The Code of the Hills

by Nancy Allen

  “Order!” he called. Pointing the gavel at Elsie, he said, “Objection overruled. Mr. Nixon, you may continue.”

  Josh Nixon shook his head with a cocky air. “No further questions.”

  It was Elsie’s turn. Her ears were ringing; she needed time to collect her wits, but she didn’t have the luxury.

  She tried, in her cross-­examination, to go over safe ground, walking the witness through her prior allegations against her father, until Josh shut it down as outside the scope of direct examination. Elsie faltered a moment, uncertain what to do next. She couldn’t risk asking anything about Roy or Al, or how the pictures came to be taken, because she didn’t have all the facts; every trial lawyer knew that proceeding blindly, asking questions when you didn’t know the answer, was suicide.

  But she couldn’t give up. The jury was looking at her askance, and Elsie knew what that foretold. Nixon didn’t have to prove his client innocent. The defense only had to raise a reasonable doubt to obtain a Not Guilty verdict. Nixon accomplished that with Kristy’s testimony; any juror who wasn’t scratching his head at this point wasn’t paying attention.

  Elsie made a stab at damage control. She drew close to the girl, and addressing her with gravity, said, “Kristy, you know that you have sworn to tell the truth in this trial, haven’t you?”

  Kristy nodded. “Yes.”

  “It’s a sacred oath. You understand that.”

  “Yes.”

  From his chair, Nixon said, “Judge, I’m going to object to this line of questioning. She’s trying to bootstrap the credibility of her witness.”

  “Our mutual witness,” Elsie replied without looking his way. “Defense can’t logically object to that.”

  “Miss Arnold’s right. Overruled.”

  Staring eyeball-­to-­eyeball with Kristy, she said, “Think hard, Kristy. Is everything, every single word that you’ve said in this courtroom true?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean today, and yesterday. All true?”

  “Objection. Asked and answered.”

  “Sustained.”

  Shut down. She couldn’t reinforce Kristy’s earlier testimony. Elsie stared intently at the girl, nodding, then nodded at the jury, before she told the judge, “No further questions.”

  When the judge declared a recess, Elsie raced out the door. She headed for the last stall in the women’s room, and bolting the door, braced herself; she thought she might vomit. Thought she’d feel better if she did.

  Nothing happened. She was so dry she couldn’t even spit.

  She sat on the toilet and buried her face in her hands. It was over. She had blown it. How did she fail to pick up on such a terrible crime occurring right under her nose? How could she have been blind to it? Remorse sat on her chest like an elephant: she should have realized what Roy and Al were up to. Certainly, there had been signs. Looking back, she wondered fleetingly whether she’d been afraid to see the whole picture.

  She looked at her watch. She had about three minutes to pull herself together.

  She left the stall and scrubbed her hands at the sink, ran a comb through her hair, applied a swipe of lipstick. She shook her head to clear it, squared her shoulders and headed down the hallway. As she turned the corner, she spied Ashlock. He walked up to her, and she asked, in a near whisper, whether he’d heard about Kristy’s testimony. He nodded.

  “They should be picked up, Ash,” she said. “Roy Mayfield and Al. Questioned about child porn activities.”

  “I sent an officer out to find them about five minutes ago.”

  “Thank God. What do we do with Donita?”

  “I’ve got her shut up in the conference room across the way. As soon as Patsy gets here with the recording equipment, me and Donita gonna have a talk.”

  Elsie nodded, silent. Ashlock put an arm around her and gave her a squeeze. “But what about our case against Kris Taney? How does it look in there?”

  Elsie let herself lean into him for a moment. “I’ve lost it, Ash.”

  “What about rebuttal evidence?”

  Closing her eyes in a bid to control her panic, she said, “I got nothing. Not a goddamned thing.”

  “Tiffany is under subpoena.”

  Her eyes popped open. “Fuck, Ash, the girl can’t talk.”

  “I think you’re going to have to take another shot.”

  Their eyes locked, she debated the possibility. After a pause she said, “Meet me by my office with her in a minute. I’ll get Rountree to extend the recess.”

  A few minutes later she sat in her office surveying Tiffany, dwarfed in an office chair with her favorite Barbie. The child twisted the doll’s head back and forth; Elsie thought it might split in two from the punishment.

  Rising from her chair, she walked over to Tiffany and stood at her side, studying the Barbie with interest. It was naked, except for a makeshift denim jacket, a blue square of fabric from which her plastic arms protruded. With a start, Elsie recognized the remnant of fabric Charlene had toyed with in the car at Sonic. “Your Barbie is so darned pretty; almost as pretty as you,” she said. Looking at Tiffany with a friendly smile, she asked, “Is she your best friend?”

  Adamantly, Tiffany shook her head.

  “Oh, okay,” Elsie said, nodding thoughtfully. “I should’ve thought: I bet I know who your best friend really is.” Be careful, Elsie warned herself; don’t spook her. “Bet it’s Charlene.”

  Tiffany ducked her head, but Elsie saw a flash of pain cross the girl’s face. “Is it Charlene?”

  After a moment the child nodded, a slight movement of her head.

  Elsie touched the Barbie’s blue jacket with a gentle finger. “Did Charlene make that for your Barbie? Before she left?” Tiffany pressed her lips together, but she stroked the jacket on the doll’s back.

  Quiet, gotta be quiet. In a whisper, Elsie said, “Charlene’s my friend, too.”

  Though Tiffany’s head was bent, Elsie could see a skeptical expression; but she forged on. “We were helping each other before she left. Tiffany, she’d want you to help me, too.”

  Elsie knelt before the child and peered into her face. “Charlene would want you to tell me about it, Tiffany.”

  Tiffany pressed her lips tightly together, lifting the Barbie to block her face. In desperation, Elsie tried another tactic.

  “Maybe Barbie could tell me. She’s a big girl, all grown up.” Elsie scooted closer and said, “Show me on Barbie, please, Tiffany. Did your daddy touch Charlene? Just show me where, on your Barbie.”

  Though it seemed that the child wasn’t listening, Elsie waited for a long moment, holding her breath. Finally, Tiffany’s hand moved, hesitantly grazing Barbie’s groin.

  Elsie’s scalp prickled with excitement, but she suppressed her reaction and spoke quietly. “Where else? Where else did your dad touch Charlene?”

  Tiffany put a finger on Barbie’s breast.

  “Did you see it, with your own eyes? Tell me, Tiffany: what did you see?”

  The child sat, silent. Trying not to press her too hard, Elsie urged, “Tell Barbie what you saw.”

  A whisper came out as soft as the rustling of a leaf. Focused on the doll’s face, Tiffany said, “I seen it. His worm.”

  Elsie’s breath caught. At long last the child had spoken. Carefully, lest her excitement scare the girl, she said, “Tell me. What did he do with his worm?”

  “He put it in they tootie.”

  Bending close to her ear, Elsie asked, “What about you?”

  Tiffany made a face and shook her head. “When I’m bigger.”

  Elsie’s eyes stung; she turned away, so the child couldn’t see. When she composed herself, she said, “Tiffany, what would you think of coming into the courtroom with me, you and Barbie? Could you say just what you told me?”

  A violent change came
over the girl; she jumped from her chair and fled to a corner, huddling with her head buried. Elsie watched her in silence for a moment, before stepping over to the child and laying a firm hand on her shoulder.

  Soothingly, she said, “It’s all right, Tiffany; don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

  Watching the child shaking in misery, she knew that there was no way she could extract testimony from her in court. The sight of Tiffany in the corner rekindled her fighting spirit; the man who had crippled his child in such fashion should pay.

  The trial wasn’t over yet, she thought. She still had closing argument.

  Taking a deep breath, she said, “Don’t you worry, Tiffany. I’ll do the talking for both of us.”

  THE PALMS OF Elsie’s hands were clammy as she held onto the wooden bar of the jury box and looked into the faces of the twelve jurors. Midway into closing argument she had summarized her evidence and explained how it applied to the jury instructions.

  The valentine, she thought. Time to drive that home.

  She had to be careful; she couldn’t comment on the defendant’s failure to testify. It could be reversible error because he had the right to remain silent.

  She said, “Remember the valentine card. You heard about it—­saw it—­held it in your hands when it was passed around the jury box. What did the defendant say on that card? What were his exact words?”

  She focused on a mustached juror with savvy eyes. He should get the point: the card contained the only statement that Taney had provided at the trial.

  “That card, addressed to JoLee Stokes, said ‘what me and Char do don’t mean nothing. You’re my girl.’

  “Think about the significance of those words. ‘What me and Char do.’ Ladies and gentlemen, you know what he’s talking about. You heard the transcript of Charlene Taney’s preliminary hearing testimony—­sworn testimony—­where she described exactly what it was that Kris Taney and his daughter ‘do,’ the sexual and perverse acts he made her perform. You heard that in the transcript.”

  At the word “transcript,” a middle-­aged woman in a knit pantsuit cut her eyes away. A negative jolt went through Elsie; she was rejecting the point. Maybe she didn’t like a transcript substituted for live testimony. Or maybe she found Charlene’s descriptions off-­putting.

  Without a pause, Elsie moved her focus to the young woman with the ponytail. She had been extremely attentive throughout the trial. “He says in the valentine, ‘You’re my girl.’ Why does he say that? What does it mean? Ladies and gentlemen, we get his point, don’t we? The defendant is reassuring JoLee that she has the position of girlfriend rather than his daughter Charlene.”

  The juror with the mustache nodded, just a fractional movement of his head. Elsie breathed out; she needed the mustache juror and the construction worker in her pocket in the jury room.

  Nixon stood. “Objection. Calls for speculation.”

  Rountree’s brow wrinkled. “Overruled.”

  Elsie was heating up, feeling the endorphin rush that sometimes came to her during argument.

  “So—­we have the Taney family in Barton, Missouri. On High Street, the defendant lives with his battered and beaten wife, a woman he has crushed in countless ways. You remember the axe handle. And in that home, the defendant has his ‘girl’ JoLee. And he has his daughters. Kristy Taney sat in this courtroom and told you under oath that her father has raped her. You heard the testimony of her sister Charlene describing the sexual abuse the defendant inflicted on her since she was nine years old.”

  A juror in her fifties with salt and pepper hair looked bored or skeptical or both. Elsie zeroed in on her; the woman held one of twelve votes.

  “Remember the testimony of Dr. Petrus. He examined Kris Taney’s daughters. He told you that neither Kristy nor Charlene has the hymen intact. Ladies and gentlemen, we are adults, we know what a broken hymen signifies.”

  “Objection. The witness did not tie the examination to my client.”

  Judge Rountree said, “Sit down, Mr. Nixon; the jury recalls what the doctor said.”

  Elsie continued, “What the doctor told us is a part of the picture, a picture of a household in McCown County where women and children are subjected to the abuse and the tyranny and the sexual whims of the defendant.”

  Nixon jumped up again. With an ironic tone, he asked, “Is tyranny a violation of the Missouri criminal code?”

  Turning on Nixon with ire, Elsie said, “You want to make jokes? Is this funny to you?”

  Judge Rountree raised a restraining hand. “Overruled, Mr. Nixon; this is argument. Miss Arnold, you have one minute remaining.”

  She returned her focus to the jury. “We have proved in this trial, beyond a reasonable doubt—­that this man,” and she pointed at Taney again, “this man committed the felony offense of statutory rape of his daughter Kristy on November twenty-­fifth. And we have proven that defendant committed the felony of statutory rape in the first degree on multiple occasions with his daughter Charlene.”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the defendant believes: what he and his daughters do sexually ‘don’t mean nothing.’

  “It is your job to prove him wrong. To prove that what he has done to his daughters is a horrific and significant violation of the criminal law of this state. The way to prove this—­to Kris Taney and to our community—­is to find the defendant guilty of counts one through five.”

  After a final look over the twelve faces, she sat down, a pulse pounding in her throat.

  While Josh Nixon delivered his closing argument, Elsie sat in her seat, composed, wearing a skeptical expression on her face. She held a pen and wrote rapidly, almost illegibly, as she prepared to have the final say. She would have five minutes for rebuttal when Nixon was done.

  Nixon was having a field day, waving the pictures of Charlene, calling Donita a liar, and painting the police as bunglers and fools. He wove a conspiracy theory in which Donita, Roy, and Al made Kris Taney the fall guy, whose objection to their child pornography enterprise was silenced by having him thrown in jail.

  “But you don’t need to believe me,” Nixon said, “you don’t have to take my word for it. The facts were revealed by the state’s witness. Kristy Taney told you who the real criminals are in this scenario.”

  Nixon turned and gestured scornfully at Elsie. “The prosecutor, in her argument, wanted to talk about the testimony of the handwriting expert and the doctor. She even dared to refer you to the testimony of that sainted ‘Mother of the Year,’ Donita Taney. These investigators are so misguided, they didn’t discover a child porn operation going on right under their noses. They couldn’t see through the gossamer web of lies spun by Donita Taney. If they had, Roy Mayfield would be in jail, not Kris Taney. Come to think of it, why isn’t Roy Mayfield in jail? Or Al Taney? Or Donita? And why didn’t the state get some DNA evidence from those children? Sure would be interesting to see who it matched up with in this household, don’t you think?

  “You know, the defendant in a criminal case doesn’t have to prove anything. That’s the prosecution’s job: they have the burden of proof. But in this case, the defense has proven that the evidence is unreliable and unbelievable. That the state has bungled this investigation and failed to do their job. If ever a case had a reasonable doubt, this is it. For these reasons, ladies and gentlemen, I ask that you find the defendant Not Guilty.”

  Elsie rose and walked to the jury box with a steely glint in her eyes.

  “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we need to focus: what is this case about? Who is on trial here? The defendant, the man who has been charged with rape, is sitting in this courtroom, in that chair; it is Kris Taney.” At that, Elsie turned to point at him, and they locked eyes for a second. He made a malevolent squint in her direction, but she turned away from him and faced the jury again.

  “You have sworn an oath to do a job in this trial.
You must make a decision. Is this man, Kris Taney, guilty of the sex acts with his young daughters, Kristy and Charlene? That is your job. That must be your focus.

  “Now, Mr. Nixon has a different job: his job is to distract you with smoke and mirrors, to confuse you.”

  “Objection!”

  “Sustained. Jury will disregard the last statement.”

  Elsie continued, unwavering in her intensity. “Don’t let the defense distract you from your duty. Think of the victims, recall the facts they gave you. Listen to Kristy Taney, and remember what she told you: that on Thanksgiving Day, a day that should be special, a happy family time, that man, her own father, held her down and raped her in his bed. Remember the transcript of Charlene, how her father raped and sodomized her from her early childhood on.

  “Mr. Nixon doesn’t want you to focus on that. He wants you to reject the state’s case because he introduced testimony that the girls were victimized by other ­people as well—­by Roy, by their Uncle Al. What kind of twisted logic is that? What kind of argument is he force-­feeding you? The defense is trying to tell you that, because these children were abused by others, then it’s okay, what their father did to them! That because other, terrible, evil men photographed Kristy or Charlene, you should just overlook the fact that Kristy’s own father had sexual intercourse with her, a twelve-­year-­old child, and with her sister. That’s crazy! How does the abuse of other predators make what Kris Taney did okay? Do you intend to close your eyes to Kris Taney’s crimes? Can you live with that?

  “You, the twelve of you sitting in this jury box, you set the standards for our community. In McCown County, Missouri, here in the Ozarks, what will we tolerate? The twelve of you determine what kind of actions will be tolerated and what acts won’t be tolerated. Ladies and gentlemen, do we condone rape and incest and child molestation in McCown County, or do we not? Do we turn a blind eye to the suffering of our children in this community? Do we protect our children here, or don’t we?”