I found a parking place on the street just down from the police station itself, but when I asked the civilian behind the inside counter for the one detective I knew there, she said he was on vacation. Then I mentioned Devonne Tinch and got a rotten egg scowl from the civilian, who asked to see my ID before calling “upstairs.”
The officer who came out a door to a short staircase was fortyish and plump, with an hospitable smile on her face. A generation before, she’d have modeled as a homemaker baking sugar cookies and pouring large glasses of milk.
“John Cuddy?”
“That’s me.”
“Aphrodite Smith.”
I tried not to cringe, but Smith caught something. “My parents figured that with a plain last name, I’d need an exotic first one to spur me on to beauty and grace. Nice game plan, just didn’t work.”
I was beginning to like her. “I gather you’re the detective on the Tinch case?”
“Sergeant Detective. Like the Boston force, we do rank first, duty second.”
“There somewhere we can talk?”
“Follow me.”
Smith entered a small interrogation area with the square footage of a walk-in closet. Table, chairs, one-way mirror on the wall. If there were four of us instead of two, you’d picture that stateroom scene from one of the Marx Brothers’ movies.
We sat, she examined my ID a little more thoroughly than the civilian had, then handed it back to me.
“You’re the visitor, Mr. Cuddy.”
“I’ve been asked by Mr. Tinch’s lawyer to investigate Lisabeth Hamilton’s complaint of rape against him.”
Elbows came onto table, chins in palms of hands. “First ground rule: I do not say the name of the complaining witness.”
“Fair enough. Does the witness have an explanation for why she waited two months to report the supposed attack?”
A disappointed look. “Mr. Cuddy, I hope you’re neither that stupid nor that disingenuous.”
“Ms. Hamilton reported the ‘rape’ only after she realized she was pregnant.”
“Girls that age have irregular periods, and they’re often late.”
“A reason why Ms. Hamilton might not be sure she was pregnant, but not a reason why she wouldn’t be sure she’d been raped.”
“Mr. Cuddy, certainly you know how difficult it can be for any victim of violence to pursue it formally. In this case, the witness did not believe she recognized her attacker, so there was no one to accuse. And she wasn’t even aware of the DNA Registry being in existence.”
“Lucky thing, then, that she came forward even when she did.”
Smith paused, then rolled her head on her shoulders. “She was a frightened little girl, Mr. Cuddy. After being attacked, she took off her clothes and bathed, as anyone might under the circumstances.”
“She washed herself, but not her clothes.”
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t throw them away, either.”
“As stated in my report, which I’m sure Mr. Rothenberg has shown you, the witness placed her clothes from the incident in a plastic bag.”
First shades of the O. J. case, and now Monica’s. “You’re comfortable with a DNA match based on two-month-old stains and three-year-old database samples?”
“The techies are, so I am too.” Smith lowered her voice, made it a little chilly. “For God’s sake, they’re exonerating convicted inmates left and right on matches — or failures to match — that go back two decades.”
“Did you test Mr. Tinch’s older brother, Maurice?”
“We requested he provide a sample, but Maurice Tinch declined, as he has every right to.”
“Won’t a jury wonder about that, though?”
“Not my department.” Smith spread her hands on the tabletop and dropped her voice another five degrees. “Look, Mr. Cuddy, Calem is a good town. I grew up here, and when the METCO program was struggling to get off the ground, people like Grant and Willa Hamilton argued in favor of bringing kids like Devonne Tinch into our public schools, to which the Hamiltons send their own children. Through the years, ninety-five, even ninety-nine percent of these METCO kids have been fine, but every once in a while, things go haywire, probably something from when they were younger and a kind of flashback hits them. And then they commit an incredibly stupid crime.”
When Smith seemed to be finished, I said, “Given that it was a rape, why not just have an abortion? Quietly.”
A sigh. “Mr. Cuddy, in this commonwealth, any child under sixteen must have a parent’s permission to have an abortion, or she has to go before a trial judge to get a court order.”
I considered that. “Difficult path to follow for the daughter of a judge and a conservative state politician.”
“That’s not the worst of it.” Smith seemed to warm up a little. “I’ve known girls — like the victim here — try so-called ‘home’ remedies. Jumping rope for twenty hours straight to induce a miscarriage. Eating Twinkies and drinking Dr Pepper.”
“Has Ms. Hamilton had an abortion as yet?”
“Quite frankly, none of my business, and certainly none of yours.”
Smith rose from her chair. “We’ve crossed every t and dotted every i on this one, Mr. Cuddy. Now, is there anything else?”
Given the current temperature of Sergeant Detective Aphrodite Smith’s voice, I decided not to ask what time high school let out these days.
II
I really felt like a ghost from history. Not only did the kids milling and strolling and acting out seem about twelve years old, but the campus and its buildings looked more like a private college than a public high school, even in a town as ritzy as Calem.
One pair of kids stood out a little, though. Maybe because they were arguing, and the others gave them a wide berth.
The first girl was about five-five and blonde, wearing a short skirt and boots out of a Frankenstein movie that kicked her height up another four inches. The second girl was olive-skinned, with brown hair streaked blonde, in a tank top and sweatpants with little strings at the bottom for tying. Probably in some fashion statement, the strings were untied and flopped around her sneakers as she shifted from one cocked hip to the other.
When I heard the second girl start a sentence with “Lissy, don’t be a bitch about this,” I figured I might have found Ms. Hamilton.
Then the second girl stomped off, nearly tripping on those untied strings at the bottom of her sweats.
I said, “Lisabeth Hamilton?”
She turned, awkwardly, given the boots. “Yeah?”
“I thought I was going to see a boxing match break out.”
Hamilton did a dry spit in the direction of the departed girl. “Well, like, her boyfriend raped me, so Gloria and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms anymore.”
Not exactly the “frightened” young woman Aphrodite Smith had described either. “I could see that three days ago, when Devonne Tinch was arrested, but now?”
“Yeah, well, I’m on meds, you know? Help me, like, handle the stress.”
Which made no sense to me as an answer, but then, if she were on drugs, it might explain both her attitude and the non sequitur.
“I wonder if I could ask you a few questions?”
Baby doll pout. “You’re a cop, let’s see a badge.”
I opened my ID holder.
Hamilton just glanced at it. “Oh, that is so lame. You’re a private eye working for that monster?”