Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

“Well, maybe not exact. But they boiled down to that.”

I said, “Wasn’t it your inflamed imagination that boiled them down to that? Didn’t she actually just invite you in, tell you to wait while she dressed, and go into the bedroom?”

“No, it wasn’t my inflamed imagination!” he yelled. “I know an invitation when I hear it. Sure she told me to wait while she dressed, but what she meant was wait until she shed her robe and then come get her.”

“You read minds, do you?” I asked.

“I don’t have to read minds to tell a woman on the make!” he shouted. “Listen, she planted me on the sofa, then went in the bedroom and left the door open a good foot. I couldn’t see through that opening, because she was beyond the door, but it left a crack where the door was hinged. From the sofa I could see right through it. Why’d she put me on the sofa and then fix the door like that, if she didn’t want to give me a peep show?”

“I couldn’t say,” I told him. “Did you get a peep show?”

“Sure I did. She pulled off her robe and posed around in front of the mirror, pretending to fix her hair. And all the time she knew I was watching.”

“So you took this as the final invitation?”

“Wouldn’t you?” he demanded.

“I’ve never been in a similar situation. So you accepted this supposed invitation by stripping yourself and entering the bedroom, did you?”

“Listen, I knew what she wanted.”

“Sure you did. She accepted you eagerly, I suppose?”

A look of doubt crossed his face. “Oh, she looked surprised and tried to act indignant. But that was just part of the game. She didn’t struggle enough even to make it convincing.”

“She did struggle some then?”

“Listen,” he said. “Every woman struggles a little. It’s to convince herself she’s not a tramp. I’m telling you the truth. Mrs. Haliburton lured me over there by putting on her naked acts; she deliberately put on another to get me in the bedroom, and she gave in because she wanted to. She yelled rape just to save face in front of her daughter. If the daughter hadn’t walked in, I wouldn’t be down here.”

I said to Lieutenant Gordon. “I think I have enough. Let him phone a lawyer, then send him back to his cell.”

When I got back to the office and went in to report to the old man, I was already beginning to feel the fire of a crusade building in me to the point of eruption.

I said to Harry Doud, “If Charles Turner Senior’s political influence gets his son out of this, I’m getting out of the legal profession. Any rapist is a low enough animal, but this one takes the prize. To save his own hide, he’s willing to brand his accuser a tramp. This Mrs. Haliburton is as respectable-looking a woman as you’d find anywhere. He can’t possibly win with his cockeyed defense, but it’ll be printed in the newspapers if he springs it. And plenty of readers who don’t know the full courtroom testimony will believe it.”

“No defense attorney with any brains will let him use the story,” Doud said. “The minute he admits she struggled, he’s lost.”

“He’ll cut that part after a little legal advice,” I said impatiently. “He has to use the story. The daughter caught them right in the act, so he can’t claim less than seduction. His only hope is to establish in the jury’s mind that she was willing.”

Doud scratched an ear. “You’re probably right,” he said finally. “I don’t suppose Turner has any previous record, does he?”

“Not here. Lieutenant Gordon’s checking with his college town. I’d like to see this fellow made an example of. A good stiff sentence for a person with Turner’s influence would be better protection for other women than all the police patrols you could set up. It would prove we don’t compromise with rapists, no matter who they are. These teen-age kids might think twice before pulling another attack if they knew they were flirting with the electric chair.”

“You’re pretty worked up about this, aren’t you?” the district attorney asked.

“You’re damned right I am. In my book a rapist is one step below a dope peddler.”

He studied me estimatingly for a long time, finally asked, “Want to handle the prosecution?”

I was a little taken aback. Already I’d begun to visualize it as a big case, perhaps one big enough to deserve the personal attention of the D.A. himself. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might get it.

“Why, sure,” I said. “If you want me to.”

“The experience will do you good,” he said. “And maybe your enthusiasm will do this office some good.”

He cautioned me about the political aspects of the case, which I’d already thought of, told me to call on him for all the help I needed, and wished me luck.