Best Intentions

by Joseph T. Klempner

  “Why?” he asked a second time.

  “Because,” said Penny, “she told me to say those things.”

  If Penny’s answer amounted to yet another setback for Hall, he showed no sign of defeat. A good trial lawyer is someone capable of maintaining a smile while in the throes of a heart attack. Beyond that, Hall knew he had Cathy Silverman to call to the stand later on. Silverman would flatly deny that she’d told Penny what to say, and given the choice between a confused child and an adult professional, the jury would be forced to believe Silverman. But even better, Hall had the videotape, literally sitting right in front of him at this very moment. And if ever there was a time to bring out your ace, Jim Hall knew this was it.

  “Your honor,” he said, “the People most respectfully request the right to play the videotape for the witness.”

  “Objection,” said Flynt Adams. “He can’t do that.”

  “Overruled,” said the judge.

  Apparently, he could.

  A recess was declared so that Hall and his staff could set up the video equipment. Monitors were positioned in such a way that the tape would be able to be seen from every angle of the courtroom - the witness stand, the jury box, the judge’s bench, the two counsel tables, even the spectator section. After a test run to make sure everything was in working order, Penny resumed the stand, and the jury reentered the courtroom.

  “Now, Penny,” Hall began, “I believe you told us a little while ago that the only reason you said your daddy made you bend over was because Cathy told you to say so. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did she tell you to say so this past Friday, which was the last time you were at her office?”

  “Yes.”

  “Penny, I’m going to show you a videotape. Do you know what a videotape is?”

  From the look Penny gave to Hall, Stephen was afraid she was about to come out with one of her duhs. But she managed to confine herself to a “Yes.”

  “Good,” said Hall. “Now you just watch that screen in front of you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Hall started the tape, and Stephen watched the monitor on the defense table. As before, there was Penny, her blanket draped across her lap just as it was today, sitting across from Cathy Silverman.

  “Did your father make you bend over like that?” Silverman asked.

  “Yes, he did,” said Penny.

  Hall played the tape straight through, from beginning to end. By the time he was finished, it was Penny the jurors were staring at.

  “Were you able to see that on your screen?” Hall asked Penny.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you able to hear everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me,” said Hall, his tone turning thoughtful. “At any point on that videotape, did you see or hear Cathy telling you what to say?”

  “No,” Penny admitted.

  “Even once?”

  “No.”

  Penny’s thumb went to her mouth. She looked smaller and thinner than ever. And it looked as though Jim Hall had managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. There was no way, Hall knew, that she could possibly explain the tape. He, therefore, decided to risk asking another why question. The difference was, this time there really was no risk: Hall couldn’t lose. It was what lawyers like to think of as a win-win situation, where whatever the witness does simply gets them into deeper trouble.

  “Why isn’t it on the tape, Penny?”

  Penny shrugged.

  “You have to answer,” the judge told her.

  “She gave me the answers,” Penny insisted, her voice barely audible. “She really did. I don’t know why they’re not there.”

  “Maybe they disappeared,” Hall suggested.

  Her thumb in her mouth now, Penny whispered something Stephen couldn’t make out.

  “Maybe they’re hiding. Or maybe” said Hall, “they were never there in the first place.”

  Again Stephen was unable to hear. Neither, apparently, was Justice McGee. “Speak up,” she said. “And will somebody please do me a favor, and take that blanket away from her? Maybe that’ll help.”

  A sheriff’s deputy rose and approached the witness stand. But when he reached for the blanket, Penny pulled it back and clung to it more tightly than ever. Gently but firmly, the deputy gave it a tug. Try as she might, Penny was simply no match for him. As the blanket came free, something slipped from her lap and fell to the floor in front of her. It was made of black plastic and was the size and shape of a deck of playing cards. For a moment, no one seemed to know what it was. No one, that is, except for Penny.

  And Stephen.

  “My tape recorder,” he whispered to Flynt Adams. “That’s my old tape recorder.”

  But if Adams had been sitting close enough to Stephen to hear, the judge had been unable to. “What is that, child?” she asked.

  Penny seemed to think for a moment. Then she looked directly up at the judge. And when she gave her answer, this time it was in a steady voice, loud enough for all in the courtroom to hear without difficulty.

  “That,” she said, “is where the rest of Cathy’s words are hiding.”

  Anyone who has ever lined up a row of dominos and then knocked the first one into the second understands what a chain reaction is.

  When Penny Barrow looked up at the judge and said, “That’s where the rest of Cathy’s words are hiding,” her statement set into motion a sequence of events that was almost nuclear in its proportions.

  Flynt Adams, who had the advantage of having learned seconds earlier from Stephen Barrow that the object that had fallen to the floor was a tape recorder, jumped to his feet and demanded that whatever it contained be immediately played for the jury. Jim Hall pounded his fist on the podium and loudly demanded a recess. Samuel Ethridge, the sheriff’s deputy who had precipitated the commotion by pulling Penny’s blanket from her lap - having initially dived for cover, certain the object was a miniature bomb of some sort - now lowered himself carefully to the floor to inspect the item. And all the while, the jurors looked on in wide-eyed, open-mouthed disbelief at this latest turn of events.

  The deputy, apparently reassured by the absence of any ticking sound emanating from the device, extended a finger and touched it tentatively, then quickly drew back. Stephen had once seen a chimpanzee reacting in identical fashion to the presence of a toy giraffe placed in his habitat. After several tries, each progressively bolder, the creature had finally summoned up the courage to pick it up.

  Samuel Ethridge did the same now. Then he stood and looked at the judge for guidance.

  Priscilla McGee had no idea what to do. With all the commotion, she’d missed hearing the fact that the thing was a tape recorder. The defense was demanding that it be played, whatever that meant. The prosecution wanted a recess, but she’d already declared two of those, and they were still on direct examination of the first witness. If there was one thing she hated, it was constant interruptions. Besides which, the jurors seemed anxious to have the mystery resolved. So Justice McGee figured they might as well find out what the damned thing was, without further delay. Turning in the direction of Samuel Ethridge, she announced her decision.

  “Play it, Sam.”

  It took the deputy a while to figure out how to work the contraption - far longer, as a matter of fact, than it had taken Penny. Of course, Ethridge was at something of a disadvantage: He hadn’t had a father to show him how the thing worked in the first place, and he hadn’t had two weeks’ worth of practice to reach the point where he could work the buttons, sight unseen, beneath a baby blanket. But he finally got the hang of it.

  To say that the tape was revealing would be somewhat akin to saying the Hindenburg experienced a rough landing, or Edmund Hillary took a hike. There was some static, but then there was Cathy Silverman’s voice, supplying Penny the answers to each of her questions, right down to the treats her father had given her as rewards. Even strawberries, which - as both f
ather and daughter well knew - Penny was seriously allergic to. But there was more. There was Penny’s mother, telling her how much her father secretly hated her and how glad he’d been to get rid of her. There was Jane Sparrow, warning Penny she’d better do as she was told, or else she’d end up with no parents. And there was even Jim Hall at one point, assuring Penny that the truth could wait until later, and that her only job on the witness stand was to make sure she answered the questions the same way as she had for Cathy Silverman.

  Penny Barrow’s tape recordings did more than bring an end to the trial. By nightfall, Priscilla McGee had dismissed all charges against Stephen Barrow and ordered his release. Everett Wainwright had permanently restored Penny’s custody to her father. Theresa Mulholland had a lengthy article published by her new employer, the Albany Times Union, in which she argued forcefully that the trial, indeed, had been about a case of abuse, only this time there’d been an unusual twist: The victim had turned out to be the accused himself, and the abusers those entrusted with the reins of power.

  For a while, it looked very much as though heads would roll. Cathy Silverman’s objectivity and methodology were questioned, Jane Sparrow had to answer a complaint before the disciplinary committee, and Jim Hall was subjected to the embarrassment of a recall petition.

  But in the legal world, as in so many others, the system has a way of protecting its own. Silverman was issued a mild reprimand, but permitted to continue accepting court assignments; Sparrow apologized for her “vigorous advocacy,” and was exonerated of any wrongdoing; and Hall not only survived the recall petition, but won reelection in the fall by a wider margin than ever. It seemed the good people of Columbia County understood that Hall had acted only out of the best of intentions, believing in his heart that the end had justified the means.

  By the year 2002, the annual number of reports of child sexual abuse in this country will have surpassed the 100,000 mark. Of those, at least 70 percent will prove to be incapable of substantiation. In cases involving disputes over the custody of children, knowledgeable experts estimate that as many as 85 percent of the allegations are completely false.

  Today, Stephen Barrow writes and lives with his daughter outside a small town in the shadows cast by the Rocky Mountains. He speaks with Theresa Mulholland on a regular basis, and she’s promised to come out and visit during ski season. The Ford Fiesta died on the trip west, somewhere in the middle of Kansas. Unable to locate a suitable Jeep Renegade to replace it, Stephen and Penny settled instead on a Wrangler. But its windshield wipers stick, its horn works only occasionally, and it reminds them of old times. Anyway, the price was right. For even though Stephen has been relieved of the requirement that he send child support to his ex-wife, it will be many years before he recovers from the debt he incurred during the course of the court proceedings against him.

  Still, he considers himself lucky.

  For even now, there are other Stephens out there. And while some of them are surely guilty of serious crimes and fully deserving of punishment, others are just as surely innocent. Yet they, too, find themselves at the mercy of righteous police officers, well-meaning child-care workers, zealous legal advocates, and prosecutors with nothing but the very best of intentions in their hearts.

  I am indebted to my editor, Ruth Cavin, her assistant, Julie Sullivan, and my copy editor, Naomi Shulman, all of whom must surely wince on a regular basis, but ultimately allow me to treat the rules of grammar and style as mere suggestions.

  I thank my literary agent, Bob Diforio, and my Man-on-the-West-Coast, John Ufland, who’s still determined to see something of mine climb off the printed page and onto the screen. From your mouth to God’s ear, John.

  Closer to home, I thank my wife, Sandy, my children, Wendy, Ron, and Tracy, my sister Tillie, and my uncle Joe for once again serving as early readers and encouragers.

  Finally, my thanks go out to the good people of northeast Columbia County, a few of whom may even find themselves in these pages, for allowing an old city dweller like me to run from the law and begin the process of becoming one of them.

  Published by New Word City LLC, 2016

  www.NewWordCity.com

  © Joseph T. Klempner

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-61230-979-8