Guilt by Association (46 page)

“Oh my God,” he muttered. “Oh my God, she’s alive.”

He turned every which way, hoping someone else would be in the park at this hour of the morning. But they were alone with each other. He crept closer and knelt down beside her.

“Take it easy,” he said. “You’re hurt, so just lie still. I’ve found you, I’ll take care of you, you’re going to be all right.”

Blue-gray eyes fluttered open to focus on him for a second or two and then closed again.

Arthur thought fast. He didn’t know how badly she was hurt but he knew enough not to move her. If he hurried, he calculated it would take him roughly four minutes to get back to Lincoln Way, where he would at least be able to find a telephone. He stood up, stripped off his warm-up jacket and placed it carefully over her. It wasn’t much, but it was better than leaving her the way she was.

“I’ll be right back,” he told her, although he wasn’t at all sure that she heard him. “I’m going to go get help and then I’ll be right back. Don’t move. Just lie there nice and quiet until I get back.”

With one last look at her, he took off at a dead run.

“My name is Azi Redfern,” the short, redheaded Native American said to the woman lying motionless on the table in the curtained cubicle. “I’m from the Rape Treatment Center and I’m here to help you in any way I can.”

It was less than fifteen minutes from the time the call came into the Center that Azi and a nurse-examiner reached the Emergency Room at San Francisco General Hospital.

“Is she conscious?” Azi had asked the resident on duty.

“Dazed, but conscious,” he replied.

“Anything serious?”

The doctor shook his head. “A number of abrasions and lacerations, but no evidence of internal trauma. Her nose is broken,
she’s got a split lip and a black eye. The rest appears to be superficial, but she took quite a beating.”

The counselor nodded to the nurse-examiner. “Let’s go,” she said.

The resident pulled aside the curtain and allowed the two women to enter the tiny cubicle ahead of him.

“The doctor is going to treat you first,” Azi told the victim in a gentle, soothing voice. “He’s assured me that your injuries are minor and that you’re in no danger. So try to relax as much as possible. Do you understand?”

The woman blinked once and closed her eyes.

When the doctor was finished, Azi touched the woman’s shoulder.

“The nurse needs to examine you now,” she said, “to collect as much physical evidence as possible.” The woman’s eyelids fluttered and Azi quickly reached down and took hold of her hand. She smiled reassuringly. “It’s purely routine.”

When she was thirteen years old, Azi Redfern’s father sent her from the reservation to an uncle in Santa Fe for a proper education.
Three weeks later, her uncle raped her, the first of what became a weekly occurrence that lasted until she was seventeen,
when she was awarded a scholarship to the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

She was too ashamed to tell her father, too ashamed to tell anyone, until she met a psychologist at the university who was able to help her deal with the pain and the anger. After college, she went on to become a counselor, knowing she could draw on her own experience to help other victims of sexual abuse.

Half an hour later, the nurse-examiner had filled a dozen or more plastic bags with swabs of vaginal secretions, slides of semen residue, pubic hairs, fingernail scrapings, torn underwear, what was left of a navy-blue silk dress, shredded nylon
stockings, grass specimens, and blood samples. A female police officer had slipped into the cubicle to observe the examination.
A police photographer had snapped twenty or more images of the battered woman from every conceivable angle. Azi still had hold of her hand.

“Why do you do all that?” the woman mumbled through her swollen, sutured lips, as she watched the nurse label each of the plastic bags and then gather them together into one large envelope, which she sealed and handed to the policewoman.

“It’s what we call the chain of custody,” explained Kelly Takuda, one of the two uniformed officers who had responded to Arthur Gertz’s frantic call. “First we collect the physical evidence, then we seal it all up to make sure that no one tampers with it, then we have the police lab analyze it. Later, we can use this analysis to identify the person who assaulted you just as positively as if we had actually seen him do it.”

“Oh.”

The police hadn’t found her purse or any identification on her person.

“Can you tell us your name?” Officer Takuda asked.

“Karen,” the woman said. “Karen—Doniger.”

“Is there someone you would like us to call for you?”

“… .my husband.”

Karen gave the telephone number, and Kelly Takuda wrote it down and passed it to her partner outside the cubicle.

“Now,” she urged, “can you tell us what happened?”

Karen took a tremulous breath. “I felt sick,” she replied. “I guess maybe I drank too much, or maybe it was the clams, but I felt sick. I asked him to stop the car.” Tears began to roll down her cheeks, stinging smartly when they reached her raw,
swollen mouth. “He pulled off the main road and then onto a side road, and I got out and started to walk around a bit and take some deep breaths, you know, so I’d feel better. And then, all of a sudden, he—he grabbed me and—and—and he was too strong and I couldn’t get away from him.”

She was shivering now, choking on her tears and words and
Azi pulled a blanket up around her and held her with an arm about her shoulders.

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “You’re all right.”

“Do you know your assailant, Mrs. Doniger?” Officer Takuda asked. “Can you identify him?”

Karen’s head was throbbing. She tried to focus on the policewoman but saw only the uniform, and, with a small groan, she turned her head away. Kelly glanced at Azi, but the rape counselor shrugged and shook her head.

“I guess that’s enough for now,” Officer Takuda said kindly. “Perhaps we’ll be able to get a more detailed statement from you later, when you’re feeling better.”

The call came just before seven o’clock. Ted was so frantic by then that it was actually a relief to hear that Karen was only injured. He had spent much of the night talking to the police and calling every hospital in the city, afraid she might be dead. He reached the Emergency Room just as the two officers were leaving.

“She’s had a bit of shock, Mr. Doniger,” Kelly Takuda said. “And she’s a little banged up. But she’s all right, and the doctor says she can go home whenever she’s ready.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“Why don’t we let her tell you about it,” the policewoman replied diplomatically. There were just some things, she had long ago concluded, that belonged between a husband and wife, at least in the beginning.

Ted knew then, of course, like a knife plunging itself into his heart. There was only one kind of injury that the police hesitated to discuss.

Karen was still huddled beneath the blanket when he entered the cubicle. A redheaded woman was holding both of her hands and talking to her, too low for him to catch the words. He came up and put his hand on his wife’s hair and smiled down at her.
Tears of relief that she really was alive and even well enough to be sitting up filled his eyes.

“I was so worried,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No, don’t,” he cried. “It’s enough that you’re all right.” But he saw her eyes slip away from his and knew that she wasn’t all right at all.

The redhead took the change of clothes that Ted had brought along and began helping Karen to dress.

“I’m a crisis counselor,” Azi said, after introducing herself. “I’ve been here since the ambulance brought your wife in.”

He saw the angry bruises on Karen’s thighs and, without either of them saying a word, he knew what kind of crisis counselor Azi Redfern was. The knife twisted itself deeper, and he wanted to scream and bash his fists into somebody’s face, as someone had so obviously done to Karen.

“Thank you,” he murmured.

With some encouragement, Karen managed to stand up, but she couldn’t seem to coordinate her legs well enough to walk.

“I’ll get a wheelchair,” Azi offered.

“That won’t be necessary,” Ted told her. He lifted his wife into his arms as though she were a feather and carried her out of the hospital.

The doorbell rang at two o’clock.

“My name is Lamar Pope,” drawled the giant of a man standing on the threshold. He was dressed in a western shirt and jeans,
a leather jacket with fringe, and an exotic pair of tooled leather boots. He handed his card to Ted. It identified him as a sergeant for the Bureau of Investigations, Sexual Assault Division.

“Come in, Sergeant,” Ted invited hesitantly. “My wife is resting. I don’t know if she’s up to seeing anyone yet.”

“I won’t stay any longer than necessary, Mr. Doniger,” Lamar assured him. “But we like to get the facts as fresh as possible,
you understand.”

Karen was curled up on one of the pale-green sofas in the living room, inside a cocoon of fuzzy blankets. Azi had just brought her a fresh cup of tea.

“I’d sure like to get a statement from you, ma’am, if I could,” Lamar said after the introductions. “To get the inves
tigation going. Tomorrow or whenever you feel up to it, you can come down to the department and make it official.”

Karen looked up at him apprehensively. Azi, noticing, sat down beside her.

“They have women investigators in the division,” she said softly. “We can request one, if you prefer. But you won’t find anyone better than Lamar. He’s not just a great detective, he’s one of the most decent men I know.” She glanced up at him and he gave a short nod. “Twenty years ago, his daughter was raped and murdered by a young man who got off because the prosecution didn’t do its job right. Lamar’s been involved in sexual-assault investigations ever since.”

The heavyset officer with the shock of white hair and bizarre cowboy clothes looked nothing at all like her memory of Michael Haller.

“I guess it’s all right,” Karen consented.

Lamar sat down in the opposite chair and produced a pad, a pen, and a microcassette recorder from various pockets.

“This is so I don’t forget anything,” he said, gesturing to the recorder. “And this,” he said, holding up the pad and pen,
“is so that I have something to do with my hands. I’m trying to quit smoking.”

“Would you like something to drink, Sergeant Pope?” Ted asked.

“Well, sir, if that’s tea your wife’s having, I wouldn’t say no to a cup if it was offered.”

Azi went to the kitchen to get the tea and Ted retreated to the study, leaving Karen and Lamar alone.

“I’m sorry about your daughter,” Karen murmured.

“I appreciate that, ma’am,” he drawled. “I surely do.” He pressed the little red button on the recorder. “Well now, suppose you tell me, in your own words and at your own pace, exactly what happened.”

It took Karen almost an hour to recall it all, from the moment Robert had approached her in the downtown parking garage to the moment he left her in Golden Gate Park. Lamar scribbled copious notes, stopping her every now and again to ask for a clarification or a further detail.

And through it all, the soft-spoken giant was kind and gentle and supportive.

“You’re doing just fine, ma’am,” Lamar said when Karen began to falter. “And we’re almost through. Now, you say that, after he forced you to have sex with him, the man got into his car and drove away, and just left you there?”

“I think so,” Karen replied. “I mean, I guess he must have, because I was still there when the jogger came along. But I really don’t remember very much about what happened—you know, afterward.”

“What kind of car was he driving?”

“A Mercedes. Black.”

“What was he wearing?”

Karen thought a moment. “I think it was a gray suit with a little stripe in it, a white shirt and a gray-and-maroon tie. And black loafers with little tassels.”

“All right,” Lamar coached. “You say you met him in the garage and he took you for a drink and then offered to drive you home.”

“He offered to drive me home first and then we went to have a drink,” Karen corrected.

“At any point in the evening, did he happen to tell you his name? Where he lived? Where he worked?”

Karen stared long and hard at the police investigator. He seemed so fatherly, with his white hair and careworn face. But behind the sympathetic blue eyes, she knew, was a keen mind. She wondered if it was also a fair one.

“He didn’t have to tell me his name,” she said finally. “I knew who he was. That’s why I agreed to let him drive me home.
I’ve been working as a volunteer at his campaign headquarters for three months. His name is … Robert Drayton Willmont.”

Lamar’s left hand shot out and hit the stop button on the microcassette recorder. He sat there frozen with shock, wondering what the hell he had stumbled into, and why it had been his accursed misfortune to be the investigator on call this particular day.

There was no point in asking if she was positive of her
identification. Obviously, she was. There was no point in asking if there were any political motivations behind her accusation.
If there were, she would certainly not admit it. There was no point in asking her anything more at all until he had time to digest what he had already heard.

“I think that about does it,” he said finally. “I will ask you not to discuss this with anyone until the department completes its investigation and decides how to proceed. Due to the rather special circumstances involved here, I think it would be wise if the press were kept out of this as long as possible.”

“I have no intention of talking to the press,” Karen declared with dignity. “Or anyone else.”

Lamar dropped the recorder back into one pocket, stuffed his pad and pen into another, and hefted himself to his feet.

“I thank you for your time, ma’am,” he said. “No need to bother your husband. I can see myself out.”

“Goodbye, Sergeant.”

Karen watched him go. Thirty years ago, it had been a fine, upstanding Harvard law student who had never been in any trouble.
Now, it was a United States senator who was seeking the highest office in the land. Her word against his. And another male police investigator. She wondered if there was any justice to be had in the world.