“Yes, sir.”
“No abrasions?”
“Abrasions where?”
“Wherever they might be significant, Melvin.”
“On the hip.”
“Scratches?”
“Correct.”
“Perhaps consistent with someone tearing an undergarment from a victim’s person?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t use the word ‘victim,’ either,” he said.
“Did you do any swabs?”
“Ms. Broussard showered after she returned home. I recommended she go to the hospital and have a rape kit done. She refused.”
“No trauma around the vagina?”
“None other than the bruise on the thigh.”
“How about inside?”
“She didn’t indicate any discomfort.”
“This isn’t coming together for me, Doc.”
“That’s your problem.”
“Ms. Broussard says the assailant sodomized her.”
“That’s a relative word,” he said.
“Not in this case.”
“If you’re asking about bite marks, there were none in the usual places.”
“How about elsewhere?”
“On the shoulder.”
“A bite mark?”
“What some call a hickey. It could have been put there before she went on the boat.”
“Is that why you didn’t mention it when I asked about abrasions?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Any other reason?” I asked.
“There were only two people on that boat. One is lying, the other is not. That’s about all I can tell you.”
“You think Rowena Broussard would deliberately put herself through this kind of embarrassment? Would any woman, at least one who’s sane?”