Read Online Rape by Joyce Carol Oates - Free Book Online

wore a charcoal gray pants suit with wide trouser legs in an outmoded style. Her hair was a brown frizz-perm. It was her duty to outline the state’s case against the numerous defendants naming them individually, specifying charges in her flat nasal upstate voice. This would be a complicated case involving a complicated legal procedure. Dromoor wondered why the state was requesting a single trial, with a single jury. There were eyewitness testimonies from the two victimslinking just five of the defendants to the crime. There were DNA and other forensic evidence linking these defendants and three others to the crime. A ninth defendant, not present at this hearing, had confessed to his role in the crime and would be a state’s witness against the others; a transcript of his testimony would be presented to Schpiro. Diebenkorn argued that the crime had been an especially vicious sexual attack—a “gang rape.” It had been an attack against a woman in the presence of her twelve-year-old daughter who had also been assaulted and threatened with rape. It had been a prolonged attack, lasting nearly half an hour. It had been a premeditated attack for the rapists had stalked their victims in Rocky Point Park for an estimated ten minutes, according to the testimony of the state’s witness. It had been an attack intended to result in the death of Martine Maguire, who had been left to bleed to death, unconscious on the floor of a boathouse in a secluded area of the park. If Mrs. Maguire’s daughter Bethel had not been present, terrified and hiding in a corner of the boathouse, Martine Maguire would not be alive today to confront and give testimony against her attackers. As it was, Mrs. Maguire had suffered critical physical injuries, had been on life support at St. Mary’s Hospital and subsequently hospitalized for several weeks, and at the present time was still recuperating from the attack. “Your Honor, Mrs. Maguire’s presence in the courtroom today is something of a miracle.”
    Dromoor had been watching Teena Maguire and saw her stiffen. Must be hell to hear yourself talked of like that. Gang rape, bleed to death, left to die. This was ugly.
    Beside Teena Maguire, the daughter. Dromoor had a daughter of his own now, two years old. Jesus! He could not bear to think of it, he would murder with his bare hands anyone who even threatened to hurt her.
    He hoped to hell the prosecution could strike plea bargains with those bastards, to avoid a trial. They could not seriously expect Bethel Maguire to testify in court. To endure cross-examinations from defense lawyers like the jackal Kirkpatrick.
    He saw the girl looking toward him. Dark startled eyes. He wondered if she remembered him.
    Dromoor recalled how he’d first seen Bethel Maguire, by the roadway in Rocky Point Park. Disheveled, bloodied. Her clothes torn. He’d been sick to think that the girl had been raped. She’d looked at him with such desperate hope. As if he, a police officer out on routine patrol, dispatched by chance to the scene of a crime, had the power to truly help her.
    My mother is hurt! Please help her! I’m afraid my mother is dying please please help her!
    In that instant, Dromoor was pulled in.
    As if their lives had gotten tangled with his, Christ knows why.
    Like tangled fishing lines. Knotted together.
    Dromoor had seen a lot of things. Ugly things. He’d done some ugly things himself. Things you’d imagine you would not forget, but he’d forgotten. Except this girl Bethel, and her mother, Teena, in the boathouse.
    *   *   *
    The hearing proceeded. There were numerous interruptions. A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour one another if possible. Dromoor who hated court appearances like any other cop had only just been sworn in and begun his brief testimony