Chapter 26

 

 

“Let me do the thinkin’ for both of us, honey,” Lou told Linda, while they waited for the cops to show up.

“Sure, Lou, anything you say,” she said back.

Unfortunately, Lou’s thinking never had been that clear in the first place. When God was handing out brains, Lou thought God said, “trains,” and said, “No thanks, I’m not going anywhere.”

But anything would be helpful to the cigarette girl.

Linda had gotten herself in a jam, and needed the help of a strong, willing man. Lou had been a confidant, friend, almost a father and thankfully never a lover, so she could count on him for sober counsel. He told her to be straight with the cops, that being honest would keep her from getting in over her head, that everything would work out.

“It’s easier to remember the truth,” Lou told Linda. “It’s so much easier to remember the truth, that’s hard to forget. But a lie, that’s made up, and it’s hard to remember anything made up, even an hour after you made it up.

“That’s how the cops trip up suspects,” Lou continued to explain to Linda. “The truth is easy to remember. For some people with a photographic memory, the truth is burned into the mind. But a lie, that’s fabricated, and the mind has a harder time recalling a fictional story.”

Linda listened attentively to what Lou had to say.

“You don’t want to lie to the cops,” he said. “They’ll record everything you say, and use it against you later on in an interrogation. I’ve seen it done on TV, and though TV’s got a bunch of lying crap on it, I’m certain that the cops work every angle to get to the truth.

“Besides,” said Lou, “they’re supposed to be on the side of the good guys, so don’t lie and become an instant bad guy. Be a good guy, not a bad guy.”

Lou’s advice was like some sort of “Truth, Justice and the American Way” speech you’d hear at a lecture at the Elks club. But Lou knew that at this moment, the best advice he could give to Linda was the straight poop, no bullshit.

Then it struck him. He realized again he hadn’t thought about Linda and her attacker smoking the marijuana.

“Oh,” he said. “Everything I said is true, but there is the matter of the pot. That’s the only thing you’ll have to make up. But that’ll be easy. Stick to the story that it was the strange dude who wanted to smoke with you, not the other way around. Got it?”

“I got it, Lou. In other words, tell the truth for everything except why we were smoking the pot. We were smoking it because he wanted to get me high, that’s the only reason we were up in the apartment.”

“Right. Keep that one fabrication in the forefront of your mind, and don’t stray from that story.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“You’d better do better than that. I’m not thinking only of your hide, but of my own skin. We’ve both got something to conceal.”

A police patrol car pulled up in front of the Club Festival. The lone officer in the vehicle parked the car and came into the bar. By then Linda was sitting in the main barroom, with Lou behind the bar.

“I’m lookin’ for Linda Avery,” the officer said to Lou as he entered the bar.

“She’s right over there,” Lou said, pointing to Linda sitting at a table by herself.

“Ma’am, please come with me,” he said. The two went out to the car, and then to the police station. At the police station, Linda gave her story to another officer, who then disappeared into the bowels of the police station.

Of equal if not more importance than the death of the unknown man was Linda’s accusation that he raped her. The police response to that part of the story was immediate and swift: They began the process of having her medically examined.

Linda gave the officer the address of the place where the death occurred. The police would begin their investigation.

Linda was then taken to a local hospital, where a nurse administered a test for rape, along with a medical examination. Linda knew the truth, but the authorities had to have the scientific, objective facts. There was no way around it, no matter how embarrassing or demeaning it was to the victim.

The proof was there.

“Wait here a minute,” the nurse said after the examination. Linda took the time alone to go over in her mind what she was going to say to the police. Within a minute, a police officer came into the room.

“Looks like we’re done here, ma’am. I’m going to take you back to the station now. Are you OK?”

Linda didn’t look or feel particularly OK.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

She had many of her own questions, but was not ready to ask anyone anything. She was still gathering her thoughts.

One thought that popped into her mind was getting an attorney. But then she thought that if she obtained a lawyer, that would be proof that she had something to hide.

“I’ve got nothing to hide,” she said to herself. “I can do this. I know I can.”

Returning to the police station, before questioning, the cops needed Linda’s cooperation. An officer had taken down some information at the hospital during the physical examination, but there was more information required. Assigned to the case was Portland Police Bureau Detective Tom O’Malley.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” said O’Malley, “but you’ll have to come to the crime scene with us.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s necessary in this case. Please, come along with me.”

Reluctantly Linda accompanied O’Malley and another officer to the building that housed the Club Festival, and to the apartment above where the incident had occurred.

By the time she arrived with O’Malley and the uniformed police officer, another police car with two officers was already at the scene. The body of the dead man had been loaded into an emergency vehicle by the time Linda and O’Malley arrived.

“You’d better wait here in the car,” the uniformed cop who accompanied O’Malley said to her. “We don’t need you contaminating the scene.”

After waiting in the squad car for about 20 minutes, the officer came back down to retrieve Linda.

O’Malley and the police officer escorted Linda up to the apartment room. Yellow police tape was placed across the door; the three of them ducked under the tape and went into the room.

Blood was still pooled on the floor, looking more like thin black pudding than blood.

“So this is where is happened?” O’Malley queried Linda.

“Yes, but I don’t want to be here.”

“OK, OK,” O’Malley said. “I need you to confirm that it was this apartment. Can you please tell me where you were when the man attacked you, and where you were when you…” he hesitated, trying to think of the right word. “Where the man died.”

Linda tried her best to describe in detail where and when everything happened. She was getting nauseated describing the incident all over again.

“Can we go now? I can answer all your questions back at the police station. This place stinks, and brings back bad memories.”

“OK, little lady, let’s go.”

When they got back to the police station, it became perfectly clear to Linda that Detective O’Malley had an agenda right from the start. His line of questioning seemed to imply that somehow she was guilty of something, whether it be murder or manslaughter.

What was most galling about the detective’s smarmy attitude was that Linda had been raped and nearly killed, yet he seemed inured to the issue. It was as if he didn’t care one iota about Linda Avery and her devastating run-in. His callous attitude was an outward sign of his inward disdain for women in general.

O’Malley decided the minute he met Linda that she was up to no good, and that he was going to make it rough on her. He was going to question everything she had to say about the death of the man, and do his best to put her in jail for a very long time.

By the time O’Malley was finished with Linda’s story, it might be game over for the cigarette girl.

Looking back, Linda remembered the good advice she got from her friend Lou. Good advice she did take. Be honest, he said. The cops are on your side, he said.

Well, Lou may have been streetwise, but he was also a wiseass, and had himself more than one run-in with the law. He’d always escaped prosecution.

Between high school and entering the military, Lou had a run-in with the law that could have put the kibosh on his military career.

One night he and a couple of buddies went driving around, drinking cheap wine and playing loud music. He was young, wild and free. The evening was filled with revelry and celebration.

By 2 a.m. the buddy who owned the car in which they’d been carousing had passed out in the backseat. That left Lou and another fellow to drive. Lou’s friend had ingested some sort of pill that made him loopy and unable to figure out the four-speed on-the-floor stick shift. At one point, his friend took the car nearly over an embankment, high centering the car at its edge.

The young men were lucky enough to have some Good Samaritan drive by at 2:30 a.m., hook up a winch and pull them back onto the street. That should have been a sign, a signal, an omen. It was time to give up on the driving and park the car.

But, no, with youth comes inexperience and with that inexperience comes no sense at all. The two continued to drive around. Lou’s friend had been grinding gears all night, and Lou had enough.

“Let me take over,” he told his friend. Lou got behind the wheel of the car, and off they went.

But cruising around town at nearly 3 in the morning meant they were conspicuous. As they drove through town, they drove by a police car parked along the boulevard. Lou didn’t think anything about it.

Until he saw the flashing lights.

The cop pulled the car over.

Luckily, Lou had stopped drinking hours before, and all the cop could cite him for was driving on the wrong side of road and without the headlights on. Unfamiliar with the car, Lou had forgotten to turn the headlights on when he got behind the wheel.

The one buddy passed out in the back woke up with a surly attitude. As the cops pulled him out of the vehicle, he took a swing at one of the officers. Lou watched his buddy go down hard as the cops took him down to the ground. Lou remembered the sound of flesh grinding into gravel.

The three ended up in the county jail that morning, and woke up in prison garb.

Lou remembered the finality of the jail, how in the movies the bars were always thin looking and placed far apart. That wasn’t the case. The bars were stout, and there was hardly any room to get your hand through them. It was apparent he was in a place where escape was impossible.

He also remembered the other inmates, some of whom were spending some considerable time there. He remembered one exchange between a couple of the inmates.

“Let’s throw up our breakfast,” one said to the other.

“Yeah, that sounds like fun,” replied his cell mate.

It was obvious there wasn’t much excitement in the jail. It wasn’t a place Lou ever wanted to return, and he never did.

He got off with a fine, which he was able to pay, and there was no mention of the incident as he entered the Army several weeks later.

But Lou was a softy. He’d lived life to its fullest, and had no real complaints. The way he saw it, the problems a person had usually were the problems a person created. So though he’d been arrested, he understood it was like a game. Play by the rules, and everything goes well. Break the rules and you pay a price.

You see, the law’s like any other institution: There are some good guys, some OK guys and then there are the guys who are out to get something for themselves by being on a criminal’s payroll.

Detective O’Malley of the Third Precinct was a little bit of all of them.

Corrupt cops are like fleas: If you find one, you know there are more of them hiding somewhere. O’Malley wasn’t the only corrupt cop on the force, that was for sure. He happened to be the vilest, the most underhanded one interrogating Linda. His attitude from the beginning was that she must be guilty of something. He was determined to make her crack, to get some sort of confession out of her.

In the case of O’Malley, and for that matter, in any case, one thing that Linda had learned in life was being able to put yourself in the shoes of the other person. Placing yourself inside the perspective of the person with whom you are dealing is the best way to understand from where that person is coming.

That ability comes in many forms.

First, there’s the ability to empathize with individuals, to look at an issue from their perspective, to see life with their eyes. It’s not hard to do.

Another important aspect of placing yourself in the other person’s shoes is not taking anything for granted, and not assuming anything. Don’t assume that the person you are dealing with is in the same mental condition as yourself. You may feel grand, or you may feel anxious. That’s not necessarily how the other person feels, although they may feel grand or anxious. Also consider that they might be physically sick, emotionally drained or on edge from a nagging spouse or haranguing supervisor.

There is so much to consider when dealing with another human being, it’s best to expect the unexpected, to never assume and to take nothing for granted.

A lesson from a professional salesman is good here. When “cold calling” a prospective client or a client on a contact roster it’s best when first speaking to the person to ask, “Am I calling at a good time?” or “Am I interrupting anything?” This is the optimum way of placing yourself in the other person’s shoes. You may have scheduled a time to make sales calls, but it doesn’t mean that the person at the other end of the line is ready for a conversation. They may be busy; they may have recently barfed into a trash container; they may be having sex. Anything and everything is possible in the world.

At the police station, Linda was placed in an interrogation room. She sat there for an hour while those involved in the investigation pored over the data collected so far. An autopsy on the body was being made that instant. The crime scene had been scoured.

The girl who sold cigarettes at a local bar sat quietly, nervously in the interrogation room. Inside the room was a table and three chairs. The space featured one of those long two-way mirrors that detectives and police officers use to observe suspects being grilled.

The room was deathly silent. Not even the noise from the hallway or the street seeped in. It was so quiet that Linda could hear her stomach grumbling.

She thought she was a tough gal. But being left alone in the interrogation room for over an hour began to grate on her nerves. She was thirsty. She had to pee. Her butt was getting numb.

Finally, the detective in charge of the investigation waltzed into the room.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Avery,” he said, slamming the door behind him. “It’s been a busy morning.”

“That’s OK, I’ve got nothing better to do than sit here,” she snidely responded.

“Let’s get one thing straight, missy,” he shot back. “This business with the dead man is no laughing matter, and I take my job pretty God damn seriously.”

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been sitting here so long…”

“Screw her,” O’Malley thought. “The man who’s dead will be sitting in his grave for a lot longer.”

As he stood behind Linda, O’Malley finally got the chance to inspect his suspect. He could smell baby powder, or some womanly scent, which emanated from her body. O’Malley was proud of the fact that his olfactory glands worked well after all these years. Not smoking cigarettes, and being sensitive to one of the basic sensations of the human body, those were his keys to making the sense of smell pay off. He’d worked on it. He knew that the nose could distinguish between thousands of odors and scents, and that a good number of them were neurologically hotwired into the brain and its memory.

“I got the police report, but I want to hear the whole story from you. Let’s go over it again,” he said, with a hint of impatience. “Start from the top.”