She sighed as if he was forcing her to make a difficult decision. But she’d pretty much expected the reaction—all part of the plan—from having listened to his lectures for the past two years and knowing what a romantic fool he was. He was bound to make his choice based on his self-image rather than practical consideration.
“Well, if that’s how you feel,” she said. “You know, it’s really too bad, Alexis. You could have had it all. Me. Your life. But now it’s all going to go away.”
Sarah smiled. It was good to have a plan. Initially, there wouldn’t be much in it for her except the publicity, and it never hurt an aspiring actress to have her photograph and résumé in the newspapers and on television. But as soon as the criminal trial was over, she planned a civil suit to wipe him out.
Most of all, she’d have her revenge. Revenge on every man who had ever taken liberties with her since childhood. They’d all told her they loved her, fucked her, then left her. She was going to get even for every man who had required sex for her to get the things she wanted— no, deserved—in life. And for every man who had ever stood between her and those things Alexis Michalik would pay the price.
“I would never want to be with a woman like you,” he said quietly, looking up. “A whore. An evil person. If I gave an evil person what they wanted, I would be evil myself…so no matter what the cost, you can go to hell.”
Ryder listened to the statement with a smile on her face. “Oh, Alex, that really hurts,” she said, then sniffed. “But thanks, I’ll use it to get into character.” She promptly burst into tears and ran over to the door, which she flung open, nearly scaring the secretary out of her seat.
“Miss, are you all right?” the secretary asked.
Ryder wiped a tear from her eye and swiped at her nose. “Ask him,” she wailed and pointed back into the inner office. “Ask your boss, Mr. Michalik.” She sobbed once more and then ran from the office.
A few minutes later, Ryder appeared in the office of the university vice president of student affairs where she promptly burst into tears. “I…I…was raped,” she gasped. “Alexis Michalik. I asked for his help on my master’s thesis…but he raped me.” The male vice president of student affairs listened to her story and immediately sent a campus security officer to escort Michalik from his office.
“Tell him to go home and remain there until he is contacted by this administration or the New York Police Department,” the vice president said. He was rewarded for his swift, decisive action with a smile from Sarah’s beautiful, trembling lips.
A female police detective arrived and took her initial statement. Sarah had gone to Michalik’s office to get help with her thesis. He’d been coming on to her a lot lately, but she thought it was just harmless flirting. Saying she needed to relax, he’d given her a beer. “Suddenly I couldn’t think straight,” she said. “It was as if I was in one of those dreams where you want to wake up, but you can’t.” The next thing she knew, her jeans and panties had been removed and her wrists were tied to the office couch.
Ryder paused, as if gathering herself for the stretch run. She burst into tears. “And then he raped me,” she cried. “I think he was wearing a condom. But when he was finished, he still wiped himself on my blouse.”
The detective reached for her hand. “That’s okay,” she consoled. “It wasn’t your fault. These things aren’t about sex; it’s about power and control. These guys are predators.”
Ryder grew impatient waiting for the detective to ask the right questions. “You know,” she volunteered, “there was this guy…I was coming out of the building after…after…I was attacked. I was still groggy so I don’t remember everything, but I think I told him that I’d been raped. He seemed concerned, but I don’t remember what happened from there.”
The detective scribbled furiously in her notebook. “A witness, that’s great,” she said. “Did you know this guy? Ever seen him before or know how we can contact him?”
Ryder shook her head. “No, I’m certain about that,” she said. “I didn’t know him from Adam.”
“That’s okay, he may still come forward,” the detective said. In the meantime, they needed to go to the hospital for a rape examination.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Ryder said. “I have all of my clothes from last night in this bag.” She handed the bag to the detective. “I read a story in Cosmo once that rape victims shouldn’t bathe or wash the clothes in case there is some DNA evidence.”
“Well done, young lady,” the detective said, patting her on the back. “That’s using your head. A tough thing to do under these circumstances.”
At the hospital, everything went as planned, except that she had to remind the crime lab photographer to take pictures of the marks on her wrists. Sloppy police work, she thought, no wonder criminals own the streets. She also felt she shouldn’t have had to mention for a second time that shortly after she drank the beer, she felt drugged.
“Well then, we’ll certainly need to take a blood sample,” the examining physician said. “He may have slipped something in your drink.”
No shit, Sherlock, she thought but said, “Do you really think so? I wondered about that but I just couldn’t imagine someone famous like him doing something like that to one of his students.”
A few minutes later, the doctor who examined Ryder came out and talked privately to the detective, who then walked over and relayed the information. “He said the preliminary examination shows trauma to your vaginal area as well as your anus consistent with sexual assault. Apparently you were torn up pretty good. They’re going to send the vaginal and anal swabs to a lab for DNA testing—”
“I told you he wore a condom,” Ryder reminded her.
“Yes, I know, but they check anyway so that the defense attorneys don’t come up with some surprise attack. Don’t sweat it.” The detective hesitated as if embarrassed to ask the next question. “You said that you haven’t had sex with anyone else within the past twenty-four hours?”
“What do you mean by that?” Ryder snapped.
“Nothing, we’d just have to explain evidence of other sexual activity, that’s all,” the detective said. “Sometimes these things come up and we want to be prepared.”
Ryder thought about Vanders and the condoms. It would be just like him to forget, she thought. But she’d checked his bathroom trash can before leaving and there were two used rubbers lying on top of the tissue.
“No, I wasn’t having sex with anyone else,” she told the detective, willing a few more tears for sympathy’s sake. “I know this sounds weird in this day and age, but I’m not into casual sex; I’m pretty celibate unless I’m in a strong, committed relationship. And, well, you know, I just haven’t found the right guy.”
“That’s okay, sweetie,” the detective said, handing her a tissue and taking one herself. “I know what you mean. Hell, I’m forty-five and I still haven’t found Mr. Right, though I’ve met more than my share of Mr. Wrongs. I’m just sorry this happened to a nice girl like you. But I think we have enough to get a warrant for Michalik’s arrest. Would you like me to drop you off at your apartment on my way back to the precinct house?”
Ryder agreed. “You will call and tell me when he’s been arrested,” she said when the detective pulled up in front of her building. “I’m afraid…afraid of him. He’s awfully clever.”
“Well, he wasn’t smart enough to keep his pants zipped, now was he?” the detective replied. “Just try to get some rest. I’ll call when we get him.”
A few hours later, Ryder thanked the detective profusely when she called to announce the arrest of Alexis Michalik. “He’ll probably make bail, but we’ll let him know that under no circumstance is he to make contact with you or I’ll be on him like white on rice,” the detective said. “And we’re still looking for your mystery witness. He’ll pretty much drive a nail in this one.”
Later, Ryder met with an assistant district attorney and a victim’s advocate. The ADA interviewed her and seemed sat
isfied with her responses. “Before I leave, I want to explain a little about how this works,” the young female attorney said. “Just because the police arrested Mr. Michalik doesn’t mean the district attorney’s office will charge him right away. We want to do this right, so that when we do go after him—and I think that I can say between me, you, and the wall, that we will be going after this creep—we nail his ass to the wall. The process can take a little while, but just stay patient and justice will prevail here.”
That evening, Ryder reluctantly but graciously accepted telephone calls from reporters with the New York Post and the New York Times. It seemed that some anonymous caller had tipped them off to Michalik’s arrest. “I’ve been told not to say anything at this time,” she said. “But thank you for your concern.”
“I understand you can’t talk about the case, Miss Ryder,” both reporters had said, using virtually the same language, “but can you tell my readers a little about yourself.”
“Well…I suppose that’s all right,” she said. “I’m from Iowa and like every little girl from Iowa, I came to New York hoping to make it on Broadway….”
The next day, the news hit the stands. RUSSIAN CASANOVA RAPES ACTRESS, screamed the headline on the front of the Post. The Times was somewhat more reserved, putting the story below the fold under the headline “Internationally Acclaimed Poet Accused of Raping Student Actress.”
She was reasonably happy with both stories, although she thought more could have been done with the small list of acting credits she’d provided—several television spots, a Card Girl appearance at a boxing match in the Garden, and as the dead nude woman in the off-off-Broadway production of Son of Sam, I Am, which had required her to remain absolutely still for ten minutes while the antihero gave his longest monologue as a knockoff of a Dr. Seuss poem. But the newspaper coverage was a start.
Stamping her feet with glee, she read and reread the part about the university suspending Michalik “pending further investigation” and the outcome of the criminal case. “We want to make it clear that NYU will not in any way tolerate any behavior from its faculty and staff that compromises the physical safety and emotional well-being of our students,” President Helen Coffman was quoted. “We point out that Mr. Michalik is innocent until proven guilty and will receive due process under the American justice system; however, we feel that there is sufficient grounds to warrant taking this measure to protect our students.”
The Post had even dredged up a file photograph of Michalik reading at one of his poetry presentations shortly after his arrival in the United States. Ryder was pleased to see they’d chosen one in which he looked just like a wild-eyed Russian of the sort who’d rape innocent young American girls. Ryder had declined to allow herself to be photographed. “Not at this time. Please understand, I don’t want to jeopardize the work of the police department.” But she’d handed out black-and-white prints of a glamour shot she’d had made a year earlier for her portfolio.
All day she’d fielded calls. Some from her former lovers, several of whom seemed to find the whole thing about her being raped sort of sexually exciting; of course, they didn’t say that flat out, but they wanted to see her “when you feel up to it.” She was disappointed that Dmitri wasn’t among the callers, but the plastic surgeon had been so titillated by the whole thing—“The newspaper story said he tied you up?”—that she was sure she could get a lip job out of him. The few friends she had—other would-be actresses and models, none of them the sort you’d trust with your life—also called, trying to be associated with the girl in the papers.
There was even a call from the producer of Son of Sam, I Am, who wanted to know her availability in February for a new play he was considering called The Sky Is Falling, “based on a fictional account of people trapped in the World Trade Center on 9/11; they all die.” She was polite and said she’d definitely be interested in reading for a part, just in case, but she was hoping for bigger offers than that.
The best call was from Harvey Schmellmann, a lawyer. “You need representation, my girl,” he’d said. “And Schmellmann, Fiorino and Campbell is the best in the business. We’d protect your interests in the criminal proceedings—I’m sure you’re aware of what happened to the victim in the Kobe Bryant case—as well as any civil litigation we might consider. Not to be insensitive to the trauma inflicted upon you by that monster, but I dare say that a woman of your obvious beauty and strength of character will soon be receiving a lot of calls—if you haven’t already. Have you?—from a lot of shysters in the entertainment business trying to lock up your options…I’m talking books, movies, television, and speaking engagements, which can be very lucrative. You don’t want to wander into that quagmire without effective counsel, and my partner Gino Fiorino is the very best there is at protecting those rights.”
Schmellmann even sent a limousine to pick her up and deliver her to his office “for a first consultation, absolutely free and no strings attached.” By the time she left, she’d signed the necessary papers to be his client—“one-third of any profits from lawsuits, plus expenses; 15 percent of any artistic or literary recompense…but don’t worry, sister, there’ll be plenty to go around by the time we get through with these schmucks. You know, I think we have a good case against that freakin’ university for not monitoring this perverted Ruskie.”
Then the limo whisked her back home in time to meet the first of three television crews, whose producers had called her after reading the morning newspapers. “Should have called us first,” they’d said. But they’d all sent over crews and eager reporters who breathlessly told their stories.
Ryder was proud of the performances she’d given: understated yet powerful, the serious student of Russian literature who’d been preyed upon by a man she’d trusted. “But I really can’t go into the details,” she said. The only reason she’d agreed to the interviews was “to empower other young women who find themselves in my position.” If this had been the stage, I’d win a Tony, she thought. Oh, well, next year.
The story only picked up speed the day after it broke, when Ted Vanders went to the police and said he’d entered the building that night and nearly bumped into a disheveled young woman. “She was crying,” he’d said in his statement. “Said she’d been attacked by some professor. But she didn’t want to call the police and then took off.”
The detective read Sarah the transcript of the interview with Vanders. “He came forward after he saw you on television. So I guess the media did its job. Anyway, he said he’d never met you before that night, didn’t even know your name. He’ll make a great witness. Pretty much a slam dunk case. You just relax and keep your head up, kid.”
The detective hung up feeling good about her job. She hadn’t bothered to tell Ryder that this character Vanders—a funny little guy, artsy-fartsy type—had a couple of scratches on his cheek she found interesting. She’d worked in the sex assault division for ten years and had seen a lot of fingernail marks on the faces of perps.
“What happened to your face?” the detective had asked him.
Vanders’s hand had gone up to his cheek and his face turned red. “My cat scratched me.”
Mighty big cat, the detective thought.
Later that evening, Ryder went over to Vanders’s apartment and gave him a mercy screw. “You were a good boy today, Ted,” she said. “Keep it up, and I’ll keep you up…get it?” Vanders reacted like a puppy who’d been praised by its owner; in fact, she wondered if he was going to pee on himself.
But that was weeks ago, and Michalik still hadn’t been charged. At first she’d been happy when the top dog in the district attorney’s rape bureau, Rachel Rachman, personally took over the case. The woman had paced back in forth behind her desk when they first met, giving a little speech about how men in positions of authority had used sexual violence against women from the beginning of time. She’d also noted that the police had found plenty of corroborating evidence, “including a beer glass on a bookshelf that he apparently d
idn’t see, with your fingerprints and lipstick on it and traces of rohypnol.”
“What’s that?” Ryder asked innocently.
“Sometimes called roofies, or the date rape drug…essentially takes away your ability to resist,” Rachman said, flashing in anger. “It’s the latest thing. Drop it in a drink at the bar, offer to give her a ride home, and then rape her when she’s defenseless. Happens to a lot more women than we know about.”
Rachman had called Monday saying she was going into some meeting with the district attorney, Karp, and expected to file charges later that day. She was excited because the lab reports were back. “There are traces of rohypnol in your blood,” she said. “Even better, your blouse tested positive for semen, and it’s a match for Michalik. In other words, he’s toast…. Um, I was thinking about calling a press conference today to announce the charges—the media has been hounding me about this one. Okay with you?”
“Whatever you think is best, Rachel,” she’d replied.
But instead of calling later with the happy news that Alexis was about to be charged, Rachman said there was going to be a slight delay. Karp and some troll of an assistant DA named Kipman apparently had some sort of problem with the case. “They want me to cross a few more t ’s and dot some i ’s. It’s no big deal. We’ll file next week.”
“I don’t understand,” Ryder complained, trying not to sound hysterical. This wasn’t the way the plan was supposed to go. “You promised.”
“Don’t worry,” Rachman assured her. “We have him by the balls. Karp and Kipman are like all men; they just don’t want to believe that sexual assault is at epidemic levels in this country, much of it acquaintance rape, such as in your case. So I have to go twice as far just to get them to budge. But I’ll get them there.”
Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17) Page 25
