Chapter 9
Carol walked slowly into the courtroom with
Detective Fred Brenning. He was the law officer to whom she had gone with her complaint against Brad. Now, she felt the walls of the room pressing in on her. She was too sick with self-hatred even to look up.
Brenning sat with her at the foot of the prosecution table. The room filled quickly with the curious and the morbid. She heard a whisper and when she looked up Brad was entering from a side door, between two detectives. Brad's arms were cuffed together at the wrists.
Carol trembled, her body shaking visibly.
Brenning whispered, "Take it easy. He can't get at you now."
Carol nodded, sicker than ever, not daring to tell him that she was not afraid of Brad; she never had been. She had been shaken by the awful sense of pity she felt for him. He was the first man who ever tried to be kind to her, and she had brought him here.
Carol tried to keep her eyes down but she knew that Brad was staring at her. Finally she could endure it no longer. Slowly she raised her head. Their eyes met across the room, and for a moment their gazes held. She felt the blood seep down from her face. Her hands knotted in her lap, but for that brief instant, she was powerless to look away from him.
His eyes were haggard, ringed. There was none of the old spark and healthy exuberance about him. His cheeks were thin, sunken, his mouth pulled down at the corners. It was hard to believe it was the same man who had tried to cheer her up that night in the rain.
He wore a white shirt that looked poorly ironed. She remembered the starched, gleaming white of the shirt he had worn the night she met him. He had been fastidious, neat and particular about his dress. He no longer seemed to care how he looked. It was in his face that he knew he was on a one-way street to the penitentiary for life or for a date with the hangman.
He wore a tie but it was loose and awry. The top button of his shirt was free; his collar was wrinkled.
Carol blinked back the sting of tears that welled into her eyes. She could not go on looking at the despair and agony in his eyes She had to look away.
But this was worse. Beyond the railing, she saw two people whom she recognized though she'd never seen them before.
Brad's parents were there. Even if the woman's face had not been tear-stained and the man's drawn with helpless compassion, she would have known Brad's mother and father. She remembered he had talked about them. He went home to visit them every weekend. He felt only pity for any child who was less than close to its parents.
Carol looked away quickly. That mother's face showed her heart was broken; every lesion was rejected in her pallid cheeks.
"Don't worry, Miss Hill," Brenning said at her side. "It will soon be over."
"I hope so."
A photographer tried to take her picture, but Brenning warned him not to. "She's under-age," he said, "and she's to get no publicity out of this. She's been hurt enough."
The photographer nodded and retreated.
Carol watched him snap pictures of Brad. Brad sat immobile and scarcely blinked his eyes when the flash bulbs popped. The photographer turned his camera on Brad's parents then. Brad was on his feet before either of his guards could move. He was almost upon the news man when the bailiffs overtook him. He was forcibly restrained and dragged back to his chair.
Carol stared at him, her face gray. For another moment his gaze struck against hers, and it was as if he asked her clearly if she were pleased with what she had wrought.
The trial began at last. There was no jury, since Brad had not insisted upon a jury trial. Only the judge would hear the testimony the judge and the roomful of onlookers.
The opening statements aside, the prosecutor called Detective Brenning to the stand first. Carol pressed her fist against her mouth, afraid she was going to be ill.
Asked to state in his own words how he came to be involved in this case, Brenning said, his voice flat as if he were reading from notes: "Carol Hill came to me on the night of ... " he paused and then named the date and gave the exact hour she appeared at his desk in the detective bureau at police headquarters. "Carol Hill, a female under eighteen, reported to me that she had been raped. I asked her for details, and she gave me the name of the hotel here in Bluetown where the forcible rape occurred, the time, and the name of the rapist."
"What did you do then?"
"I called a medical doctor and with a nurse and female bailiff present, the doctor made his examination."
"And what were his findings?"
The defense attorney objected, saying the doctor who made the examination could best give that evidence, but the prosecutor waved away the objection by asking, "Detective Brenning, were you told that Miss Hill, a female under eighteen, had or had not been raped?"
Brenning nodded. "I was told that Miss Hill had been repeatedly raped. I then had her make a disposition, and later followed up by going to the hotel where the accused rapist resided. I arrested him."
"Is he in this courtroom now?"
"Yes, sir, he is."
"'Would you point hire out, Detective Brenning?"
Brenning nodded and pointed toward Brad. "That's him, the defendant, Brad Livingston."
"Thank you, that will be all, Detective Brenning."
Carol heard Mrs. Livingston crying beyond the railing, but she did not look up. She kept her eyes fixed on her hands on the table. They were gray, damp with sweat, trembling.
The prosecutor then called Dr. Eva Taylor. Dr. Taylor stated that on the night in question he had been summoned to examine a young woman who had reported being raped.
"Would you give us your findings, doctor?"
"Yes. I'll attempt to make them as concise and uninvolved as possible. I found that there had indeed been forcible entry made upon the person of this young woman, not once but several times. There was evidence that she had been repeatedly and brutally misused sexually. I reported then, and I must repeat here that Miss Hill had indeed suffered rape at the hands of a male person of great strength and sadistic tendencies. She was most brutally assaulted."
Twice while Dr. Taylor testified, Carol had heard Brad's whispered protest, a sibilant sound. Now, suddenly, Brad threw off the defense counsel's restraining hand and leaped to his feet. "No! That's a lie! I never did that! None of it. That's not true."
The judge hammered frantically with his gavel. The two bailiffs forced Brad back into his chair.
His face livid, the judge leaned forward across his raised desk. "I warn you about these outbursts, Mr. Livingston!"
Brad leaped to his feet again. "Warn me? Must I sit and listen to lies?"
"Mr. Livingston!"
"You can stop pounding that gavel at me! What can you people do to me now but kill me? And do you think that's the worst thing that could happen to me after what you've done to my parents, to my career, to my whole life?"
"You should have thought of that!"
"I never raped her! I never misused her as this doctor is saying! Why do you permit that? It's my life I'm fighting for, and the things he is saying they are lies! All of them! They are lies!"
The judge nodded toward the bailiffs and Brad was forced back into the chair. Now his wrists were handcuffed to the arm rests. He sat, his face ashen. His eyes were wild like those of a caged, beaten animal.
The prosecutor waited until there was quiet in the room again, and then he spoke to the red-faced physician on the witness stand: "There is no chance that you could be mistaken in your diagnosis, doctor?"
Dr. Taylor's voice was low, grave, but unequivocal. "None. The young woman had been raped, brutally and sadistically. I merely state the medical truth."
"Thank you, doctor," the prosecutor said.
The defense attorney attempted to shake the doctor's story, but the physician was adamant, refused retreat a step from the diagnosis he had made at the time of his examination. "Brutal. Sadistic," he said.
Brad strained forward and his voice raged out suddenly. "Tell them, Carol. In the name of God, why don't you tell them the truth?"
A bailiff caught Brad's shirt collar and yanked him violently back into his chair. Brad sat there taut, panting, his chest heaving, his ashen face rigid.
Carol pressed her hands over her face. She felt the kindly touch as the prosecutor patted her shoulder compassionately, but she withdrew as if in terror of the touch of any mortal.
She was not called to the stand. The judge stated that the evidence in her deposition and Dr. Taylor's testimony was weighty enough to satisfy the terms of the laws dealing with rape. Brad was invited to take the stand in his own behalf. He raged out, "What good would it do? Who would believe me? I say I am not guilty. I say I could never do to any woman what you people have accused me of doing. Make her tell the truth. She's the one who should get on that stand. Only she can tell you the truth!"
Carol pressed her hands over her face, keeping her head lowered. The prosecutor assured her that Brad's outbursts only strengthened the strong circumstantial case against him. "The judge will throw the book at him."
Carol felt sicker than ever.
Finally the judge said, "Brad Livingston, will you come forward and face the bench?"
Brad and his lawyer approached the judge's desk. They stood waiting.
The judge said, "We find no mitigating circumstances, no conflicting evidence. The fact that this girl, an under-age female, did willingly accompany you to the hotel is the sole fact in your favor. But the brutal and sadistic assault upon her body must not go unpunished. We find you guilty of statutory rape and hereby sentence you to life imprisonment in the state penitentiary."
A woman screamed out, protesting. Carol's head jerked up. She sat as if in a trance, watching as they led Brad's mother from the courtroom. She was hysterical.
When Carol looked back at Brad, she saw that his face was cold and expressionless. There was savagery in his eyes but there was no longer any hope.
Carol sobbed suddenly, unable to endure the look of torment on Brad's face.
The prosecutor said, "It's all right. It's over. You can go out of here and forget all about it."
Go out of here and forget all about it! Carol shuddered, knowing better. She would never forget that look on Brad's face, that anguished cry of Brad's mother. Her sleep would be haunted by these nightmares as long as she lived.
Carol no longer had a job at National Mortgage and Loan. She went to her room in the Embers Hotel. She took a hot shower, but still felt covered with vileness. She could not stand the loneliness. She knew she had to go out and find a job some place where no one, knew her, but she could not even look ahead to this yet.
She lay naked across her bed. She decided that she would move to another town. She could not stay here in Bluetown where everything would remind her of what she had done to Brad and to Jemson and to Nat.
But that was still in the future. At the moment she could look no further ahead than a quick drink. A drink would help her forget. Enough drinks would make it all go away in an alcoholic fog. She dressed as rapidly as she could, and went almost running down to the Embers Cocktail lounge.
There were not many people in the lounge at this hour. The bartender recognized her and built her a martini, three to one.
"I like martinis," she said. "They're faster than anything else."
"It's the olive in them that does it," the bartender said.
She turned, seeing that the young man who had bought her a drink a few weeks ago was on the stool down the bar. His smile had reminded her of Brad. He glanced at her but he didn't come near her.
She finished off her martini. Her eyes glazed, a warmth settled in her forehead. She ordered another drink and then moved with it down the bar to the young man. The bartender was talking to him but moved away.
"Buy you a drink?" Carol asked.
He glanced at her without warmth and shrugged. "Why not? At least now I know it won't lead anywhere. I'm willing to drink with you."
"How do you know it won't lead anywhere?" She asked, signaling the bartender to prepare two more drinks.
He watched her down the second martini as if she had just come in off the Gobi Desert. He said, "Because, no matter what happens, nothing leads anywhere, and that's the way I want it. I prefer it that way. Look at me. Remember I told you my wife didn't care anything about going to bed with me?"
"I remember."
"Well, it seems she didn't want me, but she didn't want any other woman to have me either."
"That's a disease a lot of wives suffer from," the bartender said, standing with a newspaper across the bar.
"She divorced me," the man said to Carol, shaking his head as if he'd never heard anything so ridiculous. "She wouldn't go to bed with me. I told her I needed sex. So she divorces me for trying to find another woman. She took nearly everything I owned, and the rest will probably go to her in alimony. And for what? Because she didn't want me to have sex except maybe three or four times a year with her. You tell me the sense in that. You tell me!"
"Things are tough all over," the bartender said.
Carol said, "Maybe you need a girl to help you forget."
Now he drained his glass and stared at her. "Maybe I do, baby. But not you."
Carol caught her breath. "Why not me?"
He laughed savagely. "I'll tell you why. Because good ole Ed Bailey has gone down dead-end streets for the last time. And that's what it would be with you."
She stared at him. "What are you talking about?"
"You, sugar. I been studying you since the last time we talked together so cozy in here. And I've decided what's wrong with you. I know what's the matter."
She could barely breathe. "Do you?"
"That's right. Old Ed N. Bailey has figured it out. You can't love me, or yourself, or anybody. That's the trouble with you. You're so mixed up you don't even know how to love. I don't know why. I don't want to know. I just know that's how it is. You even make my wife look rational in comparison." He laughed suddenly. "No hard feelings, baby. How about letting me buy you a drink from one cripple to another."
She took the next martini the bartender pushed toward her. She sipped at it, watching Ed. "Maybe somebody could teach me to love," she said.
"Maybe. But not me. I couldn't take the chance. I had one kook. Luckily, I got rid of her. All it cost me was everything I had made up to the moment. But I couldn't afford your price, baby. I know that in advance."
The bartender laid down the newspaper, staring at them. "Hey, you two ever hear of a guy named Nat Collins?"
Carol felt her heart turn over.
Ed said, "Sure. I know him. Big shot in finance. One of the directors or something at the National Mortgage."
"Vice president," Carol whispered.
"Civic leader. A real go-go man," Ed said. "He's got the world by the tail, all right."
"Not any more," the bartender said. "He just let go of it. He committed suicide. Jumped off the tallest building in town."
Carol shook her head. She heard Ed Bailey and the bartender discussing Nat's suicide, but the words did not reach her. It was a clatter of garbled sounds.
The room spun. She heard the bartender say, "Looks like you've had enough, lady." But she could not answer. She pushed her martini glass from her, knocking it over. The bartender laughed. "Never mind wrecking the glassware."
"What's the matter with you?" Ed Bailey said.
She ignored him and stood up. He tried to catch her arm, but she shook free. "Let me alone," she said.
Ed Bailey laughed at her. "My pleasure," he told her.
She stared at the bartender, his face like a smiling mask. The bottles, the small signs, the beer ads, the faces of the people in the lounge changed places, whirling.
"You better go sleep it off," she heard the bartender say. "Sleep?"
Carol turned, walking out of the lounge. She did not go into the hotel lobby, nor even consider going up to her room. She couldn't stand it alone in there.
She walked the streets, thinking about poor Nat, who had tried to find romance when he thought the time for it was past, who had been willing to sacrifice everything he had believed in all his life in order to keep her with him. She had destroyed him. It had been so easy, so dreadfully easy you made a man believe you loved him, and then you could do anything to him.
Carol walked faster. She had casually destroyed everything Nat had labored fifty years to build; his reputation, his career. And it was not even Nat she hated, any more than she had hated John Jemson or Brad.
She saw suddenly that she had sown havoc in the lives of three men because she was a walking monolith of hatred unable to reach out to other human beings anymore in anything except that hate.
She had been racing toward this moment ever since that day when she, only eleven years old, had been forcibly held in the lustful clutches of Mort Engler. He had destroyed anything she might ever have been. Not even in her teen years had she been able to respond to love from other people. She had started then being withdrawn and turned in upon herself.
Tears spilled from her eyes. But was it her fault? Had she wanted Mort to use her as he had, to destroy everything lovely in his ugly lust?
She shivered, seeing that accidents happen to other people, other children, other girls. Somehow they learn to live with the wounds. But she had not been able to. She hated Mort and she hated every other man because to her they all had Mort's greasy face.
But Herb had hardened the hatred inside her, hadn't he? His evil was also partly to blame for the way her mind was twisted and obsessed with its hatred for all men now.
Wouldn't every other girl who ever lived have been just as full of hatred as she was if they'd had the terrible and degrading experiences with men that she'd had when she was growing up?
She couldn't answer that. She could only see that Herb and Mort had taken turns using her body and destroying her life leaving her good for nothing but hatred.
Every person learned to hate when he was hurt, didn't he? The difference was that her hatred had possessed her mind, obsessed all her thoughts.
She could not even see or react to the goodness in Brad Livingston until it was too late.
She could not think that despite the fact that poor Nat had loved beautiful girls, as art lovers might appreciate great classics of painting, he had spent his life in sacrifice, in civic and charity work, thinking of others before himself. He was a good man, proud of his record and his reputation. She had stripped it all away. She had let the people he worked with walk in and find him in a state of madness. He could not face any of them again. He could not go on living.
Her hatred had brought him tragedy.
Was even her need for vengeance against Herb this urgent? Wasn't it true that revenge can be uglier than the act one seeks to avenge?
Her mind touched at John Jemson. He had mistreated his wife, but who was she to judge his actions? What did she know of his life with Myra? How could anyone outside know what two people had between them, what hell Myra might have made of his life at home, what needs she never filled?
She wrecked Jemson's marriage, cost him his job. She did not know where he was; she only knew that Myra, alone, was even more miserable than she had been before sitting at home waiting for John to show up when life dulled for him outside.
The wreckage of that marriage was a bitter tragedy, and she alone was responsible.
She had not really thought about Myra's unhappiness. She hadn't cared whether Myra was unhappy or not.
She had not really wanted to repay John for chasing after every girl who came to his firm seeking a job. Those women could look after themselves; they could submit to him, or refuse him, or stay out of his way. All of that was up to them. They went to him because it was easier, or because inside they secretly wanted to. He took advantage only of women who could be used by anyone because they wanted to be used.
He was a man who relished life loved drinking and wenching. He worked hard, and he wanted to play hard. He was frustrated and denied at home. He tried to find happiness elsewhere.
And she had destroyed him without caring who he was. To her he was Herb, he was Mort.
Carol shuddered. She saw that in trying to avenge herself on Herb, she had become as evil as he was; worse, maybe, because she hid behind her facade of innocence. She led men to destruction. Herb was like a rattlesnake, at least; he warned of his intentions.
She hated him no less, but suddenly she hated herself more. She had dedicated her life to vengeance, and not even upon the two men she hated, but upon all men.
She had had enough vengeance, too much. Her mind and her soul and her body were engorged with it.
She had sent Brad to prison. She had taken a man full of kindness and laughter and she had lost him his job, broken the hearts of his parents, destroyed his reputation.
She told herself she had her revenge. She should have felt exultant, but she did not, and she never had. She felt low, as evil as Herb, as rotten as he was.
She was what Herb and Mort had made her. She was evil in their images.
She saw how wrong she was, destroying Herb, wrecking John, causing Nat's suicide. How could she live with herself? She did not want revenge, after all; she had been filled with a pathological hatred for men, but the tragedies she had caused cleansed all that away and she saw herself for what she was. All she wanted now was to do everything she could do set things right, for Brad, at least. She expected nothing for herself any more.