'This is awkward,' he said unhappily.
'Let me hear it anyway.'
'Well...' He cleared his throat. 'Conventional police wisdom says that if the complainant in a rape or an attempted rape knows the victim, there's a pretty good chance that she contributed to the crime by enticing the accused to one degree or another.'
'Bullshit!'
She got up, went to the desk, and stood with her back to him for a minute. He could see that she was struggling to maintain her composure. What he had said had made her extremely angry.
When she turned to him at last, her face was flushed. She said, 'This is horrible. It's outrageous. Every time a woman is raped by someone she knows, you actually believe she asked for it.'
'No. Not every time.'
'But most of the time, that's what you think,' she said angrily.
'No.'
She glared at him. 'Let's stop playing semantical games. You believe it about me. You believe I enticed him.'
'No,' Tony said. 'I merely explained what conventional police wisdom is in a case like this. I didn't say that I put much faith in conventional police wisdom. I don't. But Lieutenant Howard does. You asked me about him. You wanted to know what he was thinking, and I told you.'
She frowned. 'Then ... you believe me?'
'Is there any reason I shouldn't?'
'It happened exactly the way I said.'
'All right.'
She stared at him. 'Why?'
'Why what?'
'Why do you believe me when he doesn't?'
'I can think of only two reasons for a woman to bring false rape charges against a man. And neither of them makes any sense in your case.'
She leaned against the desk, folded her arms in front of her, cocked her head, and regarded him with interest. 'What reasons?'
'Number one, he has money, and she doesn't. She wants to put him on the spot, hoping she can pry some sort of big settlement out of him in return for dropping the charges.'
'But I've got money.'
'Apparently, you've got quite a lot of it,' he said, looking around admiringly at the beautifully furnished room.
'What's the other reason?'
'A man and a woman are having an affair, but he leaves her for another lady. She feels hurt, rejected, scorned. She wants to get even with him. She wants to punish him, so she accuses him of rape.'
'How can you be sure that doesn't fit me?' she asked.
'I've seen both your movies, so I figure I know a little bit about the way your mind works. You're a very intelligent woman, Miss Thomas. I don't think you could be foolish or petty or spiteful enough to send a man to prison just because he hurt your feelings.'
She studied him intently.
He felt himself being weighed and judged.
Obviously convinced that he was not the enemy, she returned to the couch and sat down in a swish of dark- blue silk. The robe molded to her, and he tried not to show how aware he was of her strikingly female lines.
She said, 'I'm sorry I was snappish.'
'You weren't,' he assured her. 'Conventional police wisdom makes me angry, too.'
'I suppose if this gets into court, Frye's attorney will try to make the jury believe that I enticed the son of a bitch.'
'You can count on it.'
'Will they believe him?'
'They often do.'
'But he wasn't just going to rape me. He was going to kill me.'
'You'll need proof of that.'
'The broken knife upstairs--'
'Can't be connected to him,' Tony said. 'It won't be covered with his prints. And it's just a common kitchen knife. There's no way we can trace it to the point of purchase and tie it to Bruno Frye.'
'But he looked so crazy. He's ... unbalanced. The jury would see that. Hell, you'll see it when you arrest him. There probably won't even be a trial. He'll probably just be put away.'
