House of Smoke (33 page)

The proceedings started off badly. The judge wasn’t on her side. It was subtle but unmistakable, at least to her. Eric’s lawyer was better than hers. She was the cop with the negative publicity, and now she was the one filing for divorce.

“He is not the father of the girls
—
my children,” she told the judge when she took the stand. They were in the custody phase, the most important part to her. She didn’t want Eric to be able to ever see them again. She wanted him washed from their lives, as if he never had existed in it. “He only adopted them because I bugged him until he agreed. He’s been a stepfather in name only. He means nothing to them, and they mean less to him.”

“And you’re capable of raising them in a proper manner,” the judge asked her, leaning over from the bench.

“Of course I am. I’m their mother. I have a job that pays well, and I love them. I already have raised them, all their lives. What more would you expect from me?”

He made some notes on his legal pad. There might be more testimony on this subject later.

The emergency-room doctor who had fixed her up testified for her. He was young, in his first year of residency, and he looked even younger.

“She was beaten severely. Some ribs were broken, teeth knocked out. She was fortunate her jaw wasn’t permanently damaged, or her liver, spleen, kidneys.”

“Why wasn’t this reported to the police?” Eric’s lawyer, an oily prick in a good suit, asked the ER doc. Her own lawyer’s suit was blue, two shades too bright. And he wore brown shoes instead of black ones. He had been recommended by the people at the shelter, who only knew good price, not good quality. She had been too discombobulated to notice his shortcomings; by the time she did, they were too far along in the process for her to get a better one.

“She didn’t want to,” the young doctor answered. He looked like Huck Finn up there.

“Isn’t it obligatory? By law?”

“She was a cop herself, man. She said she’d handle it. We figured she knew what she was doing.”

“So it was only on her say-so.” Eric’s lawyer was examining the head of the shelter now, who had taken Kate to the hospital.

“I’m not blind,” the woman responded, as if insulted. “She was beaten to a pulp.”

“I’ve seen the pictures,” he said. “That it was her husband, I’m asking. No one else.”

“There was no reason for her to lie,” the woman countered. “I’ve seen lots of these cases. It’s always the husband or boyfriend.”

“But you didn’t check to verify that. And you didn’t call the police to verify it, either. Not then or later.”

“I was worried about keeping her alive. She didn’t want to get into that right then, and I didn’t press her. It’s common not to want to sic the cops on
y
our husband. You’re scared he’ll come back and do you worse. All you want is to get away from him, and keep away from him.”

Eric took the stand. He looked sharp. A poster boy for the police recruiters.

He’d been on the stand a hundred times in a hundred trials. He knew how to talk the right way.

“Yes, I hit her,” he admitted. His lawyer was eliciting his testimony. “I had to do something. She was pointing her gun at me.”

Kate got halfway out of her chair before her lawyer managed to restrain her.

“That’s a goddamn lie!” she hissed.

“Calm down,” her lawyer warned her. “This judge won’t tolerate a ruckus. We’ll nail him on cross, don’t worry.”

She was worried. This wasn’t the way she had been told it would go.

“Why was she pointing her gun at you?”

“She wanted to leave the house. Leave me. I didn’t want her to leave, especially then, the stress she was under. I wanted to talk to her. She didn’t want to. She pulled her gun and told me to get out of her way. So I took the gun away, and I had to fight her to do it. What else could I do?”

“Had she been under a lot of stress?” Eric’s lawyer asked, leaning heavily on the word “stress.”

“Tremendous stress. She was going back to work the next day after being on administrative leave for a month. She’d been this close to getting kicked off the force.” He held up thumb and forefinger, an inch apart. “If I hadn’t gone to the board beforehand and pleaded for her she would have been.”

“He’s lying,” Kate hissed. She wanted to scream. “If anyone almost got me kicked off it would have been him. He was totally unsupportive of me. Ask Captain Albright. Put him up on the stand.”

Her lawyer had made a note about that. He seemed to be making a lot of notes, about everything.

“Why did she want to leave you?” Eric’s lawyer asked him.

Eric turned in his chair, looked at her from across the room.

“She can tell you better than I can,” he answered cryptically.

She did answer.

“Because he was scum. A liar, a bastard. The gun
—
that’s a complete lie. He pulled his gun on me, on his own wife, he held it to my head, he threatened my life. He told me I should have gotten what that poor woman and girl had gotten back in that house. And he told me
—
promised me
—
that the next time he would pull the trigger. He’s crazy, psychotic. Check his evaluations. Why hasn’t he been promoted, all his years in service? Check that out, too.”

Then she did the one thing she’d sworn she wouldn’t do. She began to cry.

“I don’t deserve this. No woman deserves this. I’m a peace officer, I see terrible things all the time, I was witness to the worst thing I hope ever to see, that man murdering his wife and daughter in cold blood, for no reason. No reason!”

“Would you like to take a break?” the judge asked sympathetically.

“No, thank you. I want to finish here.” Maybe he wasn’t against her after all, not completely. She composed herself.

“Except for killing me, when he had his gun against my head, my husband
—
this is the last time I will ever call that bastard ‘my husband’
—
except for that, I was no better off than those women were. And it has to be stopped.”

She could see the look in Eric’s lawyer’s eyes. He made a mistake, taking this client. Not taking him
—
everyone is entitled to a proper defense
—
but in attacking her character so viciously.

But witnesses had already been subpoenaed. They came forward.

“Do you know this woman?” Eric’s lawyer asked Cal Collins. Collins owned a bar and grill in Berkeley that Kate used to frequent.

“Yes.”

He looked miserable, sitting up there. She slouched in her chair, wanting to disappear.

“Did you have sexual relations with her while she was married?”

He looked at Kate as if to say “I’d do anything to lie, but I can’t, I’m under oath.” She signaled him with body language
—
tell the truth.

“Yes.”

“How many times?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t keep a scorecard.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“More than a dozen times?”

“Yes.”

Kate’s lawyer cross-examined.

“While you and Mrs. Blanchard were seeing each other, was she estranged from her husband?”

“Yes, she was. Most definitely.”

“Did she tell you they were separated?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know if she was living separately from him at the time?”

“Yes. He had moved out of the house. She had kicked him out. She was living there by herself, with her daughters.”

“And then she reconciled with him.”

With sorrow: “Yes.”

“And told you she couldn’t see you anymore.”

“We never saw each other after that, except if she was in my restaurant as a customer.”

“So when she was living with her husband, not separated, or contemplating divorce, she was faithful to him.”

“Objection! This witness does not know what else she might have been doing, or with whom.”

“Sustained.”

“She never slept with you again once she got back together with him?”

“Not once.”

“Did she ever tell you why she went back to him, a man who was brutal to her, who she didn’t love?”

“He kept at her. She felt guilty. She had one failed marriage, she said, she was willing to do almost anything to make this one work.”

“Even take the chance of getting killed.”

“Objection!”

“Sustained.”

“Did you sleep with anyone during the various times you and your soon-to-be divorced wife were physically and emotionally separated from each other?” Kate’s lawyer questioned Eric on redirect.

“I was never ‘emotionally separated’ from her. Whenever we split up it was her decision. I had to go along with what she wanted, but I never wanted to leave her.”

He could sell ice to Eskimos, she thought, watching him up there on the stand. Lying or telling the truth, to him there was no difference.

“You just wanted to beat her senseless.” Before the objection was voiced: “I retract that, Your Honor.”

“Don’t do it again,” he was warned.

The judge took over the questioning when her daughters, one after the other, were on the stand.

“Do you love your mother?”

“Yes,” both had answered.

“Is she a good mother?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love your stepfather?”

The answer from both of them was “No.” They both hated him and were afraid of him.

“Did your mother ever provoke him, or was it always his fault?”

“She never provoked him,” the younger one said. She was fiercely loyal to Kate; she was too young to have any rebellious ideas.

“She would get in his face sometimes,” the older one admitted. “Mom doesn’t back down to anyone.”

Eric’s lawyer questioned her after the judge was finished.

“Was your mother ever angry at you when it wasn’t your fault?”

“Sometimes.”

“She was mad at your father and she took it out on you?”

“Objection, Your Honor! This is pure speculation!”

“Overruled. You may answer the question,” he told her.

She fidgeted in her seat. “Sometimes,” she whispered. “He’s not really my father,” she corrected, “he’s only my adoptive father.”

“‘Sometimes,’” the judge repeated to the court stenographer, in case she hadn’t heard the answer. “Disregard the rest of it.”

“Are you happier living with your aunt and uncle?” the lawyer probed.

Again, in a small, low voice: “Yes.”

Julie was called as a hostile witness by Eric’s lawyer.

“How would you describe your sister’s current state of mind?” he asked.

“Concerned, of course. Confused.”

“Angry?”

“Yes. Under the circumstances, who wouldn’t be?”

“Angry at her children?”

Slowly, she answered, “Sometimes. They’re teenage girls. It comes with the territory.”

“Irrational anger?” he asked. “Using them as scapegoats?”

More slowly: “Yes, sometimes. I mean, rarely, the frustration level gets so high. Having to live with a man like Eric … who wouldn’t get angry?”

“Do you feel they would be safe with her? Completely safe, all the time?” he added with emphasis.

Julie looked at Kate. Her eyes were wet.

“Not completely safe all the time. Almost all the time, but
…”
She looks at Kate, seated across the room from her. “Oh, honey. I don’t know what to say, I’m sorry,” crying for real, “the girls, I want them to be safe after all this. Isn’t that what you want, too?”

The judge pounds his gavel.

“You are not to make that sort of outburst again, is that clear?”

“I’m sorry,” Julie whimpered. “I’m so sorry.”

You never had your own kids, Kate thought, staring at her sister, who wouldn’t look at her after that. So you made mine yours
—
but they’re not. You don’t know what it’s like for real.

You don’t know what you’ve done to me.

The judge announced his decision. The property settlement was cut-and-dried; they split it, it wasn’t much, just the house, which was already up for sale. They’d keep their own cars, their own personal things. The furniture and other tangibles that were in dispute were divvied up, not to either’s satisfaction, but divorce is an unsatisfying process. Eric would pay no alimony, no child support. She didn’t want either; she just wanted to get on with her life.

It came down to her daughters. Custody.

“It is the opinion of this court that the welfare of the minor children will be best served in placing them in temporary custody with Julie and Walter Netter, their aunt and uncle. Children of this age need a stable, secure household in which to live, and at this moment in time Mrs. Blanchard is unable to provide that, given the emotional stress she has been under, which I should emphasize is through no fault of her own. She will, of course, be able to visit with her daughters as much at she wants.”

Kate listened in stony silence.

“We’ll appeal this,” her lawyer promised. “This won’t hold up.”

Fuck you, she thought silently, feeling sorry for herself, wanting to lash out at the world. You fucked this up royally.

“This judgment will be in place for one year starting today,” the judge continued, “at which time Mrs. Blanchard may apply to regain custody.”

He turned and looked directly at Kate.

“I know you’re upset at this,” he said, “but it’s for your welfare as well as theirs. Someday you may thank me.”

I’ll be dead before I ever thank you, she thought.

There was an up side. Eric was granted no visiting rights with the girls whatsoever. They would never have to see him again, or be subjected to his viciousness. And the restraining order prohibiting him from having any contact with her was made permanent.