Jane Doe January (3 page)

I wonder about him remembering that so readily. It doesn't sound like he was recalling that we'd had legs he liked, but recalling specifically that he had
told
us that he liked them. Maybe saying that was his thing. Maybe he says that to his girlfriend.

Yes, he has a girlfriend. Detective Campbell talked to her. I think I'm supposed to feel sorry for her, but I'm disgusted, horrified, and
sick at the thought.
How can she let him touch her?
It's shocking to me.

I wonder, briefly, if she looks like me.

Detective Campbell tells me that Fryar assured his girlfriend not of his innocence, but that the statute of limitations had passed.

Statutes of limitations have a long history, even as far back as ancient Greece. The power of accusation can be abused and must be controlled. In the United States, many felonies have relatively short time periods in which a charge can be brought against someone; Rhode Island, for example, has one of the shortest limitations on charging someone with rape: just three years. Pennsylvania in 1992 allowed only five years; now they allow twelve.

One reason for statutes of limitations is concern for evidence. As time passes, witness memories fade and physical proofs (receipts for an alibi, for example) are thrown away. It would be unfair to wait to charge someone who might have been able to defend themselves at the time but no longer can, through no fault of their own. With technological advances, however, new forms of evidence, such as DNA analysis, better stand the test of time.

Another reason for limitation is the idea that someone who has committed only a long-ago crime, and not a recent one, could be considered reformed and of more good to society as an active citizen than a prisoner. I dislike that reason. Acknowledgment of the weight of the crime—and punishment is that acknowledgment—seems more important.

In the case of stranger rape, the delay of prosecution is often not a delay of accusation, which is what statutes of limitations are designed to prevent, but a delay of identification. That crucial difference has inspired several states to try to get around their current limitations. There are two common tactics: no-name warrants (charging, for example, “John Doe, unknown male, whose DNA
profile has the following genetic locations . . .”) and amending the old statutes with new DNA exceptions.

In 2004, Pennsylvania took the second route. They added a law that allows new DNA matches, if they identify previously unsuspected persons, to reopen expired cases for a single fresh year. This, and only this, is what can reopen my case. In the absence of a DNA match to trigger the law, even a full confession won't be prosecutable.

The hospital visit right after the rape had been my first-ever gynecological exam, and the rape kit had added to the ordeal. I'd been combed and swabbed and plucked, humiliatingly and painfully, in the hope of one day bringing proof to court. But my evidence is not a sure thing. One of the samples from my kit, my blood, has already been found inadequate, either gone off or used up from when the kit was tested back in '92.

It hadn't been tested for DNA, of course. They had tested for blood type, enzyme markers, and secretor status of the attacker, characteristics far more general than a DNA identification. They had been as thorough on my behalf as the technology of the time recommended. Unfortunately, my kit might be in better shape for proper DNA analysis now if it had been, back then, left untouched.

Pittsburgh has sent my local police in England a collection kit for a “buccal swab” from the inside of my cheek. Unlike blood samples, which require temperature control, the swab only needs a little silica pack to see it through being shipped back across the Atlantic. When the Pittsburgh lab gets my fresh exemplar, they can try to untangle my DNA from the man's in the 1992 samples swabbed from inside me and cut from my underwear.

The sergeant looking after me here in Cambridge is a cheerful, chatty woman who told me earlier that she's working only nights this week. I show up at the police station at 10:30
P.M.
and have to
ask for her through a yellow phone attached to the outside wall. I've just come from a book club meeting that was discussing one of my novels, and have an enormous bouquet from them in my arms, orange roses mixed with buds that look like little strawberries. My laptop bag hangs heavily and awkwardly. I'm worried about being late for our babysitter. A man loiters on the street corner, making me nervous.

I think asking for a DNA test is code for “this is a sexual assault case.” Earlier in the day I had dropped by to make sure I knew the correct entrance for later. The man at the front counter had been perfectly fine and friendly, but when I asked about entry after 10
P.M.
he had just indicated that the station would be closed. I persisted, saying that the sergeant I needed to see is working nights, and then at last added that “I need to do a DNA test.” That triggered an immediate softness, and the instruction to later use the yellow telephone.

The same happens with the man on the other end of the yellow phone. I ask for Sergeant Judith Hiley, and he tries to ring her. No answer. He tries a different number; no answer, and he seems like he's about to give up. I tell him that I'm there to take a DNA test, and, immediately, he swings into action, sending someone around the station to find her. I will get to see her tonight.

Sergeant Hiley brings me inside and then through, into a tiny room. I see no other people in the station, not one, not even in a corridor. Opening the UPS envelope from Pittsburgh feels like Christmas. Besides two swab kits (in case one goes wrong) there are instructions, a prepaid return label, and a prizelike fabric patch that says
PITTSBURGH POLICE
.

Sergeant Hiley says that the swabs are different from the British kind; they're also, I note, different from any I've seen on TV. They look like pregnancy tests. We lean in over the instructions and read them aloud to be sure we'll get it right. I'm to rub it seven times
against the inside of my cheek, pulling only forward toward the lips, not rubbing back and forth. I think I've done it right. She seals it and marks the date carefully as “October the 4th” rather than using the usual numeric shorthand. The Brits do that day-month, opposite of Americans, and she worries it would be read as April 10th instead of 4th October if she did it her normal way.

It's the weekend, so the package won't even start flying until Monday.

I wait.

I feel stalled. The swab has arrived and I've been told that the lab manager in Pittsburgh is “excited” to receive it and that it's been made “a priority.” Somehow this adds up to weeks before I can expect results. I'm impatient, and can't concentrate. An extradition hearing, to authorize moving Fryar from New York, where he was arrested, to Pennsylvania, where he'll be tried, was scheduled to have happened yesterday. Once he arrives, his charges will be read against him. They won't include mine. I don't count yet.

I feel guilty for continuing to see John the chaplain to talk about nothing happening, but he says that I'm welcome. He works for the Cambridge University college at which my young sons sing as boy sopranos with the college men. I have no relationship of my own with the college, so I worry that John may get into trouble for spending so much time on me. He cheerfully insists, always suggesting the next time with his calendar out. I asked him for help just the first time; he's never made me ask again.

The college makes an effort to embrace choir families, and the whole beautiful place feels open to me: the cloister court, the candlelit chapel, the practical rehearsal room lined with shelves of repertoire, the big green lawn where the boys battle with autumn chestnuts (which are called conkers here) and play soccer (which is called football) until they're called in for practice. The resulting
music is extraordinary. It makes me happy. Sometimes it's so lovely I could cry.

I talk with John a lot. Random memories bubble up and pop. Not memories of the rape itself, but of ripples that radiated out from it:

In the hospital. The doctor gave me two pills: one for right then, and one for twelve hours later. She didn't tell me what they were but said, with intense gravity, that I
really really
should take them. I figured out later, after terrible cramps and queasiness, that they were the morning-after pill. My friends who'd come to the hospital had prayed in the waiting area, and I wore a gold cross around my neck. I assume that the doctor didn't tell me what the pills were out of concern that I might refuse them. I probably would have. I'm grateful now.

Going back to that apartment exactly once, to pick up my things. There were clouds of black fingerprint powder on the walls and door. Even the inside of my sink was dark and smeared, where the forensic people had washed their hands, and my pretty scented soap had dried dirty.

Some people ask me about forgiveness (notably not the chaplain, for which I'm grateful). It's something people want me to say yes to, but I'm not clear what's meant.

The parable of forgiveness in Matthew 18 has to do with forgiveness of debt. It comes down to canceling a debt and walking away from it. But when I ask these people, so keen for me to forgive, if they think that Arthur Fryar shouldn't go to prison, they're appalled. Of course, they insist, he must. I'm not sure how one can demand forgiveness and punishment in the same breath. Isn't the definition of forgiveness release from punishment?

I think they mean forgiveness as an internal position, something like a feeling. They want, for my sake, for me to be free of thinking
of him at all. They want, for their sakes, for me to follow the religious script.

What I feel is that I would like for him to be sentenced long enough that he will surely die in prison, which I think is the opposite of forgiveness. What I also feel is pity for him, because I know he's worse off than me. I can't imagine how anyone can bear that kind of guilt. Well, the guilt that I think he ought to feel. I can pity him for that potential guilt, or pity him for being too broken to feel guilt, which I think would make him too broken to feel most anything else. Perhaps pity comes close to forgiveness. Pity is at least kind, if also condescending.

Detective Campbell has told me that Arthur Fryar claims to have lived in fear of capture these past two decades, and that he wants forgiveness from us, the two women he's admitted to. Again, I don't know what this means. Perhaps his best-case scenario is that we tell him that it's all right, it didn't hurt, we didn't mind. Impossible.

Next-best may be assurance that it was bad then, but all right now. I could almost offer that. I am happy now. He didn't break anything in me that didn't eventually heal. If that comforts him in prison, in the years he'll while away before he dies there, I don't mind.

Maybe that not-minding if he finds peace in prison counts as a kind of forgiveness, or at least indifference.

The date of the extradition hearing passes with no news. I ask Detective Campbell about it, and she scrambles to get information about a mysterious new New York court date that has appeared on the docket for a month from now.

It turns out that Arthur Fryar is fighting extradition, which means that he's denying his identity, the only thing an extradition hearing tries to prove. By doing so, he's inherently denying that he's Arthur Fryar, the man whose DNA has matched, an absurd
argument that will be disproved but it will take time. Detective Campbell has never seen this before. This delay helps me, gives my evidence a chance to catch up. I'd been desperately worried that the other woman's case would surge ahead without me. The prosecution is slow motion now, like the lab. So long as court and forensics keep pace with one another, and keep inching forward together, it's not so bad having to wait.

This complication helps me in other ways, too. I feel like there's this huge machine, a machine made of dozens of people, acting out anger for me. Not that they feel angry; I don't think they do; but they're acting out what anger demands. The Pittsburgh police are gathering photos and fingerprints from a previous arrest to prove Arthur Fryar's identity. The district attorney is drafting a Governor's Warrant to force him to face what he's done. I don't have to demand anything.

It's nice inside the machine. The parts are working without my help. I think it's significant that in criminal cases there is no plaintiff. I'm not suing Arthur Fryar; if my evidence comes through, the state will prosecute him on my behalf for his offenses not only against me and the other woman but against society.

Some people think that I'm serene because I'm good. Really, I'm serene because other people are doing the ugly things for me. The ugly things need doing. I'm ready to act out anger if I have to, to be loud if I have to, to be demanding and pushy and forceful, but it's not needed. The machine grinds on.

I tell John what Arthur Fryar wants from me. He flinches when I say it, which I appreciate. He says that Fryar has no right to ask me for forgiveness. Fryar can ask God, but not me. Fryar's not allowed to ask me for anything.

John, so formal in the chapel and so domestic in his college office, is another hardworking part of the good machine.

Some people think it's surprising that I talk to him, of all people. I think he finds it a surprise, too. People assume that I would be uncomfortable talking to a man, but I don't mind men. I mind the one man.

The other reason for surprise, I suppose, is his age. He's young. Not too young; not in his twenties anymore; but, still, he's in his early thirties, about ten years younger than me.

I did marvel, when I hit forty, that I had aged significantly past many of the authority figures in my life: my agent and editor, the kids' teachers and coaches, various doctors and pastors. It bothered me for about a year. Now I feel like we're all in this together, all of us over-thirty grown-ups.