Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(34)

“And this took how long?” I said. “Did you say fifteen minutes?”

“That’s their estimate. About fifteen minutes.”

“Did the cops come?”

“Not that we can find. No 911 calls were made.”

“So, if we believe what the girl supposedly told the police,” I said, “she shows up, goes in and introduces herself, gets paid, disappears for a few minutes, comes back out hammered, is unable to perform, gets dragged into a bathroom and raped by three different players, and is back out the door in fifteen minutes. Talk about premature ejaculation. Those boys were quick.”

I looked around the table. Everyone was smiling except for Stony.

“Aw, c’mon, Stony,” I said. “That was at least a little funny.”

“I don’t know that I find it appropriate to joke about gang rape,” Stony said.

“The whole point is that there was no gang rape,” I said. “Didn’t happen. Couldn’t have happened. What have you learned about this so-called victim?”

Stony was an open, unapologetic lesbian, which probably also contributed to her serious nature, given the macho environment at the FBI. I was sure she’d taken her share of barbs over the years, and was probably expected to work harder and better than the men with whom she was competing in order to advance. She was forty-seven, about five feet eight inches tall. Her hair was short and wavy, a dark brown, and her eyes were brown. She wore fashionable, dark-rimmed glasses and understated make-up.

“She’s a mess,” Stony said. “I actually feel sorry for her. She tossed a couple of photos on the table and we started passing them around.

“She looks like a Playboy bunny,” Jack said.

“Read a lot of Playboy, do you?” Charlie said.

“No, I don’t read Playboy. I just look at the pictures.”

The girl was certainly pretty. Red hair, beautiful blue eyes, a face structured like a runway model, full lips, and a body that would make ninety-nine percent of men do a double take.

“Meet Sheila Elizabeth Self. She’s twenty-four. Born to an alcoholic mother and a burglar father. The father dropped out of the picture when she was three. Two years later, he was shot dead in a bar in Jackson, Tennessee. When she was twelve, she developed large breasts and her stepfather apparently couldn’t keep his hands off of her. He raped her. Her mother wouldn’t do anything about it, but she had the courage and the confidence to call the police. The father was ultimately arrested and convicted of aggravated rape. The girl even testified at the trial. He’s up for parole in five months. Sheila was removed from the home by Child Protective Services and taken in by a foster family. She must really be unlucky, because a year later she was raped by both her foster father and her foster brother, who was seventeen. They did it on the same night, at the same time, in the same bed, after they got some alcohol and some cocaine into her and into themselves. The foster mother had gone to Indiana to visit her sister. Sheila called the cops again. The foster father is in prison. The brother made a deal and is on parole, a registered sex offender.

“They moved her to another foster home, and she seemed to be getting along all right until she had an incident at school. She began reporting that two black boys were sexually assaulting her. There were multiple reports documented in the school’s files. The school administration either didn’t want to listen to her because of her past or they wanted to keep these two guys out of trouble. One was a football player and the other a basketball player. She wound up bringing a butcher knife to school and when the basketball player grabbed her breasts one day, she slashed his arm so badly he almost bled to death. They charged her with aggravated assault, adjudicated her to be delinquent, and shipped her off to Nashville until her eighteenth birthday. She came back here, started stripping and prostituting herself, and has had a couple of kids. Along the way, she earned a GED, an associate’s degree, and had enrolled at ETSU this semester. I’m guessing she’ll drop out. Her declared major is psychology.”

As I listened to Stony describe the tortured life of this young woman, my mind wandered a little. I was thinking about how the world could be so random and cruel. She was born with physical beauty, something so many long for, and look what it had cost her. It had cost her a chance of having a normal, happy life. Had she not been born into poverty, had her parents stayed together, had her step father not been a child molesting pervert, her life would have most likely been far different. Maybe at some point in the future she would be able to settle down, like Sarah, and put the demons behind her. But something told me that time would be far in the future for Sheila Elizabeth Self.

“So, she has a motive to lie about being raped by black men,” I said. “She probably hates black men.”

“My guess is that she hates all men.”

I nodded. “Can’t say as I blame her.”

Stony was able to provide us with a copy of the results of her tox screen from the hospital the night she was arrested.

“How did you get this?” I said.

“That’s none of your business. I just thought you might like to have it.”

“Absolutely. Thank you. Well, I guess this explains at least part of the behavior. Ecstasy and alcohol? Powerful combination, but we need the blood results from the lab. I managed to get an order from Judge Neese to get a sample from the lab the cops sent it to. Normally, since Kevin hasn’t been charged, I wouldn’t have been able to get it, but since the lab discards the samples after thirty days, she made an exception. We should be getting the results soon.”