The judge put the glasses back in place and met my statement with a frown. "We've wasted half a day out here while you got your witness ready for this. What is it now?"
I launched into a description of Tina's condition, both physical and mental, while she and Dr. Herron waited in the corridor. "The request I'm making is that the court allow the victim's physician to appear with her in the courtroom, to serve as a facilitator, should that become necessary during the taking of testimony."
"I'm going to have to object to that, Your Honor."
"Hold it a minute, Mr. Shirker. What, this woman doesn't speak the language? What kind of interpreter do you need? Nobody told my clerk we-"
"Not a foreign language interpreter, sir." I repeated the nature of Tina's difficulties and explained Dr. Herron's relationship with her.
"Objection."
"On what grounds, Counselor?" It was clear the judge had no idea whether he should grant my somewhat unusual request, so he was hoping the defense attorney would provide him with a legal basis to make Tina's task more arduous.
Mr. Shirker had nothing more than a gut feeling and a knee-jerk reaction. "Urn, uh-due process, Your Honor."
"He's right, Ms. Cooper. This is a very peculiar step you're asking me to take."
"The fact that it is unconventional doesn't mean that it doesn't have a valid purpose in a legal proceeding. Our courts are supposed to be accessible to everyone. The fact that this witness has a severe impairment should not deprive her of her day in-"
The judge held his arm straight out in front of him to stop me. Then he lowered it, pointing his finger at the official stenographer. "We're off-the-record here, understand?"
I stood up to object. Vexter was most pernicious when he could clean up the official language of his hearings. His finger pointed back at me, telling me not to dare to stop him. "Look, Alex. You got a retard here who doesn't mind a roll in the hay. She hops into bed with Jose, so who's to say Chester can't have a date, too?"
"I'd like all of this to be on the record, Judge. I'd like the opportunity to respond to it." I wanted an official transcript reflecting his ignorance in black-and-white print that an appellate court and a judiciary committee could examine. Vexter's views were as limited as his intelligence.
The stenographer's hands were poised over her machine. She was waiting for the judge to give her the signal to resume working, while glancing back at me with a shrug of her shoulders, knowing that she was helpless to do as I asked. Vexter was in charge of the courtroom.
Vexter put his glasses on the tip of his nose and motioned to me and my adversary with his forefinger. "Why don't you approach the bench?"
"No, thank you, sir. I want all of this on the record. My witness is developmentally disabled, with severe mental and physical handicaps. But she knows what happened to her and she is entitled to tell her story in this forum."
Chester Rubiera was digging his fingers into the palm of his hand as he watched the goings-on around him. I expected him to draw blood at any moment.
"And I'm telling you that this whole thing is a waste of the court's goddamn time."
"Is that what you and Mr. Shirker mean by due process, Your Honor? Would you like me to talk about the law on this issue, or doesn't that particularly interest you?" Vexter knew as much about rules of evidence as I knew about NASA.
"You got cases on this?"
Catherine had sent the file on the matter to Jake's apartment. She had researched the issue and I had read the opinions last night. I nodded to the judge and started to cite opinions. "There's a Second Department case, In the Matter of Luz P." I handed copies of the decision to the court officer to give to the judge and my adversary. "And the People Against Dorothy Miller." I described the facts and holdings as the stenographer urged me to slow down.
"Yeah, I knew that," Vexter said, tossing the pages aside without reading them.
"The unaided testimony of this witness is likely to be meaningless without our ability to have Dr. Herron interpret her responses. Counsel is welcome to cross-examine and ask whatever appropriate questions he chooses. As previous courts have ruled, this is simply a pragmatic question, not a legal or scientific one."
The three of us continued to argue while the defendant became more irritated, and my witness no doubt grew more anxious out in the hallway. When the judge finally reversed himself and let us go forward, Dr. Herron guided Tina in and sat beside her. The patient's pleasant smile faded when she saw Chester sitting on the opposite side of the long worktable. She clung to Herron's hand and wriggled in her seat.
For the better part of the next two hours, we went through the encounter between Chester and Tina, with Herron clarifying the language whenever Tina's verbal utterances were incomprehensible. By the end of the cross-examination, the patient had exhausted herself by the combination of her concentration on the retelling of the story, and her apprehension about being close to Chester.
When Vexter ruled that there was sufficient evidence to hold the matter for the action of the grand jury, he released Tina from the room and dealt with the business of finding an appropriate facility in which to secure the defendant, away from Coler Hospital.
At four-fifteen, I thanked the doctor and retraced my steps to the lobby of the building, where Chapman was waiting. "Proud of yourself, blondie? Chester the Molester moving on to a better place? Can't believe they actually got a psychobabble disorder named for a bad disposition."
"Yeah. 'Intermittent explosive disorder'-temper tantrums that the perp's unable to control."
"And a medication that works for them?"
I nodded.
"Get a double dose and I'll keep it in my desk drawer, to have on hand for those days you lose it with me. C'mon, that student who was supposed to meet you had to leave for the day. One of the guys from the one-fourteen is going to cruise us around for ten minutes. Will that do?"
We went outside, where the sky was already darkening and the wind had picked up force. A blue and white RMP-radio motor patrol car-sat in front of the hospital. The two uniformed cops in the front seat looked less than thrilled to be chauffeuring us around the quiet little island.
They pointed out the landmarks as we wound our way south, past the remains of the Octagon, the apartment houses, the meditation steps, the observation pier. Near the southern tip, we came flat up against the heavy metal fencing that blocked off the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital.
"Can we get in there to see it?"
The driver flashed his annoyance at his partner, who answered more politely. "Nothing to see, really. You can't go inside the building 'cause it's all crumbled and full of falling blocks of granite. And broken glass. And then there's the rats."
I got the point. "Can we just drive up closer so I can take a look?"
With some hesitation, the driver started the car again and drove us to the locked fence. He got out of the RMP, inserted his card in the automated locking device, and watched as the gate slid open. He stepped back into the car and drove slowly through the entrance. In the wintry darkness of the late afternoon, I could barely make out the shapes of the large boulders on the darkened landscape. "You won't see much, and I can't let you out to walk around. Last guy I took in needed a tetanus shot from tripping and cutting himself open on some old can or bottle."
"What are these huge rocks?"
"The walls of the old City Penitentiary. That's what it all was, once. Came down in the 1940s. It's just been sitting here ever since. Kids used to really get hurt on this stuff. That's why they finally fenced it off."
He drove south until he stopped at the abandoned ruin of the Smallpox Hospital. Chapman and I stepped out of the car and walked to the waist-high wooden fence that kept trespassers at bay.
"Isn't it glorious?" The facade looked like an old castle, the dark gray stone porch of the entry now draped in icicles and bare of all the ivy that cascaded down its sides in summer. Through its paneless window frames, the enormous bright red neon letters of the bottling factory's Pepsi-Cola sign lighted the black sky above the river. On the Manhattan side, the glitter of the United Nations complex sparkled with the outline of its distinctive shape.