Julieanne Himelstein

Word Count 873

It is 7:00 a.m. I am in my office a few blocks from the federal courthouse where I am expected to make my closing argument in a case involving an American diplomat who is accused of drugging and raping multiple foreign nationals.

Right now, members of the press, the public, and government officials are forming a line outside the courthouse.

Usually, a prosecutor would be preparing for her closing argument in her office right about now.  I am leaning against the window sill, face pressed into the detective’s clavicle, the chain attached to his creds tangled in my teeth, body sandwiched between an evidence box on one side and unused sex kits stacked too high on the other.  

I can see my box filled with trial shoes. I still haven’t decided which ones I’ll wear for closing.  Shoes are everything, especially for closing argument. 

The detective didn’t even take his gun belt off or undo the top button of his field pants. This must be what it’s like when he takes a piss.

His nine-millimeter Glock rubs against my hip making his dick seem infantile and making me wish I was fucking the Glock instead.

It is the smell of cops I love but this guy doesn’t have any scent whatsoever. It’s like he is made out of air, filtered air, as if he just floated into my office from nowhere.

The cops I love arrive to me late because they were sitting with a decedent’s mother in her kitchen. And the cops I love smell like her skin and the smoke from her cigarette, and the dirty floor, the remnants of her son’s dinner from the night before, and her life now.

The cops I love have tattoos like murals that cover throats and arms and stomachs and legs and chests they got in Afghanistan or Iraq and they arrive fresh off the street after perhaps standing in project hallways under fluorescent lights on top of carpets riddled with cigarette burns and dark stains, or in deserted streets with gutted mothers of dead children having caught sleep where ever they can, mostly surrounded by blackened windows in the back of their G rides. 

And they have more excuses for not being where they are supposed to be and where their phones are “dark”:

Out on the streets.  On a wire. On surveillance. In the Grand Jury.  And I want to believe them all and I don’t believe any of them because everyone knows they are code words.   

The cops I love drink bourbon and they love the smell of me, deposits from the night before, tangled up with fuckups and perfume, on top of cigarettes I smoked while interviewing, cross-examining, ripping apart, someone else’s cologne, stickiness and a lifetime of digging deeper to whatever truth I think it is, over vestiges of vodka.

This cop is a big guy but everything about him is wispy and light and if not for the Glock, there would be no trace of him.  Here I go again.

I scan the evidence box which contains a whole lot of nothing too. Intact panties.  Blood vials with no hits.  Hair samples taken from the defendant’s bedroom matching only the defendant’s hair. A report from a doctor concluding no signs of force.

I exaggerate my breathing, as we do.

Without physical evidence, all I have are the details.

I’ll tell the jury: Ladies and gentlemen do you really believe that three women would risk their honor and reputations and those of their families?  For what?  What do they gain?

Or how about: Ladies and gentlemen, it is not here (point to head) where your verdict will be decided. Rather it is here (point to gut).

Or how about: Ladies and gentlemen, your common sense didn’t leave you when you became jurors.  No. Overused.

“You on the pill?” The detective whispered without breath, or I didn’t feel any.

“Use a condom,” I tell him.

Or how about: Do you really believe all three women are making this up? And for what? Do you think it’s in their interest be humiliated? Shamed? Never able to go home again?

And remember, ladies and gentlemen: 

They each told you things the other two wouldn’t know unless it was true:

Remember the details: 

Espresso martinis.

The guy carried me to his bed.

The guy led me to his bed.

I don’t know how I got to his bed.

Smell of apple on the sheets.

I felt paralyzed.

I was in slow motion.

Apple on the sheets.

My driver will take you home.

My driver will take you home.

His driver took me home.

Driver spoke French.

Embassy car smelled like men’s cologne.

Bullet proof windows.

Blackened windows.

Driver spoke French.

I was bare foot when I got home.

He served me an Espresso martini.

He served me an Espresso martini.

He served me an Espresso martini.

Smell of apple on the sheets.

My driver will take you home.

Barefoot when I got home.

I think the goddamn condom broke.

The jurors are going to smell it.

Jurors smell everything.

I’ll wear the pink velvet high-heels.

Is he done yet?

Julieanne is a former federal prosecutor from Washington, D.C. She prosecuted numerous cases involving sex crimes against women and children. She also played a leading role in the prosecution of one of the leaders of the attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya. Julieanne lives in New York City with her husband, an FBI agent, and is writing a novel.