Did You Want Him To Do What He Did?
The police station in Homestead was hopping after the bars closed. Drunks and drug-addled criminals were led between rooms by exhausted, life-addled police officers.
Larry and Bonnie sat on a bench with me until I was told to sit next to a desk. They weren’t allowed to join me there.
A man with beagle eyes and very short hair sat and listened to every detail I could remember, and then asked me about details I couldn’t remember – the address of the place where the attack happened, for example, or the name of the bar. I barely knew the name of the town.
But I told the officer the guy’s name was Kevin – he hadn’t given me a last name – and answered that he was wearing a gray hoodie but I didn’t know where he lived, and I’d never met him before that night.
“Did you go to the hospital?” asked the officer.
“No,” I stammered. “Do I need to go to the hospital?”
“Do you want to go to a hospital?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Then we don’t have a kit,” he said. “But from what you’ve told me, we wouldn’t be able to get any semen.”
I was still stuck on semantics. “Then was it really rape?”
“Did you want him to do what he did?”
“No.”
“Then it’s rape. Go on home, and we’ll send an officer to follow up.”
I walked back to Bonnie who hugged me again.
I looked at Larry. “Do you fucking believe me now?”
“Yeah I believe you now,” he said. Larry looked almost remorseful as he slung his arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Let’s get you home.”
Emotionally exhausted, we all passed out immediately upon arrival at the house.
Only a few hours later, a booming sound jolted me awake. There were two policemen banging on our door.
When they said they’d send an officer to follow up, they meant it.
“We’d like you to take a look at some pictures,” said one officer. “Let us know if you see the guy who attacked you.”
He held out two of the largest photo albums I’d ever seen – full of dozens, maybe hundreds of mug shots.
“Do you have somewhere we could sit?”
Larry led us into the kitchen, where we sat at the table.
I slowly plowed through every page of both books. I stared and pondered, hesitating, scared. I looked at face after face, man after man, all of whom were black, almost none of whom looked familiar.
Finally I went back to the first book, a few pages in, and pointed to a photo.
“This could be him,” I said. “It looks like him but his hair is different.”
“Are you identifying this person as your attacker?”
“Well, I think so, but his hair is different.” I really didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.
“Is there anyone else who might be your attacker?”
“No,” I said. “If it’s anyone in these books, it’s this guy.”
The officer scribbled something and closed the books.
Then he asked me where Bonnie lived.
“She lives in Akron, Ohio,” I said.
Larry chimed in from the doorway: “But she’s asleep in our attic right now.”
The officer perked up. “Can you wake her up?”
“Sure!” I dashed upstairs.
The officer asked if Bonnie could identify the man she’d seen at the bar. She walked into the kitchen without sitting down and flipped through a couple of pages.
She poked the page, hard. “That’s him right there that mother fucker!”
Bonnie was pointing to the exact same picture I’d chosen, with no qualms.