The Girl on the Bridge

by James Hayman

  There was a look, a pause, a brief fluttering of long dark eyelashes. “No. No. He’s not.”

  To McCabe, both Rachel Thorne’s tone and physical manner seemed appropriately anxious for someone whose husband had disappeared and is being accused of serious sexual crimes.

  Maggie continued. “To your knowledge has he ever been accused of rape?”

  This time she responded more quickly. “No. Except for that sign on his chest.”

  “Has he ever forced himself on you?”

  “Would that be considered rape?”

  “Yes. Spousal rape is a crime.”

  “The answer is no,” she said. “Josh can be sexually aggressive. I sometimes call him Mr. Testosterone. But . . .” She paused again. “But I’m usually okay with that. And if I tell him I don’t want to, he usually backs off.”

  “Not always?”

  “Not always. But I’d never call it rape.”

  “Have you ever known him to be unfaithful? For example, when he’s away on a business trip?”

  McCabe found himself wondering how far a wife might go to protect a cheating or even a rapist husband’s reputation. How far she’d go to deny to herself or to others what she might suspect or perhaps even knew to be true. After all, McCabe couldn’t count the number of times he tried to deny what he knew to be the truth about his own ex-wife’s sexual indiscretions. Denied them supposedly for the sake of their daughter, Casey, who was then only eight years old. Kept denying right up until the day one of Sandy’s lovers, one with a lot of money and no current spouse, asked her to marry him.

  “I urge you to be honest about this,” Maggie told Rachel. “It could be important in finding your husband. Finding out what might have happened to him.”

  “Josh isn’t a rapist,” said Rachel.

  “You told us he could be sexually aggressive,” said Maggie.

  “I also said he takes no for an answer.”

  “With you he does,” said Maggie. “But maybe not with other women. Say, for example, a woman he picked up last night in the bar at the Port Grill. And let’s also say this woman—we’ll call her Norah Wilcox—showed enough interest in Josh to invite him back to her place and when they get there maybe Josh is a little too quick on the draw and she tells him no. But Josh decides not to take no for an answer.”

  Rachel sat silently staring at Maggie and McCabe, elbows on the table, hands pressed together under her chin almost as if she were praying. Or maybe just thinking how much she wanted to tell them. For well over a minute the loudest sound in the room was Maggie’s plastic pen tapping against the wood.

  “Mark,” Rachel finally said, turning to her brother, “please wait for me outside. I appreciate your help, but I want to keep the rest of this conversation between me and the detectives.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, Rache,” said Christensen. “In fact, I’m sure it isn’t.”

  “Please, Mark. I’m sure it is,” Rachel responded.

  “Rachel . . .”

  “Mark, please.”

  The brother nodded reluctantly and rose. “Okay. Your call.”

  “You can wait for your sister in the conference room,” said McCabe. “Or if you’d rather there’s a coffee shop right up the street. Corner of Exchange.”

  “Okay. I’ll head up that way.”

  “Okay, but before you go, please ask Detective Bacon, the tall thin guy sitting out at the first desk there, to take a set of your fingerprints and a DNA swab.”

  Christensen nodded. “Okay. Fine. Rachel, call me if you need me to come back.”

  Rachel waited until her brother shut the door before turning back.

  Chapter 8

  “YOU ASKED IF I thought Josh might have picked up another woman. Given this picture, it’s obvious I have to stop lying both to myself and to others about the fact that my husband isn’t always faithful. I’ve suspected it for a long time and he’s even admitted to what he calls straying once or twice. I’m sure that’s pretty common among husbands who travel a lot for business and I’ve decided I can live with it. But rape? We’ve been married seven years. I know Josh better than anyone else and, even with his fooling around, I find rape hard to believe.”

  “If he’s never raped anyone,” asked McCabe, “what do you suppose motivated this Norah Wilcox, or whatever her real name might be, to tie him to the bed and put that sign on his chest? And cap it off by sending you this picture?”

  “I don’t know . . . Maybe I’m wrong . . . Maybe he’s not the man I thought he was. Jesus Christ, this is awful.” She lowered her head and put her hands over her face.

  “Has Josh ever hit you?” McCabe asked when she finally looked up, breathing deeply, eyes moist and red.

  “No.”

  He waited, hoping silence would prod Rachel into saying more. After a minute it did.

  “Well, actually, yes. Only one time.”

  “With his fist?”

  “No. He slapped me. With his open hand.”

  “Why did he slap you?”

  “I slapped him first. We were having an argument.”

  “About what?”

  Rachel’s brown eyes studied McCabe in a way that suggested she was still debating the wisdom of providing a pair of strange cops even more intimate details of her marriage.

  “About sex,” she finally said. “It was last September. I teach at a private girls’ school in Manhattan and I’d just gotten home hot and tired from a tough day and a long smelly subway ride. I still had a bunch of papers to grade before I could quit. When I got home Josh had already had a couple of drinks.”

  “Was he drunk?”

  “A little. He wanted to . . . to have sex. I said no. I had work to do and I didn’t feel like it anyway. I tried to leave the room. He grabbed me, pushed me up against the wall and said, as my husband, he could fuck me any damned time he wanted.”

  “Are those the words he used?” asked Maggie.

  “Yes. Pretty much verbatim. No. Exactly verbatim. I called him an asshole—again verbatim—and told him to back off. He didn’t. Just started fondling my breasts and trying to pull my clothes off. I got angry and I slapped him. He slapped me back, hard enough to bloody my nose. Might have landed me on the floor if I wasn’t propped up against a wall. I thought he was going to haul me into the bedroom, pull my clothes off and—I may as well use the word—fuck me. It certainly wouldn’t have been making love. Instead he pushed me away and slammed out of the apartment. He got home about two in the morning smelling of booze. And of another woman. He obviously found somebody more willing than his wife.”

  “Is there anything else about Josh’s behavior you haven’t told us we should know about?”

  Rachel sighed. “Detective, with all his faults, and I’m the first to admit there are many, I love my husband. He’s smart, funny and often very generous. Yes, he sometimes goes after other women. Even so, I don’t want our marriage to explode.” Rachel was weeping openly now, her tears, stained black by mascara, sliding down her cheeks.

  McCabe repeated the question. “Is there anything else about Josh’s behavior we should know about?”

  “Yes.” Rachel caught her breath. “Maybe this has something to do with that sign on his chest. When Josh was in college, a young woman, a freshman, accused Josh and some of his fraternity brothers—all members of the football team—of drugging her with roofies, rohypnol, at a fraternity party, then dragging her upstairs to a bedroom and taking turns raping her.”

  “Rachel, you told us not ten minutes ago that Josh had never been accused of rape,” said Maggie, an angry edge to her voice, “and that you just couldn’t see him raping anyone. Now you’re telling us he took part in some gang-rape in college?”

  “He swore it wasn’t rape. I believed him. I still believe him.”

  “Well, you’d better give us the details.”

  “It’s just these things are incredibly hard to talk about to a couple of cops I met less than an hour ago. And I guess I don�
��t want some ancient accusation to become, I don’t know, part of the public record. Part of—” Rachel tilted her head, indicating the camera hidden in the light fixture “—your video up there. I don’t want my husband being charged with sexual assault by some bimbo for something that supposedly happened twelve years ago.”

  “You’d better tell us about it, Rachel.”

  Another brief silence. Another deep breath. “I have a hard time dealing with this let alone talking about it. But what I was told was that Josh and five of his fraternity brothers supposedly had sex with this girl one after the other. Josh swore the girl was both slutty and drunk and that the sex was consensual. That no roofies or other drugs were involved.”

  “What college? What fraternity? What year?” asked Maggie.

  “Holden College. Alpha Chi Delta. Happened in the fall of 2001. About a month after 9/11.”

  “Did he tell you the girl’s name?”

  “No. I’m not sure he even knew it. He just said she had sex with him and five other guys. But he swore the sex was consensual. She was asking for it and egging them on.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess partly because no charges were ever filed. Maybe even more because I don’t see Josh as a rapist. If Josh wants sex there’s no reason he’d ever have to resort to rape. Not now. Not back then either. He’s a very good-looking guy. Very charming. Intelligent. Successful. He knows I hate it when other women come on to him, but it happens all the time. He can have all the sex he wants whenever he wants it.”

  Maggie didn’t bother getting into the reasons for rape. How for some men, usually insecure men, it was more about demonstrating power and domination. For others it reflected a deep, possibly hidden misogyny. But most commonly, at least in the rapes Maggie had investigated, when it was about sex, it usually came down to a simple sociopathic indifference on the part of the rapist to the pain and trauma suffered by the victims. The guy wanted sex and saw an opportunity so he took it. In those cases the rape meant no more to the rapist than jerking off. Except for him it was more fun. “What else can you tell us about this rape?”

  “Alleged rape.”

  “Okay, alleged rape.”

  “Not a lot. Like I said I only learned about it a few months ago.”

  McCabe squinted at her. “How did you learn about it?”

  “By accident. I overheard Josh talking on the phone with another man who was involved. Apparently the girl who was supposedly raped that night recently committed suicide and the supposed rape was the cause of her killing herself. I heard Josh say to the other guy, ‘I’m sorry she’s dead but you can’t blame yourself for that. And I’m sure as hell not blaming myself. What happened happened. The suicide wasn’t our fault. She killed herself. We didn’t.’”

  “Did you know who or what he was talking about?”

  “No. Not at the time. When he got off the phone I asked him what was going on. He tried brushing it off. Telling me it was nothing important. Just a business deal that wasn’t going right. But I told him I heard him talking about somebody committing suicide as a result of a rape. I heard him say he wasn’t blaming himself. I told him he needed to tell me what it was all about. He tried stonewalling, but I kept at it until he had enough of my haranguing.

  “He finally said, ‘Okay, you really want to know?’ I said, ‘Yes, I really want to know.’ Hell, I needed to know. He went to the liquor cabinet, made himself a strong drink and asked me if I wanted one. I said no. He sat down with the drink and told me about the rape allegations. He said he and some of his fraternity brothers did have sex with this girl but it was totally consensual. He said he could prove it. I asked him how. He said he made a recording of this girl saying yes, that she wanted them to fuck her.”

  “A recording?” asked McCabe.

  Rachel shrugged. “Yes.”

  “Why did he make this recording?”

  “I guess to prove the sex was consensual.”

  “Audio or video?”

  “I’m pretty sure there was no video. Kids weren’t posting stuff like that to the Internet in those days.”

  “Did you ever hear this recording?”

  “No. I didn’t want to. But Josh swore you could definitely hear this girl’s voice shouting, ‘Yes. Yes. Please fuck me.’ Stuff like that.”

  “Did it ever occur to you,” asked Maggie, “that Josh or maybe one of the other guys forced this girl to say that stuff, recording it to cover their asses? Claim consent if she ever tried charging them with rape?”

  “Oh God, I don’t know. How do you force somebody to say stuff like that?”

  “Does Josh still have it?”

  “I don’t know. He might have it somewhere in our apartment. Or maybe in his safe deposit box.”

  “Did he tell you anything else about the incident?” asked McCabe.

  “He said the girl was drunk and wanted to take on everybody. She was lying there naked inviting guys, as Josh put it, to climb aboard one after the other.”

  “Do you know if this girl was conscious when all these guys were climbing aboard?” asked Maggie.

  Rachel looked momentarily puzzled. “She must have been if she was inviting them to do it.”

  “Did Josh seem upset by what he was telling you?” asked Maggie.

  “More like angry.”

  “At you?”

  “Yes. For insisting that he tell me the story. But he seemed much more relaxed after he finished. Maybe the booze relaxed him. Or maybe just telling it and getting it out of his system.”

  “What happened after the rape?”

  “Alleged rape.”

  “Alleged rape.”

  “Nothing. Not for four months. Josh said he even asked the girl out on a date but she told him no.”

  “Josh told you this?”

  “Yes. Said he thought she didn’t want to go out with him because she was probably ashamed of what she had done that night.”

  “What happened after four months?”

  “Out of the blue, winter semester, this girl goes to the dean of students and accuses this whole bunch of guys of gang-raping her that night. Said she only knew two of their names. Josh and Charlie Loughlin.”

  “Keep going.”

  “Josh and Charlie were called in by the dean and questioned by him and a group of other college administrators. They both insisted the sex was consensual and Josh played the recording to prove it. He told the dean that four other guys who hadn’t been named would corroborate their story if any action was taken. There were no other witnesses. No videos. No anything except the audio recording and all the guys swearing that the girl had been asking for it. According to Josh, the college administrators strongly advised the girl not to pursue rape charges with the police. Told her there was no proof. Just was a case of ‘he said, she said.’ Except there were six he saids and only one she said and, in fact, she hadn’t said a word until four months after it supposedly happened. A week or so later the girl dropped out of school. Josh never heard anything more about it until he got the call from Charlie.”

  “Did he tell you the victim’s name?”

  “No.”

  “Did he tell you anything else about the suicide?”

  “Just that Charlie Loughlin told him the girl had killed herself by jumping off a railroad bridge up in New Hampshire. Josh said he told Loughlin the suicide just proved what he thought at the time . . . that she was mentally unbalanced.”

  “Have you ever met this Charlie Loughlin?” asked McCabe.

  “Once at a college reunion. And a couple of times for dinner when he came down to New York on business.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Connecticut somewhere. West Hartford, I think. He’s in the insurance business around there.”

  “Have you ever met any of the others who were supposedly involved in the rape?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How did
Loughlin hear about the suicide?”

  Rachel shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe he read about it in the papers and recognized the girl’s name.”

  “But he did tell Josh how this girl killed herself?”

  “Yes. She jumped off a bridge into a river. I don’t know if it was the fall that killed her or if she drowned.”

  “You don’t know her name?”

  “No.”

  “But Charlie and Josh must have known it?”

  “I guess so. If Charlie saw it in a newspaper he must have recognized her name.”

  “When did this phone call take place?” asked McCabe.

  “I already told you. A few months ago.”

  “Can you be more specific than that?”

  Rachel leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “It must have been right after the holidays. Our tree was still up and school hadn’t started yet. So I’d say late December or maybe the first few days in January. It was probably a Saturday or Sunday afternoon since Josh was home and it was still light out.”

  McCabe said he’d be right back. Went out to the squad room and found Connie Davenport, Crimes Against People’s newest detective. Told her to drop whatever she was doing and see what she could find out about a roughly thirty-year-old woman committing suicide by jumping off a railroad bridge in New Hampshire. No, he told Davenport, he didn’t have the victim’s name. The only other information he had was that it had probably happened around Christmas and that she had attended Holden College.

  McCabe returned to the interview room. Rachel was pointing to the photo of her husband. “You two keep talking about rape because of the sign on his chest, but does that look like a man who just raped somebody? Looks to me more like it was the other way around.”

  McCabe had to admit Rachel had something there.

  “Aside from anything else, Josh is big and strong. Six foot three. Two hundred and ten pounds. How would some woman—Christ, any woman—get the better of him? Get him tied up like this?”

  McCabe could catalog dozens of ways smaller women could incapacitate bigger, stronger men. From holding a gun on them, to slipping them drugs, to waiting until they’d passed out from booze, to one memorable instance back in McCabe’s NYPD days when a rejected Park Avenue matron got even with her cheating husband by whacking him over the head with a rare Ming Dynasty vase. The husband survived the resulting skull fracture, but the insurance company refused to pay the wife’s sixty thousand dollar claim for the broken vase because they said the damage had been intentional. The wife insisted she’d never intended to damage the vase. Just the cheating bastard who was her soon-to-be ex-husband.