explanation.
The woman was clearly confused and more than a little shocked. Sarah supposed it was shocking. But given everything else she’d seen in the last couple of days, being raped more than once in less than a week no longer felt quite so shocking, though no less degrading and humiliating. She felt no less violated than she had the first time she was here. The only difference was that now she knew what they were going to do and what they would find and she’d had time to prepare herself mentally for it. She was not going to allow herself to break down in tears again, though now would have probably been the appropriate time to do so and she certainly felt like crying, like screaming, and punching the walls. She just didn’t know if she’d ever be able to pull herself back together again if she allowed herself to fall apart now. The counselor was still looking at Sarah skeptically and somewhat judgmentally. Sarah could see all the questions on the woman’s face. She felt like telling the young counselor that she’d been murdered perhaps half a dozen times as well.
“How many rape victims do you see in here every day?”
“It’s hard to say. We see a lot of prostitutes and victims of domestic violence who we would classify as date rapes. Often, those are even more violent than the assaults from strangers. But on average I see about two or three a day.”
“Two or three a day?”
The woman nodded.
“And I’m just one counselor.”
Sarah didn’t know why she found that so surprising. Rape was one of those things she had never thought much about until she’d woken up screaming a week ago. Sarah wondered why the counselor was even there and where she’d been last week when it was just Detective Lassiter and the nurse.
“Aren’t you a rape counselor, Trina?” Sarah asked the detective.
“I’m a victims’ advocate. It’s slightly different. A lot less training.”
“So where was the counselor last week?”
“NASCAR was in town last week along with about a hundred thousand fans. It was a busy week for rape counselors.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, as if it should have been common knowledge that the incidents of rapes increased during sporting events. Sarah supposed that it should have been obvious. But that was just not ordinarily something you thought about.
The nurse busied herself lubing her rubbergloved fingers so that she could slide them more easily into Sarah’s vagina to get the sample. Detective Lassiter sprayed her with something she called luminol and scanned her with a UV light. There were glowing splotches all over Sarah’s breasts. She didn’t bother to ask what the splotches were. She was pretty certain she knew.
After the nurse had finished taking her swabs and Trina was done photographing every square inch of her, Sarah wiped herself with wet disposable towels that reminded her of baby wipes, then dressed and walked out into the waiting room. She met her husband’s eyes as he was called into the room. He was a wreck. She reached out for his hand and squeezed it. Then she pulled him close and kissed him.
“I love you, Josh.”
“I-I love you too,” Josh stammered back. He looked so frightened that it was breaking Sarah’s heart. As big as he was she still felt like it was her job to protect him. He was fragile in so many ways.
Sarah felt terrible for her husband. She could think of very few worse things that could happen to a man like Josh than being raped by another man. She wished she could have gone into the exam room with him but knew that would have been too humiliating for him. His pride would have never allowed it. She hoped they would find nothing, for the sake of his sanity. She hoped he hadn’t been violated again.
Detective Harry Malcovich was sitting with Detective Torres. They were watching TV and Torres was flicking the strap on his gun holster on and off as if he were just itching to pull his weapon. Sarah came and sat with them. She could tell that Harry was dealing with the whole thing no better than Josh was. He looked up at her and manufactured a smile for her. It looked every bit as artificial as it was. His eyes were haunted, swimming with dark shadows.
“Did everything go okay? You okay?” he asked.
Sarah shrugged.
“As good as I can be I guess.”
“Don’t worry, Sarah. This will all be over soon. If this wasn’t personal before, it damn sure is now. And if they find that that sick fuck touched me anywhere I’m going to hurt him as much as I possibly can before I blow his fucking head off. Fuck prison and fuck this badge. If they want it they can have it but I’m going to kill that pervert. You can bet on that.”
“And don’t worry, I’ll help you,” Detective Torres said. “This weird-ass case is taking up too much of my damn time. I’m starting to dream about that little motherfucker myself.”
“What kind of dreams?” Sarah asked, showing more interest than she’d intended.
“Not
“Will you shut the hell up you insensitive son of a bitch. Sarah has been raped and she doesn’t need you sitting there talking about how you’d kill yourself if it happened to you. I don’t need that shit either. I don’t know what that twisted nutcase might have done to me. I don’t even want to think about it until and unless I have to. So, just be quiet would you? Thank you.”
Harry leaned his head back, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.
“Ay, look Harry, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Skip it. I know you didn’t mean it, you ignorant bastard. Just watch it. I won’t launch a complaint against you for that kind of shit but someone else might. Sarah is a victim of something no one should ever have to go through and it’s our job to try to make her feel safer, not to make her even more depressed.”
“I’m sorry, Sarah…uh…Mrs. Lincoln. I just wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s okay.” Sarah turned away and stared at the television anchored to the wall in the corner of the room. There was a cooking show on with some chef making deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos. Sarah didn’t feel the least bit hungry and all the fried junk food flashing across the screen was making her nauseated. She knew Detective Torres hadn’t been trying to deliberately offend her but he had nonetheless. She tried her best not to stereotype him as a typical macho, chauvinistic Latino man but she had her prejudices no matter how liberal and enlightened she considered herself to be and guys like Mike Torres brought them all to the fore.
The three of them sat there in a tense, uncomfortable silence. Sarah turned to Detective Malcovich.
“Harry? When we’re done here, can you take me to see Dorothy Madigan?”
The detective turned to look at Sarah.
“Why?”
“I just need to see her. I need to speak to her. I want her to know that I believe her.”
“You’re right. We should go. Okay, I’ll take you. You sure you want to go right now? We can wait until tomorrow.”
“I think I should see her now. I think…for my sanity too.”
“Okay. We’ll go.”
Josh walked out looking shell-shocked. Sarah rushed over to her husband and wrapped her arms around him. They called Harry in next.
“Oh great. I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this. I’m going to kill this fucker when I catch him.”
He walked to the examination room, grumbling the entire way. Detective Lassiter turned to walk in behind him and he stopped her.
“You must be crazy. Go sit down, Trina. I can hold my own hand. You too,” he said to the rape counselor. He walked into the room with the nurse, leaving Trina and the counselor out in the hallway.
Sarah looked up at her husband.
“Is everything okay?”
“They’ll have the lab tests back tomorrow but they didn’t find any evidence of rape. Not that that means anything. They didn’t find any tearing or abrasions on you either. But the detective said that she didn’t see anything that looked like semen on the swabs, but you never know until the lab results come back.”
“I asked Harry to take me to see Dorothy Madigan, the woman who Dale raped before me, the one who set
