“Well at least have a slice of toast Counselor” Vivian said holding a slice, thick with butter, under the nose of the young attorney. She grabbed the sugar bowl and said “Nah, really, coffee is fine”. The entire group had gathered for breakfast. Breakfast was no exception to the feast offered. Charlie had even paused long enough from shoving forks full of eggs into his mouth to comment “I wonder what the poor people are eating”? The irony was not lost on the group.

She held her coffee and eyed the group. She learned during years as a trial lawyer that the actual show was not the hard part; it was the wait to get started. She had also found the stash of fine booze, fortified her coffee and was feelings it’s affect. “Jesus Christ, get it over with” she muttered to herself. “Can I just tell my story now?” Everyone looked around. “You don’t mind if I kept eating”? Charlie asked.

I am a commercial litigator now; strictly contracts and real estate. Suffice to say the highlight of my day is walking to the water cooler. It isn’t the field of legal work I had originally envisioned for myself. I started my career in a District Attorneys office in a small town outside Detroit. I was fresh out of law school, full of piss and vinegar, and wanted to make my mark in the world of justice. They gave me all the shit cases for my initiation, petty theft, criminal mischief, misdemeanor assault. I tried the fuck out of those cases and made sure they knew it. It didn’t take long before my boss took notice and began to hand off more serious cases burglars, wife beaters. I finally hit the mother load when Matt Dickerson hit my desk.”

Her boss had dropped a case file on her desk and announced “your boyfriend has really fucked up this time”? She lowered her glasses and asked “My boyfriend”? “Yeah. Matt Dickerson”.

Andrea had had more court dates with Matt Dickerson then actual dates with men. Dickerson was the town ne’er-do-well. He started out as a petty thief, stealing beer from the local Piggly Wiggly and eventually graduated into an abusive drunk. His father had died when he was a young boy. He was raised mostly by his grandmother, seeing his mother was too caught up in her boyfriends to care much. He didn’t cotton to work and relied on his grandmother for money. When she refused to give him any, he would steal. When she hid the money, he would hit.

Andrea had handled most of his cases in misdemeanor court. He had been seen in court so often that any case received at the office involving an angry drunk was now termed “a Dickerson”.

“Dickerson spent most of his time at the “Dew Drop Inn”, a raunchy beer joint situated right on the county line. After years of serving underage high school kids the place finally lost it’s liquor license and went BYOB. The town had hoped that would shut it down; it didn’t. It revamped it’s atmosphere to include topless dancing. It became a bum magnet”. Andrea snorted before saying “that really pissed the church crowd off”.

“Dickerson was a regular even the regulars could not stand. You could set your watch to eleven pm, the hour when they finally kicked him out the door. He wouldn’t go home, instead he would sit on the back of his Ford pick up in the parking lot, drink beer from his Igloo cooler, pissing on the side of the bar, and yell obscenities”.

She finally took the piece of toast left by Vivian. They watched and listened while she began to tear it into smaller pieces.

“Most of Dickerson's cases never hit my desk; they just arrested him and let him dry out in the drunk tank. Now he hit the mother load of all time shit behavior. He had graduated to rapist”.

As if almost for dramatic affect, she finally put a piece in her mouth and slowly began to chew. “Carrie was a waitress at one of those old fashion counter cafes; the kind where they put of cup of coffee in front of you without asking. She started there the same day she dropped out of school. She got herself pregnant by a guy that found the proposition of joining the military more attractive than staying home to raise a family. I guess you could say she ‘was tolerated’ by the local sanctimonious women. What the fuck they knew about hard work I will never know.”

She took another fortifying sip of her coffee and continued. “Everyone knew who she was because of where she worked. But other than that you really didn’t see her. She worked, she raised her boy, she minded her business for the most part”.

“She told me she went to ‘The Dew’ because she just wanted to see for herself. There were a few characters that came into the coffee shop and always invited her. She figured ‘what the hell’” “It’s not like I would run into the ladies sewing circle”.

Carrie came to my office for the case interview. Bless her heart, she even dressed up.

“Everything had been great. I actually recognized quite a few folks there. And yeah, I drank, I drank a lot. And while were at it I also shot pool, danced on a table, and smoked an entire pack of cigarettes. The bitches at Junior League probably felt chest pains”.

“I can tell you it was just before midnight when I went out to my car to get more smokes because I remember looking at that clock over the bar. You know those kind that have the fake water flowing over the Rockies? I never even heard him come up behind me; maybe I was too drunk or because I was humming to music I could still hear from outside”.

“I will say the moment his hands grabbed around my waist and my mouth I felt immediately sober.

“That’s referred to as ‘shocked sobriety’”.

She mulled it over “Yeah, okay, I was shocked sober”.

Andrea torn off another piece. Holding it just to her mouth, she continued. “He dragged her to the back of the Ford pick up. She could smell and feel his drunk, cigarette breath on the back of her neck. She described Dickerson to a tee: drunk, filthy, and vulgar. When he was finished with her he dragged her to the back of the bar, told her she was a “lousy lay” and kicked her in the face once more for good measure.”

“There was a high school kid that worked at ‘the Dew’ running empties to the trash ever hour.

“This poor kid had seen a lot working at the Dew, but this?”

“When I saw her, my first thought was someone had dumped a dieing dog. She was curled up, the blood and dirt on her body had made her look, well, like a dog that had been hit by a car. I only knew it hadn’t already died because of the whimpering”.

“The defining difference between that town’s sanctimonious church crowd and the patrons of the Dew was not their income or even level of education. It was their capacity of kindness and justice” she said sternly. “They tried to restore what dignity they could by wrapping her in a jacket and table cloth. They had the girls take her in the back and wipe the blood and dirt from her face. Later, while they waited for the police and ambulance, the biggest, toughest son of bitch in that place sat on the floor with her, held her, and cried like a baby”.

Even Charlie had stopped eating at this point; he pretended to wipe his mouth while he dabbed his eyes.

“She told him the details she could muster. They knew immediately who she was describing. He continued to hold her; but he told his buddies who to get.

They found Dickerson right where he always was, drunk and stumbling around the parking lot. If it hadn’t been for the quick response of the deputy they probably would have killed him”. Charlie lowered his napkin to say “too bad”.

“From a technical evidentiary stand point the case was weak. I had a drunk victim with vague recollection. I had no other eye witnesses. And at that time, DNA was in it’s infancy. However, I did have Dickerson’s pickup, the regulars putting him in the parking lot at the time of the offense, and most importantly, I had his reputation. Everyone in that town knew Dickerson and they knew his reputation as an abusive drunk. Hell, all I was going to have to do was put her on the stand, put him in the lot at that time of the offense, establish it was his truck, and then stand behind him and sarcastically declare that ‘we had our man’; everyone in town knew it”.

She drained the last of her cup, considered a refill, and then went on. “Ironically, my strongest piece of evidence, Dickerson’s reputation, was his ultimate victory. His attorney successfully argued that given his notoriety as the town na’ar do well, he couldn’t get a fair trial in that town. Venue was transferred to the big city of Detroit; effectively cutting my trial legs out from under me. The bastard actually took the stand and said he wasn’t there. He actually looked that jury in the eye and swore on the life of his mother that he had been on the other side of bar taking a leak. When it was all said and done there I stood in front of this big city jury with nothing”.

“Oh my God. Did that bastard walk”? Vivian asked.

“Was I disappointed when they found him not guilty? It would have hurt less if you kicked me in the face. Was I surprised? Not really. Mostly, I was just devastated. I had promised this girl I would bring her justice. I will never forget the look on her face when they returned their verdict. I stammered and tried to explain legal and evidentiary issues. I might as well have been speaking Greek. All she knew was the man that took her dignity, the man that left her with permanent scars, was walking out the courtroom a free man”. While she wanted to convey a comforting thought, Vivian didn’t know who to feel more sorry for. Instead, she grabbed the bottle of Jamison, and poured her a refill. “I saw you earlier honey”.

Andrea waved away the coffee equation of the refill, took a sip, and continued.

“I quit eating at the diner. I couldn’t stand the thought of seeing her; serving me eggs and having to stare at her broken nose”.

“Dickerson on the other hand, left. I searched the DMV records and found him. He had holed up in some crappy apartment in Detroit. I also followed his miserable existence through the National Crime Index. I could see every time he was arrested for public intoxication or disorderly conduct”.

“I would drive into Detroit on weekends. I went to every piece of shit dive in town before I found the bastard. And there he was; sitting on a bar stool, drunk, and harassing the women”.

“You killed him, didn’t you”? Sarah asked.

”Yeah I did. I followed him to his truck one night. There he stood at the back of his truck taking a piss on the wall. I made sure his dick was still in his hand when I shot him in the head. I threw his wallet and watch in a reservoir. There wasn’t any real investigation of the murder. Morning commuters might have seen the brief write up of another person robbed and killed in a parking lot, contemplating it only long enough to shake their head before turning to the sports page”.

“Good for you! You should be proud” Sarah insisted.

“I felt pretty good about myself. When my boss showed me the article I displayed the proper amount of surprise and relief. I anonymously sent Carrie a copy of the news article. I secretly carried mine around like a badge of honor”.

The group was surprised to hear her take a deep breath and continue. “This rape happened in 1982. Like I said, the science of DNA was still in its infancy. They had performed a rape examination on Carrie but didn’t have the means to follow up back then. Around 1990 we started to not only develop DNA profiles, but to also enter them into a National Index of DNA. Even if a defendant was dead or incarcerated they still entered the profile. They wanted to increase their data base. They also entered DNA profiles from unsolved cases in the hopes of getting a hit. The data bank gave us the answers to many unsolved cases. I got a call on September 26, 1991. I remember it like it was yesterday. An agent called me to say he had entered the DNA profile developed from the rape kit on Carrie into the data bank. He called to say he had a “hit”. Actually, he had had several hits. Carrie was not the rapist’s only victim.”

“That bastard had raped other woman too?” Vivian asked.

“The DNA matched a man currently incarcerated in Arizona. He was a drifter and had spent time in Michigan in the early 80’s.”

Vivian looked perplexed. “But Dickerson was dead?”

“I know. I had killed the wrong man.”

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