RD

joined his brother, both of them now hidden beneath a brilliant socko design on the white wall, a sunburst, a bright red ball of fire, an explosion…

ICobin closed the red-covered notebook, her journal labeled MAY-AUGUST '70, and sat staring at the design on the white wall. Several minutes passed in silence before she picked up the phone and dialed Mark's office, murmured quietly to the young woman who answered, keeping her voice low, and then waited. Mark came on the line and Robin said, "Hi, you want to hear something funny?"

"Love to."

"You know the journal I kept?"

"Sure, I remember."

"I was looking through it, I came to something I wrote on August tenth, 1970." Robin paused.

"If I tell you…"

"Wait, August 1970…"

"We were at Goose Lake."

"Oh, right. Yeah, of course."

"You promise you won't laugh?"

"I thought you said it was funny."

"It is, but I don't want you to laugh."

"I promise."

"I wrote on that day, August tenth, "I think I'm in love with Mark Ricks."

" "Come on, really? Wow, listen, I don't think that's funny."

Robin said in her low voice, "You don't?" n Tuesday, four twenty in the afternoon, the young woman with short red hair entered the lobby at 1300 Beaubien and stopped, uncertain. She expected to see police officers. What she saw was a bunch of black people with small children standing by the two elevators and in front of the glass-covered directory on the wall. It could be the lobby of an old office building, all tile and marble, and seemed small with the people waiting, the women holding on to the children trying to pull free. An elevator door opened and two young black guys came off grinning, playing with shoelaces in their hands, and were all at once gathered in by these people, who must be family. The young woman with short red hair edged her way around them and through a short hall that opened into another lobby, this one dismal with deep shadows, until she came to a long wooden counter beneath fluorescent lights. The uniformed police officer behind the near end of the counter, a black woman, looked up and said, "Can I help you?"

The young woman with short red hair said, "I want to report a rape."

The policewoman said, "This's Prisoner Detention," and glanced down the length of the empty counter.

"You want to talk to somebody's with the precinct. They be right back… I'll tell you what, or you can go up to Sex Crimes on seven, save you some time. Get off the elevator and turn right and it's all the way down the end of the hall. There be somebody up there will help you."

Vhris was alone in the squad room, his desk piled with case folders he'd been going through for the past few days, learning about criminal sexual conduct in its varying degrees. At lunch he'd told Jerry Baker he didn't think he was going to like it. A guy throws a pipe bomb in somebody's house to settle a score, the guy could be wacko but at least his motive was clear. But why would any guy want to rape a defenseless woman? What was in his head? The interesting thing was that it didn't have that much to do with sex.

Jerry Baker said, "Then what do you call it a sex crime for?"

Chris told him the way he understood it, the rapist wanted to dominate or be destructive, or he gets off on somebody else's pain. So he picks on a woman he can handle. But the act didn't have that much to do with getting laid, per se.

Chris said he wasn't sure he could interrogate a suspect they knew for a fact was guilty and not pound the shit out of the guy. It would require a certain amount of self-restraint Or sit down and talk to the poor rape victim. That would be tough. He told Jerry the whole setup was different. Even the squad room. It was cleaner than other squad rooms, the desks were kept neater. There were even artificial flowers on some of the desks, if you could imagine, inside 1300. See, because it wasn't a twelve-man squad, it was a twelve-person squad, half the investigators were policewomen. Chris said he wasn't complaining, not at all, it was just different.

Yesterday he'd walked down to six and stuck his head in at Firearms and Explosives to see what was going on. It reminded him of when he was in the eighth grade his family moved from the West Side to the East Side and all that summer he rode buses back to the old neighborhood to be with his friends. Chris was going to meet Jerry at Galligan's at five, have a couple before driving out to St. Clair Shores.

Working Sex Crimes in his dad's Cadillac.

It was almost four thirty. Maureen Downey had the night duty. At the moment she was off somewhere. Maureen had spent a few years in Sex Crimes, then was in Homicide for a while and came back, she said because she didn't like all the blood you found at the scene or going to the morgue to look at bodies and get the Medical Examiner's report.

Chris heard that sharp, clean sound of high heels on the tile floor and looked up expecting to see Maureen.

It was a young woman with short red hair, very attractive, maybe late twenties. She came in, Chris couldn't help notice the way her legs moved in her skirt: a short straight tan skirt that went from above her knees into a loose tan sweater. A soft leather handbag hung from her shoulder.

She seemed calm, even as she said, "They told me downstairs to come here… I want to report a rape."

As though she were telling him she wanted to report an accident, something she had seen, but was not personally involved.

Chris said, "Oh." He stood up, looked around and nodded toward a clean desk with blue flowers in a green ceramic bowl. He said, "I'm Sergeant Mankowski. If you'd like, we'll sit over there, have more room."

Chris paused to watch the thigh movement in her skirt as she walked to the desk. He sat down again and opened and closed drawers till he found a yellow legal pad and a Preliminary Complaint Report form. Going over to the desk, where the young woman was seated now in a straight metal chair, Chris said, "This happen to someone in your family?"

She seemed surprised, the way her head raised.

"It happened to me. I was forced against my will to have sex.

If that isn't rape I don't know what is."

Chris noticed she had a slight southern accent, not much of one but it was there. She sat straight, looking up at him until he eased into the padded metal swivel chair behind the desk. Now they were looking at each other over the bowl of blue flowers. She had a long thin neck. Or it seemed long the way she was sitting upright or the way her hair ended just below her ears and stuck out on both sides, wavy red hair with a lot of body. Phyllis always had rollers in her pile of dark hair. Chris imagined this girl didn't have to fool with her hair much.

He liked the way it ended and stuck straight out. She was holding herself rigid, showing him she was indignant, but didn't look as though she'd been beat up. Chris wondered if this was what they called in Sex Crimes a date rape.

"When did this assault take place?"

"Sunday morning, about two A.M."

Chris said, "Sunday? That was two days ago. Why're you just now reporting it?"

"What's the difference when it happened? I was raped."

Chris had been told eight out often rapes weren't even reported; they hadn't said anything about the ones that were reported late.

"You know the suspect?"

She said, "Suspect? I don't suspect he raped me, I know he did. I was there. Mr. Woodrow Ricks is his name."

There was that accent, soft, unaffected. It made her seem natural but also vulnerable. A guy rapes her, she calls him "Mister." Chris pictured the guy older. Looking at the PCR form he said, "I don't have your name and address."

She said, "I guess you want my real name. It's Greta Wyatt. My stage name I go by is Ginger Jones."