The Last Good Girl (29 page)

“How are you doing now?”

“I'm older and wiser.” She gave them a small smile. “Definitely more careful at parties. My mom is a rock. We thought about going forward with charges, even consulted a lawyer, but it seemed like nothing good would come of it. She got me a counselor instead. Therapy has been helpful.” Melinda glanced at her watch. “I've gotta go soon.”

Anna looked into Melinda's clear green eyes. She was credible and was strong. She could handle this. Anna said, “I want to bring a criminal case against Dylan Highsmith—and include the charge that he raped you when you were a freshman.”

Melinda looked at Anna for a long moment, then laughed. It wasn't the shrieking hysteria of Kara Briscoe. It was a dry, skeptical laugh.

“Why would I agree to do that?”

“He's still doing it—exactly what he did to you, he's doing to other girls. Someone needs to stop him.”

“Good luck with that. It took me years, and now I'm finally over it. I've got no interest in reopening that can of worms.”

“I understand what you've been through,” Anna said. “And—”

“A criminal trial is public, right?”

“Yes.”

“Press might cover it.”

“There would probably be coverage. But most major news outlets don't publicize the names of rape survivors.”

“Forget major news stations. With bloggers and muckrakers like Drudge, sometimes names do get printed. And it's hard to make a criminal case, isn't it?”

“I'd have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, the highest burden in American law. But that would be my burden, not yours. All you'd have to do is take the stand and tell the truth.”

“If you don't prove your case, the world thinks
I'm
a liar.” Melinda shook her head. “I'm sorry if he's still doing this to other girls, but I don't see how that's my responsibility. I'm a victim, not his partner in crime.”

“That's what makes you particularly powerful, Melinda. You may be the only person who can stop him.”

“And he needs to be stopped,” Sam said. “He's getting worse. Bolder. We think he's graduated to bigger crimes. Have you heard about Emily Shapiro?”

Melinda slowly tucked her hair behind her ears and stared at them. “Everyone has. You haven't arrested him yet?”

“We can't,” Anna said. “Not without you. We need more evidence against him. You might be one of the few people in the world who can make a difference. If you don't come forward now, he'll be free to go after more girls.”

“What if he comes after me?”

“That's not something we see often in sex-assault cases—that's more like an organized crime or gang sort of tactic. But if you were threatened, we could put you up in a hotel. You'd get a police escort to and from court. We could even help you move to another apartment if you want.”

“If I refuse?”

“I literally cannot make a case without you.”

Melinda stared out the window. MSU's campus was more bucolic than Tower's. This felt like a long way from Tower University, and Anna thought of how it must feel for Melinda. Not just in space but in time, how far Melinda had to come to get over what happened to her. To end up here, a successful college student, rather than in a mental hospital with nurses escorting her to her room.

Melinda was silent for a long time. Anna didn't interrupt her contemplation. Sometimes the best argument was letting someone check her conscience. Finally, Melinda answered.

“Okay. I'll do it.”

Anna almost fell off her chair, she was so relieved. “Thank you. So much. Um . . . there any chance you can skip your class and come to Detroit now?”

They never expelled him.

I'm so angry, I can't stand it.

Aaaghh!

Dammit. I liked that mirror. Now I'll have seven years of bad luck, I guess.

I want to throw my phone across the room too. It's taking all my self-control to talk at it instead.

So this morning, I woke up dead set on figuring it out. Why is Dylan on campus? Did someone forget to tell the registrar about him being expelled? I called Yolanda, our fabulous, ha ha, Title IX coordinator. After half an hour of dancing around it, she finally told me. Dylan appealed the expulsion. His fancy D.C. lawyers must've written some magical fucking brief. Because the committee overturned his sentence. He's still officially “reprimanded,” but without being expelled. What does that mean? Nothing, is what.

He gets to walk around campus like it never happened. He gets to graduate. He gets to walk at commencement in a cap and gown; he gets a Tower University diploma to hang on his wall. He gets to continue his regularly scheduled life, just like that. This sucks.

All the names they called me. All those frat boys spitting at me. The girls whispering. The online crap. It was for nothing.

They didn't even let me know, much less ask if I had anything to say about it. I had no clue. I had to find out by seeing him leering at me on campus. I'm, like, shaking all over just remembering it. How can they do that? Didn't they think it mattered to me? That I might, like, have something to say about it? That, if I knew he was coming back, I might try to avoid him, or make sure I'm always walking with a friend, maybe invest in some pepper spray? Or were they worried I'd make noise? Complain. Fight. Refuse to go away quietly, like the good girl I'm supposed to be.

I feel like I've been assaulted all over again.

Only this time, by my own college.

A
nna stepped into the grand jury room in the federal courthouse. She carried an indictment she'd spent the last hour writing, circulating, and getting approved. Twenty-four grand jurors sat at tables that resembled a college seminar room. They were regular citizens—teachers, moms, a dentist—who'd gotten their summons and were performing their civic duty. There was no defense attorney and no judge. In the grand jury, there was just a prosecutor, her witnesses, and the jurors. The jurors would decide if there was probable cause to believe a crime had been committed, and if so, they would indict the defendant for the crime. The defendant had no right to be present or even to know that the grand jury was assembled to investigate him.

“Hello,” Anna said. A few of the jurors glanced up from their newspapers and cell phones. A few didn't. “My name is Anna Curtis, and I'm an Assistant U.S. Attorney from D.C. This is case number 2015-US-1324,
United States versus Dylan Highsmith
.”

Now all the jurors looked up from their devices.

The stenographer's fingers flew over the buttons of her machine. Although this proceeding was secret today, one day it might go to trial, and a defense attorney might parse through every line of this transcript, searching for ways that Anna had messed up, in order to try to get the charges dismissed. Anna had read so many of her own transcripts that as she spoke she imagined the words being typed in Courier font.

“Today I will ask you to indict Mr. Highsmith on one count of violating 18 U.S.C. Section 249(a)(2), a hate crime, for assaulting Emily Shapiro on March 24, 2015, because of her gender. In support of this indictment, you will hear from two witnesses today.”

The jurors turned to one another and murmured. It was unusual to present just two witnesses and then ask for an indictment on such major charges. Even more unusual was a prosecutor they'd never seen before waltzing in and asking them to indict the son of one of the state's most powerful political lions.

“Our first witness, FBI Agent Samantha Randazzo, will summarize most of the evidence against Mr. Highsmith. You will see video footage of the defendant grabbing and chasing Emily Shapiro the night she disappeared. She has not been seen since then. You'll see traffic-camera photos showing that the defendant took a long drive through Detroit and Windsor that night. You'll hear that the victim's blood was found on the defendant's car, and her scarf in his bedroom. You'll see photos of a secret room below the defendant's fraternity, where Ms. Shapiro's initials were inscribed in a book of sexual conquests. You'll hear that she accused him of drugging and raping her earlier this school year, and that she was planning to publish, or already had published, these accusations online.”

All this evidence had been in the warrant that Judge DeLuca had quashed. But Anna would add a little more. The grand jury could make an independent finding of probable cause, considering the additional evidence. If they indicted him, she could get a new warrant for his arrest.

“You will also hear that Dylan Highsmith had a history of drugging and raping young women who visited his fraternity. You may consider this when you decide whether his assault on Ms. Shapiro was based on a hatred of women. My second witness will be Melinda Bates, who is currently a junior at MSU. Ms. Bates will describe how the defendant drugged her when she was a freshman at Tower University, during a fraternity party in 2013. Those drugs rendered Ms. Bates unconscious. While Ms. Bates was incapacitated, the defendant sexually assaulted her.”

“Were any tests done to see whether Ms. Bates had date-rape drugs in her system?” asked a gray-haired man. He wore a badge that said
FOREPERSON
.

“No, sir. You will hear that Ms. Bates did not report the sexual assault to the police when it happened.”

The foreperson said, “You're asking us to bring a federal case against a respected young man because a girl says he drugged her three years ago.”

“And a wealth of additional evidence,” Anna said.

“All of which is circumstantial.”

Anna looked around at the arrayed jurors, who comprised a wide range of ages, colors, and sizes. Many were frowning at her. Statistically, she had to assume that more than half of them had voted for Robert Highsmith in the last election. And Highsmith had been around for a while, kissing babies, doing favors, passing out political pork. Jurors were instructed to recuse themselves if they had a personal relationship with anyone involved in a case, but that rule was hard to enforce. She considered repeating the rule now. But it was unlikely to prompt any recusals and would just alienate the jurors even more.

There was an old saying that a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. But Anna wasn't getting a ham-sandwich vibe. She was getting a sense of palpable hostility. Funny, in D.C. she felt like a midwestern outsider. Here in Michigan, she was the stranger from D.C. coming to indict one of their favored midwestern sons. She wondered if she was a hometown girl anywhere anymore.

“I understand your concerns,” Anna said. “Agent Randazzo will tell you that, based on her training and experience, it is not unusual for a sex-assault victim to delay in reporting the assault. Additionally, I'll read to you the jury instruction that says circumstantial evidence is just as valid as direct evidence. And hearsay is admissible in grand jury proceedings.”

“We know about the hearsay rule—we've been empaneled four weeks,” said the foreperson. “What I'm saying is, I'm not sure I'd vote to indict a man in a case like that.”

Anna tried to smile at him. “Sir, I'll just ask that you keep an open mind as you listen to all the evidence, hear these witnesses, and then listen to my closing argument. Then make a fair judgment after you've considered everything.”

“Fine,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms on his chest. An old lady in the back row pursed her lips like she'd tasted something sour.

They weren't with her. And this was her last chance. Anna's stomach clenched into a hard little ball. “For my first witness,” she said, “I call Agent Samantha Randazzo.”

D
ylan sat in the first-class seat of the Boeing 747 and frowned at the glass of champagne in his hands. The pretty flight attendant leaned down and smiled at him. “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?”

“How about a real drink?”

She gave him a polite, the-customer-is-always-right smile. “I know, it's so silly how we greet everyone with champagne. What would you like?”

“Scotch, neat,” he said magnanimously, forgiving her. “Make it a double.”

“Of course.”

He leaned his head back against the soft leather seat and watched her ass undulating under her skirt as she went to fetch his drink. He tried not to feel too sorry for himself. But this wasn't how he wanted to be spending the last semester of college. In Venezuela, running from the law.

There wasn't really a choice, though. They'd gotten a warrant to arrest him. His dad had managed to get it quashed, but there was no telling how long that would last. So they'd scrambled to change his ticket to the next flight to Caracas. And here he was. Still drunk from the party at his father's house.

The stewardess smiled as she put the golden drink in front of Dylan. He drained it in a gulp. The airline scotch was piss compared to the stuff in his dad's study. Still, he gestured for another. The flight attendant smiled and took his empty glass. The low-shelf liquor burned a path down his throat.

The engine went from a purr to a hum. The pilot announced that they were on track for an on-time arrival at Caracas International Airport. The aircraft backed away from the gate and taxied to the runway.

His dad had him staying at a four-star all-inclusive resort, at least for the next two weeks. After that he'd have to rent a villa or something. He guessed it could be fun. At least until they got this whole thing dismissed and he could come home.

He'd sit by the pool drinking margaritas. He could hook up with Venezuelan whores and American expats. He'd troll for tourists who'd never see him again, who wouldn't even know if he gave them his real name or not. Maybe he'd start going by Joe. Jimmy. Jim Bob. Whatever.

The plane taxied down the runway. The flight attendant demonstrated how to use the seat cushion as a flotation device. He mouthed,
Where's my scotch?
She winked at him and gestured for another flight attendant, even hotter than she was, to bring him the drink.