“We’ll get it fixed.”
“Get that security system installed too.”
“We will.”
“Is that it?” Sarah asked. Her voice rose higher than she had intended it to, giving a panicky edge to it.
“That’s all I can do with the evidence we have right now. If you remember anything more, then you can come down to the station and file a report. But I can’t go across the street and arrest some guy because you had a bad dream.”
“But you can question him?”
“Do you really want me to do that? I can. You’re right. I could go across the street and ask him if he’s been breaking into your house and attacking you when you’re sleeping. But if he didn’t do anything and all you had was a really scary realistic dream, then you might just piss him off and start a war between you.”
“He’s right,” Josh said, and Sarah knew he was too, but that’s not what she wanted to hear. She wanted the neighbor fingerprinted. She wanted her entire house dusted for fingerprints, checked for blood and semen and hair fibers and whatever the hell else they could find. She wanted him locked up and interrogated until he admitted the things he’d been doing to her.
“What about fingerprints? Can’t you check the house for prints?”
“We would need to get his prints to compare them to and that would require a warrant. Unless you can tell me right now that you know for a fact that he attacked you, I can’t get that warrant. If you tell me it wasn’t a dream and you remember him breaking in here and raping you, I’ll have that warrant in minutes and we’ll get fingerprints and semen samples from him, run a rape kit at the hospital and dust the entire house for prints and blood and any other body fluids. Without that, there’s nothing we can do. I can’t get a warrant or call in for a CSU team based on a dream and some clean sheets.”
“Could you run a rape kit on me anyway? Just to make sure it was only a dream? I haven’t showered yet so if something happened there might still be…” Sarah paused. The words did not want to come out. A shudder went through her body once more and she grimaced as if she had tasted something foul, as if she could still taste
The cop took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He tapped his pen against his notepad, upon which he had written absolutely nothing. He hadn’t taken a single note about anything she had said.
It was apparent to Sarah that he wasn’t planning on doing a single thing about her intruder and was just humoring her. She was almost tempted to tell him that they weren’t dreams and that she knew for a fact that she had been raped but she didn’t. She was still not sure how much of what she remembered was a dream and how much was real. She couldn’t remember a thing from last night. Not being attacked. Not firing the gun. Nothing.
If this was all in her head and she was going crazy she’d be putting the neighbor through hell for nothing and causing him all kinds of problems. People only tended to remember when someone was accused of a crime not when they were exonerated. A rape charge might get him fired or chased right out of the neighborhood. He might even retaliate by suing them or calling the homeowner’s association on them every time they were late bringing in their trash can on trash day or when they parked on the driveway instead of in the garage or if they didn’t trim their shrubs or calling the Nevada Water Authority when they didn’t change their sprinkler clocks on drought days or calling the police whenever their stereo was too loud or any of those other petty things neighbors did to one another to make their lives hell. It might even wind up with him and Josh in a fight or worse. She thought about Josh storming out of the house with a gun in his hand. What if Dale had a gun? That could get really ugly. She definitely did not want to start a feud with the new neighbor.
“What if she’s been drugged, and that’s why she can’t remember anything? You could do a urinalysis while she’s at the hospital.”
“Still no way to prove the neighbor did it or that she didn’t take the drugs herself.”
“But if they find that she’s been raped and they find some kind of date-rape drug in her system, that should be enough for a warrant then, right?”
The policeman looked down at his patent leather cop shoes and shook his head, raising his arms in surrender.
“All right. I’ll take you down to the hospital.”
“I’ll get my purse.”
Sarah walked into the living room and snatched her purse off the couch. She walked past Josh without looking at him. She was still angry that he’d doubted her about the drugs. As she walked out the door she hoped that if Dale had really drugged her, he hadn’t used meth.
The ride to the hospital was loaded with tension as the police officer attempted to talk them out of it during the entire ride.
“You sure you want to do this, right? These examinations can be pretty invasive. I’ll have to call a rape counselor. That’s just procedure. And she’s going to ask you some pretty tough questions.”
“I’ll tell her everything I can remember.”
“They might have to ask you about your marriage. You know, to rule your husband out as the rapist.”
“My husband didn’t rape me.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m just trying to prepare you for some of the questions they might ask you.”
“It sounds to me like you’re trying to talk me out of it.”
“I’m taking you, aren’t I?”
They fell silent for the rest of the ride. Sarah was grateful for the break. She needed to think. She wanted to try to remember as much as she could.
Sarah still could not remember much of the previous night. She remembered changing the sheets. She remembered surfing the Internet and then putting the laptop down beside the bed and grabbing her gun. She remembered falling asleep with the gun clenched in both hands and held tight to her chest. And she remembered waking up when Josh walked in. Everything in between was completely gone. But she could remember the previous night clearly.
She remembered waking up and reaching out for her husband, only to feel that warm wetness and hearing him wheezing and gurgling as he drowned on his own blood. She remembered looking up and seeing Dale stab Josh again and again. And she remembered what he had done to her. She could not forget the image of his tiny penis thrusting between her blood-soaked breasts. The problem was that she could also remember waking up unmarred with no visible wounds or scars and seeing her husband…alive. It had to have been a dream. But then she’d started finding things, things that didn’t add up, things that supported her memories. The only thing that didn’t make sense was the fact that she and Josh were alive.
They arrived at the hospital with the police officer still visibly annoyed at being inconvenienced. There was a nurse waiting for him along with a victim advocate from the LVPD.
“We’ll take it from here,” the female detective said, and the young officer looked like he could just barely contain the urge to jump for joy.
“Have fun, guys,” the officer said, and saluted them with a flip of his hand as he turned and walked out the hospital’s sliding doors, weaving around a gurney that was being rushed in by some paramedics with a man on it screaming his head off and bleeding from a huge wound in his leg. The officer gave the bleeding man the same flippant salute as he strode out into the parking lot.
“Asshole,” Sarah and Josh said in unison as they watched him leave.
The female detective smiled at Sarah as she ushered them into a small examination room.
The victim’s advocate from the police department was a tall black woman in her late thirties with thick curves. She had a kind face with a scar in the corner of her mouth that ran from the right corner of her lip up to her nose.
“My name is Detective Trina Lassiter.”
“Sarah Lincoln.”
“Okay, Mrs. Lincoln, tell me what happened,” she said as she and the nurse pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
“I’m not really sure. I remember being attacked but I’m not sure it wasn’t a dream.”
