The Knowing: Awake in the Dark

by Nita Lapinski

  “I know the man they’re arresting right now, the one on TV. Can you tell me what he is being charged with?” I said into the phone,

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid we can’t release that information. Who did you say you are and what is your connection to the man?”

  “I need to speak with whoever’s in charge, please, it’s important, please.” My body felt like a thousand pounds of cement. I could no longer stand and I sank to the floor.

  My scalp tightened with the prickling sensation of dread. After an eternity on hold, a man answered the phone, “Dade County D. A., this is Markus Short."

  He was soft spoken but rigid and he was cautious. He refused to tell me anything until I explained who I was-so I did- I told him everything. I told him with shame that burned my lips what I’d told no one, I confessed my connection and all that it meant. When I finished neither of us spoke and then he said, “He’s being charged with rape.”

  My stomach plunged and I felt the truth wash over me like stinging needles dancing on my skin.

  “He is suspected of multiple assaults, serial rape. The media have dubbed him the ‘The Sweetheart Rapist’ and we’ve been looking for him for several years. After what you’ve told me, I’ll need to send someone to your home immediately,” he continued. “We will need to interview you. We will need you to testify.”

  I was astonished because I hadn’t heard of the crimes. I didn’t read the papers or watch the news. I was grossly uninformed. Suddenly there was a humming in my ears and my hand shook as I hung up the phone. I stared at the wall, my mind as empty as a hollowed tree. I stumbled to the bathroom and vomited. My stomach heaved until there was nothing left. I panted on my knees and clutched the cold porcelain bowl and the memory of the pictures of the man in the mask came racing back. They rose up fierce and suffocating and forced my body into a cold sweat.

  Oh my god, oh my god, this is my fault. I should have known. I did know, didn’t I? I saw him, Did I know somewhere within myself who it was and what he was doing? Oh, God forgive me, what have I done? I believed that somehow, I had the power to alter the events. If only I’d been able to face what I falsely thought, I should have known. I sank into what felt like a dark tunnel where the only sound was the roaring in my ears.

  The story was covered on nearly every television news station and an article was easy to find in the paper the next day. I carefully cut it out and hid it.

  Recent assaults may have broken 2-year rape case.

  Sheriff’s investigators hunted two years for the East County “The Sweetheart Rapist,” even setting up decoy officers in amorous settings in an attempt to trap him. Efforts to find a suspect proved unproductive until this week when a 31-year-old man was arrested for the kidnap and rape of a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old teenager. The string of sexual assaults occurred primarily during warm weather in secluded areas of East County frequented by lovers. There were seven assaults within the sheriff’s jurisdiction and two inside local city limits. Captain Raymond Nulty said Tuesday that after last week’s incident in which a 15-year-old girl camping on Richmond’s levee was kidnapped and raped, crucial information identifying a suspect came into the investigation division…

  My fingertips were numb as I held the paper and finished the article. Adrenaline forced my heart in a wild rhythm and white sticky foam coated my tongue making my mouth like paste. I hadn’t slept since last night and the discovery of the rapist. I felt responsible like a guilty co-conspirator. I felt shameful and dirty. Three-year-old rape case? That’s before I left him. When people find out who I am, I thought, they will think I’m dirty too and what will happen to my children? I imagined the kindergarten mothers beating the drum and whispering, fingers pointed at my innocent Raine. “He’s the child of a rapist,” they’d say, “keep your children away from him.” How can I protect them? How will I tell my children, that their father is a serial rapist and their mother should have known all along?

  Self-blame festered and infected me. Past events looped endlessly in my mind and I chided myself for not putting the pieces together before. Not only had I seen the pictures of the man in the mask, but there had been other things I’d rejected and disregarded in the past.

  I’d felt someone watching me the night I talked to Honey on the phone and I knew both intuitively and consciously it was Aaron hiding somewhere in the dark. I’d had a flash in my mind’s eye of Aaron lying in the dirt. It had happened more than once and I’d told myself, He’ll trust me more when he sees I am honest. If he’s willing to watch me, he must really love me. He doesn’t want to get hurt. I couldn’t acknowledge the disturbing truth.

  I’d come home late one night when I was pregnant with Elizabeth and Aaron was sitting in the dark. I felt the rage he hid floating around him. I felt a weird, creepy, energy from him like he was reliving something. And if I were honest, I would tell you I saw it literally glow like a ghostly light around him. Strangely, I thought maybe he’d been watching me again. I’d been so scared that I found myself holding my breath multiple times for the next several days, unable to breathe normally. I was certain he had done something horrible. I knew it. I physically kept my distance from him because I didn’t want to know what it was he had done. If I got too close, if he touched me, I might know and I didn’t want to.

  How many times had Bernadette, Aaron’s mother, told the story of losing her lung and her friend at the hand of her murdering husband? “That was the most horrible day of my life.” She’d say. “That man ain’t no better’n a dog. Leavin ‘three little boys with that legacy. What a gift, huh?”

  And over and over she recounted the story of Aaron’s accident and how she had suffered saying, “I was just sick with worry that my boy would die. There was so many expenses, you know? I could hardly keep up and thank God for that money cause raisin ‘them boys with no help was no picnic neither.”

  I knew Aaron hated her and blamed her for keeping his money because he said so on many occasions calling his mother a “selfish cunt.”

  Just a couple of months after I’d left Aaron, after my rape, he’d shown up at the house I was renting with Carmen. I was home alone and surprised when I opened the door.

  “What? You don’t think I know where you live?” He’d asked pushing his way through the door.

  “What do you want, Aaron?” I asked.

  “I want to know where my kids are living.” He said looking around my living room.

  “Well now you know so I guess that’s it, you can go now.” My insides were trembling. I hated that he had that effect on me.

  “I want you to leave us alone, Aaron, please.” I said.

  “Maybe I will, but you’ll have to do something for me. Give me a blow job one last time,” He said.

  “You are a disgusting pig, Aaron. Just get out!” I screamed.

  “I’ll leave you alone, I promise. I won’t bother you. You owe it to me. Just do it quick.” He said unbuckling his belt.

  I don’t know how I got there, but I found myself on my knees, crying while Aaron twisted my hair in his fist and pushed himself into my mouth.

  The shame I felt after what I’d done was bigger and deeper than any other event in my life. It cemented my feelings of powerlessness and self-hate.

  And finally, when he’d come home casually talking and laughing about the woman on the freeway he’d frightened simply because she’d cut him off, I knew he was sick and needed help. I saw that something had shifted; he wasn’t rational. I saw it in his eyes but I did nothing. Living with him required me to be dead inside, to bury my feelings.

  That was how I survived. There’d been times in the past when he touched me, his warm fingers brushing my skin. I thought I felt the energy of other women and although it sounds crazy to explain it to others - I thought I felt their fear and revulsi
on, but I dismissed the feeling telling myself, it was absurd - impossible. Their essence was attached to his skin and when he touched me it crawled like a virus infecting me. But because these things weren’t tangible, I not only doubted them, I blocked the experiences and the knowing that accompanied them from my conscious mind. I lived in a constant state of fear and dread.

  Now as the days passed, I combed my memory trying to dig up the things I had hidden. I became obsessed.

  At the same time I reflected on the past, I had to grasp the realities of the day before, when a female detective and her partner knocked on my door. They stood rigid and official on my porch wearing crisp uniforms and serious expressions. I invited them in and we sat in my kitchen at a small round table, a recording device was placed in its center. After stating the date, time and place, the sheriff looked at me with compassion I had not expected and could not accept. She doesn’t know it’s my fault too.

  “We have a pile of evidence, some circumstantial, some physical. The physical evidence is in the lab being tested now,” the brown-eyed sherriff told me, “and we think you may be the link that can tie much of the circumstantial evidence together. I need to ask you some questions about the mask you mentioned in your conversation with Mr. Short. Can you describe for me the masks you made for your son?” She asked in a soft voice.

  “Yes,” I replied. My body was ice cold and buzzed as if I were plugged into the wall.

  “I bought beanies.” I said. “You know? The black ones you wear for skiing. It was actually his idea to make super hero masks.”

  “Yes,” sheriff said, “go on.” She pushed the recorder toward me.

  “I cut holes for the eyes and sewed them with colored thread to make a Spiderman mask. At first, I just cut the holes, but later I started sewing the eyes with bright colored thread.”

  “A Spiderman mask for your son you mean?”

  “Yes.” I replied and locked my eyes with hers to steady myself.

  “And can you tell me what colors you used?” she asked.

  “Well,” I said as I licked my dry lips. “All kinds of colors. Green, pink, yellow and orange. Bright colors like the real Spiderman.” I swallowed the acid that rose at the back of my throat.

  “Can you tell me why you made so many masks?”

  My underarms were now in a full sweat unaffected by the carefully applied layers of deodorant. I clasped my hands tightly to stop the shaking.

  “Well,” I hesitated. “They kept disappearing so I just made new ones. I thought Raine lost them or hid them.”

  “And can you tell me, did you ever find the missing masks?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  Although it would never be proven, I knew some of the masks I’d made with love for my son were used to debase and terrify women.

  I listened to the frightening detail of the rapes. I was horrified when I discovered how long the attacks had been occurring and I knew there were more that had not been discovered. The sheriff’s detective laid out the circumstantial evidence that my testimony could validate.

  There were time-frames of the assaults I could confirm and cars that Aaron had access to, sometimes bringing the vehicles home while he worked on them. Some of those cars were spotted at the crime scenes. I could speak to Aaron’s familiarity with certain remote areas and weeks later I would accompany an officer, showing a house we’d rented in a secluded area grossly close to two of the rapes.

  I realized as the sheriff spoke, that the house and one of the rapes she referred to, happened on the same night that I’d found Aaron sitting alone in the dark, but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t speak it out loud. My fault, I thought, my fault.

  There were questions about the masks I’d made for my son and about whether I had cheated on Aaron, and if so, where it occurred and when? It turned out, that Aaron had spoken of the infidelity to several of his victims.

  I discovered that all but one of his victims had been blonde, like me, and they were told that was the reason they were chosen. He would degrade the women saying, “My girlfriend was a real blonde, I’m disappointed you’re not.” And the sickening connections went on and on. There were nine victims in the state’s case, but they suspected Aaron of many more rapes and assaults they couldn’t prove, dating back many years.

  While the sheriff talked, my mind regressed to some five-and-a-half years past, when I was sixteen and pregnant with Raine. A police car pulled up in front of our house and two officers stepped out on the lawn.

  “Good afternoon, ma’am. Is Aaron Goddard here?” One of the officers asked.

  “No. Why?” I asked.

  “Does he drive a tow truck?” The officer asked wearing slick mirrored sunglasses.

  “Yes, he’s at work right now.”

  “What time will he be home?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, sizing up the situation.

  “Was he home last night?” The officer continued.

  “Yes he was. I don’t think he got called out.” I answered quickly, knowing he had been gone most of the night. My defense of Aaron was automatic, it’s what I did. “What’s this about?” I’d asked as my anxiety grew.

  “We’re investigating a rape that happened last night in the area where a tow truck was spotted.” The officer said watching me.

  “That’s ridiculous,” I replied. “Aaron would never hurt anyone and he was home last night.”

  I believed Aaron couldn’t rape or hurt another person. I remembered thinking the police were wasting their time suspecting Aaron. We’d just moved in together and I was naïve. Now as I remembered the incident and my lie, I felt arrogant and foolish and responsible, but again, I didn’t tell the sheriff.

  “He’ll be arraigned tomorrow,” she continued, “but the preliminary hearing hasn’t been set. We will notify you when it is. In the meantime, the DA will schedule an appointment with you to go over your testimony and discuss what you can expect going forward.”

  “I have conditions as to what I will testify to,” I said gazing across the room at the scattered toys on the floor. Isla had them so I could have privacy.

  “I want to talk with the prosecutor,” I said. “There have to be conditions or I can’t help.”

  I met with the assistant DA later that week, who was prosecuting Aaron. I didn’t want to testify of my rape and the prosecutor agreed saying, “When he was arrested, he asked the arresting officer, ‘is this about what I did to Nita?’ We didn’t know who Nita was or what he was talking about. Now we do. It’s too messy to include your rape. You’re considered Aaron’s ‘common law wife’ and the rape will muddy the water. I think your testimony will substantiate much of circumstantial evidence we have and it’s extremely valuable to the case.

  “For instance,” he went on, “Aaron talked about being angry with ‘his longtime girlfriend’ for cheating on him and claimed she needed to be punished. He mentioned his children to some of the victims and discussed certain personal events only you can verify. The fact you are blonde, and I assume a natural blonde, is that right?”

  “Yes,” I stammered, “but what does that matter?”

  “He berated his victims for not being ‘natural blondes’ like his ex-girlfriend. All of his victims, with exception of his last one, were blonde, and that fact points to a pattern.”

  As the prosecutor talked, I thought about Aaron’s past and the trunk his hateful father locked him in and how now, years later, Aaron was locking men in trunks. I would later share the information with a court appointed psychiatrist and recount Aaron’s history with his mother Bernadette, and how Aaron secretly hated her calling her filthy names behind her back.

  The prosecutor continued to recite the ways my testimony could link Aaron to his crimes, covering the information we wo
uld and wouldn’t use. Without my testimony there would be a number of holes in the prosecution’s case. He agreed to protect my children from the media and not release their names or connect them in any way to Aaron. I feared they would be harshly judged and isolated as the undesirable “children of a rapist.” Protecting them was all that mattered.

  I suspected there was something intrinsically wrong with me, because I’d loved Aaron and he was a sick rapist. How could I have been fooled? How could anyone love such a man? You can never really know someone. But I had trusted him and loved him deeply. I was ashamed to admit that truth to anyone. I believed it made me dirty and sick and unworthy. I wanted to believe Aaron was innocent and incapable of such heinous crimes. I secretly held on to that hope for years even though I knew the truth. One day they’ll find the real rapist and it will have been a bad dream.

  I had no one I could confide in and my mother and sisters wanted nothing to do with the situation, so I faced the drama alone. No one wanted to be affiliated with a dirty, disgusting rapist and his family. My own family judged me. I had brought shame to them with my involvement with Aaron, who was now, front-page news. They had warned me all along.

  The preliminary hearing would be held weeks later and I sat alone in a tiny room, nervous and jittery. My foot bounced uncontrollably and I bit my nails until they bled as I waited to be called to testify at the closed hearing. The idea that I had to look directly at Aaron and identify him sickened and terrified me, still. My fear of him was powerful and it circulated like blood through my body.

  The purpose of a preliminary hearing was to establish whether the state had enough evidence to hold Aaron in custody for a trial. The State presented evidence and his victims gave brief testimony, we were sequestered separately and I had no idea who else was involved.

  I learned that day that Aaron’s prosecution, if successful, would set a new precedent for how rape cases were charged. In the past, a rape charge carried a seven-year sentence, but Aaron would be charged for each violation separately. Instead of a rape charge per assault, each rape would be broken down into acts and carry a separate sentence. For instance, one rape might include use of a deadly weapon, oral copulation, sodomy, false imprisonment, kidnapping, forcible rape and so on. Aaron was ordered to stand trial. The Judge raised his bail from $200,000 to $500,000 ensuring he would be in custody until his trial. The article in the paper the next day read in part: