The Fight for Us (34 page)

“There’s no sign of seminal fluid, though I won’t rule it out until we get the full results back from the lab. But I think it’s unlikely that we’re going to find anything. If you were violated, protection was likely used. That’s good news for your physical health, not good news in terms of evidence.” He sighed. “I’m very sorry.”

Joss just kept nodding. Isaiah couldn’t tell if she was actually hearing the man at all. She seemed in a daze.

“You don’t get Rohypnol in your system unless someone put it there. The police are going to meet you at the ferry landing in Bristol to take your statement. We’ll get all the information we’ve collected so far directly to the chief. From what I’ve been told, he’s going to be handling your case himself.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Isaiah responded as Joss stared at the floor.

“Of course.” He approached the bedside, and Joss looked to him. “You were very wise coming in so soon. Rohypnol leaves the system quickly, and a few more hours, and we likely could have missed it altogether. That may not help you feel better, but the fact it was in your system is the best evidence you have right now that someone violated you. You can go ahead and get dressed. Bristol Police contacted Baymont PD, and they have an officer waiting to take you back to Baymont Harbor. We’ll be back in just a few minutes with your discharge papers.”

She finally managed to thank the man, and after the nurse handed her a pair of blue scrubs to change into, she started to follow the doctor from the room.

“Where are my clothes?”

Joss stopped the woman, and both she and the doctor turned back, but Isaiah spoke before they could as he started to unfold the scrubs.

“They’ll keep them as possible evidence. Even if you changed clothes, they’ll look for transferred evidence on the clothing.” Isaiah looked up at them. “I assume the officer downstairs has the evidence bag and is coming with us to Bristol?”

The doctor nodded his head curiously as he studied Isaiah for a moment. “He’ll hand it directly over to the chief to maintain the chain of evidence. You law enforcement?”

“Not anymore.” He turned back to Joss as the door closed behind him. He helped Joss into the scrubs. He untied the back of her gown, letting it fall off her arms, and he pulled the blue shirt over her head. When she slid off the bed, he helped her feet find the right leg of the scrub pants, and he stood tying the drawstring at her waist as she stared at his chest. They’d not even left her socks for her to put on, and after he grabbed her snow boots and coat from a nearby chair, he unlaced the boots for her. She steadied herself with a hand to each shoulder as he helped her into her boots and tied them, and then he held her coat as she slipped into it as well.

Her expression hadn’t changed while he’d been dressing her, and when the nurse arrived again to walk them out, she still stared at the floor, saying nothing. They followed the woman out to the waiting patrol car, and he held Joss’s hand the entire time and kept her purse tucked under his arm. She slid into the backseat, and he slid in next to her, wrapping an arm around her and letting her lean into him. She snuggled against his side and closed her eyes.

The officer glanced at them in the rearview mirror a couple times but remained largely quiet. He parked in the harbor parking lot, and soon, they were sitting across from the man in the wind sled. He held the evidence bag and a sealed envelope in his hands, and as they made the crossing from the mainland to Bristol, Isaiah listened to the wind whipping and howling outside the enclosed sled.

A blizzard was rolling in, and the high winds were amazingly strong on the vast open surface of the frozen lake. Soon, they would decide the ice was thick and safe enough, and they’d open the ice road. Freeze up didn’t happen every year from what he’d heard, and often the ferry ran all winter long, but this had just been one of those northern Wisconsin winters. The ice road would make travel easier, but it was an odd thing to consider driving over water to Isaiah. He’d never experienced it before, and as he zoned out with Joss still snuggled up to his side and the officer watching them curiously, his brain got stuck on the notion of it for a while.

The chief met them at the ferry landing, shaking the officer’s hand as the young man handed over the sealed evidence bag and envelope, and then Chief Jeffries shook Isaiah’s hand as well before giving Joss a hug.

“It’s good to see you again, Isaiah. Not under these circumstances, of course, but I’m glad you’re here with Joss.” They climbed into the back of yet another police car, this one a four wheel drive SUV, and within minutes they were following Jeffries into the small police station and into Jeffries office.

“First of all, let me just say how sorry I am this happened to you, Joss. I’ve known you for years, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt you.”

She nodded.

“Isaiah, just to get it out of the way—” Jeffries hands were up in placation.

It was unnecessary with Isaiah. He knew the question needed to be asked.

“—where were you last night and overnight?”

“I was at home with my daughter. She can corroborate, though she is a bit catatonic at the moment, and frankly, I’d rather she not have to answer questions right now, least of all about this. I don’t think Joss wants our girls to know about what happened, not yet at any rate.”

Joss finally spoke up, and she did it quickly enough to startle him. “No. Please. You can’t possibly think Isaiah had anything—”

Chief Jeffries’s hands were up again. “No. Of course not, but I want it on the record that he was asked.” And then turning to Isaiah, he continued. “I’m very sorry about what happened to Natalie at school. My officers are looking into how this could have happened.” He sighed in frustration. “But it’s nearly impossible to trace it back to its source. One student finds one of these flyers in their locker another picks one up off the ground. The damn things spread like wildfire before anyone could even get a handle on how they made it into the school in the first place. We’ll continue to look into it, but—”

“We already know who’s responsible.” Isaiah’s voice was flat as he spoke to the chief, but given the raised brows, he’d certainly gotten the chief’s attention. “There’s also little question in my mind he’s responsible for doing this to Joss too. Supporting evidence or not.”

“Care to share your suspicions?”

“Todd Verna.”

The chief studied him for a moment, saying nothing, but then his attention shifted to Joss who was sitting in the chair beside his. “Joss?”

“There is no doubt in my mind either that he’s responsible.” She looked up at the chief. “He was abusive when we were married, he overstepped boundaries once we were divorced, he let himself into the home I rented from him whenever he chose to, he has a key, he enjoys hurting me as much now as he did when we were married—albeit in a far less physically violent manner most of the time.” She was rattling it all off in quick succession, none of her previous stupor visible at all. She sounded quite charged up at the moment. “He told me he’d found out Natalie’s history at the New Years’ Eve party at The Landing, and he was using that knowledge as a threat. We didn’t know what that could actually mean. There was just nothing we could do to even try to stop this.” She shook her head as she exhaled harshly. “He wants to destroy me, and he’ll do it through anyone I care about.”

Tears were suddenly on her lower rims, threatening to fall, and Isaiah reached for her hand, lacing his fingers with hers as she glanced at him.

Chief Jeffries steepled his fingers under his chin as he watched them. He studied them both for a moment, and when he finally dropped his hands to his desktop, he sighed. “I spoke to the doctor who examined you in Baymont.” He shook his head. “I don’t have the evidence to go after Todd. I don’t even have enough to get a search warrant for his home. I can question him, put some pressure on him, but at the end of the day…”

Joss nodded. “I know. At the end of the day, he gets away with it. Nothing new about that.”

The chief just looked at her for a moment. “We need to go over the events of last night and today. I need a timeline, and then I’m going to take one of the officers over to your place to process the scene while it’s still daylight.”

Joss nodded. “I got home about nine thirty or so from Isaiah’s. I was alone. Harper was staying with Steph for the night. I drank a glass of wine from the bottle I’d opened a night or two before. And that’s all I remember. I remember feeling drunk even though I’d not drank nearly enough to feel that way, and then nothing. I woke up this morning—”

“What time?”

“Late. Nine or nine thirty. Far later than I generally sleep. I was wearing the same clothes, but my shirt was on backward. I got up. I was confused. I wandered around the house for a while trying to figure out how I’d gotten upstairs. I really wasn’t piecing things together at that point. Not until I went to the kitchen to make some coffee. The wine bottle was gone. I looked in every garbage can in the house. I even checked the outside one. It was nowhere. I went to Isaiah’s to talk to him, but…” She glanced at him quickly.

Isaiah was just struggling to swallow without ingesting his tongue at the same time. All he could see was her confused and scared expression from that morning and his inability to recognize it at that time. He shook his head as he closed his eyes for a moment.

“He was so busy with Nat, and—” She glanced at him again, and he could only shake his head as he tried not to fall apart. “I just didn’t want to add any more stress, so I left and called Steph. She thought I needed to go to the hospital, so that’s what I did. I didn’t go home. I just went straight to the ferry landing and got on the next wind sled to Baymont. I arrived there around mid-day. About eleven o’clock if I recall.”

“You didn’t bathe?”

“No.”

“And the clothes you woke up in?”

“Still on the bathroom floor.”

“How did you feel when you woke up?”

“Umm… Groggy. Tired. I had a headache. Again, I hadn’t drank nearly enough to feel like I had a hangover, but that’s kind of what I felt like.”

Jeffries nodded. “We’re going to dust for prints when we go to your place, but I’m guessing if you said Todd let himself in and out regularly that we could expect to find his prints in your home. It won’t ultimately mean anything if we find them. We’ll collect the clothing as well and have them processed for trace evidence.”

Joss nodded.

“Unless we find a smoking gun there—spent condom or the wine bottle with his prints on it, this could be tough. I’m sorry, Joss.”

She didn’t respond at all. There was nothing to say, and she wasn’t surprised. Todd had been victimizing her for years, and Isaiah was guessing she was beyond thinking it would ever be any different. The chief had little else to say to them at that point, and he drove them back to the ferry landing parking lot where both of their cars were.

“Joss, stay here for a moment. I’ll start your car, so it can warm up.” She handed Isaiah her keys, and he glanced at the chief quickly, hoping the man would take his subtle hint to follow him. When the chief did, he left his car running and followed Isaiah to Joss’s car. The snow was picking up.

“You going to Joss’s place now?”

“Yeah. Officer Bailey is meeting me there in twenty minutes.”

“How soon do you intend to talk to Todd?”

Jeffries’s eyes narrowed as he studied Isaiah. “Why?”

“I was just thinking. With this storm coming in you might not be able to easily get to him for a couple days.” It was suggestive if nothing else. Isaiah’s wheels were turning, and while they’d not yet come full circle with a concrete plan, the seed of it was firmly planted, and it required Todd be in the dark just a bit longer about what their suspicions were.

“Hmm… You know I’m retiring in just a few months, right?”

Isaiah nodded.

“And you know the mayor has every intention of offering you my position when that happens.”

Isaiah took a deep breath. He’d been clued into that prospect a time or two. He nodded again.

“Listen, I know Todd. He’s not a good man, and I’ve been cringing since I found out he was going to be a permanent resident here. There’s something very…wrong with him. Add to that a trust fund and the fact he doesn’t need to work, and you have an asshole with entirely too much time on his hands with a serious entitlement complex. That spells trouble in my book. But you’re not going to give this town any excuses not to hire you. He’s not worth that. Do you understand?”

“Of course.” He studied Jeffries eyes as he leaned into Joss’s car and started it. He closed the door righting his position.

“If you do anything to delay my retirement and force me to hire someone else, I will kill you myself. You do not go after Todd, got it?”

“I have no intention of going to him.” He kept his responses honest.

Jeffries just stared at him some more. Isaiah knew he was jeopardizing his reputation with a man who didn’t know him very well, but he didn’t much give a shit at the moment.

“Given the weather, it’ll probably be Monday before we can get to Todd. Expect our resources will be spent pulling folks from ditches and keeping the streets clear.”

Isaiah nodded, saying nothing before he turned back to the chief’s SUV. He helped Joss from the backseat, and he pulled her into his arms for a moment. The chief just watched them.

“Time to go, sweetie. I want you to park behind me when we get home,” he whispered in her ear.

She pulled back, looking at him quizzically. He had a three car garage, and while one single stall was still taken up by moving boxes, the second one wasn’t, and she always parked there when she came over.

“Don’t ask why.” He knew the chief was still looking at them, but Joss took the hint and nodded, turning away toward her car.

As she approached the chief, he hugged her again. “I’m sorry, Joss. Take care.”

She nodded. It was her new response to pretty much everything. Isaiah had heard her voice very little since finding her in the hospital, and he hated it. It was amazing just how much he could miss something as simple as a voice.