Trial by Fury (4 page)

Except Hayley’s rape had taken place at an alcohol-fueled party on campus, and Celia was adamant she’d been drugged.

“Some schools use their honor court, which is made up of fellow students. Harwood does that, I think, as long as it’s not a violent incident. Students can be suspended or even expelled, depending on the circumstances.”

“Hunh…I wonder if they consider it violent if the victim’s unconscious and can’t fight back.” It was a rhetorical question, as it was clear Harwood didn’t even consider what happened to Hayley an assault. “Is it possible some schools don’t take reports as seriously? Maybe their numbers are deflated by their refusal to prosecute.”

“Well of course,” Gloria answered with a huff, as if even an idiot knew that. “It’s an out-and-out conflict of interest to ask colleges to report their own rape statistics. If parents knew what the real numbers were, they’d never let their daughters go to school there.”

Theo took no pleasure from sharing Celia’s story, plus the details Hank had discovered about what appeared to be a deliberate coverup. By the time she’d gotten through the narrative, Gloria was mournfully silent, no doubt stewing about the actions of the institution where she’d spent more than half her life.

“I have a video of the assault…it’s pretty graphic. There’s no way anyone could look at this and call it consensual.” She swung the laptop around and clicked it to play.

When the clip ended, Gloria sprang from her chair and started to pace, as if ready to spring into action. “That’s one of the most horrendous things I’ve ever seen. What kind of person films a rape like it’s a souvenir?”

“Someone who ought to be in jail.”

“We need to take this straight to Earl Gupton. He’s a friend of mine, you know. One of the kindest, most honest men I’ve ever met. I’ll make an appointment for us. If anyone can get to the bottom of this, it’s Earl.”

“Forget Gupton. I’ve also got him on tape blowing it off. Worse than that, he and Norman Tuttle—and Sonya Walsh too—practically threatened Dr. Perone’s job if the allegations got repeated. If I had to guess, I’d say they wanted this buried because those guys were basketball players. The rape happened right before the NCAA tournament.”

Gloria scrunched her nose with obvious distaste at the mention of the board chair. “I never liked Tuttle. He spits when he talks.” She took a long moment to absorb the news, a mar on the university she so loved. “I have a feeling this is going to get very ugly, Theo.”

“I know, but we can’t just let it go. Not with all this evidence. They did this to her—the players, the cops, the administration. They might as well have held the knife that slashed her wrists.”

“Causing a suicide? Won’t that be tough to prove?”

“I’m afraid so. I looked for some wiggle room in the
Appling
decision. Harwood had to know Hayley would suffer emotionally if she didn’t get justice. We could argue that makes it foreseeable.”

“Fine, but since when is wrongful death in our wheelhouse?”

Theo played the rape clip one more time. “Maybe it’s time we put it in our wheelhouse. Somebody has to answer for this woman.”

* * *

“
He started it.”

“
Did not.”

“
Did too.”

Celia’s home office shared a common wall with the Fowlers’ eight-year-old twins, whose words came through as clearly as if they were in the next room. She couldn’t wait until the family saved enough money for a down payment on a larger home. How they managed to live in a two-bedroom townhouse with two rambunctious boys and a newborn was beyond her.

Sitting at her desk, she turned on the TV to drown out the yelling. Not that cable news was much of an improvement, with their hyping of sensational stories that had absolutely zero relevance to the lives of real people.

“…bringing to a close the nineteenth GOP-led congressional investigation into the 2012 attack on the Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi. We’ll be back after this brief message with a report on some inflammatory charges against Illinois Senator Jim Collingwood, who filed for divorce on Monday from his wife of twenty-one years, after reporters here at TNS broke the story of his longtime affair with a Costa Rican beauty queen. Stay tuned.”

“Who cares about Jim Collingwood’s divorce? It’s none of our business,” she shouted at the TV, giving the Fowler boys a dose of their own medicine.

She needed at least another hour to finish changes to the syllabus for Introduction to Theater, or as she called it, Sixty-Five Freshmen in Need of a Humanities Credit. With any luck, her promotion would come through and the fall course would be given to one of the assistant professors so she could teach something more interesting. A craft class on TV directing, or maybe a seminar—anything that let her work with upperclassmen. Twelve years of teaching mostly fundamentals to freshmen and sophomores had gotten old. To say nothing of the fact that she drew mostly theater courses, when the department head knew her interest and expertise were in film and television.

“We’re back with news on the Jim Collingwood divorce. Following an anonymous report the senator was attempting to conceal his financial assets, his wife, Loretta Gordon Collingwood, hired famed women’s rights attorney Theodora Constantine to represent her in divorce filings. Constantine held a press conference this afternoon in our nation’s capital.”

Celia leaped from her desk and crossed the room to stand in front of her TV while repeatedly clicking the volume button on her remote.

Flanked by Mrs. Collingwood and her children—three daughters and three sons—Theo stood at an outdoor podium before a throng of reporters. The stiff collar of her suit, black with white piping, made her look like a military officer.

Her eyes blazing with undisguised contempt, she began, “It has been confirmed that, during the weeks prior to filing for divorce from the mother of his six children, Senator Jim Collingwood moved stocks valued at eighteen-point-six million dollars to a holding company headquartered in the Cayman Islands, and transferred his interest in a forty-million-dollar real estate group to Miss Roberta Castro, a citizen of Costa Rica with whom he’s alleged to have had an illicit affair that has now spanned four years.”

It was a made-for-TV spectacle, clearly designed to humiliate the senator and extract quick concessions in their divorce settlement. Theo was famous for stunts like these, and that’s why women called her when they wanted to sue rich, powerful men.

She’d spoken unabashedly about the practice in the interview with
Ms.
magazine, the one that was framed and displayed in her office. Outcomes were often decided in the court of public opinion, she said, where the winner was the one who controlled the narrative. Calling out bad behavior disrupted the systems powerful people used to silence their victims.

“Not only has Senator Collingwood attempted to hide assets that are undeniably joint property and therefore subject to equal distribution, it is apparent he also failed to report these transfers to the Internal Revenue Service—in violation of financial disclosure rules governing members of Congress. My client is seeking a contempt of court ruling placing Senator Collingwood in custody until these assets are returned to the US.”

Jim Collingwood was toast. Not only would he lose at least half of his fortune in a divorce settlement, he was likely to be censured by his peers in the Senate and turned out by Illinois voters in the next election.

Theo Constantine played hardball. Her take-no-prisoners style usually won enormous settlements in high-profile cases, nearly all of which featured men behaving badly. The Silicon Valley CEO who fired his administrative assistant after she cut her hair. The paternity suit against the televangelist. The drunken TV star who groped a flight attendant.

That’s why Celia had gone to Theo in the first place. But with rich and famous clients like those, it made little sense Theo would take on a case for a nobody like her. Or for a nobody like Hayley.

No wonder she hadn’t called back.

* * *

“
Flight attendants, prepare for landing.”

Theo pretended to focus on her notes as she draped a hand over the seat divider to squeeze Jalinda’s fingers. The paralegal had worked hard to overcome her fear of flying, but takeoffs and landings made her especially uneasy.

The trip home from Washington’s National Airport had taken less than two hours, getting them into Atlanta just before nine p.m. Too late to make any more calls.

“I have a feeling Collingwood’s attorneys will present us with an offer within the next twenty-four hours,” she said, attempting to divert attention from their bouncing descent into a thick cloud cover. “It would be nice to get the preliminaries wrapped up by midweek. Then I can send Sabrina back to DC to handle the paperwork.”

“I’ll check her schedule in the morning to make sure she’s available.”

“Thanks. I appreciate you coming with me on such short notice today.”

Jalinda closed her eyes tightly as they hit another bump. “I actually prefer these spur-of-the-moment trips. There’s no time to dread the flight.”

Theo chuckled and glanced out the window. “We’re breaking through the clouds. I can see the lights downtown. We should be on the ground in another couple of minutes.”

“Speaking of tomorrow, you wanted me to remind you to check with Hank on the status of the rape kit, the one for the Harwood student who killed herself.”

The case had been on Theo’s mind all day. A young woman who had taken her own life over a rape that had gone unpunished was a haunting reminder that no matter how much she accomplished on behalf of her clients, there was still so very far to go.

“What do you think of that case, Jalinda? Did you ever get a chance to look at the evidence?”

She nodded. “It was disgusting. And if the university refused to investigate to preserve their basketball championship hopes, it’s an egregious denial of due process. But I read your notes…it’ll be hard to make a cause of action against the perpetrators without a victim to testify. You’d have to argue wrongful death.”

That was their problem in a nutshell—existing case law simply wasn’t on their side. The Georgia courts had never held a defendant culpable for someone’s suicide. Still, it was an intriguing case, not only for its legal challenges, but because it cried out for justice.

“Several facts are in our favor though.” Theo released Jalinda’s hand so she could count on her fingers. “Number one, the precipitating behavior—the rape—was clearly illegal. That makes this case different from
Parsons
, the online bullying case. Number two, the rape, the university’s denial of due process and the threats toward a faculty member amount to intentional, not merely negligent, tort. And three, according to Gloria, thirty-three percent of rape victims have suicidal thoughts, and thirteen percent attempt suicide. Any research university with a gender studies department has these statistics at hand so they have no excuse for not knowing the risks. After viewing the incontrovertible video evidence, they were morally obligated to assess the potential for damage to the complainant, who sought counseling services at the student health center following the rape. That makes the outcome foreseeable.”

Who was she trying to convince—Jalinda or herself? Hayley’s family might recover damages from the players in a civil suit, but Celia wanted the university held responsible too. A judgment against a prominent school such as Harwood would send a message that all universities had an obligation to protect female students from sexual assault, to prosecute violators with force, and to implement programs and practices that deterred the behavior. Those were the sweeping cases Theo relished, where she could make a difference against systemic bias.

There was more to this case than she wanted to admit, more than the righteousness of winning justice for Hayley Burkhart. Something about Celia Perone compelled her forward, even against her better judgment. It always came back to the same thing—she was a woman fighting for other women, and Theo wanted to be on her side.

Gloria’s lecturing tone carried the authority of her thirty years at the head of a classroom. “It doesn’t matter if she personally calls herself a feminist or not. Her work is postmodern feminist in the sense that it casts women as individuals apart from their contrast to men.”

“But her themes are universal. You could flip the genders of her characters, tweak their details and still end up with the same final score.” Philip was over his head discussing Toni Morrison and gender theory with Gloria, but Theo gave him credit for his willingness to try.

“Which is exactly what makes it postmodernist.”

Theo cleared her throat. “Boys and girls, please. Take a chair. Let’s get some resolution on this Harwood case.”

Jalinda was seated to Theo’s left, her files of evidence and legal reviews organized with color-coded tabs. Sandy sat to her right with a tablet computer ready to calculate costs. Hank occupied the head of the massive conference table, Theo’s usual chair.

Kendra and Sabrina had also been invited to sit in. They’d be tied up for months with the wage theft case, but Theo wanted their legal opinion before she threw herself into this complaint.

“I’ve given this case a lot of thought. It’s a long shot…very possibly a loser. But we’re going to take it anyway.”

“Cause of action?” Philip asked.

“Wrongful death.” She studied their faces for a reaction. “We’re going to argue the rapists and the university conspired to deprive Hayley Burkhart of her civil rights, that the trauma of the rape and subsequent lack of police action caused mental distress, and the mental distress led her to take her life.”

Kendra nodded slowly, which Theo took as a positive sign until she said, “You’re right, it’s a loser.”

“There’s no case law in Georgia to support it,” Sabrina added.

“I’m aware of that.” She rested her elbows on the table and proceeded to stare her colleagues down. “But sometimes a situation comes along that makes you question whether or not the existing case law is all-inclusive. I believe it’s possible to carve out an exceptional set of circumstances for which parties can be held culpable for suicide.”