Malice (6 page)

“You got that?” the attendant asked her bluntly, and Grace nodded.

They didn't bother explaining anything to her. They just went down a list of tests that Dr. York had ordered. They took her temperature first, and her blood pressure, checked her eyes and ears and throat, and then listened to her heart.

They did a urine test, and an extensive blood test, checking for illnesses as well as drug screens, and then they told her to undress and stand naked in front of them, and they checked her over carefully for bruises. She had a number of them that caught their interest, there were two on her breasts, several on her arms, and one on her buttocks, and then in spite of her efforts to conceal them from them, they discovered a bad one on her inner thigh where her father had grabbed her and squeezed her. It was high up, and led to another that surprised them further. They took photographs of all of them, despite her protests, and wrote extensive notes about them. She was crying by then, and objecting to everything they were doing.

“Why are you doing this? You don't have to. I admitted I shot him, why do you have to take pictures?” They had taken several graphic ones of her crotch, but there were two bad bruises hidden there and some lesions, and they told her that if she didn't cooperate they would tie her down and take the pictures. It was humiliating beyond words, but there was nothing she could do to stop them.

And then, as they put the camera down, the resident told her to hop on the table. Until then, he had scarcely spoken to her. Most of the directions had been from the attendant, who was a very disagreeable woman. Both of them ignored Grace totally, and referred to various parts of her as though they were looking at them in a butcher shop, and she weren't even a human being.

The resident was putting on rubber gloves by then, and covering his fingers with sterile jelly. He pointed at the stirrups and offered Grace a paper drape to cover herself with. She grabbed it gratefully, but she didn't get on the table.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a terrified voice.

“Haven't you ever had a pelvic?” He looked surprised. She was seventeen after all, and a good-looking girl, it was hard to believe she was a virgin. But if she was, he'd know in a minute.

“No, I …” Her mother had gotten her birth control pills four years before, and she'd never been to a doctor for an examination. No one knew for certain that she wasn't a virgin, and she didn't see what difference it made now. Her father was dead, and she had admitted that she had shot him. So why put her through this? What right did they have to do this? She felt like an animal, and she started to cry again as she clutched the paper drape and stared at them, as the female attendant threatened to tie her down. There was no choice except to agree to do it. She got up on the table, with shaking legs, and she pressed her knees tightly together, as she lay back and put her feet in the stirrups. But given everything that had happened to her, it wasn't the worst thing that she'd ever been through.

He made a lot of notes, and put fingers into her at least four or five times, shining a light so close to her that she could feel it warm her bottom. Then he in-serted an instrument into her, and did all the same things again. This time he took a smear and made a slide, which he set carefully on a tray on the table. But he said nothing to Grace about his findings.

“Okay,” he said indifferently to her, “you can get dressed now.”

“Thank you,” she said hoarsely. She had no idea what they'd found, or what he'd written, but he had made no comment on whether or not she was a virgin, and she was still naive enough not to be entirely sure if he could really see the difference.

She was dressed and ready to go five minutes later, and this time two men ferried her back to her cell at Central Station, and she was left alone with the women in her cell until after dinner. Two of them had been released on bail, they had been there for drug sales and prostitution and their pimp had come to get them, and of the other two one was in for grand theft auto, and the other for possession of a large amount of cocaine. Grace was the only one being held for murder, and everyone seemed to leave her alone, as though they knew that she didn't want to be bothered.

She had just eaten a barely edible, very small, overcooked hamburger, sitting on a sea of wet spinach, while trying not to notice that the cell reeked of urine, when a guard came to the cell, opened it and pointed at her, and led her back to the room where she had met with Molly York that morning.

The young doctor was back, still wearing jeans, after a long day at the hospital where she worked, and then in her office. It was fully twelve hours later.

“Hello,” Grace said cautiously. It was nice to see a familiar face, but she still felt as though the young psychiatrist represented danger.

“How was your day?” Grace shrugged with a small smile. How could it have been? “Did you call your father's partner?”

“Not yet,” she said almost inaudibly. “I'm not sure what to say to him. He and my father were really good friends.”

“Don't you think he'll want to help you?”

“I don't know.” But she didn't think so.

Molly was looking at her pointedly as she asked the next question. “Do you have any friends at all, Grace? Anyone you could turn to?” She suspected long before Grace spoke that she didn't. If she had, maybe none of this would have happened. Molly knew without asking her that she was isolated. She had no one in her life except her parents. And they had done enough to ruin anyone's life, or at least her father had. At least that was what she suspected. “Did your parents have any friends you were close to?”

“No,” Grace said thoughtfully. They really didn't have any close friends, they didn't want anyone to get too close to their dark secret. “My father knew everyone. And my mom was kind of shy …” And she had never wanted anyone to know that she was being beaten. “Everyone loved my dad, but he wasn't really close to anyone.” That in itself made Molly wonder about him.

“And what about you? Any real close friends at school?” Grace only shook her head in answer. “Why not?”

“I don't know. No time, I guess. I had to go home and take care of my mom every day,” Grace said, still not looking at her.

“Is that really why, Grace? Or did you have a secret?”

“Of course not.”

But Molly wouldn't let go of her. Her voice reached out to Grace and pulled her toward her. “He raped you that night, didn't he?” Grace's eyes flew open wide, and she looked at Molly, and hoped the young doctor didn't see her tremble.

“No … of course not …” But her breath caught, and she found herself praying she wouldn't have an asthma attack. This woman already knew too much without that. “How can you say such a thing?” She tried to look shocked but she was only terrified. What if she knew? Then what? Everyone else would know their ugly secret. Even after their deaths, she still felt an obligation to hide it. It was her fault too. What would people think of her if they knew it?

“You have bruises and tears all through your vagina,” Molly said quietly, “that doesn't happen with normal intercourse. The doctor who examined you said it looked like you had been raped by half a dozen men, or one very brutal man. He did an awful lot of damage. That's why you shot him, isn't it?” She didn't answer. “Was that the first time, after your mother's funeral?” She looked pointedly at Grace as though she expected an answer, and the teenager's eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks in spite of all of her best efforts to stop them.

“I didn't … no … he wouldn't do a thing like that … everyone loved my dad …”

She had killed him, and all she could do now was defend his memory so no one would ever know what he had really been like.

“Did your father love you, Grace? Or did he just use you?”

“Of course he loved me,” she said woodenly, furious at herself for crying.

“He raped you that night, didn't he?” But this time, Grace didn't answer. She didn't even deny it “How often had he done that before? You have to tell me.” Her life depended on it now, but Molly didn't want to say that.

“No, I don't. I'm not going to tell you anything, and you can't prove it,” Grace said angrily.

“Why are you defending him?” Molly asked in total frustration. “Don't you understand what's happening? You've been charged with murdering him, they could even decide to charge you with murder in the first degree, if they can get away with it, and they think you have a motive. You have to do everything you can to save yourself. I'm not telling you to lie, I'm telling you to tell the truth, Grace. If he raped you, if he hurt you, if you were abused, then there were extenuating circumstances. It could reduce the charges to manslaughter or even self-defense, and it changes everything. Do you really want to go to prison for the next twenty years in order to preserve the reputation of a man who did that to you? Grace, think about it, you have to listen to me … you have to hear me.” But Grace knew that her mother would never have forgiven her for sullying her father's memory. It was her father whom Ellen had loved so blindly, and needed desperately. It was he she had always wanted to protect, even if it meant holding her thirteen-year-old daughter down for him. She wanted to make him love her at any price, even if the price was her own daughter.

“I can't tell you anything,” Grace said woodenly.

“Why? He's dead. You can't hurt him by telling the truth. You can only hurt yourself by not telling it. I want you to think about that. You can't be loyal to a dead man, or to someone who hurt you very badly. Grace …” She reached out and touched her hand across the table from where she sat. She had to make her understand, she had to pull her out from the place where she was hiding. “I want you to think about this tonight. And I'm going to come back and see you tomorrow. Whatever you tell me, I'll promise not to tell anyone else. But I want you to be honest with me about what happened. Will you think about that?” Grace didn't move for a long time, and then she nodded. She'd think about it, but she wasn't going to tell her.

Molly left her that night with a heavy heart. She knew exactly what was going on, and she couldn't seem to bridge the gap with Grace. She had worked with abused children and wives for years, and all their loyalty was always to their abusers. It took everything she had to break that bond, but usually she was successful. But so far, Grace wasn't giving an inch. Molly was getting nowhere.

She stopped in the detective's office to look at the hospital report and the Polaroids again, and it made her feel sick when she saw them. Stan Dooley came
in
while she was reading the report, and he was surprised to see her still at work, fourteen hours after she had started.

“Don't you have anything else to do at night?” he said amiably. “A girl like you ought to be out with some guy, or hanging out in bars, looking for her future.”

“Yeah,” she laughed at him, her long blond hair hanging invitingly over her shoulder. “Just like you, huh, Stan? You were here the same time I was this morning.”

“I have to. You don't. I want to retire in ten years. You can be a shrink until you're a hundred.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She closed the file and put it on his desk with a sigh. She was getting nowhere. “Did you see the hospital report on the Adams girl?”

“Yeah. So?” He looked unmoved.

“Oh come on, don't tell me you can't figure it out.” She looked angry at the casual shrug of his shoulders.

“What's to figure? So she got laid, nobody says she got raped. And who says it was her father?”

“Bullshit. Who do you think laid her? Six gorillas from the zoo? Did you see the bruises, and read what he found internally?”

“So she likes it lively. Look, she's not complaining. She isn't saying that she was raped. What do you want from me?”

“Some sense for chrissake,” she blazed at him. “She's a seventeen-year-old kid, and he was her father. She's protecting him, or some misguided illusion about saving his reputation. But I can tell you one thing, that girl was defending herself, and you know it.”

“‘Protecting him.’ She blew the guy away. What kind of protection is that? I think your theory is real nice, Doctor, but it won't hold water. All we know is that she may have had a little rough sex. There is nothing to prove that she had it with her father, or that he was roughing her up. And even if, God help me, she did fuck her old man, that's still no reason to shoot him. That still doesn't make it self-defense, and you know that too. There's nothing to prove that her father hurt her. She's not even saying that.
You
are.”

“How the hell do you know what he did?” she shouted at him, but he looked unmoved. He didn't believe a word of what she was saying. “Is this what she told you, or are you just guessing? I'm looking at the evidence, and a seventeen-year-old girl who is isolated and so removed she's practically on another planet.”

“Let me tell you a little secret, Dr. York. This is not a Martian. She's a shooter. Simple as that. And you want to know what I think, with all your exams, and fancy theories? I think probably she went out and got laid that night after her mother's funeral, and her old man thought it wasn't right. So she came home and he gave her hell, and she didn't like it, got pissed off, and killed him. And the fact that he was jacking off in bed is pure coincidence. You can't take a guy that the whole community knows as a good guy and convince anyone that he raped his daughter and she shot him in self-defense. As a matter of fact, I talked to his partner today, and he said pretty much the same thing I did. I didn't share the evidence with him, but I asked him what he thought must have happened. The idea that John Adams would do anything to harm his child, and I didn't even say what you thought it might have been, horrified him. He said the guy adored his wife, and his kid. He said he lived for them, never cheated on his wife, spent every night with them, and was devoted to his wife till the day she died. He said that the kid was always a little strange, very unfriendly and withdrawn, didn't have many friends. And wasn't that keen on her father.”

“There goes your theory that she was out with her boyfriend.”