, something you could take to Mrs. Canby and demand that the house be closed?”

“Yes. I mean no. We didn’t want to close them down.

We just wanted them to behave.”

“But you didn’t go to Mrs. Canby that time, did you?”

“No. I said we were wrong that time.”

“Did you come to believe you had been wrong from the start, that the house possibly had nothing to do with abortion counseling?”

“No! When women like that get together, they talk about abortions. We knew that. We just waited for something we could prove.”

“In order to close down the house?”

“No. We never said that.”

“What did you want proof for?”

“Just to make her keep a close eye on what was going on. For discipline, to screen who came and went.”

“I see. Mr. Dodgson, is abortion ever justified in your opinion?”

“Never! It’s murder!”

“Do you agree with the philosophy that maintains that women who have abortions are criminals?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“And should be punished under the law?”

“Yes!”

“And the doctors who perform abortions are criminals?”

“Yes, they are accessories.”

“And those who counsel women concerning abortion, are they accessories also?”

“Yes.”

“And those who stand by and do nothing to put a stop to this activity, are they accessories?”

Too late he realized where she was heading. He cleared his throat and licked his lips.

“If they really know. Not just suspect, but actually know, then yes.”

“You said you knew what was happening at the Canby Ranch, that you knew abortions were being discussed, that women were being counseled. You have flown all over this country to demonstrate—why didn’t you demonstrate at home, Mr. Dodgson?”

“We were waiting to get some real proof,” he mumbled.

“And then what would you have done?”

Fierst finally objected.

“I withdraw the question,” Barbara said. She raked Craig Dodgson with a look of scorn and turned her back on him, walked to her table. Her father was in his seat;

she had not noticed his arrival. She faced the witness stand again.

“Mr. Dodgson, you testified that you kidded around with Paula Kennerman back in March. You came forward with your statement months later. Why did you wait so long?”

“I just didn’t want to get involved,” he said. The line was so fluent it sounded rehearsed.

“You have had your picture in papers all over the country, in magazines, and here you didn’t want to get involved,” she said.

“Why did you come forward at all?”

“I had to. My conscience made me. I realized it was my duty.”

“Have you been back to the restaurant since the time you say you talked with Paula Kennerman?”

“No, not once.”

“How often did you used to go there?”

“Not often, once or twice a month.”

“For dinner.”

“No, to hear the music. Sometimes for dinner, maybe.”

“Don’t you know?”

“I had dinner there once in a while.”

“Alone?”

“Usually alone. Not always.”

“When you said you kidded around with Paula Kennerman, were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“And when you returned, the last time you were there, were you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have dinner those nights?”

“I don’t remember,” he said after a hesitation.

“Come now, Mr. Dodgson, you said you recall how she put her hand on

your arm, the exact words she uttered. Surely you know where that happened. Was it next to your salad or by your drink?”

“It was in the dining room,” he said. A mean new edge had appeared in his voice.

“I see. If you called and made a reservation for dinner for one, we can check the records at the restaurant and find out exactly when that was, can’t we?”

“No. I didn’t have a reservation.”

Barbara shook her head.

“They don’t seat anyone in the dining room without a reservation, Mr. Dodgson, Perhaps you mis spoke

“It must have been in the lounge,” he said, sounding so furious now that he had difficulty in controlling his rising voice.

“I don’t remember where I was, only what she said and how she gripped my arm.”

“Mr. Dodgson, earlier you said the waitresses wear those cute little skirts and heels and they are fun to kid with. Do you remember saying that?”

“Yes,” he all but snarled at her.

“You kidded them; they kidded back. Is that what you meant?”

“Sure. They know they get bigger tips that way.”

“Do you think they dress provocatively?”

“Sure they do, flouncing around, sassy-like. Teasing.”

“Did you know them by name?”

“No. You don’t ask girls like that their names.”

“Girls like that? What do you mean, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I mean they’re… flirts, out for the tips. Names don’t matter because once you’re out of there, they’re out of mind. It’s a game men and women play.” He added almost savagely, “Most men and women. Maybe you never played games like that.”

Barbara turned to Judge Paltz, but he had anticipated her.

“The personal remarks will be stricken from the record. We will have a ten-minute recess at this time.”

“Get hot, fight cool,” Frank murmured as he poured coffee for her in their little room.

“You’re a good learner, honey.”

“Oh, I’m hot enough,” she said, looking out the window at them.

“What a creep!” She let the blind drop into place.

“Where have you been all morning?”

“Things are happening,” he said.

“I had a talk with Bailey. He wanted to know how much he could spend, and I gave him the green light.” Frank sighed theatrically.

“He’s been tracking down migrants who picked berries at the orchard earlier in the summer, and one of them came through. Seems he worked with a guy who said he’d been there before, back in the winter sometime.

Gallead’s place.”

“No!” she breathed.

“He’s a marvel, that Bailey.

Where is this guy now?”

“Up north, picking apples, maybe Hood River, maybe already in Washington. Bailey needed to know it was okay to go find him. I said go.”

“They aren’t going to move now,” she said, thinking of Gallead and his secret missions.

“They’ll play it cool and wait us out, won’t they?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“This might be our only chance.”

“There’s a hell of a lot of apples up north,” Frank reminded her.

“And a hell of a lot of migrants to sort through. It’s not done yet.”

“He’ll do it,” she said.

“What else is going on?”

“Oh, not much. Doneally dropped by for a little chat.”

She eyed him narrowly.

“And?”

“We have twenty-four hours to pull that subpoena.

He’s terribly sorry, he said.”

“Or else?”

“Dodgson will slap us with a suit, harassment or some damn nonsense. But it won’t matter what it is.

And another one after that, and then another one. I sure didn’t think I’d spend my few remaining years fighting off lawsuits.”

“He’s acting stupid,” she said, nodding.

“He’s scared.”

“I don’t know about that. Mad, that I give you. But scared? I know I’m scared. He’s mean enough to do it.

And apparently rich enough to keep at it.”

When they resumed, Barbara went directly to the Saturday Lori Kennerman had been murdered.

“Mr. Dodgson, you stated that your mother made a breakfast of waffles and sausage and that the three of you ate in the dining room. Is that correct?”

“Yes.” He had recovered his boyish good looks during the short recess.

“And you just happened to notice that it was ten minutes before ten when your father went out to mow the grass. Were you wearing your watch?”

“Yes.”

“Were you dressed?”

“Yes.”

“Then you and your mother cleared the table and carried things into the kitchen. It took a minute or two at the most, you said. What did you do next, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I said I went to the dressing room and got undressed to swim.”

“No, you didn’t say that. What you said was you went swimming. Now you say you went to the dressing room first. Is it off the swimming pool?”

“Yes.”

“And how long do you estimate it took you there?”

“A minute maybe.”

“All right. Then you dived into the water? Is that right?”

He hesitated.

“I looked out in the hall and saw that Mother was at the back door, ready to go out, and then I dived in,” he said triumphantly.

“How is the pool situated, Mr. Dodgson? Where is the deep end?”

He hesitated again, a bit longer this time.

“Mr. Dodgson, it’s a simple question. Is the shallow end near the hall or at the far end of the room?”

“It’s near the hall.”, “I see. Why did you look out into the hall before you entered the water?”

“I don’t know. I thought I heard her call me or some thing.”

“When did you turn on the music, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I don’t remember. Probably when I went into the pool room.”

“And you play it loud to warn people that you’re in there? Is that right?”

“No. I like music when I swim.”

“Did you swim naked that morning, Mr. Dodgson?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

“I usually do at home when I’m alone in the water.”

“So you opened the door and looked out into the hall toward the back door. Is that right?”

“Yes. I said that.”

“Yes you did,” she said.

“Mr. Dodgson, where is the dressing room situated? At the far end of the pool room or near the hall door?”

“At the far end.” He looked mean again.

“And how long is the pool?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me refresh your memory,” Barbara said and went to the table to rummage through papers.