Sissy

by Madelyn Bennett Edwards

  Warren started to come at me, and the man dropped me to my feet and caught Warren. "No way, Warren. You are not going to hit a woman,"

  "What about what she just did to me?" His chin and eye were bleeding, but not as much as my fingers and knuckles. The man said something to Warren, but his voice was drowned out by sirens. Two state troopers pulled up on the shoulder and jumped from their cars. Before I knew what happened, Warren was sitting in the back seat of one of the cruisers and the two troopers made U-turns in the highway and headed back to Jean Ville.

  I drove home and nursed my hand all afternoon. I hated missing the trial, but I was in no shape to sit on a church pew in that crowded courtroom. My phone rang at five o'clock. I was on my second glass of wine.

  "Sissy, I'm going to the parish jail to interview LeBlanc and Morrow." Luke's voice was tender, and he spoke as though afraid he might upset me.

  "Can I go with you?"

  "Yes. We need your testimony, too."

  In his car, on the way to the sheriff's office, I asked Luke how the trial went that afternoon. He said the four paramedics testified that they triaged Susie and Rodney and put them in the two ambulances. Luke said the volunteer firemen took the stand one at a time and, although it took almost an hour to interview each of them, they didn't have much to say, mostly they said that they "watched the police and the paramedics and talked to some of our friends who had attended the wedding."

  Luke said that Dr. Cappel and Dr. Switzer both took the witness stand and were asked about the injuries Susie and Rodney suffered. It took most of the afternoon to hear about their approach to the injuries and the types of treatments they administered. "Dr. Switzer talked about how Rodney was taken to Alexandria then airlifted to Ochsner and that he, Switzer, went with Rod and returned the next morning." He looked straight ahead as he drove.

  "Marianne and Dr. Warner showed up at noon," Luke said. "I guess they are at Susie's house."

  "I wondered who that strange car belonged to." I muttered that I'd seen several cars next door at Susie's house, but was in no shape to visit.

  "You really didn't miss much," Luke said. "Tomorrow we'll question Dr. Warner."

  *

  There were two interrogation rooms at the parish sheriff's department. Joey was in one of them, Warren in the other. They sat behind tables and had Styrofoam cups in front of them. Joey looked angry, Warren, worried. I watched them through the one-way windows. Luke went into the room with Joey, first. He introduced himself and sat at the table. Joey started ranting and raving about how someone should arrest me for assaulting a cop. "That bitch slapped me, twice. I told her she was under arrest and she ran away. She should be charged with fleeing the scene, resisting arrest, battery of a police officer…" Luke let him carry on until he ran out of words.

  "You've been accused of a number of crimes, including simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling, sexual battery, simple battery, second degree battery," Luke spoke slowly and looked Joey directly in the eye and explained how much trouble Joey was in, and that I had identified him as one of the two assailants. "You could go to prison for a very long time."

  "How does she know who did it?"

  "What do you mean, Mr. LeBlanc. Do you think Miss Burton didn't recognize you?"

  "She never saw me…" Joey realized what he'd said and shut up. Dumbass, I thought, and laughed aloud. Then he said something that took my breath away. "What about her brother?" Luke got up and pulled the curtain across the window and turned off the microphone so I was shut out of the rest of the interview. I sat on a sofa in the waiting room and wondered what Joey meant by that comment.

  It was dark outside when Luke came into the waiting room and sat next to me.

  "Sorry, I had to shut you out. I felt LeBlanc had information about another investigation, which is confidential." He tried to hold my hand, but I pulled away.

  "What about Warren?"

  "Both guys will be in lockup overnight." Luke took a deep breath and let out a sigh. "The attorney general is sending a couple of state investigators here to interview Morrow and LeBlanc tomorrow."

  "Don't let them out of jail. They'll come after me again, for sure."

  "The judge signed warrants and will hold a bond hearing tomorrow during the noon recess. If they bail out, we'll put a couple of troopers on them."

  "Why don't you assign the Troopers to me?"

  "Same thing, only this way you'll have some privacy, and we'll know who they talk to, where they go. It's part of a broader investigation."

  *

  Day four of the trial seemed longer than all the other days, combined. Donato Warner was the first witness. Luke questioned him about Rodney's injuries, his recovery, how it was touch-and-go. Warner stated that without Susie and Lilly, Rodney wouldn't have survived.

  "I watched love actually heal a person who should have died." Dr. Warner's statement brought a group sigh from the gallery, followed by dead silence as he continued. "While his wife was in ICU in the Jean Ville Hospital, his daughter came to see him. We’d put him on Propofol, a drug that induces coma, to give his brain time to heal after the extensive surgery to remove the projectile."

  "Dr. Warner, for those who don't know, what is a projectile?" Luke stood behind the podium, and I couldn't take my eyes off him. When he walked into the courtroom that morning, I was sitting in my regular place: first pew behind the prosecution's table, at the end, near the wall. He wore a dark gray suit, light blue shirt, and a purple, pink, white, and blue tie. He looked exceptionally gorgeous, or maybe I thought so because I saw him with new eyes, eyes that knew he loved me.

  "A projectile is, technically, a bullet." Don Warner was direct and deliberate, but he was warm and composed. "So we had to remove the bullet that had entered his brain above his right ear."

  Luke had set up an easel that had a poster with a diagram of a brain. He asked Dr. Warner to step down and show the jury where the bullet was lodged and what he had to do to remove it without causing further brain damage. Don Warner stepped down from the witness box and used a pointer to show the location of the bullet. He said it was up against the temporal lobe.

  "The temporal lobe is the part of the brain associated with understanding language, also with memory, hearing, and sequencing, or organization which is, basically, the ability to make sense of things." Warner said there was no way to know how much damage Rodney's brain had incurred until he came out of his coma.

  "We took him off of the Propofol, but he was totally unresponsive for several days. Then his daughter came into his room, took his hand, and began to talk to him. He responded when she said she loved him and told him that Susie, his wife, was okay. He actually turned his head towards her, then tried to open his eyes. Lilly, his daughter, said he squeezed her hand. But the most significant thing was, when she began to cry and put her head on his chest, he reached his left arm over and began to stroke her hair.

  "That's the power of love." Warner testified for almost two hours with Luke prompting him to describe Rodney's difficult and painful recovery, and explain that he still couldn't walk.

  "But if you could see him with Susie and Lilly, you'd know that if anyone can overcome such dire conditions, it's Rodney Thibault. He and his family are the most amazing people I've ever known. I hope I have a family like his one day."

  Luke asked Warner questions about Susie's recovery, and he explained all the obstacles she had overcome. He talked about how Lilly was there every day, going from Susie's room to Rodney's, and how, according to Warner's opinion, Susie made herself recover so she could work with Rodney and bring him back to some type of normal life.

  "'Miraculous,' is all I can say." He took a deep breath and let it out. "In all my years as a neurosurgeon, I've never seen anything like it. Rodney should be dead, and Susie should be an invalid." Warner looked at the jurors then at the judge.

  On cross-examination, John Perkins tried to make Warner say that other patients with similar injuri
es had recovered. Perkins tried several angles to make Warner agree that the bullets were meant to injure, not kill; but Don Warner did not fall into the trap. In the end, Perkins's Perkins’ cross-examination, in my opinion, helped the prosecution.

  "I'm convinced one bullet was meant to hit Rodney between the eyes, and the other Susie, right in the center of the brain where it would cause certain death, or, at minimal, severe brain damage." Warner stared at Perkins as though he were an imbecile.

  "How can you determine motive? You're a doctor, not an investigator." Perkins barked his questions in anger.

  "If you compare Susie's height to the location of the bullet that entered Rodney's right arm, you would come to that conclusion." Don Warner spoke while Perkins tried to interrupt him and get him to stop. It was as though Warner didn't hear Perkins barking at him. "And the bullet that hit Rodney above the right ear would have hit him in the forehead had he not turned to protect his wife."

  "Your Honor, I object to the witness's testimony." Perkins walked towards the bench, and the judge put his hand in the air like a stop sign. "He's not qualified to discuss trajectory and the intention of a shooter."

  "Who is qualified, Mr. Perkins?" The judge glared at Perkins, and he began to take a few steps back when he realized he had crossed an invisible line. "If not a doctor, a neurosurgeon, the one who removed the projectiles?"

  "There are qualified investigators who are trained to make those determinations." Perkins walked backwards and returned to the podium.

  "I'll sustain your objection, but I will not instruct the jury to disregard." DeYoung looked at the jury then at his clerk.

  "Your, Honor, that's completely unfair." Perkins’ voice rose again.

  "This is my courtroom, and I'll say what's fair and unfair." DeYoung was visibly angry but did a great job of remaining composed. He actually smiled at Perkins, but it was a sideways grin, more like a sneer. "Are you finished with your questions?"

  "Yes, Your Honor. I tender." Perkins walked back to his table and sat down.

  *

  Luke called a ballistics expert who said she worked in the State Crime Lab. Luke went through all of her credentials and asked that she be entered as an expert witness. The judge approved, and the defense did not object.

  The woman stepped down from the witness stand and approached the easel with a poster that showed a diagram of two people, exactly the height of Rodney and Susie, standing outside the church doors, facing the street. She drew a line from the blue truck in front of the church to Rodney's forehead and one to Susie's. Then she took that poster down, and there was another one behind it that showed the same two figures with the taller figure turned to the left, his right arm over the shorter figure, just as Rodney's was when he wrapped his arm around Susie to protect her. The trajectory of the bullets was the same, but one entered the taller figure above the right ear, the other bullet entered the taller figure in the right arm.

  "The conclusion from this study is that one bullet was aimed at the forehead of each of the victims, but because the taller victim turned and threw his arm over the shorter one, the bullets missed their targets." The investigator returned to the witness stand.

  Perkins chose not to cross-examine and looked defeated.

  *

  "It's lunchtime. We'll take a one-and-a-half hour break and return at one forty-five." The judge looked at his watch and told the jury for the fourth day in a row about the conference room and their lunches. He banged his gavel, and the jury filed out. When I got into the hall, the woman deputy who had been kind to me asked me to follow her. We went to the judge's office and Lydia buzzed us in. The judge was standing near her desk.

  "Sissy, please…come in." He led the way into his chamber and closed the door. Luke was sitting in one of the chairs in front of the judge's desk. I nodded at him and tried to be as professional as possible. "I am going over to the sheriff's department to hold a bond hearing for Morrow and LeBlanc. Is there anything you want to tell me before I go?"

  "They did it. I'm sure of it. I thought it was Thevenot and Rousseau, but I'm convinced it was Warren and Joey."

  "Can you explain how you know this, since you admitted not seeing the assailants?'

  "When Joey was on the witness stand yesterday, he laughed that wet, coarse laugh, and I remembered hearing it that night." I looked at Luke and back at the judge. "Luke, I mean Mr. McMath, said that I should try to remember smells, sounds, tastes, anything that would help me know who did it. When I heard Joey laugh, I knew it was him. Then I thought about smelling beer breath and body odor and knew the other guy was Warren. He and I used to be…well, let's just say I know his odor and how he smells when he drinks beer. And he was belching. I'd know that belch anywhere."

  The judge suppressed a grin and looked at Luke. "Will this be enough to convict?"

  "We have the DNA, judge." Luke took a deep breath and looked sympathetically at me. "And these two guys are part of a larger investigation, so maybe we have a bargaining chip with Sissy's testimony."

  "Okay, I'm going to arrange for a high bond, seeing as how this was rape." The judge stood up and took a suit coat off a coat rack behind him and put it on. "Let's see whether they've lawyered up."

  "I’ll request a search warrant from the state police to collect the DNA samples from Morrow and LeBlanc, Your Honor." Luke put his hand on my shoulder, which sent chills down my arm.

  "I'll need an affidavit of probable cause signed by the officer." Judge DeYoung looked at Luke intently. "If probable cause exists, I'll order that Morrow and LeBlanc submit for DNA testing."

  "Thank you, Your Honor. Once that's done I'll have swabs done and send them to the state lab with the DNA collected from Sissy at the hospital." Luke squeezed my hand, and we watched the Judge walk towards the private elevator down the hall.

  *

  I followed Luke into the conference room where Susie was crying on Rodney's shoulder. I could count on one hand the number of times I'd seen my big sister cry, so I figured it was serious. Warner, Marianne, and Lilly were sitting around a table, sandwiches in Styrofoam containers in front of them and a stack of similar containers on the countertop across the back wall. Luke grabbed a container and sat down. I stood behind Lilly and watched, but I felt dis-attached as they all talked about what a shock it was for Susie to hear that the gunman had actually meant to kill her, too.

  I felt numb. Too much was happening at one time and I couldn't sort through it all. I squeezed Susie's shoulder and kissed her on the cheek then slipped out the door.

  *

  I found my dad in his kitchen, eating lunch.

  "Hey, little girl. What are you doing there? I thought you were at the trial."

  "Lunch recess." I sat across from him and folded my hands together on the table.

  "Need something?" He took a bite of salad and didn't look at me.

  "Information."

  "Shoot."

  "What do you know about Warren and Joey LeBlanc beating and raping me?" I didn't take my eyes off him.

  He looked like he'd been gut punched and started choking on his food. "Who?" He drank a half glass of water to stop choking.

  "You know who. They've been arrested for what they did to me."

  "That's good. How did they find out who did it? You said your head was covered and you had no idea who it was." He began to regain his composure and tried to act unaffected.

  "Evidence. Did you know they both raped me? Now I know why I hurt too much down there. My vagina burned for weeks. I bled. I was raw."

  "I don't need to know all the details."

  We stared at each other, and after what seemed several minutes, he looked down. "Someone tried to scare me so I'd leave the case alone. Which begs the question: why didn't James want Thevenot and Rousseau arrested for trying to kill Susie and Rodney?"

  He pushed his chair back from the table, stood up straight, and said, "You should continue to leave things alone, young lady.
" He walked out of the kitchen, and I heard the door to the Lion's den slam shut and the deadbolt click.

  I drove to James's office and walked past his receptionist, who followed me saying, "You can't go back there." I threw his office door opened and saw Keith Rousseau and Mr. Borders, the DA, sitting across the desk from James. They all looked at me like I was a ghost. I just stared at them, then turned and walked out. I felt as though the walls were closing in on me, and I could barely catch my breath as I drove back to the courthouse.

  *

  Marianne was the first witness called that afternoon. Luke asked her what she saw when she came out of the church, and she described the blue truck speeding away. She explained how she rode in the ambulance with Susie and said that Lilly was with them. She described Susie's injuries, and how she'd stayed with her half-sister day and night except for the two days she went to New Orleans so they could see Rodney.

  "His condition was the most important thing to Susie, and I was afraid she wouldn't recover if he died." Marianne started to say something else, but John Perkins stood up and objected.

  "She can't know that. No one could know." Perkins was adamant.

  "She's a nurse." Luke turned to look at Perkins then back at the judge. "And she's Susie Burton's sister. Of course she can make that determination."

  The judge called a bench conference. They met for a few minutes, then the lawyers returned to their places, and Luke asked Marianne how she was related to Susie. He probed her until she admitted that they had the same biological.

  "Ex-Senator Bob Burton." Marianne glared at Luke as though she could kill him, and no matter how hard he tried to get her to say it again, she waltzed around it, not repeating our dad's name.

  Regardless of Marianne's unwillingness to plunge deeper into her biological background, there was an impact on the jury when they realized Marianne was half white, the daughter of a senator, the venerable ex-mayor of Jean Ville. She was educated, intelligent, beautiful, and her features were more Caucasian than African American. I watched her charm the jury, and if Luke's goal was to make the jurors who were prejudiced against blacks rethink their stance, it worked.