The DeadHouse

by Linda Fairstein

  "I'm going to have to start at the beginning with you, Corinne." No one was going to be charged with rape in this jurisdiction because a woman assumed that a crime must have occurred. The doctor or nurse who examined Corinne may have been able to find evidence that recent intercourse took place, but they would be unlikely to know whether it was with or without her consent.

  "Any medical findings of significance?" I asked Teague.

  "Nothing."

  "Lacerations, abrasions, discoloration, swelling?" He shook his head in the negative.

  I elicited background information from Corinne about her education and employment. I questioned her about the medications she took regularly and her alcohol consumption habits.

  "Have you ever had so much to drink before that you couldn't remember things the next day?"

  "Yeah. It happens to me every now and then. I've had some blackouts, too. Not passing out completely, but just carrying on with my friends, and then having no memory of it the next day. My doctor tells me I'm not supposed to mix my antidepressants with liquor, but most of the time it doesn't really bother me… I haven't had anything to eat since last night. Do you think you could send out for a sandwich for me?"

  "No problem," Teague replied. "There's a sandwich shop that delivers, or there's a guy on the corner with a hot dog stand. I can run down and get one for you, whichever you'd prefer."

  Corinne's face screwed up in disgust. "You mean those New York City hot dogs that sit in that dirty water in those pushcarts all day? I couldn't possibly eat that stuff."

  No, but she could drink a six-pack of some liquid concoction without a clue about what was in it or how it would mix with her medication, and never even blink. Teague left the room to call in an order for Corinne and a few cups of coffee to keep us all going.

  Gorinne rested her head, cushioned on her crossed arms, on the table in front of her. "Would you like to tell me about the evening, or as much of it as you can remember?" I asked.

  She had met Craig at the party at about midnight, and they were really getting along well together. After a few vodka and cranberry juice cocktails, they left to go to a bar somewhere in the East Nineties. That's where she had the Brain Tumors. Maybe three of them. Maybe five.

  "Was he coming on to you at all?"

  "Like, what do you mean?"

  "Did he seem to be interested in you physically? Did he ever touch you or kiss you?"

  "Oh, yeah. We were dancing, I remember that. The jukebox was playing music and I asked him to dance with me."

  "Fast or slow?"

  "Slow stuff, mostly. He was kissing me, you could say."

  "Were you kissing each other?"

  "Sure. But I know what you're gonna say. And that doesn't give him any right to have sex with me, especially if he didn't use a condom."

  "Did you see anybody else that you know at the bar?"

  "No. He's the one who decided where to go drinking. I didn't know another soul."

  "How about the bartender? Were you talking to him?"

  Corinne thought for a minute. "Yeah. After we'd been there for a while, most of the place kind of cleared out. He and Craig were having a long talk about something-movies, I think it was. They both liked the same kind of movies. Science fiction, stuff I don't know about."

  "So there's a good chance, if Teague stops over there tonight, that the bartender can help put together some of the things you don't remember when it came time to leave the bar?"

  "Like, what do you mean?"

  "How you two were acting toward each other. He might recall some of your conversation, if you had any in his presence at the bar. How many drinks he served you and how drunk you were. Or what kind of physical interaction there was between you and Craig." It was often useful to remind a witness that other people we could talk to might actually be able to help us reconstruct some of the things she had been too wasted to think about clearly.

  "You're really going to speak with that bartender?"

  "Don't you want us to? After all, part of what you claim is that you didn't go to Craig's hotel room willingly, under your own steam."

  She extended one arm out on the table in front of her and rested her head back down on it. "What if he tells you, like, that Craig and I were making out while we were in the bar?"

  "That still doesn't give him the right to force you to have sex with him, or to take advantage of you if you weren't participating." I fed her back the line she had tried to use earlier to get me to act on her complaint. If Craig had engaged in a sexual act with her after she had passed out, we might be able to establish the occurrence of a crime.

  "Yeah, well, what if the bartender tells you that we both went into the men's room for a while? What's that gonna do to my case?"

  "That depends on what you tell me happened in the men's room, doesn't it?"

  "You're gonna be all judgmental about it." Corinne focused her eyes on a spot on the ceiling, above my head, and looked even more sullen than she had when I arrived.

  "I have no reason to be judgmental. You tell me what the facts are, I'll tell you whether we've got evidence that proves a crime was committed."

  "But it's only my word against his?" She was whimpering now.

  "That's all we need-your word-in any case. It used to be different, twenty years ago. There had to be more proof than the story of the woman who brings the charge. But now, rape is like every other crime. Your testimony-your credible testimony-is what I present to the jury. Then you're cross-examined by Craig's lawyer. After that, Craig tells him everything he remembers."

  I paused to let that fact sink in. "Corinne, what happened in the bathroom at the bar? Did you have sex with him?"

  Her eyes returned to the spot on the ceiling. "Not sex. I gave him a blow job. I didn't let him touch me."

  I had told her I did not have to make judgments about people. That didn't stop me from wondering about her definition of sexual acts. Maybe it was a generational thing, although she was only ten years younger than I. I had heard it enough times that I had learned to train the young lawyers in my unit never to accept a victim's characterization of the encounter when she said there was "no sex." Ask, I taught them, exactly which body parts made contact with the other person. Most of us make too many assumptions about what other people call sexual acts.

  Now she was rubbing her eyes and yawning. "You know, Miss Cooper, I never wanted to call the police about this. It wasn't my idea. That woman at the hospital made me do it. The only reason I went to the emergency room was to get a morning-after pill. I mean, like what if he had sex with me, didn't use a condom, and I find out I'm pregnant?"

  "Do you think that's what happened?"

  This time she groaned. "I don't know. I just don't know what happened. Don't you get it? That's exactly what I told the doctor who examined me. And after he told me he couldn't see anything unusual, that's when the counselor told me that maybe I was raped."

  "Maybe? We don't charge people with felonies, Corinne, 'cause 'maybe' they did something bad. I have to believe a serious crime was committed before I authorize the police to make an arrest. And I have to persuade a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt,that the person charged committed that crime. I can't ask them to guess. I can't ask them to fill in the blanks that you don't remember. If Craig had intercourse with you when you were unconscious, that's another thing-that's a crime. But nobody goes to state prison for twenty-five years because you got drunk and then don't like the way the night ended for you.

  "And Teague and I will have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out which of those things is what actually happened."

  "But how can you do that?"

  "Maybe we won't be able to. But we'll start with the bartender. We'll see if there's a desk clerk at the hotel who saw you coming in with Craig. Maybe even a security surveillance tape that will show you walking with him. It might suggest whether or not you were in any distress-or instead, that you were laughing, having a good time. I'll get the records of all the ch
arges from his bill. See if there was any room service, any minibar use, any pay-TV movies charged to Craig's room during the time you were-"

  "Oh, jeez, let's just forget about it then." Now she was moving from apathy to anger.

  "You don't have to do all that work. That's Teague's job. Did I remind you of something you had forgotten? Did you have more to drink in the hotel room? Get into bed with the guy to watch a movie?" It wouldn't be the first time.

  "Where's the detective? Can I talk to him a minute? I mean, like I have a plane to catch."

  "Teague and I are here because you wanted our help. We'll get you to the airport. Please try and answer my questions. One call to the hotel and we'll have some of this information anyway. It's all part of the record that goes on the guest's bill." Corinne was fuming. She wouldn't look at me for almost a minute, and then she spoke.

  "All right, so we had some more to drink. He ordered up a bottle of champagne. Is that against the law? I had a couple of sips of champagne."

  Nice nightcap for a bunch of Brain Tumors. The chances were good that there would be a charge for an X-rated movie on Craig's bill, shortly after room service arrived with the chilled bucket of bubbly.

  "How about the movie, Corinne?"

  "It was so gross I couldn't even watch it after the first ten minutes. Like group sex in a hot tub or something. He was into that shit. Not me. Look, let's just forget about this. I don't think I have much of a case." She twisted her watch around on her wrist to see the time. "If I don't go now, I'll never make this flight." She stood up and opened the door.

  "This morning, when you woke up, did you ask Craig what had happened?"

  "Yeah, I asked him. He was like all surprised I didn't remember. He said we-um-we like made love. That he thought I was having a really good time. I just know I wouldn't have done that if I had been sober. Not without a condom."

  "But you weren't sober, Corinne. That's what alcohol does, that's what drugs do to us. They change the way we act, they loosen us up. Sometimes we say and do things we wouldn't have done otherwise. Sometimes it makes us more vulnerable to many kinds of danger."

  "Well, I'm just too hungover and tired to deal with this now. I didn't want him arrested. I just wanted to teach him a lesson anyway. Please, can I go home?"

  Teague had paid the delivery boy and returned to the interview room with Corinne's sandwich. I left them alone so that he could try to soothe her and get her to go over the more complete version of her story, which she had neatly trimmed for him on the first telling. The hot coffee tasted good at the end of a long day, and I walked back to sit with the sergeant and talk about the rash of holiday assaults.

  The door to the squad room opened and Mike Chapman burst through before I could finish the cup. "Yo, Sarge. Be sure you get blondie delivered right to the door of Walter Cronkite's apartment when she leaves here. The most trusted man in television can take care of her for the night. Gotta run."

  I stood up, holding my finger in the air to signal that I'd be ready in a minute. "Teague doesn't need me anymore. I can-"

  "Sorry, kid. Just got a call from the boss at the Nineteenth Precinct. Seems like little miss Annie Oakley made an attempt to get into your building through the garage. Tried to get one of the attendants to let her in with his key. Slipped him twenty bucks. I'm meeting the cops over at P. J. Bernstein's. See if we can pick her off the street before she starts target practice. You and lover boy are grounded for the night, understand?"

  I didn't have time to protest. Mike turned to leave, but stuck his head back into the room. "And by the way, I checked with Freddie Figueroa, the detective who canvassed Lola's building the day after the murder. Remember Claude Lavery, 'Professor Ganja-R-Us,' Coop? The upstairs neighbor? On the DD5, all Figueroa had written for his interview with Lavery was that he was in his apartment, working on a research paper and listening to classical music. Didn't see or hear anything unusual on Thursday afternoon. Freddie asked Lavery if he knew the deceased. Said he did, but that he hadn't spoken to her in over a month."

  19

  Jake dropped me off at the Roosevelt Island tram station at Second Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street on his way to La Guardia in a cab at 8 A.M. Friday morning. He was back off to Washington to cover the end-of-the-year resignation of the secretary of agriculture. I climbed the three-tiered staircase and watched one of the two cable cars pull out of the station as the second arrived and unloaded its crew of daily commuters.

  With a few minutes to kill, I called Mike and found him still at home.

  "I assume that you would have phoned me last night if you had any luck finding my friend, Miss Denzig."

  "We rode around the neighborhood for almost two hours. Nowhere to be seen."

  "I'm on my way over to Bird Coler Hospital to do that hearing. Jake won't be home in time for dinner tonight. Why don't you see if you can lure Mercer into town for our Christmas celebration. I'll think of someplace lively to go, okay?"

  "Let me see what's cooking. You still planning to take a scenic tour of the island when you're done?"

  "Yes. Nan asked one of the students who stayed in town during the holidays to show me the dig site. I'm headed out there now, so I may poke around a bit before I come back. Can you still meet me after I finish at Coler?"

  "I'll beep you if I can get there."

  There were only seven other people going to the island at that hour on this cold December morning. Two of them had tennis rackets and were clearly headed for the bubble in the sports complex at the foot of the tram station. I wondered what the business of each of the others could be. The young conductor opened the doors of the car and we all boarded. There was a bench at each end, with four large poles to hang on to at various points on the floor, and straps with metal handles hanging from the roof's interior.

  Like a cable car at a ski resort, the doors closed and the heavy tram lumbered off, rising on thick steel wires as it lifted off above the city streets. I could see the people in the automobiles that were cruising down the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge ramp. Powerful winds rocked my massive carriage and it shuddered mildly as its several sets of wheels rolled over the stanchion at the first tower.

  In the sky beyond, I watched a steady stream of takeoffs and landings heading to and from the La Guardia Airport runways, and below that, three gray stacks belching smoke from some unidentifiable factory in Queens. The crossing took less than four minutes, and I snaked my way out behind the other passengers, who all seemed familiar with the routine. A bus waited at the exit path, and I fished a quarter out of my bag to pay the fare.

  The second stop, just beyond the original Blackwell farmhouse, would put me on Main Street. When I stepped down from the bus, I was struck at once by the feeling that I was in a small town, millions of miles from Manhattan. The streets were lined with cobblestones, and the handful of new high -rise buildings stood alongside the redbrick facade of the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, constructed more than a century earlier for island residents.

  I walked north, following the winding street the equivalent of a handful of city blocks, to the lighthouse at the island's tip, just beyond the hospital. The sweeping view of Manhattan from that point was the most spectacular panorama I had ever seen.

  It was after nine o'clock when I presented my identification to the security guard at the desk at Coler Hospital. He directed me to the psychiatric ward on the second floor, where I was met by a slender young woman in a white lab coat. "Miss Cooper? I'm Sandie Herron. I'm the physician in charge of this wing of the hospital. We've got one of the arts-and-crafts rooms cleared and set up for your hearing today."

  "Fine. Would you have a private place for me to interview the victim?"

  "Yes. That's what I'm here to help you with." She asked me to follow her down the hallway to her office. "You're going to need some help with Tina. It's difficult to understand her unless you've worked with her for a while."

  "Will she talk with me?"

  "You won't be able to get her to sto
p talking. Problem is that because her mental disability is so severe, I don't think you'll be able to understand her without help from me or one of my staff."

  "What's her history?"

  "Tina's thirty years old. She's spent most of her adult life here at the hospital. She has some congenital brain damage, as well as being bipolar. Her developmental level is about that of an eight-year-old's. She has dramatic mood swings, from extreme emotional highs to very profound depression. She's on a number of medications, including Depakote and Neurontin."

  I was trying to take down everything Herron was saying. "Don't worry, I've had a copy of Tina's chart made for you. All of the meds are listed in that. The problem… may I call you Alex? The problem is that her speech and language are particularly immature. She's incapable of normal verbal communication, and a lot of what she tries to express is incomprehensible to an outsider's untrained ear."

  "Have you ever testified at a preliminary hearing, Doctor?"

  "About a patient's condition? A diagnosis or finding?"

  "No. I think I'd like you to stay with me while I try to ask Tina to tell me what happened. If she isn't able to make it clear to me, or to the judge, I'd like you to act as an interpreter."

  "That's fine. Why don't we bring her in and let you get started." Herron called the nurses' station and asked one of the attendants to bring Tina to her office. "One thing you need to understand, Alex, is that Tina exhibits an unusual preoccupation with sex. She's what we call on the ward a chronic public masturbator. We have a companion assigned to be with her most of the day, so she doesn't interact sexually with the other patients."

  My luck to draw this complication at a preliminary hearing. The best I could hope for would be to get a good judge who would appreciate the issues here. My witness would be an unintelligible thirty-year-old, with all the sexual interest and curiosity appropriate for a woman that age, but with the mental capacity of a child. The law presumed that she was incapable of consenting to whatever sexual act had occurred.