DNA. Same thing. It was developed in the early ’80s in England and used as a profiling technique. The process filtered across the rest of the world and eventually found its way into the United States’ court system where it has damned many guilty parties and exonerated those few people in prison who weren’t lying when they said they were innocent.
Petticoat left his copy of the case report he was given by Detective Gillispie all those years ago. The bulk of it is the offense report where Gillispie spells out in very finite detail the events of the night. There are also statements from the Petticoats themselves, reproductions of crime scene photographs, what the rape kit found, et cetera.
The best bet is to call in a favor at the PD and have the rapist’s DNA sampled from the original evidence stilled being stored in records and sent to an independent lab where they can test it against all the DNA on file with the Department of Corrections. Hopefully our rapist was imprisoned for something, anything, and the guy can get tagged with this as well. The problem will be the timeframe. I know a lab that works very fast for the right dollar amount, but I’ll need to push a lot at the PD to get the paperwork through and approved in time.
Then of course, there’s the other problem. Petticoat is lying about something.
There is ample proof that what he said happened did actually happen. He has the lofty position in life to legitimately pay me the sums he has shelled out. I can understand the fear, the revenge. I’m widowed as well but I can’t readily find cancer and beat it to death. Petticoat has it easier than that.
There’s something up his sleeve. Before this is over with I’ll have him take his shirt off. At gun point, if need be.
I call Howard Michigan.
Howard, what passed for a training officer on the PD back when I started, he’s been a private eye for years now. Numerous alimony payments dictate he do something. Howard mostly follows around the wives of rich men and reports back, or he staples missing person flyers up and down the streets on light posts and billboards.
Howard is horrible at almost everything he does except making things harder on himself. The man excels at two other things: smoking unfiltered cigarettes and falling in love with women who will one day divorce him in very ugly terms. But, on the other hand he knows just about everybody. He’s the guy that knows a guy who can do or get just about whatever it is you need.
He answers on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Howard, Richard.”
“Hey! Richard. You gotta come by some time. I got my hands on some good scotch. Good scotch.”
“Sure.” Sounds like he’s working his way through it right now. “You know Clarence Petticoat?”
“Petticoat?” Groans while he searches his dusty memory. “The real estate guy? Or the black dwarf who used to work at that retirement home and went to prison for thieving from the old biddies who would die in their sleep?”
“Black dwarf? What are you talking about? Clarence Petticoat, the real estate guy. You’ve done work for him.”
“Oh, right, right. Never mind about the dwarf guy. That might have been a movie I seen.”
“Are you sober?”
“I can be. What’s the gig?”
“No gig. I wanted to ask you about this guy. He hired me to find the man who raped his wife back in ’92.”
“No gig? Fine. I’m drunk. Petticoat’s wife was raped? How bad?”
That’s no shit. In Howard’s mind there is a sliding scale of sexual assault. On the low end there is the woman who had consensual sex with someone and later decided her palette was indeed too discerning for her experience with such a panty-sniffer to be anything but rape. On the high end there is Petticoat’s wife; the woman blindsided by a “true” rapist, battered, hospitalized, et cetera.
“Aggravated rape, aggravated battery. During an aggravated burglary. Later she killed herself.”
“Okay. So it was rape rape.”
“Yes, Howard.”
“Funny. He never mentioned it.”
“Do all the clients who hire you to do a background check on the pool boy before they leave them at home with the trophy wife tell you about aggravated felonies? The police called it a rape rape. Petticoat gave me the case file,” I say, flipping through the pages, looking at nothing in particular. “Gillispie worked it. Poorly, I might add.”
“Gillispie, Gillispie...” Howard trails off and I can hear the ice in a glass clinking around as he takes a swallow from whatever is going to cause his hangover in the morning. “I remember a guy named Gillispie who died in a high-speed car chase.”
“Not him. You’re thinking of Ginsbee. Sam Ginsbee. I’m talking about Thomas Gillispie. Property crimes.”
“Oh. Oh! The dead queen. Why did they send a burglary dick to work a rape?”
“I don’t know, Howard. Who fucking cares? What can you tell me about Petticoat?”