understand that. In fact, I doubt if they would believe you if you didn’t admit you were attracted to her.”
Dade leans forward and rests his forearms on his thighs, staring straight ahead.
“We were jus’ friends-that’s all.”
I see I have a lot of work to do, but it can’t be done all in one day.
“Did you see her again outside of class in the spring?”
He shakes his head vehemently.
“Jus’ that one time.
School was about out, and we had exams. I went home.”
“Did you call her or ask her to do something before summer came and she couldn’t?”
“I might of called her once, but outside of class I didn’t see her.”
This kid has been brainwashed more than he realizes, but so far he is so sincere I feel good about him. Even if he is lying about his feelings, a jury in a normal case could get beyond that. The trouble is that he is black.
They’ll have to get beyond that first.
“So how did you be gin to have contact this fall?”
Dade folds his arms across his broad chest.
“She’s a cheerleader, so I’d see her at pep rallies, and I was in this course called public speaking with her. She didn’t get friendly like she was last semester until a couple of weeks ago, and then we started working together like we did before.”
“So it was her idea,” I conclude, watching his face carefully. This kid seems incapable of guile, but I remind myself I’ve had plenty of clients who had no difficulty believing their own lies.
“Now it seems that way,” he says thoughtfully.
“She’d talk at the first of the semester, but it was like she was too busy.”
“Had you asked her to work together, and she hadn’t wanted to, or what?” So far it seems that Robin called the shots.
“Not really,” Dade replies casually.
“You can jus’ tell.”
This kid is more sensitive than a lot of guys his age.
His light color may have something to do with that. Thus far, he seems about as far from a rapist as I can imagine.
“So you just started working together again?”
“Yeah,” he says blankly.
“We had a big speech coming up, and we agreed to get together and work on it a little bit the night before.”
“Whose idea was that?” I ask.
“Well, this fall we didn’t have a chance to practice be fore class. She had something before ten. I guess I did.”
“So did you suggest a place or she?” Robin could have easily manipulated this conversation. Dade seems as naive as most boys about girls. Yet, even if he is not, he gives the appearance of having been reluctant to push too hard.
“I remember talking about our rooms,” Dade says, “but you can’t study there with all the shit that goes on. I guess I suggested Eddie’s house if he wasn’t going to be there.”
Robin could have easily made this idea inevitable without saying a word about it. If this case goes to trial, one mother on the jury with a son the right age could hang up the case. Mothers know what idiots their male children can be.
“Who’s this Eddie again? What’s his last name and where’s his apartment?”
“House,” Dade answers.
“It’s a rented house on Happy Hollow Road. I don’t even know if it’s in the city limits.
Eddie Stiles. He’s just a student that kind of hangs around the players a lot. He’s okay. He lets guys use it pretty much whenever they want.”
“Is he rich?” I guess, wondering how common this arrangement is. With all the wannabes and hangers-on surrounding the Razorbacks, it can’t be terribly unusual.
I wonder if any NCAA rules are being violated.
“I heard his family owns a big funeral home in Tulsa,” Dade admits.
“He drives a new Cutlass.”
I wonder if he is black, but at this stage it seems rude to ask. I don’t want to turn Dade off. A lot of white kids have too much money; why shouldn’t one or two blacks?
“I take it that he wasn’t around that night?”
“I didn’t see him the whole day,” Dade says.
I assume the cops have talked to Eddie. He could help or hurt. Either way, I need to talk to him.
“Did you drive over together?”
“She said she’d meet me there,” Dade says.
I wonder about Robin’s motive. It sounds as if she wanted to be able to leave if Dade got out of hand. I am writing with my legal pad on my knees, and the bed creaks every time I shift my weight. Too bad the Ozark’s decorating budget didn’t allow for a table.
“Why don’t you just tell me from the moment she showed up what happened?”
Dade grabs the sides of his chair.
“It wasn’t ten minutes before she had forgot about the speech. You can tell when a girl wants to be fucked, jus’ the way she looks and acts.”
I interrupt, “How was she dressed?” I need to see a picture of Robin, so I can get an image in my mind of what happened.
“Skirt and sweater,” he says.
“She always dressed up, even for class.”
I remember seeing Robin, but it was from Row 42 in War Memorial Stadium at Little Rock during the Memphis game two weeks ago. As bad as my eyes are getting, I could have been standing next to her and not have recognized her.
“Did you have anything to drink,” I ask, “or could you tell if she had been drinking?” A good answer would be helpful here. If she had been juicing herself up beforehand, it would at least be arguable she had more than studying on her mind.
“I smelled wine on her breath, but we didn’t have any thing at Eddie’s. It happened pretty fast.”
“Did Eddie just leave his place unlocked?” I ask, glad I didn’t have a friend like Eddie in college. I got in enough trouble.
“He gave me a key,” Dade says.
“A couple of guys had them.”
I think I’m getting the picture.
“So it wasn’t uncommon to take girls over there.” Robin shouldn’t have been there. No woman asks for rape, a logical impossibility if there ever was one, but perhaps someone on the jury will want to punish her for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If they had really wanted to find a place on campus to study, it would have been easy enough.
“Not really,” Dade says.
“You got to get off campus sometimes.”
“So you’ve slept with girls over there before?” I say bluntly.
Dade makes an angry face for the first time.
“I didn’t rape nobody though. If you’re an athlete on this campus, you can get girls. That’s no shit.”
“Were you attracted to her?” I ask again, knowing this is a sore point with him, given the lectures he must have received from his parents.
I hear Dade’s stomach growl. Jail is a great place to be gin a diet. Patting his stomach through his wrinkled shirt, he says, “She wasn’t my type. A little thin, you know what I mean? No titties, no butt. I like girls with meat on ‘em.”
