The Kills читать онлайн

the guy? This one of those date things?""Ms. Vallis had met Tripping twice before. Yes, he had invited her out to dinner the evening this happened.""Alcohol involved?""Yes, sir."Moffett looked at the complaint again, comparing the place of occurrence with the defendant's home address. Now his primitive doodles were a wine bottle and a couple of glasses. "Then she went back to his place, I guess."It wouldn't have surprised me if he had said what he was undoubtedly thinking at that moment: What did she expect to happen if she went home with him at midnight, after a candlelit dinner and a bottle of wine? I had countered that logic in court more times than I could remember. Moffett didn't speak the words. He just scowled and shook his head back and forth slowly."She got injuries?""No, sir." The overwhelming percentage of sexual assault victims presented themselves to emergency rooms with no external signs of physical injury. Any rookie prosecutor could get a conviction when the victim was battered and bruised."DNA?"Peter Robelon spoke over me as I nodded my head. "So what, Judge? My client admits that he and Ms. Vallis made love. Alex doesn't even need to waste the court's time with her serology expert. I'll stipulate to the findings."Nothing new about Tripping's defense. Consent. The two spent a rapturous night together, he would argue, and for some reason that Peter would raise at trial, Paige Vallis ran to the nearest cop on the beat the next morning to charge her lover with rape. Surely it couldn't be for the pleasure of the experience she was about to undergo in a public forum, when I called her to the witness stand."Did Judge Hayes talk plea with you two?"The case had been pending since the indictment was filed back in