Secrets and Lies

by Rachel Sinclair

  The next person who Ally decided to call was her expert on spousal abuse. I had deposed her and I knew what she was going to say. I also knew how I was going to cross-examine her.

  The expert that Ally called was a psychologist by the name of Dr. Owen. Dr. Owen was a therapist who had 30 years experience in the field of domestic violence. She had a practice that specialized in treating women who were suffering from domestic violence, and she also specialized in treating the PTSD that resulted from these incidents. She was a circuit lecturer on the topic of domestic violence, and she was somebody who was an expert witness on behalf of women. One of her specialties was testifying in cases where women were able to use the battered spouse syndrome defense – this was a defense that was sometimes used when a woman had been battered and would end up murdering her husband. Dr. Owen was somebody who had testified in hundreds of trials and had treated thousands of clients. She was Harvard educated, and there was very little I could do to impugn her credentials. So I wasn’t even going to try that. I was simply going to have to make the point that she had not treated my client, nor had she treated Ava.

  Dr. Own was sworn in, and Ally approached her. “Dr. Owen, you are here to testify today in this case. Can you please tell the jury a little bit about your credentials? Explain why it is that you are an expert on this issue?”

  She got closer to the microphone. “Yes. I am a psychologist, and I specialize in treating women who have been victims of domestic violence. In fact, I have treated thousands of women over the past 30 years. I’ve treated them for post-traumatic stress disorder as well – this is a disorder that often occurs when women have been badly abused, and they relive the incidents again and again. That has been my specialty, and I have testified in 300 expert trials on behalf of women who have been involved in domestic violence. I’ve also given lectures around the country on this issue. I received my PhD in psychology from Harvard University.”

  “And you have been pursuing your specialty for the past 30 years, is that correct?”

  “Yes. That is correct.”

  “Do you treat other kinds of patients as well? Patients who have not been involved in domestic violence situations?”

  “No. I concentrate only on women who are involved in abusive situations.”

  Ally paced back and forth in front of her. “And I want to make it clear to the jury that you did not actually treat Ava Porter, is that correct?”

  “Yes, that is correct.”

  “Now, in your professional opinion, in your expert opinion, when is a volatile situation, an abusive situation, most likely to result in the death of the abused partner?”

  “The most dangerous time in a volatile situation, where one partner is being severely abused by another, is when that partner has made plans to leave the abusive partner. That’s because the abuser has a need for power and control over the abused. And when the abuser is certain that he’s going to lose that power and control over his abused spouse, he often becomes homicidal. If the situation is going to become homicidal, it is often when the abused partner makes plans to leave.”

  “I have nothing further for this witness.”

  I stood up and approached Dr. Owen. “Now, Dr. Owen, you stated on direct that you did not actually treat Ava Porter. I just wanted to make that clear to the jury.”

  “Yes. That is correct. I did not treat Ava Porter.”

  “So you don’t actually know if Ava Porter was being abused by my client, Silas Porter, do you?”

  “No, I do not know if that is the case. That is not why I’m testifying. I’m simply testifying about the point that the state wanted to make, which is that the most dangerous time in a volatile domestic violence situation is when the abused makes plans to leave. That is the only thing I’m testifying to. I do not know if the woman involved in this case was actually abused.”

  “I have nothing further for this witness.”

  So far, I felt that I was trying to stay a little bit ahead of the witnesses, but none of the witnesses were quite clear. The officer wasn’t clear about the state of the structure that burned down – he couldn’t tell if it was a dungeon, or a simple guesthouse. The medical examiner wasn’t clear as to whether or not the dental records match that of Ava. And this witness wasn’t clear that Ava was not being abused. I thought that each witness was a bit of a wash, but, at the same time, if I were to gauge the strength of the case at this point, I would have to admit that the prosecution was probably slightly ahead.

  I hoped that I could change that though.

  By this time, it was 5 o’clock, and it was time for everyone to go home. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we shall recess until tomorrow morning at 9 AM,” Judge Pruitt announced after Dr. Owen left the stand. “Tomorrow, I expect everybody to be in their seats right at 9 AM because we’re going to start at that time. Thank you very much for your service today, and I shall see all of you back here tomorrow at 9 AM.”

  Chapter 24

  I got home from my first day of trial, and I was treated to a very unpleasant surprise. Gretchen came up to me, and she looked like she was about ready to shake me. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you,” she said. “And so has the school.”

  I sighed. This did not sound good. To say the least. “What’s going on?”

  “Nate’s been taken into custody,” she said. “He brought a gun to the school this morning.”

  My reaction to finding out that my 10-year-old son brought a gun to his school was probably more muted then it should have been. Part of me was shocked and horrified, but another part of me was not really all that surprised. Nate was troubled. Worse, he still wasn’t talking to me and I had no idea where he got that gun. I had a gun, but I had it locked up. I always felt I needed protection, because of my background and history. I was always looking over my shoulder, because I had to. It was a force of habit, after I got out of the joint, to make sure that I always had a piece at home. I just never dreamed that Nate would get a hold of it.

  “Guess I better go down to the detention center and find out what’s going on.”

  Nate’s school was going to install metal detectors, and make all the kids bring in clear backpacks, but somehow, those steps were not taken. Too many parents protested, and the school administrators had backed down. I had gone to the meetings, to voice my opinion, which was that I thought that the metal detectors and the clear backpack idea were sound, but I was overruled.

  And now my son was apparently in detention for bringing in a gun. I knew that he was troubled, but with my being so busy with the trial, I just wasn’t able to give him the time and attention that I needed to give him. I felt horribly guilty about that as I got into my car, after telling Gretchen that I would appreciate it if she stayed with Amelia while I went to take care of this matter.

  It was just what I didn’t need in the middle of a trial, but that was how life worked sometimes. Sometimes your kid ends up being nabbed for having a gun at school in the middle of a trial, and you just had to deal with it.

  The juvenile detention center was a part of the family justice complex on 26th and Gillham. It was right across the street from the Crown Center and a large church, Our Lady of Sorrows, which was built in the 1920s by German immigrants. I sped down there, parked the car, and sprinted into the detention center. “Hi,” I said to the armed receptionist. “My son, Nate Harrington, has been picked up and he’s in detention right now.” I showed her my bar card. “As you can see, I’m an attorney, and I need to see my son right away.”

  She buzzed me back to the detention facility, and I went into a small room with poor lighting and a long table, and I waited to see my son. He came out in five minutes. He was still in his street clothes, and he was not in handcuffs, but he was accompanied by an armed guard. He hung his head when he saw me, but he didn’t say a word.

  “Nate, I’m going to speak with the juvenile officer after I speak with you, but I think I’ll probably be able to take you home tonight.” That was the way
it worked in the 16th circuit. Normally juveniles who are picked up are returned to a custodial parent, unless there are extenuating circumstances. If there were extenuating circumstances, then a juvenile may be kept for 24 hours if the juvenile officer deems it necessary, or they may be held for longer, but they must have a hearing within 24 to 48 hours if they’re going to be detained. “But do you mind telling me why it is that you would have taken my gun to school?”

  He said nothing, but just shook his head. I gathered that I was going to have to speak with the officer in charge, to find out why it was that Nate would do that.

  “Listen kid, I’ve been where you are. Pissed-off at the world. Thinking that nobody was hearing me. I couldn’t find anybody to listen to me. I certainly couldn’t talk to my mother.” I didn’t say anything more about my mom to Nate. He didn’t know the problems that I had with my mom growing up. I never told him about her issues, because he was very close to my mom, and I didn’t want that to change. When he went to visit my mom, he came alive. He actually talked, because my mom had a way of getting him to communicate. She was a lot of things, most of them not good, but she related well to Nate, and that was important to me. I took a deep breath. “Anyhow, believe it or not, I know how you feel.”

  A part of me didn’t want to tell him that I knew how he felt. I always hated it when people would say that to me. Of course they didn’t know how I felt. How could they possibly know how I felt? Unless they were in my shoes, with an abusive stepfather and a drunk mother who was whoring herself, then they couldn’t possibly relate to what I was going through. It was sheer desperation that led me to shoot my stepfather while he slept. I truly thought that he was going to kill either me or my mom, maybe both of us. It was the darkest time in my life, even darker then the time that I spent in prison, because at that time I had nobody on my side. By the time I got to prison, I had the guys on my side, so things weren’t nearly as bad at that time as they were when I killed my stepfather.

  Nate, of course, was not dealing with anything near what I was at that time. But that didn’t matter. Whatever was troubling him, was real to him. His desperation was as palpable to him as mine was to me, and I had to realize that. I just wished that I could get into his head and figure out what was really bothering him so much. I knew that he missed Sarah desperately. After the Amelia debacle, Sarah disappeared altogether with her boyfriend. She was not going to resurface, not after what she did to me and Amelia. She tried to terminate my parental rights to Amelia, and that was the end of it for me. At the same time, I asked her to maintain a relationship with Nate, just because of how he felt about her. She refused, so Nate had not heard from her for many months.

  He just shrugged his shoulders.

  I went and found the juvenile officer, because I needed to talk to her about what it was that Nate had done at school that day. What had set him off, and made him take the gun to school. I hated that Nate himself did not feel that he could speak with me about that, but it was what it was. He wasn’t gonna talk to me, except for in his own time, so, in the meantime, I was simply going to have to talk to other people who knew what was going on.

  The juvenile officer who was involved in the case was named Terry Warner. I met her in her office. “I decided not to ask for a 24 hour hold for Nate, so you’re free to take him home tonight. Of course, you know the drill, so you know that there is going to be a hearing on his case in the near future. He’s going to have to be arraigned, and there is going to have to be a trial, just like in an adult case. In the meantime, it’s my understanding that Nate is going to be suspended from school, and maybe even expelled. That’s not my concern, of course, but I wanted to give you a heads up about that.”

  I nodded my head. I had represented juveniles in the juvenile court before, so she was right – I did know the drill. I just hoped that it would never come to this. I had hoped that neither one of my kids would ever be involved in the juvenile system, like I was when I was their age, but apparently these hopes were not to be. I was going to obviously have to speak with the school administrators about hopefully having Nate remain in school. The last thing I wanted was for him to be expelled from school, because that would make his life even more unstable than it was. I understood why the school wanted to expel him, of course, but I hoped that they would change their mind about that.

  “Can you tell me what happened? Do you have any idea why it was that Nate would have brought a gun to school?”

  “From what I understand, after speaking with some of the kids in school, Nate was being bullied by a boy by the name of James Royal. From what the kids told me, James has decided that Nate is gay, and he’s been bullying him about that for months. He’s gotten the other kids into the act, bullying him and teasing him, and, from what his best friend, Charles Whitford, told me, Nate had had enough. Nate himself refuses to talk to me, but he talked to Charles, who talked to me. Charles told me that Nate told him that he was going to end the bullying once and for all. So he brought the gun into the school, and started flashing it around in his classroom, and he even aimed it at James. He aimed it at James and threatened him with it. The teacher immediately called 911 and the officers arrived to take Nate into custody.”

  I thought about what Officer Warner was telling me. James was bullying Nate about being gay. I wondered if it was true. If it was, then that would explain a lot of things – why Nate had been so silent, and sullen. Why he had clammed up and just decided to quit speaking with me about his feelings. I had assumed that he was just troubled because of the divorce from Sarah, but maybe there was something more. Maybe Nate was struggling with himself.

  Was Nate struggling with his identity? He was only 10 years old, but I knew that a great many people who were gay knew it from a very young age. Not that that was a problem with Nate – it could very well be that this James person was just looking for an excuse to pick on him. At the same time, I needed to let him know that if he needed to speak with me about whether or not he was gay, he could. I knew that he had this idea that I was some kind of macho man who wouldn’t understand problems such as questioning sexuality. It didn’t make me entirely comfortable to ask him about it, but I knew I was going to have to try.

  “Thanks for talking with me,” I said to Officer Warner. “I’m sure I’ll see you in court for Nate’s court date.”

  I went through the paperwork to have Nate released to me, and I got Nate to take him home. We got in the car, and I looked at him. “Nate, buddy, I told you earlier that you can talk to me about anything. And that means that you can talk to me about anything. Absolutely anything. I hope you know that.”

  He looked at me, and opened his mouth. It looked like he was about ready to say something.

  But what came out of his mouth was something I was not prepared for.

  “I took the gun to school, because I wanted to threaten James. But it wasn’t just him that I wanted to threaten. It was also my teacher, Mrs. Bowen.” He looked out the window. “She’s touched me, dad. She’s touched me in a bad place.”

  Chapter 25

  Nate told me about what happened with his teacher Mrs. Bowen, and I knew that I was going to have to go over and see her right at that moment. I also went ahead and called Harper, because I needed her to possibly take the lead on the trial for the morning session. I had a feeling that I was going to be talking with the police about Mrs. Bowen, or, at the very least, I was going to be dealing with the matter in one way or another.

  I called Harper, and she understood. “Of course,” she said. “That’s what second-chairs are for.” And she was right about that. A second-chair for a trial was a bit like an understudy for a play - if something happens to the lead, the understudy is ready to take the reins. I knew that Harper knew Silas’s case as much as I did, so I felt confident that she would be able to step in and take control of the trial.

  I had Mrs. Bowen’s address, and I drove right over to her house. She lived in a modest Tudor- style house in the Leawood area, which
was by the school itself. I knew that she was married to a man who was also an attorney, but his specialty was personal injury, so I didn’t really know him all that well.

  I went right up to her door, and knocked on it. She answered it within a few minutes. When I saw her, I knew that she had been drinking quite a bit. I tried to tamp down my rage, before opening my mouth. I couldn’t lose control – that would not do anybody any good. “Mrs. Bowen, I’m Nate Harrington’s father. I need to speak with you right now.”

  She looked around, as if she was afraid that somebody was going to hear her talking to me. “I knew that you would be coming to see me tonight, after what happened with Nate in school today. I’m very sorry about that – I knew that James had been harassing Nate for months, and I didn’t do enough about it. I guess that in hindsight, what Nate ended up doing was foreseeable. I should have done more to make sure that it didn’t come to this.”

  “Are you alone?” I asked her. “Because I need to speak with you alone.”

  She nodded her head. “My husband is away on a business trip. So yes, I am alone. Would you like to come in?”

  I looked over at Nate, who was looking at me from inside the car. “With all due respect, my son is in the car, and he does not want to come out. So no, I don’t want to come in. But I do need to speak with you.”

  She stepped out, and closed the door behind her. “Okay,” she said. “What do you need to speak with me about?”

  I took a deep breath. “Nate told me about what you’ve been doing to him for the past few months. I have called the cops, and they’re going to be here within a few –” At that, I heard the unmistakable sound of a siren, and I saw the cops pull up in front of her house.

  “What the hell is going on?” she asked me. “Why did you call the cops on me?”

  “I think you know. I’m going to go into the station, and I’m going to tell them what Nate told me. I just wanted to give you a fair warning. I also wanted to tell you that if you ever come near my son again, he won’t be the one with the gun, but I will be. And I won’t have the gun because I needed somebody’s attention. I’ll have that gun because I’m going to use it.” I didn’t tell her that I had experience with killing people with a gun, namely my stepfather when I was 15, but that thought was in my mind. All I could think about was that I was capable of anything to protect the people that I loved. And that meant absolutely anything.