“I’m not going to pass her love letters from that pedophile,” she said.
“I don’t see how it’s a love letter, just because the man tells her he loves her.”
“He raped her. I’m not giving her a letter from him that says, ‘I love you all the way.’”
“You may not like it, but this situation is different than if he was a stranger. I need the girl to tell me what happened and, if this letter will help me get that, I want her to read it.”
“No. I will not let the man who murdered my sister send her daughter letters.”
“You can’t have it both ways, ma’am. He can’t be up at the house with a gun at the same time he’s fooling around with your niece at the garage.” I took the note back from her, before she could tear it up.
“The FBI says he had more than enough time to get back to the garage, with time to spare to assault my niece.”
“That’s why I need her to tell me how long they were at the garage fooling around.”
“Stop saying that! They were not fooling around. He raped her.”
Mrs. Newling was like a terrier. In my office every day until I asked her who in Hell was taking care of her kids. It was like putting a match to gasoline. She pounded her fist on my desk and screamed at me.
“How dare you accuse me of neglecting my children? I am trying to make sure that my niece gets justice—that my sister gets justice!”
“Then make that girl talk. And then get her out of this dog and pony show. The longer you keep her here, the more likely it is some reporter’ll put her all over the front page. Is that what you want?”
Finally, I’d found something to make her listen to me. By the end of the week, she brought the girl into the station to give a deposition. In all my years as sheriff, I had a few occasions when I skirted around official police procedure. One of those occasions was the minute I spent in my office with the Quinn girl before she gave her deposition. For all I knew, she’d get in there and not say a word, and I didn’t want that, so I got her away from her aunt and laid it out for her.
“Miss Quinn, is that your engagement ring? Junior Barfoot gave that to you?”
She nodded, all serious and distrustful. My wife said how cute she was, but I thought she was downright spooky. She had old eyes. Knowing eyes. Wasn’t hard to see how Junior had got himself in that situation. She looked fragile as a doll, but she wasn’t.
“Now, the county prosecutor, the red-haired guy in the suit? He’d like to send Junior to prison for a long time. I don’t think you want that. The thing is, you’re his alibi. Do you know what that means?”
She nodded, but she wasn’t any closer to trusting me.
“You’re the only one who knows whether Junior left the garage that afternoon. If he was with you all afternoon, you need to tell the prosecutor that.”
I’d run out of time; her aunt was coming toward my office. Years on, I don’t know how to feel about what I told her. I don’t believe Junior had a thing to do with the murders, but I’m not sure what effect my advice had on the girl’s statement.
8
COURT REPORTER
I’ve recorded a few rape depositions, but Wavonna Lee Quinn’s was the strangest one I’ve ever done.
She was an alibi witness for a guy who was suspected of murder, but he was also charged with raping her. At the same time. Basically, his story was that at the time of the murder, he was having sex with her, so he couldn’t have committed the murder.
When I found out she was just fourteen, I figured it was going to be brutal. The kind of deal that would haunt me. I wasn’t too far wrong, because I still can’t get it out of my head. She walked into the room and sat down, not nervous at all. A thin little blond girl with big eyes, wearing a white skirt, a green T-shirt, and heavy motorcycle boots. If it hadn’t been for her breasts, I would have guessed she was even younger than fourteen, but she wore a tight shirt to show them off.
For depositions, most people start out pretty businesslike but clam up when they get to the difficult parts. She had to be prompted at first, to give her name and to tell things like dates and times and places. There was a lot of that, because she was providing an alibi.
Rape victims usually just say he, instead of the suspect’s name. He did this. Then he did this. She called him by a nickname, even though the prosecutor kept trying to get her to say his legal name. Finally she looked at me and said, “Can you put in that Kellen is Jesse Joe Barfoot, Jr.?”
She spoke in this small, soft voice, and she had a strange way of talking. Sometimes she used big words she didn’t know how to pronounce, and she inhaled and exhaled in odd places, not in between sentences, but in the middle of words.