THE COED MURDER CLUB. Ken Salter

feeling.”

      Mindy toyed with her empty can of Coke; she was trying to crush it in the palm of her hand. Her eyes were locked on the floor. “They just wouldn’t stop. After I came, it started all over again – the pulling, tugging, stroking – only faster. It was like my body was going through a car wash; you know, like all those big brushes were stroking every sensitive part of my body all at once. My head was whirling; I felt engulfed and powerless to resist the waves of sensation that kept surging and getting more intense. When I tried to get hold of myself, they laughed and changed the rhythm of their stroking.”

      Mindy threw me a sheepish, concerned look before continuing. “One of them started licking my sex while another held me by the ankles and spread me open. The other guy was tugging at my nipples, pulling them in opposite directions. It was just too much. I wanted it to stop before they went too far, but I couldn’t force myself to physically resist. Can you understand what was happening to me?” Mindy pleaded with her eyes for understanding and reassurance.

      I gave her my best college smile and nodded for her to continue even though I didn’t understand why, in spite of being drunk, she couldn’t have yelled her head off for those guys to stop touching her.

      No is no in my book.

      “I didn’t even have time to catch my breath before they made me come again in the guy’s mouth. Then they turned me over and one of them took me from behind.”

      I did a double take. “Didn’t you protest when they turned you over?”

      “It all happened so fast. I was in a fog. I was so high from the booze and stimulation that I just couldn’t resist anymore. I was more scared by what was now happening. It was out of control.”

      “Were you scared they would hurt you? Wasn’t the sex getting rougher?”

      “No, they were laughing and joking about how much I liked what they were doing to me and whether I would come again. It was weird. It was like they were testing me to see how much I could take.”

      “Do you know which one took you from behind first?”

      “No, it was all a woozy blur. All those fingers just kept touching me – pulling, tugging, pinching and probing me. It was all happening so fast, but also like in slow motion in my brain. The next thing I knew my butt was up in the air, and my legs straddling the armrest of the couch. One of them had hold of the back of my thighs and pushed me open, then someone just pushed himself up my butt. They kept doing it until I passed out.” Mindy was crying again.

      I tried not to show my astonishment at Mindy’s frankness. “Had anyone ever penetrated you there before?”

      “No, but they’d been touching me there all along. The nurse who examined me said they had used some kind of lubricant. My whole insides burned like hell the next day.”

      “When did you come to?”

      “I woke up in my dorm room. I was sore all over and really felt bad. My head felt like it was going to come off its socket, it was pounding so bad. My nipples hurt from all the pulling and my butt felt like someone had dropped it on a fence post wrapped in barbed wire; when I wiped myself, there was blood. I got real scared, then angry when I remembered how I’d been duped and that all those guys had me.”

      “How did you get home?”

      “I didn’t know. I learned later from Ernie, the night watchman at the dorm. It must have been Barry who drove me home. He told Ernie that I’d got loaded at a friend’s party, then got sick.”

      “Wasn’t Ernie suspicious of foul play?”

      “I guess not. He said I smelled and acted like I was drunk and passed out and my clothes weren’t messed up.”

      The intercom light on the phone console had been blinking furiously for some time. Juanita and Mindy’s parents were getting antsy.

      “I’m gonna have to talk to your parents and get some money to poke around for some leads on those guys who took advantage of you. Did the police have you describe them to a sketch artist?”

      Mindy shook he head, no.

      “I’m gonna have Juanita set up an appointment with Monty. He’s an artist who draws faces from witness statements. I will need likenesses of the guys we’re looking for.”

      Mindy nodded a feeble assent. She looked completely washed out, almost limp except for her puffy-red but smoldering eyes. “Are you going to tell my parents what I told you?” she said starting to cry again.

      “No, I meant what I said. You’re my client. The less they know about the details of your ordeal, the better. They need to shift their focus to making you well, to getting the best treatment possible to keep the HIV virus from becoming AIDS. Nobody but me is going to know the details unless those guys get prosecuted.” What I said was not really true except for the parents, but she badly needed an avenger in her corner and I’d try to play that role as long as I could, hoping that it’d raise her spirits and keep her cooperating with me.

      She gave me a brave smile and grabbed another handful of tissues as she made her exit.

      CHAPTER 3

      It was a hard slog that lasted nearly an hour to get Mindy’s father straightened out and a check up front for a thousand dollars to get me started. He claimed he had the right to know everything his daughter confided to me if he was going to pay the freight for the investigation. He yelled and swore each time I told him he played it my way or not at all. He wouldn’t listen to either me or his wife. I was glad Mindy wasn’t subjected to our contentious squabbling. Finally his wife, Greta, told him to shut up and wrote the check on their joint account.

      I really felt like packing it in for the day. I sorely needed to finish Barney’s report, but that required patience and concentration. Mindy’s startling story and the nasty scene with her father had my blood up. I needed to get out of the office, and do something more active than dictating the conclusion of a report.

      I handed off the retainer check to Juanita and asked her to set up an appointment with Barney so I could discuss some legal issues related to the attack on Mindy when I finished the report. Next, I called Detective Walker at the Berkeley Police Department to find out who had handled Mindy’s rape investigation. I hoped to cash in a chit owed to me by Walker and finagle access to the investigation file.

      Walker wouldn’t cut me any slack. Since the investigation wasn’t a homicide, he said I’d have to deal with Detective Dean Sawyer who’d led the investigation. I called Sawyer and to my surprise, he agreed to discuss the case with me if I hustled over to his office on the double. He was due to go off duty soon, but he agreed to give me a heads up on the case.

      Sawyer’s a big-boned, raw-looking guy with curly red hair and tons of freckles all over the exposed parts of his body. He stands about six-feet seven-inches and I remember when he played center for the Berkeley High basketball team. He was the only white guy on the starting five. He had a pretty good hook shot but he couldn’t jump. The best he could do was to try to tip a rebound to someone else. Since he knew that I’d played for Berkeley High, too, we’d talked basketball the few times we’d had occasion to chat about active cases.

      His desk was piled high with reports that fought for space with a number of Styrofoam cups and containers waiting their turn to grace his overflowing wastepaper basket. Sawyer wouldn’t be winning any awards from the ecologists at the recycling center. He pulled his nose out of a report and stubbed out his cancer stick in an ashtray full of butts and ash and pointed to a sturdy prison-made oak chair facing his desk.

      “I’m not surprised you’re working on the Rohnert girl’s case. The parents got real pissed off when I refused to authorize further investigation,” Sawyer said matter-of-factly.

      “How much did you tell them about what really happened to their daughter?”