The Kill Clause Part 22

Rayner shook his head. "No."

"So the whole case hung on the girls' testimony? Do you have the interrogation tapes?"

Rayner pulled two tapes from his briefcase. "I got hold of them a few weeks ago." He crossed the room and slid the first one into a VCR hidden in a dark wood cabinet. "The supervising DA and I were in Ivy together." Off the others' puzzled expressions, he added, "My eating club at Princeton."

The tape quality was poor; the recording jerked a bit, and the lighting washed out the interview room to whites and yellows. A young girl sat on a plastic chair, her heels resting at the seat's edge, her knees drawn up to her chin.

The interviewer-presumably a Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect social worker-sat on a low footstool, facing the girl. "...and so he touched you?"

The girl hugged her legs, clasping her hands midway up her shins. "Yes."

"Okay, you're doing a good job, Lisa. Did he touch you somewhere you didn't want him to?"

"No."

A frown appeared on the social worker's face, a barely noticeable furrowing between her eyebrows. Her voice was soft and rea.s.suring. "Are you sure you're not scared to answer, sweetheart?"

Lisa rested her chin on her knees. Her head bounced a few times before Tim realized she was chewing gum. "Not scared."

"Okay. Then I'll ask you again...." Calm, drawn-out sentences. "Did he touch you somewhere on your lower body?"

A tiny voice, almost inaudible. "Yes..."

The social worker's face softened with empathy. "Where? Can you show me on these dolls?" Two puppets appeared almost instantly from the social worker's bag, complete with shiny polyester genitalia.

Lisa studied them tentatively before reaching out to take them. She made the male puppet hold hands with the little girl puppet, then looked up at the social worker.

"Okay...then what?"

Lisa arranged the puppets in an embrace.

"Okay...and after that?"

Lisa chewed her gum thoughtfully for a moment, then put the male puppet's hand on the little girl's chest.

"Very good, Lisa. Very good. And that's how Peggie told you she was touched also?"

Lisa nodded solemnly.

Rayner looked troubled. He exchanged a glance with Ananberg, who shook her head, unimpressed. "Let's watch the rest of the interviews first," he said.

Occasionally fast-forwarding, they made their way through the following six interviews, each of which featured similar questioning techniques by the same social worker.

When the last girl finished tearfully recounting her molestation, Rayner stopped the tape. "It was a d.a.m.n witch-hunt. No wonder the judge threw out the verdict."

"What are you talking about?" Robert said. "Every one of those girls said they were molested. They even acted it out on the dolls."

"The social worker asked leading questions, Rob," Dumone said. "It's fine for us, trying to pull a confession, but kids are more impressionable. They parrot."

"How were the questions leading?"

"For starters, there weren't any general questions," Ananberg said. "Like 'What happened?' The social worker was prompting, implanting all the information through closed, suggestive questions. So 'Did he touch you below the belt?' turns into 'Where did he touch you below the belt?' And she was conditioning the girls, rewarding them for the answers she wanted to hear-smiling, saying 'Good,' telling them it's okay."

"And frowning when she didn't like what she heard," Rayner added. "If a girl gave the 'wrong' answer, she was subjected to repeated questioning-and the interviewer's tacit disapproval-until she made something up."

Tim glanced through the files at the badly photocopied detective notes. "The girls were in the same circles. Parents knew each other. After the first accusation, there were meetings between the families, conferences at school. Cross-pollination. These recorded interviews happened later. The witnesses weren't exactly working from a clean slate."

"And who knows how many other opportunities there were to have memories implanted and reinforced?" Ananberg added. "Other kids, media..." She spun her hand in a double loop, a gestured et cetera. et cetera.

"What about the dolls?" Mitch.e.l.l said.

"Same criticisms apply," Rayner said. "On top of which, anatomically correct dolls are not recommended to be used with very young children."

"Only with the elderly," Ananberg said.

Robert fixed her with a piercing stare. "This isn't a f.u.c.king joke." He gestured to his brother. "Not to us."

"I don't think she meant anything," Dumone said.

"No, he's right." Ananberg ran her hand through her dark brown hair. "I'm sorry. Just trying to defuse the tension in here. It's a, uh, tough topic."

"If you can't handle tough topics, maybe you're in the wrong place."

"Robert. She apologized," Tim said. "Let's keep moving."

Ananberg returned to her usual briskly professional tone. "According to the Ceci and Bruck study published in 1995, questioning young children with anatomically correct dolls is less than reliable."

Mitch.e.l.l glanced up from the court file. "Who cares about the dolls? According to this, the guy confessed."

"The confession was persuasively called into question by the defense," Rayner said. He strode over to the VCR and switched tapes.

The cold light of a police interrogation room. The camera caught some glare from the backside of a one-way mirror. Mick Dobbins sat hunched in a metal folding chair while two detectives worked him. Despite his solid frame and broad shoulders, his orientation was distinctly youthful. His arms hung loose and heavy between his spread knees, and his left sneaker was untied, his foot turned on its side. One of his overalls straps had come undone; it swayed at his side like a yoyo waiting to be snapped up.

The detectives had the lights going hot, one of them always staying just out of Dobbins's view, to his side, behind his back. Dobbins kept his head hung but tried to follow the detectives with his eyes, which peered nervously through the sweat-matted tangle of his bangs. His low-set ears protruded from his oddly rectangular head like opposing coffee-mug handles.

"So you like girls?" the detective asked.

"Yeah. Girls. Girls 'n' boys." When Dobbins spoke, his mild r.e.t.a.r.dation was immediately apparent in his low register and plodding cadence.

"You like girls a lot, don't you? Don't you?" The detective raised a foot, placed it squarely on the small patch of metal chair exposed between Dobbins's legs. Dobbins lowered his head more, tucking his chin into the hollow of his shoulder. The detective leaned forward, his face inches from the top of Dobbins's head. "I asked you a question. Tell me about them, tell me about the girls. You like them? You like girls?"

"Y-y-yeah. I like girls."

"Do you like touching them?"

Dobbins wiped his nose with the back of his hand, a rough, frustrated gesture. He muttered to himself. "Chocolate, vanilla, rocky road-"

The detective snapped his fingers inches from Dobbins's face. "Do you like touching them?"

"I hug girls. Girls and boys."

"Do you like touching girls?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah what?"

"I like touching girls. I..."

"You what?" what?"

Dobbins jerked at the sharpness of the detective's tone. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Strawberry, mocha almond fu-"

"You what, Mick? You what?"

"I, uh, uh, I sometimes pet them when they're upset."

"You pet them, and they get upset?"

Dobbins scratched his head above one ear, then smelled his fingers. "Yeah."

"That what happened with Peggie Knoll? Is it? Is it?"

Dobbins cowered from the voice. "I think so. Yeah."

After double-checking the file, Rayner paused the video. "That's really the essential segment."

"That's no confession," Tim said.

"Pretty weak," Mitch.e.l.l agreed. "I'll grant you it wasn't a confession, but I don't think we need a confession here. I think the other evidence holds."

"What other evidence?" Ananberg asked. "Seven impressionable children regurgitating implanted memories? A girl who died of an infection that was never conclusively linked to a molestation that was never proven to have occurred?"

"So let me get this straight," Robert said. "We have seven little girls who testify individually that they've been molested by a r.e.t.a.r.d groundskeeper, we have each of them acting out with puppets the sick s.h.i.t the freak perpetrated on them, we have them each saying he molested their friend who's now dead from a resulting infection, we have him on tape saying he likes to pet and hug little girls, and you don't think this is an open-and-shut?"

Tim pictured Harrison outside Kindell's, arms crossed. It's an open-and-shut. It's an open-and-shut.

"No," Tim said. "I don't."

Robert directed his scowl down the table. "Stork?"

The Stork's rounded shoulders rose and fell. "I don't really care."

"If you're gonna sit in this room," Tim said, "you'd better care."

"Fine," the Stork said. "I think he probably did it."

"Franklin?" Rayner asked.

Dumone shrugged. "We're thin on physical evidence, especially with no indication of v.a.g.i.n.al or rectal damage on any of the girls and nothing concrete linking the bladder infection and the molest."

"Dobbins has got no criminal history," Ananberg said. "No felonies, no misdemeanors."

"That don't mean s.h.i.t," Robert said. "A puke can start anytime."

"It just means he's never been caught for anything before." Mitch.e.l.l exhaled hard through his nose, irritated. "Sounds like you've made up your minds already. Why don't we take a nonbinding preliminary vote to see if we're just wasting our time in continuing our a.s.sessment here?"

Ananberg looked to Rayner with an arched eyebrow, and he nodded.

The vote went down four to three, not guilty.

The Stork looked typically indifferent, but Robert and Mitch.e.l.l were having difficulty keeping their frustration out of their faces.

"We're here to pick up the slack when the courts screw up," Mitch.e.l.l said. "When we fail to act, there's no other recourse."

"Acting is not always the right decision," Tim said.

Robert's eyes remained locked on the photograph of his deceased sister. "Tell that to the seven little girls who were molested and the dead girl's parents."

"The seven little girls who said said they were molested," Ananberg said. they were molested," Ananberg said.

"Listen, b.i.t.c.h-"

Dumone rocked forward in his chair. "Rob-"

"You might think you have the answers in here, with your studies and your Freudian bulls.h.i.t, but you haven't so much as set high heel on the real streets, so don't you f.u.c.king tell me you know s.h.i.t about who's done what."

"Robert!"

"Until you spend some time with these pieces of s.h.i.t, you don't know how they tick." Robert jerked his head toward the TV. "That f.u.c.ker just smells smells guilty." guilty."

Dumone was standing now in a half crouch above his chair, hands on the table, arms elbow-locked, bearing his weight. "Believe it or not, your sense of smell isn't the criterion for our voting. You can argue the merits, argue the cases, or you can hop a Greyhound back to Detroit and stop wasting our time."

The room froze-Rayner's gla.s.s halfway to his mouth, Ananberg midturn in her chair.

Dumone's eyes burned with an uncharacteristic fury. "Do you understand me?"

Mitch.e.l.l's face was drawn. "Listen, Franklin, I don't think-"

Dumone's hand shot up, a crossing guard's signal aimed in Mitch.e.l.l's direction, and Mitch.e.l.l stopped cold.

Robert's expression softened, his head ducking slightly under the heat of Dumone's glare. "s.h.i.t, I didn't mean it."

"Well, don't pull that c.r.a.p in here. Do you understand me? Do you understand me? Do you understand me?"

"Yes." Robert raised his head but could barely meet Dumone's eyes. "Like I said, it was nothing. I was just p.i.s.sed off."

"'p.i.s.sed off' has no place in our proceedings. Apologize to Ms. Ananberg."