"I don't understand," my father said.
"He wouldn't let Tricia stay in the lineup," I said to my dad. "I hate him," I said. "He's a slimy asshole."
Murphy smiled.
"How can he do that?" my father asked.
"The defendant has the right to request a courtroom be closed if he thinks it will rob the witness of support," Gail said. "Look on the bright side, Gregory's father is here too. By closing the court, he won't have his father there either."
"How could he support a rapist anyway?"
"It's his son," Murphy said quietly.
Gail walked back to the courtroom.
"It might be easier for you without your father there," Murphy offered. "Some of what you'll have to say is harder in front of family."
I wanted to ask why, but I knew what he was saying. No father wanted to hear the story of how a stranger shoved his whole hand up his daughter's vagina.
Detective Murphy and my father stood facing me. Murphy offered words of condolence to my father. He pointed to a bench nearby, saying they could wait right there the whole time. My father had brought a small, leather-bound book along.
In the distance I saw Gregory Madison walking toward the courtroom. He had come from the hallway perpendicular to the one where I stood. I looked at him for a second. He did not see me. He was moving slowly. He wore a light gray suit. Paquette and another white man were with him.
I waited a second and then interrupted my father and Detective Murphy.
"Do you want to see him?" I asked my dad. I grabbed his arm to make him turn. "There he is, Dad."
But it was just Madison's back now, entering the courtroom, a flash of gray polyester suit.
"He's smaller than I thought," my father said.
There was a beat. A silence. Murphy rushed in.
"But wide. Believe me, he's all muscle."
"Did you see his shoulders?" I asked my dad. I'm sure my father had imagined Madison as towering.
Then I saw another man. He had a softer version of his son's build, white hair around the temples. He hesitated, for a moment, near the courtroom door, then spotted our little group down the hall. I didn't point him out to my father. Murphy's earlier comment had made me see him differently. After a second, and a look at me, he disappeared back down the other hall. He must have realized who I was. I didn't see him again, but I remembered him. Gregory Madison had a father. It was a simple fact but it stayed with me. Two fathers, both of them helpless to control their children's lives, would sit out the trial in their separate hallways.
The courtroom door opened. A bailiff stood in the open doorway and made eye contact with Murphy.
"You're up, Alice," Murphy said. "Remember, don't look at him. He'll be sitting at the defense table. When you turn around, look for Bill Mastine."
The bailiff came to get me. He looked like a cross between a theater usher and someone in the military. Detective Murphy and he nodded to each other. The pass-off.
I reached for my father's hand.
"Good luck," he said.
I turned. I was glad for Murphy. I thought suddenly that if my father were to go to the men's room, he might bump into Mr. Madison. Murphy would keep this from happening. I let it come now, the thing that had been burning at the corners of my temples the night before and boiled beneath the surface all that year: rage.
I was frightened and shaking when I crossed the courtroom, passed the defense table, the judge at the podium, the prosecution table, and came to take the stand. I liked to think I was Madison's worst nightmare, although he didn't know it yet. I represented an eighteen-year-old virgin coed. I was dressed in red, white, and blue.
A female bailiff, middle-aged and wearing wire-framed glasses, assisted me up onto the stand. I turned around. Gail was seated at the prosecution table. Mastine was standing. I was aware of other people, but I didn't look at them.
The bailiff held a Bible in front of me.
"Place your hand on the Bible," she said. And I repeated what I had seen on TV a hundred times.
"I swear to tell the truth… so help me, God."
"Be seated," the judge said.
My mother had always taught us to be scrupulous when wearing a skirt by smoothing it out before sitting down. I did this and as I did, I thought of what lay beneath the skirt and slip, still visible, if I lifted up the hem, through the flesh-tone stockings. That morning, while I dressed, I had written a note to myself on my skin. "You will die" was inked into my legs in dark blue ballpoint. And I didn't mean me.
Mastine began. He asked me my name and address. Where I was from. I barely remember answering him. I was getting the lay of the land. I knew exactly where Madison sat, but I didn't look at him. Paquette cleared his throat, rustled papers. Mastine asked me where I went to school. What year I had just finished there. He took a moment to close the window, first asking permission of Judge Gorman. Then he led me back in time. Where was I living in May of 1981? He directed my attention to the events of May 7, 1981, and the early hours of May 8, 1981.
I went into minute detail and, this time, did as Gail had told me to; I took each question slowly.
"Did he say anything to you by way of a threatening nature while you were screaming, and while the struggle was taking place?"
"He said he would kill me if I didn't do what he said."
Paquette stood. "I am sorry. I can't hear."
I repeated myself: "He said that he would kill me if I did not do what he said."
A few minutes later, I began to stumble. Mastine had led me up and now into the amphitheater tunnel.
"What happened there?"
"He told me to-that he was-well, I figured out by that time that he was-didn't want my money."
It was a shaky start to the most important story I would ever tell.
I began a sentence only to trail off and begin again. And this wasn't because I was unaware of exactly what had happened in the tunnel. It was saying the words out loud, knowing it was how I said them that could win or lose the case.
"… Then he made me lie down on the ground and he took his pants off and left his sweatshirt on, and he started fondling my breasts and kissing them and doing things like that, and he was very interested in the fact that I was a virgin. He kept asking me about it. So he used his hands in my vagina……"
I was breathing shallowly now. The bailiff beside me became more and more alert.
Mastine did not want the fact of my virginity to go by unnoted. "Stop for a second," he said. "Had you ever had sexual intercourse with anyone at that time of your life?"
I felt shame. "No," I said, "I had not."
"Continue," said Mastine, stepping back again. I talked uninterrupted for nearly five minutes. I described the assault, the blow job, talked about how cold I was, detailed the robbery of $8 from my back pocket, his kiss good-bye, his apology. Our parting. "… and he said, 'Hey, girl.' I turned around. He said, 'What is your name?' I said 'Alice.' "
Mastine needed specifics. He asked about penetration. He asked how many times it had occurred if more than once.
"It would be ten times because-or something to that effect, because he kept putting it in there, and then it kept falling out. So that is 'in there,' right? I am sorry. That is entering, right?"
My innocence seemed to embarrass them. Mastine, the judge, the bailiff beside me.
"So in any event, he did have penetration?"
"Yes."
Next, more questions on lighting. Then the photo exhibits. Photos of the scene.
"Did you receive any injuries as a result of this attack?"
I detailed these injuries.
"Were you bleeding when you left the scene?"
"Yes, I was."
"I am showing you the photographs marked for identification thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. Look at those, please."
He handed me the photos. I looked only briefly at them.
"Are you familiar with the person depicted in those photographs?"