Silent Scream (7 page)

“How is Karen?” Maddie asked.

“Enjoying Berkley.  She always did want to live in California.”  She folded her arms across her chest.  “That girl never did care for this state.”

“She got that from her mother.  You hate it, too.”  Maddie brushed a strand of hair from her face.

“You’re right about that.”

“I bet you miss her.”

Yolanda nodded.   “Yeah, I do.”

“Thanks for letting me stay.  I’ll keep out of your way.  You won’t even know I’m here.”

Yolanda patted Maddie’s shoulder.  “How long have I worked with you?”

Maddie swallowed hard.  “Years.  We both started at about the same time.”

“There’s a reason we never run into each other in the ER.  I know where you are no matter what, and you’re never in the way.”  She smiled kindly.  “It’s no trouble having you here.”

“I appreciate your generosity and all, but….”  Maddie felt tears prick her eyes.

“But what?”

Maddie sat on the edge of the bed and rested her good hand in her lap.  “Since this happened, I feel adrift.”

“What do you mean?”  Yolanda sat next to her, and she pushed her bifocals higher up on her nose.

Maddie took a deep breath. “There’s no place I really belong.”  She looked at her broken nails.  “I don’t even think of home as ‘home’ anymore, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back there.”  Tears thickened her voice.  “I’d have to drive past that...spot.”  Although she tried to hold her back in a rigid line, her whole body trembled.  “I used to think I was safe.  Now I wonder if that’s even possible.”

Yolanda took her hand.  “It’s going to take a while, Maddie.  Nobody goes through something like this without feeling raw.” Maddie leaned against her, resting her head against Yolanda’s arm.  “No matter what, you are safe.  And you can think of this as home.  I mean, I know it’s not so fancy as that house you left behind, but I’ve always thought of you as a daughter.  Doesn’t that make you like family, with this as a sort of home?  You’ve been over here countless times for summer barbeques and such.”

Maddie brushed her good hand up and down her arm, trying to ward away chills she couldn’t escape.  Tears burned her eyes, blurring the picture of the ballerina that hung on the wall into smears of flesh and pink.  With the back of her hand, she wiped her face.  “I’m sorry I’m like this.  I just need to get over it.”

“Get over it?” Yolanda echoed, frowning as she shook her head.  “You just got out of the hospital.  You’re not even fully healed, and you think you don’t deserve the right to mourn what somebody stole from you?  You try so hard to keep it locked away, as if speaking to anybody about what that animal did to you was a crime.  What he did is the crime; not talking about it only keeps you locked in his prison that much longer.”

Maddie closed her eyes, and her hand stilled.  Her breathing shallowed.  “I can’t  talk about this.”

“Why?  Why keep it inside?”

Maddie’s hand drifted to her face, and she touched her temple.  “I just can’t.”

“What are you afraid of?”  Yolanda stood and watched Maddie.

“He said he would kill me.”  Maddie looked at the cast on her arm.  “And I believe he would.  I mean, it’s not like he was far from it in the first place.”

“He’s not going to get the chance.”  Yolanda stepped to the nightstand and picked up the phone.  As she began punching buttons, Maddie’s hand caught her wrist.

“Don’t.  Please.”

Yolanda’s shoulders sagged, and she stared at the floor.  Her shoulder-length gray hair slipped around her face, concealing her features.  “You can’t just let him get away with this, Maddie.  The police can help.  They’ll find out who this guy is and keep you safe.”

“I...I’m afraid.”  Her voice wavered uncontrollably.  “You don’t understand.  You can’t.”  Fresh tears burned her eyes.

“It was a threat to keep you quiet, Maddie.  That’s it.”  She replaced the receiver in its cradle.  “Besides, if you don’t do something, he’s going to do this to other women.  He won’t stop with you.”

Maddie stood and walked to the window.  “Maybe I brought it out in him.  Maybe he wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t hit his truck.  Maybe it’s my fault.”

“Like hell!” Yolanda exploded.  “He didn’t need an excuse, and if he attacked you, that means no woman is safe, including me or my daughter.”

Exhaling sharply, Maddie felt a painful twinge in her arm.  She closed her eyes and absently rubbed the cast.  Despite her best intentions to keep her mind from forming images, Maddie saw Karen at the hands of her attacker, the blond man holding a knife at her throat,  Karen’s long, red hair framing her face as her mouth blossomed into a full ‘o.’  She could hear the young woman’s screams, agonized shrieks.  She could see her white, button-down blouse stained with blood.

Maddie’s knees threatened to buckle, and she quickly sank onto the bed.  “You’re right,” she whispered, feeling her whole body trembling.  She plucked at the rose-patterned comforter.  “Nobody else should have to go through this—not you, not Karen.”

Yolanda picked up the phone and thumbed the buttons.  “You shouldn’t have have had to go through this.”

* * *

“Is there anything else you can tell us?” Steve asked as he sat on the sofa in Yolanda’s living room.  Maddie shook her head.

David stood in the doorway next to Yolanda, his hands thrust deep into the black pockets of his police uniform.  “Any other details you remember?”

“No,” Maddie replied softly, brushing her hand on her rough denim jeans. Maybe it didn’t seem like much to the police, but it felt like more than enough to her. She absently stroked the cast, her fingers memorizing the coarse white stiffness engulfing her arm.  “What happens now?”

“Since you gave a pretty detailed description of the perp, we have something to go on, and hopefully we’ll turn him up.”

What if they never catch him?
  Maddie shuddered as a chill ran down her spine at the thought of always looking over her shoulder to see if the creep was following her. 

Maddie peered at him.  “Do you think he’s done this before?”

“It’s possible.  A lot of rapists repeat the act several times before they’re caught.  The thing is, we need to catch him before another woman goes through what you have.”  He closed his notepad and stood.  “Thank you for calling us, Maddie.   We’ll be in touch to let you know our progress.”

“I’ll show you out,” Yolanda said, heading into the foyer with the two officers following closely behind, while Maddie remained in her chair, leaning back and wishing she could forget the horrible turn things had taken.  She heard Yolanda bid them farewell, and  the front door squeak closed before Yolanda ambled back to the living room where Maddie sat.

“Do you feel any better?” Yolanda asked, sitting next to Maddie.

“No, not really.”  Maddie leaned back against the chair.  “What if they don’t find him?”

“They have a significant amount of information to go on, Maddie.  They’ll find him.”

Maddie grabbed the afghan from the couch’s armrest and tugged it around her body. 

“And if they do, there’s the trial in which I have to go over this story again and again.  Either way, what bliss.”

“I know this isn’t easy, but you’re doing the right thing.”

Sighing, Maddie looked at the grandfather clock on the opposite wall.  She watched the pendulum swing back and forth, back and forth.  Tears stung her eyes.  She thought
, You’re a healer, damnit.  Why can’t you heal yourself?
  But the why didn’t matter.  No matter what happened from this point on, Maddie was never going to be the same.  Never.  And she knew that even if they caught the man who’d done this, she knew she’d still looking over her shoulder—maybe not for him, but for all the others like him.

Closing her eyes, Maddie pretended to fall asleep.  She forced her breathing to an easy pace and a feigned a contentment she’d not known since this hell had begun.  The nightmares–God, they were awful.  She had yet to sleep without them, and even the drugs couldn’t drive them away.  They writhed about in her mind, strangling it with images of him,  images of what she’d gone through, and  of what she could never have believed were possible.

“It’s good you fell asleep,” Yolanda whispered.  “You need your rest, Maddie.”  Maddie could feel her tucking the afghan around her body.  “I wish I could help more.  You’ll never know how sorry I am.”

Maddie could feel tears welling behind her closed eyelids, and she wanted to throw her arms around Yolanda and wallow in a motherly embrace her own mother had never given.  Maddie was a successful product of human sexuality, one of the expected aspects of marriage and an important aspect of life.  Unfortunately, her father had not warmed to this aspect of life and had abruptly asked for a divorce  before Maddie had turned  even a year old.   After her father’s departure, Maddie had been a dutiful child, the medical school prodigy who had gained her mother’s approval with grades and achievements until she had died four years ago of ovarian cancer.

Her mother’s hatred of Maddie’s father had tried to sharply focus Maddie’s negative feelings about men.  Maddie had only wanted to please her mother; she’d never fallen in love, never had the time or desire or whatever else it was that might have sparked such a drive.  And now she wasn’t so sure it was a choice.  This habit had only been reinforced by that rapist.  She’d never felt so violated, so dirty, so helpless.

The gentle hands stopped tucking her in, and Yolanda walked away.  Maddie knew this by the sound of the floor creaking under Yolanda’s weight and the sound of her retreating footsteps.  And when she was sure she was alone, Maddie opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling.  It was then the tears came, silent and hot as they streamed down her face.  Always before, she’d wiped them away, but not this time. Somewhere deep inside, Maddie ached.  Her body trembled, but she forced the sobs deep inside where no one would hear them. 

Maybe if she spent enough tears, the pain would lessen and eventually subside, leaving Maddie to go on with her life.  There had to be a point at which enough would be enough, didn’t there?  But her body seemed overwhelmed with them, and the streams never waned.  She forced herself to stop crying.  “Don’t think about it,” she hissed.  “There’s no point.”

Despite her will to keep her eyes open, they grew heavy, and her body resisted movement, as though she were back in her dentist’s office wearing a gas mask before he filled a cavity.

I don’t want to sleep,
she thought. 
Sleep leads to dreams.
  Regardless of her wishes, however, unconsciousness claimed her and wrapped her for a time in its numbing blanket.

Chapter Seven

While Gabriel knew it made no sense to drive back to the scene of the accident, he couldn’t seem to help himself—and Donner had been no help at all, as usual.  He’d slipped out the firehouse door and waited by Gabriel’s truck until the fireman had given in.

Thirty minutes later, he parked along the silent country road.  As Gabriel got out and slammed the door closed behind him, he exhaled a flurry of steam.  The temperature was holding at about 20 degrees.  Luckily, no new precipitation had fallen in the last few days to muck up the road conditions. Dead grass crunched beneath his boots as he walked the area with the dog.

Lost in his own world, Gabriel tried to imagine Maddie’s ordeal.  He had done the same thing with Jessie, as if he had  been responsible for knowing—as  if that would somehow lessen his guilt. 

Donner yapped at him, ducking his head and heading toward the fence, near the place they’d found Maddie.  Gritting his teeth, Gabriel immediately remembered the hellish scene and the surreal glow of the police lights bathing the world in blue and red.  Maddie’s broken body convulsing in the cold night air.

It had been two weeks, and he still dreamed about her.  Except sometimes she was dead.  Sometimes nobody came when he called for help.  Sometimes the dream played on just as the real events had done.  Sometimes he found himself holding his sister, not Maddie.  Those were the nights he made himself stay awake afterwards.  Clenching his teeth, he shook his head.  There were some things a person wasn’t meant to forget.  Ever.

A harsh wind whipped the bare branches back and forth.  Gabriel drew the collar of his coat higher round his neck, and he began prancing in place, trying to keep warm.  Still, a pit of cold lodged in his stomach as he stared at the ground in front of him.

Despite Gabriel’s reluctance to walk around that spot, Donner jerked insistently at the leash.  Donner moved toward the bushes and nuzzled the grass.  Something gold flashed there.  “What in the world?”  Gabriel knelt and grabbed a stick that he used to pick up a ring with a crest on the front.  Frowning, he realized the large, thick band must have belonged to a male.  He set it in his palm and wondered if it could have belonged to the rapist.  Considering the location, he knew it was possible.  But how had the cops missed it?

Giving Donner a long last look, he lightly jerked the leash, leading the dog back toward the truck.  “Let’s go, boy.”  Gabriel opened the driver’s side so Donner could get in then closed it back again.

Gabriel pulled out his cell and punched the number for the police department. When someone greeted him, and he asked to speak to David Ferguson.   Another pause, and David’s voice filled the line.  “This is Officer Ferguson.”

“Gabriel Martin here.  I found something that may be linked to Maddie Gilcrest’s case.”  He scrutinzed the crest engraved in the gold.  “I need to give it to you.  You want me drive it in, or you want to meet me at the site?”

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

Gabriel snapped his cell shut.  Frowning, he knew this had probably been left behind by the perp.  It was an important link.  It had to be.  Without understanding the impulse, Gabriel walked back to his truck and pulled his camera from the glove box.  He set the ring on the hood of his truck and snapped a couple of shots–one from a distance and one close up before sliding into the car and putting the camera away.  Then he reached to the floor of his truck and grabbed his extra pair of work gloves before opening his tackle box and grabbing one of the extra ziplock bags that he slid the ring into.