about each witness.
Predator’s “pattern” started young By Cynthia Fist Toronto Telstar
Toronto – A lovely young woman who narrowly escaped devastating consequences by virtue of age and the “luck” of meeting Ramona Hawkes in her formative years, Molly Sumner is as much a victim as any other, tainted by her association with this creature who fed off her innocence and used her to grow into the fearsome preying monster we witness each day in Courtroom 7-2 …
I wondered what she’d say about me.
Justice Larraby gave the Hawkes jury time off until the Tuesday after Easter. The talk shows reverted to transvestite love triangles and female gang warfare. I didn’t buy the paper.
Alex emptied his gym bag into the basement washer. He took off his T-shirt and tossed it on top. Aside from an oblong beige stain on his left shoulder, he had unmarked skin that flushed often, his muscles etched like dunes. He folded me into a bear hug and I inhaled his cinnamon bite, fingers nestling in the valley of his spine. Growling, he guided me into a kiss, my hair in his fist.
I ferreted his scrubs out from the clothes pile. “Shouldn’t the hospital wash these for you?”
“Usually they do. I forgot to take them off before I went to the gym. Don’t worry. I didn’t do much today. They’re clean-ish.”
I researched bloodstains in a book called Handy’s Household Hints. Wearing rubber gloves, I soaked then rinsed the scrubs in a paste of cold water and meat tenderizing crystals from the Lucky Dollar. Then I met Alex in bed.
He sidled onto me and pinned my arms to my sides. “Nobody lets me do anything,” he said.
“Who?”
“The hospital. I could perform surgery as well as anyone, including Dr. Augustin. How else am I supposed to learn if I can’t practise my skill?” He’d complained this way before. When we’d met in Foundations of Art at university, he’d griped about an oil painting the prof assigned. He worked best with watercolours, he’d said, and refused to use oils. He got a 0 and switched to pre-med.
“Show me your skill.” I wriggled away and spread my arms. I met his eyes then closed mine and held my breath.
He lay on his side and leered. “That’s what you say. But you never let me do anything either.” He twirled the hem of my nightie with a finger. I moved closer and kissed him.
“Surgery. Dr. Hanoka practised on his wife.” I kept my tone jokey, light. I wanted to go to a new place with him, but I didn’t know how to get it started.
“The poster boy? He administered anaesthetic. He didn’t cut her.”
“So you say. Show me, then, on my body. How would you take out my appendix?” I lifted my nightie, what I usually waited for him to do.
“You’d have to take off that chastity belt for starters,” he whispered near my ear. The edge had left his voice.
I turned off the lamp and slid out of my panties.
“Lights are helpful, too.”
“If you’re so good, you should be able to perform surgery in the dark.” My belly shuddered then rose to meet his cold hand.
“First you’re prepped,” he said. “Shaved, washed. An orderly rolls you into the operating theatre on a gurney then transfers you to the table, supine. Then you’re intubated and given general anaesthesia. Your abdomen is draped. There are blazing lights above and nurses to assist. I’d have my tools on a tray beside me. With my Metzenbaum scissors — I know you love the terminology —”
“Baby.”
“I’d cut here, called McBurney’s Point, and hold the incision open with a retractor. Then I’d reach in, snip the appendix free, clamp, suture.”
He marked the line with his fingernail. My thighs stirred. “I wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“Not until you woke up.”
“You’d have your fingers inside me.”
“This is different. This is beneath the skin.”
We were watching The Ten Commandments and eating Easter eggs when I announced I was going out of town for a while, up north, back to Haliburton maybe, to work on my novel. “I’ll have to miss the trial,” I said.
“Unless they un-subpoenaed you, I wouldn’t advise it. You could get charged. They call it contempt of court.”
“That cop, Detective Stanton, he phoned again. He took me to meet Ron Laurie, the Crown attorney. I had to go over my story, practise being cross-examined.” My voice shrilled. The cops had given me a copy of the police statement with my answers to their questions about Ramona, but I wanted Alex to hear what I said on the stand, rather than read it at home. I grabbed his shoulder. “They won’t protect my name, Alex, because I was eighteen. Oh, and I’m not supposed to go in the courtroom before I testify so I don’t get influenced. They could charge me if I do. Most of it’s in the news, though. All the girls are saying the same thing — that they acted out fairy tales and movies. Nothing sexual. What’s the point of having me up too?”
“Maybe they think you’ll say something different.”
“I don’t want to say anything.”
“The question is, do you have anything to say?” “The question is, why should a person have to talk if she doesn’t want to?”
“A person shouldn’t have to say anything at all,” he said. Then he kissed me, what he did when he didn’t want to fight. I snapped my face away. I wanted opposition, the okay to fling out all subjects, hurl fury at him.
“You’re jittery. Anybody would be, no matter what kind of testimony they were giving. This is a murder trial. It may be inconsequential to you, but what you say could affect this woman’s life and many others. That’s enough to rattle anybody.”
I let myself agree with him and reminded myself that the Crown would ask about what my statement contained, nothing more. It calmed me that Alex wasn’t prying, yet I half-wondered if he didn’t care. What little control I had I felt slipping away as the date of my testimony grew closer.
“Come to bed,” Alex said. He stood and took my arm. His voice, his mouth, stayed even. I teetered and a near-sob choked out. I rolled it into a laugh and let him pull me along.
“But the Red Sea,” I said. “It hasn’t been parted yet.”
“Don’t make me make that joke.”
Later, half-kidding, I said, “I feel a cold coming on.”
“Maybe you need a doctor.”
“I need surgery. A long recovery. Something to make it hard to talk or think.”
“Brain surgery. Or throat.”
“What about the face? You could disguise me.”
I rubbed his hips with my thighs
