Gibbon's Decline and Fall (57 page)

“This next sequence is of a female who was raised in isolation, giving birth.”

They saw the birth, the expression on the face. Fear. Anger. Panic, as the feeble infant was pushed away, buried under straw, trod upon, ignored.

“Chimp infants are helpless for the first four weeks of life,” said Jessamine. “Mothers have to carry them at least that long, until they can cling. If an infant isn't carried and nursed, it dies.”

The courtroom was quiet, every eye fixed on the screen.

“The last sequence on this film is human. It was taken during the Bosnian conflict of ninety-three-ninety-four. A woman photographer was part of a team documenting atrocities committed during that conflict; she'd been caught away from her team when an attack occurred, and she took refuge in a barn occupied by a half-dozen refugees. The woman at the back of the picture had been repeatedly raped by Serbs, impregnated, had escaped, had been hiding, and this film shows her giving birth.”

The film, in badly lit black-and-white, observed a haggard woman lying on the straw, hands frantically pulling, feet braced, face contorted. Then a sudden relaxation. For a time the woman lay as though stunned. There was another quaver, and she lay for a time again. Then she sat up, pushed herself away from the bloody mess in the straw, and pulled clean straw down to cover it. The straw moved. The woman looked away from it, her face twisted. She staggered to her feet, stepped over the straw without looking at it, and went away. The film ended.

Carolyn waited while murmurs in the courtroom subsided. “Do you see a parallel, Dr. Ortiz, between the film you have shown us and the case before this court?”

“I can cite many studies which establish that parenting is a largely learned activity. I know from talking with the defendant that she never learned anything about parenting. Though we have used chimps as examples, men and women are also primates, and their instinctive behavior is similar. I have seen women reject newborn infants when hurt or helpless. I know that the defendant had no help at all and she was impregnated through forcible, painful rape. She was an extremely poor risk as a parent.”

“Did she commit murder, Dr. Ortiz?”

“If there was a murder, the murder was done by the society that allows young men to grow up as rapists, the society that allowed this girl to stay ignorant, that offered her no help before she became pregnant, and that offered her no help once she was.”

“I have no further questions,” said Carolyn.

Jagger was already on his feet. “Dr. Ortiz,” he said, voice bearing down on the “doctor,” sneering the title, making it doubtful. “You are telling this court that this defendant is not responsible for killing her child?”

“She never thought of it as her child, any more than that Bosnian woman did. She didn't think at all.”

“She gave birth to it!”

“Her
body
gave birth to it. Our bodies do a lot of things we don't want or intend them to. We catch the flu, but that doesn't make us experts on infectious diseases. We break out in hives, but that doesn't make us allergists. When a girl gets raped, why do we believe that being pregnant makes her an expert on childbirth and parenting? It's ridiculous.”

“She was a mother! She had to take care of it!”

His voice was outraged, almost trembling. Carolyn looked up, curiously. Here was the Hail Mary Assumption in spades. What would Jessamine do with it?

“No,” Jessamine said at last. “That rule was made by men. Men have no experience of childbirth or pregnancy; few of them have experienced rape, but they believe their seed is somehow so important that women must not only submit to it but also honor and serve it impeccably. Men make laws saying so. Notwithstanding, the law can't make a woman accept a pregnancy she hasn't wanted and agreed to. She may choose to accept it, of her own will, but merely being impregnated doesn't make a mother. It never has.”

She took a breath; then, moved by some obscure impulse, she blurted, “As for fathering, raping a woman sure doesn't make a father.”

His eyes blazed at her. “You're aware that courts have repeatedly held the rights even of biological fathers who were unaware of the pregnancy.”

Jessamine met his eyes calmly, refusing to be browbeaten. “In 1999, however, the Supreme Court let stand a state law that says no man can ever assert parental rights to a child unless he was legally married to the mother of the child at the time of the conception and at the time of the birth. Human parenting is done by intention. Without that intention human parenthood doesn't happen. Cells don't make a parent. Being there does.”

Jagger was ashen, almost immobilized by fury.

“Counselor?” asked the judge, eyebrows raised. “Mr. Jagger?”

For a moment he merely stood. “No further questions,” he grated, almost unintelligibly.

“Ms. Crespin?” said the judge.

There were a dozen questions Carolyn wanted to ask, but not here, not now. Why was Jagger in a rage? It was more than anger at her for having tricked him. More than annoyance. Something primal, some age-old grievance he had with the world.

“No further questions of this witness, Your Honor. I call Gilbert Devaca.”

Lolly reached up and clutched her sleeve, whispering urgently, “What you doin' with him? You don't want to talk to him!”

Carolyn leaned down. “Lolly, take it easy. He'll be a good witness for you—just hush. I'll take care of you.”

Gilbert Devaca was sworn, a stocky boy in his midteens, who gave an address just down the block from the Ashaler apartment.

“Mr. Devaca, on the Fourth of July last year, 1999, did you and a group of boys take Lolly Ashaler over to the area behind El Camino machine shops?”

“Yeah. We was just foolin' aroun'.”

“When you got there, was Lolly Ashaler raped?”

“Well, yeah, I suppose. Crank, he had her. An' Henry B., he stuck a bottle in her.”

“You didn't do either of those things?”

“No.”

“Did she object? Did she fight?”

“She was yelling and there was blood all over.”

“Why was Lolly raped?”

“She was … it was kind of a test, like.”

“A test.”

“Henry B. said Crank couldn't do it no more, and Crank said Henry B. couldn't, so they got Lolly over there to show they could. Me 'n' the others, we was just there.”

“No further questions, Your Honor,” said Carolyn.

Jagger declined to ask any questions at all. He sat in his chair, ruminous with anger, staring at two members of the jury, his face clearing as they nodded to him very slightly—so slightly, no one should have noticed.

Carolyn, however, had seen it. Taking a deep breath, she rested her case, saying, “Before summation, Your Honor, may I have a brief recess?”

“Court will reconvene in fifteen minutes.”

Carolyn slipped down the aisle and out into the corridor. Where in hell was her investigator? He'd said he'd be here! She looked around for a phone. He had a beeper, if she just had time to …

Then she saw him, coming up the stairs. He caught sight of her and nodded.

“What?” she whispered when he came closer.

He handed her several photostats. “They've been arrested two or three times each, in Albuquerque and elsewhere. Clinic blockading. Those are copies of the indictments. They haven't even lived in Santa Fe County long enough to be
called for jury duty. They moved in after they were selected. Somebody played games.”

“Bless you,” she said.

A few moments later the bailiff called for order. Carolyn stood. “Before summation, Your Honor, may I approach?”

Judge Rombauer beckoned to her and to Jagger. Carolyn leaned on the desk, passing over the copies.

“What is this?” the judge asked.

“I have been made aware,” Carolyn replied, “that these two jurors lied during jury selection. I specifically asked the panel if they held strong opinions about birth control and abortion. I am now informed that these two people, who answered negatively, have both been arrested for such activities in Albuquerque. These are copies of the indictments.”

“I can't see that it makes any difference,” grated Jagger, his voice no angrier than his eyes.

Carolyn murmured, “To the contrary. We would assume such persons were prejudiced against the defendant. In any case, they lied. They're guilty of perjury. Also, I have been informed that these people are residents of Bernalillo County. They never should have been called for this jury panel.”

“We'd have to check that,” snarled Jagger.

“You're asking for a mistrial,” said the judge, almost hopefully.

“The alternates haven't been named yet,” Carolyn said. “It would be possible to take these two out. It would leave us with no alternates, but on the other hand, deliberations are unlikely to be lengthy and alternates are unlikely to be needed.…”

“I'll take it under advisement,” said Rombauer, his eyes moving down the copies, from one to the next. “Ah, um, since it's already four-thirty, I think we'll leave summation until morning. That'll give me time to consider this.”

Carefully not looking in Jagger's direction, Carolyn gathered up Ophy and Jessamine and departed.

“Jagger was mad,” whispered Jessamine.

“He looked like a stroke about to happen,” Ophy agreed.

“I know,” Carolyn murmured, glad she had parked some distance from the courthouse that morning. At least her car hadn't been sitting right there, inviting someone to put a bomb in it.

When they arrived at the farm, they found the kitchen busy, with Faye, Bettiann, and Agnes much in charge.

“How'd it go?” Hal whispered into Carolyn's hair when she went to the bedroom to change.

“Like yesterday, the courtroom all but empty. If it had just been some other judge. Any other judge. Oh, Hal, I don't know what Jessamine said that did it, but Jagger got so angry at her testimony, he's almost boiling.…”

“He's dangerous, Carolyn.”

“You don't know how dangerous.” She told him about Swinter. “When we came out of the courthouse, I actually worried about whether there might be a bomb in my car!”

“Tomorrow somebody should drive you and pick you up.”

“That may get us through tomorrow. What do we do afterward? If we win, he'll come after us. If we lose, he'll come after us. He won't forget this.” She wiped at her eyes, which had overflowed. “Hal, I've been feeling this sense of … menace, I guess. I'd thought it was the trial, but it wasn't. Isn't. I thought it was Jagger, but it's more than that. I can't shake it!”

“My fault,” he murmured. “I brought up Webster's connection.”

“Is it Webster that's bothering me? I really don't know for sure. All I know is, I keep wanting to look over my shoulder. I keep feeling like I'm being watched.” She shuddered.

“You need to get away from here,” he said. “We both do. As soon as this case is over, we'll take a vacation.”

Jessamine and Ophy offered to drop Carolyn off at the courthouse Wednesday morning, and then to go elsewhere within range of Carolyn's beeper. Protective paranoia, as Ophy defined it, which was preferable to passive paranoia. Accordingly, the three of them rose early. While Jessamine made coffee and Ophy toasted muffins, Carolyn found a stick and went down the drive to pick up the paper. Her state of mind was measured by the length of the stick she carried to fish the paper out of the box, in case there was a bomb inside. The paper fluttered to the ground, and she turned it over with the stick before picking it up. She didn't look at it until they were at the table. Even then she almost missed the item, not a large one, at the bottom of the front page.

“They got him,” she blurted.

“What?” Jessamine asked.

“Rombauer. They've arrested him!”

Almost whispering, she read it aloud. Deactivation vaults
had been opened at the behest of the attorney general's office. Three juveniles, restored to movement and sense, testified they had been molested by the judge in return for promised lighter sentences. The setting on their vaults had been life, though the sentence had actually been only two years.

“What will they do?” Ophy asked. “About the trial?”

“I haven't a clue.” Carolyn picked up her cup, feeling her hand shake. “One thing I do know. Rombauer won't be on the bench.”

“What do we do?”

Carolyn stared at the clock, almost without seeing it. “There's no one at the courthouse this early, so we can't call. Probably the best thing to do is go on into town as planned. We'll find out when we get there.”

She went to wake Hal, who had his head buried under the pillow, resolutely unconscious. She had to tell him three times before he opened his eyes.

“So it came off.” He grinned sleepily, the grin of an old wolf who hadn't forgotten anything he'd ever known about wolfing. “Your friend Josh is quite a guy.”

“You had him in on it?”

“I had the pictures, but they weren't enough by themselves. So I found Josh, and he gave me a statement, and I faxed the statement to Mike, along with the pictures, and Mike said he'd push the AG's office to release the three kids and get statements from them. A local reporter got the copies of the pictures from, need I say, an anonymous source, and if it went the way we planned, he and the photographer were waiting when they untanked the kids. My bet is the kids told their story, and why not? They'll probably sell their life histories to make a TV movie.”

“Lord, we may actually have a chance with this case! Jagger will be apoplectic!”

He yawned, almost chuckling. “A better chance than I thought you had yesterday.”

She shook her head, trying to get whirling thoughts to settle. “Jessy and Ophy are driving me to town. Chances are the trial will be delayed. If it is, we can't afford to waste the day. As soon as it's a reasonable hour, would you call the McCrackens and ask if I can borrow their Land Rover? They offered last time we dog-sat for them while they were in Jamaica. Maybe there'll be time for the DFC to go hunting Lizard Rock.”