Linda Fairstein - The DeadHouse

"I'll check with you before I leave, okay?" I said to Mike as he let me out in front of the building. I headed upstairs while he parked the car.

The day tour had just ended, and the teams working four to twelve had come on duty. Teague had caught the case in the morning, when the victim had called the police from the emergency room at New York Hospital to make an official report. Even though many of the cops took vacation leave during Christmas week, sexual assaults continued to occur at an alarming rate. Despite the drastic reduction in street-crime statistics, the volume of acquaintance-rape cases remained steady. Women were far more likely to be attacked by men who were known to them rather than strangers-not the public perception but a well-documented fact. And the alcohol that fueled so many of the holiday parties, at people's offices as well as their homes, led to an alarming number of new incidents.

"Hey, Sarge, how've you been?"

"We can hardly keep up with everything. What a wild week."

"Where's Teague?"

The sergeant led me to a small cubicle in the back of the squad room. Ryner and his witness were talking quietly, as he took notes while she recalled more events of the night before. "Corinne, this is Alexandra Cooper. She's the prosecutor who can answer your questions."

Before I could be seated, Corinne asked the first one. "What kind of case do you think I have? I mean, like, I really don't want to go through, like, all the hassle if nothing's going to happen to this guy."

"I'll try to give you an answer, but I'm going to have to get a lot more detail from you about everything that went on during the evening."

"Well, that's part of the problem. I don't remember much of the night. I met this guy at a party. He told me he's a vocalist. Sings with the Baby Namzoos."

"Who?" Whatever happened to rock and roll?

"They're kind of a hot group now." She could barely disguise her disdain for my ignorance. "Anyway, I started drinking with him. Next thing I know it's ten o'clock in the morning, and I wake up in his hotel room. Naked. There's no way I would have done that unless he forced me to be there."

"Did he have sex with you?"

"Why else would I be naked and in bed with him? He must have. That's what I went to the hospital to find out."

"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-i swhat I present to the jury. Then you're cross-examined by Craig's lawyer. After that, Craig tells him everything he remembers."