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I sat down. “I’m going to turn on my recorder. Okay?”
“What for?”
“Sometimes I can’t read my own handwriting.”
“You’ve lost me.”
“Rowena Broussard dropped a heavy dime on you, Jimmy. Rape, assault and battery, sodomy, maybe false imprisonment.”
“The heck you say.”
“She says y’all had some drinks and ended up on your boat at Cypremort Point.”
“That’s right. But that’s all there was to it.”
“You didn’t attack her?”
“Attack her? I didn’t do anything.”
“You didn’t have consensual sex?”
“I showed her my boat. That woman is nuts, Dave. I was pretty plowed myself. She could have put my lights out.”
“She’s pretty convincing.”
“Send her out to Hollywood. She deserves an Academy Award. I can’t believe this.”
I couldn’t, either, but for other reasons. In most rape cases, the accused immediately claims the act was done with consent. The issue then devolves into various claims about intoxication and the use of narcotics and muscle relaxants, or inability on the victim’s part to show sound judgment. I had never caught a sexual assault case involving adults in which the accused claimed to have done absolutely nothing.
Jimmy put a mint into his mouth and looked at me, never blinking. If you have dealt with liars, even pathological ones who pass polygraph tests, you know the signs to look for. The liar blinks just before the end of the lie, or he keeps his eyelids stitched to his brow. He folds his arms on his chest, subconsciously concealing his deception. The voice becomes warm, a bit saccharine; sometimes there’s an ethereal glow in the face. He repeats his statements unnecessarily and peppers his speech with adverbs and hyperbole. The first-person pronouns “I,” “me,” “mine,” and “myself” dominate his rhetoric.
Conversely, the truth teller is laconic and seems bored with the discussion, not caring whether you get it right or not.
Nightingale showed none of the traditional characteristics of the liar, and I began to believe him. Then something very strange occurred. For just a second I saw a glimmer in the corner of his eye, like a wet spot. His throat became ruddy; his lips parted slightly, as though he wanted to confide a secret to a trusted friend.
“Did you want to tell me something, Jimmy?”
The moment passed. His eyes were bright, his smile in place. “I don’t know what I could add.”
“Want to come in and make a formal statement with your attorney present?”
“What good would that do?”
“Do it by the book. Show everybody you have nothing to hide,” I replied.
“Said the spider to the fly. Where is this going, Dave?”
“That’s up to the prosecutor’s office.”
“Rowena really said all those things?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I was a fool to take her to the boat. What’s Levon got to say about all this?”
“What do you think?”
“I was hoping to put a movie deal together with him. I’ve got the connections to do it. I guess that’s in the toilet, huh?”
