Shattered Shell (9 page)

There was a brisk wind coming off the harbor and I kept my hands in my coat as I walked across the parking lot, glancing back once. Out on the harbor was the normal complement of fishing boats, but all of the sailing boats --- including Diane's
Miranda
--- were gone, now in storage. I didn't like the view. I liked seeing Diane's boat out there, for I had been on a number of enjoyable day jaunts with her and sometimes with Kara as an extra passenger ---and just seeing the empty cold waters was disturbing.

Diane answered the door on the first ring, and she tried to smile as she took my coat, and failed. This wasn't going to be a smile-filled morning. I followed her up the carpeted stairs, which led to a kitchen on the left, overlooking the parking lot and the harbor. On the right was a small living room, with a low wooden counter holding up a television and stereo system, and a tan couch with matching chairs. There was another set of stairs that led upstairs to a bedroom and a study.

The kitchen had white-tiled floor and a glass-topped table with white tubular chairs. On the refrigerator door were a number of photographs. Most either showed Diane with Kara or Kara alone, and there were a lot of smiles. I could not look at those happy pieces of paper for more than a few seconds before my throat started to ache. Diane draped my coat over one of the chairs and said, "Thanks for coming."

"You're welcome," I said, still holding a small tan notebook in my hand. "How's Kara doing? Is she eating all right?"

Diane shrugged, one hand on the back of the chair, leaning on it for support. "She's doing better, but she can only do soft foods, like scrambled eggs or soup. Her jaw's still pretty sore... And the bruises..."

She paused, gave a quick nod. "It's the nighttime when it's worse. She doesn't sleep that well, and she wants all the lights on, and, well, most of the time she has a bad dream about every couple of hours."

"She's upstairs?"

"Yeah, she was reading when you got here." She folded her arms. "Can't watch too much daytime TV. Ever watch daytime TV? All the goddamn talk shows, most of them have to do with violence against women or some sexual freak show, or shows that make us look like crazed, man-hating deviants, and shit like that, Kara doesn't need to see right now."

I kept my voice gentle. "Is she ready to see me? Does she know what I'm up to?"

A curt shake of the head. "We've talked about it, and that hasn't been a wonderful topic to discuss, but yeah, she knows what you’re here for, what's going to happen." Her eyes filled a bit, and she turned to look at the harbor. "Oh, Christ, this is so hard... There's no way I can sleep at night, knowing he might get away wlth it, that he's laughing, telling his buddies about screwing Kara. I can't let him get away with it."

I rubbed at the notebook. "I know. And Felix and me, we're going to do our best."

She looked back at me, briefly rubbed at her eyes. "Felix Tinios is going work with you on this? Really? What was the jerk's price?"

"Nothing you have to worry about," I said. "Look, let's get started."

Diane nodded briskly, started walking around the kitchen table. "You're right. I have the incident report in my study. Do you want to look at that first?"

"No," I said, following her to the set of stairs that went up to the next floor of the condo. "Later, but right now I want to hear it fresh, and from Kara."

"I understand."

My legs were heavy as I went upstairs, and I tried to concentrate on what I would be doing over the next few minutes. At the top of the stairs a door to the right led to Diane's study, and the opposite door opened up to a bedroom that had a grand view of the harbor, the marshes, and the boxy buildings of the Falconer nuclear power plant a couple of miles away. I was trying to smile as I went into the bedroom. There was a set of bureaus, two rocking chairs, a television, and sitting in bed, up against the pillows, was Kara Miles, friend and lover of one of my best friends, a talented computer programmer who enjoyed Cajun music and mountain climbing, and who was now known simply as a rape victim.

And at that thought, I stopped pretending to smile.

Though Kara did do her best to smile at me as I came in. A blue down comforter was pulled up to her waist and she had on a green plaid flannel nightgown, buttoned to the neck with a little red bow, a romance novel folded over on her lap. On the nightstand next to her was a box of Kleenex, a reading lamp, a glass of water, and some medicine bottles. On the nightstand on the other side of the bed were some paperback books and a leather holster with Diane's .357 Ruger service revolver.

There was a chair near the foot of the bed, which I took, and Diane clambered up on the bed, outside of the comforter, and put her arm around Kara's shoulders. Kara blinked and reached up with a free hand and patted Diane's wrist. It was hard not to stare. Her eyes were still puffy, though the scratches on her neck looked like they were healing. Her right cheek was still swollen and her bottom lip looked awful, red and split open. Kara's light brown hair was done in a modified flattop with semi-shaved sides, and I guessed Diane must have washed her hair in bed, and I was touched by the thought.

“Well," I finally said.

Kara tried to smile again. "Here to save my soul, Lewis?"

I crossed my legs. "No, I'll leave that up to Diane. I'm just here for information, Kara, whatever you can tell me, and I'm sorry it's going to be so hard."

She moved her hand against Diane's, shifted some so that she was looking up at her. "I'm sorry, too. Why can't you just look at the police report? It's all there."

I made to answer, but Diane was faster. "Because he wants to hear it from you, and doesn't want to read it from some official report."

Kara shook her head. ''I'd rather just try to forget it all happened..."

Diane moved closer to her on the bed. "Hush, now. We've talked about this over and over again, hon. You know what we agreed. Please. Lewis is here to help --- you, me, the two of us. I'll be right here. Every second."

Kara turned her head, looked out the window, and then she looked at me, her eyes filled with tears, but there was no fear or sadness there in those eyes. Just a flat anger.

"Go ahead," she said.

I looked down at the notepad, uncapped my black ink ballpoint. "Do you have a fairly good idea of what time it happened?"

"An exact time," she said, her tone bitter. "At one-fifteen in the morning, on Saturday. I heard someone opening the bedroom door and coming in and I woke up and looked at the clock. I checked the time, and I thought...." and her voice caught for a moment, "I thought it was Diane, coming in. We had made plans earlier, except that she called, 'cause of that fire. So I sat up and said something, and then... then it happened."

"What do you remember happened first?"

She let out a breath, as Diane slowly rubbed her cheek. "Oh, shit, well, it all was a jumble, you know? Jesus, I was scared... the minute he jumped on the bed and grabbed me by the throat... I've never been so fucking scared in my life.... I was rock climbing up on Cathedral Ledge last summer, and my harness came loose when I was a hundred feet up, and I started falling and I caught a ledge... I was so scared I peed myself, and that was nothing, not a damn thing, compared to what it was like that night... " She coughed and Diane looked at me, tears rolling down her cheeks, and I knew with absolute certainty that I would never back away from this one. Never.

"How long was he there for?" I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

"Oh, shit, when he left… shit, I checked the clock and it was almost two.... but I knew I was just there, lying, not moving for the damn longest time after he left... He just jumped on the bed and grabbed my throat and said if I moved, if I screamed, then he'd cut me... Um, I just lay there for a bit, trying to pretend I was somewhere else, hoping that someone would rescue me, just like in these fucking romance novels..."

Diane winced and I knew that a spike of guilt had just gone through her heart. Kara continued, saying, "And he was just pounding me.... Christ, it hurt so much... and I couldn't stand it and I tried to claw his eyes out... and then he started beating on me.... Then I panicked after he left, I started cleaning myself up, cleaning up the room, 'cause I couldn't stand the thought of him still being there, his smell, his fluids, so I cleaned for a while.... I don't remember much else, shit, I'm sorry," and the tears came back again and I so much wanted to stop talking and leave these two women alone.

Instead I asked, "Did you get a look at him at all? Any features, anything?"

"No, it was dark. I just know he was wearing jeans, and I think he was white, I'm not sure. It was all going so fast."

"Was he clean-shaven?"

"Hunh?"

"Did he have a beard? Mustache? Something you saw or felt?"

Kara's tone turned quickly. "Why?" she demanded. "Do you think he was kissing me? Do you think he was trying to seduce me after breaking into my apartment and jumping on my bed? Right? Kissing me tenderly on the lips and neck, so I could tell in the dark if the asshole had a mustache and beard?"

I swallowed, looked over at Diane, and she said, "Kara? Please. Could you tell if he had a beard or mustache?"

She looked away from us, burrowed into the comforter. "No. He was clean-shaven."

My hand was beginning to cramp from writing so fast, trying to get every word down exactly, and I said, "Just a couple of more questions, and then I'm finished. Kara, has anything odd been going on the past few weeks before this? Obscene phone calls? Problems with a neighbor or someone at work? Anybody odd hanging around the neighborhood that made you feel uncomfortable? Anything at all?"

One word. "No."

"Kara, did he say anything at all that might be helpful in tracking him?"

She looked incredulous. "Like what?"

"Like something that indicated he had been following you, or that he knew you at all. Did he say your name?"

Her tone was the same. "He said three things. At the start, he said if I fought or screamed, he'd cut me. At the end, he said if I went to the cops, he'd cut me. And in the middle, he said, shut up and take it, bitch, take a real man's cock."

"Oh."

Kara said, "Why, does that sound like one of your dates, or one of your fantasies?"

Diane started to say something and I shook my head and put I he pen away and folded up the notebook, and as I left the room I said to Kara and Diane, "I'm sorry this all happened, and I'm sorry I had to do this."

Downstairs I poured myself a glass of orange juice and looked closer at the photographs plastered up on the refrigerator door. My heart was racing along from the past minutes I had spent upstairs, and I didn't feel particularly happy or proud to be a man. I know that sounds like the classic white male guilt, but tell me how many female rapists there are in prison and that'll give you an idea of what I was thinking about.

Diane came downstairs after a while, and I was sitting in a kitchen chair, looking out to the flat water of the harbor. A few gulls crisscrossed the sky and the orange and yellow lights of the nuclear power plant were steady from across the marsh. Diane went to the sink and washed her hands and face and dried herself off with a towel, and then turned, leaning back against the counter.

"I'm sorry about what went on up there."

"No apologies needed. Whatever she said or did is fine. I don't take it to heart."

She shook her head. "No, I don't mean I'm sorry that she got upset with you. I'm sorry that you had to see Kara like that."

"I've seen Kara enough times before to know what she's like. She's just scared and hurting, and that's entirely understandable."

Both of her hands were grasping the counter. "You don't know what it's like."

"You're absolutely right."

"I mean, there she is, upstairs, and she's not the same person anymore, and neither am I. The Kara and Diane that were alive and breathing last Friday are dead. They were killed by an animal that broke into her apartment and raped her. Do you know what she's been going through, besides the trauma and the humiliation and fear? I mean, that asshole wasn't practicing safe sex, you know that? So when she was at the hospital she had to take a morning-after pill, which made her nauseous all this past weekend, and she had to have a shot of antibiotics in her butt, and she's going to have to get an AIDS test in a month, and every month for at least a year. Jesus."

Diane rubbed at her face, looked out toward the harbor, and her hands were shaking some. "You don't know what it's like."

This time, I didn't bother repeating myself. I just nodded in agreement.

After a bit she said, "Let me get you the Newburyport police file."

She walked me out, her breath making little clouds in the cold air, and held on to my arm and said, "I've talked to Inspector Dunbar, told him that you'd be seeing him this week. I said you were doing research on a magazine article and were going to use Kara's case as a test example of how sex crimes are investigated in Massachusetts."

"I imagine he was thrilled by that," I said.

"You're right, and don't expect too much. Like I said back at the hospital, I don't think he's putting this case on the front burner. Just the way he talks tells me a lot."