"Any medical findings of significance?" I asked Teague.
"Nothing."
"Lacerations, abrasions, discoloration, swelling?" He shook his head in the negative.
I elicited background information from Corinne about her education and employment. I questioned her about the medications she took regularly and her alcohol consumption habits.
"Have you ever had so much to drink before that you couldn't remember things the next day?"
"Yeah. It happens to me every now and then. I've had some blackouts, too. Not passing out completely, but just carrying on with my friends, and then having no memory of it the next day. My doctor tells me I'm not supposed to mix my antidepressants with liquor, but most of the time it doesn't really bother me… I haven't had anything to eat since last night. Do you think you could send out for a sandwich for me?"
"No problem," Teague replied. "There's a sandwich shop that delivers, or there's a guy on the corner with a hot dog stand. I can run down and get one for you, whichever you'd prefer."
Corinne's face screwed up in disgust. "You mean those New York City hot dogs that sit in that dirty water in those pushcarts all day? I couldn't possibly eat that stuff."
No, but she could drink a six-pack of some liquid concoction without a clue about what was in it or how it would mix with her medication, and never even blink. Teague left the room to call in an order for Corinne and a few cups of coffee to keep us all going.
Gorinne rested her head, cushioned on her crossed arms, on the table in front of her. "Would you like to tell me about the evening, or as much of it as you can remember?" I asked.
She had met Craig at the party at about midnight, and they were really getting along well together. After a few vodka and cranberry juice cocktails, they left to go to a bar somewhere in the East Nineties. That's where she had the Brain Tumors. Maybe three of them. Maybe five.
"Was he coming on to you at all?"
"Like, what do you mean?"
"Did he seem to be interested in you physically? Did he ever touch you or kiss you?"
"Oh, yeah. We were dancing, I remember that. The jukebox was playing music and I asked him to dance with me."
"Fast or slow?"
"Slow stuff, mostly. He was kissing me, you could say."
"Were you kissing each other?"
"Sure. But I know what you're gonna say. And that doesn't give him any right to have sex with me, especially if he didn't use a condom."
"Did you see anybody else that you know at the bar?"
"No. He's the one who decided where to go drinking. I didn't know another soul."
"How about the bartender? Were you talking to him?"
Corinne thought for a minute. "Yeah. After we'd been there for a while, most of the place kind of cleared out. He and Craig were having a long talk about something-movies, I think it was. They both liked the same kind of movies. Science fiction, stuff I don't know about."
"So there's a good chance, if Teague stops over there tonight, that the bartender can help put together some of the things you don't remember when it came time to leave the bar?"
"Like, what do you mean?"
"How you two were acting toward each other. He might recall some of your conversation, if you had any in his presence at the bar. How many drinks he served you and how drunk you were. Or what kind of physical interaction there was between you and Craig." It was often useful to remind a witness that other people we could talk to might actually be able to help us reconstruct some of the things she had been too wasted to think about clearly.
"You're really going to speak with that bartender?"
"Don't you want us to? After all, part of what you claim is that you didn't go to Craig's hotel room willingly, under your own steam."
She extended one arm out on the table in front of her and rested her head back down on it. "What if he tells you, like, that Craig and I were making out while we were in the bar?"
"That still doesn't give him the right to force you to have sex with him, or to take advantage of you if you weren't participating." I fed her back the line she had tried to use earlier to get me to act on her complaint. If Craig had engaged in a sexual act with her after she had passed out, we might be able to establish the occurrence of a crime.
"Yeah, well, what if the bartender tells you that we both went into the men's room for a while? What's that gonna do to my case?"
"That depends on what you tell me happened in the men's room, doesn't it?"
"You're gonna be all judgmental about it." Corinne focused her eyes on a spot on the ceiling, above my head, and looked even more sullen than she had when I arrived.
"I have no reason to be judgmental. You tell me what the facts are, I'll tell you whether we've got evidence that proves a crime was committed."
"But it's only my word against his?" She was whimpering now.
"That's all we need-your word-in any case. It used to be different, twenty years ago. There had to be more proof than the story of the woman who brings the charge. But now, rape is like every other crime. Your testimony-your credible testimony-is what I present to the jury. Then you're cross-examined by Craig's lawyer. After that, Craig tells him everything he remembers."
I paused to let that fact sink in. "Corinne, what happened in the bathroom at the bar? Did you have sex with him?"
Her eyes returned to the spot on the ceiling. "Not sex. I gave him a blow job. I didn't let him touch me."
I had told her I did not have to make judgments about people. That didn't stop me from wondering about her definition of sexual acts. Maybe it was a generational thing, although she was only ten years younger than I. I had heard it enough times that I had learned to train the young lawyers in my unit never to accept a victim's characterization of the encounter when she said there was "no sex." Ask, I taught them, exactly which body parts made contact with the other person. Most of us make too many assumptions about what other people call sexual acts.
Now she was rubbing her eyes and yawning. "You know, Miss Cooper, I never wanted to call the police about this. It wasn't my idea. That woman at the hospital made me do it. The only reason I went to the emergency room was to get a morning-after pill. I mean, like what if he had sex with me, didn't use a condom, and I find out I'm pregnant?"
"Do you think that's what happened?"
This time she groaned. "I don't know. I just don't know what happened. Don't you get it? That's exactly what I told the doctor who examined me. And after he told me he couldn't see anything unusual, that's when the counselor told me that maybe I was raped."
"Maybe? We don't charge people with felonies, Corinne, 'cause 'maybe' they did something bad. I have to believe a serious crime was committed before I authorize the police to make an arrest. And I have to persuade a jury, beyond a reasonable doubt,that the person charged committed that crime. I can't ask them to guess. I can't ask them to fill in the blanks that you don't remember. If Craig had intercourse with you when you were unconscious, that's another thing-that's a crime. But nobody goes to state prison for twenty-five years because you got drunk and then don't like the way the night ended for you.
"And Teague and I will have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out which of those things is what actually happened."
"But how can you do that?"
"Maybe we won't be able to. But we'll start with the bartender. We'll see if there's a desk clerk at the hotel who saw you coming in with Craig. Maybe even a security surveillance tape that will show you walking with him. It might suggest whether or not you were in any distress-or instead, that you were laughing, having a good time. I'll get the records of all the charges from his bill. See if there was any room service, any minibar use, any pay-TV movies charged to Craig's room during the time you were-"
"Oh, jeez, let's just forget about it then." Now she was moving from apathy to anger.