“Come on now!” I snap at him.
“It’s really going to be just your word against hers. This isn’t going to be any picnic for her either. You can do this.”
“She talks real good,” Dade says, not quite looking me in the eye.
A pretty black girl, dressed in a beige sweater and tight jeans, yells in our direction: “Come here, Dade!”
This is not the time or place for a pep talk. Students, several of them black, look over at us from a huge bulletin board where they are gathered. This must be where the black students hang out. I see more here than I have on the rest of the campus combined except for Darby Hall, the athletic dorm.
“Believe me,” I whisper, “she’ll be a lot more nervous than you will. I’ll see you tonight.
I’m going to the prosecutor’s office and see if I can get the statements she and the others have given.”
Dade nods again perfunctorily, and I head for my car, wishing I knew what I could say to him that would get his head off his chest. Yet, I have the same discouraged feeling that is registered on my client’s face. If Dade were going to appear before a group of kids like himself, he would have more of a chance. Instead, I have no doubt the students on the “J” Board will resemble Robin (in more ways than just skin color) instead of him. Surely, there will be one black face, but all it will take to “discipline” him will be a majority vote. As I unlock the Blazer, I think of Marty’s comments about blacks and nearly laugh out loud. I don’t think she would choose to trade places with Dade right now.
Binkie Cross, the Washington County prosecuting attorney, has the bearing of a hillbilly-not the wormy, inbred sodomite who buggered poor Ned Beatty in Deliverance, but the rugged, lean, born individualist to whom the law is at best a painful necessity. At six-five he towers over me in an ugly brown suit that is too short in the sleeves and pants. Oblivious to his appearance, he sticks out his hand and swallows mine in his.
“Sorry, I missed you last week,” he says.
“I was on vacation. Call me Binkie, by the way. Everybody else does.”
“That’s all right,” I say, deciding not to mention that I heard his vacation was being cut short. He may feel he needs to protect his assistant, and I don’t want to make him defensive.
“I’d just like to get a copy of the file, and I was told only you could let me have it.”
Binkie winces as if he had been reminded of an un pleasant conversation. He invites me to sit down, then says candidly, “I would have preferred that my deputy wait until I was back in town to file a charge that serious.”
I nod, delighted to hear him say this.
“I wish he had too, because I don’t think my client is guilty of anything but some incredibly bad judgment.”
“How do you mean?” Cross says casually, as if we were colleagues instead of on opposing sides. He looks about my age, and I wonder if he went to school up here.
“To hear him tell it,” I respond, “sex was her idea, more than his. If you’ve seen this kid, you realize in a hurry he’s not lacking for female companionship.”
“How come he didn’t talk to the police?” Binkie asks.
“If he had, I doubt if Mike would have been in such a hurry to charge him.”
“Kids have seen a million cop shows on TV where the Miranda warnings are given,” I say.
“It probably wasn’t such a bad idea at the time. I’ll bring him down to talk to you anytime you want. I’d like to get this university hearing out of the way first though.”
Binkie reaches into his desk and pulls out a manila folder and hands it to me.
“I had this made for you Monday,” he says.
“I think it’s up to date. The girl’s statement is near the top.”
“I appreciate it,” I say, genuinely relieved I’m not getting another runaround. He knows that I don’t want Dade talking to him until I’ve seen the evidence against him.
“How was your trip?” I ask, deciding I like this guy. He doesn’t seem as if he is going to make me jump through any unnecessary hoops. To impress the voters, some prosecutors will make you play games with them from start to finish. Maybe he’s not going to run again. That would be fine with me.
A slow smile spreads to Binkie’s sunburned face.
“Damn, it was wonderful!” he says enthusiastically.
“My wife and I were bushwacking through a provincial park outside of Vancouver and we walked right up on this big of brown bear. I guess the look on our faces scared him because he took off the other way. If he hadn’t, we would have become permanent residents. God, it’s pretty country up there,” he adds wistfully.
“The closest I’ve come is a nature program on TV,” I confess, “but I’ve heard it’s wonderful.” Poor guy. He sounds as if he had died and gone to heaven. I’m lucky he didn’t come back mad. I would have if my vacation had been interrupted.
“I’ll be happy to produce Dade for some blood, hair, and saliva samples the first of next week,” I say, trying to appear equally cooperative.
“You don’t need to file a motion.”
“Why don’t you bring him in next Wednesday at eleven?” Binkie says, looking down at his calendar.
“I’ve got some time that day to take his statement.”
I pull out my calendar. Hell, I might as well move up here.
“That’s fine,” I say, eager to leave so I can go over the file.
Binkie looks at me square in the face.
“I knew Chet Bracken,” he says.
“You must have been pretty good if he wanted you to work with him.”
Now I understand the reason for the respect I am get ting. I don’t say that if he knew the circumstances of my relationship with Chet he wouldn’t be impressed.
“Chet was the one who was pretty good,” I say.
“He was the best damn trial lawyer I ever saw,” Binkie says flatly.
I don’t disagree, but at the time I knew him Chet was riddled with cancer and couldn’t think straight for more than an hour at a time. I stick out my hand again.
“Maybe in the next couple of weeks we can figure out what really happened. I know the last thing a prosecutor wants to do is to send an innocent kid to jail.”
As I hoped, Binkie does not give me an automatic response He clasps my hand and looks me in the eye.
“If I’m not convinced this boy raped her,” he says earnestly, “I’ll dismiss the charge. You can take that to the bank.”
“I’ll hold you to it.” Maybe I’m a fool, but I believe this man. He doesn’t seem the type who needs any trophies on the wall. Indeed, he doesn’t display even a single diploma. Behind him are pictures of him and presumably his family in the mountains. If he is as decent as he appears, we might not have to try this case.
In my room at the Ozark, I begin to have some real hope. Robin’s statement, and that of her roommate, Shannon Kennsit, aren’t as strong as I feared. Robin’s ex planation of why she waited a full nine hours
to go to the hospital comes across, on the printed page, as vague and not particularly believable. According to her, she was afraid that she would get in trouble with her parents be cause they would think she had been dating someone black, when, in fact, they had only been friends. Too, she was afraid nobody would believe her because of the incidents involving athletes in the past. What incidents? She doesn’t say. According to Shannon Kennsit, it was she who convinced Robin that she had to go to the hospital and report the rape. On this point, Robin seems to suggest that she had been planning to go to the police when the shock of what happened had worn off. She claimed to be in a daze when she had returned to the Chi Omega House that night and had gone straight to her room and had taken a shower, telling no one what had happened until four that morning when she had awakened Shannon with her crying. She didn’t remember if anybody had seen her when she came in.
On some points, with the exception of the sexual encounter itself, her story resembles Dade’s, but, of course, here it differs dramatically. He was the aggressor; he grabbed her arm and said, “Don’t make me have to hurt you.” He forced her to undress and get in the shower with him. The questioner, a Detective Parley, got her to state there had been penetration (as he had to for there to be a charge of rape), but she was vague on other details. All she had come over to do was to work on the speech with him. They had been friends since the spring.
