Act of God

by Susan R. Sloan

  “I know Mr. Ram,” Elise said. “He’s a nice man, but I think he got his nights mixed up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that the day before, which would have been Sunday, my brother and his wife came over for dinner. They didn’t leave until around, well, it must have been twelve-fifteen. I think that may have been the car starting up that Mr. Ram heard.”

  The judge took the noon recess as soon as Dana completed her direct examination of Elise Latham. Some forty reporters hurried out of the courtroom to file their stories. Those in the Hill House section sat as if dazed, not sure what to think about what they had just heard.

  Stuart Dunn felt sorry for Elise. She was so clearly caught in a no-win situation. It wasn’t that her testimony wasn’t believable, exactly, it was that a wife wasn’t always the most reliable witness when it came to her husband. After lunch, it would be up to the prosecutor to discredit her, and to his surprise, Stuart found himself uncomfortable with the idea. Elise seemed so fragile, somehow, and the history teacher didn’t want to see her hurt or humiliated.

  There was something about Elise Latham that Allison Ackerman didn’t quite like or, perhaps, trust. A chilliness, she thought, beneath the soft dress. Or it might have been that her answers seemed just a shade too rehearsed. Allison was well aware that witnesses were primed before their testimony, but she would have expected just a little more emotion from a wife whose husband was accused of such an unspeakable crime. And there was something else, too, that the mystery writer had noticed. During her entire testimony, Elise Latham had never once looked at the defendant.

  While Joan Wills dashed out of the building to pick up sandwiches, Dana took Elise in tow, settling her in an available room just outside Judge Bendali’s chambers. The young woman was shivering, and, it seemed, close to coming apart.

  “You did just fine,” the attorney reassured her.

  “Sure,” Elise said with a shrug. “But that was the easy part. After lunch comes the hatchet job, right?”

  “Just keep your composure, and you’ll get through it.”

  “What composure? I feel like a train is about to run right over me.”

  “Then use that feeling,” Dana advised. “It’ll make you just that much more sympathetic to the jury. And remember, wait three seconds after each question before you respond.”

  “I know,” Elise said. “In case you want to object.”

  “Answer only the question that’s asked of you, and keep your answer brief. Don’t offer any additional information.”

  “I know,” Elise repeated, with an edge of irritation. “You’ve told me a zillion times already.”

  At that moment, Joan poked her head in the door. “May I see you a moment?” she said to her partner, an unreadable expression on her face.

  “Sure,” Dana said, and followed Joan out into the hallway. “What’s up?”

  “I think maybe you’d better take a look at this,” Joan said, handing her the latest issue of Probe. “It was at the deli.”

  Dana glanced at it. A color photo of herself, wearing the very same gray gabardine suit she was wearing today, and carrying a briefcase, stared back at her, beneath a black headline that screamed, “Hill House Defense Attorney Had Abortion There!” Below, the lead paragraph read: “Attorney Dana McAuliffe, who is defending the man accused of bombing Hill House because his wife had an abortion there, apparently had an abortion there herself. According to reliable sources, McAuliffe had the abortion about five years ago.”

  “What on earth…?” she muttered.

  “I checked three other places,” Joan told her. “It’s everywhere. I know these tabloid types are notorious for making things up out of whole cloth, but I can’t believe they’d be so stupid as to think they could get away with something like this. The way I look at it, they’ve just bought themselves a multimillion-dollar libel suit.”

  “No,” Dana said, her head beginning to throb, and her knees suddenly so weak that she had to lean against the wall for support. “I don’t want a lawsuit.”

  “But you can’t just turn the other cheek,” Joan declared indignantly. “It’s out there, in black and white, for everyone to see. You can’t let them get away with that.”

  “Please,” Dana said wearily, “just let it go.”

  “But that’s what slime like this counts on, that you won’t fight back.”

  “Just let it go,” Dana repeated, angry and numb at the same time.

  “Look,” Joan persisted, “I know how focused you are on the trial right now, and I can understand that you don’t want anything to interfere with that, but the firm can handle this. You don’t have to be involved.”

  Dana turned on her. “Tell me,” she snapped, “what is it about the word ’no’ that you can’t seem to comprehend?”

  Joan stared at her mentor, taken aback, and then her mouth dropped. “Oh my God,” she whispered. “It’s true, isn’t it?”

  Dana closed her eyes, and let out a long breath. “So, now you know,” she said in a leaden voice. “Now the whole world knows.”

  “I don’t know what to say,” Joan murmured.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have barked at you like that,” Dana told her. “But as you now see, I wouldn’t have much of a case for libel.”

  “No, it’s all my fault,” Joan asserted. “I shouldn’t have pushed. I can be pretty obtuse sometimes.”

  Dana pressed her fingers against her temples. “I tried so hard to keep my personal life out of this,” she said tightly. “I guess I should have known I couldn’t.’

  “Does it matter?” Joan asked. “What does it change, really? So you won’t be the darling of the pro-life people anymore. Does that bother you terribly much?”

  “Hardly.”

  “And the last time I looked, abortion was still legal in this country. Which turns it all into a big so what!”

  “You think so?”

  Joan shrugged. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s business as usual. And right now, that means lunch. It just so happens, I’m starving.”

  “You go on,” Dana told her with a weak attempt at a smile. “I have something I have to take care of first. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Dana found a temporarily unoccupied office with a telephone, and quickly dialed a number. It took four rings before Craig Jessup answered.

  “Oh good,” she said. “I’m glad you’re there. I need you to change gears for me, if you could.”

  There was an awkward pause. “What do you mean?” Jessup asked finally.

  “Well, I know you’re working on the anonymous letter, but I was hoping I could get you to squeeze in something else that’s just come up,” she explained.

  “I guess I’m a little confused,” he said. “I’m not working on your case anymore.”

  Now it was Dana’s turn to be confused. “Why on earth would you quit in the middle of trial?” she asked.

  “I didn’t quit,” he replied. “I got a letter telling me you were terminating my services.”

  “Terminating your— What are you talking about? What letter?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “Know what?” she demanded.

  “I got a letter from the firm,” Jessup explained. “It came yesterday, saying that my services were no longer required. Cotter signed it.”

  “That’s absurd,” she told him. “It must be some kind of mistake, a clerical error or something. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Meanwhile, consider yourself back on the job. And please tell me you haven’t gotten involved in something else already, because I have no idea how I would get through the rest of this trial without you.”

  “No, I’m still available,” he said. “I guess I should have called you when the letter came, but I assumed you knew about it.”

  “Well, I assure you I didn’t,” she declared. “But it doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, it never happened. So, can you help me?”

  “What do you need?” he ask
ed.

  She steeled herself. “In case you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a story out today in a sleaze magazine called Probe that says I had an abortion at Hill House,” she said, as matter-of-factly as she could. “My guess is it was leaked by someone from the clinic, in an effort to scuttle my case, and secure a conviction. I want to know who.”

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the line, and Dana held her breath for what seemed forever, until she heard his voice again.

  “I’ll get on it immediately,” he said softly.

  Jessup stared pensively at the telephone, long after he had hung it up, his mind already at work. He had stumbled across something a couple of days ago, before he’d gotten the letter, that had struck him as odd—a piece in a puzzle whose shape he couldn’t quite grasp. It had nothing to do with Dana, directly, but he wondered if there could be a connection.

  He thought about the magazine article. Finding out where the information had come from would be relatively easy. What might be difficult, he knew from experience, was telling the client.

  TWENTY

  Somehow, Dana managed to swallow some of her sandwich, managed to finish coaching Elise Latham in the complexities of cross-examination, and managed to return to the courtroom for the afternoon session with her head high. Despite her outward demeanor, however, she was certain she could feel every eye in the room fastened on her. At one point, she couldn’t resist stealing a quick, questioning glance behind her. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she sighed so audibly that Joan overheard.

  The associate was concerned. For some reason he neglected to share with them, Charles Ramsey had not returned to court after lunch, and Joan worried whether Dana would be able to get through the afternoon session. Although, technically, he was the third chair, it would have been comforting to have the senior partner there for backup.

  She needn’t have worried. Dana knew how to separate her personal life from her professional one. This was not the time to think about the harm done by the tabloid article, or even to think about Sam. Oh God, Sam! No, now she had to focus every ounce of her attention on the proceedings at hand. She owed that to Corey. Later, when she was out of the courtroom, she would take stock, assess the fallout, and consider her options. And deal with other matters.

  Brian’s cross-examination of Elise Latham took up a good part of the afternoon. He poked and prodded, but as far as some of the jurors were concerned, Stuart Dunn and Allison Ackerman among them, he didn’t seem to make much headway. Until just after four o’clock.

  “Mrs. Latham,” he said, “you testified earlier that your normal habit on weeknights was to watch the ten o’clock news, have your cocoa, and go to bed. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who made the cocoa?”

  Elise shrugged. “Sometimes I did, sometimes Corey did.” She gave him a direct look. “For the past seven months, I have.”

  “On the night in question, who made the cocoa?”

  “I don’t really remember,” Elise replied. “Does it matter?”

  At the defense table, Dana’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. She knew exactly where Brian was going.

  “It may matter a great deal,” Brian said smoothly. “So why don’t you take a moment to think about it.”

  The witness glanced over at Dana, but the attorney could not give her anything but an imperceptible shrug.

  “All right, I think Corey made the cocoa that night,” she said.

  “The defendant made the cocoa, and after drinking it, you slept soundly all night. Is that correct?”

  “What are you trying to say, that he drugged my cocoa?” Elise demanded.

  “Objection,” Dana interrupted. “May I ask where the prosecutor is going with this line of questioning?”

  “Mr. Ayres?” the judge inquired.

  “Your Honor, assuming, as the prosecution does, that the defendant did get out of bed that night,” Brian explained, “I’m just trying to determine if there could be a reason why a light sleeper like Mrs. Latham might not have awakened.”

  “It sounds like a fishing trip to me, Your Honor,” Dana suggested, “based on the grossest speculation. Does the prosecutor have anything to back up his hypothesis? He certainly made no mention of it in his own case. Is there new evidence that I haven’t been made aware of?”

  Bendali fixed a steely eye on the prosecutor. “Do you have evidence you’re planning to introduce here, counsel?”

  Brian sighed. “Not at this time, Your Honor,” he admitted.

  “Objection is sustained,” the judge declared. “The jury will disregard counsel’s fishing expedition.”

  In the second row of the jury box, Allison smiled to herself. Dirty trick or not, Brian Ayres had executed it well. He had no proof of it, but he wanted the jurors to consider the possibility that Corey Latham might have doctored his wife’s cocoa to make her sleep through the night. Despite the judge’s admonition to disregard, that thought would rattle around twelve minds for some time to come.

  “I have no further questions,” Brian declared, his job done.

  “Redirect, Ms. McAuliffe?” Bendali inquired.

  Dana sighed. The damage was already done. Anything she could do now would only make it worse. “No, Your Honor,” she said.

  “Then we’re adjourned until ten o’clock Monday morning,” he declared.

  The moment the gavel sounded, and both the defendant and the jury had been escorted out of the courtroom, some forty reporters descended on the defense attorney, and Dana readied herself to try to discredit the notion of drugged cocoa.

  “Is it true, Ms. McAuliffe?” several exclaimed. “Did you really have an abortion?”

  She was stunned. In the heat of battle, she had actually managed to put the tabloid article out of her mind. She opened her mouth, and closed it again.

  “Ms. McAuliffe has no comment at this time,” she heard Joan saying. And then she felt the associate grasp her by the arm, and with Robert Niera’s help, propel her to the front of the courtroom and through the door that led to the judge’s chambers.

  Robert had been out during the lunch break. He had seen the latest issue of Probe. Making a quick decision, he put the two women in his own office. “I’ll get the deputies,” he said.

  “I was afraid something like that might happen,” Joan murmured.

  “To tell you the truth, I’d forgotten all about it,” Dana said, with a touch of irony. “I was too busy envisioning every five o’clock news lead in the country warning mothers about the potential dangers of hot chocolate.”

  “I say we get back to the office and come up with some kind of statement,” Joan suggested. “On both issues.”

  Before Dana could respond, Guff and Marty, the two deputies, appeared in the doorway.

  “Are you ladies ready?” Guff asked.

  “We certainly are,” Joan replied.

  Questions began firing at them the moment they entered the corridor outside the courtroom. Ignoring them, the two officers marched the attorneys through the swarm of media people, physically clearing the way when necessary, and hurried them into a waiting elevator. Three reporters appeared out of nowhere at the last minute, and tried to jump aboard before the doors closed. They were unceremoniously shoved aside.

  “Whew!” Joan exclaimed. “It’s like dodging real bullets.”

  “I think we’re in the clear now,” Guff said.

  Dana set her jaw. Joan was right, of course. She was going to have to come up with a statement about the article, or risk having her personal life disrupt the trial. But it would have to be carefully thought out.

  By the time the elevator doors opened on the main floor, she had settled on a gracious but firm, “No comment for now.” That would stop them for today. By tomorrow, she would be prepared.

  To her great relief, there were no reporters waiting to accost her in the lobby. She was safe for the time being, knowing that outside the courthouse, they could blend into the crush of
people, and likely be gone before anyone had a chance to recognize her.

  One by one, they pushed through the revolving door, made their way out from under the portico, and turned left toward Jefferson. The demonstrators, grown now from hundreds into thousands, were alternately singing and shouting at one another. But the moment they saw Dana, they began to surge toward her, threatening to break through the police barricade.

  The first projectile hit just as they were crossing Third Avenue. The overripe tomato caught Dana full in the chest and oozed its way down the front of her coat.

  “Baby killer!” someone shouted.

  “Murderer!”

  “May you rot in hell!”

  Before anyone quite realized what was happening, tomatoes were pelting her from all directions, followed by raw eggs, and finally, animal feces, some of it spilling over onto Joan.

  “Abortion makes you the mother of a dead baby!” a woman hissed in her face.

  Guff and Marty sprang into action. Grabbing the two women, they pulled them back from the corner and into a handy doorway. Guff then barked into his two-way radio, and almost immediately, half a dozen additional deputies were on the scene. Using locked arms, they managed to drive back the crowd enough to get a police car through. The attorneys and their guards quickly climbed inside and were driven off.

  “No more of this walking stuff. From now on, we drive you wherever you need to go,” Marty told them, and neither Dana nor Joan were of any mind to argue.

  “My God, what happened to you two?” Angeline Wilder exclaimed after the deputies deposited the attorneys in the Cotter Boland reception area some ten minutes later. She wrinkled her nose. “You smell like a barn.”

  “We just ran into a few unpleasant people, that’s all,” Joan told her.

  “I can guess why,” Angeline said archly, a copy of Probe in plain view on her desk. She lowered her voice. “I think you’d better go clean up a bit. Mr. Cotter said I was to tell him the moment you came in. He’ll probably be looking for you.”