Shield of Justice (8 page)

The left side of the young woman’s face was swollen and discolored. Her eye was a mere slit, the lashes caked together with dried blood. Fine black sutures closed a series of lacerations on her forehead. She clutched the covers up to her breasts despite the heat. Her hands were covered with cuts and scratches. Looking at her, Rebecca thought she was probably very attractive. Her body under the light sheet appeared trim and her bare arms were muscled as if she worked out or had a passion for sports. Rebecca thought that she must have put up a hell of a fight, too.

Catherine went immediately to the bedside and took Janet’s hand. “Detective Frye is here.”

Janet nodded her head slightly, carefully, as if the small motion hurt. “Please stay with me.”

“Of course,” Catherine said, pulling a chair up to the left side of the bed.

Rebecca dragged a similar worn plastic chair next to Catherine’s and sat down, opening her notebook as she did so. She leaned forward so Janet could see her face.

“Ms. Ryan, I’m Rebecca Frye
.
I’m a police officer. I’m trying to find out what happened the night you were injured.” She watched the young woman carefully, looking for any unspoken reactions to her questions. “Can you tell me what you did that day
,
Tuesday, three days ago?”

Janet glanced at Catherine, who nodded encouragement. Then she began to speak in a slow, halting whisper. “I was…late…I missed the train. So, I drove…to work.”

“Where is that?” Rebecca asked. She knew the answer, but she liked to get a witness comfortable with the interrogation process before she pressed them for more important details.

“Compton Building. I’m a software programmer…” She halted uncertainly, her grip on Catherine’s hand tightening.

“Go on,” Rebecca urged.

“It was a normal day. Barb…called at lunch…I told her I’d be home around seven.” A single tear slipped from between her lashes and dampened her cheek.

Rebecca reached for a tissue and pressed it into Janet’s free hand. She waited a moment, then asked, “What did you do after work?”

“It was beautiful outside. I…I decided to go home on the Drive, even though the traffic is slower…” She stopped again, a slight tremor noticeable in her hands. “If I hadn’t…”

“It’s all right, Janet,” Catherine said quietly. “None of this is your fault.”

“I remember,” Rebecca said softly, wanting to draw Janet back to that day. “It was cool, there had been a shower—”

Yes! It had been so sticky all weekend. I stopped the car…oh…it’s all so confusing. I can’t remember where I stopped!” Her anxiety was more pronounced now. She glanced anxiously around the room, her fingers pulling on the sheet.

“That’s okay, Janet, you’re doing a great job,” Rebecca soothed her. “You don’t have to get everything straightened out now. Just tell me anything you can remember, even if it doesn’t make sense right away.”

Catherine gave Rebecca a startled look but remained silent.
Maybe I should take her on rounds with me. She’s better at this than some of my residents
. Rebecca continued to surprise—and intrigue.

“Do you remember why you stopped? Did you see something from the road? Something that concerned you?” Rebecca probed. She knew she was leading the distraught woman a bit, but she was hoping to jog her memory.

Janet’s blue eyes were wide, her voice breathy with effort. “There was a regatta, and…I…I stopped to watch. I headed toward the water…”

When Janet seemed about to lose her train of thought, Rebecca prompted, “Did you see something there? Hear something? Can you remember anything that you saw?”

“That’s just it! I can’t make sense of what I
can
remember. There are so many colors!”

“What colors, Janet?” Rebecca asked quickly, writing the word on her pad and circling it.
What the fuck?

“I don’t know!”

“Do you remember a man? Did you see a man, or a woman and a man?”

“No.”

“Did you hear a woman scream?”

“No.” She looked at Catherine, her face pale. “I’m sorry…I can’t remember. I’m trying…”

“I know you are. It’s all right,” Catherine comforted her. “Close your eyes for a minute, and tell me anything you see—any image—any picture in your mind at all.”

“Just the number.”

Rebecca sat up straight in her chair, her face tense. “What number?”

“Ninetyseven.”

“Ninetyseven what? Were there letters with the number?”

“I can’t remember…please, I just can’t remember.”

“That’s all right, Janet,” Catherine intervened, sending Rebecca a warning glance. “You’ve been wonderful. We’ll talk again when you’re a little stronger.”

Rebecca forced down a protest. She
knew
Janet had seen something important. She could feel it. She also knew it would be futile to try to prolong the interview. Clearly Catherine felt the young woman had had enough.

The detective pocketed her notebook and stood up, angry and frustrated. She looked at the battered, terrorized woman in the bed, so pale and fragile under the thin, impersonal sheets—an innocent victim of fate and circumstance. Janet Ryan and the others were her charges now, and she intended to bring them justice.

Catherine stood with Rebecca in the hallway outside Janet’s room. She couldn’t miss the hard stillness of the detective’s face. “Not much help?”

Sighing, Rebecca passed a hand across her face, consciously trying to shake the anger from her mind. “Not much.” Letting her feelings rule was not going to help her get the job done. “There’s something there, though. I’m sure of it.”

“I’m almost positive Janet walked up on the rape,” Catherine said as they began to walk. “That would explain both her extreme reaction and the symptoms she’s displaying now.”

“Can you press her on the number…and try to find out more about the colors?”

“Sorry, not right now,” Catherine replied, still thinking about Janet’s obvious fragility. “She’s blocking because she’s not psychologically prepared to cope with what she witnessed.”

Rebecca suppressed her impatience. She had no doubt Catherine was right, but she
needed
this woman to remember. This powerlessness was eating her up inside. “Will you let me know when I can talk to her again? I really need her, Catherine.”

“I know, Rebecca. Of course.”

The detective stopped in front of the elevator, at a loss for words. She didn’t want to say goodbye, and she wasn’t sure she should do anything else. The bell rang, announcing that the elevator had arrived. Catherine was so close to her she couldn’t seem to think. Then Catherine’s hand was on her arm, her fingers softly caressing, her green eyes holding Rebecca’s with a tenderness she could drown in.

“About last night…” Catherine began. “I didn’t mean to rush—”

“I want to see you again,” Rebecca interrupted. “Not here, and not about the case.”

Catherine realized she had been holding her breath. She let it out with a soft sigh as the elevator doors slid open. It took all her willpower to step back and let go of Rebecca’s arm. Touching her was such an unexpected pleasure. “Yes. Yes, I’d like that, too. Very much.”

Rebecca stepped in, then held the door back with one hand to keep it from closing between them. Several people in the rear stared. “Tonight? I’ll come by…”

“Yes…dinner…”

The elevator bell chimed with annoying regularity while the door bounced against Rebecca’s palm. She grinned at Catherine, who was smiling faintly, her eyes searching Rebecca’s face—memorizing every detail.

“I’ll call when I’m through,” Rebecca said as the doors closed.

“Just come,” Catherine called, hoping her voice carried through the metal. “Any time.”

*

Rebecca drove back to the station with her thoughts divided between Janet’s scanty recollections and the exchange with Catherine at the elevator. Catherine elicited a physical response so intense it was actually painful. She was hard and throbbing, again. It was all she could do to keep her mind on the traffic.
A visit with Flanagan ought to cool me off.

She walked through the first floor of the station house, moving deftly around a small clump of people trying to get the attention of the duty sergeant behind the tall counter just inside the door. The hallway itself was nearly blocked by the feet and legs of people waiting for visiting hours or for someone to hear their complaints and who had stretched out on the benches lining the wall. Avoiding the obstacles, she pushed through the steel fire doors at the end of the hall and started down the stairs to the basement. Dee Flanagan, the senior criminalist, her crime unit lab, and by way of a series of underground tunnels, the morgue could all be found on that lower level.

Stopping first at Dee’s small, windowless office, Rebecca noted the usual clutter of journals, model reproductions, and containers of yogurt in various stages of consumption piled on the oversized metal desk in the middle of the room, but no Dee. She was probably in the lab.

At forty, with twenty years of experience and a degree in forensic analysis, Dee didn’t have to do bench work. She didn’t have to get her hands dirty or her feet wet in the field. And she didn’t have to work nights. But she did—routinely—because she was a perfectionist and something of a control freak.

Rebecca loved it when Dee handled her cases. She found the Crime Scene Investigation chief bent over a series of plaster footprints lined up on a bench in the wet room—a long, narrow, brightly lit space where the crime scene techs processed the gross evidence from a crime scene. Bags of trash, clumps of dirt, torn clothing, abandoned cigarette butts, gum wrappers, and discarded condoms all sat in labeled boxes and clear plastic evidence bags. Representative samples of the debris would undergo more definitive examination under the microscopes, in the spectrographs, and via the gas chromatographs in the adjoining high-tech lab.

“Those mine?” Rebecca asked, pointing to the shoe casts. She put her hands in her pockets to curry good favor as she walked up to the small, trim, tomboyish woman with short dark hair and a perpetual curl to the end of her surprisingly full mouth. Flanagan didn’t like anyone touching anything in her lab.

“They’d better not be yours, Frye,” the smaller woman snapped, barely affording the detective a glance. “If you haven’t learned by now not to contaminate a scene, you should be on traffic.”

“You turn up anything?” Rebecca persisted, ignoring the jibe. Traffic was one step up from the property room in terms of inglorious assignments.

Flanagan turned and leaned her hips against the counter, shaking her head. “Not much yet. Lots of shoe prints, but without a suspect, they won’t help us. Bike tire treads…ditto. Same with the semen analysis. This one matches the other two, by the way. I
can
tell you it’s the same guy, but without his cooperation, I can’t match it to anyone.” She looked as irritated and frustrated as Rebecca felt.

“What about the trace evidence from the newest victims, Myers and Ryan?”

Dee Flanagan raised an eyebrow, studying the tall blond detective. She’d never known Frye to jump to conclusions. “You’re certain the other woman—Ryan—was part of this?”

Rebecca nodded. “She was there. I think she tangled with him. She saw something, at the very least.”

“Darla Myers had his semen on her but not much else.” The scientist consulted her notes. “There were a few nylon fibers on her skin that didn’t come from her own clothes. Could have come from him.”

“Can you match them to anything?”

Flanagan shrugged. “Generic sports clothing, most likely. No help there. Maybe Maggie will have better luck with the chemical analysis of the material, but I doubt it. I’ll tell you one thing, though,” she added.

Rebecca’s pulse speeded up. “What?”

“Darla Myers didn’t put up a fight, if that’s what you were theorizing. No scrapes on her hands, no broken nails, no tissue or fiber
under
her nails, and no evidence that she even tried to block any of the punches to her face. She was beaten after she was unconscious, as near as I can tell.”

“It fits,” Rebecca said grimly, feeling the rage again and quickly stifling it. “When will you have the rest of it for me?”

“When it’s done,” Flanagan said curtly.

“Call me. Any time,” Rebecca replied as she turned to leave.

Flanagan just grunted, her attention already focused again on the shoe casts she had spread out for sizing.

*

Rebecca was almost out the door, finally done for the day, when her pager went off. For a moment she debated not answering it. She was on her way to Catherine’s, and she hadn’t thought of much else for the last hour while she brought her case notes up to date. The memory of Catherine’s face, her voice, the touch of her hand kept drawing her attention away from the task of organizing and filing reports. She wanted to see her more than she had wanted to do anything for a long time.

Before she could take the final step through the doorway, her pager vibrated again.
Damn.
She turned around and took the front stairs two at a time back up to the third floor. Leaning over the counter at the intake desk, she announced, “Frye here. What’s up?”

The frazzled dispatcher, sweating profusely in her blue uniform, looked up from the computer console. “Jeff Cruz is not responding to his calls. The captain wants to see you, pronto.”