The Best Defense Read Online Free PDF Page B

supposed to take care of her and I left instead.”
    Her resignation turning into fatalism, Barbara stopped fiddling with the coffeepot and went to the table
    “Okay. Just tell me about it, but start farther back.” But she knew, Barbara thought despairingly. She knew this story all too well.
    The night her mother left home, Lucille said in a toneless voice, she had made her promise to take care of her little sister. Lucille was fourteen, Paula nine.
    Their father never had hit them, but that night her mother eye was swollen shut and her jaw was swollen from a broken tooth…. The day Lucille graduated from high school, she had kept going and had never gone back.
    “I told Paulie I’d get a job and bring her with me,” she mumbled.
    “But I couldn’t. Minimum, that’s all, washing dishes, stuff like that, and then I got married .. She stayed until she was sixteen, and he started beating on her just like he did our mother.”
    Once Lucille started talking, Barbara had got up and finished the coffee. Now she brought two cups to the table and put one before Lucille, who had lapsed into silence and was gazing into the past.
    “What happened to your mother after that?” Barbara asked.
    “She died. We got a letter. That’s when he beat up Paula the first time.”
    And the district attorney would get all this into the record, Barbara thought moodily, and an expert would testify regarding the statistics that showed the frequency of battered children becoming battering parents.
    “Where’s your father now?”
    Lucille shrugged.
    “Maybe still in Salem. I don’t know. One time after Paula came to Eugene she was going to LCC to get her GED, I mean, she left before she finished school, and we thought she should do that, and we went to the coast and sat watching some of the boats leave. Not just fishing boats, I mean. Pretty boats, yachts. And we said when we got rich that’s what we’d do, have a pretty boat and take off. Just take off.”
    Barbara glanced at her watch.
    “You said you had something to ask me, Lucille. What was it?”
    “Yeah. It’s just that this popped in my mind when that reporter came around asking about Craig Dodgson. I mean, did I know him? Did Paula ever talk about him?
    Stuff like that?”
    She was losing a battle with exasperation, Barbara felt then; compassion for the two mistreated girls, sympathy for their fantasy about wealth and escape were not enough to tilt the scales. Carefully she said, “Lucille I don’t know who Craig Dodgson is. I don’t know what you’re talking about. What reporter? What did the reporter want?”
    “He said he had a tip that Craig Dodgson was telling the police that he had joked with Paula about taking her away on his yacht. He said that Craig Dodgson told Paula that no kids were allowed on his boat.”
    “Oh, God,” Barbara sighed.
    “And what did you tell the reporter?”
    “Nothing. I said I didn’t know anything about it.”
    “Did he say anything else, ask you anything else?”
    “He said did I realize this gave Paula a motive for killing Lori. And I slammed the door on him. Then I got in the car and came up here to see Paula. I might lose my job. I was supposed to work today.”
    “And what did Paula say?”
    “I told her, and she just said what difference did it make? And I got scared. It was like she was thinking about something else and just not interested. She’s thinking of another way to kill herself. I know she is.
    She’s smart. She’ll find a way.”
    She was going to break down, Barbara realized. She said sharply, “Lucille, stop that! Wallowing in self-pity isn’t going to help your sister.” She took both cups to the sink and dumped out Lucille’s coffee. She had not touched it. She refilled the cups and returned to the table
    “Listen to me,” Barbara went on then.
    “Have you told anyone else about this? Spassero?”
    “No. I went to see Paula and came straight over here.”
    “What is the question you said you