Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel by Jeanine Pirro Page A

if I eat all this candy.’ He swore he would never lay a hand on me again, never. We’d been drinking that night, too, and, I thought, ‘I shouldn’t have hugged that guy. I was wrong to do that. And Rudy is just a very passionate guy.’ The truth was that I liked that he was jealous. It meant he cared about me. I was his girl, no one else’s.”
    “Were there other times when he hit you?”
    Mary Margaret’s already quiet voice grew even quieter. “Not in the beginning. I mean for weeks—maybe two—everything was great. But then he got mad at me again and it would happen. But by then, it was too late ’cause I was in love with him. And every time he did it, he would apologize and be really sweet and I’d forgive him. I told myself, ‘I got to stop making him angry,’ and I was sure it wouldn’t happen again.”
    She seemed to be growing tired so I decided to focus on the sort of questions that I might ask her during a trial rather than questioning her more about why she’d put up with him for four years.
    “Can you describe a typical incident?”
    “Rudy liked to drink, especially on weekends, and he’d come home drunk and he always wanted sex. If I was drunk maybe I would’ve been okay with it, you know. But when he was drunk, he got rough, and if I tried to stop him, he’d get mean. He’d slap me around and hold me down. One time he tied me to our bed and left me there naked for an entire day. He’d rip my blouse off, too, if he were drunk. He liked that—getting all tough with me. One night I decided to fight back, well, not really fight back, but just tell him to stop when he grabbed me. I dug a fingernail into him.”
    “That was brave of you.”
    “And stupid. He went crazy. He slapped me and then he said he was going to teach me a lesson. He’s really strong and he grabbed my arms and held them above my head with his left hand. Then with his right hand, he pulled down my panties and that’s when he—”
    She hesitated. I said, “That’s when he forced you to have sex?”
    “Yes. I started crying because it wasn’t love, it was rape, but that only seemed to make him more turned on. That was the first time he did that to me, and the next day, he laughed about it and said, ‘You liked it, baby, and you know it. You just don’t want to admit it. Deep down, you’re a dirty little whore.’”
    “How often did that happen—forced sex?”
    “Too many times.”
    I gently squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry.” Putting my prosecutor’s hat back on, I asked, “Did he ever tell you what he thought of women in general?”
    “Oh yeah, he said a woman was good for two things, having sex and cooking, and I didn’t know how to cook very well. Then he said I wasn’t very good in bed, either, because I didn’t like to do things he wanted me to do. He told me no one else would want to be with someone like me because I was frigid and stupid. I never finished high school. He brought that up a lot. And he told me I was getting fat and that I smelled bad when we had sex.”
    In a gentle voice, I said, “Mary Margaret, jurors are going to wonder why you stayed with him for four years when he treated you like that.”
    Tears began to form in her eyes and she whispered, “I loved him and I thought he loved me. Once he came into O’Toole’s when I was working and he heard this customer tell me I had a really nice ass. Rudy went outside and waited for him to leave. When the guy came out into the parking lot, Rudy hit him with a tire iron and beat the crap out of him. I’d never had anyone do something like that for me. He told me I was special and he’d always take care of me. I knew he had a nice, sweet side. And I kept thinking, ‘Why can’t I get that Rudy back? What am I doing wrong?’ When I got pregnant the first time, he was so happy. I thought, ‘This is great. We’ll be a family.’ Then I had the miscarriage and he told me that I couldn’t even do that right—have a baby. I was