by Wick Downing
“There is a parking lot near the big yellow building.”
“The streets in the park were blocked off, weren’t they?”
“Yes.”
“So you weren’t parked near where you were sitting?”
“That is true.”
“And there were lots of people walking on the streets, and kids on bicycles?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“There were even some kids on Sting-Rays, weren’t there?”
“I do not know this word.”
“A Sting-Ray is a kind of bike, with little wheels and a seat like a banana, and wide handlebars,” I told her. “Do you remember kids on bikes like that?”
She shrugged. “Not really.”
“Kids on Sting-Rays ride them on the grass and the walkways as well as on the streets. Didn’t you see some of them?”
“Perhaps.”
Ideas started forming in my brain again. “You testified earlier about the fight between Mr. Benson and Herman, do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“And how Mr. Benson had to beat the dog into submission?”
“Yes.”
“The dog just got what he deserved, don’t you think?”
“I certainly do.”
“Because after the fight his coat was bloody, and even one eye had been battered and bloodied and was swollen shut. Isn’t that right?”
She shrugged. “That animal was not a pretty sight.”
Now you’re being a lawyer, Kate. Good questions!
It was so nice of Grandfather to cheer me on, but I knew I had to be careful. “You’ve seen Herman in the courtroom today, and how friendly and nice he’s been?”
Her arms crossed. “Not always,” she said. “Not this morning, before the trial begins. He growl with fierceness.”
“That was when you were sitting with Ron Benson, wasn’t it?” I asked.
“Your Honor,” Mr. Thomas said, “objection. Facts not in evidence. Relevance.”
“But Your Honor,” I said quickly, before the judge could rule, “I think it’s very relevant. Whenever Herman smells Ron Benson, who beat him bloody with a chain, he gets hostile. Other than that, he’s just a sweet and gentle dog. Isn’t that relevant?”
“Enough of that, Miss Hope!” the judge stormed at me. “Save those comments for argument. Objection is sustained. Now move on!”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said quickly, smiling at him. Bully for you! Grampa said, and it felt like a hug. You got the makin’s! “Just so I’m real clear about your testimony,” I said, “you are very sure that you and Mr. Benson were not behind that lilac hedge”—I walked over to the chart and pointed to the one that I hoped Spence would say they were behind—“at any time that day?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Did anyone see this happen other than you and Mr. Benson?”
“Many others.”
“Do you remember seeing an old man in dirty clothes?”
Her nose wrinkled prettily, which was the way she did everything—prettily. “Yesss. He smell badly. He need to wash himself.”
I could go on, Grandfather said, but you’d better stop. Good work!
“Thank you, Miss Jespersen,” I said, sitting down.
“Call your next witness, Mr. Thomas,” Judge Steinbrunner said.
“Yes, sir. I’ll call Ron Benson to the stand.”
Chapter Twenty-five
HAVING FIVE MOTHERS ON THE JURY might not be so awful, I thought when Ron Benson took the stand. I tried to see him the way they would, rather than through the eyes of the one man on the jury, or the kids in the courtroom who thought he was so great because he could play a stupid game like football. What was the big deal about that, other than fame and glory and large bucks from the National Football League when he finished college? Mr. Thomas treated him like a god too, as did the judge, proving that men are way too impressed with sports. But the mothers, even though they were interested in him, weren’t ready to get down on their knees in worship.
With Mr. Thomas asking the questions, Ron repeated the horrible story that Ursula Jespersen had already told, except that he was oh-so-modest about the brave way he’d stood up to the beast. When he moved over to the chart to show exactly where he and Ursula were sitting when the dog attacked, Mr. Thomas took him through his testimony all over again.
Ron moved like a panther when he walked back to his seat in the witness box. “No further questions,” Mr. Thomas said. “You may examine.”
It wasn’t as hard as I’d thought it would be to smile at Ron. “We’ve met, haven’t we, Mr. Benson?” I asked from behind the lectern.
“Yeah, you could say that,” he said. “When you and your boyfriend came by to talk to Ursula.”
“That was a week ago Tuesday, wasn’t it, Mr. Benson? When we met the first time?”
“Yes,” he said, his hands balled into angry fists. Did he want to smack me?
I realized he didn’t scare me at all. “It was around one in the afternoon at the Pearsan residence, right? You wore short pants and no shirt?”
He blushed suddenly. The muscles in his jaw got huge and started thumping. “Yeah.”
“Your Honor, I object to this line of questioning,” Mr. Thomas said, standing. “It’s not relevant to the issues here.”
“I agree,” the judge said. “Let’s move on, Miss Hope.”
“Thank you, sir,” I said, as though the judge and I were together on the objection. But one of the mothers on the jury had an eyebrow up, and I wondered if I could make Ron lose his cool. He was on the edge now. Could I give the jury a taste of the real Ron Benson, a musclebound bully and a liar, willing to sacrifice the life of a dog to save himself and his girlfriend from embarrassment?
I tried a patient-mother voice, as though he was a child who needed a good mom to help him understand things. I’d used it on my older brother when I was only six, and it could drive him up a tree. “Do you remember that day at City Park . . . well, for the record, it was Sunday, May twenty-seventh, 1973, about three weeks ago. Try to remember that day, okay?” I asked.
“Duh,” he said, with annoyance. “Sure I remember it.”
“Good for you,” I said, as though encouraging him. “There were other people at the park that day, weren’t there?”
I loved watching the muscles in his jaw send angry vibrations through the courtroom. There were lots of other people, he said. After the incident with the dog, a crowd. Did he remember an old man in dirty clothes who might even have had an odor about him? “Oh yes,” Ron said, then described the man as “a mess. Tall, thin, hair every which way, and the rottenest beard I ever saw.”
You might be a lawyer yet, Grandfather’s gruff voice said. Keep working on his attitude. Good job using the City’s witnesses to prove up your case. Now that jury knows Spence was there.
In my best “If you don’t understand, just ask me” voice, I asked Ron if he’d seen the dog today that had done this awful thing. “Yes,” he said, ready to explode, and leveling a stare at me that no doubt would have terrified a lineman on the opposing football team.
“You and Herman aren’t really buddies, are you, Mr. Benson?”
“You mean, do I like that dog?” he demanded, snarling at me. “Would I want that animal in my house? Around my children if I had any?”
I started to object. Don’t, Grampa’s voice said. He’s close to helping you. “Actually, I meant that every time he’s seen you this morning, he’s acted aggressively. You understand what I mean by ‘aggressively,’ don’t you?”
“Yes, I know what you mean!” Ron said, his neck all swollen and red . . . and then he seemed to catch himself. “But it isn’t me that sets him off, Kate. Excuse me. Miss Hope.” He threw me a beautiful smirk. “He’s just plain vicious and dangerous. Mean enough to attack a little baby.”
“Really,” I said. “You mean he acts that way around everyone?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. Didn’t you see how he
was with the animal-control officer?”
“You’re talking about the man who dragged him down the aisle earlier today, before the trial started?” I asked.
“He wanted to get that animal out of here before he bit somebody,” Ron declared.
“A dog like that would never wag his tail at anyone who got near him, would he?” Ron frowned at me but didn’t answer, so I went on. “Or lick somebody in the face, or allow someone to rub his stomach?”
Some of the jurors smiled. “I’d be real surprised,” Ron said.
“Is it possible that there’s just some bad chemistry between you and Herman that makes him aggressive?”
“Do I have to answer a stupid question like that?” he asked, glaring at the judge.
“You do, Mr. Benson,” the judge said.
“No.” Ron folded his arms in front of him and stared pointedly at the clock. “How much longer will this go on?”
Don’t object, Grampa’s voice said. He’s showing himself well.
I smiled at him, letting the moment take its own sweet time. “Mr. Benson, in the park that day when you saw him, he was dragging a chain behind him, wasn’t he? One of those thin chains that people use as a dog leash?”
“Yes,” he said, like a grizzly bear in a cage who wants out so he can get at the squirrel on the other side of the bars who is teasing him.
“The chain had a spike on the end, didn’t it?” I asked. “The kind of spike that gets hammered into the ground to tether a dog?”
“Could have. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You whipped him with it, didn’t you?”
“Your words, Kate,” he said. “I protected myself from him. When he dropped Monica, he went for my throat.”
“How awful,” I said. “That must have terrified you, to have a vicious, snarling animal charge you and go for your throat. Were you terrified?”
He leaned back in his chair and smiled, as though nothing really bothered him very much. “Not really.”
“Then why did you whip him with the chain and spike hard enough to cut him and make him bleed?”
“That’s a lie. I didn’t hurt him. I just protected myself.”
“Oh,” I said. “Miss Jespersen testified a few minutes ago that you beat the dog into submission. Did she lie to the jury when she told them that?”
“She never said that,” he snapped at me. “You’re making that up.”
“I’m not making it up, Mr. Benson,” I told him. “She even testified that Herman’s coat was bloody afterward, and that one of his eyes was swollen shut. Would you like to have the record of her testimony read to you?”
He cleared his throat and looked at Mr. Thomas, who was busy writing on a legal pad. “I told you I was protecting myself,” Ron said. “What would you have done, Little Miss Angel-face? Petted him? Given him a dog bone?”
It was fun, dancing around the big bozo. He would flatten me on a football field, but I could dance circles around him in court. Nothing like it, is there? Grandfather’s voice said. But be careful. It can change in an instant. “Did Herman reach your throat, Mr. Benson?”
“No.”
“Or your hands, or your arms or legs?”
“No.”
“So there were no dog bites or scratches on you at all, isn’t that right?”
“He tried, but he never got me.”
“What about your clothes?” I asked. “Did he get a fang into a sleeve or a pant leg?”
“He did not.”
“In fact, all Herman managed to do was get himself beaten bloody by you?”
He stared at me without saying anything. I could have asked the judge to order him to answer the question, but the stare was so venomous and awful that I wanted to give the jury plenty of time to see it.
“It must have felt wonderful to give Herman exactly what he deserved, and to punish him so thoroughly. Am I right, Mr. Benson?”
“Objection, Judge,” Mr. Thomas said, as though he was bored. “Relevance. Argumentative.”
“Sustained. Miss Hope, this has gone on long enough. Move on, young lady.”
“Thank you, sir. Can I ask a couple of questions from the chart?”
“You may.”
I got next to it and picked up the pointer, like a teacher in school. “This is an accurate map of where the action was that day, isn’t it, Mr. Benson?”
“It’s okay.”
“Just okay? Is there something you’d like to add to it, or take off?”
“No.”
“For example, it shows the shoreline of that little lake, and lots of little meadows and shrubs”—I pointed to things as I talked about them—“and that asphalt path that kind of wanders around and gets real close to the lake.” I stuck the tip of the pointer where the map showed that. “That’s the way it was that day, isn’t it?”
“I already said it was.”
You are so angry at me, I thought happily. “Mr. Benson, I have a witness who saw you and Miss Jespersen over here,” I said, touching a place on the other side of a lilac hedge. It was exactly where Ursula had been absolutely certain she and Ron had not been. “Is that where you and Miss Jespersen watched the ducks?”
“Objection,” Thomas said. “Assumes a fact not in evidence.”
“Sustained.”
Keep tying. “You and Miss Jespersen were over here before this happened, weren’t you, Mr. Benson?” I asked, pointing to the same place.
“No.”
“Did you hear Miss Jespersen’s testimony?” I asked, as though I’d caught him in a lie.
“No,” he said, glaring at me with suspicion.
“Didn’t you spread your blanket over here when you first got there?”
“We might have. I’m not sure.”
“You were on the other side of the lilac hedge just some of the time you were in the park that day. Is that fair to say?”
“What of it? That isn’t where we were when the dog showed up.”
“You weren’t there very long, I guess. Is that what you mean?”
“We weren’t there more than two minutes. So what?”
So one of you is lying, I thought, hoping the jury saw it too. “Thank you, Mr. Benson,” I said, and sat down and waited to hear what the voice in my brain had to say about my performance. It had a little smile inside, and some gruff grandfatherly pride. You’ve got the instincts, it said.
But the glow didn’t last. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the judge said, “we’ll have a short recess now.” He frowned in my direction, and I kind of ducked. “Bailiff, you can escort the jury to the jury room, and I’ll ask the lawyers to meet me in my chambers.”
Here it comes, I thought. My motion for additional witnesses. Before following Mr. Thomas through the door that led to the judge’s office, I looked for Mike and my two witnesses. I saw Sally get up with Kenny Benson and scoot toward the hall, but there was no sign of Mike. And what was Sally doing with Kenny? I wondered. Hadn’t she been with Mike?
“Hey, Kate,” someone said, turning me around. Willis Suggs! “Uncle Two-Fingers asked me to say hello.”
“Willis, hi! Thanks for helping. Did you bring Bean Pole and Tomato Face?”
“No,” he said, looking down. “They changed their mind.”
“What do you mean? What happened? Where’s Mike?”
“Pickin’ hisself off the ground, the last I saw. Sorry, Kate. Nothin’ I could do, only watch.”
“Watch what?”
“Two big dudes, buddies of Ron Benson, messed it all up. They gave Bean Pole and Tomato Face T-shirts, then took them someplace, you know, like for ice cream.”
“What happened to Mike?”
“He tried to stop them,” Willis said. “Big mistake.”
“You mean he let them take my witnesses?”
“He couldn’t stop them, Kate. They didn’t hurt him bad, but they hurt him.”
My motion for additional witnesses was denied, naturally. I spluttered around helplessly in Jud
ge Steinbrunner’s chambers, but I had no proof of anything, and no witnesses, either. It was almost a relief to crawl back to the pit and sit next to Miss Willow, where I could smile with confidence even though my case teetered on the brink of disaster. “Call your next witness,” the judge said to Mr. Thomas, and Dr. Donald Webb trotted to the stand, as fit and trim as a marathon runner.
He had four color photographs of Monica and at least they weren’t gruesome, which was a relief. There was some bruising on her legs and two little red dots on her right thigh, and the doctor used them to describe the trauma to the baby, which included an assault on her feelings. “She howled long and loudly,” Dr. Webb said, “I should say expressing outrage, indignity, and pain.”
How did he know what the little baby was expressing? She might have been hungry. But I didn’t object, because what would have been the point? I wanted him to like me, in case he could help me with my case.
As a medical doctor, he could give expert opinions, to help the jury interpret the facts. Mr. Thomas asked him if he had an opinion as to what had caused the bruising on Monica’s legs and the red dots on her skin.
“In my opinion,” he said, “she’d been picked up in the jaws of a large animal, such as a dog.”
I floundered around on cross-examination. But it wasn’t on purpose like Grandfather had done. I wasn’t trying to trick the witness into thinking I was dumb. My brain had stopped working. I’d switched it to ON at four that morning, and it needed a rest. It sorted through what it knew about asking questions of expert witnesses, and came up empty. I asked what the two red dots were, which was stupid: “Tooth marks.” The jury didn’t need another reminder that the baby had been in Herman’s jaws.
Then I thought of a way to soften the blow—one that might even please Grandfather. The doctor had treated several dog-bite cases, he said when I asked him about it. He agreed with me that this was not a severe case. The skin had not been torn, and no surgery was required, or stitching of wounds. In fact, the baby’s skin had barely been punctured. After cleaning her wound and bandaging it, he’d released her to her parents. There hadn’t been any need for her to spend the night in the hospital.