The agreement was: Byron Mudrick would bring his client to City Hall to identify one of the “alleged rapists” and to make a brief, formal statement, but nothing more.
No “interview” with the Juvenile Aid officer. Not at this time.
Byron Mudrick insisted that Sybilla Frye hadn’t fully recovered
from the violent trauma she’d undergone. To subject the fifteen-year-old to further trauma would be an outrage.
Sybilla wore a long-sleeved white silk blouse with a little bow, a dark pleated skirt, dark woolen stockings and shoe-boots. In the shallow crevice of her throat, a small gold cross glittered.
Her hair had been hot-combed and plaited and fixed in place with plastic barrettes. She might have been a middle school student, and not a high school student; her almond-shaped eyes were both downcast and alert. The only visible scar on her face was a tiny white comma in her left eyebrow.
No ear-studs, no bracelets or rings. And her fingernails neatly filed, short and unpolished as a child’s nails.
“Miss Frye? Will you look at these, and tell us if this is the same man . . .”
Several photographs of a young man with light blond hair were shown to Sybilla. In none of these was the young man smiling and there were no visible dimples in his cheeks.
Might’ve been Jerold Zahn, or someone else. Sybilla sensed a trick.
“My client says no, she doesn’t recognize this man. If this is Jerold Zahn or someone else, she doesn’t recognize the photo.” Byron paused. In a voice heavy with sarcasm he said that his client had only “glimpsed” the rapist—“In not ideal circumstances and in a state of pain and terror.”
Sybilla pointed to the original photograph, which had appeared in the newspaper. This was the one!
“My client is certain that the man in this photo is the man she remembers from the assault. ‘Jerold Zahn’—a positive ID.”
Buzzing in the room. Shock, outrage. Sybilla wasn’t listening.
Sharp raised voices—male. And Byron Mudrick answering, quick and efficient.
But Sybilla wasn’t listening. It was all a haze. It was all happening somewhere else. And Sybilla wasn’t looking. Downcast eyes, shy and stricken. Deep inside, she wasn’t even there.
Jaycee saying to her
S’b’la we gon see each other when I get out, that a promise.
The look in Jaycee’s face when his sister Shirley appeared with Sybilla in the visitors’ room at Mountainview—and Jaycee expecting to see his little sister Colette.
Damn she was crazy for Jaycee Handler. Never minded he was at Mountainview where she could just think of him and not have to worry about the kind of things you’d worry about, if you were a girl, and a guy like Jaycee “liked” you.
But now God damn, she was so shamed!—Jaycee seemed to forgot her. A week at least he’d been out of Mountainview. Must be parole—probation? Martine was the one to tell her, knowing how it would hurt.
Except—it was maybe better if Jaycee didn’t try to come around right now.
She’d have to explain some things to the Reverend—not sure what she’d tell him. Fuck it!
Fuck sometimes she wished he’d killed her, like he said he would do.
All the day before Marus Mudrick and Byron Mudrick had coached her and rehearsed her these few words to utter, how to breathe (through her nose), how to move her head, her eyes, where to look, where not to look, how to clasp her hands together in front of her when she wasn’t required to point to a photograph—(for instance). How she must not “lock eyes” with anyone in the room—any of the Enemy.
The Family Services people, and the social worker—they’d be wanting to speak with her, get her attention, but—
no
.
And going into City Hall, and afterward leaving City Hall: walking between the Mudrick brothers, and Mama close behind, so the photographers, journalists, TV people (Reverend Mudrick had alerted) could observe her but not take advantage of her. Byron Mudrick and Marus Mudrick would speak to selected reporters and TV interviewers on the steps of City Hall only after Sybilla and her mother were safely enclosed in the waiting car with dark-tinted windows.
Rape Victim I.D.’s One of Six Alleged “White Cop” Rapists.
Between them they’d coached her until she’d wanted to lay her head down on the table and just cry. Until she’d screamed and wept and laughed the high wild laugh Mama said was a crazy-girl’s laugh it scared her to hear. And Mama held her arms pinned to her sides to quiet her saying it would be all right, the Reverend had explained why it was necessary, and had to be done, and would be over soon.
They’d promised
Just this once, Sybilla. Just say what we have prepared for you to say. Not a word more. Then we will leave. You will never have to see them again we promise.
Until now it had been mostly Reverend Mudrick who’d done all the talking. In this meeting-place in Pascayne City Hall it was Byron Mudrick who did most of the talking in his quick-snappy way reminding Sybilla of a whip, a whip you could snap, a whip to snap into the face of the Enemy.
Sybilla was rubbing her eyes. So sleepy! She never slept right any longer even with Martine cuddling beside her and snoring quiet like a cat.
His
snores she’d hear through the house, in their old place. Hoped they would never go back to that damn stinky place.
“Sybilla?”—Byron Mudrick nudged her gently.
Oh here was a surprise: yellow Post-its on the table before her.
Not close in front of Sybilla so she might’ve grabbed and torn them if some wild impulse had come over her but about eighteen inches away. The Juvenile Aid policewoman had had these, in a folder. It was surprising and disorienting to Sybilla to see the Post-its she’d forgotten, or mostly forgotten, confused with a vague memory of the St. Anne’s emergency room and Mama clutching at her like crazy trying to protect her from the medics and that female detective asking questions—looked like Puerto Rican—dark straight eyebrows, straight nose, beautiful eyes and beautiful smooth tanned-olive skin—real kind to Sybilla saying
Maybe it would be easier to write, Sybilla? Here.
The Post-its had been hers. The detective. For a brief second flashing like a short thread through the eye of a needle Sybilla recalled the woman, then forgot her. They were confronting her with the Post-its hand-printed in pencil:
WHITE COP
WEAR A BAGDE
YELOW HAIR
AGE 30
Yes. Shook her head
yes.
Yes
she recognized these.
Sybilla’s heart beat hard in protest. They’d promised her she would
not have to answer questions only just say what she’d memorized. Yet, questions were being asked, and Byron Mudrick was answering them in his quick curt whip-snap way; and sometimes, Marus Mudrick would interject a cutting remark, and Byron might turn to Ednetta seated behind them blinking and staring like a drunk woman, and Sybilla would cringe hearing her mother stammer
What—what did you say? What?
The hostility in the room! She’d been warned to expect it, she’d been warned to expect the hatred of the Enemy, for of course they would deny that one of their own, Police Officer Jerold Zahn, had committed a heinous crime, but there was something more than just hatred, Sybilla thought—the looks in the faces of the women from Family Services, and the social worker—like they were all but saying aloud
You poor girl! What has been done to you, Sybilla Frye!
Hiding her face in shame. Hiding her eyes.
“No. My client will not answer any more questions today. And yes, we will consent to a polygraph. So long as I am involved in the choice of the polygrapher who will not be an employee of the Pascayne Police Department or, indeed, any law enforcement bureau in this state.” When Byron paused, Marus Mudrick quietly interjected: “And not a ‘white’ polygrapher.”
(Polygraph? Was this—“lie detector”?)
(Sybilla felt faint. Hunched over her tight-clasped hands. The buzzing in her ears, a quick beat-beat-beat of blood. Byron Mudrick had promised—
Don’t even try to listen, what will be said. By them and by me. These are tactics of law. The Enemy has no defenses. The Enemy is flummoxed. And that means fucked.
)
Byron said: “Yes. We will insist upon choosing the polygrapher ourselves.”
Byron was on his feet, signaling the end of the meeting. Affably he said, “We’ll hope to schedule the polygraph before the end of the
year, if you can meet our criteria. In the meantime, we’ve made some progress—my client has made the first identification of her rapists. She will soon give a full statement. By then her memory may have returned at least partially, so that she might identify others of her rapists among the Pascayne Police Department. We will want to examine photographs—we will want a ‘lineup.’ But this is enough for today—this is more than enough. You can investigate ‘Jerold Zahn,’ one of your own. Determine why this twenty-seven-year-old white man shot a bullet into his brain, and why at such an appropriate time as the Crusade for Justice for Sybilla Frye was coming into prominence. Officers, look a little harder for the suicide note. Interrogate the family. They’ve taken the note and hidden it, and it’s up to your skilled detectives to find it and reveal its guilt-laden contents to the world. And now, we are leaving.”
Byron spoke calmly and with much satisfaction. His lawyer’s diction, clipped and precise, he’d cultivated since moot court in law school in emulation of certain of his revered elders. Sharp as an arrow, young Byron Mudrick! He was seeing lately that his very integrity had held him back, as a clubfoot holds back a runner. Around him he’d seen lesser individuals, like his twin brother, rise to prominence, make names and reputations for themselves, lavishly profiled in the white liberal press. And now, belatedly, it was Byron Mudrick’s turn.
The Enemy’s outrage he felt like waves of deafening sound, that can scarcely be registered yet is felt deep in the guts, and it made him happy as mere words could not make him happy.
We are doing this. The Mudrick brothers are playing this hand. Trump card! See what you can do, assholes.
Not all of the Enemy was white. But those
of color
who worked for the Enemy were enemies by association.
One of the D.A.’s assistants was a dark-skinned Hispanic in his mid-thirties who looked with particular disdain upon Byron
Mudrick. No doubt, his law degree was from Rutgers–New Brunswick and not Rutgers-Newark. Or Penn. He’d spoken only briefly at the meeting, not to Byron but to his boss the district attorney, but Byron had detected a New Jersey accent, nasal, possibly Camden-area, like his own. Arrogant bastard looking with contempt upon
him.
There were two other dark-skinned individuals among the Enemy: a middle-aged supervisor from Family Services, and the social worker who’d had the Frye family in her caseload. Tight-curly hair trimmed close to her head like Klarinda’s hair, and that professional-black-woman air of moral rectitude Byron found so exasperating in his wife—he couldn’t bear it! She was staring at Byron Mudrick as if she were frankly, openly disgusted with him, and wasn’t about to disguise it.
He felt a pang of hurt, and anger. Wanting to say
Sybilla Frye is our scourge to harrow Hell. See what the fuck you can do to stop us.
S
ee, Brother? What is meant by ‘escalation.’”
Marus Mudrick laughed deep in his throat. As the elder of the Mudrick twins he’d taken a lifelong delight in surprising, impressing, intimidating and awing his younger brother.
It was so: following the identification of a young, recently deceased police officer in the Pascayne PD as one of several “alleged rapists” of Sybilla Frye, the Crusade for Justice for Sybilla Frye leapt prominently back into the media.
New York Times, New York Post, People
, Associated Press,
Philadelphia Inquirer
, Newark
Star-Ledger, Pascayne Journal
. . . Photographs of Jerold Zahn on the front pages of newspapers, on TV news. On NPR, a forty-minute interview with Byron Mudrick.
Twenty-seven-year-old Pascayne police officer Jerold Zahn, who died in a “gun accident” on December 11, has
been identified by the fifteen-year-old rape victim as one of “six or seven” local law enforcement officers who allegedly kidnapped, beat, and gang-raped her in Pascayne, in early October, in a case that has yielded few suspects.
Reverend Marus Mudrick of the Care Ministry of Central New Jersey and the victim’s legal counsel Byron Mudrick are charging the Pascayne Police Department, Pascayne city officials, as well as the Passaic County district attorney’s office with “criminal conspiracy” to cover up the crimes. The Mudrick brothers are demanding a specially convened New Jersey State Commission to investigate whether their client’s civil rights were violated, in addition to the pressing of criminal charges.
“We will not rest until there has been justice for Sybilla Frye, as for the hundreds of thousands of other, similarly violated and debased black victims of our time,” Byron Mudrick told reporters on the steps of City Hall last Monday after a meeting with police and prosecutors. “Sybilla Frye is but the first, and will not be the last.”
Byron Mudrick, 44, professor of law Rutgers-Newark Law School, has been a civil rights activist since 1961, an officer and legal counsel of the NAACP, a member of the ACLU, the National African-American Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyers’ Guild, the National Bar Association, and the National African-American Christian Fellowship.
Had to laugh how the (white, elitist) media leapt like circus animals through Reverend Marus Mudrick’s flaming hoops. Byron had had his differences with Marus over the years—some betrayals, for which he’d never forgive his brother—(though it was pragmatic to pretend to forget)—but he had to admire Marus lifting the hoop ever
higher, fanning the flames brighter, the fools leapt nonetheless. And the money came in.
Marus took care to provide a Newark, New Jersey, P.O. box for donations to “The Crusade for Justice for Sybilla Frye,” or “Sybilla Fry”—a name variously misspelled, yet Marus’s bank in Newark would honor it.