The Advocate's Devil by Alan M. Dershowitz Page A

come to mean so much to all of his different lives.
    He had first met Rendi ten years ago, and at the time he wouldn’t have been able to guess if she were twenty-eight or forty.
     Dark-skinned, with a European face, she was a strange and mysterious woman of indeterminate ethnicity, culture, and age. “I
     have no native language,” she was fond of saying, “because I have no home.” In fact, he knew Rendi spoke eleven languages,
     each with a slight accent. It wasn’t until much later that Abe would discover she had been born in Algeria, moved to Israel
     as a child, worked for the Mossad, where she’d acquired her skills as an investigator, and was closer to thirty-five than
     twenty-eight.
    For all his fascination, however, their relationship was a troubled one. Though Hannah had been dead for nine years, Abe still
     felt a strong sense of guilt about his wife’s death. He and Rendi had engaged in a one-night foray a week or so before Hannah
     had been killed in the crash. It had tortured Abe, who frequently indulged in the self-lacerating belief that Hannah might
     have been distracted by her suspicions when she’d driven the car into the tree. The indiscretion had made both Abe and Rendi
     feel so terrible that it had been several years before they could begin to explore their own feelings for each other. Even
     now their relationship was rocky, and Abe had not yet been able to commit himself to her.
    “Abe, look, a spot. Grab it.”
    The reality of parking in Manhattan brought Abe back to the present as he backed the rental car into the metered space between
     two trucks right in front of Campbell’s building on Broadway between Eighty-sixth and Eighty-seventh Streets.
    “Let’s walk down to Zabar’s and grab a bagel,” Abe suggested, grabbing Rendi’s arm.
    “Forget eating, Abe, you don’t have time.”
    It was so like Rendi to rush headlong into a conversation that Abe had to suppress his smile. Every part of her lovely frame
     was infused with nervous energy. In fact, it was impossible to relax around her. And the last thing Rendi ever wanted anyone
     to do around her was relax.
    Naturally Justin had to react. “What’s the matter, Rendi, the Campbell case isn’t making us crazy enough for you?”
    Rendi ignored Justin and motioned the two men around the corner to Eighty-seventh Street.
    “This won’t take long. I did not want to do this over the telephone. And I thought if you were going to see Campbell, you
     might want to give him a sense of how urgent this matter is. So I brought you the original instead of faxing you a copy.”
     She opened her attaché case and pulled out a piece of paper that Abe recognized as a printout of the police report.
    “Listen to this. When I got this it read just like your basic report: ‘The complaining witness acknowledges that she initially
     consented to perpetrator’s advances, including cunnilingus, blah, blah.’ Now listen: ‘Perpetrator then’—here’s the part that
     got me—‘made reference to a sexual harassment complaint she had filed against a former boss, which involved oral sex.’ Then
     the report goes on, ‘Witness insisted that perp stop and leave. Perp ignored her expressed lack of consent and proceeded to
     force intercourse.’
    “Here’s another little goody: ‘Small microabrasion on vagina consistent with forced intercourse according to examining Dr.
     Mary Stiller.’”
    “Yeah, but that could be related to a few things,” Justin commented.
    “Something’s not right here. You guys told me that Campbell had seemed surprised to learn about Jennifer Dowling’s sexual
     harassment complaint when you told him after the game. Now it looks like he knew about it earlier.”
    “There could be a few explanations,” Abe said. “My clients frequently hold information back for a while until they trust me.
     It’s been my experience that criminal defendants—even innocent ones—often lie about details of the case that may be