Jane Doe January (12 page)

That's how it is with Evan and the detectives, understandably. I must remember that. This is my once-in-a-lifetime trial. But, to them, it's just their normal work. They deal with far worse than what happened to me; they even deal with kids. I work myself up until I assume the worst, that they're secretly annoyed and impatient, and only kind to my face. I'm surprised that they don't throw their hands up and say, “It was just sex. You were an adult. Deal with it.”

Evan has sent me the DNA results to tide me over until we can talk. I appreciate that he knows that I like to have the paperwork. The first page says
CONFIDENTIAL
at the top, has fancy logos in the letterhead, and mentions that the test cost the county four thousand dollars.

DNA testing doesn't compare entire genetic sequences; that would make an already lengthy process completely impractical. Instead, the lab compares just a few pieces of genetic code, fifteen to be exact, pieces that are known for being highly individual as opposed to generically human. Matching just those few provides a likelihood well beyond reasonable doubt. For example, the likelihood that the sperm sample they swabbed out of me would match a randomly selected black man are 1 in 2,600,000,000,000,000,000,000. (The listed odds are separated out by race and the chance of finding a white or Hispanic man to match are even farther out there.)

Evan's also given me the revised sentencing forms. Now that
Pennsylvania has the certified conviction for Fryar's 1976 rape in New York, his Prior Record Score has jumped from zero to three. Evan had hoped that it would hit four, and on the page I can see that the automatic calculation of “4” has been whited out and replaced with a handwritten “3.” That's one of the things I need to ask him about. In any case, the improvement in sentences from a PRS of zero to three doesn't seem terribly much, at most eighteen months extra per charge, even for the top counts.

Looking at these forms, I can understand why I can barely make sense of Fryar's official past. The system wouldn't accept the true “date of offense” in all charges, as the crime was so long ago, so some of the boxes say that this happened last August (a date that Dan had chosen because it's when I'd started badgering him again, just before the arrest). Other charges, which have the correct offense date of January 1992 in a different database, mysteriously say on this form June 1997, which I suppose could be the early limit in this particular database, though the change of month from January to June is inexplicable. Both of these incorrect dates contribute to automatically generated and incorrect “age at offense” numbers for Fryar. Anyone looking at this twenty years from now would not get any kind of accurate picture at all. It would even look like he'd attacked me more than once, years apart.

Even more significantly to me, one of the “indecent assault” charges, which is supposed to be of the subtype “forcible compulsion,” is coming up in some databases incorrectly as subtype “mental disease or defect,” meant to be used when the victim is too mentally disabled to consent. I've been after Dan to correct it, assuming it to have been caused by a typo in the charge number. Turns out that it is the right number, just linking someplace to the wrong charge, perhaps to an older version of the laws. The wording is as it should be on Evan's paperwork, but I hate seeing it wrong elsewhere, especially publicly accessible elsewheres.

Other things confuse me, too, I think because the page automatically generates sentence information based on current standards, but we're limited to using the standards as they were in 1992, when the crime was committed. For the first four charges, for example, the handwritten “guideline range” maximum is well below the generated “statutory limit” minimum.

I'm learning new acronyms. For every charge, the option for “IP eligible” is checked off. Google tells me that IP stands for “Intermediate Punishment,” which allows for house arrest, electronic monitoring, or probation instead of prison. Another is “RS,” which is what's listed as a possible sentence for the misdemeanor charges. These are “Restorative Sanctions,” also meaning no prison time.

I'm horrified to discover these, and I'm relieved that the delay of our call gives me the chance to review these documents thoroughly before we talk. I send Evan an e-mail that says, in part, “No, no, no, no, no.”

Now in the headspace of poring over paperwork, I look carefully at all of my collected documents.

Just after returning from the hearing in January, I'd finally received minutes from two of the extradition hearings in New York, which had been a struggle to get. I'd only glanced at them when they arrived. I'd wanted them desperately before the Pittsburgh hearing, but they seemed insignificant when they arrived after. Fryar hadn't appeared at either of these New York hearings, but rather had just been represented by attorneys (different ones, both Legal Aid). One report is only a single page. The other, just a few. I look at them now.

He did fight extradition, by not waiving it. He made Pennsylvania go through the rigmarole of getting a Governor's Warrant. I wonder why he was happier on Rikers Island. Is he a connoisseur of prisons, fearing Pennsylvania's more? Or was it the official charges
that would be attached to him once he got to Pennsylvania that he feared? Anecdotally, it's more difficult to be in prison as a rapist than as, say, a drug dealer or fugitive. He would know this firsthand.

I hadn't noticed before that the Staten Island warrant from the eighties was mentioned at the first extradition hearing in Manhattan. Interestingly, the warrant appears to have been still outstanding, though I don't know how this can be, considering that he finally served time in Otisville. At the end of the hearing, the judge specifically adjourned the Staten Island case back to them for the next day, with a token bail of one dollar.

I need to call Richmond County, again, and talk once more to that sounds-like-just-one guy.

There's a day to go before my Skype call with Evan.

In the short term, he replies to my e-mail to quickly clarify that the check box next to the “IP eligible” phrase is actually in a column that's headed “no” farther above. That X actually means Fryar's
not
up for punishment outside of prison. Relief. And annoyance—these forms are more difficult to read than even tax returns.

There's an hour to go before our call.

So I call Staten Island, this time the court reporter office. Instead of getting “that guy,” I get a shrill, awful woman. Before she's even found the case, she wants to know who I am that I want her to look, and demands that I explain to her why I want to order court minutes if I'm not an attorney. I say simply that I'm a member of the public and I'd like to order the minutes of a public proceeding. She says, slyly, “Oh, are you one of those court watchers? You sit in courtrooms all day, huh?” Her voice is full of disgust, as if she thinks I get off on it. I say again that I'm a member of the public and I have the right to order minutes of a public proceeding. She insists that I explain myself. I tell her, carefully but firmly, that I don't have to. I don't, not any more than I would have to explain why I want
to buy something in a shop or order lunch in a restaurant. It's not her business why.

She yells at me and hangs up. I'm shaking. I call the Richmond county clerk again, and get one of the interchangeable guys. I babble, upset, about the horrible woman at the court reporter office. The guy's voice is soothing and friendly over the tapping of his fingers on the keyboard. He finds a reference to what happened this recent September 13, when the extradition judge sent Fryar's old warrant case back to Staten Island. There, it was “dismissed in the interests of justice.” It's also sealed.

I suspect that this dismissal was a kindness to our case, deferring to Pennsylvania's greater claim rather than competing with it. Because New York already had him in custody then, if they'd tried to keep him over Pennsylvania's request they probably would have succeeded. Thank you, Staten Island, for letting us have him.

I'd been wondering why Fryar had a sealed case in 1986. I'd assumed, from the law, that the sealed case had to have been something minor or unproven. Maybe, though, it is the drugs and warranting case that was referred to, and the sealing happened as recently as this past fall, because the case had been dismissed, for Pennsylvania's sake. For my sake, mine and Georgia's.

I'm still rattled by the vicious woman who answered the court reporter line. People must have all kinds of reasons to want information about a case. Family, right? Family of the defendant, or of the victim. Really, anyone who's been affected by things that are so awful that they get all the way to court might want to know more. Why should those people have to parade their reasons to her satisfaction? Why should I?

I can't be the only nonlawyer who orders minutes. That's simply not possible. I want to know everything. Doesn't everyone?

It's almost time for Evan to call.

Evan looks older on this call, and more tired. Maybe it's only because I turned the brightness of the screen to max, but this time he has a bit of five o'clock shadow. That's appropriate, I suppose, as for him it will be five o'clock in about an hour. For me, it's after nine.

He clarifies the sentencing forms for me.

The Prior Record Score is a handwritten three instead of an automatic four because that's what it would have been in 1992. He points out that the results of a PRS of three when applied to the 1992 guidelines are very similar to the way a current PRS of four interacts with the current guidelines, so that makes sense.

The sentencing Guideline Ranges, which come in “mitigated,” “standard,” and “aggravated” versions, have no concrete rules about which column certain kinds of cases must be put into. It will be the defense's job at sentencing to argue for mitigated, our job to try for aggravated, and the judge's job to choose.

I assume that the Guideline Ranges are what's recommended, and that the Statutory Limits are the absolute extremes to which sentences can be pushed outside of those recommended ranges. I'm not quite right. Instead of the Statutory Limits being the absolute lowest and highest that sentences can go, meaning the lowest that the minimum can be and the highest that the maximum can be, they're actually both highests: the highest that the maximum sentence can be, yes, and also the highest that the minimum can be. They're there to protect from draconian sentences.

Evan tells me that, in the case of a negotiated plea, he'll likely start with an offer of thirty to sixty years, for all charges in both of our cases combined, and go no lower than accepting twenty to forty.

He asks me not to worry about the minimum being too low. He says that Fryar is unlikely to be given parole, and that he, Evan, will speak against Fryar at any future parole hearings. Evan's youth suddenly becomes valuable. He'll still be working then, after I'm old.

If it comes to a jury conviction, Evan will present to the judge how the low ends of the mitigated, standard, and aggravated sentence ranges add up if served consecutively, and argue for standard and consecutive at least, really for aggravated and consecutive. For my half of the case alone, the minimums in the standard range add up to almost nineteen years, and the minimums in the aggravated range add up to over thirty-one. Georgia's charges, which are slightly fewer, would probably come in at about three quarters of that, so together the standard would start at something over thirty years, and, within guidelines, could hit an aggravated maximum around seventy. Eschewing the guidelines, which the judge has the right to do, and obeying only the absolute Statutory Limits, the sentence could break a hundred years.

Serial stranger-rape cases in Pittsburgh, of which there are more than I expected, routinely do get sentences that high—dramatic, reassuringly punitive sentences—but not from this judge.

The larger point of the call, the potential delay of the trial, is itself put off. Monday is when the defense will at last meet with Fryar to discuss the confirmatory DNA results. Evan has insisted to Fryar's assigned attorney that they must decide then whether Fryar will plead guilty, or, if going to trial, whether they'll delay for an expert. If the defense chooses trial without first delaying to find a DNA expert, that could leave any eventual conviction open for appeal under the Post Conviction Relief Act. If Fryar wants to go to trial as scheduled, without an expert, Evan will insist on a signed waiver of Fryar's right to one.

We'll Skype again Monday night, three days away, to discuss whatever the news may be.

If it's a plea, Evan will give me a to-do list to start prepping my impact statement for sentencing, which he promises we'll work on together, back and forth.

If it's a trial coming up, he'll give me a to-do list for readying my testimony. We'll schedule more Skype calls, with Dan sitting in. Evan has to have someone with him when he and I discuss my testimony, in case I mention anything that's not already written in a police report. If Evan's alone when he hears any new information from me, that can force him to become a witness in his own case and therefore prevent him from continuing as the prosecutor. If there's a second person there, then he or she can be the witness to the new information, and it might as well be a police officer, because any new information will require an official supplemental police report.

I ask if I can see the courtroom before whatever official thing, whether plea or trial, starts. My plane will land late-ish the day before, so he says that we can meet at seven the next morning, when the building opens, and get a sheriff (again with the sheriffs!) to open the room for us. Then he promises me a conference room
to wait in, between the early look-see and the official start of court, presumably a couple of hours later. It'll be an upgrade from waiting in the busy, bare municipal court hallway for the hearing.

He tries to prepare me, gently, for a plea, and assures me that it would be a good thing, a guaranteed thing. That's what he thinks is going to happen on Monday. He lists the pros of such an outcome, tripping over the benefit of the victim being spared giving their testimony. “I know that skipping that isn't what you want,” he corrects himself, “but most victims do.”

I accept “most,” but surely that leaves, oh, I don't know, maybe 30 percent who do want to testify, right? The way that I feel can't be completely oddball, surely.

He agrees that there are those few who are eager to testify, but says that they usually fall more toward the extreme, prioritizing their day in court and the official expression of their anger over their effect on the jury or sentencing outcome. I want that, too; testifying is important to me. But apparently, in his experience, my interest in the process details and my cool focus on nailing Fryar to the wall is indeed unusual.

Georgia doesn't want to testify again. The hearing was hard enough for her. If I get what I want, that will hurt her, and vice versa.

Oh, and Fryar's apparently “found Jesus” in jail.

Evan cracks a joke about that. I laugh, and just think,
Bullshit.
Fryar's had twenty-two years to feel guilty, and it hasn't motivated him before now.

Mother's Day (the American one, two months after Britain's “Mothering Sunday”) comes in handy. Fryar's sister posts an old photo on Facebook, and relatives comment. Now I know their mother's name, and from that find her maiden name and where she grew up. Newburgh, New York, where Fryar's first convicted rape took place, was her hometown.

I feel better now, knowing both of his parents' names, especially his mother's. This makes him less mysterious to me, less symbolic. He's just one limited man, with one limited life, not a force. He keeps getting smaller to me, piece by piece.

According to my religion, I'm supposed to pray for my enemies.

As with forgiveness, I'm not sure what this actually means. Pray for what, exactly? Not pray for them to get what they want, which is to hurt me. That doesn't make sense, even in the turning-everything-on-its-head way that Jesus tended to talk. After all, one of the biggest commandments is to “love your neighbor as yourself,” which assumes self-care as the foundational, appropriate, and natural way of things. If I treat myself poorly, then treating others the same way wouldn't really help anyone. The commandment only works if I'm kind to me.

I think that praying for my enemies means something along the lines of praying for their general well-being, in ways apart from whatever they're trying to take from me. Maybe in this case it means to pray that Fryar makes a place for himself in prison that is safe and perhaps in some ways satisfying; that he is able to keep connected to his family and to have friends.

But that feels condescending and almost comical. I'm working to put him in prison, a place he desperately fears, for so long that he'll die there, yet I'm to pray that he'll have some peace, distraction, and satisfaction while inside? It's a pathetic scrap to drop onto the floor for him. Let's not pretend that it's generous.

It reminds me of the laughable “gentlemanliness” that he showed me afterward, telling me in a soft voice as he zipped up: “You'll feel better if you lie here.” I think, from my memory, that he gestured toward my futon bed in the corner while he said it. We'd never gotten as far as the mattress. Everything had happened on the floor between the door and the back of the couch.

“You'll feel better if you lie here” is from Bill's notes. I remembered the sentiment without the cue of the notes, but not the exact words, just the command, in that sweet voice, that meant “rest.” It was a bizarro-world generosity, a gallant “oh, it sometimes hurts your first time, sweetheart, give yourself a break” kind of thing. I read into it something else, too:
Don't stand up.
He needed to get away. I needed to show him that I wouldn't do anything to prevent that. I had to present as obedient, so that he wouldn't have to do anything to make me unable to get up once he was gone.

Bill's notes tell me that I said, “Good night, Bob.” I was nice. I had one goal:
Don't get killed
.

I don't want to pray for him, but, if I do, being motivated by this verse makes it a backhanded kindness: it defines him as my enemy. It feels satisfying to call him that. I can't think of any other person in the world who is personally “my enemy.”

I'm probably supposed to pray that he realizes the extent of his guilt and accepts the forgiveness of Jesus's sacrifice, which is supposedly what he's already done, and about which I'm utterly cynical.

One of the things that John has been plain about from the start is that the goal is not some touching scene of my forgiving Fryar in person and our having a new relationship as siblings in Christ, which is the hero-ending that lots of religious stories work toward. John knows—it's probably pretty obvious to anyone near me—that I'm idealistic and ambitious, and so susceptible to aiming for such things, or at least to feeling guilty if I don't. One of the early things he'd said to me was that Fryar forced himself on me once, and that any religiously motivated scenario that shoves him up against me again is not okay.

Just as Fryar must ask God for forgiveness if he wants it, and stay away from me, if I want to forgive Fryar (should I ever figure out what that means), that's between me and God. It's not necessary or desirable for the two of us, me and the bad man, to interact again, ever.

John agrees to pray for Fryar for me when I ask him to, but it's plain that the request takes him by surprise. He cares about me, not Fryar.

I do wonder if, as a priest, he's supposed to care about everybody, which would include Fryar. But I suppose that, as a priest (and just as a person), he's supposed to be disgusted by what Fryar has done, so I guess it all evens out. Besides, Fryar has his own chaplain, in jail. Perhaps Christians aren't each meant to do all of the faith individually, but can share the duties. Just as the ideals of the legal system would fail if the prosecutor and defense attorney were the same person, perhaps religion also requires people to take on discrete roles. Fryar needs someone to care about him, but it would be a betrayal for Evan or John to do it. There are sides here.

That I get to see John today, before Evan calls with Fryar's decision, feels almost decadent. Normally I get only about two chances to talk about the prosecution in a week, on top of short, in-passing references. It's a luxury to have two chances to talk about it in a day.

I wait for Evan to call to tell me of Fryar's decision to plead, delay, or move forward. In this prosecution year so far, Fryar has had very little choice. This is his opportunity to act, which must be a thrill, or a relief, or overwhelming to him.

John's asked me to let him know what happens tonight. We can meet again this week if I need to, if the news rattles me.

I make a little list of who else I'll tell once I know what's going to happen. I now treat news about the trial like party invitations, carefully considering who are in the same social circles or at the same friendship level, and so should be included in the same way; they should hear about it at roughly the same time.

Then, an e-mail instead of a phone call. The festive feeling of “something is going to happen” evaporates. Fryar's lawyer isn't answering Evan's calls. If she doesn't answer by 5
P.M.
his time, twenty
minutes away, that's it until tomorrow. Evan has only her office number, not her cell phone's.

She should be the one doing the calling. I speculate. Has she not been able to meet with Fryar yet? Has she met with him, but he hasn't been able to decide? Has he decided something, but she doesn't like it and is trying to persuade him otherwise?

I wish that my e-mail would make a sound when a new message arrives. Instead, I have to stare at the mail window, to immediately catch whatever Evan might say in what is now the last eight minutes before the workday finishes in Pittsburgh. I choose a song that's eight minutes long—the choir singing Bairstow's “Blessed City, Heavenly Salem”—explicitly for its length, to remind myself of exactly when the time runs out on learning anything tonight.

The music finishes; five o'clock in Pennsylvania; no message. Evan must be on the phone with her now. I play the song again, to give him time to have the conversation I hope he's having, then I'll look at my e-mail again.

Nothing.

I play the song again. Gavin is downstairs, watching a TV show that he knows bores me, saving the shows we both like for when we can watch them together.

I check my e-mail again. I stay up here. I play the song another time. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Morning. No e-mail from Evan has come in overnight. Even though it's not yet dawn in Pennsylvania, I continue to click hopefully on my in-box throughout the next hours, on my iPad while the kids are rock-climbing and swimming. We homeschool, which is why I'm with my kids on a day of the week that I can reasonably expect Fryar's defense attorney to be answering Evan's continued calls to her office phone. When we get home, the boys have math and programming to do, and there's new paperwork to distract me.