My newest assistant grinned. “This wouldn’t be rape. This gal knows I’m watching, and deliberately puts on a show. I think I’ll accept the invitation one of these nights.”
“Charlie Turner claimed his peep-show actress knew he was watching too. He still got twenty-five to life.”
“Charlie Turner?” Novy said. “I remember that case. I was a freshman in law school then. You did handle that prosecution, didn’t you?”
“It was the case that made me,” I said. “If it wasn’t for Charlie Turner, I’d still probably be an assistant D.A. Frank Garby would probably be district attorney instead of me, and I certainly wouldn’t be running for the senate.”
“Aren’t you being a little modest, chief?” Novy asked.
I shook my head. “Public life is just as speculative a profession as acting. You need the one big break in both. In acting, it may be getting called to take over for a sick star on the night a movie talent scout is in the audience. For a public prosecutor with political ambitions, the big break is almost always a highly-publicized criminal case. Mine was Charles Turner.”
George Novy cocked a dubious eyebrow.
“Just consider,” I said. “Before the Turner case I was just an unknown assistant district attorney like you, the junior of eight in Saint Francis County. Nine hundred and ninety-nine voters out of a thousand had never heard of me. By the time the case was over, there wasn’t a person in the state who didn’t know who I was. Which made it almost mandatory for the party to by-pass the other seven assistants plus Frank Garby, who even then was first assistant D.A., when it came time to pick a new district attorney candidate because old Harry Doud wanted to retire.”
“You may have something there,” Novy said reflectively. “Even after five years, you see, I remembered you tried that case. And I’ve only actually known you three months. Next time a juicy rape case comes up, how about throwing it my way? I’ve got political ambitions too.”
“You keep peeping in that woman’s window, and you may end up the defendant in a rape case instead of the prosecutor.”
“It would almost be worth it,” Novy said with a faraway look in his eyes. “She’s not as young as she could be, but what a body she’s got! You ought to drop over some evening and see the show.” He went off into a detailed anatomical description of his exhibitionistic neighbor, but I wasn’t listening. My thoughts had drifted back five years to the case which gave me my big break.
It wasn’t just political ambition which made me build a relatively minor rape case into a sensational trial. If it had been, District Attorney Harry Doud would have thrown on the brakes. I was sincerely crusading for the protection of all womanhood against morals offenders, and the crusade just happened to catch public interest.
It caught public interest because the time was ripe. A number of brutal and unsolved rapes by a teen-age gang which was terrorizing the east end of town had made the whole city rape conscious. The police and the D.A.’s office were fretting under increasing editorial demands that “something be done.” So both officialdom and the general public were ready and eager for somebody like Charles Turner to come along and be made an example of.
My choice as prosecutor was pure luck. I happened to be the only assistant in the office when the call about Turner’s arrest came in. Harry Doud sent me over to make the preliminary investigation merely because I was available, later kept me on the case, I think, because my crusading fire caught him in the same way it eventually caught the public. If any of the other assistants had been around, Saint Francis would probably have a different district attorney today.
When the phone rang, I picked it up and said, “District attorney’s office. Wilde speaking.”
“Lieutenant Gordon, Johnnie,” said a husky voice. “We got a rape case down here for you.”
“Oh?” I asked. “One of that teen-age gang, I hope.”
“Naw,” the lieutenant said. “This guy’s an adult. Forced his way into a neighbor woman’s bedroom.”
“Okay,” I told him. “Somebody’ll be over.”
When I went into the boss’s office to tell him, Harry Doud asked the same question I had. “One of that teen-age gang, finally?”
I shook my head. “An adult who jumped one of his neighbors in her own home.”
The boss promptly lost interest. “Well, run over to the headquarters and see what they’ve got,” he said. “If you run into the chief, ask him when the hell he’s going to catch one of those teen-agers.”
At headquarters I found Lieutenant Gordon in his office with two women. One, who I assumed must be the rape victim, was a striking blonde of about nineteen with delicate, sensitive features and a build which was almost an open invitation to criminal assault. The other was about forty, an attractive, full-bosomed woman who was a mature replica of the younger. Even before introductions, it was obvious they were mother and daughter.
“This is Assistant District Attorney John Wilde,” the lieutenant told the two women. He introduced the older woman as Mrs. Haliburton, and the young blonde as her daughter Eleanor, then added, “They’re the victim and the witness in the case I phoned you about.”
I said to the blonde, “Just when were you attacked, Miss Haliburton, and what was the man’s name?”
Gordon said, “You’ve got your signals crossed, Johnnie. Mrs. Haliburton was the victim.”
I looked at the older woman in surprise, and she blushed.
Gordon said, “The culprit’s a guy named Charles Turner.”
My surprise turned to astonishment. “Not Congressman Charles Turner?”
Now Lieutenant Gordon looked surprised. “No, of course not. Turner’s in Washington, and anyway this guy isn’t more than twenty-five.” A thoughtful expression grew on his face. “The name didn’t register until you mentioned it. I didn’t ask him whether or not he’s related to the congressman.”
Mrs. Haliburton said in a quiet voice. “He’s Congressman Turner’s son.”
No one said anything for a few moments. The woman’s statement had suddenly changed a routine rape investigation into a delicate political problem. Theoretically everyone is equal under the law, but in practice you handle people backed by political influence with a great deal more care than you handle the average citizen. Since Congressman Turner was of the opposition party, I knew that even more care than usual would be necessary in this case, for the slightest misstep in investigation or prosecution could bring the charge that we were framing his son in order to embarrass the congressman politically.
Presently I said, “I didn’t know Turner had a son.”
“He’s been away at school,” Mrs. Haliburton said, pretty calmly I thought, for a woman who’d recently been attacked. “He’s just graduated in June, and has only lived here in town a few weeks.”
I said, “It sounds as though you know him pretty well.”
“Only as a neighbor. He lives in the same apartment building we do, directly across the court from us. I have some tulips planted in the courtyard, and a couple of times he’s wandered out while I was tending them. We had a little neighborly conversation, little more than an exchange of introductions and comments on the weather. But I considered him a bare acquaintance.”
“Tell me what happened today,” I said.
The woman glanced at her daughter and flushed slightly, then said in a resolute voice, “Mr. Turner rang my hall bell at about eleven-thirty this morning. I had just stepped from a bath, so I answered the door in my robe. He said, ‘Hi. May I come in?’ I was a little surprised, because he’d never called before, but I assumed he had some legitimate reason for wanting to talk to me. It never even occurred to me it mightn’t be safe to let him in.”