“That was the only thing I knew I could do for her, give her that chance. Even after all these years, I don’t think I ever had a case where anyone was put in a worse position. In a lot of ways, it is easier to be convicted of something than just accused of it.
If the truth be told, it was easier to be Edward Larkin than Janet Larkin. He did something, he admitted it, and it became a tangible fact, something to be dealt with, something that gave a sort of definition to everything else. She was accused, and there was nothing she could do. She was helpless, impotent. Guilt clings to no one the way it does to the innocent. Imagine the shock of it. If you did something, something wrong, and you are caught, there is no surprise when you hear yourself accused. But when you did not do it, when you never would have thought about doing it, it eats you alive. You feel guilty. You think everyone who looks at you, everyone you pass on the street, is thinking of nothing else but this thing you supposedly did. The whole world is watching you, convinced you did it. Your friends-the ones who still come around-tell you they believe you, but you’re not sure they really do; you’re not sure they don’t look upon themselves as victims, caught between their obligation to you and the embarrassment they start to feel every time they come near you.
No one believes you, and you begin to wonder whether you should believe yourself. Could you have done this thing, and then, because it was such an awful thing to do, blacked it out as if it had never happened? You don’t really believe that, but you have to admit that, impossible as it seems, it could conceivably be true.
Does anyone really know when they first begin to go mad?
“Janet Larkin had been living with thoughts like these for nearly a year. It was a miracle that she had any sanity left. When I called her name as the first witness for the defense, she had the look of someone not quite awake, not quite certain that this was not still part of a bad dream.
“She did everything wrong. When she answered a question, she looked at me instead of at the jury. When she denied that she had ever done anything improper with her son, she spoke in a timid, quiet voice that instead of carrying the kind of outrage you might expect from someone wrongfully accused, made her sound as if she herself was not quite sure.
“At first, she would not answer the question. I had to put it to her directly. ‘Mrs. Larkin, did you at any time have sexual intercourse or sexual relations of any kind with your son, Gerald Larkin?’
“The courtroom was mobbed. The benches were crowded tight.
Without objection from Jeffries, those who could not find a seat had been allowed to stand along the wall at the back. All those eyes staring at her frightened her, and from the moment she took the stand she refused to look anywhere except at me. Until, that is, I asked her that question. A look of utter hopelessness came into her eyes. Her shoulders sagged forward and she gazed down at her hands. She began to rub them together as if she was trying to wash them clean. It was only when I repeated the question that she stopped and looked up again.
” ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head back and forth. Her sad eyes were wide open. ‘I never hurt my children.’
“I had to remove any possible ambiguity. ‘You never had sexual intercourse with your son?’
“She bit her lip and a shudder passed through her. ‘No.’
“I took her back through all of it, what her husband had done to her daughter and when she had first learned about it. I had her describe what she did to help her daughter and how she tried to help her son.
” ‘He told me one day that he didn’t think his father should have to live alone. I told him he could visit, but he needed to live at home.’
” ‘After he made this accusation, he was taken out of your home and allowed to live with his father, correct?’
“We went on like that for hours, explaining everything that had happened until, finally, we were at the end of it, and I had only one question left to ask.
” ‘You think it’s your fault, don’t you? What happened to your daughter, and then what happened to your son to make him tell a story like this?’
“I do not know how much time or how many different days we had spent together, going over every detail of her married life, but we had never talked about this. Not once. I asked it now because suddenly it seemed the only question that made sense. She looked at me as if I had just betrayed a secret. Her mouth began to quiver and tears came into her eyes. She had to force herself to answer.
” ‘Yes, I do. I should have known,’ she said as she buried her face in her hands. ‘It’s my fault. I should have known.’
“Because he had believed the boy from the beginning, Spencer Goldman had no sympathy for the boy’s mother.
” ‘Are you trying to tell us that your husband was having sex with your daughter, that it went on for years right under your nose, and you knew nothing about it?’
“His manner was cold, caustic, and he threw questions at her so fast that she had barely started to answer one before he was shouting the next. Each time he did it, I objected, and each time I objected, Jeffries overruled it. We went back and forth, like pup-pets in a Punch and Judy show. ‘Objection.’ ‘Overruled.’ ‘Objection.’ ‘Overruled.’ Finally, I bounced up one last time and instead of objecting, said, ‘Perhaps your honor would like to lend Mr.
Goldman your gavel so he can save us the trouble of a trial and just beat a confession out of her?’
“You have never seen such a wrathful look. ‘Do you want to be held in contempt a second time?’
” ‘At least that would be a ruling we could both agree on, your honor,’ I replied with studied indifference.
“There was really nothing he could do. No matter what he said, he was not going to hold me in contempt and have me dragged out of the courtroom. We were too far along in the trial, and besides that, there were too many people watching. Jeffries abused his power too often not to understand that it was best done in private. His only reply, at least for the moment, was a withering glance just before he turned his attention back to the prosecution. ‘Please continue, Mr. Goldman.’
“I continued to object, not because I thought there was any chance that any of them would be sustained, but simply to give Janet Larkin time to collect herself. Goldman never could break her down. She answered every question and she told the truth.
That was all she had left. Her husband had taken everything else.
He had taken her daughter, and he had taken her son, and not just taken them, but in different ways stolen their innocence and destroyed them.
“Afraid of making a mistake, aware that hundreds of eyes were watching her, she formed each word of each answer with the deliberate care of a mother teaching a child the first letters of the alphabet. Goldman, always ready with the next question, could barely contain himself. When he tried to hurry her along, she ignored him; when he tried to interrupt, she went right on talking as if she had forgotten he was there. He kept after her, asking the same thing over and over again, trying to get her to admit what he knew she had done, or to change her testimony so he could use the inconsistency against her. He hurled questions at her with incredible ferocity. He would have stoned her to death if he had been able. It had no effect. She sat there like a glass-eyed automaton, going back to the beginning of the answer to repeat it all over again. Frustrated beyond measure, Goldman finally gave up.
” ‘You can deny it from now until kingdom come, Mrs. Larkin, but we both know you raped your son!’