To read an excerpt from the book, please click on the following link:

ashaveilbook.blogspot.com

An excerpt from The Pleasure Palace, my romantic comedy, can be found here:



Monday, September 19, 2016

Why Go Back?

Going back now to the time when our community really fell apart, when it was discovered that Asha had been killed and no one knew who the murderer was. 

Sometime just before she was found, I seem to remember that a call came into the household--it must have been all households in the Valley, perhaps--that credit and other cards had been found somewhere.  I was surprised at this call, as I had never heard of our law enforcement department doing such a thing.  It turns out that Asha's backpack was found sometime during her search. I seem to recall--wow, I am saying that a lot, aren't I?--a photo of a backpack similar to the one I once had, with a brightly striped strap. People use these sorts of things as purses.  I am sure this call was in regards to Asha's credit cards.

At the time of her discovery, women began to be afraid that there was a serial killer in our area.  In my records, I see that police gave out a message that they believed there was only one killer. Personally, I did not want to go out after dark, alone. I believed, along with many others, that a killer lurked in the shadows.

And yet I knew her killer all along.  

Many people do not know that McClish's original arrest was for first-degree rape.  And when did that rape occur?

The night before Asha and McClish met in the Felton cemetery, the place of the lone intimate contact they had.  This puts one more piece of the puzzle in place for me: that Asha's contact with this man was not consensual.  Someone said to me, insensitively: does it matter, would it "clear her name" somehow? She did no wrong, she did not have to be cleared...but it might help women to see that all her behavior, leaving her husband, her fear of McClish, etc., were the result of trauma. Women have been made to feel ashamed of such trauma when there is zero reason to feel this shame.