God, that was good, he marveled in panic. How can I top that? He turned to face the jury and looked up at their inquisi-tive faces. He had watched their reactions at listening to Czernek. Hit them on the same points, I guess.
'Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,' he said. 'This is not a custody battle. This lawsuit is not the result of righteous in-dignation at discovery of some sort of evil crime. We are all here because of a nuisance suit brought by a money-hungry couple who are more interested in the thirty-million-dollar so-called
`damages' than they are in the welfare of Renata Chandler.'
He looked down at the plaintiff. Czernek took notes, while Valerie stared at Terry in disbelief. He turned back to the jury box. 'Mr. Czernek may indeed view himself and his live-in lover as the injured parties, but the tale he spins is one of purest fantasy. What he skillfully neglects to mention-and what the evidence will show-is that we are here today because Renata Chandler was rescued from death nearly eight months ago.'
Johnson's hands began to move as he spoke, weaving their spell. 'Think back to a day in early March when Valerie Dalton discovers that she is pregnant. It's unplanned, a surprise. Well, Valerie's a modern woman. She has a job of her own, and she's just gotten a promotion. She's living pretty well in a Palos Verdes home overlooking the ocean. She has no need for the commitment of marriage to enjoy life with the moderately successful lawyer Ron Czernek, her lover of several years.' Valerie, despite her best efforts, turned red with anger and embarrassment. She knew she had no reason to react to what everyone who mattered already knew. But strangers were hear-ing about it, here and on TV all around the country. People who had no way to judge her life except for the selective words uttered by a hostile attorney.
'What's a modern woman to do?' Terry paced slowly about, looking as if he were thinking on his feet. 'Giving birth to a baby would just be an intrusion on her life. How could she work effectively at her job? How could she take pleasant vaca-tions in Hawaii and Europe?'
That bastard, Czernek thought, has done his homework.
'How indeed?' Johnson gazed from juror to juror. 'Some of you have children. You know what they can do to your lives. A baby changes you forever. Some of you are unmarried. I know a couple of you are career women. You know what I mean. You know what Valerie feared. Being tied down. Having to care for a defenseless, demanding infant. She wasn't ready for it. Wasn't ready to commit the rest of her life to supporting and nurturing the child she and Ron Czernek had begotten.' He smiled at the word, paused to scratch at his chin.
'What's a modern woman to do? Well, she sought the vener-able solution of abortion, a convenience women have turned to for thousands of years.' He paused to let them mull that over.
'What is abortion? The word comes from Latin. Oriri means to rise, appear, be born. Ab, meaning off or away; it's a prefix that means `badly,' as in abnormal or abuse. So an abortion is a bad birth. The dictionary describes abortion as `the fatally premature expulsion of a fetus, whether natural or induced.'' He stopped in front of the plaintiff's table. 'We're here today because Valerie Dalton and Ron Czernek sought to abort their child. Attempted to kill it. And it survived.'
This time, he managed to coax a murmur out of the specta-tors.
Valerie tried to look straight ahead without emotion, but tears leaked from her eyes. As she dabbed at them with a tissue, Ron stopped taking notes to put his arm around her.
Terry wandered over to the jury box. 'You'll probably hear a lot of talk during this trial about a wicked medical experiment conducted in secrecy by a mad doctor.' He waved a hand in Fletcher's general direction; she smiled imperceptibly at the description. 'You'll hear a lot about a woman so desperate for a child that she paid for her pregnancy. I intend to demon-strate, however, that this was a far nobler act than that of the plaintiff, who paid to have a living being torn from the womb of its mother and disposed of like so much garbage. A living being actually rescued by Dr. Fletcher and Karen Chandler. If they had not done what they did, Renata Chandler would not be alive today to be reclaimed by the very people who eight months ago paid for her death.' He looked at each member of the jury. 'A killing that, I assure you, Dr. Evelyn Fletcher was fully certified to perform by the laws of the United States and the codes of the American Medical Association.'
He walked back to his table. 'Had Dr. Fletcher not had a rare and amazing conscience coupled with an astounding medical insight, Renata Chandler would have been just one of millions of aborted fetuses tossed away every year. Instead, she is a beautiful, living baby girl who is the center of a con-troversy that is shocking to behold: her attempted killers de-manding custody on the specious argument that they would be better parents!'
Terry Johnson shook his head and stepped to his seat be-tween Evelyn and Karen. 'That's all I've got to say for now. Let's see what happens.' With that, he sat down.
The murmuring behind the bar grew louder. The judge rapped gently a couple of times to bring silence. 'Mr. Czernek, you may call your first witness.'
Valerie looked at Ron with apprehension. He clasped her shoulders, looked her in the eyes, and whispered, 'Just be brave and tell it the way it happened. Make eye contact with the jurors. Answer my questions and nothing more.' He stood.
'Your Honor, I'd like to call the plaintiff, Valerie Dalton, to the stand.' Valerie approached the stand and was sworn in by a tall, aging Latino court clerk who spoke with a deep, solemn voice. She sat in the wooden chair, adjusted the drape of her dress, and tried to be calm. Czernek's first few questions were standard. She stated her name, her address, her age, her educational and business back-ground. The recitation of such simple facts soothed her. The sense of panic subsided.
