“Anything that could give us a motive as to why she would say you raped her?”
“Not really,” Dade says, sounding genuinely perplexed
“I keep asking, but nobody I talked to knows her that good.”
Dade and his sources are out of the loop. The only black faces in the Chi Omega House are the ones who clean up after the whites. I tell him to call me at the Ozark tomorrow if he hears anything. His last exam is not until Friday. Sometimes, it is hard to forget these kids are really in school.
My first stop the next afternoon is Jefferson Memorial Hospital. My sophomore year I broke my arm playing touch football one fall and spent a long afternoon in its emergency room. Things are relatively slow this afternoon, and after only a half hour of searching and waiting, I sit down with the nurse who talked with Robin Perry the morning she came in to be examined.
She had been out of town the day of the administrative hearing conducted by the university, and I am eager to check her out. A tall, gangly, dishwater blonde in her early forties, wearing blue hospital scrubs, Joan Chestnut isn’t particularly eager to talk to me, but does so after I show her the release on the state crime lab report form that Robin had signed. In the corner of a break room shared by two other employees who are watching a daytime soap, I whisper, “Do you remember how Robin Perry seemed to you the morning she came in and reported she had been raped?”
Ms. Chestnut gives me the patient smile of a woman used to dealing with attorneys.
“Her reactions were quite consistent for a rape victim,” she says, slowly and deliberately as if she already sees herself being cross examined
“She was very articulate besides being angry. I remember her in particular because even with all that she had been through she was a beautiful girl.”
I hand her the section of the nurse’s notes. In it she has noted that the patient was “calm.”
“Why wouldn’t she be upset?”
She flips through the entire document and hands it back to me.
“I’ve done ER over twenty years, and I’ve seen scores of rape victims. I’ve seen women numb, in shock, and then some who were relatively composed even minutes after an attack had occurred. It depends entirely on the individual. If she was raped the night before, she’d had time to work through the initial shock.”
“So you have no doubt Robin Perry was coerced into having sex?” I ask, over a commercial for breath mints.
“That’s not something you can ever know with any certainty, but just because she wasn’t hysterical doesn’t mean anything,” Ms. Chestnut responds, remaining un ruffled.
“The girl said she had been crying the entire night, and I believed her. I could look at her and tell she hadn’t had any sleep.”
Even though she isn’t saying anything particularly damaging, this woman, unlike the Rape Crisis counselor, is going to be helpful to the prosecution. She radiates such competence that a jury is going to believe anything that comes out of her mouth.
“Didn’t her roommate come in with her?” I ask, curious about Shannon Kennsit’s reaction. If her roommate was at all suspicious of her story, I might begin to get some hints now.
Looking at her watch, Joan Chestnut says, “I didn’t re member until now that that girl was her roommate. She was very supportive, I know that. From what I recall, I think she felt in some way responsible. Like if she hadn’t been going out that night, Robin wouldn’t have gone out there by herself, and it wouldn’t have happened.”
Ms. Chestnut has told me that she is supposed to be checking on a patient, but I say, “One more question. Was Robin worried about being pregnant?”
“Of course she was!” she says, looking at me as if I were slightly insane.
I spread my hands in a dismissive gesture.
“She could have gotten an abortion if that had been the case.”
Ms. Chestnut puckers her mouth as if she has been forced to swallow something unpleasant.
“That’s a terrible burden to place on a young woman, Mr. Page. I know lots of people who would only allow abortion if the mother’s life were in danger.”
Despite what this nurse thinks, I’m not out to make an enemy of her. I need her a lot more than she will ever need me.
“Thanks for your time, ma’am,” I say politely.
“I’m glad women have someone like you to support them.”
She stands up, ready to make her getaway.
“If you saw what we do,” she says, “you’d react the same way.”
“I have no doubt,” I say scrambling to my feet.
“One very last question. I know the lab report says she wasn’t pregnant at the time of the incident. Would she have found that out before she left the hospital?”
Ms. Chestnut looks puzzled.
“She would have known she wasn’t pregnant.”
“But if she thought she had been,” I persist, “she would have known that she wasn’t by the time the hospital got through with her, is that right?”
As usual, one last question has become two or three.
“She would have known,” Ms. Chestnut agrees.
“Do you know how she reacted to the information,” I ask, “that she wasn’t pregnant at the time of the alleged rape?”
Ms. Chestnut gives me a blank stare.
“She didn’t react to that news at all,” she says, clearly nonplussed by my question.
“It was the trauma of being raped she was re acting to.”
Shit. So much for my theory that she thought she was pregnant by her professor and had concocted a rape story so she could justify getting an abortion.
“If you think of something you didn’t tell me,” I say sincerely, “I’d appreciate it if you’d call me collect.”
Now that I am leaving, she smiles and lights up the entire room.
“I’ll be happy to,” she says, dropping my card into a pocket on her thigh.
“Am I going to be subpoenaed?”
I won’t hold my breath waiting for her call.
“Not by me.” I walk out the automatic double doors of the emergency room realizing I’m not going to be able to do any thing with this woman at the trial except pretend she’s boring the jury to death.
Like an old drunk who can’t remember anything except where he lives, I check into my room at the Ozark, which seems to be having a heating problem. It must be fifty degrees in here. I’d move, but I’m too damn lazy.
After complaining to the manager, I call Sarah. Reluctantly she gives me the telephone number of a girl named Lauren Denney at the Tri-Delt House.
“She’s the one who’s the cheerleader,” Sarah says irritably.
“She’s too eager. Dad. She wants to talk to you. Her last exam was this morning, but she said she could see you before she leaves town tonight.”
“What’s she like?” I ask.
“Two-faced,” Sarah warns me.
“She’s got more ex friends than anybody I know.”
“She sounds charming,” I comment. Defense witnesses, like clients, don’t come with a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval stamped on them. When they appear sincere and competent like Joan Chestnut, they are usually on the other side.
“Actually, she is,” Sarah says, “for the first twenty minutes or so you’re around her. But she can be a bitch!”
I rarely hear Sarah attack another girl, but I know she isn’t all sugar and spice either. There’s got to be some of me in her somewhere.
“Any other names?”
“Jenny Taylor,” Sarah says.
