Due Process (Joe Dillard #9)(4)

“Did they beat you? Did they have weapons?”

“They just trained me.”

“Trained you?”

“Just one after another. I didn’t fight. I was scared. It’s like a dream.”

“Do you have any serious injuries?” Officer James asked.

“I don’t think so. I’m sore down there, but they didn’t hurt me bad.”

“How did you get out of the house?”

“I think I walked.”

“So they just let you go?”

“When they were done.”

Officer James didn’t quite know what to think. She took out a note pad and jotted several things down while they were fresh in her memory.

“I’m going to have to take you to the hospital, Ms. Self. You’re going to need to do a rape kit, talk to the nurse and the doctor, and I’m going to get in touch with a detective and he’ll be there to talk to you, too.”

“He? Don’t you have a woman who can talk to me?”

“Not right now. We had a woman on the detective squad, but she got married and moved away a couple of months ago. Right now, all we have are men. We’re not a very big department.”

“Don’t take me to Woodlawn. I’m not crazy. And I have babies at home.”

“Babies? How old are your babies?”

“Two and three. My cousin is keeping them tonight.”

“So they’ll be all right? Do you want to call your cousin?”

“They’re asleep. I’ll see her in the morning.”

“Have you ever been through a rape examination before, Ms. Self?”

“Yes.”

“You have? When?”

“My stepfather raped me when I was young. Then my foster father and brother both raped me. I’ve been through it twice.”

Officer James shook her head, not knowing whether what she was hearing was the truth. If it was, then the person she was carrying in her back seat had to have some serious psychological baggage.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Officer James said. “At least you know what you’re about to go through. You know it isn’t going to be fun. But it’s extremely important. So just be brave and do what the medical people tell you to do, okay?”

“I can handle it.”

Officer James turned her blue lights on and did a U-turn in the parking lot. Twenty minutes ago, this woman could barely talk, or at least that’s the way she was acting. Now, she seemed far more lucid and was telling a tale, albeit an unusual one, of being gang-raped.

James called her supervisor.

“She claims she was raped,” James said. “The plan has changed. I’m going to take her to the medical center.”





SUNDAY, AUG. 25

Investigator Bo Riddle was dreaming of putting the noose around the neck of a black man named Howard Felts when his cell phone began to buzz on the bedside table. Riddle had been instrumental in convicting Felts of murder a week earlier, and the jury had later come back with a death penalty sentence. A thirty-year-old patrol officer with a wife and two young daughters had responded to a domestic disturbance at Felts’ apartment eighteen months earlier, and as soon as the patrolman walked through the door, Felts ambushed him and shot him in the face. Felts had never shown a bit of remorse and had been a terrible disciplinary problem at the jail and in the courtroom for the past year-and-a-half. As soon as the verdict was announced, he’d been shipped off to Death Row at Riverbend in Nashville, which, Riddle believed, was exactly where he belonged. The only problem was that he’d be on Death Row for fifteen years. Riddle believed death penalty sentences should be carried out on a flatbed truck in front of the courthouse in the county where the crime was committed. And forget the appeals process. The man was tried and convicted by a jury and that same jury sentenced him to death. End of story.

It was 6:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, and Riddle would have rolled out of bed in fifteen minutes, so the hour didn’t annoy him. But the interruption of the dream did. It was one of the better dreams Riddle had experienced in a while.

He picked up the phone and growled, “What?”

The voice on the other end of the phone was Tonya James, a five-year patrol veteran of the JCPD.

“There’s a woman who claims she was gang-raped by at least three ETSU football players at a party last night,” James said.

“And?”

“The watch commander wants you to take the interview and get a statement. I took her to the hospital and they did a rape kit. They’re just finishing up, but she’s a little strange. There were some problems with her story.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Details. Important things. Like what time she arrived at the party, what time she was raped, how long she was raped, what time she left, exactly how many attackers there were. She can’t describe them. Then there’s the fact that she’d been hired to strip at the party.”

“Sounds to me like you don’t believe her,” Riddle said.

“She didn’t mention being raped until she figured out I was taking her to Woodlawn for a mental evaluation. I ran her name through a couple of databases and talked to a guy at the Carter County Sheriff’s Department because she lives over there. She’s had some problems in the past. The guy I talked to in Carter County thinks she’s got a screw loose.”