money to poke around for some leads on those guys who took advantage of you. Did the police have you describe them to a sketch artist?”
Mindy shook he head, no.
“I’m gonna have Juanita set up an appointment with Monty. He’s an artist who draws faces from witness statements. I will need likenesses of the guys we’re looking for.”
Mindy nodded a feeble assent. She looked completely washed out, almost limp except for her puffy-red but smoldering eyes. “Are you going to tell my parents what I told you?” she said starting to cry again.
“No, I meant what I said. You’re my client. The less they know about the details of your ordeal, the better. They need to shift their focus to making you well, to getting the best treatment possible to keep the HIV virus from becoming AIDS. Nobody but me is going to know the details unless those guys get prosecuted.” What I said was not really true except for the parents, but she badly needed an avenger in her corner and I’d try to play that role as long as I could, hoping that it’d raise her spirits and keep her cooperating with me.
She gave me a brave smile and grabbed another handful of tissues as she made her exit.
CHAPTER 3
It was a hard slog that lasted nearly an hour to get Mindy’s father straightened out and a check up front for a thousand dollars to get me started. He claimed he had the right to know everything his daughter confided to me if he was going to pay the freight for the investigation. He yelled and swore each time I told him he played it my way or not at all. He wouldn’t listen to either me or his wife. I was glad Mindy wasn’t subjected to our contentious squabbling. Finally his wife, Greta, told him to shut up and wrote the check on their joint account.
I really felt like packing it in for the day. I sorely needed to finish Barney’s report, but that required patience and concentration. Mindy’s startling story and the nasty scene with her father had my blood up. I needed to get out of the office, and do something more active than dictating the conclusion of a report.
I handed off the retainer check to Juanita and asked her to set up an appointment with Barney so I could discuss some legal issues related to the attack on Mindy when I finished the report. Next, I called Detective Walker at the Berkeley Police Department to find out who had handled Mindy’s rape investigation. I hoped to cash in a chit owed to me by Walker and finagle access to the investigation file.
Walker wouldn’t cut me any slack. Since the investigation wasn’t a homicide, he said I’d have to deal with Detective Dean Sawyer who’d led the investigation. I called Sawyer and to my surprise, he agreed to discuss the case with me if I hustled over to his office on the double. He was due to go off duty soon, but he agreed to give me a heads up on the case.
Sawyer’s a big-boned, raw-looking guy with curly red hair and tons of freckles all over the exposed parts of his body. He stands about six-feet seven-inches and I remember when he played center for the Berkeley High basketball team. He was the only white guy on the starting five. He had a pretty good hook shot but he couldn’t jump. The best he could do was to try to tip a rebound to someone else. Since he knew that I’d played for Berkeley High, too, we’d talked basketball the few times we’d had occasion to chat about active cases.
His desk was piled high with reports that fought for space with a number of Styrofoam cups and containers waiting their turn to grace his overflowing wastepaper basket. Sawyer wouldn’t be winning any awards from the ecologists at the recycling center. He pulled his nose out of a report and stubbed out his cancer stick in an ashtray full of butts and ash and pointed to a sturdy prison-made oak chair facing his desk.
“I’m not surprised you’re working on the Rohnert girl’s case. The parents got real pissed off when I refused to authorize further investigation,” Sawyer said matter-of-factly.
“How much did you tell them about what really happened to their daughter?”
“I had to tell them that the case was too weak to prosecute even if we managed to I.D. the three guys she partied with. The father flew off the handle and threatened me and the investigating officer with lawsuits and sanctions from all the high powered politicos he knew if we didn’t convict the guys that screwed his little girl.”
“They get briefed by anyone else?”
“Yeah, they kept hassling Officer Mary Sandoval for info and accusing her of not doing her job. I finally told Mary to cut ’em off. If they wanted progress on the case, they had to go through me.”
“Mary Sandoval?”
“She was the officer assigned to the case.”
“I just spoke with the daughter. She’s real shook up; they told her she’s HIV positive and she’s sure it came from the guys who screwed her. Won’t that make a difference now? Couldn’t the case be reopened, especially if they knew they were HIV positive when they assaulted her?”
“I’m real sorry to hear she’s got the AIDS virus. It’s a public health matter to locate the guys, not a police matter. Even with that possible twist, there’s no way the D.A. is going to file a criminal complaint on the set of facts we learned. He’d be laughed out of Dodge and probably not be reelected. He’s not gonna risk losing his big salary on a losing case and the stupid antics of a good-time party girl. So, you’re trying to find the guys so the father can bring a civil suit, huh?”
“That’s one of the options. I’d like to get your take on the case. It seems to me that it could have gone either way – rape or seduction.”
“Yeah, I thought so, too, at first. But when I started to push her, her story didn’t hold up. She let herself get picked up and went along with everything right up to the time the guys fucked her.”
“I thought maybe you could make a case that they set her up – purposely plied her with liquor to get her drunk enough so she couldn’t effectively give her consent to sex or even resist. She told me she got sick and dizzy and passed out on the couch. When she came to, she was naked and all three of them were sexually assaulting her with their hands on all her private parts and she was too woozy and drunk to resist. She did say ‘No’ once; why isn’t that enough to support rape?”
“I was working that angle at first, but it doesn’t hold water. She voluntarily took her clothes off to belly dance for the guys. According to her, the guys were already mostly undressed. What the hell does she think is going to happen? She’s twenty-two years old and she does a bump and grind number for three horny guys. They put money on the table and she delivered the goods. When it’s over, she’s pissed they fucked her up the ass. She’s got a hundred and sixty bucks in her purse and a sore butt. Her parents expect us to pound the pavement to find three guys that paid for her to play harem girl for them for a pile of twenties. Give me a break! The D.A. would never touch a case I brought to him if I’d referred this one. It would have brought ridicule to the whole department. We’ve got enough bad press as it is.”
Mindy hadn’t told me that she’d wound up with the money she’d won dancing. It certainly made her look like a tramp in Sawyer’s eyes. I could see the little old ladies on the jury going, “tsk, tsk, she was asking for it and even got paid like a prostitute.”
“Did she tell you that she asked them to stop touching her, but they wouldn’t?”
“Yeah, that’s what
