Crash Into Me_ A Survivor's Search for Justice - Liz Seccuro [37]
That evening, after I had put Ava to bed in her crib, the phone rang again. It was Detective Nicholas Rudman of the Charlottesville police. He said he had had a meeting with the chief, had studied all the materials I had sent, and had some questions for me. Would now be a good time?
Detective Rudman walked me through the basics again, asked more detailed questions about the e-mail correspondence and confirmed that the Greenwich officers had made contact.
“Ms. Seccuro, would you be willing to come to Charlottesville and give us a statement?” I pondered the logistics of this and thought, why not? We could make a weekend of it. The last time I had visited Charlottesville was for my fifteenth college reunion, when Ava was six months old. I told him I would do it.
“Great. Ideally, we would like to interview you sooner rather than later.”
I didn’t quite comprehend the urgency after all this time, but asked if I could call him back.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Why don’t you make arrangements and let us know when you’ll be in town? And, hey, thanks for sharing this with us. What you are doing is very brave. I’m going to be working with my partner, Detective Scott Godfrey, on this, so if you get a call from him, know that it’s my partner. I look forward to meeting you.”
I phoned Mike at the office and we agreed to go that Friday night and stay for two nights. I called the Boar’s Head Inn and booked a room with a crib for Ava. I called Detective Rudman and he said that he and Detective Godfrey would pick me up at the hotel Saturday at noon. I also e-mailed Courteney Stuart at the Hook to tell her about these developments, and that I would be coming to town. We agreed to meet while I was there.
On December 9 we checked into our hotel room at the inn. At noon the next day, Detectives Rudman and Godfrey were in the lobby to meet me.
We shook hands all around and they asked if we could take a drive before going down to the station. I sat in the passenger seat of the squad car as we set off down the road toward the main campus, with Detective Rudman behind the wheel and Detective Godfrey in the backseat. We exchanged pleasantries about my drive down, the upcoming holidays, my daughter. I tried to breathe deeply. It was a glorious late-fall day with deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine, the kind of day that always reminded me why I loved Virginia.
“Liz, we wanted to get a sense of your memory. Could you take us to some of the places you mentioned in your statements to us and Chief Longo?” asked Godfrey.
“Sure,” I said. As we drove, I pointed out the salmon-colored building that housed the university police and told them of my visits there. I told them a bit about my meetings there with Sybil Todd and the university police. We continued on, stopping near Rugby Road and the Rotunda. I pointed left to the Phi Kappa Psi house, sitting gracefully at the head of Madison Bowl.
“Drive down the street,” I urged. We drove past Phi Psi.
I pointed to a few windows. “That’s the room I was raped in,” I said, gesturing toward the second-floor window on the far right. “If you go around to the other street, there’s another window overlooking Madison Lane, and the bed was flush against that window.”
“Can you take us the way that you walked to the emergency room?”
“Absolutely. Turn back onto Emmett Street. I walked this way.” The emergency room had been renovated, but I showed them where the entrance had formerly been in the rear, where I walked. The memories were hard and I swallowed my saliva.
Next, we doubled back and drove toward the main part of the campus, to my dorm, and parked. We walked in, turned right, and walked up the stairs to the second floor. We turned right, then quickly left, and at the end of the long hall I saw the door to my room.
I touched the door, almost caressing it. I felt overwhelmingly sad as I stood there, feeling so much older, but still so frightened. Rudman knocked