Rape (7 page)

She folded the stiff cardboard in two. She stuffed it into one of the plastic trash cans at the side of the house. She would say nothing about it to anyone wishing to think possibly it had been a mistake, a message meant for some other woman in some other house on Baltic Avenue.

Secrets

I
N THE
7-E
LEVEN YOU
saw them. Their eyes moving on you. “ ‘Bethel Maguire.' You're
her?
”

They stared at you unsmiling. Your name was uttered in contempt.

The largest girl, in sweatshirt and jeans and boy's sneakers, advanced upon you, pushing your shoulder with the flat of her hand.

“See, you better watch your mouth, bitch. You better not be saying wrong things about my brothers, bitch. 'Cause what they begun out there in the park, see, they're gonna finish up, you and your bitch momma don't keep your fucking mouths shut.”

Grandma's long-haired orange cat Tigerlily. She'd been missing for three days. You searched for her in the neighborhood, knocked at doors. Grandma was so upset, you'd never seen Grandma so upset. Grandma stood on the porch calling
Kitty-kitty-kitty-kitty!
in a forlorn-hopeful voice.

You didn't wish to think that Tigerlily had been taken.
You wished to think that Tigerlily had wandered off. You wished to think that, if Tigerlily had been struck by a car and crawled away to die, it was only a coincidence, the hearing scheduled for later this week.

Finally you found the cat's stiffened body, in the alley behind Baltic Avenue. Three houses down from Grandma's. Her tawny yellow eyes were open and blank. Her white whiskers were stiff with blood. The full, fluffy ruff around her neck you had loved to stroke was stiff with blood. You could not determine how Tigerlily had died, how they had killed her. Maybe with a rock. Or maybe one of them had kicked her to death. She had not been a large cat, a few blows would have killed her.

You recalled your mother's baffled cry.

“Why? Why would they want to hurt
me?
”

You began to cry, carrying Tigerlily in your arms. You would bury her in the backyard, in secret. You would not tell Grandma, who would continue to call
Kitty-kitty!
from the porch for another day or so.

The Hearing: September 1996

“S
HIT
.”

Dromoor knew it would be bad. His gut instinct was to wish to hell he had no part in it.

He saw who the lead defense attorney was. He knew the man's reputation in Niagara Falls and Buffalo, too.

He saw the mostly hostile crowd pushing into the courtroom, filling every available seat by 8:40
A.M
. And this a weekday.

He saw the defendants. All were clean-shaven. The one whose parole had been revoked wore an orange prison jumpsuit stamped with OLEAN MEN'S FACILITY that gave him a look of clownish formality. The others were neatly dressed in suits, shirts, neckties, polished shoes. They'd had haircuts. Their tattoos were hidden. Even the coarse-faced Picks bore only a cursory resemblance to the punks taken into police custody on the morning of July 5.

He saw the woman Teena Maguire. And her daughter, Bethel.

The prosecution's chief witnesses: the victims.

Teena Maguire was wearing dark glasses that suggested an incongruous glamour in this staid setting and she was wearing
a floral print silk scarf tied about her head that suggested childlike innocence, frivolity. She was heavily made up to disguise her scarred face. Her mouth was crimson as a blood clot. The female deputy prosecutor who would argue the case had probably advised her to wear conservative clothes, and so Teena Maguire was wearing a navy blue sheath with a small prim jacket that fitted her loosely, a white silk blouse beneath. She wore low-heeled shoes. She entered the room hesitantly and stiffly like a blind woman being led onto thin ice. She was leaning against her daughter who was looking older than Dromoor recalled as if in the scant nine weeks since July Fourth the girl had rapidly and unnaturally matured. Teena Maguire's expression was vague and dazed and she may have been smiling faintly. She stumbled once or twice, the deputy prosecutor quickly took her arm. She seemed to see no one, not even the prosecutor, who was speaking urgently to her. She took no evident notice of the numerous young men at the defense table who were staring at her with undisguised resentment, hatred. Initially she took no notice of an agitated middle-aged woman in the first row of spectators, mother of the defendants Marvin and Lloyd Pick, who was flush-faced in indignation mouthing just-audible words in Teena Maguire's direction: “Bitch! Whore! Liar!”

Bailiffs advanced swiftly upon the woman to threaten her with expulsion. It wasn't clear at first whether she would desist, other family members were trying to calm her, angrily she shook off a restraining arm and cursed the bailiffs in a furious undertone and in virtually the same moment she was helped to her feet, urged out into the aisle as a stout
younger woman, clearly a relative, pushed her way out to join her, shouting, “They didn't do it! You got the wrong parties! This is a fucking setup! This is the Gestapo!” as the bailiffs led her away.

Beside Dromoor, Zwaaf shifted in his seat. “Fucking Jesus. This ain't even the trial.”

Look: don't get involved. Whatever shit happens to these people isn't happening to you
.

It was too late, though. Since he'd first seen the dazed bloodied girl at the side of the roadway in Rocky Point Park, and since he'd first seen the woman broken and bloodied on the filthy boathouse floor, it had been too late for him.

“All rise.”

The judge entered the courtroom. He was breathing quickly, as if he'd been running. He, too, was flush-faced in indignation, he'd been informed of the commotion in his courtroom but would not acknowledge it.

Schpiro was the judge's name. He was in his midfifties, short, with sharp-glinting wire-rimmed eyeglasses. In his pompous black robe he looked squat as a fire hydrant. Except that Schpiro was a judge presiding over a courtroom with the power to irrevocably alter lives, he would not have merited a second glance from anyone in the courtroom. The peevish bulldog set of his mouth indicated that he was aware of this fact and he would tolerate no bullshit in his courtroom.
He was a politician, canny. He knew the volatile nature of the case he was assigned to adjudicate and he would make no mistakes if he could avoid them. Dromoor saw that Schpiro recognized on sight every attorney in the room: prosecution, defense. Except for the deputy prosecutor sitting beside Teena Maguire, all were men. Schpiro exchanged a nod of greeting with only one of these, the lead defense attorney Kirkpatrick. Neither man smiled. But Dromoor saw the look that passed between them, of subtle acknowledgment, respect. Thinking
Fuckers. Probably belong to the same yacht club
.

The lead deputy prosecutor Diebenkorn rose to address Judge Schpiro. Her manner was deferential, guarded. She was a woman of indeterminate age: not young, not yet middle-aged. When she spoke too rapidly out of nervousness, Schpiro told her, “Hold your horses, counselor,” and there was a mild titter from the rows of spectators. Dromoor thought this was a bad sign: Schpiro playing to the crowd. Diebenkorn was a natural foil. She was earnest, righteous. She wore a charcoal gray pants suit with wide trouser legs in an outmoded style. Her hair was a brown frizz-perm. It was her duty to outline the state's case against the numerous defendants naming them individually, specifying charges in her flat nasal upstate voice. This would be a complicated case involving a complicated legal procedure. Dromoor wondered why the state was requesting a single trial, with a single jury. There were eyewitness testimonies from the two victims
linking just five of the defendants to the crime. There were DNA and other forensic evidence linking these defendants and three others to the crime. A ninth defendant, not present at this hearing, had confessed to his role in the crime and would be a state's witness against the others; a transcript of his testimony would be presented to Schpiro. Diebenkorn argued that the crime had been an especially vicious sexual attack—a “gang rape.” It had been an attack against a woman in the presence of her twelve-year-old daughter who had also been assaulted and threatened with rape. It had been a prolonged attack, lasting nearly half an hour. It had been a premeditated attack for the rapists had stalked their victims in Rocky Point Park for an estimated ten minutes, according to the testimony of the state's witness. It had been an attack intended to result in the death of Martine Maguire, who had been left to bleed to death, unconscious on the floor of a boathouse in a secluded area of the park. If Mrs. Maguire's daughter Bethel had not been present, terrified and hiding in a corner of the boathouse, Martine Maguire would not be alive today to confront and give testimony against her attackers. As it was, Mrs. Maguire had suffered critical physical injuries, had been on life support at St. Mary's Hospital and subsequently hospitalized for several weeks, and at the present time was still recuperating from the attack. “Your Honor, Mrs. Maguire's presence in the courtroom today is something of a miracle.”

Dromoor had been watching Teena Maguire and saw her stiffen. Must be hell to hear yourself talked of like that. Gang rape, bleed to death, left to die. This was ugly.

Beside Teena Maguire, the daughter. Dromoor had a daughter of his own now, two years old. Jesus! He could not bear to think of it, he would murder with his bare hands anyone who even threatened to hurt her.

He hoped to hell the prosecution could strike plea bargains with those bastards, to avoid a trial. They could not seriously expect Bethel Maguire to testify in court. To endure cross-examinations from defense lawyers like the jackal Kirkpatrick.

He saw the girl looking toward him. Dark startled eyes. He wondered if she remembered him.

Dromoor recalled how he'd first seen Bethel Maguire, by the roadway in Rocky Point Park. Disheveled, bloodied. Her clothes torn. He'd been sick to think that the girl had been raped. She'd looked at him with such desperate hope. As if he, a police officer out on routine patrol, dispatched by chance to the scene of a crime, had the power to truly help her.

My mother is hurt! Please help her! I'm afraid my mother is dying please please help her!

In that instant, Dromoor was pulled in.

As if their lives had gotten tangled with his, Christ knows why.

Like tangled fishing lines. Knotted together.

Dromoor had seen a lot of things. Ugly things. He'd done some ugly things himself. Things you'd imagine you would not forget, but he'd forgotten. Except this girl Bethel, and her mother, Teena, in the boathouse.

*   *   *

The hearing proceeded. There were numerous interruptions. A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour one another if possible. Dromoor who hated court appearances like any other cop had only just been sworn in and begun his brief testimony reciting the facts of his involvement at the crime scene when he was interrupted by Schpiro's dry voice: “Officer. Excuse me.”

Dromoor must have stared blankly at the judge, there was a titter in the courtroom.

“ ‘My partner and
I
,' Officer. Not ‘My partner and
me
.' ”

Dromoor knew that he was expected to reply. He was expected to say something conciliatory that would include the words
Your Honor
. But he did not.

Schpiro said, with an air of leaden patience, “Officer, continue. ‘My partner and
I
.' ”

So Dromoor knew from the start it would go badly for the prosecution.

In her flat earnest nasal voice Diebenkorn presented the state's case in outline. It soon developed that she had a verbal tic of saying “Your Honor” to which Schpiro politely responded, “I am here” or “Yes. I am listening.” The judge's air of scarcely concealed impatience made the female prosecutor ever more nervous. She paused to sort through files, documents. She conferred with her colleagues. There was a good deal of testimony regarding DNA and forensic evidence, for while there was such evidence linking several of
the defendants to the rape, evidence was not yet available or missing in other instances; where there was eyewitness testimony, there was not invariably forensic evidence. The case would be partially circumstantial. Each of the defendants presented an individual problem. Only one of the arrested men had confessed, and he had confessed only to assault, not aggravated assault and not rape. He had named others in the rape but had spared himself. Lawyers for the defendants were challenging his testimony, claiming that he lied in exchange for lesser charges; he had a prison record, and would make a poor prosecutorial witness. And there was the matter of other individuals involved in the rape/assault who had not yet been named and apprehended. Dryly Schpiro said, “In the event of a trial, the state will present its case more thoroughly, I assume?”

Chastened, Diebenkorn murmured, “Yes, Your Honor.”

Ordinarily by this time Dromoor would have slipped from the courtroom. His partner Zwaaf had departed. But something held Dromoor there, a morbid curiosity and dread as of one about to witness a train derailment.

“Mrs. Maguire. It is not bright sunshine here, you might remove your dark glasses.”

Schpiro spoke politely yet with an air of impatience. He was a judge keenly alert to frivolity in his courtroom. The dark glasses with their pathos of glamour, the floral print scarf tied about the woman's head to disguise her sparse tufted hair, annoyed him.

Teena Maguire fumbled to remove the glasses, and dropped them. Diebenkorn, breathing through her mouth,
stooped to retrieve them as they clattered to the floor. She explained to Schpiro that since her injuries, Mrs. Maguire's eyes were unusually sensitive to light. Schpiro expressed some measured sympathy, saying that Mrs. Maguire might partially close her eyes. Teena spoke slowly and haltingly and not very coherently as Diebenkorn led her through an abbreviated testimony. It was clear that Teena had suffered neurological damage; often she paused for several seconds to search for the correct word. She had recovered only partial memory of the rape/assault. She had been able to positively identify only three of the rapists. When Diebenkorn asked if these individuals were present in the courtroom, Teena could not at first reply. She hid her face in her hands. She wiped at her eyes. Almost inaudibly she murmured yes. But asked to point them out, she hesitated for a long moment before concurring with the request.