by Kate Wilhelm
The next morning she drove to Frank’s house; Heath Byerson arrived promptly at eight forty-five and drove them to the courthouse, where they were present in force. She ignored them.
Today Kay Dodgson wore a soft pink dress with a matching jacket, and pearls, and looked even more expensively turned out than she had previously.
Judge Paltz reminded her that she was still under oath, but before Barbara could start, Gerald Fierst said, “Your Honor, the witness spoke to me before court this morning and said she would like to make a statement. She misspoke yesterday and wants to correct the record.”
Judge Paltz eyed Kay Dodgson with a distant look. “Is that so, Mrs. Dodgson?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. “I made a mistake. I realized last night that it might look bad, and I thought I should fix it as soon as I could.”
So, Barbara thought, Doneally, Dodgson’s attorney, knew about Rhode Island v. Stanley along with everyone else.“Proceed, Mrs. Dodgson,” Judge Paltz said.
“Thank you, Your Honor. You see, when he asked if we paid Carrie Voight, I was thinking of paying, like you do people who clean the house, and the people who work at the press, you know, on a weekly basis, or hourly, or whatever. Then I realized that since Rich is helping support Carrie, that might look like we’re paying her. But it’s not the same thing.” She hesitated, and cast a swift glance at the jury, then plunged on. “We give—donate, that is, two hundred fifty dollars a month to help support her.”
Judge Paltz nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Dodgson. Ms. Holloway, if you will.”
“That’s a very generous gift, Mrs. Dodgson,” Barbara said, rising, moving toward the witness stand. “Is Carrie Voight related to you or your husband?”
“Of course not.”
“So you can’t even claim her as a dependent on your income tax, which makes it even more generous. How long have you lived in your present house, Mrs. Dodgson?”
“Twelve years.”
“And when did you start this act of generosity with Carrie Voight?”
“I really don’t know for sure.” Kay Dodgson glanced again at the jury box and raised her eyebrows. “I mean, we just like to help people. We don’t make notes about it.”
“You said earlier that you’re the general manager of the Dodgson Publishing Company, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So you keep the books? Do the accounts? Make out the payroll? Are those your functions?”
“Yes,” she said sharply. “I said that.”
“I know you did, Mrs. Dodgson. I know you did,” Barbara said easily. “Yet you don’t know how long you have been paying, excuse me, giving—Carrie Voight two hundred fifty dollars a month?”
“No, I don’t.” She turned her gaze to Gerald Fierst, as if to seek his intervention. He made no response.
“Mrs. Dodgson, what kind of arrangement did you have with Carrie Voight? Did she report personally when something was out of line?”
“No. I never met her.”
“How did she communicate when she suspected a problem?”
“She called us sometimes to say what was going on.”
“I see. Did you take those calls?”
“No. She talked to Rich. I never had anything to do with her.”
“Did you share your husband’s feelings about the seriousness of the incident when two women from the ranch went swimming nude in the pond?”
“Yes! Absolutely. I have to protect my own children from that sort of thing.” Her mouth had become very tight, her lips almost invisible, and two spots of red appeared on her cheeks as she answered.
“How old are your children, Mrs. Dodgson?”
“Craig is twenty-seven and Alex is twenty-three.”
“And this happened two years ago when they were twenty-five and twenty-one. Do they ever swim nude, Mrs. Dodgson?”
“No! Of course—” She stopped herself and said, even more tightly, “In the privacy of our home, not in public, they might.”
Barbara went to her table and opened a file, extracted several glossy prints. “Your Honor, I would like to introduce into evidence photographs of the pond we arc talking about.”
“Objection,” Fierst said, and already he sounded tired. “This is irrelevant to the case we’re hearing.”
“Your Honor,” Barbara said, approaching the bench, “this witness is prejudicial to the use that was made of the Canby property, and that prejudice may have extended to my client. In cases of extreme prejudice witnesses sometimes misspeak, misinterpret what they see, or fail to see what is clearly before them. It is my intention—”
Judge Paltz held up his hand and overruled the objection, and Barbara continued.
“This is a photograph of the pond taken from the private road leading to the Canby property. Do you recognize the pond?”
“Of course not! I can’t even see the pond!”
“This one was taken from Farleigh Road. Do you recognize the pond from this one?”
“No!” Kay Dodgson snapped.
“And finally, another one taken from your driveway off the private road. Can you recognize the pond here?”
“You know I can’t see the pond in those pictures.”
“Yes, I know that. And yet the swimming incident was one of the problems your husband raised with Mrs. Canby, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. That pond is in public view, even if those pictures don’t show it.”
Barbara went to the aerial map and traced the outline of the pond. “Three-fourths of the ground around the pond is overgrown with rushes that grow six to eight feet high by mid-summer.” She pointed to a narrow strip without vegetation. “This one area is open, and it faces the woods that are on the Canby property. Would you call that public, Mrs. Dodgson?”
“Yes. Swimming naked in public is indecent, and they were there to be seen by anyone who looked.”
“When your two sons swim nude, what is to prevent your housekeeper from glancing in and seeing them?”
“She knows better. If they have the music on, she doesn’t go near the pool room.”
“So, if those two women had played music, that would have been enough to warn off possible voyeurs?”
“They had no business swimming naked out in the open like that! Not around impressionable young boys.”
“Mrs. Dodgson, did your sons make it a habit to trespass on the Canby property—here in the woods, for example?”
“Never! They knew better than to go over there.”
“Could they have seen anyone in that pond from your property?”
Kay Dodgson hesitated and Fierst objected.
“The witness can’t testify about what someone else might have seen.”
“I withdraw the question,” Barbara said. Then she asked, “Did you see the women swimming that day?”
“No.”
“When did you hear about it?”
“I don’t remember. After dinner, after Rich got home. I’m not sure.”
“Your sons didn’t report it to you?”
“No. Rich told us.”
“Was he at work that day?”
“Yes.”
Barbara led her through the incident with the gate. Did she see anyone actually turning around on their property? Was Rich home when it happened? Was Craig?
“If no one saw it, why were you so upset? Was any harm done to your landscaping?”
“No. We were afraid one of those women would decide to take a shortcut through our driveway out to Spring Bay Road. You just don’t know what irresponsible women like that will do. We wanted them to stay off our property, and we put up a gate to see that they did stay off.”
“How can you be certain it was one of those women who turned in your driveway that day since no one in your household saw her?”
“We knew. We just knew.”
“Did Carrie Voight tell you?”
“Not me. She might have told Rich. Not me. I told you, she didn’t call me.”
During the first rec
ess Frank handed Barbara a report from Bailey. She read it and grinned. Kay Dodgson had been a dancer in a casino in Las Vegas when she married Rich Dodgson. Frank winked at her. “You’re wearing her down just fine,” he commented.
She nodded. “Not enough, not yet. But I’m working on it.”
When they all filed back into the courtroom, she heard Frank’s voice in her ear. “Someone opened up her spine and filled it with starch.” Kay Dodgson was almost rigidly straight, with high color, as if she had been given a swift kick. Barbara hoped that had happened.
“Mrs. Dodgson,” she asked, “have you ever met any of the guests at the Canby Ranch?”
“No, of course not!”
“Yet earlier you labeled them irresponsible. Why?”
“They left their husbands, didn’t they? That’s irresponsible.”
“Do you think there is ever a legitimate cause for a woman to leave her husband?”
“Rarely.”
“Do you accept that some men beat their wives?”
“If they fight, it takes two.”
Fierst objected on the grounds that a criminal trial was no place to conduct a philosophical discussion. Barbara agreed, thinking, testing, just testing.
She led Kay Dodgson through the incident with the woman photographer and concluded by asking, “So no one could have seen her, since you say your family rises at about eight or eight-thirty. Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“And she didn’t make any noise that you heard? Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t leave any trash behind, did she?”
“I don’t know.”
“If she had, wouldn’t that have been part of the complaint?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“So no one saw her, or heard her, and probably no one found anything she left behind. How did you know she had been on your property?”
“Rich told me.”
“And did Carrie Voight tell him?”
“Yes.”
Later: “Mrs. Dodgson, how did your husband and son learn that a woman had miscarried?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know they were going to the Canby house to confront Mrs. Tidball, to accuse her of running an abortion clinic?”
“I knew. We all talked about it first.”
“Do you and your husband support someone in the emergency room of Sacred Heart Hospital?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you have a spy in the hospital who calls you when there’s a suspicious emergency?”
“We don’t have spies!”
“You say you help out Carrie Voight. Do you ‘help out’ someone in the emergency room of the hospital?”
“No,” she said harshly. “We were suspicious from the start, that’s all.”
“Yet you didn’t go to Mrs. Canby this time. Why not?”
“It was just a miscarriage, that’s all.”
“How did you know that?”
“Emma Tidball told Rich.” She drew in a quick breath. “And they threatened him and Craig, just like we always knew they would.”
“You knew that Paula Kennerman and her daughter had arrived at the ranch. How did you know she was injured?”
“I didn’t know that.”
“What did you say to Angela Everts that Saturday morn-
ing?
“I said I’d like some mushrooms. That’s about all.”
“Did you mention the new woman and her child?”
“I don’t know. I might have. We wanted them to know we were keeping an eye on them, that’s all.”
“Did you ask if the new woman was well enough to go into the woods?”
“No! I didn’t. I didn’t know she was hurt.” The red spots on her cheeks had spread down her (ace. Angela Everts had been right; pink was not a good color for her. And the stage training that had given her poise yesterday had deserted her today.
Barbara walked to her table and leaned against it with her arms crossed. “You said as long as they were quiet and behaved themselves, you had no objection to women using the Canby Ranch as a refuge. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s what I said. That’s what we agreed from the start.”
“Were they quiet?”
“I don’t know. I guess so.”
“Your house is about how far from the site of the Canby house?”
“I don’t know, not very far.”
Barbara went to the pile of stuff on her table and pulled out an acetate sheet. “This is an overlay with distances marked to scale with the aerial map.” It was accepted as an exhibit and she carefully positioned it over the other map. “Let’s see the distances we’re talking about,” she said. “Your house here is two thousand fifty feet from the site of the Canby house. About half a mile. Wouldn’t you say there was little chance of hearing anything from such a distance?”
“I guess so.”
“Mrs. Dodgson, when did you and your husband sell the other parcel of land? Over here, across Spring Bay Road?”
“Objection,” Fierst cried. “Your Honor, that is irrelevant. What difference does it make to this trial?”
“It isn’t irrelevant,” Barbara said swiftly. “If they objected to noise, it is highly relevant to ascertain to whom they sold that property, and for what purpose. I maintain that noise had nothing to do with their objections.”
She was allowed to continue. Kay Dodgson moistened her lips. “When did you sell that piece of property?” Barbara snapped at her.
“About nine years ago.”
“And to whom?”
“Royce Gallead.”
“What is Mr. Gallead’s occupation?”
“He owns a gun shop and a firing range, I think.”
“Don’t you know he owns a firing range, Mrs. Dodgson?”
“Yes. He does.”
“Have you ever objected to the noise from the firing range?”
“No, I haven’t. We don’t hear it much.”
Barbara returned to the map and overlay and put her finger on the Dodgson property, and then on the range. “This shows four hundred fifty-five feet from your front door to his back door. That’s less than half a city block. But it doesn’t bother you to hear gunfire. Is that what you’re saying?”
“I never paid much attention to it.”
“Is Mr. Gallead a friend of yours?”
“No! He’s a neighbor, that’s all.” She shot a swift glance at the courtroom and then looked down at her hands clenched before her.
Good heavens, Barbara thought. She’s terrified of him. To give herself time to consider this new datum, she walked back to the table and took a sip of water. Later, she thought. Later. She returned to the map. “Mrs. Dodgson, the Canby house was screened by evergreens and rhododendrons, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” She looked up from her hands and then put them in her lap.
“So your spy—that is, your helpful neighbor—couldn’t really see what was going on once a car got near the house. Is that right?”
“Objection,” Fierst said. “She can’t testify as to what someone else could see.”
Barbara nodded and didn’t demur when the objection was sustained. She was playing for time now; she didn’t want to get into that Saturday and then break for lunch. She said, “If you were on the private road, you couldn’t see the house, could you?”
“No.”
“Your vision was obscured by the shrubbery around the house and then by the trees on the side of the driveway. Is that right?”
“Well, when I got near enough I could see more.”
“Even if you were up here, near the end of the road, you still couldn’t see through the dense forest, could you?”
The map showed the forest to be almost solid. Kay Dodgson looked at it for a second or two, and then said, “I could see someone if someone was there.”
“But I didn’t ask you that, now did I?” Barbara said in a kindly voice. “Do you have
exceptional vision, Mrs. Dodgson? X-ray vision, perhaps? The ability to see through a tree?”
“Objection!” Fierst yelled. “Counsel knows she can’t harangue the witness in such a manner.”
“Ms. Holloway, that is quite enough of that,” Judge Paltz said. “Sustained. Since it is almost noon, we will recess until two.”
When she turned to look out over the courtroom, they were there staring at her with hatred. Standing against the back wall was Bill Spassero. He nodded, and left.
“Well, sometimes you have to put your paw in the door before someone will close it,” Frank said with a grin as he examined his sandwich in the little room that made Barbara feel like a caged animal.
She looked out the window. They were patrolling the crosswalk. They were in the cafeteria, she knew. She had the second floor of the building to pace in; at least they were not allowed here.
“I’ve been thinking about disguises,” Frank said thoughtfully. “A beard for me, maybe a red wig for you, funny clothes …”
She snarled at him and went out to pace the second floor.
FIFTEEN
“Mrs. Dodgson,” Barbara started that afternoon, “as bookkeeper and general manager of Dodgson Publishing, do you handle the employee records? Deductions for taxes, health insurance, that sort of thing?”
“Yes, of course,” Kay Dodgson said. The break had been good for her; she was in her very cool mode, gazing past Barbara as if bored.
“How many employees do you have?”
“Seven at the company, four full-time, three part-time.”
“And you keep all their records?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a grounds maintenance person?”
“Of course. He’s part-time.”
“Does he also work at your residence?”
“Yes.”
“So you work with numbers a great deal. Do you keep separate accounts for what he does at the company and what he does at your home?”
“No. Yes, I mean.”
“Is your son Craig a paid employee?
“Yes. He’s learning the business.”
“And your other son, Alex? Is he a paid employee?”
Kay Dodgson stiffened, then shrugged. “He’s an intern in the office of Senator Bulmar in Seattle. He doesn’t work for us.”