'Tears were streaming down his cheeks. That's the first thing I noticed. As he got closer, I could see that his left eye was bruised, and there seemed to be some scratches on his face, too.'
'Did you say anything to him?'
'I dropped to my knees and grabbed hold of his elbows. I started to ask if he was all right, and as I was doing that, his father began shouting at him, telling him to grow up and act like a man.'
'What did you do next?'
'I tried to embrace the boy, telling him that he would be okay. But he stepped away from me and wiped his face with the backs of his hands. I stood up to get closer, so I could try to examine his eye. 'What happened to you?' I asked him.'
Paige Vallis explained that Dulles resumed his seat while his father answered her question. ''He made mistakes,' is what Andrew told me. 'He's going to get things right this time. Aren't you, Dulles?''
Then she described how Andrew pulled up two chairs, facing the boy, and ordered Paige to sit down in one of them.
'Did you sit?'
'Yes.'
'Did you make any effort to leave?'
'No. Not then. I didn't think that-'
'Objection,' Robelon said.
'Sustained. Don't tell us what you were thinking, tell us what you did,' Moffett told the witness.
'Yes, Your Honor.' She turned back to the jury. 'Andrew began drilling the boy, talking to him like a soldier. He made him stand up at attention, and then fired a series of questions at him.'
'Do you remember any of them?'
'I remember the first thing Andrew asked about. 'The lion's brood,' he said. 'Tell us their names.' Dulles answered him. He named Hannibal and his three brothers-they were weird names like Hasdrubal and Mago-I can't think of the others. He got it right, apparently. Then Andrew told him to list the winning battles of Aetius, who was some kind of Roman general. Dulles did that right, too. He knew all the places and the dates.'
Paige continued with a litany of quizzes, all of them about military figures. Mike Chapman could have answered them without missing a beat, but the ten-year-old child had been force-fed the list in the few months he had taken 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 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, instead of at the jurors. ''Don't do this, Andrew.' That's what I said.'
'Did Andrew respond?'
