Hovander tries to square this away. Earlier testimony has already established that Brittany picked up her daughter from the baby-sitter just after five, and probably arrived back home sometime between five-thirty and six. She had been home from work earlier in the day, having taken the afternoon off for some unknown reason.
“So you got Binky, and then what did you do?”
“I sat down with Mommy,” she says. “I tried to wake her up. But I couldn’t.”
There are haunted expressions on the faces of several jurors. The mental image of a child sitting on the floor beside the body of her dead mother, her only comfort the synthetic fur of a stuffed animal, does not conjure thoughts of clemency.
“After that did you go back to the closet?”
She nods her head. “I took Binky.”
“Why? Why did you go back to the closet?”
“’Cuz I heard him coming,” she says.
“Who?”
“The man who hurt Mommy.”
“Where was he coming from?”
“Outside,” she says. “He opened the door.”
“Did he see you?”
She shakes her head, wonder in her eyes, perhaps puzzled herself how he could have missed her.
“I ran,” she says.
“Were you scared?”
The child offers a succession of large nods.
“Did you think this person would hurt you?”
“Yes. ’Cuz he hurt Mommy.”
“Objection. Calls for speculation,” says Harry.
“Sustained. The jury will disregard,” says Radovich. It is not likely.
Hovander is turning the screws, jurors on the edge of their seats. The tactic here is to plumb the fears of the child, to leave the clear supposition that Acosta, who had killed her mother, would have had no choice but to dispatch the child if he’d known she was there. Indictment for a crime not committed.
“Did you see this man when he came back?”
“His shoes,” she says. “They were black and shiny.”
At this moment every eye in the jury box is under our table. I am tempted to look myself, but exercise restraint.
“Did you see this man’s face?”
She shakes her head.
“How did you see his shoes?”
“He walked down the hall to Mommy’s room. I saw his feet go by.”
“By the closet where you were hiding?”
She nods. “The door was open.”
“All the way?”
“A little bit,” she says.
“So you hid in the closet again when you heard the man come back?”
“Binky and me, we got in the closet. Fast,” she says.
“And you stayed there?”
A big nod.
“Do you know how long you were in the closet?”
“A long time,” she says. “He came and went, and then he came and he went again,” she says.
“So that we get this right,” says Hovander. “The man came back more than once?”
Kimberly gives the lawyer a big nod. Now I am confused. This is the first we are hearing of any of this. At first I think Kimberly is embellishing, and then it hits me. The child is telling the truth. The first intruder no doubt was the killer, coming back for the body. The second was the sound of Lenore and me.
“Do you know what the man was doing when he came back?”
She shakes her head. “I stayed in the closet a long time. And when I came out Mommy was gone.”
“Then what did you do?”
Kimberly looks for a moment at the jury, then she says, “I came out of the closet and I fed Binky.”
“Did you hear anything while you were in the closet?”
For a moment she is stone still in the witness box.
“Sweetheart, did you hear something?”
“Mommy,” she says.
“You heard Mommy?”
There is a rustle through the jury box, murmuring in the audience.
Kimberly nods. “She hollered,” says the child. “Just after the man came back the first time.”
Acosta and I look at each other. Harry is mystified. Then it finally dawns on me. My gaze makes contact with Radovich up on the bench in the instant that he comes to the same conclusion. The child, huddled in the dark closet, holding her bear, had heard her mother’s call from beyond the veil, what the coroner had attested to on the stand-Brittany Hall’s death rattle.
Following a brief recess, Hovander takes a different tack, a few preliminaries. She has the child identify Binky, her stuffed bear, which is sitting on the evidence cart. They get into it when Kimberly demands this back. Harry seems bemused by the specter of a prosecutor in a tug-of-war with a five-year-old over a stuffed toy.
Hovander tries to move on, and the child won’t let her. At one point Kimberly actually turns to the judge up on the bench and demands to know if Binky is in jail. Radovich doesn’t know what to say. Finally he tells Hovander to let her have it for a while. This results in a bench conference, three lawyers and the judge, how to dig yourself a hole.
“The toy has her mother’s blood on it,” says Hovander. “The child would require rubber gloves. There are health concerns.” Hovander won’t take the responsibility.
Harry objects to the gloves as a negative image in front of the jury. Something else that the prosecution can psychically hang on Acosta.
“Then you tell her she can’t have it back,” says Hovander.
“You got into it,” says Harry. “You get out.”
“This is getting us nowhere,” says Radovich. He calls in the troops. The shrink gets the dirty detail. She dons surgical gloves, gets Binky off the evidence cart, and approaches Kimberly on the stand. We return to our tables, the judge to the bench.
There are several seconds of whispering as the shrink talks to the child, efforts at some reasoned solution. All the while the child is a bundle of nervous gestures, tugging on the sleeve of her dress, then pulling on one of the heart-shaped buttons on the front until she tears this off.
Just as we start to think that she has resolved this crisis, Kimberly in a full voice demands to know if Binky is sick.
“What have you done to him?” She turns this on Radovich. “You’re not taking care of him.”
The judge has his palms turned up, shrugging shoulders under black robes, as if to say it’s not his fault.
It is comic relief. Even Acosta is laughing.
By now the psychologist is leaning over the witness railing, trying to get Kimberly’s attention. Before she can react, Kimberly turns on her and snatches the bear from her hands. She hugs it to her body and withdraws in the box, out of the chair, and into a corner where she cannot be reached. A stark look on the shrink’s face. Who would think a kid would be so quick?
She reaches over and tries to take it away from Kimberly, and there is a scream heard around the courtroom, something to pierce every eardrum. Hysterics in the witness box, tears and lashing little fingers.
By this time Kimberly’s grandmother is coming through the gate railing like mama bear protecting her own. She is followed by a bailiff who is trying to grab her.
Radovich calls him off.
“Enough,” says the judge. “Leave her alone. She can have the bear. You sit down.” He’s looking at the psychologist.
“You can stay,” he tells Grandma.
It takes several minutes, during which the jury is let out, of her grandmother holding her before the child stops crying. By now they are both seated in the witness box, the child on her grandmother’s lap, Binky in her arms. At one point she pets the toy as if it were alive and then, talking to it, feeds it the button torn from her dress. This disappears into the bear’s mouth, and when she removes her fingers the button is gone.
Hovander approaches the stand to talk. I can’t hear the conversation, but it’s animated, a lot of smiles and laughter between the child, grandmother, and the lawyer, who is busy repairing trust.
Once it is clear that Kimberly has calmed down, the jury is brought back in and Grandma’s off the stand. Hovander and Kimberly are friends again now that the witness has both bears.