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 P.O.P. 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. Al 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 popular 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, I 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.