“Maybe some ice cream, too,” he says.
While we’re waiting, Radovich continues his questions, asking Kimberly to tell him about that night.
“They were really mad,” she says.
“Who?” says Radovich.
“Mommy. .” Stark looks from the little girl, as if she can’t fill in the other blank, the other voice she may have heard that night.
“Do you know if the other voice was a lady’s voice, like Mommy’s, or was it a man’s?”
“I heard Mommy,” she says. “She was crying.”
“Yes. But did you hear the other voice?”
She shakes her head. A five-year-old, cowering in a dark closet, listening to the voices of violence; it is little wonder that all she would hear is her mother crying.
“Did your mother say anything?”
“She said, ‘No!’ She was real mad.”
“Did you hear a man’s voice?”
This is suggestive and I could object, but Radovich is likely to roll over me, since it is he who posed it.
“I think so,” she says.
I wince with a little pain. “Your Honor, I have to object. It’s a powerful suggestion to a little child,” I tell him.
“You can clean it up later,” he says.
“We could strike it now,” I tell him, “and avoid the necessity.”
“It’ll stay for the moment,” he says.
The Coke comes from the cafeteria and Kimberly sips from the straw. The ice cream goes up on the bench to melt for a while. Radovich continues to question her about her toy bear and how it came to have blood on it.
“Binky was out with Mommy,” she says. “They both got hurt.”
It becomes clear that Kimberly has rationalized the blood on the bear so that it has now become Binky’s.
“Binky must be a pretty good friend?” says Radovich.
“Binky keeps all my treasures,” she says.
“I had a fuzzy little friend when I was your age, too,” says the judge. “We were real buddies. I could talk to him about anything.” Radovich takes a sip from the coffee cup. “Tell me, Kimberly, did you see how Mommy got hurt that night?”
She looks at him very seriously for a moment, then shakes her head.
The court reporter records this. One more stake through the prosecutor’s heart.
“Your bear, was he out in the front room when Mommy was hurt?”
To this he gets a big nod.
“And were you in the closet?”
“I was in my bedroom first,” she says.
“You went from the bedroom to the closet?”
“Uh huh.” She nods.
“Did you go there when you heard the shouting?”
She nods.
He is leading her shamelessly, but it is likely that with a child he would allow counsel to do the same. It is the only way to get her story.
“So you heard shouting when you were in your bedroom, and then you went into the closet. Why did you go into the closet?”
“I was scared,” she says.
This probably saved her life, and Radovich knows it. It is the kind of point that would not be lost on a jury, the sort of thing that could inflame them against a criminal defendant if there is no other party against whom they can vent their wrath.
“So this was a very loud argument that Mommy was having, if it scared you so much?”
She gives him a big nod.
“Did you hear what they were saying, your Mommy and this other person?”
“A lot of bad words,” she says.
“Bad words?” Radovich draws this out and rubs his chin whiskers.
“Uh huh. Mommy said a lot of bad words.”
To listen to the little girl, Brittany Hall died uttering a shower of profanities, though there is no substance to the conversation that might lend a clue as to who was with her that night.
“A couple more questions,” says Radovich, “and then we’ll be through. Kimberly, I want you to think real hard now. Did you see anybody with your Mommy that night? The night she was hurt?”
She looks at him but makes no gesture.
“Is there anybody in this room that you saw that night?”
I can feel Acosta tense up in the chair next to me.
Kimberly starts on the right of the courtroom, the area nearest the jury railing, and studies the faces in the room; first the deputy D.A., then Radovich himself, the court reporter, and the bailiff. She works her way left, past the reporter and the psychologist to our table, first me, and then Acosta, studying long and hard. The expression on her face is tense, then she points with one hand at our table-not at Acosta, but at me.
I give a sick little laugh. The blood in my system heads south to my stomach like lead. My sweat turns cold.
Radovich is looking at me. So is Acosta.
“Transference,” says the shrink. This draws their attention away from me for an instant.
“He objected to one of your questions.” She winks at Radovich and they convene out of earshot of the witness.
The D.A. and I join them, though my knees are so weak at this moment I can barely walk.
The psychologist is whispering to Radovich. “She knows that somebody in the room is a bad person. She knows it’s not the lady at the other table.” She means the deputy D.A. “Or the officer who brought her the drink. She figures it has to be one of the men at the other table. It’s simple. You’re the one who spoke up.” She looks at me. “So she picked you. She guessed.”
The wonders of modern analysis.
“The record will reflect that the witness indicated the defense attorney,” says Radovich. “What else?”
There are a few chuckles in the courtroom, the bailiff and the clerk. Kimberly’s grandmother is eyeing me warily, whispering to her husband.
I am thankful that Kline is not here to see this. He would no doubt make more of it than the judge, put two and two together: Lenore’s print on the front door along with the little girl’s make on me. By tonight I would be talking with bright lights in my eyes, figuring ways to save my ticket to practice.
CHAPTER 17
Today the courtroom is packed, every seat is occupied, with a line two columns deep in the hallway outside, roped and cordoned to one side to keep the halls clear for workaday foot traffic.
Even with the notoriety of this case, it is not likely that we will see such a crowd again until a verdict is delivered.
There are pickets carrying signs on the steps outside-“Women Against Violence,” “Mothers Against Crime”-exclusive franchises of virtue from which all men are blackballed.
Since the disclosure of the evidence in Acosta’s case, the talk airwaves are hot with anti-male rhetoric, aimed chiefly at those of the political class. At night I can turn on anything electronic and hear screaming voices with their endless anecdotal tales of predatory men. From the more farfetched of this crowd, there is now a cry for a federally mandated neutering program for the male of the species, presumably to tame the violent among us, though this is not entirely clear.
“Susan B. Anthony’s final solution,” says Harry.
From another quarter there is talk of whether judges are sufficiently monitored in their personal behavior. Acosta’s case is the rallying point for judicial reform among the “cause-of-the-hour set” in the state legislature. These are lawmakers who watch television in the afternoon to see what bills they should introduce in the morning.
There are budding campaigns for the protection of witnesses, and the limiting of judicial terms of office. There is even a proposal to limit the number of words that a lawyer may utter in a trial, like the preemptory challenge of jurors, the only difference being that when you run out, they hang your client.
In all, Acosta’s case is a cross between Carnival and a public hanging, with hucksters peddling snake oil from the tailgate of your television set.
It is in this maelstrom of hysterical political dialogue that we are now to obtain a fair trial.
In the shadows there is the deft hand of Coleman Kline, whipping this froth for spin. He is suddenly everywhere on the airwaves. While he studiously discusses none of the particulars of the case, he has views of every social and political issue swirling about it, enough to lay a plush carpet of blame all the way to Acosta’s cell door.