The Code of the Hills (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

A
S SHE WALKED
down the stairs to the courthouse coffee shop, Elsie pulled off her suit jacket and rolled it into a ball, taking care to avoid touching Taney's spittle. She longed to escape to her office and lock herself inside. The hearing and the aftermath in the hallway had sucked all the sap out of her. However, she had an obligation to her witnesses. She had to make sure they'd survived the hearing intact.

When she walked into the tiny coffee shop, Tina waved from the corner table, where she sat with the Taneys.

Forcing a smile, Elsie joined them. “Phew,” she said, leaning on a plastic chair back, “it's been an exciting day, huh? What can I get you guys?”

Donita shook her head. “Nothing. Got no money.”

She dismissed the objection with a shake of her head. “It's on me. Girls, come on up to the counter with me.”

Kristy and Tiffany jumped out of their seats. Refusing to meet Elsie's eye, Charlene rose, too. Elsie led them to the counter, where she ordered a round of Cokes and chips.

Charlene grabbed a bag of Doritos from the display, but Kristy and Tiffany hesitated, examining the selections, fingering one and then another.

“Order up, ladies,” Elsie urged, affecting a cheery tone. But the girls lingered.

“It all looks so good,” Kristy said. “I can't make up my mind.”

Impatience formed a knot in Elsie's chest as she silently willed them to pick something and sit down. But looking into their faces, she chastised herself. The girls needed to recover from the hearing, just as she did.
Let them have a damned minute to
pick their chips.

Finally, Kristy plucked a bag of Lay's from the display. As Elsie handed Tiffany her cup of Coke, she asked if she wanted some chips, too. Tiffany didn't respond.

“Me and Tiffany can share,” Charlene said, taking Tiffany's hand.

They returned to the round table and crowded their six chairs into a circle. As Elsie pulled the paper wrapper from her straw, her hand shook.
Pull yourself together,
she told herself.

Congratulating the girls on their good work in court, she began to explain the next steps: the case would be assigned to Circuit Court and placed on the trial docket.

During her explanation, Tiffany stuck her finger in her nose and commenced to dig. Kristy's hand shot out and slapped Tiffany on the side of the head.

“Stop it. That's nasty,” Kristy said.

Charlene grabbed Kristy's hair and twisted it. “Don't you be mean to her, you stinking bitch.”

Donita snatched Charlene's upper arm, pulling her away from Kristy with an iron grip. In a low voice she hissed, “You'uns all cut it out right now.”

Charlene turned on her mother. “I won't have her hitting Tiffany.”

“I mean it. I've about had it with you today.”

Picking up Charlene's Coke, Donita took a long drink through the straw. “Hey,” Charlene protested, but her mother stared her down.

“Lord, that's good,” Donita said as she set the cup down.

Tina asked her how the family was holding up and Donita said, “Pretty good, I reckon. But I got to tell you about the WIC.”

Tina nodded. “The nutrition program.”

“Yeah. Now that Tiffany is in school, they won't give me the WIC no more. I need it.”

“Tiffany is over five. You're not eligible.”

“That don't make no sense. It's for women and children, and that's us. She needs more eats now that she's getting big.”

“Donita, you don't qualify anymore,” Tina told her again. “You'll have to get by with your food stamp account.”

As the two women talked, Elsie leaned across the table and said, “Charlene, I need to know what happened at school, what the defense attorney was talking about.”

Charlene ignored her, pulled Tiffany's chair a little closer to hers and smoothed her sister's strawberry hair behind her ear.

Elsie persisted in a quiet voice. “I'm not trying to be nosy; it's not that. But I have to know what the attorney is talking about, so I can protect you, and we can try to shut him down.”

Charlene didn't answer. She was talking to Tiffany, close to the child's ear, speaking in almost a whisper. Elsie strained to make out what she was telling the little girl.

She heard her say, “Just do it when you're alone. Or in the toilet.”

Tiffany nodded.

Charlene offered her a chip from the bag, and Tiffany took one. Then Charlene smiled indulgently and said, “Honest to God, Tiff, it ain't no big thing. Everybody picks their nose.”

B
EFORE
T
INA ESCORTED
Donita and her daughters through the side exit of the courthouse, Elsie pulled Charlene aside, in a final attempt.

“Charlene, please. It's important that you tell me what happened to you at school that time.”

“Ain't important to me.”

Charlene tried to walk away, but Elsie put a restraining hand on her arm. “They'll use it as ammunition against you, don't you see? I have to be in the know, so I can fight it.”

Tiffany inched up to them. Charlene lifted her sister's hair and tickled the back of her neck. “Spider on you,” she whispered.

Looking up, Tiffany swatted at Charlene's hand. But she was smiling.

Frowning, Elsie said, “Charlene, we're going to have to discuss it sooner or later.”

“Maybe later.” She gave Elsie a hard look. “Maybe never.”

Elsie watched as Tina walked Donita and her daughters to the parking lot, then slowly climbed the stairs back to the second floor. When she returned to her office, Josh Nixon was waiting for her, slouching comfortably in the chair facing her desk, drinking coffee from a plastic cup.

“Oh yeah, great,” she said irritably. “Make yourself at home. Totally.”

“I will, thanks.”

Elsie displayed her befouled jacket, then wadded it back into a ball. After throwing it into a corner, she asked, “Don't suppose I can bill your office for that?”

Nixon just laughed.

Flopping into her chair, she swiveled around and put her feet up on the air-­conditioning unit. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I want discovery.”

She looked at him with disbelief. “You'll get it. After the arraignment in Circuit Court.”

“I need access to the prosecutor's file today. I want to read those witness statements before I go talk to Taney at the jail.”

“You aren't entitled to discovery until after the felony charge is filed in Circuit Court. That's Friday. That's when you can see our file.”

He surveyed her silently for a moment. “You know, Elsie, I'm trying to save you from yourself.”

She blinked. He was really yanking her chain. “How's that?”

“I know you're mad at my client right now; he just spit on you. But you need to take a step back from this thing.” He set his coffee down and leaned toward her with a look of sincerity. “You're getting tricked into playing the heavy in a simple domestic relations case. Really. Mom gets the girls to claim that Dad's a molester, and everything goes her way. Nobody will stop to ask what kind of scene Mom's into. Oldest trick in the book.”

“ ‘Oldest trick in the book,' ” she mimicked back. “Defend your criminal case by saying the girls are bold-­faced liars, set up by Mom to take down dear old Dad.”

Josh picked up the coffee cup, raised it in a toast. “I'm just telling you. Trying to help.”

She responded with a dismissive flip of her hand. She started reorganizing her papers in the accordion file bearing the name
TANEY.

Nixon was okay, as defense attorneys went. And prosecutors and public defenders had a sort of kinship. As opposite sides of the same coin, they were both overworked and underpaid, and embroiled in the attempt to bring reason and justice to terrible crimes.

She wanted to get along with him, if she could. It was helpful to have friendly relations with opposing counsel; it meant that fighting would be confined to the courtroom, not deteriorate into personal animosity. But being friendly did not mean she would give an inch where the case was concerned. She was not opening her file to Nixon until Friday.

He persisted, saying, “Your star witness is a liar. Little Miss Charlene. Her record at school will prove it.”

“Your defense is so farfetched. What would motivate the girl to go through all this courtroom torture if it wasn't true?”

“Mommy dearest.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“I'm serious.”

Elsie set her file down. “Problem with your theory that Mom concocted this plot: I don't think you understand this woman's situation. She is the most powerless person imaginable. She's got no weapons in her arsenal.”

“She's got a boyfriend.”

“Please.”

“She's got a boyfriend and he put her up to it.”

“Would you get out of here?”

Nixon rose from the chair. “It's not too late to stop it from going any further. You'll be the one with egg on your face when this whole thing blows up.”

“Well,” she said wryly, “I'll have the pleasure of seeing you carried off the field on the shoulders of Taney and the Earthly Fathers.”

Nixon shook his head. “You know, I like you. I'm trying to help you out.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Elsie?” Tina Peroni called from the hallway.

“In here,” she answered.

Tina stuck her head in the door.

Nixon nodded with mock gravity. “I'll show myself out.”

As he moved to the door, Elsie said, “I know you have to take whatever garbage they tell you and try to make the jury believe it. But Nixon, don't try to sell it to me.”

He turned and sighed. “Can't wait for you to meet the boyfriend. Bet she really traded up.”

Chapter Thirteen

“O
H,
T
INA, PLEASE DON'T,”
Elsie begged as the social worker pulled her blue Volkswagen beetle into the parking lot of Baldknobbers bar.

Tina was perplexed. “Why not? I thought you liked this place. I'm always hearing some wild tale about the prosecutors and the cops at Baldknobbers.”

Elsie shook her head. “That's just it. I was here last Friday and got pretty shit-­faced. Fell on my butt. I'm still mortified.”

Tina put an arm around Elsie's shoulder and peered at her over the top of her specs. “You do understand that you are not the first person who ever had too much to drink at a bar.”

“I know, but it's embarrassing.”

Tina got out of the car, walked around to Elsie's side and opened her car door.

“Come on. I'll buy you a burger. Let's go beard the lion in his den.”

Groaning, Elsie hauled herself out of the car. She was being silly. Nobody at Baldknobbers cared about last Friday. It was ancient history. As she neared the front door, she spied a red Camaro occupying two parking spots: Noah's car. She felt a twinge of guilt; she hadn't called to touch base since Wednesday morning, when the Taney case blew up. Surely he'd understand that she was consumed by work.

The two women walked inside and paused for a moment to check the place out. Baldknobbers was an old dive, the kind of bar that covered the windows so the light of day could never shine in. It had a working jukebox, which would obligingly play a tune for a quarter; of course, the musical selections were sadly out of date. The smell of frying hamburger mingled with cigarette smoke. Baldknobbers was permitted by city ordinance to have smoking on the premises only so long as it had more revenue from liquor sales than food sales, and the owners were careful to keep that ratio in line.

Tina looked for a table while Elsie scoured the room for Noah. Tina tugged at her arm and pointed out a booth by the kitchen. As Elsie followed, she spied him.

He was at the pool table. His back was to her and he was in his civvies, but she'd know him if he was dressed for Halloween. The light overhead glinted on his hair, and his back and shoulders in a red flannel shirt looked good enough to eat. Just as her face broke into a welcoming smile, she recognized the woman next to him: Paige. From the crime lab. Paige glimpsed her and did a double take, then had the nerve to give her the hairy eyeball.

Elsie lifted her chin with a jerk. Marching up to Noah, she tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, there,” she said.

He grazed her cheek with a kiss. “Hey. Stranger.”

She didn't rise to the bait; she had nothing to apologize for. “What's up?”

“Playing pool. Me and Paige.” He bent over the table and studied the eight ball.

Elsie pressed her lips together, reflecting that she was experiencing déjà vu. Hadn't they had this very encounter less than a week ago? As she shot a glance at his pool partner, she saw Paige smirk. Elsie turned on her heel. “Have fun,” she said without a backward look.

As she scooted into the booth across from Tina, the barmaid, Dixie, came up to the table. “Now what can I get for you ladies?” she asked.

I want gin, Elsie thought. Tanqueray.

“What kind of wine do you have by the glass?” Tina asked.

“Box,” Dixie answered.

Tina looked at Elsie to see whether someone was pulling her leg. But Elsie was focused on her own order:
Bombay.
Beefeater.
It would be medicinal.

“I'll have a Bud Lite,” said Tina. “Thanks.”

The smell of the grill reminded Elsie that she hadn't eaten all day. Sighing, she said, “I better have a cheeseburger.” With a sidelong glance at the pool table, she added, “With onion.”

“You want a beer, honey?”

She struggled with her response. “I want a Coke. A real Coke, not diet.” She didn't want to get all ginned up while Noah acted the pool hustler with Paige. No telling what she might do or say.

Dixie jotted it down. “Sounds like a party,” she said, and gave the table a quick swipe with a rag before she walked off.

While Elsie made a stack of the cardboard coaster squares, she kept a stoic face. She vowed she would not turn her head to check on Noah and Paige.
Not gonna do it.

Tina got down to business. “How do you think the case looks?”

Elsie grimaced. “Could be better. But incest cases are tough; that's the way it always goes. Tangled family relationships, family secrets, busting that code of silence.” Leaning back, she looked at Tina. “How on earth did you get them to talk in the first place?”

“Funny thing. We'd smelled a rat over at the Taneys' for years, but no one would admit to it. Donita always said everything was fine.”

“And this time?”

Tina rubbed her nose reflectively. “I'm not sure, exactly. After the brother made the police report and I was called in, they were all ready to talk about it. Charlene, Kristy, Mom, all three of them.”

“What about Tiffany?”

“No. Not Tiffany. How are you going to get Tiffany to testify for you?”

When Detective Ashlock had tried to take Tiffany's statement on Wednesday, he could not cajole her into uttering a single word. Tina took over but didn't achieve any better results. Even when they picked up the broken dolls in the room and played with the child, she would not speak. Taking Tiffany by the hand, Elsie began to question her, but when she asked the child about her father, Tiffany hid her face on her knees and wouldn't look up until she backed off.

When they asked Donita about Tiffany's silence, the mother feigned ignorance, said she didn't understand what they meant because Tiffany talked to her all the time. “A chatterbox,” her mother called her. Tiffany had smiled and climbed onto her mother's lap.

“I'm at a loss,” Elsie said. “Why do you think Tiffany won't talk around us?” She heard a peal of laughter from the pool table then.
Don't look don't look don't look,
she told herself
.

Tina said, “Could be she's a little addled. Or maybe the kid has been ordered to keep the abuse a secret for so long that she opts to be mute outside of the family, just to play it safe.”

Elsie thought that made sense. “We'll never get her on the stand,” she said, shaking her head. “I'll bet you never get a statement from her for the Social Ser­vices file. Good thing the other girls are willing to talk.”

She leaned across the table and continued in a low voice. “But I've got to find out what the deal is with Charlene and those accusations at school. Do you know what the defense attorney is talking about? Because I'll need to suck the poison on that.”

As Tina shook her head, a cheer erupted from the crowd now gathered around the pool table. Elsie started to turn toward the noise, then caught herself. Deliberately, she stirred her Coke with the straw and asked Tina, “How's work?”

“Swamped.”

“Worse than usual?”

“January's always a big month for abuse and neglect referrals.”

Elsie took a gulp of Coke. “Why's that?”

“Winter is hard, hardest on poor ­people. Everybody's cooped up together in the cold, they start drinking, doing drugs; things get ugly. God, we see a lot of it in McCown County.”

“Yep,” she agreed. She had seen evidence of that.

Tina leaned back in the booth, shaking her head sadly. “We've got one of the highest rates of child abuse in the state. Higher than St. Louis or Kansas City.”

“Who's highest?”

“Greene County, just a stone's throw from here.”

“That's Springfield,” Elsie said, adding, “Queen City of the Ozarks.”

“We're right behind them. The other hot spot is the Bootheel.”

Elsie frowned, trying to make sense of the numbers. “I don't understand why southern Missouri has more child abuse than the urban areas in the state.”

“Well, there's meth. And poverty. And domestic violence, all tied up with patriarchy. The idea that wives and daughters are chattel.” Tina leaned across the table, staring intently through her glasses. “In the hill country, ­people have hung onto some misguided notions of what they have the right to do with their children.” When Elsie didn't respond, Tina added, with a sigh, “You crazy hillbillies.”

“Hey. Watch it. My ­people settled this state.”

“Impressive.”

“It's true. Came here in a wagon in the 1820s.”

Tina gave her a wicked grin. “Are you bragging or complaining?”

“So if you think it's such a sewer here in Missouri, how did you end up here? You're from Michigan, right?”

Tina said, “In my youth, I wanted to save the world through print media. So I decided to go to the best journalism school I could afford.”

Elsie made a cocky face. “That would be Mizzou.”

“Yeah, really. Imagine my surprise: the first J school in the world was in Columbia, Mo.”

“So then what? You realized journalism is a dying profession?”

“Not exactly. I had a sociology professor who convinced me to check out the social work program. That maybe I could save the world one family at a time.”

“How's that working out?”

Tina laughed. “Depends on when you ask me. Some days I wish I had stayed with the news.”

Dixie arrived with the food and drink. Elsie squirted mustard and ketchup on her burger, arranged the red onion neatly atop the meat patty, and took a hearty bite. Tina sipped from the beer bottle and asked, “About the case: what are you going to do with the mother?”

Elsie swallowed. “She's a can of worms. I have to use her, no way around it. She can corroborate Charlene and Kristy, and I need that. We don't have any physical evidence; you know how incest cases are.”

Tina nodded. ­“People don't get it, unless they've seen it from the law enforcement perspective.”

“Lord, no. A prosecution like Taney is the toughest case to make. We've got no DNA evidence, because the report is invariably made weeks or months after the fact. We've got no disinterested eyewitnesses, because the crime is committed in secret. We've got no forensic evidence to offer, like blood or hair or prints, because the defendant lives with the victim, so of course his fingerprints are in the home.”

Tearing into the bag of chips that accompanied the burger, Elsie shook her head ruefully. “Our main evidence is the word of a traumatized child, and the only supporting evidence we can hope for is the corroboration of family members, ­people who'll say, ‘This is what I saw.' So I'll put Donita on the stand. The jury will hate her, though.”

“Will the jury associate Donita with Taney?”

“Well, the fact that Donita is cooperating with the police and the prosecution helps, but her prior complicity with her husband is a problem. The jury will wonder why Donita would stand by and let Kris Taney do those things.” Elsie sighed and rattled the ice cubes in her glass. “I can't fathom it myself. What happened to the maternal instinct? Where was the enraged mother bear that fights to protect her cub?”

“It's not that unusual,” said Tina. “You see it all the time in my line of work. She was afraid of him. Dependent upon him. You should have seen her when I first talked to her about him. Shaking, looking over her shoulder, like he might appear at any moment and jump on her. Honestly, I think he scares the shit out of her. Got to give her some credit for cooperating with us now.”

“Is that why the girls are still at home? I know you could've taken protective custody when the case broke.”

Tina took another pull on the beer bottle. “Sure we could've. And then what? Where we going to put them? We're going begging for foster care in McCown County. And institutional care is not a happy ending, I promise.”

Elsie had to acknowledge that Tina was right. Foster homes in McCown County were scarce as hens' teeth. Because of that, the juvenile judge was adamant about keeping children with family members, if it was a workable solution at all.

Tina leaned in close to Elsie and said in a hushed voice, “You're too young to remember, but they used to let any asshole in the county be a foster parent. Any shithead who signed on the line. Then, after that case north of Branson happened, everything changed.”

“You mean where the foster parents beat the baby to death?”

Tina nodded. “Our judge is very careful about farming them out now. He wants to keep families intact. Blood relatives.”

Elsie took another bite. “Damn, this case is sure enough full of crazy shit. What's up with this ‘Our Earthly Fathers' thing?”

“Another caseworker was telling me something about that group lately, but this is the first time I've encountered them in the flesh.”

“Well,” Elsie said, “I'm not going to borrow any trouble about it. Looks like it's just one or two guys.”

Tina said, “I wouldn't discount them altogether. They made for trouble in a case a while back, where the wife had a restraining order. They showed up in a group with the husband when he contested it. Shook the woman up so much, she backed off.”

“Why didn't I hear about that?”

“It was the next county over, I think.”

The cheeseburger was reduced to crumbs aside a wilted lettuce leaf on the oval stoneware plate. Dixie popped by to pick it up. “Your drinks okay?”

Tina asked for an iced tea, while Elsie ordered another Coke. When the drinks arrived, Elsie drank hers slowly, focusing on her friend, taking care to avoid looking around the bar. She was not going to indulge another fit of pique from Noah. Ignoring him would do him good.

Apparently he had other ideas. Glancing toward the other side of the room, Tina told her, “Somebody's trying to catch your eye, I think.”

Elsie tied a paper napkin into a knot and smoothed it down. “That right?”