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.

She didn’t sound upset, but even in statutory cases, the girls want to avoid details. She was happy to give them. Leaning back in her chair, she crossed her legs, swung her foot, and told the court everything.

“First we kissed. Kellen tastes like wintergreen. He kissed my mouth for a long time and then he kissed my neck. It tingled all down me. He lifted up my shirt. Slow. He slipped his hand under it and touched my tits. Held them in his hands. Rubbed his thumbs over my nipples. Kellen has beautiful hands. Big and strong. Rough from working in the garage.”

It was unsettling to listen to a little girl saying things like that and she enjoyed describing it.

It didn’t get really bad until she started in with the graphic details. In police reports, often victims will be asked to describe their attacker’s genitals and things like that, but in depositions, there’s less of that, unless the defense or prosecution hinges on some identifying feature. Miss Quinn didn’t even wait for the attorneys to ask her for details.

“He still has his foreskin. He was born at home and his mother didn’t have him circumcised.” She stumbled on the word, inhaling in the middle of it, and looked at me. “Is that right? Circumcised?”

When I didn’t answer, she went on. “My hand won’t go all the way around his cock. Unless I squeeze hard. Kellen likes that.” She brought her hand up to demonstrate, fingers held in a semicircle. The girl’s guardian put her head in her hands and cried. Quietly at first and then louder. Almost in response, the girl let the hand she’d held up drift to her breast. Just for a moment, maybe not even aware she’d done it.

“My pussy was very wet. I was sitting on his desk, my legs open. He pushed against me, not hard. Rubbing against me. Then he slid his cock into me. It hurt a little, but he went back and forth in me. Every stroke, his cock was rubbing against my clitoris.” She struggled with the word, said it three times to get it right. Or she said it three times to shock people. “That made it not hurt. It felt good.”

Her guardian sobbed so loudly that the prosecutor said, “Miss Quinn, would you like to take a break?”

“No.” That time there was no mistaking that she was trying to provoke a reaction. She moved her hand off the arm of the chair and pressed it between her thighs. “I wrapped my legs around him. Held on tight to him. He moved faster, going in and out of me. His cock was so hard, swollen up in me. I felt how close he was getting. I remember saying his name. Kellen. Like this: ‘Harder, Kellen. Fuck me harder, Kellen.’” That came out in little breathy pants. “He did. Right as my pussy clenched up on him, he exploded.”