“But she left a message canceling on my voice mail.
Her name’s Shaniqua Simmons here’s the number. Call it yourself you’ll see why she’s not coming.“
“Anybody need that space?”
“Yeah. Jackie Manzi called from Special Victims. She’d like you to see a Hunter College student case came in yesterday morning and she doesn’t know whether to make an arrest. Wants you to decide and let her know.”
“Fine. Call and tell her to get her witness down as soon as possible she can have Shaniqua’s spot.”
“Rose Malone said to ignore her e-mail. Battaglia wants to take you, Rod, and Pat McKinney to lunch to brainstorm for some ideas on bringing down the arrest to arraignment time. She warned me that he also wants to see how you’re functioning under all this stress.”
“Thank her for the warning.”
“Then at two you have that interview with Ellen Goldman, the woman who’s doing the profile for USA Lawyer’s Digest.”
“I really don’t have the patience to sit for that kind of thing today. I have too much to make up here.”
“Well, I doubt you’ll be able to put her off much longer she’s very persistent. Plus the District Attorney thinks it’s good PR. for the office, so don’t fight it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I smiled and bowed my head in deference to Laura’s sound advice.
“Anything else?”
“An avalanche of calls some media, some friends you can go through them yourself. And one guy kept calling all day Friday. Wouldn’t leave his name or a message says he must talk with you about Isabella and will try you again today. You want to take it?”
“Sure.”
“And Alan Glanton called already. He’s opening in the Bodega rape case this morning. Judge Callahan told him he’s much more likely to rule favorably on the prosecution’s objections during the trial if you give Alan the same ”equipment“ you Used so successfully in the Boynton trial. Can he stop by and pick them up before he goes to court?”
I laughed and walked over to the last filing cabinet along the wall, which held all of my personal belongings. Shoes with varying size heel heights, pantyhose in a wide variety of shades to guard against daily snags and runs, makeup and perfume for unanticipated evening invitations. And my way to Judge Callahan’s heart: packages of Stick-Ups, the air freshener, deodorizers in different scents, which adhere to wood surfaces. Philip Boynton, a serial rapist I tried last spring, refused to shower from the day he was arrested till the trial. His stench was so overwhelming that none of the court officers wanted to work Callahan’s part. I brought the Stick-Ups to court every day and we covered the underside of the defendant’s chair and counsel table with spearmint, peppermint, and evergreen to make life bearable for the personnel. Bodegaman was in the same category so I gave Laura my secret stash to pass along to Alan.
When Laura left I sat down to return calls, and started with the message from Shaniqua Simmons. It was common for domestic abuse victims to cancel appointments after making an initial police report, but it always concerned me in case they had been threatened or re victimized because of the meeting with a prosecutor. Her phone rang twice, then kicked into an answering machine which played a recording.
“Hi, this is Shaniqua,” in her sultriest voice.
“Me and Nelson can’t come to the phone right now, ‘cause we got some makin’ up to do.” The background music, quite appropriately, was written by the immortal Marvin Gaye, advising Shaniqua that this was the time for sex-u-al healing.
I tried to look at the bright side. It did give me an extra hour to get Manzi’s victim an interview without any delay.
There was plenty of work to busy myself with until the Hunterstudent arrived shortly after eleven o’clock. Laura buzzed me on the intercom: “Beverly Vaughan is here she’s the witness in Jackie Manzi’s case.”
“Fine. Please start me a screening sheet and I’ll be out to get her in a minute.”
Laura handed me a screening sheet, which“ was the printed form we used to record all the data about each case interview, including the pedigree information about the victim, which was how I usually began the conversation.
I introduced myself to Ms. Vaughan and explained the process we would be going through.
“I’ve got a lot of questions I need to ask you, but before I begin, is there anything you want to ask me?”
“Yes, Ms. Cooper. I want to know why Steven wasn’t arrested last night. The police know exactly who he is they even talked to him last night. I want to know why he isn’t in jail.”
“As I understand it, Beverly, there are some questions you weren’t able to answer for Detective Manzi, some things you didn’t remember about Saturday evening. You told them you ”thought“ you had been raped, but you weren’t sure…”
“Well, I don’t exactly remember everything that happened, but I know I was violated.”
“Steven tells a very different story than you do. And before we lock somebody up for first-degree rape you can be damn sure we’re going to explore every detail of the events and try to reconstruct them. If it’s clear he committed a crime, Steven will be arrested and charged.
“The best thing you can do is relax, try and answer all my questions as candidly as possible, and understand that I need to know every bit as much about you as Steven knows everything that he will tell his lawyer about your encounter on Saturday.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, Beverly, that your case is different than a case where a man climbs through a window or stalks a woman from a subway station and attacks someone he’s never seen before. It may be every bit as serious, but it’s different.
In those situations, they’re only together for as long as it takes to accomplish the rape -but the attacker doesn’t know anything about his victim, she hasn’t confided in him, she hasn’t trusted him like someone on a date with a friend does. Understand?“
“Sure. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t raped.”
“No. But it means that Steven knows a lot more about you than I know, information he can try to use against you. I can’t just limit my questions to the point in the evening that you went to his room, I’ve got to start with what brought you together in the first place, what you told him about yourself, whether there was any foreplay during the evening, whether there was any conversation about sex.
And first of all I need to know why your memory of the events is so unclear is it because of the trauma, or is it the amount of alcohol?“
“Oh God. This isn’t going to be easy, is it?”
“No, Beverly, it’s not going to be easy. There’s too much at stake for both you and Steven, and now is the time to get the answers not six months from now, at a trial. I’ll just begin with the background information I need try and relax.”
I walked the young woman through the personal material the sheet called for: date of birth, permanent address, roommates, status at school, medical history, means of support. Like most of the witnesses who had preceded her in that seat, this overweight nineteen-year-old was nervous and uncomfortable, barely able to meet my eye when she responded to questions. She was a sophomore at Hunter College this fall and living in an apartment with two other students the first time she was away from her parents’ home. She explained that she didn’t want them to know what happened because she was sure they would make her move back to Queens or drop out of school. I assured her that our meeting was confidential.
“Why don’t you tell me how and when you first met Steven.”
“Who, me?”
“Yes, Beverly.”
She explained how she saw him at a school mixer a couple of weeks earlier, talking with a guy she knew from her sociology class, and she had gone out drinking with them after the mixer.
“What did you have to drink that first night?”
“Who, me?”
“Yeah.”
Beverly struggled to remember what combination of rum and sodas she had the first time she and Steven sat at a bar for four hours, drinking and talking about their classes, their interests, and their mutual friends. She had
