With every nerve ending pushing out against the edges of my skin, I reached Bird Library. Although I was still wary, I allowed myself to exhale here. I walked through the fluorescent light. It being still early in the semester, the library was not busy. The few people I passed, I did not look at. I didn't want to meet anyone's eyes.
I could not wait for Ken; I was too afraid to stop. I kept walking. Bird was constructed so that by walking through the building, I could exit on the other side of the block, no man's land. It was a street populated by old wood frame houses, many of them used by fraternities and sororities, but it was no longer the sanctified quad. The streetlights were fewer here and in the time it had taken me to walk from Marshall Street to tell Wolff I couldn't come to class, it had grown dark. I had only one goal: to get back to my dorm without injury and to write down everything he'd worn, to detail the features of his face.
I got there. I don't remember seeing anyone. If I did, I brushed by them without comment. Inside my small single, I called the police. I explained my situation. I had been raped in May, I said, I was now back on campus and had seen my assailant. Would they come?
Then I sat down on my bed and made a sketch. I had written out details. I started with his hair, went next to height, build, nose, eyes, mouth. Then there were comments on his face structure: "Short neck. Small but dense head. Boxy jawline. Hair slightly down in front." And his skin: "Pretty dark but not black black." At the bottom of the sheet, in the left-hand corner, I did a sketch of him and beside this noted his clothing: "Maroon jacket--windbreaker-style but with down. Jeans--blue. White sneakers."
Then Ken showed up. He was out of breath and nervous. He was a small, fragile man--the year before, I had romantically compared him to a pint-size David. So far, he had not shown much ability to handle my situation. Over the summer he had written once. He explained, and at the time I accepted it, that he had reinvented what had happened to me so it wouldn't hurt him as much. "I have decided it is like a broken leg and like a broken leg, it will heal."
Ken tried to improve on my sketch, but he was too nervous--his hands shook. He sat on my bed and looked very small to me, frightened. I decided he was a warm body who knew me, who meant well. That had to be enough. He made several attempts to draw the head of the rapist.
There were sounds in the hall. Walkie-talkies tuned to a self-important pitch, the sound of heavy footsteps. Fists thumped against the door and I answered them as girls came out into the hall.
Syracuse University Security. They had been alerted by the police. They were amped. This was the real shit. Two of them were quite wide and, in my tiny studio, their size was accentuated.
Within seconds, the Syracuse City Police arrived. Three of them. Someone shut the door. I relayed my story again and there was a slight squabble about jurisdiction. The SU Security seemed personally disappointed that since the original incident had happened in Thorden Park and the sighting was on Marshall Street, it was clearly a City of Syracuse matter and not a campus one. On a professional level, this reflected well on them, but they were not as much university representatives that night as they were hunters with a fresh scent.
The police looked at my sketches and Ken's. They repeatedly referred to Ken as my boyfriend, though I corrected them each time. They eyed him suspiciously. In his slight physique and nervousness, he stood out as a freak in a room populated by large men armed with guns and billy clubs.
"How long ago did you see the suspect?"
I told them.
They decided there was still some chance, since I hadn't acknowledged him, that the rapist would be loitering in the area of Marshall Street. It was worth a ride in a squad car.
Two of the city police took my sketch, leaving Ken's behind.
"We'll make copies of this and send out an APB. Every man in the city will keep this in his car until we find him," one said.
As we readied to leave, Ken asked, "Do you need me to come?"
The looks from the police must have burned into him. He came.
With six men in uniform escorting us, we left the building. Ken and I got in the back of a squad car with one officer in the front. I don't remember this man's name, but I remember his anger.
"We're gonna get this puke," he said. "Rape is one of the worst crimes. He'll pay."
He started the engine and turned on the red and blue flashing lights of his squad car. We roared down to Marshall Street, only a few blocks away.
"Look carefully," the officer said. He maneuvered his squad car with a manhandling agility I would later recognize in New York cabbies.
Ken was slumping down in the seat beside me. He said the flashing lights hurt his head. He shielded his eyes. I looked out. While we drove up and around Marshall Street a few times, the officer told me about his seventeen-year-old niece, just an innocent girl. She had been gang-raped. "Ruined," he said. "Ruined," He had his billy club out. He started smacking the empty seat with it. Ken winced each time it hit the vinyl. Having thought this mission was probably futile from the start, I began to be afraid of what this policeman might do.
I saw no rapist. I said this. I suggested leaving, looking at mug shots down at the station. But this officer wanted release and he was going to get it. He braked hard on the final pass down Marshall Street.
"There, there," he said. "What about those three?"
I looked and knew immediately. Three black students. You could tell by the way they were dressed. They were also tall, too tall to be my rapist.
"No," I said. "Let's just go."
"They're troublemakers," he said. "You stay here."
He got out of the squad car in a hurry and chased after them. He had his billy club in his hand.
Ken began to suffer some version of the panic I was familiar with from my mother. His breathing was labored. He wanted to get out.
"What's he going to do?" he said. He tried the door. It had been locked automatically. This was where criminals as well as victims rode.
"I don't know. Those guys aren't even close."
The lights were still flashing overhead. People began to come up to the car to stare in. I was mad at this policeman for leaving us there. I was mad at Ken for being a wimp. I knew no good would come of an angry man, speeding on adrenaline, looking for revenge for his raped niece. I was in the center of it all and simultaneously I realized I didn't exist. I was just a catalyst that made people nervous, guilty, or furious. I was frightened, but more than anything, I was disgusted. I wanted the policeman to come back and I sat in the car with Ken whimpering beside me, put my head between my knees so the people on the outside of the car looking in would be met with "the back of the victim," and I listened for the sounds I knew were taking place in the alley. Someone was being beaten, I knew that as surely as I knew anything. It was not Him.
The officer returned. He swooped into the driver's side and laid his billy club firmly against the palm of his hand.
"That'll teach 'em," he said. He was sweating, exhilarated.
"What did they do?" Ken ventured. He was horrified.
"Open container. Never talk back to an officer."
I did not overlook what happened on Marshall Street that night. Everything was wrong. It was wrong that I couldn't walk through a park at night. It was wrong that I was raped. It was wrong that my rapist assumed he was untouchable or that as a Syracuse coed I was most certainly treated better by the police. It was wrong that the niece of that officer was raped. It was wrong of him to call her ruined. It was wrong to put the lights on and strut that car down Marshall. It was wrong to hassle, and perhaps physically hurt, three innocent young black men on the street.
There is no but, there is only this: That officer lived on my planet. I fit into his world in the way I never again would fit into Ken's. I can't remember whether Ken asked to be dropped at home or whether he came with me to the station. Whatever the case, I shut him off after the search on Marshall Street.
We reached the Public Safety Building. It was now
after eight. I had not been back to the station since the night of the attack, but that night, the police station felt safe to me. I loved the way the elevators let out onto a waiting area at the end of which was a huge door that locked, automatically, behind us. Through the bulletproof glass you could see out into the lobby but no one could get at you.
The officer led me in and I heard the smooth, hydraulic hush and firm click of the door behind us. To our left was the dispatcher sitting at the command center. There were three or four uniformed men standing nearby. Some held coffee mugs. When we entered, they quieted down and stared at the ground. There were only two kinds of civilians: victims and criminals.
My officer explained to the man at the front desk that I was the rape case out of the East Zone. I was there to look at mug shots.
He set me up in a small file room across from the dispatcher. He left the door open and began to pull large black binders off the surrounding shelves. There were at least five such binders and each was filled with small, wallet-size mug shots. These five books were of black males only, and only those near the age that I thought my rapist would be.
The room seemed more a storage area for these books than a place for victims to sit and pore over the photos. The only surface was an old metal typing table, and I had difficulty balancing the books in my lap and on the rickety table, whose flyleaf kept collapsing under the weight. But I was a good student, when I needed to be, and I studied those books page by page. I saw six photos that reminded me of my rapist, but I was beginning to believe the process of mug shots would turn out to be fruitless.
One of the officers brought me some weak but still-hot coffee. It was an island of comfort in an otherwise alien environment.
"How you doing? See anything?" he asked.
"No," I said, "they all just blur together. I don't think he's here."
"Keep trying. He's fresh in your mind."
I was coming to the end of Book 4 when the call came in.
"POP Clapper just called in," the dispatcher called over to my officer. "He knows your man."
The officer left me in the room and went out to the front desk. The uniforms who'd been waiting for assignment surrounded him. I listened to the Abbott and Costello-like routine that followed.
"Says it's Madison," the dispatcher said.
"Which Madison?" asked my officer. "Mark?"
"No," said another, "he's up on a charge already."
"Frank?"
"No, Hanfy tagged him last week. It must be Greg."
"I thought he was already in."
And so it went. I remember one of the men said something about pitying Old Man Madison--how it was hard raising sons alone.
Then my officer returned. "I've got some questions to ask you," he said. "Are you ready?"
"Yes." "Describe again that policeman you saw."
I did.
"And where did you see his car?"
I said he'd parked in the Huntington Hall lot.
"Bingo," he said. "It looks like we may have our man."
He left again and I closed the mug book lying open on the typing table. All of a sudden, I didn't know what to do with my hands. They were shaking. I placed them under my legs and sat on them. I started to cry.
A few minutes later I heard the dispatcher say, "Here he is!" and those inside the locked door cheered.
I stood up and frantically searched the room for a place to hide. I chose the corner that shared the wall with the door. My face was pressed up against the metal shelving that held the mug books for years past.
"Great work, Clapper!" someone said, and the air rushed out of me. Could it just be the officer, without my rapist in tow?
"We'll get a statement from the victim and then make out the warrant for an arrest," someone said.
Yes, I was safe. But I still didn't know what to do. I wasn't able to join them. I was a victim, not really a person. I sat back down in the typing chair.
The men outside were happy. Slapping backs and teasing Officer Clapper for his red hair. He was a "beanpole," a "carrottop," and "young stuff."
He ducked his head in the room.
"Hi, Alice," he said. "Remember me?"
I smiled ear to ear. "Yes, I do."
The men outside roared.
"Remember you? How could she forget you? You're the next best thing to Santy Claus!"
Things settled down. A call came in. Two of the men left to respond. Officer Clapper had to go write up a report. My officer brought me back into the room where I had met Sergeant Lorenz three days short of exactly six months before. He took my affidavit, quoting heavily from the detailed description I had written down.
"Are you ready for this?" the officer asked me at the end of the affidavit. "We'll arrest. You have to be willing to testify."
"I am," I said.
I was driven back to Haven Hall in an unmarked car. I called my parents and told them I was fine. The officer filed his final report on case F-362 before it was transferred back to Sergeant Lorenz.
Rape 1st
Sodomy 1st
Robbery 1st
While I was still in the CID Office with the victim the Gen Mess, was broadcast and immediately upon the broadcast there was a response from Car #561 P.O.P. Clapper, who stated that he had spoken to a person who fit the rape suspect's description at approx 1827 hrs on Marshall St. He informed me that the person whom he had spoken to was one Gregory Madison. Madison has a record and has done time in Prison. A photo line-up was to be conducted in CID Office by EO.E Clapper but there was no negative. It is almost certain that the suspect in question is Gregory Madison. An affidavit was taken from the victim and P.O.P. Clapper. Arrest is imminent.
Description broadcast to both 3rd and 1st shift coming on. If located observe and ask for assistance. Suspect considered armed and dangerous.
That night I had a dream. A1 Tripodi was in it. In a prison cell, he and two other men held my rapist down. I began to perform acts of revenge on the rapist but to no avail. He wrested loose from Tripodi's grasp and came at me. I saw his eyes as I had seen them in the tunnel. Close up.
I woke screaming and held myself upright in my damp sheets. I looked at the phone. It was 3:00 A.M. I couldn't call my mother. I tried to sleep again. I had found him. Again, it would be just the two of us. I thought of the last lines in the poem I had turned in to Gallagher.
Come die and lie, beside me.
I had issued an invitation. In my mind, the rapist had murdered me on the day of the rape. Now I was going to murder him back. Make my hate large and whole.
EIGHT
In the first month at school, I had kept largely to myself, focusing intently on my two writing workshops. I called Mary Alice the day after seeing the rapist on the street and told her about it. She was thrilled but frightened for me. She was also busy. She, Tree, and Diane were rushing sororities. She had her sights set on Alpha Chi Omega. It was a sorority for good girls who were both athletic and academic. It was all white. Mary Alice was a shoo-in.
Her pursuit of such things, despite the running cynical commentary she provided on the rituals and idiocies of the rush process, divided us. I did not spend day-to-day time with her.
Tentatively, I made one new friendship. Her name was Lila and she came from Massachusetts by way of Georgia. But unlike my mother, who approved of all things Southern, Lila had no accent. They had drummed it out of her, she said, when she enrolled in high school in Massachusetts. To my ear, she'd done a fine job. My mother swore any Southerner would know better, could pick up the slight lilt and drawl in her words.
She lived on my hall at Haven, six doors down. She was blond and we both wore glasses. We were the same size, that is to say, slightly overweight. She considered herself a grind, a "social retard." I saw it as my duty to draw her out. I could sense she had a zany side. Lila was also, as Mary Alice still was, a virgin.
Lila was a perfect audience of one. Unlike my pairing with Mary Alice, I was not the oddball sidekick of the pop
ular girl. I was the slightly thinner one, the louder one, the braver one.
One night I told her she needed to find her inner animal and said, "Watch me!" I took a box of raisins and stabbed it with a knife, grimacing and mugging for the camera she held. I made her switch places and stab the raisins. In the pictures from that day, I mean it. I'm after those raisins. Lila couldn't quite get into the role I'd made for her. Her blade is poised delicately over the already perforated box. Her eyes are sweet and her face a schoolgirl trying her best to appear passionately dismayed.
We specialized in getting the giggles. I anticipated her scheduled study breaks and tried to cajole her into making them longer, making them arc over a whole evening in my room, where, in laughing with her, I wouldn't have to think about anything outside.
On October 14,1 was on campus. Downtown, Investigator Lorenz called Assistant District Attorney Gail Uebelhoer, who had been assigned to review the case prior to presentation to the judge for warrants. ADA Uebelhoer wasn't in. Investigator Lorenz left a message.
"Gregory Madison was arrested at two P.M."
I made the papers for the second time. VICTIM POINTS FINGER was the headline for the small, five-paragraph item in the Syracuse Post-Standard of October 15. Tricia, from the Rape Crisis Center, mailed this to me, as she would all subsequent articles.
A preliminary hearing was scheduled for October 19 at Syracuse City Court. The defendant was Gregory Madison, the plaintiff the People of the State of New York. It was a hearing held to determine if there was enough evidence in the case to support a grand jury. I was told that witnesses being called might range from the medical doctors who had completed the serology report the night of my rape, to Officer Clapper, who had seen Madison on the street. I would testify. So might Madison.
I needed someone to go with me to the hearing, but Mary Alice was busy, and Ken Childs was obviously not the right choice. Lila was my new friend; I didn't want to ruin that. I approached Tess Gallagher and asked her if she'd come. "I'm honored," Gallagher said. "We'll have lunch in a good restaurant. My treat."