Hold Still (4 page)

SIX

October 4th

Two hours later, Jocelyn was
still fuming, and still waiting to be taken for X-rays. Someone on the hospital staff had found crayons and a coloring book to keep Olivia occupied. They sat on the gurney together coloring while Kevin waited outside for Inez’s daughter Ana to arrive. She had offered to take Olivia until Jocelyn was finished at the hospital. Although Jocelyn didn’t want to let her daughter out of her sight for even a second, Inez had insisted.

“She’ll be fine,” Inez had said. “Ana will feed her and take her for ice cream. It’ll be a hell of a lot better for her than sitting in here for six hours.”

When Kevin came in to get Olivia, Jocelyn kissed her good-bye six times until she got annoyed and pushed Jocelyn away. Tears stung Jocelyn’s eyes as Kevin walked out with her. “Make sure you get the car seat from my Explorer,” she reminded him.

“Bye-bye, Mommy,” Olivia called over Kevin’s shoulder with a sunny smile. It was all a grand adventure to her.

Smiling tightly, Jocelyn waved. She didn’t trust herself to speak again without bursting into tears.

Kevin returned five minutes later and tossed a folded piece of paper at her as he plopped into the chair beside her gurney. It landed in Jocelyn’s lap. She picked it up, turning it in her hands. It was an origami crane. “What’s this?” she said.

“It was on the front seat.” He fished in his pocket for a tab of Nicorette gum. “Doesn’t your sister do that shit? What is it? Origami?”

Jocelyn turned it in her hand. It was sloppily folded, not at all up to Camille’s standards. “Yeah,” she replied. “My uncle Simon taught us when we were little girls. I could never get the hang of it. Camille is way better than this, though, and Simon . . . Well, he’s better than Camille.”

“I heard he used to do it in court to distract the juries.”

Jocelyn laughed. Simon, her mother’s brother, had met Jocelyn’s father in law school. He had introduced Bruce Rush to his little sister, and the two had quickly become engaged. Simon and her father later partnered up, opening what would become one of the best defense firms in the city. “Yeah, that was an old trick. He used to do the most elaborate origami there was while the prosecutor talked so the jury would be watching him and not hearing a damn thing the DA was saying. They don’t let him do it anymore, though.”

Jocelyn held it up. “I have no idea where this came from. Neither Simon nor Camille have been in my vehicle for weeks—maybe even months.”

Kevin shrugged and opened his mouth to speak but was interrupted by an orderly who had come to take Jocelyn for X-rays. She tucked the crane into her pocket and let the man push her back and forth to radiology. Once she returned, Kevin pointed to the gurney and said, “Lie down. Rest.”

Too exhausted to protest, Jocelyn followed his instructions. She closed her eyes and tried to quiet her mind. Her wrist ached and throbbed. No one had even offered her an ice pack, and she was too tired to make a fuss over it. Within moments, Kevin was snoring, chin on his chest. He’d always been able to sleep anywhere, under any circumstances. Jocelyn tried to follow suit, closing her eyes and trying to ignore the sounds outside her curtain.

Even for a Friday, Einstein Medical Center’s emergency room was packed. Children wailed. Chairs scraped against linoleum. A young woman shouted, “I’m bleeding all over the place. Can I get some help over here?” Someone vomited. An incredulous male voice said, “Yo, look at this shit. Dude cut his motherfucking finger off.” Nurses scrambled and shouted out instructions to other staff members, impervious to the suffering around them. A different male voice said, “My wife is having chest pains.” Magic words in an ER. She heard a nurse say, “Come with me, please,” as the couple was whisked out of triage and back to the treatment area.

Lucky for Jocelyn, the pain meds made her drowsy. Within a few minutes, all the voices and other noises blended together into a sonorous buzz, lulling her into a light sleep.

A half hour later, she woke to the sound of whimpering. She looked toward Kevin, who rubbed his eyes and pointed toward the other side of Jocelyn’s bed. It was coming from the patient on the other side of the curtain.

Jocelyn heard a woman’s voice, calm but firm. “Miss Grant, I have to call the police—”

“No, no. Don’t. I’m fine,” came another female voice, this one strained.

“You’re not fine. Whoever did this to you—”

“Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I have to call the police.”

The other female’s voice went up about three octaves. Her voice was squeaky and thick with tears. “Please, no.”

Silence.

The nurse again. “All right, no police for now. Miss Grant, do I need to do a rape kit?”

Silence again. The nurse sighed. “I’ll take that as a yes. You should know that I have a legal obligation to report this to the police.”

“Please. Do you—do you at least have a more private room or something? Something besides these curtains?”

The nurse’s voice was laden with sympathy. “I’m sorry, Miss Grant. We’re completely full. We just had to put a guy with a severed leg in the hallway. This is the best I can do. If a private room opens up, or if I can switch you with someone else, I’ll try.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Jocelyn and Kevin exchanged a look and raced into the hall after the nurse.

“Excuse me,” Jocelyn said. “Were you just in with a patient named Grant?”

The woman nodded. Kevin stepped forward and flashed his credentials. “Detective Sullivan with Northwest Detectives. This is Detective Rush.”

The woman arched a skeptical eyebrow at Jocelyn. “You’re the carjacking.”

“Yes,” Jocelyn said. “But I’m also the police. You were going to call us. Well, we’re here. You’ve got a sexual assault?”

The woman frowned. “You know your wrist is broken. The doctor will be in any minute to speak to you. You should really go back to curtain five.”

Kevin stepped forward and smiled. Although he was in his fifties with thinning salt-and-pepper hair and a paunch, he could still soften up females. Jocelyn always thought it was the kindness in his hazel eyes. “Detective Rush is technically a patient, but I’m here in my official capacity. If you had called, I’d probably be the one coming over here to take an initial statement. If it’s a sex crime, we have to call SVU, but we’d be happy to get the ball rolling and speak with Miss . . .”

The woman swallowed and glanced toward the nurses’ station. “Grant,” she said. “Anita Grant.”

“Anita Grant?” Jocelyn said.

Kevin glanced at her. “You know her?”

“Anita and I go way back. She was a pro—I knew her when I worked in the Northeast, on patrol. She went through Dawn Court. She’s been clean for years.”

Project Dawn Court was a program for women who had multiple prostitution offenses. It offered refuge, mental health treatment, substance abuse counseling, and job training. It gave repeat offenders a chance to get their lives together and reenter society in a meaningful way rather than throwing them in jail.

Kevin turned back to the nurse. “What happened?”

The nurse shrugged. “I don’t know. She won’t tell us. She’s got some pretty bad wounds. She’s refused pain meds, though. Well, narcotics. We gave her Tylenol, but I don’t think it’s helping.” She gave Kevin a tight smile. “My name’s Kim, by the way. Come with me.”

She led them to curtain four. “Miss Grant,” Kim said as they entered. “These are Detectives Sullivan and Rush. They’ve come to talk to you.”

Anita lay on the narrow hospital bed, her hands and feet bundled in gauze. She had put on weight since she’d left the street. Her brown face had rounded out, as had her figure. She looked healthy finally.

She met Jocelyn’s eyes and quickly turned away. Still, Jocelyn saw the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I got nothing to say,” she murmured.

Blood seeped through the bandages on her hands in dime-shaped circles, front and back. The nurse probed gently at Anita’s left hand. “This is bleeding through. We’ll have to change it.”

Anita winced as Kim pulled the gauze away from her hand to rewrap it. She turned Anita’s hand over so that Jocelyn could see the damage. Blood leaked from a pen-size puncture hole that went straight through Anita’s palm and out the other side. Jocelyn’s stomach tumbled uneasily. She swallowed and turned back to Anita’s face, willing the woman to meet her eyes.

Anita stared straight ahead, refusing to look at them.

Beside Jocelyn, Kevin cleared his throat. “What is that from?”

Kim shrugged. “Looks like a nail. I mean, it’s small. Looks like it went clean through. It chipped the bone in the center of her hand, but other than that, she was lucky. Same for the feet.”

“Someone crucified her?” Kevin said.

“Looks that way.”

Jocelyn felt sick to her stomach. “Anita,” she said. “What happened to you?”

Anita’s frame trembled. She bit her lower lip. Jocelyn could see her holding it all back—the fear, the trauma. Her body shook with the unspoken knowledge of what had been done to her, but she did not speak.

Jocelyn turned to Kim. “Who brought her in?”

Kim shrugged again. “Don’t know for sure. She says it was a friend, but whoever it was left her lying outside the ER.”

“Anita,” Jocelyn said softly. “I can help you. Whatever happened to you, I can help make it right, but you have to talk to me. Tell me who did this.”

Anita shook her head and looked away. Another nurse pulled the curtain back. Beside her was a female doctor. “We need a moment with the patient, please,” the nurse said. She pointed a finger at Jocelyn. “And you—you need to get back to curtain five. The doctor is looking for you.”

“Anita,” Jocelyn implored.

The woman wouldn’t look at her.

“Just a minute,” Jocelyn said. She retrieved a business card from Kevin and jotted the number to the Special Victims Unit as well as her own cell phone number on the back of it, sucking in a sharp breath at the pain in her wrist. “Kevin is going to make a report and send it over to Special Victims. The doctor will do a rape kit. There will be a file started with the SVU if you decide you want to press charges.”

She put the business card into Anita’s purse. “You call me when you’re ready to talk, Anita.”

SEVEN

October 5th

In her dream, Jocelyn stood
at the door again, peering through the crack. There were four teenage boys. Were there four or five? She couldn’t see all of them. Two of them held Camille down. All Jocelyn could see were her sister’s white legs, pale and slender. They pushed them up into the air. “It will feel better that way,” one of them said. They talked among themselves excitedly. There was a strange exhilaration in the room. They knew what they were doing was wrong, and they hurried about it. They could hardly contain themselves.

Jocelyn couldn’t see Camille’s face. Did any of them look at her face?

Then Jocelyn’s dream-self was beside Camille, standing near her sister’s head, her back to the atrocity. She held Camille’s hand and wiped the fine beads of sweat from her brow, assuring her that it would be over quite soon. It would be over soon.

Jocelyn woke with a thrash, as if the wind had been knocked out of her. She tried calling out her sister’s name, but all that came out was a strangled whimper. She sat up, clutching at her throat with her uninjured hand, willing air to move through her body again. Her T-shirt was soaked with sweat, locks of her hair plastered to her cheeks and the back of her neck.

For God’s sake, it was only a dream.
Breathe!
a voice commanded. It sounded like her mother, but it couldn’t be. Her mother was dead. Was it still a part of the dream? She cried out as the air filled her lungs once more. She gulped it as if she had just broken free from the depths of a deep, churning pool of water.

Tendrils of light from the hall night-light crept into her bedroom. A small leg was strewn across Jocelyn’s middle. She gripped it and looked over at its owner. Olivia snored lightly; her tiny body fit into the space between the wall and Jocelyn, blankie clutched to her chest. Her little face was so peaceful. Jocelyn hadn’t even heard her come in. Two weeks ago, she’d made the mistake of letting Olivia sleep with her while she battled bilateral ear infections. The ear infections had cleared up, but now Olivia moved stealthily each night from her toddler bed across the hall into Jocelyn’s bed.

Looking at Olivia’s face calmed her, soothed away the last vestiges of the nightmare. As her breathing returned to normal, she got out of bed and rifled through her dresser for another T-shirt. Goose bumps erupted all over her flesh as she changed her shirt, in spite of the warmth in the room. Back in bed, she pulled the comforter over her and laid her head on the pillow, staring at her daughter. She stroked the girl’s brow gently and planted a kiss on her forehead.

Jocelyn knew she should scoop her up and return her to her own bed. But she didn’t do it. After what they had just been through, Jocelyn couldn’t imagine a better place for Olivia than cuddled up next to her, where Jocelyn could keep a watchful eye on her. She liked feeling Olivia’s warmth right next to her, being able to kiss her little forehead or her tiny hands. She liked the sound of Olivia’s breathing and the occasional soft sigh she made in her sleep. That sound was one of Jocelyn’s favorite things in the world.

Jocelyn planted another kiss on Olivia’s cheek and turned away from her, curling up on her side. She brought her hand up beneath her head and realized she was shaking. Her wrist, which was encased in an immobilizer, throbbed. She didn’t want to think about the dream, but of course, there it was. It must have been seeing Anita Grant that brought it back. She hadn’t had the dream for years.

Maybe I should have agreed to therapy
, she thought with a heavy sigh.

She concentrated on the sound of Olivia’s breathing and turned her thoughts to how she could help Anita Grant.

“Mommy, what kind of store is this?”

“A hardware store.”

“Do they have toys?”

Jocelyn laughed as she tugged Olivia through the narrow aisles of Stanley’s Hardware. It was the last small store of its kind in her neighborhood, run out of a large house with a long line of garages in the back. It had always amazed Jocelyn just how much crap the owners could cram into the tiny establishment. There was talk of tearing the old house down and putting up a new modern storefront, but so far it was just that—talk. Still, they seemed to have everything—except toys.

And nails.

“No toys, honey,” Jocelyn said as she surveyed the last aisle in the store, searching for nails and finding none.

“What kind of stuff do they have?”

Jocelyn pulled Olivia toward the back of the store to what passed for a customer service counter. It was a wooden desk that took up half of the back of the store. Then again, the place was so small; a space heater would take up half the store.

“Tools and other materials that grown-ups use to fix stuff,” Jocelyn explained.

They waited at the counter. Olivia looked up at Jocelyn, her tiny stuffed bear, Lulu, in her hands. She pinched Lulu’s ears. “Are you going to fix the window in the back door?”

“No, honey. Not today.”

“Are you going to fix the leak in the skylight?”

Jocelyn raised an eyebrow. “No.”

Olivia’s delicate little brow furrowed. She looked around at the tools, storage bins, painting supplies, and other home repair items. “Are you going to fix the hole in the carpet in the living room?”

Jocelyn burst into laughter. “No, I’m not. Since when do you catalog our home repairs, young lady?”

Olivia’s face remained serious. “What’s catalog?”

“It means to make a list of things. Honey, Mommy has to pick something up for a friend. Then maybe we can go get some lunch. We can go to any restaurant you want.”

Olivia loved restaurants. Just the mention of eating at one was enough to distract her from her litany of questions. Her eyes widened and her lips curved in a huge smile. “Can we go to Cracker Barrel?”

“Sure,” Jocelyn agreed as a man in a Stanley’s polo shirt came to the counter. He was young with short brown hair and dark eyes. “Can I help you?” he said.

“I’m looking for nails.”

“We have them in the back. What kind do you need?”

The kind you use to crucify someone.

“Big ones. I need to see the biggest nails you have,” Jocelyn said.

The man looked down at the counter, barely suppressing a grin. He must have thought she was some kind of idiot. “Well, what are you using them for? You need roofing nails? Aluminum nails? Finishing nails?”

“Just regular nails.”

“Common nails?” he said, sounding like a patient parent speaking to a child.

Jocelyn nodded. “Yeah, common nails.”

“Okay. What are you using them for? ’Cause typically your nail should be three times as thick as whatever you’re using it on. If you tell me what you’re working on—”

Jocelyn smiled tightly, resisting the urge to tell him to just give her the goddamn nails. “I’m not using them. I’m not constructing anything. I—I need to match them up with something in my house.”

“Do you need a screw nail or ring-threaded nail?”

Jocelyn stared at him blankly. “What does that mean?”

The man disappeared for a moment and returned with three small nails. Two of them had grooves snaking round the length of their shafts. The third was smooth. “That one,” Jocelyn said, pointing to the last sample. The nurse had said that Anita’s wounds were clean. A serrated or threaded nail would have done a lot more damage. The one the man handed her was only an inch long. “Do you have this in a larger size?”

The man dipped his chin and looked at her from beneath an arched brow. He cleared his throat. “Uh, this isn’t like trying on clothes. If you just tell me what you’re fixing—”

“I told you—I’m not fixing anything,” Jocelyn said impatiently.

“My mommy’s not a good fixer,” Olivia put in, breaking some of the tension building between the adults.

The man laughed. “Is that right?” he said, leaning over the counter so he could look into Olivia’s face. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “Is she more of a breaker?”

Olivia smiled. She looked at Jocelyn, gauging her mother’s reaction to the conversation. Jocelyn couldn’t keep the smile from her face. Olivia turned back to the man, grinning. “Yeah, she’s a breaker.”

Jocelyn shook her head. An image of Henry Richards lying immobile and bloodied in the street flashed through her mind.
Sure
, she thought grimly.
I break faces.

Pushing the image out of her mind, she turned her attention back to the man. “If you could just show me what you have—I’d only need one of each size.”

He frowned and stared at her for a beat longer, as if debating whether or not he should try imparting some manly wisdom, before finally disappearing into the back of the store.

He returned with a pile of large nails. He left them on the counter for Jocelyn to sift through and moved on to another customer.

Jocelyn chose a few that looked three times the thickness of a human hand. She held each one up along the outside edge of her hand, placing the head of the nail flush with the surface of her palm.

Olivia stood on the balls of her feet to peer over the top of the counter. “Mommy, what are you doing?”

“Just trying to see how long these are, sweetie,” Jocelyn said absently. She chose three candidates that would easily penetrate through her palm with an inch or more to spare.

“What are you going to do with those, Mommy?”

Probably not a whole hell of a lot.
Sex crimes went right to Special Victims. It was their job to go to the hardware store and look for nails that were large enough to penetrate a human hand. It was their case. But that wouldn’t stop Jocelyn from following closely to make sure Anita’s attackers were brought to justice.

Jocelyn reached down and tousled Olivia’s hair. “I’m going to help a friend, sweetheart. Now let’s pay for these and we’ll go get lunch.”