Trial by Fury

by KG MacGregor

  “Uh, not really…but how’s your driving?” She glanced over at Hank, who was creeping down the interstate again. “Never mind. You were right about Belinda Burkhart. She can’t help us at all. We’re heading back to Atlanta to talk to the grandmother’s brother.”

  She proposed meeting Celia for a drink to pick up Michael’s thumb drive.

  “I dropped it off at your office this morning. I didn’t know you were out.”

  Theo was both pleased and disappointed. Pleased to know Celia had gone out of her way to deliver the data, and disappointed they had no pressing reason to see each other again, at least not right away. When she ended the call, she heard a distinct chuckle from Hank.

  “What?”

  “Didn’t say nothin’.”

  She glanced back at Jalinda, who was wearing earbuds so she could transcribe the recording she’d made with Belinda. She’d missed the conversation.

  As Theo played the words back in her head, her face began to burn. Admittedly, she’d broken from her usual professional protocol with the cheery and personable chitchat, enough that Hank had noticed and interpreted it as flirting.

  Which it was, despite her declaration to Celia that it was a line she couldn’t cross. After their conversation at Sammy’s Pint, she’d gone home and studied the Georgia Bar Association’s guidelines, which she already knew by heart. Dating a witness wasn’t strictly prohibited as long as it didn’t compromise her representation of her client. So why did it feel sleazy?

  “You know what, Hank? Just shut up and drive.”

  They followed the directions on her smartphone, and by late afternoon arrived at a small brick house in Forest Park, a suburban community of small square homes enclosed within chain-link fences. A rusted SUV that looked like it could have been their Suburban’s older brother sat in the driveway.

  A plane roared overhead, leading her to conclude they were directly underneath the flight path for Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. Probably one of the cheapest neighborhoods in the Greater Atlanta area.

  “Let me do this,” Hank said. His knock on the weathered wooden door brought a throaty bark from inside.

  An old dog, if Theo had to guess, and a big one. She clutched her portfolio to her chest as if it were a shield.

  Jalinda held up her phone. “I assume you want me to record this one too.”

  A yell from inside quieted the eruption and a man answered the door. He was thin and drawn, dressed in gray work pants with a plaid shirt. “You Hank Maloney?” he asked.

  “Sure am. Donald Lipscomb?” Hank stuck out his fat hand for a shake and slipped into his detective persona. “Thanks for meeting with us. As I told you on the phone, we’re working on a case that involves your niece. Your great-niece, I mean. I was hoping we could ask some questions.”

  He introduced Theo as an attorney who was looking into possible legal action, and Jalinda as her assistant.

  “What kind of legal action? They told me she killed herself.”

  Theo girded herself against a possible dog attack and followed him inside, where the stench of cigarette smoke nearly choked her. She passed on the offer of an upholstered chair in favor of a wooden stool he likely used as a side table for his ashtray and beer. The instant she sat down, a gray-bearded black lab began sniffing her feet.

  Watching the dog warily in case it lifted its leg, she asked, “Were you aware your great-niece had reported being raped a month before her suicide?”

  He answered with a look of disgust. “I hadn’t heard that. Do they know who did it?”

  She was careful with the details, doling them out slowly so he’d grasp the horror of Hayley’s death. “Are you a Harwood sports fan, Mr. Lipscomb? Did you happen to see them win their national basketball championship last month?”

  “Watched it right here in this chair,” he said. “Kentucky never knew what hit ’em.”

  “So you recognize these names—Matt Frazier, D’Anthony Caldwell and Tanner Watson.” She waited for his nod. “They’re the ones who raped her. We’re absolutely certain. We acquired a video they made while they were doing it. All three of them were laughing and talking about Hayley like she was a slut. They wanted to show it to their friends and brag about it.”

  “She was unconscious, Don,” Hank chimed in, leaning forward as if to emphasize they were talking man to man. “They slipped her a Mickey that made her pass out, and then they took turns with her. One of them even used her phone to take a picture of her without her clothes when they were done. When she came to, she went to call for help and that picture was staring back at her. Can you imagine what kind of low-life does something like that to a girl?”

  Lipscomb’s fists curled and released as his agitation grew, and his knee began to bounce. “What’s going to happen to them?”

  “That could be up to you,” Theo said calmly. “They should be held responsible, don’t you agree?”

  “Damn right.”

  She went on to explain the process Hayley followed, from the student health center to the police, and then to a trusted professor. “The police and the administration refused to help her. We think it was because they were ballplayers. Harwood didn’t want them arrested because they couldn’t win with their best players in jail. People don’t want to cheer for them, don’t want to buy those championship T-shirts. So they just ignored that evidence—I’m talking video proof they raped her while she was passed out—and took the players’ word for it that she wanted to have sex with all of them.”

  “But she couldn’t have given consent because she wasn’t even conscious,” Hank reminded.

  “No one believed her, Mr. Lipscomb. After she told a couple of her sorority sisters, one of them said she was just being a drama queen. They told her if she didn’t shut up, she was going to cost them the championship. They didn’t care about her being raped. They just wanted to win that trophy. So they turned on her even though she was the victim. On the night the Hornets won—you were probably sitting right here in this chair when it happened—she went into the bathroom at her sorority house and slashed her wrists. She died all alone thinking nobody cared what happened to her.”

  The man’s eyes filled with tears that he hurriedly wiped away. “What are you going to do about it?”

  Theo opened her portfolio to the cause of action document, its space for the name of the plaintiff blank. “You were her great-uncle, the only real family she had. As the next of kin, you’re the only one entitled to speak on Hayley’s behalf. It’s up to you to make them pay.”

  Chapter Six

  Harwood Street, marking the northern edge of the antebellum campus, was the epicenter of the university’s social and commercial activity. Bars, restaurants and T-shirt shops, one after another, all catering to students on a budget. The Bistro was a cut above, and thus a popular lunch place for faculty and administrators.

  Celia had run into a friend unexpectedly in the campus bookstore and they agreed to get lunch.

  She recognized the waitress as a former student from her Intro to Theater class and smiled at her. “I’ll have the chicken caesar, dressing on the side, please.”

  “Make it two,” said Kay Crylak, the women’s softball coach. “But you can drown mine in dressing if you want.”

  Though only in her mid-thirties, Kay’s face already showed signs of her years in the sun—leathered skin with deep red spots on her face and arms. She wore her dark hair short enough to tame what would otherwise have been a mass of curls.

  Celia had met her through Gina when she arrived at Harwood eight years ago from a successful stint as coach of a junior college in Florida. After three semi-serious relationships, Kay was once again single and had made clear her romantic interest in Celia. Unrequited interest, as it were, since Celia felt nothing but friendship. To Kay’s credit, she’d handled the rejection with her easygoing manner.

  “I was surprised to see you,” Celia said. “I figured you’d be on the road recruiting all summer.”

 
; “I’m heading up for a couple of tournaments in the Smokies in August, but mostly we’re set for next year. Twelve scholarships and eight walk-ons.” Kay looked around and lowered her voice. “Provided two of my scholarships pass remedial algebra in summer school. It’s hard enough to coach ’em in softball without having to get ’em through math and English. And then I have to figure out how I’m going to keep ’em eligible for four years.”

  “I hear ya.” The diction training from her early TV career went out the window after only a few minutes of being exposed to Kay’s Southern drawl.

  “A lot of homework on the bus, I reckon.”

  From living with Gina for ten years, Celia knew all about the NCAA’s rules for academic progress. More than once, she’d been pressured by someone in the athletic department to grant exceptions that allowed players to make up work so they wouldn’t fail her class and lose their eligibility for sports. “You wouldn’t believe how many calls I get from coaches wanting special considerations for players.”

  Kay chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Why wouldn’t I believe it? I’ve made my share of calls like that. Then I have to go build a fire under my girls’ britches so they don’t cut class and make me look like an idiot.”

  “I don’t mind them missing class as long as they’re serious about making up the work. I know they have travel schedules and can’t be there all the time. But some of them think they ought to get a pass just because they play for the school. I’m not going to hand out grades for nothing—especially if they act like they’re entitled.”

  Frazier, Caldwell and Watson must have felt especially entitled when police officers took their word for it that Hayley had consented to gang sex even after seeing video of their brutal assault.

  The details of Hayley’s rape haunted Celia every day. To wake to the horror of knowing something awful had happened—she knew that feeling all too well—only to have it confirmed in the worst way. Then to have her trust shattered by those who didn’t seem to care she’d been violated.

  “…to be proactive in class,” Kay went on, bringing Celia back to the present. “They’re supposed to go meet with all their professors at the beginning of the semester and figure out the conflicts. I tell ’em to read ahead and take exams early whenever they can. And every time we hit the road, travel time is study time. No iPods, no video games. Just homework.”

  “Gina was the same way.” In fact, Harwood’s female athletes had always been far more conscientious about stopping by her office to talk about how to offset their participation in sports. “You know, I’m trying to think of the last time one of the football players came in for a meeting like that. Or anybody from the basketball team. Maybe twice in twelve years.”

  “Don’t you know, girl? The rules are different if you have dangly bits, especially if you play one of the big money sports. Hell, those coaches don’t even teach their own classes. They have grad assistants do it for ’em. It’s no wonder the players screw around. Sports is all they care about. They’re just following the example their coaches set.”

  Women’s basketball wasn’t exactly big money, but it was considered a major sport—certainly more visible than women’s soccer or softball. Gina had felt a lot of pressure to succeed on the court, sloughing off her teaching load on her assistant coaches as well. The AD—athletic director—actually encouraged it. “Gina wasn’t exactly a shining example as far as teaching her classes, but she never let her girls get away with anything. Not on the court, and not in the classroom either.”

  “I’m the the same way.”

  Gina also kept her team’s business in the locker room. Squabbles between players and coaches, academic struggles and love triangles—all of it took place out of the public eye. “You ever have a player get in trouble, Kay? I remember a couple of Gina’s underage girls got caught with a bottle of tequila in their dorm room. Then another one got into a fight with somebody at a bonfire. She always dealt with that kind of stuff herself…benched them for two or three games.”

  “The worst thing I ever had to deal with was when my starting left fielder accidentally borrowed somebody’s bike off a rack at the library. That was just last year. We talked the cops out of pressing charges, but I still suspended her ass for two games. Talk about tough love—that killed us because she was hitting four-fifty.”

  Celia was intrigued by the mention of the police. “How did you manage to get the cops to drop it?”

  “There’s this guy we’re supposed to call. The AD handed out a bunch of his business cards at a meeting a couple of years ago.” Kay opened her wallet to find it. “Here it is…Austin Thompson. I think he went to law school here a few years ago, but apparently he works now at Hubbard-McCaffrey. I guess that’s one of the law firms downtown. All I know is he’s in with all the big shots in the AD’s office. And the boosters too. Pals around with the players…you know the kind—a jock sniffer. He shows up like a genie out of a magic lamp whenever one of ’em gets in trouble with the cops. Bar fights, DUIs, shoplifting. I bet the football team has him on speed dial.”

  So that’s how it worked—an attorney on call who ran interference for all the athletes. Apparently the basketball team had him on speed dial too. “Who pays him? The athletic department?”

  Kay paused her story while the waitress delivered their lunch.

  “Beats me. I just know I called him like they said and he turned a bike theft into a lost and found.”

  If Celia had to bet, he also had a hand in turning a gang rape of an unconscious woman into consensual sex.

  * * *

  Theo twisted in her chair at the massive conference table where she and Jalinda had splayed more than a dozen law books open to cases relevant to wrongful death. The State of Georgia made it all but impossible to hold another party responsible for suicide, no matter how ugly the circumstances.

  “For the sake of argument, let’s assume we get past the issue of standing,” Theo said. A formidable assumption, since the defense would argue Donald Lipscomb was not Hayley Burkhart’s closest surviving relative, and therefore not eligible to sue anyone for her loss. “What’s our best way around Appling? Hayley didn’t lose the ability to behave rationally during the thirty-day period following the rape. No rage, no frenzy, no loss of control. The defense will argue there’s no proximal cause of death. Case dismissed.”

  Jalinda reviewed her notes, which were tagged as usual with multicolored tabs linking them to the evidence they’d collected so far. “So we’ll need to document her state of mind. Interviews with friends, sorority sisters. Establish a change in personality or demeanor during the window.”

  “Good, good.” She’d gotten some of that in her interview with Michael, which Celia had arranged. As they’d suspected, his boyfriend, Gavin Sandifor, played for the Hornets and was part of the players’ secret group where the video had been shared. “And since she reported the crime to the student health center and campus police, followed up when she received the video, and ultimately took it to one of her professors when the police refused to charge her assailants, we can also show that she believed the university was equally responsible for her state of mind.”

  It was a stretch but Theo couldn’t cut new law out of whole cloth—she had to shape the facts of the narrative around existing cases. The key was convincing first a judge then a jury that Hayley’s feelings of being violated—along with frustration at the university’s lack of action on her behalf—had created a sense of hopelessness. When her rapists were glorified after their championship win, she suffered a sudden mental breakdown that led to her impulsive act.

  Jalinda’s nose wrinkled with uncertainty. “What if they say she was already unstable? That the circumstances of her birth and the loss of her grandmother made her unable to cope. Or she suffered remorse after engaging in sex with multiple partners. Or maybe she was just acting out a dramatic scene because of her interest in performance studies.”

  Already unable to cope. Without realizing it, Jalinda had just
given her a brilliant idea.

  “Damn, Jalinda. I’m going to use that to argue her suicide was foreseeable. I wish you’d think more seriously about my advice to go to law school. You’re a natural.”

  “It’s not natural. I get it mostly from you and Kendra. I listen when you practice your arguments. Some of it rubs off.”

  Penny appeared in the doorway and rapped her knuckles gently on the door. “Theo, I have KDP News on the line. They’re doing a segment tonight on a study just released that shows male nurses are paid more than female nurses. They want you for a live interview around seven. I checked…you have a royal blue top and white necklace hanging on the back of the door in the studio.”

  Good thing, since she was wearing a forest-green dress, which would render her transparent against the computer-generated backgrounds some news stations used for remote interviews. “Tell them yes, but not to leave me hanging like they did last time. I’m out of here if we haven’t started by seven thirty. And see if you can get me a copy of that study. No, get me Gloria for about an hour this afternoon. Have her review it so she can tell me what I need to know.”

  Hank squeezed past Penny into the room, surprisingly clean-shaven and wearing a crisp white shirt with a dark sport coat.

  “What’s up with you?” Theo asked. “You have a date or something?”

  Scoffing at her remark, he slid a piece of paper across the table. “I just talked to the nurse at the student health center, the one that comes in for all the rape cases. Her official title is Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. She said the campus cops picked up the rape kit the same day Hayley Burkhart came in. In fact, they called twice asking if it was ready.”

  Why would they be so anxious to pick up the rape kit if they had no intention of charging the men responsible?

  Theo examined the form, a copy of the receipt the courts required to establish the chain of custody. The scrawl on the signature line was illegible. “Any idea whose chicken scratch this is?”