“Yes. The same rape kit that allowed a laboratory to find evidence of semen in Trixie's mouth, when by her own statement she did not have oral sex that night. On the other hand, Jason Underhill says that the intercourse was consensual . . . and was both oral and vaginal.” The DA turned over a page in a file.
"According to Trixie, she screamed no while she was being raped but said that her friend
Zephyr wouldn't have been able to hear her over the music. Yet according to other witnesses, no music was playing during the time of the assault."
“They're all lying,” Daniel said.
Marita stared at him. “Or Trixie is. She lied to you about going to her friend's house for a quiet sleepover that night. She lied about losing her virginity the night of the assault...”
“What?” Laura said, her jaw dropping, and at that moment Daniel remembered he'd never told her what the detective had said. Had he forgotten, or had he intended to forget all along?
“she lied to the ER physician about the cuts on her wrist, some of which were made long before that Friday night,” Marita continued. “Which begs the question: What else is Trixie lying about?”
“I want to speak to your boss,” Laura demanded.
“My boss will tell you that I have a hundred other cases to prosecute that could be commanding my attention. I don't have time for a victim who's crying wolf.”
Daniel couldn't look at Trixie. If he did, he thought he might break down. Where he'd grown up, a Yup'ik boy who cried wolf would simply turn into that animal forever. His relatives would say he had it coming. He'd spend the rest of his life watching his old family through yellow eyes, from a distance.
Daniel turned to the detective, who'd been doing a good job of trying to blend into the 1970s paneling. “Tell her about the photo.”
“He already has,” Marita said. “And I'm going to have my hands full trying to keep that out of the courtroom as it is.”
“It's a perfect example of how Trixie's being victimized . . .”
"It doesn't tell us anything about the night of the assault . .
. except that Trixie wasn't a choirgirl before it happened."
“Will you all just shut up!” At the sound of Trixie's voice, all eyes
turned. “I'm here, in case you hadn't noticed. So can you all stop talking about me like I'm not?”
“By all means, Trixie, we'd love to hear what you have to say. Today.”
Trixie swallowed. “I didn't mean to lie.”
“You're admitting you did?” the district attorney replied.
“There were so many . . . holes. I didn't think anyone would believe what happened if I couldn't remember the whole story.” She pulled her sleeves down farther over her wrists. Daniel had noticed her doing that in the past few days, and every time it made his heart pleat. “I remember going to Zephyr's, and all the people who were there. I didn't know most of them. A bunch of the girls were playing Rainbow”
“Rainbow?” Daniel said.
Trixie began to pick at the hem of her coat. “It's where everyone gets a different shade of lipstick, and the boys . . . you know, you go off with them .. .” She shook her head.
“The one with the most colorful penis at the end of the night wins,” Marita said flatly. “Is that about right?” Daniel heard Laura's intake of breath as Trixie nodded. “That's it,” she whispered. “I didn't do it, though. I thought I could - I wanted to make Jason jealous - but I couldn't. Everyone went home after that, except for Jason and Moss and me and Zephyr, and that's when we started playing poker. Moss took the picture of me, and Jason got mad at him, and that's when it all goes blank. I know I was in the bathroom when he found me, but I can't remember how we got to the living room. I can't remember anything, really, until he was on top of me. I thought if I waited long enough, it would all come back. But it hasn't.”
The district attorney and the detective exchanged a glance.
“Are you saying,” Marita clarified, “that you woke up to find him having intercourse with you?”
Trixie nodded.
“Do you remember any other details?”
“I had a really bad headache. I thought maybe he'd slammed my head on the floor or something.”
Bartholemew walked toward the district attorney. He stood behind her shoulder, flipping over the contents of the file until he reached a certain page and pointed. “The ER doc noted a seemingly dissociated mental state. And during her initial interview at the PD, she was unresponsive.”
“Mike,” the district attorney said, “give me a break.” “If it's true, it would turn this into gross sexual assault,” Bartholemew pressed. “And all of the inconsistencies in Trixie's story would actually work to the prosecution's advantage.”
“We'd need proof. Date rape drugs stay in the bloodstream for only seventy-two hours, tops.”
Bartholemew lifted a lab report out of the file folder. “Good thing you've got a sample, then, from six hours post.” Daniel was utterly lost. “What are you talking about?” The prosecutor turned. “Right now, this case is being tried as a juvenile sexually assaulting a juvenile. That changes, however, if the assault is committed either while Trixie was unconscious, or if she was given a substance that impaired her ability to appraise or control the sexual act. In that case, by law, Jason Underhill would have to be tried as an adult.”
“Are you saying Trixie was drugged?” Daniel said. The district attorney fixed her gaze on Trixie. “Either that,” she replied, “or your daughter is trying to dig herself out of yet another hole.”
* * *
"Special K, Vitamin K, Kit Kat, Blind Squid, Cat Valium, Purple
. . . it's got a dozen names on the street,“ Venice Prudhomme said, peeling off a pair of latex gloves and throwing them in the trash at Bartholemew's feet. ”Ketamine's a nonbarbiturate, rapid-acting anesthetic
used on both animals and humans . . . it's also allegedly a sexual stimulant. Kids like it as a club drug because, molecularly, it's very similar to angel dust - PCP. It produces a dissociative state, making them feel like their minds are separate from their bodies. We're talking hallucinations . . . amnesia." Mike had begged Venice to run the test at the state lab, in spite of
a two-month backlog of cases. He'd promised, in return, a pair of
club-level Bruins tickets. Venice was a single mom with a hockey-crazy son, a woman who didn't get paid enough to spend $85
per ticket; he knew she wouldn't be able to turn down the offer. Where he was going to actually get two club-level Bruins tickets on his own
salary, though, remained to be seen.
So far, Trixie had tested negative for GHB and Rohypnol, the two most common date rape drugs. At this point, Mike was close to conceding that Trixie had, again, duped them. He watched the computer screen, an incomprehensible run of numbers. “Who's dealing ketamine in Bethel, Maine?” he asked rhetorically.
“It's fully legal when it's Ketaset and sold to vets as a liquid. In that form, it's easy to use as a date rape drug. It's odorless and tasteless. You slip it into a girl's drink, and she's knocked out in less than a minute. For the next few hours, she's numb and willing ... and best of all, she won't remember what happened.” As the computer spit out the last analysis, Venice scanned it. “You say your victim's been lying to you?”
“Enough to make me wish I was working for the defense,” Mike replied.
She pulled a highlighter from her towering nest of braids and drew a yellow line across a field of results - a positive flag for ketamine. “Keep your day job,” Venice replied. “Trixie Stone was telling the truth.”
* * *
There were not, as most people believed, a hundred different words for snow. Boil down the roots of the Yup'ik language, and you'd only have fifteen: - qanuk (snowflake), kanevvluk (fine snow), natquik (drifting snow), nevluk (clinging snow), qanikcaq (snow on the ground), muruaneq (soft, deep snow on the ground), qetrar (crust on top of snow), nutaryuk (fresh fallen snow), qanisqineq (snow floating on water), qengaruk (snowbank), utvak (snow block), navcaq (snow cornice), pirta (snowstorm), cellallir (blizzard), andpirrelvag (severely storming). When it came to snow, Daniel thought in Yup'ik. He'd look out the window and one of these words, or its derivatives, would pop into his mind ahead of the English. There were snows here in Maine, though, that didn't have equivalent terms in Alaska. Like a nor'easter. Or the kind of snow that landed like goose down, during mud season. Or the ice storm that made the needles on the pines look like they were fashioned out of crystal. Times like those, Daniel's mind would simply go blank. Like now: There had to be a term for the kind of storm that he knew was going to be the first real measurable snow of the season. The flakes were the size of a toddler's fist and falling so fast that it seemed there was a rip in the seam of the gunmetal sky. It had snowed in October and November, but not like this. This was the sort of storm that would cause school superintendents to cancel afternoon basketball games, and create long lines at the Goodyear store; this was the kind of storm that made out-of-town drivers pull over on the highway and forced housewives to buy an extra gallon of milk.