"Who was sitting next to you at the bar that night, Mr. Milford? I'd like a name, please."
"I didn't know the guy. Sorry."
"How about somebody sitting near you, then. A few seats away, maybe."
"I don't know."
"You didn't know anybody in the bar that night? Not a soul? How about Jake Whalen, the bartender? You knew him, didn't you?"
"Sure, but ... look, Jake was there. He might've heard, he might not. But the others ... hey, I wasn't paying attention. I was there to have a couple of drinks, that's all."
Sansom gave him a look of disgust.
"No more for this witness, Your Honor," he said.
That night she was struck by a cold unreasoning fear.
She kept hearing Wood's words. Judge Burke's words.
Could you comply with the decision of the court if that decision were to continue visitation rights according to the previous terms of your divorce?
That meant private visitation.
That meant Robert raped again.
And no way for her to stop it.
Anything's possible.
She tried listening to music over a glass of white wine, hoping it would relax her and calm her down but music only seemed to open up her heart, to make her feel soft and yielding, and she needed to be hard now and not feel sorry for herself or Sansom or his wife or even for Robert because sorry wasn't the answer. Winning was the answer.
The alternative was unthinkable.
The wine helped a little. She poured another and got into bed. She lay sipping it in the half-dark, staring out her window into moonlight. The sheets felt cool and soothing against her legs.
Could it happen?
Could they actually do such a thing?
When the telephone rang it didn't really surprise her. It was as though the telephone's ringing was going to be part of the answer for her.
"Hello?"
"I didn't think it went all that well for you today, Lyd. Did you?"
"Arthur, I don't need this. What do I have to do, change my phone number?"
"Don't bother. I won't be doing this often. I was just curious. So. What do you think?"
"It doesn't matter what I think."
"Sure it does. It matters to me."
"I can't imagine why."
"Because if you thought it was going badly for you, you might do something stupid. That's why."
"Stupid like what, Arthur?"
"Like packing Robert up and trying to make a run for it. That wouldn't be smart."
"You think?"
"Yes, and you know why? Because you have to work, Liddy. You're a nurse—and nurses need to be registered. So no matter where you went, no matter what state or how far away, I'd find you. You realize that? And I could probably get you thrown in jail when I did. I mean, what a great guarantee of your basic stability, you know?"
"I'm happy you're happy, Arthur. Now do you mind if I go back to bed?"
"No problem. What're you wearing, Lyd?"
"Fuck you, Arthur. Sheet metal."
She hung up.
The call made her angry. And not just his last comment.
Am I really that easy to read? she wondered.
Because she'd considered running.
And rejected it for exactly the reason Arthur cited. It boiled down to money. If she had money of her own she might have run already.
But he was right. She had to work. And nursing was the only way she knew of keeping them both somewhere above the poverty line. There wasn't much choice but to stick it out in the courts and pray it would all come out for the best.
Could they really be so insane as to give him what he wanted? Unlimited, unsupervised visitation?
And if they did—what was she going to do?
It took two more glasses of wine to put her to sleep
Restless sleep. Full of unremembered dreams.
The kind that provide no clues and answer no questions.
Twenty-three
The Hearing: Third Day
They led with a pair of character witnesses, local businessmen who did nothing more than establish that Arthur was reliable in financial matters and business practices. Neither Stone nor Sansom even bothered to question them.
Next was Arthur's mother.
She hadn't seen much of Ruth since the divorce except around Christmas time and she certainly hadn't missed her. Even decked out in her Sunday best—again, she suspected, selected by Arthur—there was something basically unattractive about the woman and always had been, some meanness of spirit that worked its way through her flesh like a subtle but distinct aroma.
She's give her this much, though—she was loyal.
"My boy wouldn't hurt a soul," she said. "If you ask me it's nonsense. And he sure wouldn't hurt somebody that way, let me tell you. My Arthur's had more nice girlfriends over the years than you could count on your hands and toes. Fact is I used to confuse the names of 'em."
"Thank you, Mrs. Danse," Wood said. "Nothing further."
"Mr. Sansom?"
"Nothing for this witness, Your Honor."
He looked better today, she thought. Tired. But that haunted look was gone.
"I have a few questions for Mrs. Danse, Your Honor," said Andrea Stone, "purely of a formal nature."
"Proceed, Ms. Stone."
"Mrs. Danse," she said, "when I visited you at home you indicated to me that, in the event that the court should find for neither Arthur nor Lydia Danse in this matter, you would be willing to offer Robert legal adoption. Is that still your position and your husband's position?"
"Absolutely."
"Your husband's too?"
"Absolutely."
"And would you be able to comply with the court's instructions regarding visitation?"
"How do you mean?"
"Well, suppose the court said Lydia Danse was allowed to visit Robert twice a week, take him on vacations, have him for a given number of weekends every month, that sort of thing. Would you be all right with that?"
"Sure I would. She's his mother. Whatever I might think about her and what she's doing to my boy personally have no bearing on it."
"And then suppose the court limited Arthur's visitations. Suppose the judge ruled that Arthur could only see Robert under structured, supervised conditions. Or even permitted no visitation at all."
She hesitated only a moment. But Lydia wondered if she was the only one in the room who was able to recognize the sly secret look that passed over her face and then was gone. She wondered if you had to have seen it before—as she had many times—to notice it.
"Well, I have to be honest," she said. "I wouldn't like it. I wouldn't think it was fair to Arthur. But if that's what you folks decided then I'd be duty-bound to honor the law, and that's what I'd do."
"Thank you, Mrs. Danse. Nothing further."
"We call Arthur Danse, Your Honor."
She studied him as he turned to face them on the witness stand. If I were the judge, she thought, would I be inclined to believe this man?
I might. Dammit, he looks good.
His face contrived to show nothing other than to register the seriousness of the moment—kind of intelligent concern. No guilt, no shame. No nervousness. The face of a man who wished nothing more than to clear this up once and for all and leave it behind him. She decided he'd missed his calling. The camera would have loved Arthur. He met her eyes for a moment and didn't seem to need to look away.
Wood made quick work of the preliminaries. So that the lies and half-lies weren't long in coming.
"Mr. Danse," he said, "can you describe for us in your own words the events of January eleventh of this year?"
"Yes." He leaned forward intently. "I picked up my son at his mother's house at around noon. We drove to the McDonald's out on 93 for lunch. Robert likes the Chicken McNuggets there, though I try to keep our visits down to one or two a month. We ate in the car. After that we drove to Ellsworth, near where my parents live. We went hunting. I'd just bought a brand-new s
hotgun—a Remington over-and-under—and I wanted to give it a try."
"Robert didn't have a gun, though, did he?"
"No. He's got a couple of years yet before I'd consider letting him handle a weapon."
The responsible family man. Sure.
"How long were you out there hunting?"
"I'd say about two and a half hours. I think it was about three-thirty by the time we got back to the car. Something like that. I could see Robert was getting pretty tired and I'd managed to bag a rabbit, so a couple of hours out there was plenty."
"And then what did you do?"
"I had some business to take care of so we drove back to my house and Robert watched a movie on HBO and then played one of the Sega Genesis games I keep for him over there, while I got to the paperwork. And I guess we both lost track of time. Because the next thing I knew it was quarter after six and I thought, oh my god, I was supposed to have had him home fifteen minutes ago already. She's going to be furious."
"She?"
"Robert's mother."
"Why didn't you call? To say you were going to be late?"
"I tried. The line was busy. So I just hustled him out into the car and got him over there as fast as I could."
"Mr. Danse, did you notice if Robert appeared to be in any discomfort at all while you were driving him back to his mother's house?"
"Yes, I did. He seemed ... antsy. Like he was having a hard time just sitting there in the car seat. And I remember that once we hit a pothole that was pretty deep and my head practically hit the roof even though I had my seat belt on. So I looked at Robert to make sure he was okay. He had this odd kind of look on his face. Like he was hurting. Though he also had his seat belt on too."
"And did you ask him what was wrong?"
''Yes.''
"What did he say?"
"He said nothing was wrong. That he was just worried that his mom was going to be mad at him and punish him for us being so late. I reassured him. I told him it was my fault and I'd tell her so. So he didn't have to worry."
"Mr. Danse, when you were doing your paperwork, were you sitting in the same room as Robert?"
"No. I was in the study. Robert was in the living room."
"For about how long, approximately?"
"About two hours, maybe a little longer."
"And were you aware of him getting up and going into the bathroom at any time?"
"Yes. To get to the bathroom from the living room in my house you have to walk right past the study. He came in after the movie was done. I asked him how it was. He said it was pretty good. Something about killer clowns from outer space. We laughed at that. Then he went on in the direction of the bathroom and I went back to work."
"Were you aware of him coming out of the bathroom again?"
"Not really, no. I was pretty absorbed in what I was doing."
"Mr. Danse, did you sexually abuse your son that day?"
"No. Absolutely not."
"And have you ever abused your son, Mr. Danse? Sexually or otherwise?"
"God, no. I'm amazed that I'm even being asked a question like that. Robert is ..."
His brow furrowed. His chin fell to his chest and he slowly shook his head. When he looked up again his eyes were full of tears.
"Robert is the single most important thing in my life," he said. "I would never hurt him. Never."
You bastard, she thought.
"Do you have any idea then, Mr. Danse, why Lydia Danse should be bringing this charge against you now?"
"Objection," said Sansom. "Calls for speculation."
"I'm going to allow it, Mr. Sansom. I think the witness's opinion on the matter is relevant."
"The only way I can think to explain it," Arthur said, "is that she's never forgiven me that the marriage didn't work. To say I'm surprised is the understatement of the year. I'd thought our divorce was amicable. Now I guess it wasn't. Not from her point of view, anyway."
He looked at her directly, unflinchingly.
"Lydia," he said, "I swear—I'm sorry. I really am."
"Objection," said Sansom.
"Sustained. Strike that," said Burke. "Do you have any further questions of this witness, Mr. Wood?"
"No, Your Honor."
"Mr. Danse," said Owen Sansom, "I believe you just told us that you noticed in the car that Robert was acting as though he had a hard time sitting there, and that then when you hit this pothole you thought he was actually hurting. Am I right?"
"Yes."
"And you asked him what was wrong and he said nothing, that he was only concerned about being punished by his mother for being late."
"That's right."
"And you believed him on this?"
"I didn't see any reason not to. Yes, I guess I did believe him."
"Didn't you say you thought he was actually hurting? Physically hurting?"
"Yes."
Sansom was sweating. She could see it from here and so could the judge. She knew the effort this was costing him with what was going on in his own life, but she thought that so far he was managing to do this right.
"And isn't there an obvious difference between what a person would look like if he were simply worried about the loss of a few privileges, say, as punishment for being late, and what he'd look like if he were physically in pain?"
"Speculation, Your Honor. My client's neither a doctor nor a trained psychologist."
"Sustained."
"Let me put it another way, then. Why did you so quickly dismiss the notion that his discomfort was physical, after seeming to observe exactly that?"
"I believed what he told me."
"You observed what appeared to be a physical discomfort in your son, and then dismissed it, said to yourself, fine, no problem, he's just worried about his mother punishing him for being late—you dismissed these observations simply because you believed what he told you. Is that correct?"
"Asked and answered, Your Honor."
"This conversation didn't occur at all, did it Mr. Danse? Nor these 'observations.'
"Objection. Argumentative."
"Sustained. Please, Mr. Sansom, get on with it."
"What sort of paperwork were you doing in your office that day, Mr. Danse?"
Arthur shrugged. "Bills. Orders. Shipment records. The usual."
"And were these very ... engaging?"
He smiled. "I wouldn't say engaging. Pretty dull stuff, actually."
"But they were absorbing enough so that you never heard Robert leave the bathroom. All these boring bills and orders had that much of your attention."
"Sure they're boring. But they still take concentration."
"Were you aware of hearing the toilet flush? Water running in the sink? The bathroom door opening and closing?"
"No. Not really."
"You have hardwood floors over there, don't you?"
"Yes."
"Was Robert wearing shoes?"
"I don't remember."
"But this is a hall we're talking about, correct?"
"Yes."
"What else is down that hall?"
"Excuse me?"
"What else is down the hall aside from the bathroom?"
"There's a deck leading out through a door to the backyard, and then if you turn the corner and go around the other way you're in the dining room and then beyond that in the kitchen."
"So you don't really know that he went to the bathroom at all that day, do you? You heard nothing. Saw nothing. He might have been going to the deck, or to the dining room, or to the kitchen."
"He was jiggling."
"He was what?"
"He was jiggling. Standing there jiggling. You know, the way kids do. When they've got to go to the bathroom."
"So you assume he went to the bathroom because he was jiggling."
"Yes."
"You didn't tell us that earlier, though, did you?"
"It didn't occur to me."
"Isn't it true that it didn't occur to you because this is jus
t another lie, Mr. Danse? Like your conversation with Robert in the car and your observations in the car?"
"Absolutely not."
"Did Lydia Danse ever tell you or give you any reason to believe that she was unhappy with the terms of her divorce prior to this incident?"
"No."
"Then why would she now?"
"I don't know."
"Mr. Danse, you're aware that there are penalties for perjury, right?"
"Yes."
"Good. Then I'll ask you once again. Did you, on that day or on any other day, sexually molest your son, Robert Danse?"
"Listen ..."
"Yes or no. Did you?"
"If you don't believe me, why don't you just ask him? Ask Robert. No, I did not. Ask my son."
Wood requested a sidebar and the three lawyers approached the bench. Whatever they were talking about went on for a while and, Burke aside, drew heat from all of them. Finally Burke said something and they turned away.
As he returned to their table Owen Sansom was shaking his head.
"What? What's happening?" she asked him.
"We'd like to recall Lydia Danse to the stand, Your Honor," Wood said.
"That's what's happening," said Sansom. "Try not to strangle him, all right? Try to stay cool up there."
Cool was not the operative word. She felt frozen. Afterwards she could barely remember walking across the room to the witness chair and sitting down and then being reminded that she was still under oath. It was as though something had locked down inside her, frozen into gear like a cog on a wheel that still ought to have been spinning.
Wood didn't waste a minute.
"You stated earlier," he said, "that you didn't know if you could comply with any order that would permit my client free and unrestricted access to Robert. I'm talking about perfectly normal visitation rights. You've had time to think it over, and we're wondering now what your position is on this."
"My position?"
"Yes."
She wasn't stupid. There were danger signs everywhere.
She knew what he was after. She just couldn't believe that Judge Burke was allowing it.
Careful, she thought. There's got to be some way to deal with this.
"My position is that my ex-husband is a rapist," she said.
Wood looked stricken. It was pure phony melodrama, playing for the judge. But she thought maybe it actually might give her an opening. Maybe she could put him off balance for a change.