Jed followed me in after he had dressed. I hugged him to me and told him how much I had missed him during the week. We rolled back onto my bed together, and I let him kiss the dark circles under my eyes, which I teased him that he had caused by making me sleep alone. I rested in his arms, delighted at not having to talk or explain or resolve any of the problems which had plagued me since he had last been with me in this room so many days ago.
“Can I fix you a drink?” he asked, as I finally untangled myself and started for the kitchen, prepared to nuke our dinner in my microwave.
“Sure, if you’ll join me.”
“I think I’ll just have a glass of wine with dinner.
Between the jet lag and your magic-fingers-welcome-home treatment, I’m not going to last too long this evening. Is that very rude?“
“I’m so glad you’re here, Jed, of course not. I haven’t slept in three days, so we’ll just eat and go to bed early.”
“When I got off the plane I almost changed my mind and went directly to my own apartment. I never thought I’d have the strength to, well, to…”
“I’d have been so hurt if you hadn’t come here.”
“But, Alex, I want you to understand that I had to come here, too, for my own sake. Not just because you needed me. Because of everything that’s happened. Now it’s clear to me that I really love you and that I had to be with you and that once I held you in my arms there wasn’t any way I couldn’t make love to you.”
My mind scrambled for a diversion from the direction this conversation had started to take. Our romance had progressed with great speed, and for weeks it seemed that I had been more anxious to engage Jed’s sentiments than he had wanted. The physical attraction had been a perfect fit, and I knew he would be slow to involve and yield his reserve. He had left Santa Barbara earlier this year when his marriage split up, and he was plagued by thoughts about the effects of the divorce on his two kids. By late-summer, I knew I was falling in love with him, once he had opened himself up with a warmth and playfulness that I found irresistible.
Still, I reminded myself that at the height of my crisis he had been an ocean away and unwilling to cancel the deal he was negotiating to wing his way to my side. It excited me physically and calmed me mentally to have him with me tonight, but I wasn’t ready to confuse it with loving him.
“Darling, I wish I could have dropped my clients or called in one of my assistants, but you know-‘ ”Sssssh. Stop apologizing. Do you think I’m going to say I’m sorry for pouncing on you in the shower?“
”Nothing to apologize for. I didn’t seem to mind very much, did I? Kind of reminds me of that story you told me about your first rape trial I think you were just showing off.“
The first sex crimes“ case I had ever taken to trial was a ground ball so easy the jury should have reached a verdict without ever leaving the box. The victim was a twenty-one-year-old college graduate on her way to her first job interview in a towering office building on Lower Broadway in the middle of the afternoon. As she entered the elevator to go upstairs a man got on with her and as the elevator started to move pressed the button to stop it between floors. Before the startled young woman could react, the defendant grabbed her by the neck and slammed her head against the wall to daze her and render her semi-conscious. Then, as he held her pinned in place with one arm, he lifted her dress, ripped down her panty hose, unzipped his pants, and penetrated her while she stood up slumped in the corner of the elevator.
Impatient workers on the ground floor kept ringing for the stuck car, which finally returned to the first floor. When the doors opened, the girl screamed and the defendant bolted for the street. An off-duty cop the building coincidentally housed the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association offices chased the rapist for two blocks and dragged him back to the scene where other officers arrested him.
No wonder the bureau chief had given it to me as a first trial. The defendant’s attorney made a very weak argument for mistaken identification, and there didn’t seem to be any reason to worry about the outcome of the case. The jury got the charge at noon, and should have been back before lunch. By ten that night, we all knew some issue was giving them trouble. When the twelve very angry men and women returned with a guilty verdict close to midnight, several of them asked to talk with me.
The hang-up? An elderly man married and the father of four children simply didn’t believe the victim’s story, even though the defense had conceded that the rape had occurred exactly as she described it. Number eight told the others that she had to be lying: no one could have intercourse in a standing position it just wasn’t possible!
Eleven jurors had spent the rest of the day arguing with this old-fashioned gent, whose four offspring had been conceived in the missionary position. He was convinced that was the only manner in which sexual coupling could be accomplished… until jurors three (a thirty-six-year-old masseuse) and eleven (a forty-three-year-old mailman) volunteered to demonstrate to him, in the interest of justice, exactly what the victim had described.
From that experience I learned that a prosecutor could never assume any aspect of a case, especially when it comes to the complicated world of sexual assault. Jurors bring to the courtroom with them their own biases, prejudices, and personal knowledge, which was frequently quite limited.
And the biggest problem is their natural impulse to confuse consensual sexual events, familiar within their own lives, with the very different phenomenon of forced, assaultive acts. Never again have I presented an event to a jury without using my closing argument to explore the distinctions between what I could suppose were their own private habits and the criminal elements of the acts charged.
Jed poured me a drink while I opened a bottle of wine for him. I set out the meal, lit the candles, and tried to bring the conversation around to what he had seen and done in Paris and at which restaurants he had eaten.
But I had put off the obvious topic of conversation for as long as I could and he was determined to be brought up to speed.
“Alexandra, don’t you want to tell me what happened?
Do they know who killed Isabella?“
Like anything else, I had answered this question so many times since Wednesday evening that I could respond quite easily at this point. I summarized the details of her death and the investigation.
“No suspects right now. At least none that they’re telling me about. Ex-husband, psycho co-stars, pen-pal psychiatrist, obsessed fan maybe even a secret lover. What’s your guess? I think I’m too close to it to see it clearly.”
“I didn’t know she’d ever been married. And what lover?
Had she told you about him?“
“No. Talk about using me. You know the crap she gave me about being stalked and needing to get away? Well, she neglected to tell me that she was taking someone with her. A guy.”
“Maybe it was platonic, a friend-‘ ”Well he left some very un platonic condoms in my garbage. I suppose if I look at it scientifically instead of with my gut, at least when they get a suspect they can always test what’s in the condoms for DNA.“
“Don’t the police know who he is? Didn’t anybody see them together?”
“Not many people. That’s the beauty of the Vineyard.”
Jed had not been to the island with me yet because he had spent most of his free weekends commuting back to the West Coast to spend time with his kids.
“Anyway, they’re talking to everyone who Isabella ever crossed in her inimitable fashion, so I think this is going to be a long haul.”
“But are they sure the killer was after Isabella and not you? That’s what had me tortured when I couldn’t get here.”
“Now it seems quite obvious, but it was truly frightening before we could reconstruct the timetable. I was pretty distraught when I called you that first time.”