by Brad Smith
Her eyes widened and Carl turned to see Miles Browning and one of the young lawyers from his team walk into the place. They went directly to the bar, where the bartender greeted them like royalty.
‘If not, there’s the reason why,’ Frances said. ‘It’s a shitty thing, what he’s doing. And he’s doing it for a shitty reason. Money. He’s got this reputation as the top criminal lawyer in the country and he’s nothing but a dirty little prick. A fucking high-priced character assassin.’
Carl watched Browning joking with the bartender. ‘Were you surprised when The Mayor resigned?’
‘I don’t think he had any choice. It was an election year and he couldn’t run with this hanging over him. But if he manages to get off, the story is he’s going to run again. He loves being mayor. Nice image for a city, having elected officials who are scum.’ Frances looked out the window to the street as she took a drink. ‘I hope Kate comes by.’
‘She won’t,’ Carl said.
‘You don’t know that.’
Carl had a drink. ‘She seems to think I’m after something.’
‘She told me what she said to you at the bar,’ Frances said. ‘She knows she shouldn’t have. If it’s any consolation, she feels like shit about it.’
‘Her feeling that way is no consolation. I don’t want her to feel like shit.’
He was still looking at Browning. Frances chuckled and he turned to her.
‘What?’
‘Look at you,’ she said. ‘Twenty years ago, you’d be across this room right now, punching Browning’s lights out. And I know goddamn well you still want to do it. You’re fantasizing about it right this minute. But you won’t do it.’ She smiled. ‘Of all people to become civilized.’
‘Should I apologize for that?’
‘Hell, no,’ she said. ‘For one thing, I suspect that you’re just marginally civilized anyway.’
‘You sure know a lot about me.’
‘Not about you,’ she said. ‘I’m a student of human behavior. You’re older and wiser. Probably being in jail helped. You do remember prison?’
‘Very clearly.’
Frances took a drink of the rye. ‘Sometimes you have to have faith in the system. And not because it always works, but because it sometimes works. Even if it doesn’t, Kate had enough guts to sit up there and stare down that lying fucking pervert and his million-dollar lawyer. She told the truth. Maybe this is one of those times when the truth is enough.’
Carl didn’t look at her then. He passed a few moments pushing his beer glass back and forth in the little pool of condensation it had formed on the table top. ‘She didn’t tell the truth about everything.’
‘What are you talking about?’
Now Carl looked at her. ‘She said that she didn’t tell anyone about the rape when it happened.’
‘Yeah?’
‘She told me. At least she tried to.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Frances said. ‘What did she say?’
‘Not a lot. Because I wasn’t listening to her. I wasn’t listening to anybody back then.’
Kate talked to Peter Dunmore on the lawn in the shadow of the courthouse. David, giving them some space, waited in the parking lot by the car. The lot was thinning out quickly; it was quitting time and people were eager to get away. Even the media had largely dispersed, with the star player Browning gone.
‘So what’s with this Filsinger guy?’ Dunmore wanted to know. ‘Browning’s beating that like a drum.’
‘I’d never heard of the man until a few months ago,’ Kate said. ‘He called me at home one night.’
‘How did he get your number? I couldn’t find it.’
‘I don’t know,’ Kate said. ‘I don’t know how any of this works.’
‘Would you say he’s an ambulance chaser?’ Dunmore asked.
‘Browning seems to think so,’ Kate said. ‘But if Filsinger’s an ambulance chaser, what’s Browning? All I know is that he called and said he wanted to represent me in a civil suit against Sanderson. And the city.’
Dunmore was writing in his notebook and now he looked up. ‘The city?’
‘That’s what he said. He claimed that Sanderson used his position as mayor to, I don’t know, gain our trust before he … did what he did. And with Maria Secord, it happened right in his office at city hall. And so the city’s responsible. At least that’s what he’s saying.’
Dunmore thought about it. ‘And that’s where the real money is, if you’re talking about a settlement.’
‘I guess.’
‘You told him you weren’t interested.’
‘Christ,’ Kate said. ‘It can’t be about the money. You were in there. We’re having a tough enough time as it is, getting people to believe us. They decide we’re all just chasing a payday and nobody will.’
‘And what about afterwards?’
‘What about it?’
‘If Sanderson is convicted,’ Dunmore said. ‘Will you go after the money then?’
‘No,’ Kate said, frustrated now. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’
‘Maybe I do,’ he said. ‘But I had to ask the question. And now I have to ask another one. Why did you wait so long to come forward? Not just you – all of the accusers. You realize that’s going to be a major stumbling block for the jury, don’t you?’
‘I guess it might be,’ Kate admitted. ‘I can’t answer the question because I don’t know the answer. It’s like when you’re sick and you put off going to the doctor. Why do you do that? Maybe I needed to know there were others, that it wasn’t just me. Or maybe I’m afraid of him. Maybe it’s a lot easier to pretend that it didn’t happen than to admit that it did.’ She smiled without much humor. ‘Gee, I said I didn’t have an answer and there’s three. Take your pick, buddy.’
‘They might all be true,’ Dunmore said. ‘Are you still afraid of him?’
‘No,’ Kate said. She hesitated. ‘Yes. I am.’
‘Are you afraid he’s going to walk on the charges?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘We going to Salinger’s?’ David asked when Kate joined him at the car. The reporter Dunmore was still standing alongside the courthouse, writing in his notebook. Kate didn’t know if talking to him had accomplished anything. He did seem sympathetic to her, even if the newspaper that employed him did not. There was a good chance that nothing would come of it. She was OK with that too. She really didn’t care what the Rose City Times thought of her.
Kate thought about it. ‘I’d rather just head home.’
‘Frances is kind of expecting us.’
‘She’ll understand.’
David hesitated. ‘You don’t want to talk to your father?’
‘I really don’t have anything to talk to him about,’ Kate said. ‘I’m not trying to shut him out but he really doesn’t seem like my father. He’s basically a stranger, David. How do you have a conversation with a stranger and pretend he’s not a stranger?’
‘I was watching him inside,’ David said. ‘It was hard for him to hear.’ He paused. ‘It was hard for me to hear.’
Kate put her arms around his neck and held him for a moment. ‘Let’s go home,’ she said.
They picked up some Vietnamese take-out on their way and ate in the living room. Kate changed into shorts and a t-shirt and sat cross-legged on the floor while she picked at the food. David, on the couch with a fork in one hand and the remote in the other, flipped through the sports channels, looking for baseball scores. Finally settling on ESPN, he muted the sound and got up to get himself another beer.
‘How’s yours?’ he asked.
Kate glanced at her bottle. ‘I’m good.’
He came back and flopped on the couch, watching Kate as she picked at the noodles on her plate. ‘I feel like we should celebrate,’ he said.
‘Celebrate what?’
‘You did it,’ he said. ‘After all these years, you told your story. And that bastard had to sit there while you told it. In a way, it doesn’t matter
what happens now, Kate. Browning’s going to try and twist everything around, you know that. You knew that going in. Thing is, you told the truth. And a thousand Brownings can’t make a lie out of the truth.’
‘But what if it accomplishes nothing?’
‘You can’t think about that,’ David said. ‘That’s out of your hands. You did your job.’
‘That’s very Zen-like of you,’ she said.
‘It is what it is.’
‘That’s less Zen-like.’ Kate pushed her plate away and got to her feet. She found the remote and turned the TV off, then moved to sit astride him on the couch. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘You’re welcome,’ he replied. ‘Um … for what?’
‘For making me feel like a normal human being,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be a sideshow. That’s why I couldn’t decide whether or not to talk to the reporter. I don’t want to be “the girl who got raped”. You make me normal.’
‘Gee,’ he said. ‘I had no idea I was such a saint.’
‘Well, you are,’ she said. She leaned forward to give him a lingering kiss. After a moment, she straightened. ‘I’ll tell you something else. Something I’ve been wanting to tell you. If I hadn’t met you, I don’t think I could have done this. Not on my own. So yes … we should go someplace to celebrate.’
‘OK,’ he said. ‘Where do you want to go?’
She kissed him again, longer this time. ‘I’m thinking … someplace warm.’
‘Someplace warm?’
‘Yeah.’ She kissed him a third time. ‘Do you have any suggestions?’
‘Not really.’
‘For a saint, you’re a little obtuse.’ She smiled.
‘Give me a hint.’
Kate pulled her t-shirt over her head and tossed it aside. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
David smiled.
TEN
Frances was up early the next morning. In fact, she’d been up most of the night, thinking about Kate and the trial. She’d been thinking about Kate for weeks now, leading up to things, but now she was forced to throw Carl in the mix too. She was uneasy about him. On the surface he appeared calm and in control of himself. But she hadn’t been joking yesterday when she’d suggested that he’d become just marginally civilized. She wasn’t at all sure what might happen if The Mayor was acquitted. Things could get interesting then, and not in a good way.
She sat out on the patio as the sun showed above the tree line to the east, drinking coffee and reading the Rose City Times while she waited for Perry to arrive. She wanted to run the cultivator through the tomatoes before heading in to the courthouse.
It was a busy news week in the city. The trial of former mayor Joseph Sanderson III was all over the front page. The Times had a handful of reporters covering it, providing exaggerated details of the lurid testimony and courtroom theatrics. The paper, continuing its biased reporting, seemed inordinately impressed by lawyer Browning. There was nothing in the edition by the reporter Dunmore, Frances noticed, before moving on to other news. Apparently EnviroFill, the Michigan-based company that had been taking virtually all of the city’s trash for the past decade, was pulling out, two years before its contract expired. City councilor Bud Stephens was riding – at least in his eyes – to the city’s rescue, announcing a plan to contract Hank Hofferman to receive the city’s garbage at a new landfill on a large parcel of land near the town of Talbotville. The land in question was no more than three or four miles from where Frances sat with her coffee. The news did nothing to improve her mood. Reading that the Rose City Redbirds ran their winning streak to a record-setting sixteen games didn’t help much either.
She almost missed the tiny item on page four. There had been a house fire on the Irish Line, some thirty miles south of Rose City. That the fire was reported at all was probably due to the fact that the place had belonged to John McIntosh and had been built in 1847 by John’s great-grandfather, an early governor of the area. The cause of the fire was believed to be faulty wiring, the result of aged circuitry overloaded by a faulty air-conditioning unit. So the fire, in effect, was a consequence of the heatwave. Whoever had written the report in all likelihood didn’t know what Frances did – that the McIntosh property was directly across from that of the proposed landfill.
Miles Browning presented his defense of Joseph Sanderson III like a man who had left his car running in front of the courthouse. He had a roster of witnesses prepared to contradict virtually every aspect of each of the accusers’ stories, and it was apparent that Browning had instructed them to be as concise as possible. The jury was treated to two days of rapid fire testimony designed not to create doubt of, but rather disbelief in, the prosecution’s case. Browning himself was in full strut throughout, displaying the confidence of a man selling sunscreen at the gates of hell.
Louise Sanderson testified, stating that she had never known Maria Secord’s mother, even in passing, not through her involvement with the church or anywhere else, making it impossible for her to have played a role in Maria’s hiring at city hall. Grant’s effort to challenge her under cross was tepid at best. The woman was revered in the city, mainly due to her charitable activities. Calling her a liar in open court wasn’t going to help his case in the least.
An investigator from welfare services elaborated on Debra Williams’s admitted gaffe in collecting social assistance. It turned out that she’d defrauded the agency five times, not once, and that the agency, in its mercy, had agreed to pursue just one of the charges.
Ninety-three-year-old Norma Stevens appeared. She had been The Mayor’s secretary for most of his early tenure at city hall, and she testified that Kate Burns had repeatedly phoned the office during the winter of 1998, asking to speak to The Mayor. The old woman’s memory of these calls was remarkably clear in spite of the fact that, during the course of her testimony, she referred to the accused twice as ‘Mayor Sanders’ and at one point mistook Judge Pemberton for her late husband, calling him ‘Herb, dear’.
Even though Amanda Long did not testify, her statement had been read into the transcript. Browning called to the stand two case workers from separate rehabilitation centers who outlined her many failed attempts to beat her alcohol addiction, the testimony focusing on her propensity for lying.
Finally, Browning called Marvin Tallman. Tallman had worked for the Department of Lands and Forests for forty-seven years, all of his service having passed in the area surrounding Lake Sontag. He testified that there had never in that time been a trapper’s cabin on the south shore of the lake, and that furthermore he had never heard of any tale involving an unsolved murder in the lake’s history.
When Browning’s revolving door of rebuttal witnesses had concluded, he turned to his summation. He was wearing a black suit – the first time he had worn black – with a dazzling white shirt and a scarlet tie. He spoke without notes, and his manner remained perfunctory, his demeanor suggesting that an acquittal, at this point, was a foregone conclusion, and that the jury would be doing justice and everybody else a favor by coming to that conclusion quickly.
‘I was sitting in my room last night and I had this sudden feeling that I should apologize to you,’ he said to the members of the jury. ‘I felt as if your time – your precious time – had been wasted on these frivolous charges, hurled at my client. But then I realized that I was wrong. There’s no apology required, because your time has not been wasted. In fact, you have been given an opportunity to accomplish something that few people get to do in this life. I began practicing law thirty-two years ago and over that period I have heard too many times that our judicial system is flawed. It is aged and rusty. It allows killers to run free, crooks to prosper, drug dealers to threaten our children. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have long disagreed with that assessment. It does work, and you have the occasion here, in this courtroom, to display to those naysayers just how well it works.’
Browning paused and smiled at the jury, as if welcoming them into his brotherhood of believers. Then
he turned and approached the table where the four women sat.
‘Perhaps your job would be made more difficult if just one of the stories told by the four accusers held up. If just one of these women had presented a credible, reliable account of these allegations, then perhaps we would be given pause. But that didn’t happen. They say that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but this wasn’t even close.’
Browning walked back to his desk and picked up several sheets of paper.
‘Maria Secord claimed that her mother was friends with Louise Sanderson. That proved to be untrue. You heard Louise Sanderson’s testimony on the subject. She is perhaps the most respected woman in this city. Her character is beyond reproach. Maria Secord lied.
‘Debra Williams said she defrauded welfare services one time, purely by accident. She defrauded welfare services five times, and five times is not accidental. Five times is criminal. Debra Williams lied.
‘Amanda Long chose not to testify, so we will never know what her claims were, other than a statement which bears no value in this courtroom because it cannot be cross-examined. We know that she is, sadly, a woman embattled by alcoholism. However, by recording her statement at the onset of this trial, she was saying she would testify before you. She did not follow up on that promise. Amanda Long lied.
‘Kate Burns – she of the quick wit and the sharp tongue – Kate Burns tells tales of cabins that never existed, of murders which never occurred. She denies making numerous phone calls to my client. His secretary, a woman with no ulterior motives, with no lucrative civil suit lurking in the background, says otherwise. Kate Burns lied.’
Browning brandished the papers above his shoulder as he walked toward the jury again. ‘I must warn you that you are not here to judge these four women. Whatever circumstances have conspired to deliver them here to this courtroom, to inspire these outrageous tales, it is not for us to ponder. We have here four victims of broken homes, four women who have suffered from alcohol abuse, drug use, alienation from society in general. Furthermore, we have heard there are seedy elements on the periphery of this matter, whispering promises of financial gain in the event of a conviction. Who among us, having fallen on hard times, would not at least listen to those whispers? And who, in a moment of weakness, might not decide to tailor a story to fit certain accusations? No, you are not here to judge these women.’