The Best Defense (44 page)

“I will not answer any more of this woman’s questions I object to allowing this woman to meddle in my private affairs. I object to having been called to testify in a matter that I know nothing about. I object to this public persecution. This woman is on some sort of personal feminist crusade to obliterate truth and decency.

What is happening here is a travesty of justice, a mockery ” He had started in a low, intense voice that gradually rose until he was shouting. He was drowned out by the furious banging of Judge Paltz’s gavel.

“Sir,” Judge Paltz said, “the court will adjourn at this time until one-thirty. At that hour, you will present yourself in the witness chair and conduct yourself properly.

You may consult with your attorney if you choose, but, sir, you have been called as a witness, and you will testify.”

The noise in the courtroom was like an explosion when the judge left.

He had cut the luncheon recess short, but it was too long, Barbara thought, pacing, too restless to sit still, too restless to consider food. She wanted to walk in the woods, by the river, in her old neighborhood, anywhere.

On the beach. That was what she wanted, to walk on the beach, for hours and hours.

“That’s how he must be before he hits her,” she said with a shudder.

“Remote, icy, monstrous.” She went to the window.

“He put on that last performance on purpose,” she added.

“Controlled all the way. Buying time to think, to plan.”

“You rattled his cage, all right,” Frank said.

“He must be going nuts trying to figure out where you’re leading him.”

She turned away from the window—she had not seen a thing out there—and faced him again.

“I’ll nod when I want the stuff,” she said. She had told him this already.

She bit her lip and went to the rest room to wash her face.

“Mr. Dodgson,” she said, “I showed you the invoice from the pool-cleaning company and asked if you recognized it. Do you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s correct to your knowledge?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you paid the bill; you must have accepted it at the time. Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

She held up the invoice.

“The man who did the work reported here that he started the pump on Tuesday and returned when the pool was empty on Wednesday and scrubbed down the sides with detergent to remove an oily residue. Mr. Dodgson, a floor stripper chemical is not oil based, is it?”

“I don’t know what it is.”

She handed the invoice to the clerk.

“When you lived in Las Vegas, were you acquainted with Royce Gallead?”

“No.”

“Did you know that your wife danced in the club where he was assistant manager?”

“No.”

“Did you know she continued her professional dancing while you were away from home?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

“We have no secrets.”

“Is Mr. Gallead a business associate of yours?”

“No.”

“Do you speak French, Mr. Dodgson?”

Fierst objected and she withdrew the question.

Dodgson’s eyes were narrowed, his jaw hard and tight again.

“Is your printing company capable of printing in foreign languages?” she asked.

While Fierst was objecting, she glanced at her father and nodded. He was at the defense table, not behind it as he had been throughout the trial until now. She faced Dodgson again, aware of the rustle of paper behind her.

“Is it possible that Mr. Gallead is not a real associate of yours, that he is instead merely a customer? Some one you do printing jobs for?”

He was watching Frank with an intense stare. His lips had all but vanished.

“Mr. Dodgson,” she said.

“Did you not bear the question?”

He moistened his lips and then said in a low voice, “I’ve done printing work for him.”

“And you wouldn’t necessarily know what the work was, especially if it was in a foreign language. Is that right?”

He turned his gaze to her, and then looked past her.

There was a slight commotion. She turned to see Craig Dodgson pulling away from Kay Dodgson’s hand. Craig hurried from the courtroom.

“Mr. Dodgson,” she ‘said.

“Did you hear my question

“I heard it,” he said with a flash of fury.

“I don’t know what the work was. It was in a foreign language, on a computer disk. I just did the printing.”

“Ah,” she said. She walked to the table and regarded the pyramid Prank had constructed, the cardboard car ton on the bottom, the case-size box on top of it, the small box on top of that. She turned and approached him again with her hands in her pockets.

“Mr. Dodgson, do you recognize these?” She withdrew her hand and opened it. Dodgson turned the color of wet putty.

“Objection!” Fierst yelled.

“Your Honor, this is a fishing expedition pure and simple. What is counsel doing playing games with boxes, hiding something in her hand?”

Paltz glanced at him almost absently.

“Overruled. Mr.

Dodgson, did you hear Ms. Holloway’s question?”

“I don’t know what they are,” he said in such a low voice. Judge Paltz asked him to repeat it.

Barbara approached the bench and said, “It’s baby aspiring and a time-release decongestant, Your Honor. But it looks very much like the combination drug RU-486.”

There was a cry behind her; she turned to see Kay Dodgson running from the courtroom, closely followed by half a dozen other people. Reporters, she thought, and looked at Dodgson again. He was stone-faced and very pale. She read murder in his expression, cold, merciless murder.

“Mr. Dodgson, did you print labels for boxes similar to those on the defense table for Mr. Gallead?”

“Yes.”

“How many did you print?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, was it in the hundreds? Thousands?”

He hesitated, then shrugged.

“In the thousands.”

“Did you print information sheets for him?”

“I don’t know what it was.”

“Was it in French?”

“Yes. I don’t read French.”

She walked to her table, thinking. Here goes. She had warned him, had coached him, had led him all the way to the next question. Enough? She hoped so. She faced him again.

“When you were cutting the grass at your house on Saturday morning, April nineteenth, did you see anyone on your property who didn’t belong there?”

He hesitated briefly, then nodded.

“I thought I did.”

“What did you see?”

“Just a shadowy figure dart across the road, go be hind the trees, out of sight.”

“Did you recognize that figure?”

He was hesitating after every question now. This time the pause was longer.

“No,” he said.

“Where did he come from?”

“I don’t know. I just caught a glimpse of someone on the road.”

“Across the road from your property is the Gallead property, isn’t it? Did he come from that direction?”

He drew in a long breath and said yes.

“Did you simply continue to cut the grass?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Dodgson, you hired spies to keep an eye on your property, you were so alarmed at the thought of intruders yet when you saw a strange shadowy figure, you simply kept mowing the grass? Is that what you did?”

“Yes!” he yelled.

“Yes, that’s what I did! I thought I’d been mistaken, and I cut the grass.”

“Before the fire, did Mr. Gallead pressure you to try to get the Canby Ranch closed as a refuge for women?”

“No.” He ran his hand over his face, and then said, “Yes, he did. He asked me repeatedly to call Mrs.

Canby. I don’t know why.”

“But you obeyed him. Why was that, Mr. Dodgson?”

“I wanted them out, too.”

She felt almost sorry for Fierst when it was his turn.

He stood up and then sat down again.

“No questions,” he said tiredly.

the summations had been brief. Fierst had reconstructed the prosecution’s case and stated that all the other material that had been introduced was irrelevant, but his performance was lackluster, spiritless. Barbara had also reconstructed the state’s case, and item by item destroyed it, and the jury was out.

Now Frank and Barbara were being ushered into Judge Paltz’s chambers, where others had already gathered.

The district attorney, Larry Coltrane, was there, along with Fierst and another assistant. Carter Heilbronner and an assistant were there. Judge Paltz was behind his desk, his senior clerk at his side and a stenographer in a chair pulled back a few feet.

“Come in, come in,” Judge Paltz said. He made the introductions, and then said, “Barbara, please sit over there.” He indicated a chair, and then waved Frank to another one. He peered at Barbara.

“You asked for this meeting, so I turn it over to you at this time. Since this is irregular, notes will be taken.” He leaned back in his big handsome chair.

“Before we start,” Larry Coltrane said, “I want it on record that my office is very aware of the leading nature of counsel’s questions, and we are considering action.

We believe she deliberately led witnesses to make statements that she knew were lies.” He folded his arms over his chest and glared at her.

She shrugged.

“People on the stand lied from day one. Are you objecting because a few of the lies helped my client instead of hurt her? Where do we start examining the lies given as evidence?”

“Not here, and not now,” Judge Paltz said.

“This is not a good beginning. Barbara, what is RLJ-486?”

She glanced at Heilbronner.

“Will any of them have a chance to wipe computer disks, flush stuff down the drain?”

He shook his head.

“Good. RU-486 is a drug combination that induces abortion with virtually no side effects. It mimics an early spontaneous abortion, commonly called a miscarriage, with as few aftereffects as a miscarriage. It’s widely used in Europe, and is illegal here. There’s been terrible pressure to keep it from being licensed in this country; no company here will touch it for fear of massive reprisals in the form of boycotts, demonstrations, whatever. There is evidence that Dodgson and Gallead have a source for it, and they are smuggling it in, pack aging it, and distributing it to selected doctors. If it were legal, it would cost about seven hundred fifty dollars;

on the black market, who knows what they charge for it? All Dodgson’s diatribes against birth control, abortions, and all the while he was making millions with RU-486. And Craig’s demonstrations against clinics while he was actually delivering the stuff. This has to be the most cynical, the most hypocritical black-market enterprise on record!” She was too furious to continue.

“You can prove any of this?” Judge Paltz murmured.

His eyes were gleaming.

“Not enough,” she admitted after drawing in a long breath. She told them about Miguel Torres, how he and three other men had spent four days packaging a medication.

“We have the picture showing the truck with five workers at a different time. We have people who will testify that the Gallead truck brings in workers every six to eight weeks. This is a multimillion-dollar operation.

They are packaging from four to six thousand doses at a time, six or more times a year! We have the names of four doctors Craig Dodgson visited in Denver, all gynecologists; I have no idea how many doctors may be involved. I talked to a woman who was given medication that looked like the baby aspirin and decongestant I showed Dodgson in court. She had what she thought was a spontaneous abortion following it.”

No one had moved or made a sound as she talked.

Now Larry Coltrane made a disgusted sort of noise, not quite a snort.

“If they’re making that kind of money, where is it, why doesn’t it show?”

“This isn’t an open-ended racket,” she said.

“The day RU-486 is legalized, they have to close shop, and I imagine the day after that, they all planned to vanish.”

“By this time,” she went on, “Gallead believes the Dodgsons are throwing him overboard, framing him for the murder of Lori Kennerman. And, no doubt, he believes that Dodgson is going to plead ignorance of what Gallead was doing. Dodgson said he can’t read French, remember. All he did was print orders from time to time. I think Gallead will talk, he’ll want to deal.” She added, “It seems likely that Gallead

got hold of some 5 one with the drug years ago and looked around for a partner, and who better than a pharmaceutical rep?”

“All that nonsense about a shadowy figure,” Fierst protested.

“It’s not worth a damn. You can’t pin the murder on Gallead with nothing more than that, and you know it.”

“I never said I could,” she said.

“Right now they all know we’re onto the RU-486 operation, and the Dodgsons know that I’m asking dangerous questions about the arson fire and murder of Lori Kennerman. Let me tell you one more scenario, the only one that makes any sense. The one that the Dodgsons will do anything to keep under wraps, even if it means framing Gallead.”

Fierst set his mouth in a tight line and didn’t speak.

“They must have been desperate to close down the refuge after Carol Burnside took those photographs. But if they stirred up too much trouble Mrs. Canby would have had the Dodgsons Investigated; she told me that.

And real investigators were more dangerous than someone stumbling over their operation. Then, less than two months after that incident, Kay met Angela and learned that the house would be empty. She hurried back home.”

Barbara scowled at Fierst and added, “Carrie Voight saw her, remember? Kay and Craig saw their chance to get rid of the Canby place, to burn it down. She wrote the note to Mrs. Melrose to clean the refrigerator in order to keep her in the kitchen. She opened the poolroom door, the door to the family room, turned the music on loud, all to establish that Craig was in there swimming naked. And then she went back toward the end of the road to watch for the departure of the women and children at the Canby house. From the pond area she had a clear line of sight. But she didn’t know Angela’s little girl was there, so when the second little girl ran out, she thought that was the last one, and she stooped down to tie her shoe. She couldn’t see Craig through Die trees, but he could see her very well in her pink running out fit. Then she went back to the house to wait for him, to open the front door for him. He must have been covered with blood and gas. Maybe in shock. No one expected a child to show up to witness the arson.” Her voice hardened She took a deep breath and continued.