The Dreams of Ada

by Robert Mayer

  In the second, Bill Peterson was angry. The D.A. said he had learned that one of the jurors had lied to the court the previous afternoon. He was referring to the last juror seated, Janet Williams. Mrs. Williams had lied, he said, when she told the court she had no family members in jail; in fact, her husband was in jail right now, the D.A. said. He wanted Mrs. Williams dismissed from the jury.

  The judge had Mrs. Williams brought from the jury room to his chambers. Mrs. Williams said she did not have a husband—that she had been divorced, in another county.

  Peterson, nonplussed, still wanted her dismissed from the jury. Judge Powers ruled that Mrs. Williams had told no lies; that she had no family in jail; he said he thought she would make a fine juror.

  The defense attorneys were gleeful. They had a woman on the jury who might be expected to be sympathetic to the plight of the defendants, who might be open to an argument of police coercion; and the D.A. had just attacked her truthfulness.

  Peterson was glum as he returned to the prosecution table.

  The witness rule was invoked: all those in the courtroom who had been subpoenaed to testify in the trial had to leave. Slowly, all of the Wards except Melvin filed out. For the rest of the trial, Melvin, who had been away in the Navy at the time of the alleged crime, would be the family’s eyes and ears in the courtroom, reporting each evening what had transpired that day.

  At 10:20 A.M., the district attorney moved to a lectern and read the formal charges: of robbery, kidnapping, and murder in the first degree. In brief opening remarks, he said that the state would prove the defendants were guilty on all three counts. And he summarized the evidence that would be introduced.

  George Butner, in his opening statement, said the defense would show that the suspects had been pressured by the police into making false confessions; that outside of these forced confessions, there was no evidence whatever in the case.

  Don Wyatt reserved his opening remarks until the defense’s turn to present its case.

  Then the first witness was called.

  His name was Wayne Girdner. He had not testified at the preliminary hearing. An insurance man in Tulsa, he had written the insurance on Joel Ward’s modern pickup truck. He testified that a few years back, Joel had come to him with a gray-primered pickup, a 1968 to 1973 model. The implication was that this could have been the truck used in the abduction of Denice Haraway, and that Tommy Ward could have had access to it.

  On cross-examination, it was established that Girdner had never insured this truck, had no application forms or any other written documentation that Joel had brought him such a truck.

  The second witness, a tall, slim, elderly man named J. T. McConnell, was a neighbor of the Wards on Ashland Avenue. He repeated his testimony from the hearing, saying he had often seen Tommy Ward riding up and down the street in an old gray pickup.

  Under cross-examination, he said he’d seen Odell Titsworth in the pickup, driving it. And it could have been a late 1950s model, not an early 1970s one, as he had said at the preliminary.

  Sticking to his plan of sequential presentation, the D.A. then called three members of Ada’s running crowd, who testified that Tommy Ward had long hair at the time of Denice Haraway’s disappearance, and that he once owned a knife. Under cross-examination, their memories became hazy about the dates, just as they had at the preliminary. The defense suggested one witness had been let out of a prison term early in return for his testimony in this case.

  During the lunch break, from 12:10 to 1:30, three lady jurors ate at the Feed Store. So did Dennis Smith, Mike Baskin, Gary Rogers, and Bill Peterson, at a table out of their earshot, about thirty feet away.

  The jurors were not discussing the case; the judge had warned them not to. Their talk touched on the religious.

  “Nobody’s perfect,” one juror said. “There’s only one perfect person.”

  “And He created us,” the second juror said. “And look at the mess we’re in.”

  In the afternoon, the testimony began to focus on Denice Haraway. Her faculty adviser at ECU, Norman Frame, testified about what a mature, interested student she had been. Her student-teaching mentor, Donna Howard, talked about how Denice was planning for the future, about how she had taken home workbooks that weekend.

  Of each of these, the defense asked only one question: Did Denice Haraway smoke? Norman Frame said he didn’t know. Mrs. Howard said she had never seen Denice smoke.

  A recess. Steve Haraway stood in the corridor, tall, slim, wearing a Navy blue blazer, dark pants, a white shirt, a dotted tie. “Just my luck. I’m next and they recess,” he said.

  Don Wyatt hailed a journalist. “Have they thrown anything at the wall yet that stuck?” he asked. He obviously felt that they hadn’t, that the defense was doing well.

  Bill Peterson, passing nearby, heard the loud question and frowned.

  Steve Haraway took the stand looking calm, composed. He gave his name, and then further identified himself: “I was married to Denice Haraway.”

  He told of their plans for the future; of their normal activities that day; of being called to the store that night, after his wife was discovered missing.

  He said he had not seen or heard from her since.

  Nothing was missing from their apartment that night, he said—no luggage, nothing. Only the clothes she had been wearing. She always wore jeans and tennis shoes to work, he said, and always took a gray zippered sweatshirt, because it was cold in the walk-in cooler. He did not know what blouse she wore that day, he said, because he was away at work when she left for her job at McAnally’s.

  He had talked to her on the phone about 7:30 that night, he said. Nothing had seemed wrong.

  The purse found at McAnally’s was entered into evidence. “That was my wife’s,” Steve said.

  Under cross-examination, he said his wife did not smoke.

  Soon after, Denice Haraway’s sister, Janet Weldon, took the stand. She spoke of making plans with Denice to go shopping the following week, of speaking to her on the phone between 6:30 and 7, and nothing being wrong.

  Much of her testimony centered on the blouse Denice allegedly had been wearing when she disappeared. Janet said she had gone through Denice’s clothing within a few days; the blouse with the little blue flowers was missing; she was familiar with the blouse because it had been hers; she had given it to Denice when she, Janet, had begun to put on weight. She said she was contacted by the police about a week after October 18—a week after the arrests—and that she had told them then about the blouse. She said she had not told the police which blouse was missing earlier because she had not gone through all of Denice’s clothing, and could not be sure it was missing, or that it was the only one missing.

  “Would you lie?” Don Wyatt asked on cross-examination.

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Would you shade your opinion?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  George Butner was harsher. He reviewed Ms. Weldon’s testimony that she had gone through Denice’s closet shortly after she disappeared, but did not tell the police about the blouse she thought she’d been wearing until six months later, until after the arrests. As Butner repeated this, he looked incredulous, for the benefit of the jury.

  Court was recessed until 9 A.M. Bill Peterson looked at Butner with hateful eyes for this questioning of Denice Haraway’s sister.

  Earlier that day, as the opening arguments were being made before the jury, Richard Kerner was knocking on the door of a trailer in Del City, adjacent to Oklahoma City. It was the residence of Jannette Blood Roberts. He had come to serve her with a subpoena for the defense.

  Kerner had been serving many subpoenas; he’d been unable to find an address for Mrs. Roberts until today. He did not know what she had to do with the case.

  When he explained who he was, Jannette led him into the living room. Kerner began to chat, as he liked to do with potential witnesses, just to see where it might lead. Jannette told him that Karl was living with
her and her husband and family at the time of the crime; that Tommy stayed over a lot; that Tommy was living with them when he was arrested.

  Kerner had noticed a pickup parked outside. It was nothing like the one described at the scene of the crime. Yes, sometimes she had let Tommy and Karl borrow it, she said.

  Then why would they need some old gray one? Kerner asked.

  “They wouldn’t,” Mrs. Roberts said. “And besides that, they both had short hair at the time.”

  “Short hair?” Kerner asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Karl went to work for Wendy’s, and they made him cut his hair. And Tommy was looking for a job, so he’d cut his hair, too.”

  God damn, Kerner thought, excited. And said, “I wish you had pictures of them, or something.”

  Suddenly, Jannette Roberts, too, grew excited. “I do have pictures! We took pictures on Easter!”

  She hurried down a narrow hallway in the trailer, knelt on the floor. Against the wall just inside the bedroom was an old oak trunk that was one of her favorite possessions, in which she kept her other favorite possessions: her wedding dress, pictures she had not put in her photo albums; she was an inveterate picture-taker with her Polaroid camera. For several minutes Kerner stood in the hallway, watching, as Jannette’s hands rummaged through the trunk. Finally she came up with a bunch of snapshots. They went back into the living room and looked at them.

  “Holy shit!” the investigator said.

  “What?” Jannette asked.

  “Wait till they see these!”

  One of the Polaroid snapshots showed Jannette, wearing a housecoat and pajamas and slippers, seated in the foreground on a sofa. Visible in the dark background, seated at the other end of the sofa, was Tommy Ward. His hair was short, above his ears. Written in blue ballpoint ink in the white bottom margin of the picture was a date: “4–22–84.” That was six days before Denice Haraway disappeared.

  They’ll argue that the picture was dated recently, Kerner thought; was taken some other time. But he had just seen Jannette take them from the trunk with the dates already on them; she had not known he was coming; and it was he who had brought up the subject of pictures; she had not volunteered them.

  He looked at another one: a picture of a little girl posing cutely beside a large Easter basket.

  “Who’s that?” Kerner asked.

  “My daughter.”

  The picture had the same date written on it. In the corner of the picture, Jannette’s foot was visible; she was wearing the same robe, pajamas, slippers, as in the picture with Tommy in it. And the Easter basket was not unwrapped.

  Another set of pictures showed Karl Fontenot standing around at a party. His hair, too, was short. Those pictures were hand-dated “4–16–84”—twelve days before Denice Haraway disappeared.

  Kerner gave Mrs. Roberts her subpoena; she let him take the photographs.

  Late in the afternoon the investigator drove to Ada, the pictures in his briefcase; he was due at Wyatt’s office anyway, for a meeting.

  The state’s case, having gone through a dress rehearsal at the preliminary hearing, was already largely worked out: a logical progression toward the playing of the tapes. There was little improvising to do at this point. The defense, however, was still only in rough outline. In Wyatt’s mind, it went like this:

  1. Establish that the police had coerced the confessions.

  2. Present the alibi witnesses, and perhaps Tommy himself.

  3. Present Richard Kerner’s various scenarios, to further establish reasonable doubt; to suggest alternatives to the guilt of Ward and Fontenot.

  The details still had to be pondered. The lawyers bought fast-food snacks after court, and went to Wyatt’s office to kick things around. First they reviewed how the first day of testimony had gone. George Butner said he thought the D.A. had erred in not starting off with testimony about the disappearance. “He should have had Steve Haraway shed a tear or two,” Butner said. “If only we could put a bomb under those tapes, we’d have no problem.”

  Wyatt, Butner, Austin sat around the conference table in the library. On the green-slate blackboard were the names of all the possible suspects they could raise; and the words “Elmore City”; and the names of all the people who had given Kerner taped statements saying the composite drawings were others besides Ward and Fontenot. There were a lot of names; Wyatt was thinking they had to call all of them, lay out all the scenarios; Butner wanted to streamline the presentation as much as possible, so as not to confuse the jury.

  As they talked, Richard Kerner arrived. He entered the library, opened his briefcase, wordlessly handed the batch of snapshots to Don Wyatt. The lawyer looked at them, one by one. Then he looked up at Kerner.

  “Where the hell did you get these?”

  “Jannette Blood Roberts,” Kerner said with satisfaction.

  “Where did she get them?”

  “She took them herself. Except for the ones she’s in, of course.”

  Wyatt spread the pictures out on the table for the others to see. The one with Ward in the background they had to pick up, look at closely, to make out; but there he was.

  “Is there a date on those?” Butner asked.

  “Easter Sunday,” Kerner said. “A week before the disappearance.”

  “That’s hand-written,” Butner said. “Is there a developing date or something?”

  They examined the pictures. They were Polaroids, therefore undated. Wyatt turned them over, looked at the back.

  “Doesn’t every roll of film have a different number?”

  He looked carefully. The pictures of Karl, hand-dated April 16, had one number. Those of Tommy, dated April 22, had another number. But the one with Tommy, and the one of the little girl with the Easter basket, had the same number; they had been taken with the same roll of film.

  “The basket is still wrapped,” Kerner said. “What kid doesn’t open their Easter basket on Easter Sunday?”

  Don Wyatt shook his head, as if he could hardly believe this new evidence.

  “She’s under subpoena?” he asked.

  “As of today,” Kerner said.

  The mood in the room became jocular as they looked at the pictures again and again. Finally they put them away, turned to the scenarios on the blackboard. For several hours they debated which witnesses to call, in what order, the easiest way to get in testimony about Rogers and Sparcino, Larry Jett, Shelton and Hawkins, Elmore City. By late in the evening they came to agree with Butner. They would not call all those people who had identified the composite drawings; instead they would simply put Kerner himself on the stand, and let him lay out the scenarios.

  “How you going to get that admitted?” asked Leo Austin, a former judge. “Everything somebody told Richard is hearsay.”

  They debated that for a while. Butner had an idea: “What if Richard says, ‘Then my investigation led me here. Then my investigation led me there’?”

  “I don’t know,” Austin said. “The judge might allow it that way. But Peterson will be jumping all over him, screaming ‘hearsay.’ I’d say it’s chancy—but it might work.”

  By the time they agreed on strategy the dark wood conference table was a messy litter of empty cans of New Coke, Cherry Coke, Diet Slice. It was late in the evening. In another part of the building, Odell Titsworth was waiting to be interviewed about the testimony he would give for the defense; so, too, was his mother. As Marie Titsworth waited, she vacuumed all the offices.

  With the trial on, the case was back on the front page of the newspaper, was the lead item on the KTEN newscasts each night, was once more the talk of the town. Over a breakfast of sausage and eggs, biscuits and gravy, coffee, two middle-aged men were discussing it at the Village Restaurant Thursday morning.

  “They’re making a big deal they don’t got that body. If they was to get rid of the body, they wouldn’t bury it. They knew that area out by Reeves Packing Plant. They just cut her up in little pieces and put her in plastic bags and thre
w her in that acid pit. You know, they make dog food out of that. Somebody’s bought her and fed her to their dogs already.”

  “It’s terrible sometimes. You know people did it, but the legal system, sometimes you can’t get into evidence what you know, and they get off.”

  “But if they get off, somebody’ll probably take care of them anyway.”

  “It really bothers me, what’s happenin’ to the world the last ten years. The Antichrist is here, and people don’t even know it. Ya know, anybody who doesn’t believe that Jesus Christ is the living Son of the living God is the Antichrist. Even the Jews.”

  DAY FOUR

  Steve Haraway’s testimony had been completed. But because the defense had subpoenaed him as well, he could not sit in the courtroom. His mother and father and sister would watch the proceedings each day, would tell him at night what each witness had said, just as Melvin was doing for the Wards. But sitting, waiting at his father’s house, was frustrating. On Thursday he went hunting coyotes.

  In the courtroom, Pat Virgin of Purcell took the stand. She was Denice Haraway’s mother. She was shown Denice’s driver’s license, which had a picture on it. “That’s my daughter,” she said. She was fighting back tears as she sat on the witness chair, in a turquoise suit. “She was a very beautiful girl. Slim…She was in very good health as far as I knew…She seemed very happy.”

  On the defense table, as she testified, was a large brown paper sack, with bulges inside. The sack bore the marking “Dicus Discount Supermarkets.”

  Mrs. Virgin stepped down. Soon after, a man named Richard Holkum took the stand. Now with the Alcohol Commission, he had been, at the time of the disappearance, an Ada city policeman. Holkum testified that at 7:45 P.M. on the night of April 28, 1984, he had stopped by McAnally’s, which was on his way home. He was off duty, in civilian clothes. Denice Haraway was the clerk at the time, he said, alive and well. She was wearing blue jeans, tennis shoes, a gray sweatshirt with a hood, and a light pastel blouse, lavender or blue, with a print or design on it.