Robert Tanenbaum - Reversible Error

Maus said, "Yes, Lord!"

Dugman climbed into the car and slammed the door. "And what is our cause, brothers?"

"Say it out!" said Jeffers.

"Let us hear it!" said Maus.

"It is to investigate and invigilate. It is to detect and suspect. It is to bring to the bar of justice lowlife motherfuckers of every description, but especially the lowlife motherfucker responsible for the heinous crime which we got before us now."

"That the truth!" said Jeffers.

"Hear his word!" said Maus.

"Because he has not only done fuck' with the citizens; because he has not only done fuck' with the po-lice; but he done have the temerity to fuck with the Trio, and therefo' he has fuck with the wrong dudes! Mr. Driver, take us to the Deuce!"

"A-men!" said Maus, and cranked the engine to a roar. "I wasn't going to come in," said the dark young woman to Marlene Ciampi. "I figured, what the hell, I was stupid, I learned my lesson. Looking for Mr. Goodbar, and all that, I figured I was lucky not to be dead. But, like, I couldn't just leave it. I started jumping at shadows, being nervous on the street. My sleep is shot. I can't work.

"So I went to the cops. It turns out, if you don't go right away, you might as well not go at all, because you washed the evidence away and also they figure if you waited days, how bad could it be? But they gave me your name down at the precinct, so I figured it was worth a shot and, so…"

Her voiced trailed off. Marlene looked at the card she was filling out. Name: Jo Anne Caputo, West Village address, worked at NYU, age twenty-six, date of incident, description of assailant. Jo Anne had been explaining, without being asked, why she had delayed a week before reporting the rape. It was a familiar reaction, and one that added an additional burden to the prosecution of such cases.

Marlene said, "OK, Ms. Caputo, what I want you to do now is tell me about the incident in as much detail as you can remember."

Caputo took a deep breath. "The incident… OK. I met this guy two weeks ago this coming Saturday, June 10, in a bar called Adam's. It's in SoHo, I don't know the exact address…"

"That's OK, I know it."

"He seemed OK-calm, decent; said his name was Bob Graziano. Didn't put any heavy moves on me. I gave him my number.

"He called me a couple of days later, nice conversation, asked me for a date for the next Saturday, the seventeenth, for dinner and a show. I said OK.

"He showed up around eight. I ask him in, offer him a drink. Right away I notice something different about him-he's more nervous, more agitated. I sat down on my couch, he's still pacing back and forth, rattling ice cubes. So I get up and say something about shouldn't we be going, and he grabs me.

"I thought it was a joke for a second there, like he was parodying a horny guy. But then he started really mauling me, squeezing my breasts, and trying to grab my crotch. I managed to push him away. But when I saw his face was when I really got scared.

"I said to myself, 'JoAnne, you have really done it this time.' I began shouting at him, that he was an asshole, that I wanted him out of there right now, and like that. That's when he pulled out the knife."

"Describe it, please."

"A regular knife, like a kitchen carving knife."

"Not a hunting knife or a switchblade?"

"No, I don't think so. A regular carving knife, about eight or ten inches long, and shiny."

"All right, go ahead. What happened then? And please try to remember his exact words, if you can."

Caputo's voice became lower and more strained. "He told me to take my clothes off. 'Strip, cunt! Now!' is what he said. 'I want to see that precious cunt!' I said, 'Please don't hurt me.' And he said, I forget what, something about don't make me angry, and I'll do anything I want to you-he got real crazy then, so I started taking my clothes off.

"When I was naked, he told me to sit on the couch and keep my mouth shut. He couldn't stand women running off at the mouth, he said. Cunt bullshit, he called it. Then he picked my panty hose up and sort of played with it for a minute, rubbing it on his face. I'm thinking, this is a real fruitcake, all the time I was sitting there frozen, part of my mind was clear as a bell, observing it, looking for a way to make a break.

"Then he came over and wrapped the panty hose around my head, the seat part, and knotted the legs around my neck, tight, but not enough to cut off the air. Just to hold them on. I thought, this is it, he's going to strangle me.

"But he backed away and said, 'Spread your legs and show me your cunt! Wider, wider! So I did. He made me pull my knees way up. Then he must have bent over, because the next thing I felt was the knife poking around down there, between my legs."

"Did he cut you?" Marlene asked as calmly as she could.

"No, he just poked around the… area, just hard enough not to break the skin. Look, could I have a drink of water? Talking about this, my throat is clamping up."

Marlene poured a paper cup of water from the carafe on her desk. After the woman had drunk it down, she continued.

"While he was doing this he was insulting and threatening me, like saying stuff like, 'I should cut it out, bitch,' and 'I ought to fuck you with this, you whore.' He was really working himself up. I was concentrating on not wetting myself, that's how scared I was.

"Then he raped me. It hurt like crazy but at least it was over fast. He lasted about eight seconds. Then he stood up and grabbed my head and rubbed his genitals on the panty hose. That was it. He left."

"He didn't say anything as he left?"

"He might have. I can't remember."

"I don't guess you kept the panty hose."

"No, that was a dumb move, I realize it now. But I wasn't thinking of that at the moment. I buried them in the trash and took a shower for about an hour and a half. And then took a bunch of Valium. Which was another dumb move. I should have just gone down to the emergency room and had them take a sample. Now I know, but I, um… but I'd never been raped before."

Caputo sat silently for a moment, taking deep breaths. Tears oozed slowly from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Marlene passed her a box of tissues, without comment. She completed her card and resisted the temptation to glance at her watch; she was due in court in a few minutes, but something was nagging at her mind and she didn't want to let it go.

She slid one of her shoeboxes across the desk. What was that woman's name? Feldman? Rosenberg? She started shuffling through the files, muttering and cursing quietly.

"What are you doing?" asked JoAnne Caputo.

"Oh, sorry. It just occurred to me that your rapist may have done it before-that trick with the panty hose. I had a woman in here a couple of weeks ago with a similar story, but I'm ashamed to say I've forgotten her name. I have them filed by name, and there are over two thousand."

Caputo leaned forward. "You don't have them cross-indexed?"

Marlene shook her head. "No, see, this is strictly amateur hour. It's a shoebox with cards. I've been trying to get some better analysis, but there's all kinds of problems…" Now Marlene did look at her watch. Almost out of time.

"Let me see the card," said Caputo.

Marlene passed it across the desk and Caputo read both sides. "I see the problem. A lot of the key information is in text fields-what he said, what he did. You'd have to input the whole field as text and then do a string search subroutine to pull matches out. SPSS could handle it, or you could write a little Fortran program."

"You know about this stuff?" Marlene asked hopefully.

"It's what I do. I told you I worked at NYU. I'm in social stat."

"I'm afraid to ask," said Marlene. "Would it be possible…?"

"Would it help to find that bastard?"