WILL STEPPED OVER to his counsel table, wondering briefly if the tide was turning with this witness.
When he turned back toward Liz Luden, he had a large, black notebook in his hands.
“Did you use a CRAM in Mary Sue’s case—in evaluating her as a potential child abuser?”
Luden took a few seconds to eye Will and study the notebook he was holding.
“A what?” Judge Trainer asked, with subtle confusion on his face.
“Child Risk Assessment Manual, Your Honor,” the attorney responded.
“It is our practice to use the guidelines in that manual in all our investigations.” Luden answered confidently. “But Mr. Chambers, that is only one tool in our procedure. And it’s only a tool—it’s not Holy Writ”—and with that she smiled.
Harriet Bender guffawed loudly.
“No, I don’t suppose you would consider anything Holy Writ,” Will commented, “including Holy Writ itself.”
However, before the Putnam and Bender tag team could leap up with mutual objections, Will launched into his next question.
“But how about someone who did believe in Holy Writ—someone who is a Bible-believing, churchgoing person with strong—even ‘absolutist’—spiritual beliefs?”
“Like?” Luden inquired.
“Mary Sue Fellows. You did evaluate her in light of her religious beliefs?”
“We don’t discriminate on the basis of religion, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No—I’m not asking that. But isn’t it a fact that, according to Risk Factor Seven in the manual, a parent who holds—and I quote—‘rigid, authoritarian religious beliefs’ should be treated with a higher index of suspicion for child abuse?”
“Mr. Chambers,” Luden responded with a tinge of sarcasm in her voice, “I know what the manual says. It says thousands of other things too. And they don’t relate to this case—just as Risk Factor Seven doesn’t either.”
“It doesn’t relate? Mary Sue’s strong beliefs in the Bible—her ‘rigid’ moral beliefs—her use of spanking as a form of discipline according to Scripture—none of those things relate to this case?”
“We decided to prosecute her and to seek custody of Joshua for his protection because of evidence she was poisoning her child. You don’t seem interested in talking about that.”
“Oh, Ms. Luden,” Will said somberly, “we will certainly be talking a lot about that. But you seem uncomfortable with my questions about how you assessed Mary Sue’s Christian beliefs.”
“I didn’t assess them,” she snapped back.
Harry Putnam jumped up. “There is a limit, Your Honor,” he said in his most deferential voice, “to adversarial zeal. I can appreciate Mr. Chambers trying some kidney punches against our first witness here.” By then, Putnam was rocking on the balls of his feet like a basketball player ready to make a free throw. “But this is way out of line—he’s accusing the department—a Juda County Department—of religious bigotry. Now that simply will not stand. No sir, it will not stand.”
Judge Trainer was unperturbed.
“If that was intended to be a legal objection, Mr. Putnam—and that would be a rather wild assumption on my part, because it sounded more like a Fourth of July speech—if it was, it’s overruled.”
Will dug in.
“Ms. Luden, do you deny indicating to Julie, your intern at the Department of Social Services, that Mary Sue was ‘rigidly religious,’ and that as a result she met the criteria for a ‘heightened risk of child abuse’?”
Luden’s eyes narrowed. She spotted her intern in the audience section of the courtroom and glared in her direction.
Before she answered, Will added, “And we have subpoenaed Julie to testify. She is here in the courtroom. If your memory is bad, I can simply call her and have her relate what she told my investigator, Tiny Heftland.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Luden said with a manufactured smile. “I may have indicated something to that effect regarding Mary Sue Fellows.”
“Thank you,” Will said and he jotted a small plus sign next to his notes.
Harriet Bender indicated she had no questions, but Joe asked to also cross-examine.
Will held his breath.
“You were saying how I said some things when I was arrested—was that said to you, or to the officers—wasn’t it to the officers? And didn’t I say some things also to you?”
Putnam jumped up and Bender followed, both objecting to the question being compound.
“Sustained,” Judge Trainer said and commented, “I know you are not a lawyer, Mr. Fellows—but if you insist on representing yourself, you’ll be bound by the same rules as everybody else. Ask single, separate questions.”
Joe tried again.
“What else did I say to you…”
“I believe that you were muttering something about a government conspiracy—and then you asked me something. You asked me—and this is a quote—‘Why did you come to my farm in an automobile—don’t you usually ride on a broomstick’?”
Will cringed and jotted two minus signs on his notes. Several reporters in the audience broke into laughter.
Judge Trainer gaveled the courtroom into silence and admonished the reporters.
Putnam was grinning. He paused for a minute—wondering whether to let things end there, or whether he should try to put the icing on the cake.
“Just a few more questions—on redirect,” Putnam announced.
“Ms. Luden, you said that Mrs. Fellows had fled from the farm and that Mr. Fellows said he was glad about it, and then angrily accused you of being part of a government conspiracy—do I have that correct?”
“Exactly,” Luden answered.
“Had you announced your arrival? In other words, had you warned the Fellowses why you were coming that day—or indeed, that you would be coming?”
“No—we didn’t want to take the chance. We arrived without notice.”
“So,” Putnam asked, “can you explain then what caused Mrs. Fellows to run away so fast—and drag little Joshua along with her—if she couldn’t have known why you were there?”
Will objected, but the judge overruled him.
“Yes, I have an explanation.”
“Please share that with us.”
“She fled from the farm because she knew she was guilty of child abuse—and Joshua was the proof of that, so she had to take him along.”
“Thank you,” Putnam said, and sat down with a flourish and a grin.
“Re-cross?” Will inquired.
The judge nodded.
“No notice to Mr. or Mrs. Fellows?” Will asked.
“That is correct. The sheriff’s deputies and I arrived at the Fellows farm without prior notice.”
“But let me see if I understand—Mary Sue had been cooperative previous to that in giving you access, at your request, to Joshua’s medical records?”
“And she had permitted you to interview her and her family physician, Dr. Wilson?”
“That’s right.”
“And she had articulated some reasons why she had lost confidence in Dr. Wilson and was seeking a second opinion?”
“Correct.”
“And you knew that money was tight for the family and that it would take some time to raise the money for a second opinion that wasn’t covered by insurance. Right?”
“That was our assumption.”
“So when you felt enough time had gone by and Mrs. Fellows hadn’t secured a second opinion, that’s when you and two squad cars came swooping down?”
“Hardly—by that time, we had also received the anonymous phone call and secured the lab results from Dr. Parker, the pathologist,” Luden responded. And then she added, “You make it sound sinister, Mr. Chambers. It was an emergency situation—we had to act immediately to rescue Joshua.”
“An emergency?”
“Absolutely.”
“To rescue Joshua?”
“Yes, that is what I said.”
Will pulled out his copy of the Social Services file, and glanced at it.
“That’s interesting,” he commented, “because the anonymous call came in a full four days before you swept down onto the Fellows farm—correct?”
Luden looked at her file, then answered curtly, “Yes. Correct.”
“And Dr. Parker’s report was given to you a full three days before you decided to bring the sheriff’s deputies over to the farm in an attempt to grab Joshua and place the parents under arrest?”
“‘Grab’ is not the right word. But yes, your timetable is correct.”
“During those full three days you had left, you could have called Mary Sue and asked to interview her—and get her side of things first?”
“Anything is possible,” Luden snapped.
“You could have done that?” Will demanded, his voice ringing.
“Yes.”
“But you chose not to?”
“We chose not to.”
“And then, when your county vehicle and the two squad cars approached the house, was it slowly—or did you arrive at high speed?”
“We were making good time.”
“The three vehicles drove down the driveway so fast, in fact, that they were spinning tires, spitting gravel, and sending clouds of dust up in the air?”
“Probably.”
“And then after you had seen that Mary Sue was gone and Joe Fellows had been arrested, there was a court appearance?”
“Yes.”
“An ex parte hearing—without notice to me as Mary Sue’s attorney?”
“There were reasons for that…”
“And you knew, and the district attorney’s office knew by then, that my office was representing Mary Sue—yet you met behind closed doors with Judge Mason—you, and Mr. Putnam, and Ms. Bender here—without notice to or participation by me as Mary Sue’s attorney?”
“That is why it is called an ex parte hearing, yes.”
“And you actually wonder—and Mr. Putnam here wonders—why Mary Sue, a mother whose whole life is her family, panicked after being treated like that, and took flight with her little boy?”
Putnam and Bender leaped up, but Will cut them off.
“Your Honor, that was admittedly a rhetorical question—I withdraw it.”
Liz Luden was excused, and as she whisked past Will’s spot at counsel table, he could feel the polar winds blowing.
Joe gave Will a hopeful, searching look. But it was too early—the attorney had no definite feelings about the case yet.
He took his legal pad and jotted down a plus sign.
And then he followed that with something else—an even larger note on his legal pad.
It was a question mark.