Page 20 of A Mean Season

“Do you feel like Detective Wellesley put pressure on you to identify Stu Whatley as your rapist?”

She was very quiet. I hadn’t noticed, but the dogs had quieted down. The tea pot began to whistle.

“I hope you don’t take milk,” she said, pouring hot water into the cups. “I ran out yesterday and my groceries aren’t delivered until tomorrow.”

“A little bit of sugar is fine.”

She nodded. A few moments later, she shooed the tan dog away, her name was Muffy—I’d guessed male but was wrong—and sat down on the sofa next to me. I took the cup of tea from Joanne and held it on my lap. I was about to try asking my question again, when she said, “I didn’t see him, you know. My rapist.”

“But you identified him by voice.”

“That wasn’t used at trial. I—uh… about a week after the rape, I was brought to a room with six tall men. No two-way glass, no separation. The men were asked to say, ‘you like it, bitch, don’t you,’ which is what my rapist kept saying. It was awful. By the time we reached the fourth guy I was coming apart. Brenda told them to stop, and she said to me that… we didn’t have to continue if I’d heard my rapist’s voice. I could tell she wanted me to pick number four, so I did. I regretted it, and before the trial I told Brenda that. But it didn’t matter. By then she had Candy Van Dyke’s statement.”

“Who is that?” I asked, even though I remembered the name from the file.

“My neighbor, across the street. She got a good look at him. Or at least she said she did. I suppose the DNA test proves she was wrong, too.”

“Do you think she’ll mind my stopping by after this?” I asked, though I would no matter what she said.

“She doesn’t live there anymore. She moved away shortly after the trial, about three months. I don’t know where she went. We weren’t friendly.”

“Why didn’t you move?” I asked, an obvious question.

“I was going to. I had the house on the market for two months in 1990. I even had an offer. It’s just, it felt like surrendering. He took so much from me. I didn’t want him to take my home. And there were practical reasons. It’s an inexpensive house and that has allowed me to make significant security upgrades.”

I nodded. It made sense. Logical sense. I still had trouble with the emotional sense.

“Do you have any idea who your attacker might really be?”

She shook her head. “When I was researching DNA, I found an article about the databases being developed. So, maybe someday.”

“You did a lot of research.”

“I design websites.”

“For AOL?”

My understanding of computers was woefully limited. I did notice that Ronnie and I got a blue plastic floppy disc with free hours from AOL every week or so. I think he might even have signed up. If he tried to show me, I’d blocked it from my memory. I knew there was some real estate database that he worked with and that he had a laptop he hooked up to the phone line. I knew that mainly because I couldn’t make calls when he did it.

Joanne was chuckling. “AOL is a browser and a rather primitive one. I use Navigator to access the web. AOL is proprietary. People will move away from it soon enough.”

Honestly, I didn’t know enough to have an opinion.

“Well, I should go.” I’d barely sipped my tea.

“I appreciate what you’re doing. I do want to say, though, I don’t think Brenda did anything on purpose. I think she really believed she had the right guy.”

“I’m sure she did.”

7

April 5-7, 1996

The weekend

Friday through Sunday I worked at The Hawk on Broadway. In the gay rags it was listed as a leather & Levi bar, but it wasn’t that rigid. For about four hours on Friday and Saturday nights it was what you’d called an S&M bar—Stand & Model. Guys would stand around looking at each other trying not to look interested in whether or not they were going to pick each other up. The rest of the time—and often overlapping—it was just a neighborhood gay bar. I started work at six and finished around three in the morning.

Normally I try to sleep in on Fridays, since I’d be up so late. It almost never worked. That morning I woke up at nine. Ronnie was rushing around grabbing his keys, his wallet, his briefcase, his cellular phone, his sunglasses and his lip balm. I said good morning but was barely acknowledged. I didn’t mind. The night before he’d told me he was going on an agents’ open house tour. He’d be spending the morning driving around Long Beach stopping at open houses for agents only. He always wanted to know what was on the market the moment it became available.