Authors: Emily Winslow
I don't phrase it like that. I compose a normal-sounding reply about wanting to know Fryar's legal grounds for fighting the extradition, to know the process, the decision.
Randall is sweetly anxious about doing everything right. He even wears a tie. He reports that he was “very overdressed . . . Pretty
sure most people thought I was a lawyer just sitting in the wrong section.”
In the end, Fryar didn't even show up.
It's a good thing that Randall did go. As before, the Pittsburgh police are unable to get any information out of New York. Because of Randall, I'm able to report to them that Pennsylvania's Governor's Warrant demanding extradition has been served and that Fryar will be arraigned on it in front of the local supreme court in three days, on the nineteenth. This warrant is an upgrade of the original extradition request from the Court of Common Pleas. Hopefully it will be enough to move him.
The other reason it's good that Randall went is because it was kind of him, and his willingness comforts me apart from any practical effect his action also has. For all that I have dozens of connections in and around New York, most of whom know the situation, I had felt embarrassed to ask anyone. He's someone that I'd told only recently, and that freshness had made me feel able to bring it up.
Meanwhile, Honan is drafting my charges so that they'll be ready to send as soon as the final lab report is complete. I've learned to phone Honan. While Detective Campbell's e-mail replies are detailed and long, generously full of information, Honan's are spare. But, I've discovered that he's friendly and even sweet on the phone. My call about the hearing interrupts him, and we chat. I ask him what my charges specifically are, forcing him to translate from legalese to normal words: breasts, fingering, blowjob. He stammers, clearly preferring the official acronyms and euphemisms.
I ask him why the smothering isn't being charged as an assault on its own. He tells me that it's the forcible aspect of the highest charge, the “forcible rape,” not a charge itself. I don't like this. The smothering was a big deal. I check with Valenta, but he agrees with Honan: it's an aspect of the rape.
I don't mean to set them up against each other, but, when Honan
gets back to me and says he'll double-check, I tell him that there's no longer any need; Valenta agrees with him, so I'm on board. I think I've hurt Honan's feelings. Valenta's got no power in the current investigation, but I trust him more than anyone else in Pittsburgh. He was kind to me in the hospital. He's kind to me now, answering any e-mails quickly, even checking in if he doesn't hear for a while. He cares.
I'm so grateful to him for his commitment and transparency that it's jarring to realize that he technically failed. This was his case and he didn't solve it, not then and not now. DNA did that, and he didn't have the technology or the database in 1992. In fact, if he had ever suspected Fryar, even vaguely, we wouldn't be able to be in court now. The theory of the law that overrides statutes of limitations for DNA is that if the police knew enough back then to suspect someone, then they've had their shot at finding evidence, non-DNA evidence that should have been findable so close to the crime itself. Game over.
What I'm grateful for from Valenta is not the resolution, which he never gave to me. I'm grateful that he was kind to me, that night and now; that he was indignant on my behalf; that he took care with my case for the short time that it was his. Long before the police got near Fryar, there were chances to believe me, to take me seriously, to declare that I was right to tell what had happened, and that the man was terrible to have done it. There was the chance to call this thing a crime, a genuine crime. All of that was done for me then, and it's just as important as what's happening now. More than twenty years before the Pittsburgh police caught Arthur Fryar, they put the weight of their authority behind my version of events. They wrote down my words and kept them safe; they took my evidence and kept it frozen.
Detective Valenta did that. This is, profoundly, his case.
Perhaps because of the holidays and end-of-year, the court date set for the nineteenth becomes the thirtieth, then December 31. At
this point I don't know if Fryar ever really did fight the extradition, or if New York is just disorganized. At home in Cambridge, we celebrate Christmas twice, once for the kids on the day, and again a week later for my unwell mother-in-law, who is recovering from heart surgery.
The day of New Year's Eve, Detective Campbell tells me that, at last, prisoner transport is being arranged. A new dateâJanuary 13âhas appeared on New York's docket, but she assures me that it's not a new hearing; it's a status conference and deadline by which Pennsylvania must have picked him up. I wait, ready to fly at a few days' notice. Once Fryar arrives in Pittsburgh, the hearing has to happen within thirteen days.
Even though the lab has matched my evidence, he can't actually be charged for me until they've officially confirmed the match. They may or may not finish this in time for my charge to catch up with the other victim's; but, even if I can't yet testify, I'm going.
Urgent things have been completed: I've finished a revision of my next novel and am in a lull while others are reading it. I've dug up our tax numbers and handed them in to our UK accountant, barely making the deadline for her to be able to turn those numbers into finished returns. Gavin puts off the business trips he's supposed to be booking. We brainstorm childcare options depending on what date the hearing may fall.
I dry-clean an outfit for court. I plan to dress carefully: makeup, blow-dry, well-fitting clothes. I want to present myself flatteringly, aware that onlookers will mentally rate whether I was worth it. I assume they'll wonder why he bothered. I'm middle-aged now, and fat from indulgence and babies and sedentary work. I was pretty then. Not special, but the perfectly serviceable prettiness of being young. I'm grateful for the victim protection policies that will prevent me from being photographed, drawn, or described in this con
text. I'm open about what happened, and about what's happening now, but only on my own terms, in my own words.
This year, the anniversary, January 12, is on a Sunday, just as it was then. I don't mention it to anyone on the day, but it always feels strange to me when that happens. It's like an eclipse, or that time when I was in middle school and all the planets lined up, or like the tick-over to the year 2000. It doesn't mean anything, not really, but it feels like it should mean something. It means something to me.
I check New York's online “inmate lookup” every day, hoping to see that Pennsylvania has picked him up. I don't know how the physical extradition process works except that Detective Campbell has said that “two sheriffs” have been sent to New York do it. The word “sheriff” makes me crack a smile. It sounds very Wild West.
When I Google for extradition services and processes, the top hits are independent companies. They advertise that they are “cost effective,” “available 7 days a week,” and that their vehicles are equipped with little segregation cells for the violent, mentally ill, and juvenile, and for keeping the sexes apart. One has the cheerful slogan “No Where to Run” and branded hats, coffee mugs, and teddy bears for sale. Another company's YouTube video, with a background soundtrack of the theme song from the reality show
Cops,
promises “consistent, reliable, timely handling of your prisoners.” I find my impatience placated by the language used, word choices classing Arthur Fryar in the way of a zoo animal or object. He doesn't need to get to Pittsburgh to start being punished.
When I finally see the change, see him listed as, as far as New York's concerned, “released,” it's late at night, after we've had some guests over to watch a long movie. I have trouble falling asleep. I've done the journey between the New York area and Pittsburgh many, many times, to visit my sister at college, then later to go to college there myself. The drive with my parents used to take about seven hours, with a stopover at the state's halfway point in a town that
exists for only that purpose, made up of motels and restaurants and shops selling Pennsylvania-themed souvenirs. Taking the Amtrak train was a bit of a longer trip, blissfully zoning out listening to musical-theater tapes on my Walkman. I loved those journeys, those elongated transition times, and it's uncomfortable to now share the route with Fryar.
By the time I wake up, I figure he must have gotten there.
The confirmation report from the lab comes in a few days later, and he's charged for me. My hearing is added to the docket for the same day as the other victim's, already scheduled. I'm told on Friday that I'll be testifying Thursday, just six days away.
I realize that I'd been wishing so hard for the hearing because I felt that I needed a new and significant development to justify continuing to talk about my ongoing panic and distress. But, instead of the upcoming trip reinforcing my upset, it makes me giddy. Detective Honan tells me that Fryar will be there, and that I'll have to point him out. He assures me casually that Fryar will be “shackled.” That cheers me immeasurably. I'm bouncy and talk too fast. This lasts about twenty-four hours, through all my preparation and organization of travel details. Even as I'm in this state I recognize that my manner is oversized, inappropriate, and probably the climb before a fall.
My plans shape up. Valenta makes arrangements to be there on the day and offers me a ride to court. I explain breezily that my hotel is near, so I'll just walk. He e-mails back to say that he'll meet me at the hotel and walk with me.
That's what does it. That's the trigger that makes me understand, like a sudden view over the edge of a cliff, that this is serious and probably difficult and that I'll need support. Everything in me shifts back to emotional again, this time somber-emotional instead of panicky.
I've felt this shift before, at the hospital twenty-two years ago. It was when I was being interviewed by the detectives, and I was frustrated by the time. Classes were starting up for the semester in just two days, and I had planned to spend the evening memorizing the monologues that were due. I'd been lazy all Christmas and hadn't even started; I needed that evening if I was going to get it done; the evidence collection and questioning and gyn exam were all getting in my way. I'd had work to do. It was either Valenta or the other detective, the tall, blond one, who'd interrupted my frantic worrying to say, gently but seriously and a little sadly, “You're not going back to school on Tuesday.”
I remember that punch-in-the-gut feeling, the realization that this is bigger than I'd let myself perceive. Valenta now making sure that I have someone to walk to court with, well, it hits me like that.
Back when it happened, my parents and my sister and my high school friends had wanted to visit. They wanted to look after me. I didn't let them. My top priority had been to keep normal anything that could be kept normal. People from other spheres of my life suddenly appearing in my college town would not have been normal. It would have rocked a very delicate balance. I made my parents wait for a performance as an excuse to come, because they always came for performances. Taking cast pictures is normal; applause is normal. Waiting, and so keeping my world steady, was a greater comfort than upending my world just to give me a hug a few weeks sooner.
Discrete worlds is why I won't let Gavin come with me to Pittsburgh. Besides one of us needing to stay home with the kids, I don't want to bring any part of my present life back there. I'll be passing from one world into another and out again. It's an expedition, made easier by my uncontaminated world here at home staying the same and very far away.
Deliberately going alone confuses people, but it's what I want. One
of the most liberating things about the aftermath of the rape had been that I was asked, repeatedly, “What do you want?” I'd felt then, for the first time in my life, that that question was genuinely open-ended. Before that, I'd always assumed that there was a right answer to figure out and hew as closely to as possible. After, for about a year, I was allowed anything. I could want to be alone or want company, feel desire or be frigid, want to rage or want to forgive. Anything was acceptable. It's a trick I still use, in the privacy of my own mind, to figure myself out: I ask myself what I want as if I'm allowed to want anything. I don't always do what I want, but it's interesting information to have.
I want to book a hotel. This is strange, because I have friends I can stay with, really nice friends who I like and miss and can trust, but I don't want to have to compose myself and be social and explain things at the end of each day. I don't want to worry about how crying or just shutting myself in my room might upset someone.
I want to see my police file. I'm curious about my past self, as if she's another person.
I don't want to visit my old apartment building. I'm not scared of it, just not interested. I passed by it once, years ago, during a brief visit shortly after getting married, on our way to going out to lunch with friends. It didn't affect me.
I want to learn what it's like to see Arthur Fryar in person. I might panic or cry or get angry. Or, I might not recognize him. He might just seem like an old man, unconnected to what he did then. I don't know if I'll be fragile or stony or indifferent. I'm curious about my future self, the me just about to be.
I want to know how Arthur Fryar will react to me. Will he recognize me? If he does, will he regret or gloat? Will he lower his eyes, or laugh at me?
This wondering is different from my writing a novel, where I have to decide everything: what happens, and how each character will react. I don't get to choose this. I have to discover it.
My story is already in the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
the day I arrive. I'm not named, only referred to as a woman from the United Kingdom.
The hotel distracts me with little luxuries. I've come a day early, in case of weather delaying the flights, and I stay inside, viewing the snow-covered streets outside only through windows. I feel swaddled by the building, and safe.
I already call Valenta “Bill.” I decide that I'll address Detectives Campbell and Honan as Aprill and Dan. I want to be peers here. Really, though, I don't get to talk to them much at all. They haven't offered their cell-phone numbers, or checked to see if my plane got in as expected. Bill is indignant over their apparent lack of care.
Bill is different from Aprill and Dan. He's older (though not old), retired from the job, not swamped with other just-as or more-than upsetting cases. The real difference, though, is that he was there when it happened. Not in the apartment, of course, but “it” is bigger
than just the crime itself. “It” includes the hospital and the investigation and finishing college and having flashbacks. Bill was with me that night, when I was still in shock, when I was still bleeding, and the case was his. Aprill and Dan care about my case in a generic human way, and in an efficient police way, but it can't be personal for them. It's personal for Bill.
I almost wonder as much about how I'll react seeing him as I do about how I'll react seeing Arthur Fryar. All of the other people who were “there then” were also in my life before and after. The friends who went through it with me went through other things with me, too, good things, or things that were about them not me. I can see them and there's lots to remember; “it” is only one of them. With Bill, “it” is all there is.
He meets me in the hotel lobby the night before the hearing, with his wife, Jane. They find me instantly because of my pink coat. I've braced myself for the greeting, not sure how to touch. In Cambridge, there would be European cheek kisses, which even after eight years still make me uncomfortable. I'm happier with simple hugs, but I've had to practice not hugging in greeting since moving to England, especially with university people. It's just not done. So when Bill reaches for a hug I reflexively balk, out of English habit. He smoothly switches to a handshake.
He's made us reservations at a nearby restaurant with attentive waitstaff and a coat check. Despite the fancy surroundings, the conversation is informal and profoundly American in a way that I recognize deeply and have missed. We three talk about our kids and our jobs, and lightly swear in passing, not rudely just simply, words like “bullshit.” I sip from Bill's martini, falling back into the casual familiarity I grew up with. He banters with the waiter. The accents! Not strong Pittsburghese, but a generic East-Coastishness. I feel at home.
The conversation alternates between chitchat and case talk. He's
upset about the new detectives being so aloof to me, and upset with himself over not having been available to me for these twenty-two years. But it's understandable: he left the Sex Assault Unit just months after my case, switching to Internal Affairs because it was daywork only and he was starting college at night. He eventually moved to Vice, then became a commander, before retiring from police work for a new career in academic administration. Aprill remembers him from her early police years as “the boss.”
She and Dan seem to find it baffling that Bill's so kind to me, that he cares after all these years. Dan had even told Bill that he was surprised at the thoroughness of Bill's case notes. Bill rolls his eyes recollecting that, and wonders if he could help change things over there, make things better. He says, wistfully, “Maybe . . .” Jane, glad to be past the life stage of being a cop's wife, says, “No, Bill. We've talked about this.” She's a newly promoted vice president at Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and they both have to travel a lot, taking turns to ensure someone will always be home. They need a controllable schedule for the kids' sakes. That's when we switch to telling funny stories about times we were left at home by our traveling parents, and what we got away with. When my parents left me for a couple weeks at seventeen, I adopted a kitten. Bill was naughtier, throwing crazy parties while his parents were gone. He steam-cleaned the house before they got home, to the delight of his doting Italian mom and the justified suspicion of his cop dad.
His wife says to me, right in the middle of other things, “I want you to know that I'm okay with this.” She means that she doesn't mind Bill caring about me and helping me. I'm glad that she doesn't mind, because I need him tomorrow. Every time he's said that he can be with me for this part or for that, I've looked down at my lap and said “Yes, please” or “Good” or, once, “I need you to stay for the whole time. I need you to not leave.” I think he feels
that need, too. When he talked about how “some cases stay with you,” his eyes had gotten shiny.
When we get our coats, while we wind scarves around our necks and tug on gloves for the brief dash across the street back to the hotel, I thank him again for prioritizing the hearing over a university event that he's supposed to attend at the same time. I'm just relieved that the hearing didn't fall a few weeks later, when he'll be representing the university in Prague and China. He says, without hesitation, “I would have changed the trip if it did.”
I wake up early, because of the time difference, and find a marathon of
Law & Order
reruns on the hotel room TV. The pattern of each episode is familiar and comforting as it hums in the background, driving toward a resolution every hour. It's what I would watch anyway, even if I weren't going to court, but being headed to court makes watching it seem funny. I drink an entire pot of room-service decaf. I get my shoes shined. I have till noon, when Bill and I will walk to court together, through the blade-cold winter air. England doesn't typically get to these temperatures, and the chill feels like childhood to me.
The hearing is not in the historic courthouse near the hotel. It's a few blocks away, in the municipal court, a run-down building awkwardly shaped to look like a police badge from above. Bill and I have been instructed to meet the other detectives in front of the “broken elevators.” They're easy to find once we're through the oversensitive metal detector and past the chipper, already bored security lady; there are no working elevators to trick us.
Everyone knows Bill. He's greeted by passing uniformed cops, security, and press. Newspaper journalists are there, and TV cameras. They're only allowed to film my feet. I'm glad for the whim that had led me to use the hotel's shoe-polishing service.
The unpleasant building is pretty much just rooms off a single
long hallway, a corridor that's quickly filled by the line for today's hearings. Everyone is scheduled for a twelve thirty start and will just wait their turn. Accusers, accused, and witnesses for lesser cases all stand together in that line. For us, a more sensitive case, Fryar is in a holding pen. Dan Honan and Aprill Campbell arrive and we go upstairs to meet the assistant district attorney (ADA) from the Crimes Against Persons Unit (shortened in conversation to “Crimes Persons”) who'll be prosecuting our case. His name is Kevin. I'm told that this case was fought over in the DA's office. Everyone wanted it.
On our way up the stairs, the detectives tell me that “Georgia” is already here. I figure out that they mean the other victim, from November the same year as me. It's the first time I've heard her name. She's with her husband, and two women: we've each been assigned an advocate from Pittsburgh Action Against Rape.
Georgia has the first prep session with the prosecutor, so Bill, Dan, my advocate, and I continue to hang out in the hallway. Dan's brought my file for me to see, at my request. I blip over all the paperwork from this year to get to the real stuff, the notes from that night, pages and pages in Bill's neat handwriting, and then pages and pages in single-spaced typing. I mutter, “Holy crap! Holy crap!” over and over. There's a lot I haven't bothered to remember. There's nothing that contradicts what I do recall; it's just stuff that's news to me.
Apparently I'd had a conversation with Fryar before he went upstairs and waited in the stairway next to my door. Bill had transcribed my recounting of it like a play. I feel faint and have to sit. Dan gets me water. I don't cry once the entire day, but my hands shake.
Our turn comes with Kevin the ADA. We're led into a back office with a pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game taped to the door. The goal of the hearing, it's explained to me, is not to prove Fryar's
guilt but simply to demonstrate that there's a reasonable case for it, to persuade the judge to “bind over” the case for an actual trial later. We go over procedure and review my testimony.
I'm worried about vocabulary. I have to be very specific in my descriptions, to clearly match the charges. My concern is what words to use. I feel ridiculous using clinical terms, and rude using slang terms. We brainstorm phrasings, me and these three men I barely know.
As we exit, Bill holds the door for the advocate to go out first. I follow her, then hang back, noticing that Bill has waited in the office to listen to something Kevin is saying. I wait, too. For the entire day, I don't let myself get more than three feet away from Bill except to go to the bathroom. When he's in front of me, I follow closely. When he's behind me, my head swivels back, over and over, to make sure he's still there.
More hallway. I bore my victim advocate with pictures of my kids; she's a good sport about it. While she and I flip through images on my iPad, Bill chats with Dan; shoptalk, I suppose. I don't listen, but I keep Bill in the corner of my eye. He's just a foot or two in front of me, leaning on the railing that surrounds the opening overlooking the line for court below. Sometimes he shifts position and my eyes flick up, making sure he doesn't go anywhere. Once he walks a couple yards away to the men's room and I almost panic; then I see that he's left his coat on the rail and I know he's coming back.
Georgia and I tell “how I met my husband” stories and it's all very social, very chatty. She observes what we have in common, that we were both performers then, that we both subsequently had sons; I point out that we lived so close; she says that we have
him
in common and I, caught up in the camaraderie, joke that he has “great taste.” Everyone laughs, then looks around a little nervously. She and I are grenades of emotion with loose pins; they don't know when we're going to go off.
I feel faint again. Bill gets me vending-machine crackers and a sports drink. Dan goes to the bathroom.
Dan's wife has apparently been waiting downstairs for just this opportunity. She's suddenly up here, introducing herself, trying to tell the victims from the advocates, distributing hugs and hellos. She'd told Dan that she wanted to come today, and he'd said no. But she had to, she explains to me. She had to see me.
She says that this case has gotten to him, that it means the world to him that the lab came through, that the extradition finally happened, and that I've come all this way. I'm amazed. He'd never shown those feelings to me. She and I hug, three times, by the time Dan comes out of the bathroom. He sees her and freezes. I call out, “We've already hugged three times! She's great.” She gazes proudly at him and tells us all that he got a new suit for this. Dan looks down, embarrassed. She follows his eyes and says, “He got those cuffs hemmed just yesterday.” She tells me that she had English tea and an English muffin for breakfast, in honor of me.
We're called into court.
The room is downstairs, very plain, just rows of stackable chairs lined up to face a high area at the front, for the judge and two assistants. The judge looks youngish and is wholly bald, leaning back in his big swivel chair like a throne. He looks powerful and a little bored, reminds me of Lex Luthor, and chews gum the entire time.
I sit between Bill and my victim advocate. Dan's wife sits behind us and holds my handbag for me for when I testify. She pokes her head between me and the advocate and points to the screened-off area in the corner to the right of the judge. That's where Fryar is. “Do you know what that's called? That sort of cubby where they keep the criminal?” she asks. Bill and the advocate and I all demur. She whispers, fiercely, “I call it the
cubby of shame
!”
There are glimpses of Fryar, huddling with his defense attorney, flashes of his bright jail uniform, but no tug in my gut. I'm not
afraid of him; I'm curious about him; I'm curious about my reaction to him. He's old now, old-old, not adult-old like me. “Across the room” feels very far away, safely so. We've swapped: now he's the one who has to defend himself.
It's decided to go chronologically, January before November, so, after a group swearing-in, I testify first. There's no seat or box or fancy setup. We go up together to stand before the judge, with our backs to the rest of the room. We stand in a line: me, Bill, Dan, Kevin the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the defendant. Aprill's attached to the other woman's case, not mine, so she stays seated. Kevin positions himself, kind of leaning, to block me from having to see Fryar while I speak.
It's all fine. I'm glad we practiced. I'm glad we carefully chose the words to use. It's just like it was in the pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey office, except that when it's over there's cross-examination.
The defense attorney's questions try to pin me down to a physical description that he'll later be able to dispute. Our case is based on DNA, not eyewitness identification, so, though I do in fact recognize Fryar, this whole road is just an unnecessary diversion to try to catch me out. I don't fall for it. I'd read advice about this very thing, about defense attorneys prying for nonessential details, the kind of details that aren't really the point so the witness won't have prepared for them, in hope of mining a contradiction. It's important not to let the natural social form of at least trying to answer direct questions prompt me to guess at anything I'm not absolutely certain of.