The newscasts didn’t reveal the girl’s name, but the family was too well known for it not to be common knowledge. “Lisabeth Hamilton.”
A nod. “Ms. Hamilton claims that she was attacked two months ago, but reported the incident just last week.”
It didn’t take a genius. “When Ms. Hamilton discovered she was pregnant.”
“Right on the button. Her statement to the police reads that the attack occurred as she was walking home from school just after classes began. She’s ‘certain’ it was an African-American, though he wore a mask.”
“A mask, but not gloves?”
“Correct, hence she saw his hands. And Ms. Hamilton also claims she didn’t recognize her attacker, despite knowing Devonne Tinch from said school.”
“I thought the papers said Tinch lived in Dorchester?”
“He does. METCO student.”
A program that bussed promising kids from Boston’s inner-city neighborhoods like Dorchester to supposedly better “metropolitan” schools like Calem’s. “Steve, if the incident happened during the first week or so of classes, how sure are we that Ms. Hamilton would have met your client already?”
“He started last semester, struggled with his studies, and therefore repeated a year.”
I felt myself nodding. “Making the four-year age difference functionally three.”
“More like two, John. Ms. Hamilton skipped a year herself.”
“Okay, so the victim says she didn’t recognize the attacker, even though she actually knew him for eight or nine months.”
Rothenberg leaned back in his swivel chair. “And even though Mr. Tinch is three inches taller and twenty pounds lighter than the description Ms. Hamilton gave to the police.”
“Steve, that could be just the stress of the situation.” I tried to recall the news report’s details. “Didn’t your client get nailed by a DNA match on semen from the victim’s clothes?”
“Yes.” Rothenberg came forward now, frowning as he leafed through the file. “My client was arrested in the current case three days ago because his specimen went into the Registry’s database from a plea three years ago.”
“Rape also?”
“No. Indecent assault.”
“Which sounds an awful lot like rape bargained down to a lesser charge. And maybe a pattern of conduct on your client’s part.”
Rothenberg closed the file. “He didn’t wear a mask three years ago.”
“So he’s learning from his past mistakes. And he necessarily would have known the Hamilton girl could recognize him.”
Rothenberg sighed, then slumped back into his chair again. “You know what drives me nuts, John?”
“Private investigators?”
“Innocent clients. The guilty ones, I make the system work for them the best I can, but I can also sleep nights, knowing that something I didn’t think of never got the wrong guy put in jail. On this baby, though...”
“Steve, they’ve got a DNA match, so unless this Tinch has a twin brother—”
“Just an older one, I think—”
“—I don’t see there’s much I can do for you.”
Rothenberg pursed his lips, then gave a judicious nod. “Tell you what, John. On my dime, go see Devonne Tinch, give me your take on him.”
“Steve...”
“Please.” Rothenberg waved his hand over the file as though administering a blessing. “The paperwork reads right for him as the guy, but the kid’s attitude just doesn’t feel right for it.”
I dropped my head, then looked back up. “Is Tinch in Middlesex, then?”
The so-called “new” Middlesex County Courthouse and Jail had been open for about thirty years now, and the building’s furnishings were starting to show it. I sat in a little conference room with glass walls across a scarred and scorched tabletop from a slim, intense young black male with a shaved head and a face like a camp hatchet. A corrections officer stood outside the room, watching for security reasons but not listening in on us.
Devonne Tinch stared through me as he spoke. “I did not rape that bitch.”
I clasped my hands on the table. “Looks like we have to start with a vocabulary lesson, Devonne. Ms. Hamilton is either the ‘victim,’ or the ‘accuser,’ or just the ‘complaining witness.’ ”
“Now you sound like a cop.”
“I was. Military Police, but a long time ago.”
“Army, huh?” Tinch stood down a bit. “I was thinking about joining the army too. Get that scholarship program for college.”
“Let’s think about more current events, like your version of what happened.”
A flare from the eyes. “My version is that nothing happened.”
“Then where were you on the afternoon Ms. Hamilton claims she was attacked?”
“How should I know, man? That was two months ago, and my lawyer says even Lissy’s not dead sure which day it was.”
Lissy. “Can you remember back three years, then?”
Tinch blew out a breath smelling of “mystery meat,” a jailhouse staple.
“I was just a kid — fifteen years old. The bit — the victim was twenty-five, gave me liquor, saying her old man wasn’t treating her right, then she starts touching and feeling me up. Next thing I know, we’re going at it, not even using a condom or nothing — hell, I could of caught a disease. Then her old man comes through the door, and she’s screaming rape.”
“The conviction still stands.”
“I wasn’t convicted. I plea-bargained it, on account I was a juvie, and they said that meant the record’d be sealed up. Only now it turns out they can unseal the DNA stuff.”
“You tell the good folks at the METCO program about your juvenile record?”
“You out of your mind? I’m a black student with decent grades in a crappy school, and I got the chance to attend an A-plus school in Calem that might get me on to college. What would you do?”
“I was never in the position.”
Tinch grunted out a derisive laugh and waved his hand behind him, toward the cells. “Yeah, well, this here’s my ‘position.’ And it’s gonna be, till you and Rothenberg figure out a way to prove I didn’t rape that girl.”
“Did you ever have consensual sex with her?”
“No, man. Never, not once.”
“Then how do you account for your DNA being on her clothes?”
A cruel, wise smile. “Same way Johnnie Cochran accounted for it in O. J.’s case. I was framed.”
“If that’s your best argument, Devonne...”
Tinch held his hands up shoulder high, as in a double stop sign. “Look, I knew Lissy Hamilton. Plus, my girlfriend Gloria and her go back to grammar school together.” Tinch looked around, then hunched forward, maybe being sure the corrections officer outside the glass wall couldn’t read his lips. “I’m gonna attack somebody who can identify me and is best buds with my own girl? Come on, man, there’s lots of easier ways.”
I was beginning to see what Steve Rothenberg meant by Tinch not “feeling” right for the crime. “Does Gloria have a last name?”
“Yeah. Carson.”
Time to change tacks. “Any chance your older brother could help us here?”
“Maurice?” A streak of what I took to be genuine sadness crossed Devonne Tinch’s features. “No, man. Maurice and me, we don’t get along so good.”
Five minutes later I’d recovered my cell phone from the security pod on the citizen side of the bars. Then I called Steve Rothenberg to tell him I’d give it a day. Or two.
I hadn’t been out to Calem for a while, and driving through the town center reminded me of why I never much liked it. Too clean, too cute, too aware of itself as a picture-perfect place to live. I tried to imagine the battle some poor school administrator had to have fought to get METCO kids like Devonne Tinch out to paradise.