“You want to know what chaps my ass?” Gloria wagged her finger as she spoke. “I spent thirty-eight years on that campus and never heard one word about any of this. Do you know how many colleges are under Title IX investigation right now for how they handle sexual assault? One hundred six. And Harwood isn’t one of them.”
“Maybe because the other universities don’t threaten their victims into silence.” That was undeniably having an impact at Harwood, but Theo also had another theory. “I bet if you look closer, the trigger for most of the Title IX investigations was having someone on the inside turn on the administration. A dean who tried to help a student and couldn’t. A student health nurse ordered to bury evidence.”
“Am I imagining things, Theo, or are you seriously thinking about opening this can of worms again?”
“Call me crazy.” After hashing it out with her staff, Theo’s legal strategy was beginning to take shape—all except one key element. “I need to get Philip in here to figure out how we’re going to get paid.”
“Maybe one case isn’t enough.” Jalinda stretched across the table and took Theo’s spreadsheet. “These women came in here and told their stories. We know how much courage that takes. I think everyone who’s willing to join the suit and make their case in public deserves a piece of the settlement.”
“She’s right, Theo. Look at Bill Cosby. One or two women complaining gets explained away. You’d have a powerful case if there was a courtroom full of women saying the same thing. It’s time to drag those bastards into court—every single administrator who signed off on it. The chancellor, the provost, the dean. All the trustees, the campus police. Anyone who knew about it and let it happen.”
What they were proposing was nothing short of a circus. Except circuses were supposed to be fun. Sweeping charges against a bullying institution like Harwood—and a guarantee she’d have to face off against James Somers again—had this shaping up as the toughest case of her career.
Hank knocked and entered simultaneously. “Hey, chief. We need to go get lunch.” It was an unusual request coming from Hank, especially since his insistent tone suggested it wasn’t a request.
“I’m supposed to meet Celia. Can it wait?”
“You don’t want to wait for this.”
Over the years, Theo had developed an appreciation for his cocky demeanor. It usually meant he had something big.
* * *
Theo hurried to meet Hank in the parking garage with her phone pressed to her ear. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s a work thing. It came up all of a sudden.”
“It’s all right. I can grab a bite on campus,” Celia said.
“It’s not all right. I haven’t seen you in”—she checked her watch and did the math from Monday morning when they parted—“fifty-four hours. How about I pick you up about six in front of your building?”
“That’s a great idea. It’s supposed to be pouring by then.”
“I’m getting in the elevator so I’m going to lose you. Love you. See you at six.”
As Hank drove through the side streets of the city, he shared the results of his morning’s investigation. “So my pal Bobby called me last night about midnight. He’d just gotten off his shift. Said he got a call from none other than Tommie Egan, the head of campus police. Told him to swing by the station and pick up a rape kit.”
“Let me guess—another athlete.”
“I don’t know anything about who it was, but apparently it happened over the weekend.” He stared into space as they sat at a traffic light that had turned green.
“You can go now, Hank.”
He lurched forward. “Bobby said Egan told him to take it to the police station at East Point and give it to the desk sergeant.”
“East Point?”
“Don’t you get it? That’s where they’re holding the rape kits in evidence. If the DA wants it, they have to cough it up or get cited for obstruction. That’s how they came up with Hayley’s. They weigh the consequences as to which could hurt them worse—no rape kit or a rape kit that nails somebody. You can bet your sweet ass they wouldn’t have produced it for a civil case.”
“But why East Point?”
“Because that’s where Tommie Egan used to work. He must have some buddies still on the force there and they’re doing him a favor.”
She assumed they were heading to East Point and was surprised when he turned north toward the campus. “Where are you taking me?”
He ignored her question. “Bobby says they have seven old rape kits in their evidence locker going back three years. That’s all. Plus the one from last night—like I said, they picked it up but it wasn’t logged into evidence. There’s no official record they have it, and Bobby was told not to put the ride down to East Point in his duty log. So I got to thinking about how many of those kits might be missing.” He turned into a strip mall and squeezed the SUV into a diagonal space across from Soul of Atlanta, a small café that boasted homestyle Southern cooking.
It was useless to ask him any more questions. Hank liked to explain things in a logical, chronological way that led listeners to draw the same conclusions he had. No doubt the practice had served him well as a detective on the witness stand.
“First thing this morning I called Raynelle and asked her about it. She couldn’t tell me everything on account of that hippo business.”
“It’s called HIPAA. It’s supposed to guarantee patient privacy.”
“Yeah, that. But we did a little digging on our own. I thought you ought to hear what she has to say about it. I figured you might get arrested for trespassing if you tried to talk to her on campus…what with you being famous and all. We meet here for lunch sometimes. The food’s good.”
Raynelle Willis was waiting in a booth, and smiled when she saw Hank. Her medium-length hair, dyed auburn and cut to frame her round face, gave her a somewhat youthful look, but the lines around her eyes put her in her late fifties-early sixties. She wore tan slacks and a slimming black sweater that went past her hips.
“Pleased to meet you,” Theo said. Aware of her budding relationship with Hank, she added, “And thank you for being the reason Hank has started keeping his car clean.”
“Truth! The first time we went out, I insisted on driving after one look inside that garbage truck. You should have seen him trying to control himself with me behind the wheel. Crouching down and stomping on those imaginary brakes.”
They shared anecdotes at Hank’s expense until the waitress took their lunch order. All the while he absorbed it good-naturedly, holding Raynelle’s hand under the table.
“So I was telling Theo about the rape kits, how they got picked up and taken over to East Point,” he said, turning the conversation in a serious direction. “Tell Theo what you told me about the numbers.”
“I was saying we average six or eight sexual assaults a month during the fall and spring semesters. Most of the girls don’t want to talk to the police at all. Of the ones who do, there’s no guarantee they’re going to want to press charges. Some of these girls…they just want it to go away. They don’t even submit to the rape kit.”
“I understand,” Theo said, remembering stories from the Surviving Sisters.
“But after what Hank said, I got curious about the how many of those kits got picked up, so I looked at our records. Now I can’t name names—”
“On account of HIPAA,” Hank said, showing off his newfound knowledge.
“Right. But I can tell you they picked up fourteen rape kits last year from women who ended up not pressing charges. Five of them never even talked to police.”
Theo let the implications of that sink in. “That means the cops came looking for them because they were tipped off by someone who knew a rape had occurred and assumed a kit was done.”
“Bingo,” Hank said. “So naturally, I thought of Slimeball, that lawyer who hangs around the jocks. I tracked down Kelsey Cameron and had her meet me at the student health center.”
Raynelle continued, “She asked about the status of her rape kit—she can do that because it belongs to her—and I confirmed it was picked up two days after she came in for the exam.”
“Same scrawly signature as the one they had on Hayley. And Bobby checked—no sign of it in the evidence room.”
The pieces of a conspiracy were coming together. Someone was definitely looking out for athletes accused of rape, but the only way to know if cops were protecting other male students too was through the discovery process. Testimony from Raynelle and Bobby—if they agreed to go on the record—would go a long way toward demonstrating the process was rigged.
But she’d need Celia’s audiotape to prove the administration’s role. She’d been hoping the case would come together without having to involve Celia again, but without ironclad proof, it would be nearly impossible to persuade the court the university was quashing rape complaints as a matter of policy.
Rain pelted the glass and stripped the first red leaves off the maple tree outside Celia’s office window. Theo’s offer to pick her up outside Forbes Hall would save her from a soaking dash to the MARTA station and a miserable, wet ride home on the train.
Celia had given up her reservations about staying at the penthouse on a weeknight. Now that fall semester was in full swing—and Theo was absorbed in the pay equity suit for nurses—their jobs had cut into their private time. Even on weekends, they had less time just
to relax and enjoy being together.
Shutting out the din of the thunderstorm, Celia returned her attention to a research proposal from one of the students in her seminar. “Movement for Movements: An Historical Overview of Dance as Protest.” A worthwhile subject, but overly broad for a senior assignment. The student would do better to focus on a subset of the genre so he could fill his paper with insight and analysis rather than a simple regurgitation of historical events. She’d never had the pleasure of teaching a senior seminar, and she wasn’t going to waste it by letting her students get away with sophomore work.
A knock startled her and she looked up to see her colleague from across the hall, Eric Butler. Without waiting for an invitation, he smiled and took the chair in front of her desk. “Ever hear that saying about things having a way of working out?”
Eric was a wiry man in his mid-sixties. A car accident thirty-five years earlier had severed his left arm, effectively ending what had been a promising Broadway career. Though he’d made a name for himself in performance theory, his scholarly work had tailed off in recent years following the death of his longtime partner, leaving some in their department to wonder why he didn’t just retire.
“I’m actually enjoying the Intro to Theater class,” he went on. “It’s been a reawakening, like a breath of fresh air. Who knew those wide-eyed freshmen could be so interesting?”
Celia honestly couldn’t tell if he was serious. Most of her Intro students had been bored to tears, showing up for her lectures because attendance was compulsory for a humanities credit. Only a handful had a bonafide interest in the theater.
“Eric, forgive me but I have to ask. Are you being sarcastic? I can’t tell because you’re such a good actor.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “Not at all, Celia. It’s fascinating to go back to the beginning with these kids. I’d totally forgotten why I loved the theater in the first place. I can look out in the lecture hall and practically see the lights go on in their heads. Not everyone, of course. But enough that I find it exciting.”
“Does this mean you’re actually glad Andrew switched our assignments?”
“Frankly, yes. In fact, I plan to ask him for the spring section as well. I hadn’t realized how far away I’d moved from the foundations of performance.” He pushed himself up to leave, but stopped in the doorway. His smile faded. “I just wanted you to know I forgive you for poaching my seminar.”
Celia was stunned to hear such a blatant accusation. “Eric, I never asked Andrew for your seminar. I was as shocked as you were.”
He made no effort to disguise his skepticism, drawing a deep breath and shaking his head. “Perhaps not directly, but it’s obvious Andrew put a higher priority on your request to work with advanced students than on mine or Paul’s. There had to have been a reason for that.”
Never mind that she’d patiently waited her turn while Eric and Paul saw their wishes granted year after year. “Just so you know, I protested this. I told Andrew it wasn’t fair to you guys, especially on such short notice. His answer was what you just said—that it wasn’t good to let the faculty get too far away from the fundamentals.”
“Well, we all know that’s rubbish, to borrow his term. What some people are saying is you got special treatment because of your involvement with that rape case.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” she snapped back, checking the anger in her voice. The fact that her colleagues were talking behind her back was enough to make her want to go to each and every one and explain what happened. “Why on earth would they give me special treatment when I was willing to testify against them in a wrongful death suit? Some days, I’m surprised I still have a job at all.”
“Because punishing you would have been a political disaster.”
“Whereas rewarding me accomplishes what? I would have testified against them if the case had gone to trial.” In her heart, she knew Eric was somehow right, though she couldn’t pin down the administration’s motives. What mattered now was making sure he knew she hadn’t set out to take advantage of her position. “You know, Eric…I don’t know how any of this happened. I didn’t deserve these assignments more than you or Paul, but I swear I did nothing to steal them out from under you. If you’re really serious about enjoying the Intro class, then I’m happy for you. I’m enjoying the fact that after twelve years I’m finally getting a crack at leading a senior seminar. I’m sorry that came at your expense, but it isn’t as if I’m not qualified to do it.”
His frown slowly gave way to a weak smile. “I believe that. And I appreciate hearing you had nothing to do with how this came about. Let’s hope for your sake you can convince Paul of that. You might want to reach out to him and explain. He’s not as happy with his Performance Overview course as I am with Intro. In fact, he’s considering filing a grievance against Andrew.”