by A. W. Gray
“That’s dangerous. You need to put the abuse question in front of the judge in pretrial.”
Sharon firmly shook her head. “Not with Sandy Griffin. I don’t want Fraterno sensing what we’re up to until the very last second. I’m sure of my research, but I don’t want to give her time to dig up any cases that might muddy the issue.”
“How’ve you got the cross-examination pictured?” Black said.
“Linda’s?”
“Yeah.”
“The way I see it,” Sharon said, “no matter what she says on direct, I’ll hit her right off by asking if she ever saw William Rathermore sexually abusing his daughters.”
“To which she’ll automatically say no.”
Sharon put both feet on the floor. “To which she won’t have a chance to say anything, because Fraterno will object before I finish the question. Which is how we’ll introduce the abuse issue.”
“In front of the bench?” Black said.
“In chambers, more than likely. Oh, there’ll be a bench conference and then a recess. Kathleen will say we’re just trying to incense the jury against the victim, and that’s when I plan to trot out my theory on battered wives, extended to battered children. Judge Griffin will likely call for briefs.”
“Which we’ve already got, thanks to your trip to the law library.”
“And which Fraterno will have to hump to come up with,” Sharon said. She almost added that Milt Breyer might have to go horny while Fraterno researched the law, but decided that such a catty remark would be unprofessional. It would be sort of to the point, though, Sharon thought.
“We’re bankin’ a lot,” Black said, “on the judge allowin’ us to get into the abuse question. If she sustains Fraterno’s objection, we’re dead in the water.”
“We’d be dead without it anyway, boss. We’d be stuck with beating Linda Rathermore up on the stand, and we’re probably going to have to do that anyway.”
“Is our client openin’ up any?” Black said.
Sharon inhaled and exhaled. “Some. Her mother’s done wonders with her. Midge even talked to Mr. Gear for about an hour, night before last. The problem is that what she says doesn’t help.”
“That child’s got real hang-ups.”
“It’s much worse than that, Russ. She hired those boys, or thinks she did. We can make all the noise we want to. Midge is such a mixed-up kid, gang-bangs and the works, we could probably make a case that those two studs egged her into it. But she promised them part of her inheritance for killing her dad, and there’s not any way around it.”
“Don’t guess we could put her on the stand,” Black said.
“We’d be cutting our throats. Aside from the fact that she’d give this ditzy grin and tell the jury she did it, Midge isn’t mature enough that I’d trust her. She might tell us one thing, then get on the witness stand and say something else.”
“What in hell’s wrong with these kids today?” Black rocked back and looked at the ceiling.
Sharon let her legal pad dangle from her fingertips. “I’ve got a different theory than most people. The basic problem is no different than it’s ever been. Every high school class in history has got at least one Midge Rathermore. The unattractive girl so mixed up that the boys have an easy time with her. It’s nothing more than a desire to be popular. To feel wanted and loved.” Like me sleeping with Stan Green? Sharon thought. The corners of her mouth tugged involuntarily downward.
Black’s cheeks relaxed in pity. “Ours was Estelle Bigby. They used to take turns with her in the balcony at the picture show. Every one of those guys should have had their butts thrown in jail.”
Including you? Sharon thought. She tried to picture Black as he’d looked in high school. Conjuring up such an image was near impossible. “Back then,” she said, “they didn’t know what they do now about sex abuse. Chances are, every one of those girls had an older brother, stepfather, whatever.”
“This is Midge’s real daddy we’re talkin’ about,” Black said.
“To the child it makes no difference, from what I understand. Any older male, sort of an authority figure. He slept with Susan and rejected Midge. Like lighting a stick of dynamite.”
“Back in my day,” Black said, “I don’t recall anybody tryin’ to kill the parent.”
“That much has changed,” Sharon said. “A lot of people want to blame drugs, but I don’t see any evidence of that with Midge. I think it’s the power of suggestion. Too much in the newspapers and on TV. Did you get our psychologist’s report on Midge?”
Black scratched his head. “Didn’t tell me much.”
“Look again. Her IQ’s a shade below dull normal. In public school I doubt she could pass. Abused or not,” Sharon said, “Midge Rathermore didn’t think up any murder plot on her own. Somebody planted the suggestion.”
Black frowned. “Who?”
“Maybe those boys themselves. Who’s responsible for suggesting it to them. God only knows.”
Black opened his drawer, took out Sharon’s research file, and dropped it on his desk. “The whole case, right here,” he said. “Jesus H., a lot depends on this.”
“I know,” Sharon said.
When she went across the hall to her office, she sat down and stared at the three books on her desk. Her trusty ever-ready penal code and the family law section of the statutes were stacked, with the Standard Synopsis on Victim’s Rights off to one side. In addition to working on the Rathermore case, she’d bought the victims’ rights paperback with the idea of finding out if she could force the DA to prosecute Bradford Brie for breaking into her house. She wasn’t having much luck in that regard. She pushed the paperback aside and opened the penal code to the bookmarked section on criminal responsibility. It was in the back of Sharon’s mind that, failing in the effort to have Midge’s case fall under the abuse category, she could try to defend Midge based on the teenager’s understanding of right and wrong. That effort, Sharon knew, would likely be in vain.
As much as she tried to concentrate on the code, her mind wandered and her gaze drifted to the transom above her door. Likely her problem was lack of sleep. One didn’t see transoms in offices anymore; this building was more than fifty years old. She regripped the edges of the book and forced herself to look at the page. And let her gaze roam to the transom again. Finally she turned the book facedown and reached for a small pile of unopened mail. The first envelope she looked at brought her into shocked wakefulness.
The letter, addressed to her in care of the Dallas County district attorney’s office, bore a thirty-day-old postmark. Once the letter had circulated through the office for several weeks, someone in the DA’s mail room had finally bothered to forward the envelope to her. The envelope had been slit open and stapled closed, and Sharon wondered which nosy assistant prosecutor had read her mail. The letter inside showed a New York City return address, but the postmark on the envelope was from LA. It was a message from Rob, the first Sharon had received from him in the twelve years since they’d split the blankets. She wanted to drop the folded piece of correspondence into her wastebasket, but could no more do that than she could fly. Curiosity compelled her. She read.
Dear Muffin:
I was recently shocked to learn from Betsy that you and I may have a child. Is this true? If so, it is devastating to learn that I am a father after all these years.
I have a starring role coming up in the pilot of Sixty-First Precinct, a police drama in which I play a homicide detective. The pilot airs in August. In connection with this I’m making a promotional tour through Dallas on the 17th and 18th, and think we should get together. If what I have heard is true, then I of course wish to discuss my assumption of parental responsibility to the child. Please contact me, and if you have indeed borne my child, include photos of our offspring.
Affectionately as always, Rob
Sharon tossed the
letter aside in disgust, then hugged herself as depression set in. The message was typical of him. His sudden interest in Melanie was likely prompted by his agent, who’d figured out that if Rob was likely to be elevated to stardom, he’d better cover his ass before his illegitimate child came up to haunt him in the tabloids. “Betsy” would of course be Betsy Willis, who had become Rob’s shack job within days of Sharon’s vacating the Brooklyn Heights apartment, and his “recent” enlightenment had likely come about within hours of Melanie’s birth. “Muffin” had been his cutesy nickname for her—the moniker had no basis whatsoever other than the fact that Rob thought having endearing names for his lovers was something Cary Grant would likely do—and the inclusion of the name in a letter such as this made Sharon absolutely want to puke. “Affectionately as always,” Sharon thought, was likely a close added by some addlebrained typist in Rob’s agent’s office. Fuck you, but Merry Christmas anyway.
He had been on television once more this week, a bit part as a wiseass repair man on Murphy Brown. This time Sharon had sat stiff as a stone beside Melanie on the sofa, and had managed not to fly off the handle. Rob had a sensitive mouth, a nice trim physique, and the ego of a three-year-old. Sharon wondered if he had matured any. She felt that she had grown up, so why couldn’t Rob grow up as well? Artistically, living with him had been just the thing for that period in Sharon’s life, but that had been then and this was now. Sexually Rob had been adequate, though nothing to set the bells a-ringing.
Sharon had a fat picture of Rob’s “assumption of parental responsibility.” There would be regular—and generous, depending on his future Neilsen ratings—support checks, and just enough visits so that photographers could catch him romping with his daughter. Not my child, Sharon thought. Absolutely, positively, no frigging way. She and Melanie had done just fine, thank you, for eleven years, and a father figure was something that Melanie simply didn’t …
Sure, there are thousands of successful products of one-parent homes, Sharon thought. Midge Rathermore, for example.
But that’s different.
Or is it?
Well, Midge’s father was a pervert, Sharon told the voice inside her. That makes it different.
And Melanie’s mother, the voice inside Sharon said, is a lawyer who sometimes stays in trial for weeks at a time. So what?
She felt like screaming. She stuffed the letter into her purse. She’d have to talk this development over with Sheila. Who would tell her, just as she always had, that Melanie needed contact with a father figure. Trish’s father, bastard that Sheila felt he was, nonetheless had Trish on alternate weekends and two weeks during the summer.
Sharon expelled an agitated breath and picked up the law book, concentrating on the print so hard that she saw double. She read the same sentence over three times, comprehending nothing, then set the book aside once more.
Christ, what she needed was to take a couple of days off and get violently laid.
Oh, yeah? the voice inside her said. Laid by whom?
Sharon sighed. Stan Green had the body of a wide receiver and a me-hungry-me-eat, me horny-me-fuck mentality. Pillow-biting ecstasy followed by conversations with a moron.
Sharon glared at the poinsettia in the corner, the one she’d bought to replace the disgusting imitation rubber plant which had been there on her first day. The rubber plant, Russell Black’s idea of a decoration.
He owned a razor-sharp mind and used a gruff exterior to hide a kind heart. And had egg on the front of his shirt. Jesus Christ, the voice said, you’re not thinking about sleeping with Russell Black, are you? Girl, you’re really on the edge.
No, Sharon answered, but I’d like to put Russ’s mind in Stan Green’s body. Would that be a combo or what?
Suddenly the intercom buzzed. Sharon picked up the receiver. “Hi,” she said dreamily, then assumed a more businesslike tone and said, “Hello?”
“Hot-foot it on over here, Sharon,” Russ Black said.
“I just left from over there,” Sharon said, then realized she was talking into a dead phone, Black having disconnected. She trudged across the hall and entered.
Black stood by the window, looking out. He turned and grinned. “My detective just called,” he said.
Sharon sat down. “Mr. Gear must have done something good. For the past week he’s been my detective.”
Black’s smile broadened. “You ain’t wolfin’. Remember Leslie Schlee?”
“Sure. The girl that snitched Chris Leonard and Troy Burdette off to Stan Green.”
“That’s her. Grab your gear, Sharon. In a half hour we’re goin’ to interview the young lady.
26
On the ride out to interview Leslie Schlee, Sharon concentrated on the scenery in an effort to keep Rob’s letter out of her mind. She sat beside Russell Black in the front seat of the older lawyer’s Buick, her arms folded and her gaze shifting alternately to either side of the wide, tree-lined Highland Park boulevards.
She could probably count the number of times she’d visited homes in wealthy Park Cities on the fingers of both hands. When she was a little girl, it was an annual event for her parents to drive her through Highland Park at Christmastime to view the decorations. Sharon would never forget gaping in awe at the lit-up Santas and reindeer, and at the thousands and thousands of red, blue, and green lights which covered the trees and the fronts of the mansions. Her dad used to remark that the people on Lakeside Drive spent more on Christmas glitz than the Hayses had paid for their modest East Dallas home, and Sharon supposed that he hadn’t been far from right. In her little-girl daydreams she had often lived in one of the Lakeside Drive palaces and had had a staff of servants to boss around. Always in her daydreams she’d been a movie star.
The castle-sized houses were built on a hillside which sloped steeply upward from the banks of Turtle Creek, and had no lawns to speak of. The angle of the slope rendered mowing virtually impossible, and Lakeside Drive residents opted mostly for English ivy as a breathtaking ground cover. The stately elms and sycamores which dotted the creekside properties provided ample shade so that the ivy would thrive, but anyone, Sharon knew, who thought that the creeping vines with their broad dark green leaves were easier to maintain than grass simply had no experience with the expensive ground cover.
Early on in her gardening career, shortly after her father had died and she’d inherited the East Dallas house, she had decided to try English ivy in her own front yard. Her reasoning had been that since her job with the DA left scant time for mowing and pruning, the ground cover would take over the yard on its own and make her small East Dallas property virtually maintenance free. Well, she’d been partly right. The English ivy had taken over her yard. It had crawled up the trunks of two pecan trees and strangled them to death, and had covered up the front of the house and twisted around the eaves like a herd of boa constrictors. Weeds had thrived among the ivy and waved their ugly heads tauntingly above the vines, and had very nearly driven Sharon insane. The last straw had come when Mrs. Breedlove had remarked that she was considering sending in the National Guard to make sure the ivy wasn’t attacking Sharon in her bed. It had cost two months’ county prosecutor’s salary to have the English ivy dug out, but the cost had been well worth it. Now, as Russell Black steered the Buick along Lakeside Drive, Sharon wondered how much of an army was required to maintain the vicious but gorgeous stuff which covered the hillsides. Must cost a fortune, she thought.
Midway down the block, Black put on the brakes and moved over to the side of the street. With the motor idling, he bent his head to look up the slope. “There’s our crime scene, girl,” he said.
She leaned toward him for a better view, and a chill went through her. She’d forgotten for the moment that the Rathermores had been Lakeside Drive residents. Hearing about the murder from a lawyer’s perspective made the whole thing seem like fiction, as if she’d been watching a play or reading a n
ovel, but finally looking on the place where the tragedy had unfolded gave her a sobering sense of reality. The towering gothic home sat high above street level. There were round, tall spires at the two visible corners like gun turrets, and the roof was peaked and covered with brown wooden shingles. Right there, Sharon thought. According to Christopher Leonard’s testimony, the boys had crept straight up the hillside under cover of darkness, their breaths shallow, murder on their minds. Sharon relaxed in the seat and hugged herself.
“World’s gone crazy,” Russell Black finally said. He gave the Buick some gas and moved on.
About two hundred yards farther down Lakeside Drive, he left the street to pull into an exposed aggregate circular drive. The drive slanted upward at a forty-five degree angle, then leveled off in front of a porch of ornate red stone. The entrance was an oak door with a huge brass knocker. So thick was the forest of trees in front that the house had been invisible from the street. Anthony Gear’s white Land Rover was parked directly in front of the door. Black stopped behind the Jeep, got out, and went around the Buick toward the passenger side. Sharon reached for her door handle, then relaxed. It was another of Russell Black’s eccentricities that he opened all the doors for women who were in his company, and anytime she forgot and opened a door for herself, she felt the older lawyer’s resentment; he wouldn’t come right out and say that he was miffed, but his posture would stiffen slightly and he would become morosely silent. Black’s politeness had taken some getting used to on Sharon’s part. When she’d been a prosecutor and had tried cases alongside male assistant DA’s, she had felt fortunate when she hadn’t had to lug the man’s paraphernalia around in addition to her own, as if she were a packhorse. She thought that being treated with respect because of her gender was something which could spoil her in a hurry. Black opened the passenger door. Sharon climbed out and led the way up the drive toward the house.
The Land Rover had mud on its tires. Sharon thought that a private detective who drove around in a vehicle which looked as if it were headed off on a jungle safari was sort of weird. It wasn’t the only strange thing she’d noticed about Gear, but also she thought that he wasn’t any more of an oddball than other current and former FBI agents whom she’d met. They all had their own way of doing things. And so far, she had to admit, Gear had shown to be one corker of an investigator. Sharon led the way up on the porch. Black raised the knocker and slammed it down; the banging echo rumbled through the interior of the house like the Haunting. Sharon and her boss waited in beams of sunlight slanting down through thick overhead branches.