Turning to the bench, Mack said, “Your Honor, I offer this entire file into evidence as Defense Exhibit Number Four and ask that its entire contents be read into the record.”
Velie stood. “Your Honor, defendant’s attorney hasn’t even shown me the common courtesy to permit me to examine this file before showing it to the witness. I ask that before the file is accepted into evidence, I be allowed to examine it.”
“Granted.” Judge Langley rose. “Court will take a thirty-minute recess.”
“What do you think?” Bill asked.
Velie’s hand lifted tenuously to ward off distraction as he continued flipping through the pages, dwelling at great length on the final entry, which referred to Jungian archetypes as a possible explanation for the nightmares. At last Velie shut the small book with a thump and sighed deeply.
“Well, I haven’t found any material I think I can exclude on the basis of hearsay.” He looked at Bill starkly. “It certainly opens a door for them.”
“They didn’t have this file yesterday,” Bill said hotly.
Noting Bill’s hunched-over, hangdog expression, the district attorney smiled and said equably, “He’s opened a door, Bill, but let’s not commit suicide till we find out what he thinks there is on the other side of it.”
When court reconvened at ten forty, Brice Mack quickly renewed his motion to introduce the file into evidence. No objection was made by the district attorney, and the court ordered it marked as Defense Exhibit Four. At that point Brice Mack again asked the court’s permission to read the entire file into the record.
Scott Velie came to his feet, pouting. “Your Honor, it’s a voluminous file. The jury will have the opportunity to take the file into the jury room for assistance in its deliberations if it so chooses, and we strongly feel that it would be an unnecessary abuse of the court’s time to permit the reading of the entire file into the evidence.”
“Your Honor,” Mack sighed with a maddening indolence—“I do ask the court’s indulgence to read the entire file into the evidence, for I believe that it will assist the jury in intelligently evaluating the testimony that will be forthcoming in the trial if they have heard its contents.”
Judge Langley, who seemed more than interested in hearing the entire contents of the file himself, quickly decided in favor of the defense.
The balance of the morning was spent in reading its contents into the record. Brice Mack identified each page of the notebook by page count and slowly enunciated each entry, struggling over the pronunciation of the more complex psychiatric terms and often being forced to spell a word into the record.
When the reading came to an end, a hushed expectancy hovered over the courtroom while Judge Langley considered his next move, which, although it was twenty minutes shy of twelve o’clock, was to declare the noon break.
Janice skipped lunch at Pinetta’s on the pretext of some fictional errands. There was nothing ambiguous in the looks Bill had been sending her throughout the morning session, and her innate sense of danger ahead had sent up enough warning signals to convince her that his company was to be avoided at all costs. With a couple of martinis inside him, the short fuse on a temper that was boiling murderously close to the surface was sure to erupt, especially if she was there to ignite it.
Getting a call through to Ivy at Mount Carmel was an equally urgent reason for missing lunch. She had planned to call that morning; but Bill had routed her out of the apartment too early, and the courtroom pressures of the morning session had also prevented her from doing so.
Having lost three of her dimes, Janice trudged up and down icy streets in a biting wind, seeking a telephone booth with a working phone, and finally found one in the warm and aromatic precincts of an Optimo cigar store.
The woman who answered her call was a secular teacher named Miss Halderman, or Alderman, an assistant art teacher who supervised the lower grades. Her sprightly voice informed Janice that the girls had just finished lunch and were happily engaged in preparing Sylvester for the crowning and melting ceremonies that were due to commence at four fifteen sharp. Yes, Ivy was fine; in fact, Miss Alderman could spot her through the office window—at least, the lovely blond hair seemed to be Ivy’s—in the midst of a group of girls who were helping Mr. Calitri, the school custodian, pile the boxes. Did Janice want her to go fetch Ivy?
“No, it’s all right,” Janice said, feeling a sudden unaccountable chill in the oven-warm booth. “I don’t want to bother her. I just called to see how she is.”
On the walk back to the Criminal Courts Building, Janice went into a pharmacy to buy some aspirin. Her head felt light, and the chill persisted.
Inside the lobby, she stopped at a fountain and took three aspirin. As she rose from the water spout, a wave of dizziness seized her, forcing her to grab onto the porcelain basin to keep from falling. She was trembling. Uncontrollably. Dear God, what was wrong? What was happening to her? It had started after the phone call. Actually, during it. Something in their conversation. Something Miss Alderman had said caused her to suddenly feel ill. But what?
“Dr. Perez, tell me.…”
Janice heard Brice Mack’s voice as if through a filter. The trembling had stopped, but the chill persisted. That, and the empty hollow feeling of encroaching doom, which seemed to be moving now at a swifter pace.
A dry cough from Bill beside her caused her to open her eyes and steal a glance at him. He seemed blessedly out of it all—eyes shut, body slumped down in his seat, totally relaxed in a deep alcoholic euphoria. She was alone. The thought struck her in a painful way. She was alone. Bill’s withdrawal into bitterness and his deepening self-absorption had made any real communication between them impossible. He had shown himself to be incapable of understanding not only her, but all that was truly happening in their lives. Yes, she was alone.
“… and you say that Dr. Vassar took you into her confidence on all of her cases, including this one?”
“We worked very closely on every case, and especially this one.”
“Why especially this one?”
“Because it was unusual, unique. It defied categorizing. Dr. Vassar had never before encountered such a case.”
“And you and she discussed it at great length?”
“At great length and in great detail.”
Brice Mack referred to a page in the notebook.
“I want to call to your attention certain language in Dr. Vassar’s notebook, Dr. Perez. Certain language that requires interpretation.”
Turning slightly toward the jury, the lawyer read in a clear voice:
“In the entry dated January 18, 1967, she says: ‘[the child] tries to climb over the back of a chair—and succeeds! Appears well coordinated and shows a degree of muscular coordination and skill of an older child. (Test subject’s ability to climb over chair during wakened state.)’”
Flipping to a clipped section in the notebook, he continued:
“And in the entry dated February 20, 1967, she says, ‘results of chair-climbing test during wakened state disclosed subject unable to climb over chair successfully without falling … but within dream state is able to climb over chair and appears to show much greater creative muscular skill and coordination than one would expect in a child of two and a half.…’” Mack looked up at the witness. “How do you interpret this observation that the child seemed ‘older’ during her dream state?”
“It didn’t make sense to either of us. Because a person in a somnambulistic state may enact an event that happened at an earlier time, but in that case the person would appear younger. And yet here she was, enacting some prior event in a somnambulistic state in which she appeared to be actually older.”