Stranglehold. Part 34

The Burden of Proof

"It's for you." Cindy held out the phone. "Owen Sansom."

Lydia took the telephone and Cindy went back to what she was doing-simultaneously preparing them a meal of chicken cacciatore, green beans and pasta, clearing her daughter Gail's toys and books off the kitchen table and sipping her second bottle of Miller Lite.

"I thought I'd find you here," said Sansom. "G.o.d, Lydia, I hate to have to tell you this. But Robert's recanted."

"He's what?"

"He's recanted."

"Oh G.o.d, no!"

Cindy stopped everything, stood there with ca.s.serole dish in hand and stared at her.

"I just talked to Andrea Stone. She got a call half an hour ago from Lois Strawn at the shelter. Robert told her that everything he said to the state police was a lie. That he made up everything."

"I don't understand. Why? Why would he do that?"

"I don't know for sure but I've got a pretty good idea."

"Why?"

"You're not going to like this. Lois Strawn says he had a visitor earlier. Arthur. All very civil, she says-but Andrea had a bad feeling about it anyway. She asked if Strawn had left the room at any point. Seems that while they were talking Arthur opened up a cut on his finger and she went out to the kitchen for some towels and a Band-Aid. She was only gone a minute or two but h.e.l.l, how long does it have to take? I can't prove it, but I'd bet anything Arthur threatened him."

"I'm going over there."

"That's a lousy idea. Even if you could get him to admit that Arthur threatened him, at this point it's going to look like coercion on your part. Like you're exerting undue pressure. Andrea Stone's over there right now, taking his statement to submit to Judge Burke. Let's see what she comes up with. And I don't care what he's saying now-those videotapes are still very convincing. Burke's going to have a d.a.m.ned hard time overlooking them. These were police experts doing the questioning and Burke knows it."

"So what am I supposed to do? Just sit here and hope and pray that he believes my son's first confession and not his second? Jesus!"

She felt Cindy's hand on her shoulder. Only then was she aware that she was shaking.

"I don't like it any more than you do, honestly. But ..."

"Arthur's not playing by the rules. Why the h.e.l.l should we have to?"

She heard him sigh. "Lydia, I think you already know the answer to that. Think about it. You already all but admitted in court that you were willing to break the law in order to get what you wanted out of this. That's the way Burke sees it, anyway. He also sees you as p.r.o.ne to hysteria. Given that, the only way to do this is to go about it calmly and correctly and keep a low profile until we hear from him. Believe me, it's the only way."

"I'm taking him. G.o.dd.a.m.n it! I'm ..."

"No, you're not. We haven't come this far so you and Robert can become a pair of fugitives! Listen to me. I want you to calm down. I want you to tell Cindy to pour you a drink-a stiff one-and I want you to stay there and hang tight until I hear from Andrea. Okay? I'll phone you right away as soon as I do. Promise me."

"Owen, I ..."

"Promise me, Lydia."

She felt old and weary, defeated-and sick with shame for feeling that way. She couldn't afford to feel defeated. Probably he was right. She had to summon the patience somehow and the strength and faith in some kind of future for them that would allow her to do this one more time.

"All right," she said. "All right, Owen."

"I'll call you as soon as I know."

She hung up the phone.

"Oh, honey," Cindy said, both hands on her shoulders now, not even knowing what was going on but getting it right, knowing somehow exactly how she was feeling and putting it perfectly-quietly and perfectly and succinctly into words.

"You do get the s.h.i.+t, don't you?"

Andrea Stone thought the instruction was unusual to say the least. When she returned to her office there was a message on her desk from Judge Burke, saying that he wanted to hear the tape of her interview with Robert Danse immediately. That he would still be in chambers.

And that he intended to make a ruling in the morning.

She phoned Owen Sansom and gave him the gist of it and then walked across the street to the courts building. The street was dark. She saw that one of the streetlights was out and it gave her a strange uneasy feeling as though someone had vandalized the light, knocked it out purposely, as though typical urban street crime had reached this far north into the boonies and from now on was going to be part of the lives of all of them.

When it was probably just a burned-out bulb.

She presented her ID to the guard and walked the dimly lit hall to the judge's chambers.

She found him sitting at his desk, turned to a VCR and television monitor, listening to Robert say, "He messes with me back here ... with this ..." She closed the door quietly and saw him push a b.u.t.ton on the remote. The screen went black.

"Ms. Stone," he said.

She handed him the small voice-activated tape recorder. "The tape's inside?"

''Yes.''

He handled the recorder as though unfamiliar with this kind of gadget, turning it, frowning, looking at the control panel on the side and then putting it down in front of him on the big oak desk.

"So?" he said.

"Excuse me?"

"So how did it go? With the boy. How did you find him?"

"Upset," she said. "Nervous. Scared."

"Scared of what?"

"You're asking my opinion?"

"Yes, I am."

"I believe he's scared that he'll never see home again at this rate. And I believe that he's scared of his father." Burke nodded.

"I'll speak candidly, Ms. Stone. This doesn't surprise me. This videotape ... I've watched it half a dozen times ... both these interviews with him tend to be convincing."

"He recants it all on my tape, Your Honor."

"So I understand. After seeing his father."

"And according to Mrs. Strawn, seeing him alone. For a minute or two at least."

"Unfortunate. And this tape of yours-is this convincing too? Objectively speaking?"

"I have a problem with it."

"What's that?"

"He won't say why he supposedly lied to the psychologists in the first place. Why he would want to implicate his father. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

"Could it have been the mother? Coaching him?"

"I doubt it, Your Honor. I doubt it very much. I think he told them the truth down there."

"At this point I tend to agree. Despite what my feelings are regarding the mother's actions in the case, I ..."

"Your Honor ..."

He stopped her. "I understand that we don't agree on this, Ms. Stone. It's not the point. The point is, right now, the father."

"Yes, Your Honor."

He sighed. "I'll listen to the tape. Thanks for delivering it at this late hour. These cases demand a lot of all of us, it seems to me. Trying to do the appropriate thing for a child such as this, trying to prevent further damage." He smiled ruefully. "Late hours are the least of it. Anyhow, thank you, Ms. Stone. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Thank you, Your Honor."

As she stepped outside and quietly closed the door she heard her own voice coming from the other side, tinny and thin-sounding, from the tape.

The man was willing to do his homework, anyway.

She realized that despite what the judge had said about the credibility of the videotape she was still afraid for Robert Danse. Preventing further damage was a tricky thing. When there had been so much already.

She thought not for the first time that child abuse was a kind of parasite, one that digs in deep and painfully at first so that you can see its effects quite clearly if you happen to be looking. But then sometimes after a while the symptoms almost seemed to disappear. The insidious thing about a parasite was that you got used to it, the pain notwithstanding. The feeding of the abuser. The slow starvation of the victim. Both became routine. Part of the organization of the internal structure of life.

While all the time the thing inside grew and grew, the sheer need of it constantly expanding. And eventually-if it ever did come to light-leaving its famished, wasted host to fend for himself as best he could in order to seek whoever and whatever else had come in contact with it. Family, friends, marriages.

Getting inside them too.

Even courts. Even lawyers and judges.

The parasite didn't think. It fed.

And nothing was exempt.

There was no reason involved. No intelligence to speak of in the organism.

Only hunger.

It was up to them, to the social services system and the courts, to apply reason like a poultice to a wound made by long seasons of the lack of it-while they themselves already had the thing inside them too, had already been affected.

Some of them, like herself and Judge Burke, over and over again.

It changed them. One way or another.

She wondered if any of them were really up to the job. And how the judge would find tomorrow.

She walked to her car across the darkened street. An hour's drive from home, she thought, another hour maybe to get to bed. Already she wished for sleep.

There were times she'd thought she'd like to have a husband and kids of her own someday but this was not one of them. Not with this thing inside her.

I hope they get that G.o.dd.a.m.n light fixed by tomorrow, she thought.

We need some G.o.dd.a.m.n light here.

Thirty-two.

Judgment

She saw the door open and Sansom, Wood and Stone emerge from the judge's chambers and got up from the bench. None of them looked happy. Wood paused and said something to the other two and then walked off alone down the corridor. Sansom and Stone glanced at her and then seemed to avoid her eyes as they approached her.

My G.o.d. How bad was it?

How much worse could it be?

She sat down again, unwilling to trust her legs a moment longer. Sansom sat to her left, Andrea Stone to her right.

"n.o.body wins on this one," Sansom said. He shook his head. "G.o.d."