by Kate Wilhelm
“What else did Lori do?”
“Sometimes she wet herself.”
“And she was punished for that?”
“Yeah, she said she’d take her to the woods and let the bears eat her.”
“And did she threaten her in any other way?”
“Yeah, with a curling iron. She said she’d burn her.”
He began rubbing his chest, still staring, blindly, it ap-
“Do you have a scar on your chest, Mr. Kennerman?”
“No! She never burned me.”
“Who are you talking about, Mr. Kennerman?” Barbara asked in a low voice, moving in close to the witness stand.
He broke then. Both hands flew to his face and his body shook out of control. Barbara walked back to the defense table, turned, and regarded him with pity. The silence in the courtroom was complete.
“You’re not talking about Paula, are you, Mr. Kennerman?” she asked after a moment.
“No,” he said, choking, his hands concealing his face.
“Did your mother burn you with a curling iron, Mr. Kennerman?”
“No! She didn’t do that. She wouldn’t do that!”
“Your former wife never threatened your child, did she?”
“I don’t know. No. No, she didn’t.”
“Mr. Kennerman, the night you had your last fight with Paula, did you pick up Lori and throw her on the bed?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he said from behind his hands.
“Did you threaten to throw her out the window?”
“No! I didn’t mean it. She knew I didn’t mean that. I wouldn’t hurt Lori. I loved her. Oh, God, I loved her!” He stopped, and this time he buried his face in his arms on the stand.
Judge Paltz rapped his gavel. “The court will recess for fifteen minutes,” he said quietly.
“He was crying,” Barbara said softly to her father in the little room. “Paula was crying. Half the jury was crying. I might cry.”
“You might want to cry,” Frank said, putting his arm around her, “but you won’t. Not here, not now. Maybe later.”
He gripped her shoulder. “You know you had to do it, Bobby. You know that.”
She nodded. She knew that. What she wanted to do, she thought then, was go to the coast, stand on the cliff over Little Whale Cove, and explain to Mike that she had to do it. She patted Frank’s hand and went to the window to watch them on the crosswalk.
“Mr. Kennerman,” she said when they resumed, “when Paula was in the hospital after the tragedy, you went to visit her several times. Then you stopped. Why was that?”
He had washed his face and looked as if he had taken something that had a remarkable calming effect. He was pale but composed now. “I knew she must have done it,” he said dully.
“What made you think that?”
“The paper said she killed Lori and set the fire, nobody else could have done it; and I got a letter.”
“What newspaper are you referring to, Mr. Kennerman? The daily paper here in town?”
He shook his head. “Some paper I never seen before.”
She went to the table and picked up a copy of the Valley Weekly Report. “Was it this paper?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Like that one.”
“Tell us about the letter, Mr. Kennerman.”
“It just came. It said she was seeing this rich guy and making a fool out of me. That’s all.” Whatever he had taken had numbed him so much that now his voice was a monotone and all his restlessness was stilled. He looked almost asleep.
“Do you have the letter or the paper?”
“No. I tossed them.”
“Mr. Kennerman, a year ago didn’t you and your former wife see a counselor who advised you to continue with counseling?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t pay any attention. It was for her.”
“You mean you went because Paula insisted?”
“Yeah.”
“And did Paula say she would give you one more chance? Only one more chance?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.”
“When you arrived home that Thursday evening and found her packing, was she angry because you took the money out of the savings account? Is that what you fought over?
“Yeah. She was sore.”
“And did she say you had had your last chance, that you had blown it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“When you went to the Polk Street house, did you threaten to break down the door if they didn’t send her out?”
“No. I didn’t mean anything like that.”
“Did you say it?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Did you threaten to burn down the house?”
“No! I didn’t say that!” Sudden animation made him look at her; he was wild-eyed.
“Did you yell that you would burn down the house and make all those bitches go back home where they belonged? Did you say that?”
“I could of!” he cried. “I might of. I didn’t mean it! And I didn’t burn down no house!”
“No more questions,” Barbara said.
“Dad,” she said, in the car with Heath Byerson behind the wheel, driving what seemed to be a random route, “remember that wildlife refuge up past Junction City? Off Ninety-nine? I think I’ll change my clothes and go up there and do some hiking.” No people, she thought, not on a weekday at this hour, this time of year.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll go with you. But there’s something we have to see to first.”
Heath Byerson had made many turns, and she realized that they had entered the Whiteaker neighborhood, her neighborhood. They passed Martin’s restaurant, and she had a surge of nostalgia for it, for holding court in the dining room, advising people about wills and fences and property lines…
Heath Byerson turned down her street and stopped at her house; she gasped. The windows were boarded up, and the front of the house was covered with red paint.
“Those sons of bitches,” she cried. “Those goddamned sons of bitches!”
EIGHTEEN
Frank produced a key for the padlock, and they entered the house. Every window had been broken; it looked as if a high-pressure paint sprayer loaded with red paint had been used inside and out. Silently she looked at her futon, covered with red paint that looked like blood. In her office her file cabinet was streaked red, the desk was covered. Nothing in the living room was salvageable.
“Let’s go,” she said tightly.
“We think it happened about three or four in the morning,” Heath Byerson said back in the car. “Probably when a train was going by, since no one heard anything. Some of the paint was still wet when the investigating officers arrived a little after eight. A lot of people saw the windows and junk this morning, and called us.”
She kept her face averted, her gaze out the window although she was seeing nothing.
“Insurance people will be out tomorrow,” Frank said, “and a patrol car will roam up and down until this whole thing is over.”
She said nothing, not then, not when they reached Frank’s house, and the two men exchanged glances. “See you in the morning,” Heath Byerson said, and left them.
Inside the house, she started up the stairs.
“Bobby, wait a damn minute. Loosen up. It’s a mess, but you’ve seen messes before.”
She stopped nearly halfway up. “I don’t want to fight with you,” she said, not looking back at him. “Just don’t protect me anymore. Okay? You’ve known about this since morning, haven’t you?”
“What the hell good would it have done if I’d told you? You had a tough day to get through. You didn’t need this on top of it.”
“Just don’t make my decisions for me. Don’t shoulder my load. Stop trying to protect me! Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“No,” he said. “You’re dealing with maniacs, people who’ve let the alligator brains take over. Someone’s using them, trying to rattle you. What if
you’d been in that bed? Sure, we could have gone over there first thing, you could have seen it before court, and then what? You did a brilliant job today. Would you have been able to do that with fire in your eyes, murder on your mind?”
“Don’t decide what I can or can’t do,” she snapped. “Let me mess up by myself!” She ran up the rest of the stairs.
She drove alone to the wildlife refuge with little memory of getting there, and then she started up the three-mile trail. No one else was in the area, which had been designated a wilderness, untouched except for the several trails. It was very still in the early evening; the trail was dusty.
Noble firs, Douglas firs, an occasional yew made up the forest here. Sunlight found an opening rarely, slanted in on columns of dancing dust motes, and touched with gold what it could reach, but most of the trail was in deep shadow. Fir forests were dark, forbidding to many people who dreaded the menace of the shadows, the stillness. The bears, she thought with a shudder. Jack Kennerman’s mother had threatened him with bears in the woods.
She should whistle, make a noise, warn the bears that she was coming. The only sound she made was the fall of her rubber soles in the dust of the trail. She climbed for half an hour, and was drenched with sweat when she stopped to rest and look out over the valley she could now see. Below, the refuge was dotted with many ponds. Geese came here, and ducks, herons, gulls, even a pelican now and then. Refuge.
She should be thinking about what had happened in court, who had said what, the nuances, the changing expressions, the meanings behind the evasions, the destruction of her house and the implications—Gallead? Dodgson?—Just another warning or had they thought she was there? Instead, the words she had used, the words her father had used played the loop. Alligator brains, rattle you, don't protect me, murder on your mind, let me mess up myself…
She started to walk again, this time following the trail at the crest of a hill that afforded a glimpse of the valley, twisted back into the forest, returned to give another view…
The next time she stopped, she sat on a fallen tree trunk that was being absorbed back into the ground but now afforded a mossy resting place. She said out loud, “Put it behind you, kiddo. He’s wrong, and so are you. Leave it for now.” She nodded at the wisdom of the words and then brooded some more. He did want to help, that was part of the problem. But she had asked him to help, she reminded herself. Not this way, she retorted in the silent dialogue.
It occurred to her abruptly that the shadows now were not from the forest, but were shadows of dusk; no more sunlight slanted through the trees, and the sky had taken on a pale violet color, streaked with the muddy gray smoke from forest fires. She stood up and made her way on the remaining trail, which was all downhill now. It was nearly too dark to see the pond when she was on level ground again; where the water began, the grasses and rushes ended was impossible to tell. She skirted it with caution, and was vastly relieved when she reached her car and got inside.
No bears, no dunking in the water, no mishaps. Her legs were throbbing, and she could feel the clammy touch of her shirt on her back where sweat had soaked it through. She began to shiver, and turned on the engine, waited for the heater, and tried to imagine the state of mind Jack Kennerman would experience alone in the woods. Did he still have that fear?
All the way home she thought of Jack Kennerman and his brutalizing mother, of Craig Dodgson and his mother, of Paula and her child, her hopes. And she realized she was thinking of her father and herself. Doing the best we can, she thought then. Most of us, some of us, somehow or other, trying to do right by their children; children trying to do right by their parents.
When she got back to the house and entered, the study door was open; her father was in his old brown chair, which was a bit disreputable.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” she said from the doorway.
He looked up at her over the top of his glasses. “All right. Let’s bring all this up again at a later time.”
She nodded.
“Hungry?”
“Starved. I’ll make something.”
“I had Mexican pork stew. A little spicy, but not bad.”
His pork stew was heavenly, and he knew it. “I’ll heat it up if there’s any left.”
“Plenty left.” He turned to his book again. “Won a bet with Heath Byerson,” he said. “Five bucks. Not bad. He thought you’d cry over that mess. I said you’d get madder than hell.”
She felt her cheeks burn. “I’ll go shower first,” she muttered. Shower, eat, and then work for several hours, she thought as she went up; a grin began to twitch at the corners of her mouth. Damn him.
Good, she thought the next morning when Fierst was well into his plodding examination of Enrico Palma. Fierst was going to cross every t, dot every i. She sat back to listen.
“Exactly what is a forensic psychiatrist?” he asked after Palma’s credentials had been explained in infinite detail. Palma had a gray beard that was closely trimmed and neat. His hair was gray, and his eyes were a piercing black. He was fifty-one, and had been doing forensic psychiatry for sixteen years.
“We often work in cases such as this one, in order to determine the state of mind of the accused at the time of the crime, and to evaluate whether the accused is fit to stand trial.”
He had examined Paula Kennerman, he said, in Salem, at the state mental hospital. Paula Kennerman had been taken to the hospital because she had withdrawn into silence and was uncooperative, and it was feared she was suicidal.
He had got her to talk to him, he said; one almost always could with the right approach. She had cooperated up to a point. He went into a very lengthy report of her childhood, adolescence, her adult life, her marriage. A recess was called, and after it, he picked up exactly where he had left off and brought his testimony up to the date he had concluded his examination.
“Exactly what do you look for when you examine persons accused of committing a crime? Criminal insanity?”
His smile appeared and vanished almost too fast to be identified. “No. I’m afraid that term has little meaning in the medical world. We look for a dissociative personality, for diminished capacity to resist a compulsive urge, for a delusional personality, or even schizophrenia, for a sociopathic personality, for an inability to distinguish right from wrong. There are other signs we seek, but those will do, I think. Of course, we have to eliminate brain dysfunction due to substance abuse, and we give a battery of tests to determine if the person is intelligent enough to comprehend the proceedings.”
Fierst was about to speak when Barbara said, “Objection. The witness has used terms that are quite unfamiliar to most people. I suggest he explain them.”
“I was going to ask him to,” Fierst said with a touch of irritation.
And that would take them right up to lunch, Barbara estimated, when the doctor went into a long, detailed explanation. What a pompous little man, she thought; he was not quite preening, but was clearly happy with his performance.
At lunch time, before Paula was led out, Barbara held her hand for a moment. “Relax,” she murmured. “I don’t think I’ll need to call you. I’ll explain later.”
“Where is that Bailey?” she demanded when she and her father entered their room. She stopped just inside the doorway. A vase with many red roses was on the table. She looked at Frank, who went to it and extracted a card, handed it to her.
Vm sorry about your house. Bill. Wordlessly she picked up the vase and went back out with it and handed it to a woman emerging from a nearby office. “I’m allergic to roses,” Barbara said. The woman looked at her blankly, turned, and reentered her office carrying the flowers.
“That asshole,” Barbara muttered, inside their room again. “I’m getting fed up with their head games.”
“Bobby, I wish you wouldn’t call him that,” Frank said, lifting the cover of a large bowl.
“I bet he’s used to it. What do you suppose kids called him all through school? With his name, it’s a sure bet.
What’s that?”
It was a beautiful seafood salad with tiny pink Pacific shrimp, chunks of salmon, bits of crab… Today she sat down and ate with her father before she prowled the second floor of the courthouse.
Fierst picked up where he had left off. “Dr. Palma, you’ve explained the psychiatric terms, and we know now what you were looking for. What were your conclusions after you examined the defendant?”
“She was suffering from situational depression.”
Before he could continue, Fierst looked at Barbara with some bitterness and said, “Will you explain that term, please?”
And he was off with an explanation of the differences between manic-depression, clinical depression, and situational depression. “It’s quite temporary,” he finished. “Time and rest are the only treatment needed.”
“Did you determine her state of mind before the death of her child and the fire?”
“Yes. I determined that she was absolutely normal.”
Fierst had a few more questions and then Barbara stood up.
“Sir,” she asked. “What is your name?”
“Enrico Palma,” he said promptly.
“Thank you. You said Paula Kennerman was ordered to undergo psychiatric examination because she had become silent and uncooperative. Is that correct?”
“Yes. She had refused to answer questions, refused to speak at all.”
“Did you have access to her medical records and the police investigators’ records?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you read them all before you spoke with Paula Kennerman?”
“Yes, I did.”
“You’re familiar with Sergeant Sanderson’s interrogations of the defendant?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Do you recall how many times the sergeant questioned the defendant?”
He frowned slightly, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you. I don’t recall now.”
“Oh. What did you say your name is, sir?”
“Enrico Palma,” he said, clearly and slowly.
She nodded absently. “We have here Sergeant Sanderson’s final report in which he states that he interviewed the defendant seven different times. This was his seventh time. Of course,” she added, “we have the notes from the first six interviews also. Did you have access to all seven interviews?”