Guilt by Association (62 page)

“How much do you weigh?”

“About two hundred and fifteen pounds.”

“Would you say you were in good physical shape?”

“Fairly good. As good as a candidate on the road six days out of seven can be, anyway.”

“And yet you say that a five-foot-six-inch, one-hundred-and-ten-pound woman pinned you against the hood of your car?”

“Yes.”

“You then say that this unbelievably strong, although small, woman dragged you into the bushes and demanded that you perform sexual acts on her and abuse her in the process?”

“Yes.”

“And you obliged her?”

“I’m not proud of it, but yes, I had sex with her.”

“And you bruised her?”

“She begged me to be rough with her. I may have bruised her slightly.”

“Slightly? You consider a black eye, a broken nose, and a split lip that took seven stitches slight?”

“I don’t recall doing any of those things.”

“And you also claim she scratched you, and that it was from passion and not an attempt to fight you off?”

“Yes.”

“And these scratches, were they hard enough to dig into the skin on your chest and cause actual bleeding?”

“Yes.”

“Did it hurt?”

“I suppose it did.”

“Yet you did nothing about it? You didn’t cry out, you didn’t protest, you didn’t slap her, you didn’t pin her hands beneath her to keep her from doing it again?”

“No.”

“You just went right on doing whatever it was you were doing?”

“Yes.”

“And after you had this consensual sex, you simply got into your car and left her there, in the middle of Golden Gate Park,
in the middle of the night, with her clothes in shreds, her nose and lip bleeding and no visible means of getting home?”

“I never saw any blood,” Robert protested. “And I would have taken her home. I didn’t want to leave her there. She insisted.”

“She needed medical attention, she was practically naked, her purse was in your car so she had no money for a taxi, or even a telephone call, and yet you want this jury to believe that she insisted on staying where she was?”

“I know it sounds crazy now, but yes, she did.”

At ten minutes after two in the afternoon, Tess finished her cross-examination of the defendant and returned to her seat with a nod to Lamar Pope, who stood at the rear of the courtroom.

“Senator Willmont,” Hal Sutton redirected, “did you rape Karen Doniger on the night of April seventh?”

“No,” Robert declared. “I did not.”

“The Defense rests,” the Silver Fox said.

“Miss Escalante?” Judge Washington inquired.

Tess stood up. “The People have one rebuttal witness, Your Honor. We call Margaret Smith to the stand …”

Sutton looked at his client. The senator shrugged and shook his head.

“… Margaret Holden Smith.”

In the second row of the gallery, Randy and Mary Catherine
looked at each other in surprise. At the defense table, Robert Willmont blanched.

“Stop her,” he hissed at his attorney. “Whatever you have to do, stop her.”

“Uh—may we approach, Your Honor?” Sutton cried, jumping quickly to his feet.

Washington nodded and covered his microphone with one hand as he gestured the two attorneys forward with the other.

“What is it, Mr. Sutton?”

“Defense has had no prior notification of this witness. The name does not appear on any of the lists we received. We object to her testimony being presented.”

Tess swallowed a smile. “I apologize for the short notice, Your Honor, but I wasn’t even contacted by Mrs. Smith until yesterday,
after court had begun. As soon as possible, after receiving her message, I had my associate notify your clerk about the existence of a potential rebuttal witness. But, until I had the opportunity to interview her in person, which wasn’t until late last night, I couldn’t be sure her information was relevant.”

“The assistant district attorney is correct, Counselor,” Washington concurred. “We did receive notification. She did follow procedure.”

“Then, at the very least, Your Honor, I would want a continuance,” the Silver Fox argued, entirely unsure of his footing,
“until defense has had the opportunity to take the witness’s deposition and then has had time to study it and conduct a thorough investigation of its own.”

“And just how long would you anticipate this taking, Counselor?” the judge asked.

“I would think it might take two or three weeks at a minimum,” Sutton estimated.

“Somehow, that’s what I thought you’d say.” Washington sighed. “Miss Escalante?”

“It’s July the second, Your Honor. Even two weeks would put us past the convention, and I seem to recall that the reason I had barely two months to prepare for this case was because defense wanted a resolution before July thirteenth.”

“She has a point, Counselor,” the judge acknowledged.

“May I have a moment to confer with my client, Your Honor?” the defense attorney requested.

Washington nodded.

Tess kept her face carefully blank.

“What the hell is going on?” Sutton demanded with his lips to his client’s ear. “I’m operating blind here. Just how far do you really want me to go with this?”

“As far as you have to,” Robert declared.

“We’re not going to be able to exclude this witness’s testimony. Escalante went by the book. The best we can get is a continuance that will take us past the convention. What can this Margaret Smith do to you?”

Robert looked at his attorney for a moment. “She can bury me,” he said.

“My client seeks a continuance, Your Honor,” Sutton said, returning to the bench.

“In chambers,” declared Washington, advising the jury and sweeping from the courtroom. “Now, what’s this all about?” he demanded as soon as the door had closed.

“The senator realizes that a continuance will take us past the convention,” explained Sutton, “but he feels his rights would otherwise be compromised.”

“What have you got, Miss Escalante?” asked the judge.

“The senator said, under oath, that prior to April seventh he had never been unfaithful to his wife and had never in his lifetime raped anyone,” Tess responded. “Mrs. Smith is prepared to rebut both statements.”

“Hearsay,” snapped Sutton.

“Not exactly,” corrected the ADA. She turned to the judge. “I believe you know me better than that, Your Honor. I’ve never had a case come back on me.”

The judge nodded slowly.

“Besides,” Tess continued, “had I had the proper length of time to prepare my case, defense would have had all the time necessary to prepare its cross.”

Washington sighed. “Both the district attorney’s office and my office did everything in their power to expedite this trial,
Counselor,” he told Sutton, “in order to get you the speedy resolution you not only requested, but demanded. So I’m not particularly inclined to grant you any lengthy delay. But I’ll tell you what I
will
do—I’ll allow Miss Escalante to present her witness and then, if you wish to take the long weekend to prepare your cross-examination,
you may do so. However, I intend to have this case wrapped up and sent to jury by the middle of next week. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” both attorneys replied.

“Then let’s get on with it.”

“You can’t let her testify,” Robert hissed when Sutton returned to the courtroom and resumed his seat.

“I can’t stop her,” the Silver Fox hissed back. “But we have the weekend to plan a rebuttal.”

Maggie Holden Smith, looking even lovelier than Randy and Mary Catherine remembered, walked to the witness stand and took the oath.

“Mrs. Smith,” Tess began, “will you tell the court how you came to be acquainted with the defendant?”

“I worked as a secretary in Senator Willmont’s office in Washington, D.C., from January to June of 1984,” the rebuttal witness said in a naturally husky voice.

“Did you enjoy working there?”

“For the most part. The job was exciting, the pace was incredible, and there were really important people coming and going all the time that, before then, I had only read about in newspapers or seen on television.”

“This was important to you?”

“I graduated Brigham Young University with a degree in political science and all I wanted to do was work in Washington. I was twenty-two years old and full of ideals, and this was my first exposure to the world of power and politics.”

“You said you liked your job, for the most part. What part of the job didn’t you like?”

“I didn’t like it much when the senator was there.”

“Why not?”

“Because he used to hang around my desk a lot, making comments that embarrassed me.”

“What sort of comments?”

“Oh, things like how distracting I was to have around, or how he wished he were single when he looked at me, or how he could be arrested for what he was thinking when I walked across the room. Things like that.”

“Did you take these remarks seriously?”

“I thought he was probably kidding, but it made me very uncomfortable anyway.”

“Did you discuss how you felt with Senator Willmont? Did
you
ask him to stop?”

“Heavens, no. I was just a kid, all on my own in the big city, and I really needed my job. I was afraid if I said anything to him I might get fired. But after a while I got up enough courage to tell his administrative assistant. She said that was just the way he was and I should try not to let it bother me. But she must have seen how upset I was because she promised she would talk to him. I guess she did because he stopped doing it for a while.”

In the gallery, Mary Catherine nodded slowly. She remembered the lovely young woman almost in tears, and the senator’s shrugging off her remonstrations with a laugh.

“Then what happened?”

“About a month or so later, it started again, only it got
worst.
Even though I wasn’t his personal secretary, he would ask me to bring him coffee or files or something, and then when I came into his office he would stare me up and down. He said he’d like it better if I wore low-cut clothes because it would show off my bosom, and he wished miniskirts were still in style so he could see more of my legs.”

“When the senator made these remarks, weren’t you able to just laugh them off?”

“I come from a very conservative, very religious family, Miss Escalante, where making remarks about such matters just isn’t considered decent. He made me feel like I had no value as a person, and it was humiliating.”

“What did you do?”

“I started looking for another job.”

“Did you find one?”

“I had a final interview with a congresswoman from Connecticut scheduled for the third Wednesday in June. She really liked me and I think I would have gotten the job.”

“Your Honor, I fail to see any relevance in a discussion of Mrs. Smith’s employment history,” Sutton objected.

“If the court will allow me to proceed,” Tess rejoined, “I’m sure it will find this witness’s testimony to be entirely relevant.”

“Objection overruled,” Judge Washington decided. “But let’s get to the point, Miss Escalante.”

“What happened on the day before your final interview with the congresswoman from Connecticut?”

“The senator’s secretary was out sick,” Maggie replied, “and the senator asked me to stay and retype a paper he had written.
I didn’t really want to, but he promised it would only be for an hour or two and I didn’t know how to refuse without sounding like a real idiot, and I needed the overtime anyway, so I agreed. But he kept making changes and I had to keep retyping, and it was almost ten o’clock by the time I was finished. He offered to buy me dinner, in appreciation, but I said it was too late. So then he offered to drive me home. He said it was the least he could do.”

In the second row on the right side of the gallery, the Sullivan Street set began to look at one another with growing anticipation and Ted sat up a little straighter in his seat.

Across the aisle, Randy felt the cold knot that had been occupying the pit of his stomach begin to tighten. Beside him, Mary Catherine sat like a stone.

“Did you accept his offer?” Tess inquired.

“Well, it
was
late,” Maggie replied, “I was tired and the buses weren’t very reliable at that hour. Besides, he hadn’t been offensive during the evening, and I didn’t want him to think I was rude, so yes, I let him drive me home.”

She shivered and clutched at the arms of her chair.

“Would you like a glass of water?” Tess asked gently.

The witness shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said in an uneven voice. “It’s just hard to talk about, even after all these years.”

“Take your time.”

Maggie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I lived in Alexandria, which is about forty-five minutes out of the city,
and when we got there he asked if he could come in and use the bathroom, being that it was such a long drive back to Rock Creek Park, where he lived. The apartment was a mess. My roommate had just left for vacation and half her wardrobe was left where she’d dropped it and I didn’t really want to invite him in. But how do you tell a United States senator that he can’t come in and go to the bathroom because your roommate’s closet is all over the floor? So I let him in and then I just waited by the front door to let him right out again. But when he came out of the bathroom he was taking off his jacket and untying his tie and he said, ‘You can close the door—I’m not planning on leaving just yet.’“ The former secretary took another deep breath. “And then he raped me.”

A startled gasp rose up from every corner of the packed courtroom and met the echo of Margaret Holden Smith’s words.

“Your Honor, I object to this totally uncorroborated testimony!” the Silver Fox cried.

“Sit down, Counselor!” Oliver Wendell Washington barked. “You’ll have your chance to cross-examine.”

“Senator Robert Willmont raped you?” Tess pressed the witness.

“Yes,” Maggie confirmed. “He told me I had been asking for it for months, teasing him, enticing him with my sexy dresses and phony modesty, and it was time to end the game. He forced himself on me, and when I tried to resist—tried to scream—he beat me, slapping me with his open hand and punching me with his fist. When he finished with me, he got up and straightened his clothes and told me maybe it would be better if I didn’t come back to work at his office. I told him I had no intention of coming back. I told him I was going to the police.”