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Q: Isn’t it true, Mrs. Leeds, that when you were removed by ambulance from the police station to the hospital, the examining physician could find no bruises anywhere on your body?

A: No, that’s not true.

Q: It’s not? Well, I have here the medical report…

A: There were bruises on my…

Q: Yes?

A: Breasts.

Q: Ah?

A: And thighs.

Q: I see. But you didn’t suffer a broken nose, for example, did you?

A: No, but there was a…

Q: Or even a bloody nose? Was your nose bleeding when you got to the police station?

A: No.

Q: Had any of your teeth been knocked out?

A: No. But there was a bump at the back of my head, from where I hit it on the…

Q: Were your eyes blackened?

A: No.

Q: Any black-and-blue marks anywhere else on your body?

A: I told you. My breasts and my thighs were.

Q: You’re not saying, are you, that those bruises on your breasts and thighs were the result of being punched?

A: No, but…

Q: Or kicked?

A: They didn’t kick me, no.

Q: Did they, in fact, harm you physically in any way whatsoever?

A: Yes! They raped me!

Q: Mrs. Leeds, did these men, who happened to be in the kitchen at the time you say you were…

A: Objection!

A: Strike it.

Q: Were you beaten up by these men who allegedly raped you?

A: No, but they…

Q: Yes, if you can tell us what they did do, without repeating over and over again that they raped you, I’m sure we’d all love to hear it.

A: They held me down.

Q: I see.

A: And they put a gag in my mouth.

Q: What sort of gag?

A: A handkerchief.

Q: I see. Do you watch a lot of movies, Mrs. Leeds?

A: Objection.

A: Sustained.

Q: What else did they do to you?

A: They… threatened me.

Q: Oh? In what language?

A: At the time, I didn’t know what language. I only knew…

Q: Oh? You mean you don’t speak Vietnamese fluently?

A: I knew what they meant!

Q: How could you possibly have known what…?

A: I knew.

She knows that the one with the new mustache is giving them orders, whispering urgent directions to the other two. Tear off her panties, he must be telling them, because on either side of her they grasp the legholes and rip upward toward her crotch, leaving her open to their hands. Another command and she is suddenly being lifted off the ground and onto the hood of the automobile. She tries to say something around the filthy handkerchief in her mouth, tries to say I’m a respectable married woman, please don’t do this to me, please, but the leader, the one with the mustache, slaps her sharply across the cheek again, and then whispers something to the other two.

“This was Ho. The one giving the orders was Ho. I memorized his face, I could see it clearly in the moonlight, he was the leader.”

They rip open her blouse, the little pearl buttons frying upward on the night, catching little glints of moonlight as they explode and fall onto the hood of the car, rattling there, rolling off. Two of them grasp her thighs and yank her legs apart. Ho, the leader, steps between her open legs, she hears the whisper of his zipper in the dark. The other two whisper encouragement. One of them laughs softly, almost a girlish giggle. The other leans into her and kisses her on the breast. Something gleams on his face, she realizes all at once that he has a glass eye, the eye is catching the moonlight, reflecting it…

“This was Ngo. The one with the glass eye. He was the one who… who… hurt me the most. Later. When they… they…”

One after the other, they violate her.

The Maserati, her cherished luxury automobile, becomes a bed of torture for her, she will hate this car for the rest of her life. The hood is a convenient height for these men. Whichever one is between her legs forces her open as he pumps furiously into her, his fingers digging into her thighs until she screams silently in pain around the handkerchief in her mouth. The other two hold her wrists pinned to the hood of the car on either side of her. With their free hands, they brutally knead her breasts; she will later show the emergency-room doctor the angry bruises their fingers have left, especially around the nipples. Her black panties hang in tatters, both stockings are torn now, one of them undone from its garters and falling to her knee.

When the last of them is finished with her…

“Dang Van Con, the youngest one. Eighteen, I learned later, when he was arrested, when they caught him and the other two. He was the one who… who went last when I was… when I was on my back and they were hold… they were holding my legs open. And then, when they… when they were finished with me that way… they… they…”

Ho is giving orders again.

The other two roll her over, face downward, on the hood of the car.

She screams No.

But they will not stop, they will not stop.

“For more than two hours, they… they did what they wanted to me,” she said, her face still turned away from Matthew. “At the trial, they tried to show that I was out looking for trouble and finally found it — but not with those three. I was mistaken, the rapists were three others. Those three were in the kitchen. They couldn’t have been outside raping me, I was mistaken.”

She turned to him at last.

There were tears in her eyes.

“But no,” she said, “I was not mistaken. They were there. And they raped me.”

She had repeated those words endlessly at the trial, they raped me, they raped me, they raped me — to no avail. Those words seemed to echo accusingly on the air now, they raped me… they raped me… they raped me. The pool made a steady, soothing trickling sound, and in the distant clouds there was the low hum of an unseen airplane. But the words hung on the air, seeming to smother all other sound, they raped me, they raped me, they raped me.

“I still have nightmares about what happened,” she said. “For months afterward, I’d take two sleeping pills before I went to bed each night. But they only made me sleep, they didn’t stop the nightmares.”

She turned to look out over the pool again, beyond the pool, over the fields stretching to the horizon and the yellow-grey sky. Her face in profile was magnificent, the classic nose and jaw, the russet hair swept back from her burnished forehead and cheeks.

“I wonder if the nightmares will ever go away,” she said. “Now that they’re dead, will the nightmares go away?”

“Mrs. Leeds,” Matthew said, “did you take any sleeping pills on the night of the murders?”

She turned to him.

“Did you?”

“No,” she said.

“But there are sleeping pills in the house.”