The One-Eyed Judge Read online

  “Oh, come on, Mr. Campanella.” Norcross was genuinely irritated. This was a waste of his time. “The author of Alice in Wonderland? Please.”

  “Infamous.” Campanella pressed on. “And Carroll is also known to have distributed child pornography, photographs of children he took himself, that would have earned him a heavy prison sentence if he’d done it today. This is the man we—”

  “What does this have to do with anything?” It was time to cut this off. Norcross felt his scalp begin to prickle, a sign of gathering anger he’d have to control.

  The defendant was leaning forward, his hands pressed down on the surface of counsel table, with a furious, determined expression. Was he going to get on his feet? The wisps of hair on top of his head were practically standing on end. He was speaking to Ames in tones just beyond the judge’s hearing.

  But not, apparently, beyond Campanella’s. His head darted to one side in surprise, and he looked up at the court indignantly. “And do you know what I just heard this defendant say to his attorney in response to my comments? He said—”

  At this, Ames stood up, smacked her right hand hard on counsel table, and said, very loud, “Objection!”

  “What he said was—”

  Ames repeated, even louder, “Your Honor, I object. I object! That was a comment made to counsel.”

  Campanella responded, equally loud, pointing over at Ames, “The attorney-client privilege does not protect remarks made within the hearing of third parties.”

  “Okay.” Judge Norcross tapped the butt of his pen on his microphone. “Everybody just settle down.”

  Ames grabbed the floor. She dropped her voice but spoke with focused intensity.

  “The only point my client wished to make, wishes to make, is that there is no evidence, no credible evidence, suggesting that”—she nodded down at the defendant who was still muttering to her heatedly—“Charles Dodgson, an Oxford professor who wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”—Ames looked down at Cranmer again and nodded impatiently as he continued to bug her with whispered muttering—“and Through the Looking-Glass under the pen name Lewis Carroll, was a pedophile. It’s okay, Sid.” Ames nodded at Cranmer, who was still trying to get her attention, then looked up at the bench with an expression of exasperation, to make sure Norcross knew that the controversy over Lewis Carroll was news to her.

  “As Your Honor can see, my client seems to feel strongly about this academic dispute. Personally, I don’t give a hoot about Lewis Carroll or Charles Dodgson or whatever he called himself. The guy died, like, a hundred fifty years ago. I’m more interested in what happens to Sid Cranmer in this courtroom in the next five minutes.” She looked pointedly down at her client to make sure he got the message.

  Campanella, still standing, broke in, once more gesturing at Ames and Cranmer. “That’s all very well, but the defendant also just said something very significant that perhaps Your Honor didn’t hear. He said that just because a person takes photos of naked children doesn’t mean he’s a—”

  Ames smacked her hand on counsel table again, not quite so hard this time. “I object! I already said I object twice, and I still object. I object strenuously. This is unfair.”

  “I don’t care what the defendant said,” Norcross interrupted. “Everybody sit. I’ve heard enough. Here’s what I’m going to do.”

  10

  In her book-lined office at Amherst College, Professor Claire Lindemann sat and stewed. She was positive her friend Sid was not into child porn. How could he be? He had to be innocent, and she was going to stand by him, end of story. She couldn’t imagine what she would think if he turned out to be guilty. It was too upsetting to contemplate.

  Claire couldn’t say that she “loved” Sid Cranmer, even in a sisterly way—sometimes she didn’t even like him—but she was fond of him, respected him as a colleague, and, knowing his frailties, felt protective of him. What was happening was a travesty, and it was making her angry at David, which was even more distressing. David apparently felt more allegiance to the overrefined niceties of his judgy world than he did to her. She knew she was being unfair, maybe, but she didn’t care.

  Her loyalty to Sid stemmed, in part, from a particular, perfectly awful, incident. One afternoon, years ago, when she’d been new at Amherst, she had been hurrying across campus when her former husband, Ken, had stepped out from behind a tree into her path, drunk and demanding to talk. Claire didn’t frighten easily, but her ex’s out-of-the-blue appearance rattled her so badly, she just froze. Sid Cranmer happened to see the two of them from a distance and, somehow, picked up on what was going on. Though he barely knew Claire, he hurried over and actually pushed himself in between Ken and her. Claire couldn’t recall exactly what Sid said, but he got right up in Ken’s face, almost butting chests with him and making it clear that, while he might be a small dog, he could bite hard if things got nasty. Before long, Ken staggered away, flinging curses. It was the beginning of Claire and Sid’s friendship.

  One peephole into Sid’s situation might be Elizabeth Spencer, Sid’s erstwhile research assistant and the belle of Amherst College. As chair of the English Department, Claire was going to have to dig up someone to take over Elizabeth’s summer supervision now that Sid was suspended, and this would give her a chance to have a chat with the girl. Sid had mentioned that Elizabeth was doing some research for him on his specialty, Charles Dodgson. Claire was generally familiar with the controversy over Dodgson’s photographs of very young girls. The potential relevance of this academic brouhaha to Sid’s criminal charges was obvious and worrying, but she pushed the feeling aside. She simply refused to believe Sid was a pedophile.

  After pondering the matter, Claire decided she would take over supervising Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth was practically the only person who’d seen Sid outside class for weeks, possibly months, since his mother died. She might know something.

  Claire texted Elizabeth asking her to drop by her office when she had a minute to discuss her research stipend in light of the change in Professor Cranmer’s situation. A return text arrived from Elizabeth almost immediately, thanking her and saying that she could come by right now if that was okay.

  Fortunately, Claire knew Elizabeth Spencer fairly well. It was hard to miss her. She possessed all the qualities that in Claire’s experience provoked poetry in men: soft, deferential brown eyes, creamy skin, a slim waist, larger than average breasts, the voice of an earnest child, and a way of wearing her clothes that tended, with reasonably good taste, to get the goods in the window.

  She had also taken Claire’s Renaissance drama course and received a well-deserved A. She might be cute, but she was no airhead. Her insights into the plays of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and John Webster had been impressive, particularly considering she was a biology major. Elizabeth had folded her future professional interests into a final paper entitled “Renaissance Corpses,” in which she examined, from a medical and thematic viewpoint, the interesting methods employed by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century playwrights to kill off various characters. The cardinal’s murder of his mistress, Julia, in Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi—using a poisoned bible—struck Elizabeth as especially ingenious.

  Claire kept an eye out the window and soon saw Elizabeth strolling across the quad with her boyfriend, Ryan Jaworski. Ryan had taken the course with Elizabeth, though he’d been content with a gentleman’s B+. Certain stylistic similarities between Ryan’s final paper and Elizabeth’s made Claire wonder whether Elizabeth might have been his ghostwriter.

  Claire’s suspicions were compounded when she learned that Ryan had taken Sid Cranmer’s seminar on George Eliot, without Elizabeth’s company—an act of ridiculously lousy judgment—and pulled a disastrous C−. His appeal of the grade, supported by a fire-breathing letter from his father, a Chicago attorney, went all the way up to the dean before expiring without success. Scandals over grade inflation
had finally given the administration a little backbone.

  The two paused before the entrance to Claire’s building, just below her window, and Claire watched as Ryan, laughing, put his hands around Elizabeth’s throat and shook her head back and forth as though she were a doll. Presumably, Ryan found this to be good fun, but as he walked away, Claire noticed Elizabeth rubbing the back of her neck and frowning after him.

  A minute later, as she took a seat opposite Claire, Elizabeth apologized for her outfit, white running shorts and a lavender racerback top that went well with her light brown hair.

  “Ryan and I were about to go for a run, but I wanted to come right over. I hope it’s okay.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Claire said with a wave of her hand, and they dived into the new arrangements for Elizabeth’s summer research. They quickly agreed that Elizabeth would continue plugging away on the Dodgson material. This was not Claire’s area, but she knew enough to keep Elizabeth on track.

  “I’m going to be away for a good bit of the summer, so we’ll have to stay in touch by email or Skype. Are you all right with that?”

  “Oh, that’s not a problem. Thank you so much, Professor Lindemann,” Elizabeth said. “My parents will be relieved. Me, too.” The Spencer family was not well off. Elizabeth was on scholarship and must have been counting on the summer stipend.

  “Glad to do it,” Claire said. She shifted to sit sideways behind her desk, propping her feet on her computer table. Without making eye contact, she asked briskly, “So how have you liked working for Professor Cranmer?”

  “He was really sweet at first.” Elizabeth smiled. “I’d bring him cookies. He’d make muffins. Sometimes we had almost, like, baking contests. Once, we let the cleaning guy, Jonathan, act as judge.” She chuckled and shook her head. “Poor Jonathan. He’s so quiet. He hated having to choose.

  “Anyway, after Professor Cranmer’s mom died, all that stopped. Sometimes, he wouldn’t even come out of his bedroom. He showed me where he kept his key outside, so I could just ring the bell and let myself in if I had something to drop off. When he was really bad, I helped him get ready for class a few times.”

  Claire kept her face neutral. “We’re all shocked about this stuff in the news.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “It was really awful, Professor Lindemann. I know he didn’t do it. He couldn’t. If he did, I’d …”

  “Please call me Claire.”

  “I was there when, you know, the cops showed up. It was just like, wham, they came through the door like the Gestapo or something.”

  “God, Elizabeth. I didn’t know that.”

  “People mostly call me Libby. Anyway, we were going over the research when it happened. The first couple minutes, I was, like, totally freaked. I didn’t even know who these guys were. Later, he called from the, you know, from the jail, and asked me to go in and feed his cats and stuff.”

  “They took things from his house?”

  “From everywhere. There were at least a dozen of them, running all over the place. The worst was the DVD. I got a look at the front of it. It was really … I don’t even like to think about it. It was really bad.”

  “Damn. It was …” Claire hesitated. “A child?”

  “A girl, younger than my little sister. It was horrible.”

  “Shit.”

  “I don’t know what happened. He said he never ordered it.” She bit her lip and shook her head. “Ryan says the college is bound to get him off.”

  “I doubt there’s much they can do.”

  “Well, I don’t know. Ryan is sure they’ll do something.” She looked to the side with a worried expression before turning back to Claire.

  “It’s kind of strange,” she said, her voice changing. “Lewis Carroll liked—Dodgson liked—to take photographs of naked children, especially little girls.”

  “Right.” Claire tipped toward her lecture mode. “The Victorians saw no problem with that. The girls’ parents were often present, and he stayed friends with some of his models even into adulthood. The pictures were considered esthetic, just pretty little flowers.”

  “Spiritual almost, I know,” Elizabeth said. “It wasn’t porn exactly, but some of the poses …”

  “Yeah, they were …”

  “My mom and dad sure wouldn’t have let anyone take pictures of me like that. A few of them are really borderline. Even some of the ones in the published biographies.” Elizabeth leaned forward, and Claire was impressed at the competence and animation that came into her voice. “The 1995 Cohen biography includes some photographs, especially the ones of Beatrice and Evelyn Hatch, taken in the mid-1860s, that would definitely be a problem if someone took them today. Especially if he sent them around to his friends, the way Dodgson did to his Oxford buddies.” Elizabeth stopped, as though she was considering whether to say more.

  Claire waited. Silence often got a fuller response from students than questions. Unfortunately, her cell phone wrecked the moment by breaking in with its maddening hum. She quickly looked at the screen: David.

  “I’ll deal with this later.” She turned off the ringer and popped the phone into a drawer. “You were saying?”

  “Sid—Professor Cranmer—has a separate accordion folder with a bunch of Dodgson’s published and unpublished photographs. There’s an original print of the famous one of Alice Liddell—the real-life Alice—six years old and dressed up like a prostitute, in torn clothes with her chest exposed.” She looked at Claire, embarrassed. “Some of the unpublished ones are even worse. I only saw a couple before he put them away, but they were …” She hesitated and grimaced. “Gross is the only word I can think of. It was a pretty fat file.”

  “Oh, dear.” Claire shook her head. “That’s not going to help, that’s for sure.”

  “The file’s still there in a sort of hiding place. The cops didn’t find it.”

  “Aha. Hmm.”

  “Should I …” Elizabeth hesitated and scratched the top of her knee. Her fingernails were perfect. “Should I take it away and put it somewhere? I’m going to be at Sid’s house, using the bank records he scanned from Christ Church College. Sid told me to come by as often as I can.” She smiled. “He says I can even sleep over if I want to. The cats like it.”

  “You don’t want to get any more involved than you are, Libby. If I were you, I might just forget I ever saw that file.”

  A silence followed, with both of them drifting off. Outside, the buzz of a lawn mower approached and retreated, then the purr of a plane passing overhead. Some students walked under the window three floors down, chatting and laughing. The breeze through the window carried the aroma of the cut grass.

  On an impulse, Claire gestured at her laptop, which was sitting open. “Have you ever used Professor Cranmer’s computer?”

  Elizabeth nodded. “Oh yes, all the time when I’m at his house. I pull up the records on his desktop computer and draft the summaries on my laptop.” She sighed and looked down at her knees. “It was bad after his mother died, but he was finally getting better. He was playing his harpsichord again.”

  “Was there a password for the computer?”

  “If there was, I didn’t need it. The computer was just always switched on when I got there. He was using it a lot, I guess.” She ran a finger under the upper hem of her top and scratched thoughtfully, then seemed to realize what she was doing and pulled her hand away. “He had a yellow sticky on the side of the screen with some numbers on it. I don’t think …” She shook her head. “Sid—Professor Cranmer—is not very security minded.”

  Looking out the window, Claire saw Ryan Jaworski trotting slowly across the quad in his running shorts and T-shirt. He was looking up at the building with a blank expression.

  “I see Ryan’s here,” Claire said. “I’d better let you go. But let’s keep in touch about the research and anything else you need to
discuss. I’ll want to be in touch with you at least once a week, either in person or, if I’m away, by email, okay?”

  “Fine. This is so great,” Elizabeth said, standing up. “Thank you so much, Professor Lindemann. Claire. I appreciate it. I really do.”

  Claire swung her legs off the computer table and leaned toward Elizabeth. “Can I give you some advice, Libby?”

  “Sure.” Her voice was tentative. “Of course.”

  “When I was about your age, I went crazy for this one guy I’d met. I sort of let him take charge of me. It didn’t work out.” Claire nodded down in the direction of Ryan Jaworski. “In fact, it got to be quite bad, which was mostly my fault.” She looked at Elizabeth. “You have a good brain, Libby, and a great future. My advice is: Beware of being too sweet. Sometimes you can end up attracting flies.”

  Elizabeth, relieved, broke into a tinkling laugh. Her white teeth were perfect.

  “Oh, Ryan—I know what you mean!” Elizabeth shook her head, still smiling, and scratched her top again, obviously thinking of something that amused her. “He’s better than he looks, better than he acts sometimes. I can deal with him.” She stood up. “Thanks for the advice, though.” She tapped her temple. “I’ll store it away.”

  The conversation with Elizabeth left Claire late for her usual lunch time, and afterward, she hurried across campus to the faculty dining room, starving. Just as she was taking her seat, her cell phone started vibrating with another call from David. The interruption created at least two species of headache. First, while talking on a cell phone was not explicitly forbidden in the dining room, it was definitely frowned upon by everyone, including her. Second, given the Sid mess, she wasn’t sure she was ready to talk to David just yet. To complicate matters further, her colleague Darren Mattoon was bearing down from across the room, clearly intent on joining her and ruining the quiet half hour she needed to process her chat with Elizabeth.