[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
up residence with his schizophrenic father.
She got through five subjects that she was able to recall and estimated that
there was a handful more that she could not. She tensed visibly as she moved
to a more difficult part of the scene.
"Then Andrew started peppering the child with questions about Benedict Arnold.
'Death to traitors,' he kept saying. 'You know what happens to traitors, don't
you, boy?' Dulles knew about the betrayal of West Point and the Quebec
campaign, but Andrew asked him something about the Battle of Valcour Island
and the boy simply froze."
"What did Andrew say to him next?"
"He pointed at the closet door. 'The gun, Dulles, don't make me take out the
gun again.'"
Paige Vallis described how the boy's body shook in response to the threat. She
got up from her chair and went to grab him by the hand, begging Andrew to stop
and let her take the boy with her.
"Did you attempt to leave the apartment?"
"Objection."
"Overruled. I'll hear this. Go on, Ms. Vallis."
"Of course I did. I told Andrew I was going and I was taking Dulles with me.
He stood in front of the door and told me the boy couldn't leave. He said that
if I went to the police, he had people who would take care of me. Those were
his exact words. I swore I wouldn't go to the police, that I just wanted
Dulles to see a doctor. I wasn't worried about myself-this was all about the
poor little boy."
"Did Andrew Tripping step away from the door?"
"No, no, he did not. He put his hand on the child's shoulder and asked him if
he had forgotten about the gun. 'Death to traitors,' he repeated. 'Benedict
Arnold was the scum of the earth.'"
Paige Vallis lowered her head. 'That's when he stepped away from the door."
"Did you open it?"
"No, Miss Cooper. Not then."
The logical thing to ask her was why, but the law wasn't always logical. She
was not allowed to talk about the workings of her mind, just what she did and
what she observed. "What happened next?"
"Dulles broke loose from me and ran back to the chair. His father followed
him."
"What did you do?"
"I stayed. I couldn't bear to leave the child in those circumstances."
This was one of the biggest problems we faced with the jury. I might have
proved the misdemeanor charge of Tripping's endangering the welfare of his own
child, but not much more. At that moment on March 6, Paige Vallis had the
clear opportunity to get herself out of harm's way. She had not witnessed any
assault on Dulles Tripping and had no clear understanding of how he had been
bruised. She heard Andrew refer to a gun, but had not seen any weapon nor been
Page 44
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
threatened with the use of one.
"Objection," Peter Robelon said. "Move to strike."
"Motion granted," Moffett said, tapping on the railing in front of him,
telling the reporter to strike the comment about Paige not being able to bear
leaving Dulles behind.
But the jury had heard the words, and it was impossible to erase them from
their minds.
"What did the defendant do next?"
"He took something out of his pocket. Something small. At first I couldn't see
what it was. Dulles started to whimper. 'Please don't,' he said, over and
over."
"Did there come a time when you could tell what the object was?"
"Tweezers. It was a small pair of metal tweezers. He leaned the child's head
back, and inserted the tweezers in his nose."
Juror number four slinked down in her seat and closed her eyes. Squeamish, I
guessed. An appropriate reaction. Number eight leaned forward and seemed to
enjoy the detail. Too much television, no doubt.
"What did you do?"
"I ran to stop him. But I couldn't. He had already placed them in the child's
nostril, and I was afraid I'd cause more damage if I shook his arm. In
seconds, he pulled a bloody piece of cotton out of the boy's nose."
"Was there any discussion about that?"
"Yes, Andrew told me he had packed Dulles's nose to stop some earlier
bleeding, before he came out to meet me for dinner. It looked to me as if the
stuffing must have caused as much pain as the initial blow."
"Objection, Judge."
"Sustained."
Jurors were listening intently, some of them occasionally glancing over at the
defense table to see whether Andrew Tripping was reacting to Paige Vallis's
testimony. I desperately needed the testimony of Dulles himself. Without him,
there was only this hint of what his father's nightly torture routine had
been.
The luncheon recess interrupted the narrative's drama once again. Neither
Paige nor I felt like eating. She noshed on a sandwich and I played with a
salad, knowing how likely I was to develop a crushing headache by midafternoon
with the combination of the stress level escalating during the proceedings and
my failure to eat.
Back on the stand, Paige took us through the rest of the bizarre evening.
Eventually, at some point after midnight, Andrew allowed Dulles to change into
pajamas and go to sleep on the narrow cot that had been placed in the alcove
off the kitchen.
Then, Vallis said, Andrew spent more than two hours telling her about the
terrible pressures of raising the boy alone.
"It must have been two o'clock in the morning," she went on. "Andrew stood up
in front of me. 'You're going to come inside,' he said. 'I want you to come in
and take off your clothes.'"
"What did you do?"
"'No,' I said to him." Vallis tried to stay composed as she looked at me,
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]