Rape Read Online Free PDF Page B

disheveled, torn clothing, bleeding at the nose and mouth, saying her mother had been beaten, hurt bad, in the boathouse at the lagoon. And when they’d arrived at the site, there was the girl dazed sitting on the grass, and Dromoor saw the look of her, the torn clothing, bloodied face, the way one of her arms hung wrongly, and knew it must be rape.
    Medics were arriving. Dromoor and Zwaaf would be first to enter the boathouse. In the harsh unsparing light of their flashlights the naked woman lay open-mouthed, open-legged in the supplicant posture of death. She was scarcely breathing, almost imperceptibly her rib cage lifted and fell. She was bleeding from head wounds, a broken nose, torn lips. A pool of dark blood lay beneath her, spreading from between her legs. Her fingernails, which had been polished a glamorous gleaming crimson, matching her painted toenails, were jagged and broken. Her eyelids were only partially closed. Tears or mucus encrusted her lashes. Her hair, a tawny blond, was splotched with blood. Her breasts, which were full, heavy, lay partially flattened against her chest, and were also smeared with blood in the way of savage and exotic tattoos.
    Zwaaf muttered, “Jesus! They really got her.”
    Dromoor was squatting beside the unconscious woman. His flashlight shook in his awkwardly uplifted hand. Here, he amended, was rape. This was the rape. The other, the girl, the daughter, had been beaten but not raped.
    He had never been called to the scene of a gang rape before. He had never seen the victim of a gang rape except in photographs. He would not forget the sight.
    He knew the woman’s name: Martine Maguire.
    Teena, she was called. Lived in the neighborhood. A widow.
    Since their meeting at the Horseshoe, Dromoor had seen Teena Maguire a few times, at a distance. He had kept that distance between them believing it was to no purpose, otherwise. She had not seen him.
    Medics entered the boathouse. The scene was swathed in unnatural light more radiant than the sun.

Witness
    Y OU WERE TWELVE AT the time. Your thirteenth birthday would arrive abruptly, too soon in August, and depart mostly unheralded. For childhood belonged to before , now you had come to live in after .
    You would tell what you could remember.
    Many times you would tell. And retell.
    That night, the very night of the rape, in the emergency room at St. Mary’s where you and your unconscious mother were taken by ambulance, you were questioned. Before your grandmother and other relatives arrived at the hospital, you were questioned. You were eager to tell. All that you knew. You were desperate to cooperate. In the way of childish logic you believed that all that you could do would help your mother to live.
    Though one day Teena Maguire would curse the fact that she’d been kept alive, five days on a respirator and attached to IV tubes in intensive care at St. Mary’s, had not been put out of her misery with a bullet to the brain there on the boathouse floor, fucking bad luck she’d ever been born.

The Enemy
    Y OU WERE INSTRUCTED Take your time, Bethie .
    At the Eighth Precinct where police officers showed you photographs.
    Grandma brought you. From St. Mary’s to the police station she brought you. Your mother was still unconscious, on a life-support system. You were the sole witness.
    Trying to explain it happened so fast.
    So fast! And it was so dark! The men’s faces . . .
    Your mouth was sore, swollen. Every word you uttered hurt.
    There was a woman, not one of the detectives but a Family Services counselor. She smiled at you the way a kindergarten teacher might smile at her pupils. Telling you in a slow, careful voice that just because things had happened fast to you did not mean that you had to remember anything “fast.”
    Take your time, Bethie. This is very very important .
    So many pictures of young men and boys! Some of them were very young-looking, like kids from Baltic High.