15: Survivor
“Good question about the parents, Seb,” Banfield said during the rump session after the Skype interview. “So, you’re seeing them as suspects?”
“Parental love is a murder motive Jefferson and I have seen before.[3] However, there is still the nettling problem of how an outsider could show up on campus that late at night, enter Mackie Hall, and even avoid the video surveillance while doing so.”
“Parents don’t consider themselves outsiders,” I objected. “They see themselves as tuition-payers, more often than not—stakeholders, if you want a fancy term.” This I knew from my email in-basket. When controversy erupted, I heard from the stakeholders. “My guess is that most parents have been on campus more than once. More than a few small businesses in town depend on it.”
“Points well taken,” Mac conceded. “They do not solve our problem, however. Stakeholders do not get pass cards to buildings, nor are they invisible. What are your thoughts, Aurelia?”
“I think we’re getting a clear idea why Mr. Burch didn’t live to a ripe old age. He seems to have had a firmly established pattern of objectionable behaviors. Maybe he found ways to resume that when he returned to teaching and somebody took extreme exception, whether student or parent. That’s all I’ve got. Other than that, I hope Jack is having more success than we are.”
“Am I the only one bothered that neither Ms. Abood nor Ms. Lee worried about protecting other young ladies from Burch’s creepy attentions?” I asked. “Or at least, not enough to file a complaint while they were still students.”
“Don’t be too harsh on them.” Banfield sounded almost scolding. “It’s not unusual in cases of sexual harassment of any kind for the victim to be reluctant to report. It takes courage. It’s not even easy for women in the military. And remember, these students are still young.” They seem to get younger every year. “As a law enforcement officer on a university campus, I pay close attention to these cases. Right now, there’s an investigation underway of a team doctor at Ohio State who killed himself thirteen years ago. Some of the men he groped never came forward until now, and there were more than a hundred of them.”
“I take it that, like the earlier investigators of these reports, you deem the testimony of Ms. Abood and Ms. Lee credible,” Mac said.
“Very.”
There wasn’t much else to say. Banfield and I departed Mac’s quarters a short while later.
Lynda awaited me in my office, fresh from her interview with our outgoing president.
“Father Joe sure is a great guy,” were the first words out of her mouth.
“Yeah. I miss him already.”
We picked up whole wheat pizzas on our way home—only two, since our babysitter Triple M had to scoot off to a planning meeting for a student retreat as soon as we relieved her. By our standards, this was practically a date night. I filled Lynda in on my hard day’s sleuthing as she drove.
Home on Campion Lane, she fed the twins pizza and talked while I fed myself and almost-three-year-old Donata. She (Lynda, not Donata) regaled me with Pirelli anecdotes that even I had never heard before.
“So, I said to President Reagan, ‘There you go again!’”
That was Lynda, imitating Father Joe imitating the Gipper—and quite humorously, too.
“What’s on your agenda tomorrow while I slave over a hot computer at nap time, darling?” she asked as I cleared away the detritus after dinner.
“I could come home at nap time!”
She chuckled as though I were kidding. “No, really, what are you boys up to next?”
“First of all, we boys and Banfield are going to talk with Zoe Slade.”
“I can see Erica as a total Mamma Bear. I’d love to be a fly on—”
Darling Donata, wearing a diaper for a change instead of being completely naked, interrupted this cliché to make an important announcement:
“My leg—my leg—my leg wet!”
Sam laughed as if he understood the implications of that. Jake grabbed another piece of pizza.
The next morning, Friday, we met the Slades in Erica’s law office on Water Street. Downtown Erin was dressed for Christmas, with red ribbons and little white lights on the streetlamps.
In previous incarnations, the Slade Law Center had been St. Swithin’s Episcopal chapel and then a trendy (but unprofitable) pub called The Sanctuary. The pub owner’s loss was Erica’s gain when his equity in the building became her fee for getting him out of a spot—a very big spot—of legal trouble. I love the stained-glass windows and the former bar, which is now a reception desk.
Ashley Crutcher, Erica’s paralegal and my friend from the Poisoned Pens writing group,[4] showed us into the small conference room.
“Hello, officer and gentlemen.”
Mac raised both eyebrows at the sight of Marvin Slade rising to greet us from the other side of an oval conference table. The billboards around town show Erica Slade with her dukes up and boxing gloves on (“I fight for you!”), fire in her violet eyes. In real life, Marvin is most often the other lawyer in the ring in his capacity as Sussex County prosecutor. If Sebastian McCabe had brought the two of them together outside of a court room, it would have qualified as his greatest trick. But it wasn’t his doing.
“Surprised?” Erica said. “No more than I am.”
The former gym teacher and Cincinnati Bengals cheerleader is pushing fifty, but not hard. Her shoulder-length black hair may not even be dyed. She stands about five-seven without her stiletto heels, but she is never without her stiletto heels. I know that because Lynda and I have spent many social hours with her at Bobbie McGee’s Sports Bar. Today her athletic body was encased in a red dress that should have won an Emmy, set off by a beautiful necklace of Murano glass. Maybe she had a trial in the afternoon.
“To her credit, Erica thought I should be a part of this, and I readily agreed,” Marvin Slade said. He paused, but nobody clapped. “After all, she’s my daughter, too.”
Said daughter sat between her parental units, looking like she’d rather be back at Miami of Ohio studying for the exams next week. The resemblance to her mother was inescapable, what with the dark hair and fit body. I’d never met her, but I’d heard about her over brews and burgers. I thought I remembered that she was as runner. For sure she was the child of two parents who didn’t get along, which had to be tough.
Marvin took the initiative to introduce her to the trio of us. Mac bowed, in an amazing display of agility given his girth. He parked his crutches and we joined the Slades at the table.
“Officer Banfield—” Erica began.
“Assistant Chief.”
Round One to Banfield!
“Of course.” Erica looked bemused. Or pissed. Hard to tell. A good defense attorney must be a good actor anyway, so maybe she was putting on. “Marvin and I find ourselves in rare agreement”—her mouth flirted with the idea of a smile—“that our daughter has been traumatized enough. We’re here to see that she doesn’t get victimized all over again.”
“I don’t consider myself a victim,” Zoe asserted in an assertive way. “I’m a survivor.”
Dinner times at the pre-divorce Slade house must have been interesting affairs, what with three boxers in the ring.
“I appreciate that,” Banfield said, covering both Slade women in one efficient comment. “And I’m sure you all appreciate that this is one of a number of routine interviews we have to conduct as part of our investigation of Professor Burch’s murder. Are you here as Zoe’s counsel, Ms. Slade?”
Too canny to give a close-the-door definitive answer, Erica said, “I’m here as her mother, for now. When I go into lawyer mode, you’ll know it.”
I bet.
Marvin leaned in. “Obviously, I’m here as her father, not as prosecuting attorney.”
Nobody asked you. I guess he wanted to remind us that he was there.
Banfield nodded, appreciating that, too. “Obviously. I think all our roles are clear here.”
“Oh?” Erica sounded unsure. “Who do Mac and Jeff represent?”
“Father Pirelli. He asked them to get involved. That’s not exactly by-the-book, so I hope you don’t mind.” Banfield didn’t wait for a comment on that before moving on. “During his time as dean, the late Professor Burch exhibited a pattern of misbehavior that may in some way be related to his death. So, I just want to check on the details of what he did. I’m sorry to have to ask you to go through that, Ms. Slade.”
“That’s all right.”
Zoe Slade interned as Warren Burch’s office assistant in the 2015–2016 school year. She transferred to Miami in the fall semester of 2016, warning her successor in the job—Madison Lee—on her way out.
“I wasn’t working there long before I learned not to wear skirts or dresses,” she said. She should have passed that advice on to Ms. Lee from the get-go, IMHO. “But that didn’t stop him from looking down my blouse, making me bend over to pick things up, commenting on my nice ass. Which, by the way, is a nice ass.”
Marvin winced at the addendum. Erica looked like she was trying not to look annoyed at her daughter.
“How did you feel about that?” Banfield asked.
“Powerless. Disrespected. Humiliated. Just what he wanted me to feel, I guess.”
“Ask her how she feels in ten years,” Erica suggested.
“Is it true that you never filed a complaint about any of this with the university?” Banfield asked Zoe.
“Yes.” Zoe nervously fingered the buttons of the blue sweater she wore over a white blouse.
“Did Dean Burch threaten you or in any way prevent you from filing a complaint?”
Mac smiled his approval at this new line of inquiry, clearly designed to establish whether Burch might have pushed somebody and got pushed back hard. The question must have just occurred to Banfield since she hadn’t asked either of the other women.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Then why didn’t you file a complaint?”
“Is this an investigation or an inquisition?” Erica asked.
But her daughter didn’t mind answering. “I’ve asked myself the same question. Maybe I didn’t want to call attention to myself. I get enough of that in Erin just for being the child of my parents. I should have gone away to school to begin with.”
“I’m surprised your father didn’t tell you to file a complaint under Title IX.”
“I didn’t know about it until recently.” The tone of Marvin’s voice would have frozen saltwater in Hawaii.
“It’s not as if I had the worst of it,” Zoe snapped at him.
“What do you mean?” Banfield pounced.
“I mean there was another girl there at the time, an administrative assistant, and he helped himself to her boobs when her hands were otherwise occupied.”
Judging by the stunned look on his face, this was brand-new intel to Marvin Slade, county prosecutor. For McCabe & Co.—or maybe I should say Banfield & Co.—this was just what we’d been hoping for: a line on another victim with a bigger axe to grind. Make that “survivor.”
“Are you sure?” Banfield pressed.
“I used my phone to record him doing it, but the survivor didn’t want to come forward publicly.”
“What!” I think that was me.
“I guess Burch thought she was easy pickings because of her history,” Zoe said. “She was in her twenties, not a student. It was common knowledge in the hallways that she’d ‘been around’”—air quotes—“before somebody at SBU got her an admin job in the business school. I think she practically had her own suite in the Erin jail. Maybe that’s why Burch thought he could go further with her and get by with it.
“Anyway, when she told me he was handling the merchandise, I decided to catch him at it. I just made sure I was nearby whenever Burch maneuvered it so the two of them were off in a corner by themselves. It took a couple of weeks, but I finally got some clear video of the old guy getting handy.”
Marvin found his voice, and it wasn’t a quiet one: “That’s sexual imposition. You had a legal responsibility to report it. Haven’t I taught you anything?”
Zoe had her mouth open for a snappy response to that, but Erica intervened. “Failure to report a felony is a crime, but sexual imposition is not a felony in Ohio. It’s a third-degree misdemeanor under Section 2907.06 of the Ohio Revised Code.”
“You must be an expert in that particular section,” Marvin snapped, “since you’ve defended a number of violators of it.”
“I don’t choose my clients,” Erica shot back. “They choose me. And everybody’s entitled to a defense. And by the way, did you ever notice that juries of their peers found some of those clients charged under that statute innocent?”
“Stop it!” Zoe yelled. Who’s the parent here? “Both of you! It wasn’t my story to tell. I tried to get the survivor to file a complaint, but she wouldn’t.”
“You know as well as I do, Marvin, there’s a good reason these cases are usually settled out of court.” Erica looked at the rest of us, in case we didn’t know as well as she and Marvin did. “Testifying in court about harassment or abuse can be traumatizing for survivors. Suppose Zoe had taken the video to law enforcement and Marvin indicted Burch. If Burch didn’t agree to a plea deal, Zoe could have been dragged into court as a witness on the sexual imposition. And that means that, inevitably, she would have had to testify about her own experience with Burch. And Burch’s attorney wouldn’t have been gentle.”
“You should know,” Marvin muttered. Erica talked over to him.
“Zoe’s a tough young woman”—said with pride—“but a half-day in court being interrogated by Evan Farleigh might have affected her for years. Trust me on that. No mother would want that for her daughter.”
This declaration meant something to Marvin Slade. He telegraphed that with the widening of his eyes. I just had no idea what. Maybe it had something to do with realizing that Mama Bear had been in the know all along and he’d been shut out. Or maybe not.
Whatever it was, I don’t think Mac missed it. He gave his beard a workover as Banfield riposted.
“Granting all of that,” she said in a carefully neutral tone, “surely you can see that the murder has changed everything, Zoe.”
“But the survivor had nothing to do with the murder!”
“You can’t know that,” her father told her. “You need to tell us who she is and turn over the video.”
“I won’t!” I had a sudden vision of Zoe in boxing gloves. “And you can’t make me. Look, the girl he grabbed has already had enough to do with cops and courts to last her a lifetime. Besides, Burch knew what I had. He left both of us alone after that. She stuck with the job for a few months after I transferred to Miami in the Spring Semester of 2017.”
Sounds like blackmail to me, but I won’t tell if you won’t.
“Whatever you think,” Banfield said, “it’s not at all far-fetched that Burch’s killer is somebody he took advantage of.” She paused, probably girding her metaphorical loins. “Or a parent of such a person.”
“I can get that,” Erica said with gusto. “I wanted to punch Burch in his nether regions myself.”
With gloves off, I bet.
“That’s only human,” her ex allowed. How would you know, Marv? “But justice is not a DIY project. That’s why we have laws and courts and prisons. When a crime is committed, it isn’t just the injured party who is harmed but the whole community. That’s why only the state can be the agent of justice.”
You know, that actually makes sense.
“Well said!”
But Marvin looked too disconcerted to enjoy Mac’s praise. “This entire conversation puts me in an awkward position as prosecutor.”
“Well, it’s above my paygrade,” Banfield said. “All I know is that I’d really like to talk to anybody who’s happy to see Warren Burch dead.”
“Try his students,” Zoe said. “I hear his tests were really tough.”