Force of Habit: A Falcone & Driscoll Investigation (10 page)

Frank’s hands touched her shoulders and she jerked her body away, but there was no place to go.

“Giulia, I’m sorry. It’ll be all right, I promise. If you’re uncomfortable with just me here, I can call my mom. She’s a born comforter. She won’t mind if I wake her up—she loves to fuss over people.”

She raised her head and actually laughed a small laugh. “Frank, I would never ask you to call your mother at this hour.”

“Did he hurt you? Did the hospital take good care of you? Who’d they call from the station?”

“I didn’t go anywhere till I had to go to tonight’s show.”

He jumped up again. “What?”

“I needed to get myself together.”

“Have you been living in a cave?” He pulled her off the couch. “You should’ve gone straight to the ER. They need to get semen samples, look for hair, test you for STDs. Did you scratch him? They’ll swab under your fingernails for skin samples. DNA testing, Giulia. What the hell were you thinking?”

She yanked her hands out of his. “Get out.”

His face changed to a Greek tragedy mask: wide eyes, open mouth. Then: “What?”

She stalked to the door and shot back the bolt. “Get out of my apartment, Frank. It’s after working hours. You can’t order me around.” Her hand shook when she popped the lock on the handle. “If you think you should be able to give orders day and night, you can have my two-week notice Monday morning.”

What was she saying? She needed her job. She needed Frank. As someone to admire if nothing else.
Say no, Frank. Please say no. You’re a decent man and I’m falling for you—there, I admitted it—and I need decency right now.

He scrambled to the door and stopped her hand before it turned the handle. “What are you talking about? This scum committed two crimes in one night. You have to report it. You have to get treatment. What if he got you pregnant?”

The righteous anger vanished. “He didn’t, didn’t get that far.”

“There was no penetration?”

“He put it in my, in my mouth.” Her other hand clamped over her lips.

“Oh, Giulia.” Frank pulled her into his chest and held her. “We have to get you looked at. Make sure you’ll be okay. Come on. You know you have to do this. Where’s the clothes you had on yesterday?”

“In the bathroom trash.”

“All right, I’m going to get them. You get your purse and I’ll drive you to the ER. I’ll call my ex-partner and he’ll meet us there. You’ll like him. I’ll stay right there with you, too.”

She’d have to do this. It did make sense, really.

She’d have to describe it all.

And? She’d thought of nothing else for the past twenty-four hours.

He doesn’t want you to quit. Focus on that.
He was holding her. Just comfort, but strong and safe and oh God she wanted to kiss him, touch lips that weren’t foul and spewing hate.

Frank spoke before she could raise her head and humiliate herself by acting on that thought.

“Come on,
a mhuirnín
.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Come on. Let’s get this done.”

Captain Hogarth was as
sweet as Frank promised. Giulia sat on the cot in the treatment room, legs folded as close to her chest as possible, as he keyed in her answers to his questions. He was way too tall for that flimsy plastic chair. Frank leaned against the wall next to him. At any moment the nurse would return with the rape kit and tell Giulia to take off her clothes.

She inhaled a lungful of sweetish hospital disinfectant. Gack.

Hogarth unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and loosened his plain navy-blue tie. “Did you see his face at all, Ms. Falcone?”

He had a good voice, too. A little gruff, but fuzzy. Like his pale brown beard.

“No. The path lamps don’t give off much light, and he pulled me into the bushes. When he, when he stood over me, shadows from his hoodie pretty much covered his face.”

“Tell me everything he said.”

Detach yourself. Report it like those girlfriend interviews.
“He called me a slut. He said, he asked me if I thought I was smart.”

Frank stuck his head forward. “Why smart? What did he say next?”

“I don’t know...”

“Use that memory thingy you told me about. The one you used to remember the interviews. Come on, Giulia, you can do it.”

She closed her eyes. “He said... Do I think I’m better than other women?” She opened her eyes before the sounds and odors from last night drowned her.

Hogarth tapped into the laptop on the crowded table. “Anything else?”

“He punched me in the head. It made my ears ring.”

Frank muttered something she couldn’t understand. More Irish, she supposed.

Giulia frowned. “I didn’t think about it at the time, but he did something really weird. When I was on the grass, he put one foot on my chest like... how do I describe it? Like a general in one of those old Roman Empire movies.” She chewed her bottom lip. “He said, ‘Warriors show no mercy.’ ”

Frank stared at her, brows furrowed. “That was a weird thing to say. ‘Slut’ and all that—” he waved a hand—“typical rapist-speak. Why would he talk about you being smart? Why better?”

“I told you. Because it’s connected to—”

“Shush, Giulia.” Frank looked down at his former partner. “Confidentiality. You know.”

“I knew it would come up. I’ll talk to you later about that.” Hogarth smiled at Giulia. “If only Frank had given us a chance to warn you what he’s really like, Ms. Falcone. Sure we can’t talk you into working for us? You’d be in much better company.”

What a puppy dog.
She couldn’t have hoped for a better interrogator.

“I have a few more questions, Ms. Falcone. They’re a little awkward, so if you’d like Frank to leave, I can kick him into the waiting room.”

Last chance... No. What would be the point? He’ll need to know the perp’s MO. She nearly smiled. Since when did she turn into a whiz at jargon?

“That’s okay. He said he’d stay with me, so he might as well listen to the gory details.”

Frank pushed away from the wall and sat on the bed next to her, but she moved away. “No, Frank. I need a lot of space for this.”

He slid to the edge of the bed and hung his legs over the footboard.

Hogarth tapped more keys, and another page filled the screen. “Ms. Falcone, was there penetration?”

There. He said it. That hadn’t been so bad. “No.”

“Was there exchange of body fluids?”

Oh.

“Ms. Falcone?”

Still gentle. Giulia wondered if he talked to small children a lot. “He stuck his tongue in my mouth. The taste made me gag and he got mad. I spit in his face and he grabbed my hair and told me he was going to, going to hurt me.”

“Ms. Falcone, could you speak up just a bit? I learned on a manual typewriter, and I always bang the keys.”

Frank said, “You spit at him? Good for you.”

“Frank, either shut up or get out.” Hogarth’s voice froze Frank in position. Then his next words returned to the soothing gravel. “What happened next?”

“He punched me in the side of my head and stood on me. I got woozy for a second. The next thing I saw—”

“A little louder, please.”

She cleared her throat. “Then his knees straddled my chest and he... put his... penis... in my mouth.” All those years of teaching Sex Ed weren’t helping her with this at all.

Frank remained motionless.

Several keystrokes. “Did he ejaculate?”

Almost done. “No. I bit him—it.”

The keystrokes stopped, then restarted. “And then?”

“He fell off me and I grabbed my clothes and ran home.”

“Did he chase you?”

“No. He yelled at me. It sounded like falsetto.”

Frank burst into strangled laughter as the nurse opened the door.

“The doctor is ready to examine you, miss. If these gentlemen would step into the hall?” Her Amazonian body filled the doorway. Hogarth hit two keys and closed the laptop. The nurse moved aside and Frank followed Hogarth through the door.

The nurse waited in front of Giulia until she looked up at her. Her fuchsia lipstick and matching eyeshadow framed the kindest face Giulia had ever seen.

“It’s okay, honey. We’ll be real gentle. Here.” She reached up and pulled the green curtain all the way around the bed. “Get undressed behind there and make sure the gown opens in the front.”

Giulia managed to get the puke-green paper gown on without looking at her gouged breasts. On the other side of her cocoon she heard tiny clinks and rustles. The rape kit. She twitched back the curtain, the rings rattling. An array of swabs, slides, boxes, and plastic bags covered the movable bedside table.

The doctor’s head only reached to the bottom filigree ball of the nurse’s dangling earrings. Giulia stared at his back as he opened his own laptop and set it where Hogarth’s had been. His short, sharp movements contrasted with the nurse’s gentle ones. If he thought no one could tell he used styling gel, she wasn’t about to disillusion him.

“All right, Ms.—” The doctor glanced at the laptop. “Ms. Falcone. I understand you were attacked last night. It’s unfortunate you didn’t come right to us. We could have gathered more evidence.” He shone one of those little lights in her eyes and up her nose. His delicate hands matched his small body and meticulous black beard. “This injury is more than a day old.”

Giulia had almost forgotten the karate chop. “I took a self-defense class the other day, and my partner didn’t stop his demonstration in time.”

“Ah.” He touched the bridge of her nose and pressed her sinuses. “Does that hurt? No? The bruising should dissipate and the tissue return to normal in two days.” He typed for a moment. “Please recline on the bed. Nurse, position the lamp for a pelvic examination.”

“No.” Giulia scooted against the head of the bed. “That isn’t necessary. He didn’t get that far.”

“This will proceed more quickly if you follow standard procedure.”

“I said no.”

His precise voice acquired a clipped edge. “Then please sit on the edge of the bed and hold out your hands.”

The nurse handed him a series of cotton swabs and opened several plastic bags. He swiped them beneath Giulia’s fingers and dropped them in the bags. The nurse labeled and closed them. When the doctor turned his back to them to type, she mouthed
tight-ass
at Giulia, and Giulia hid a smile.

The doctor spoke over his shoulder. “Please recline on the bed.”

Giulia looked at the nurse. She nodded.

The doctor untied her gown’s thin plastic belt—did they make these things from recycled trash bags?—and opened her gown.

“Oh, that pig did a number on you.” The nurse patted Giulia’s hand as the doctor pushed the scabbed crescents on her breasts. “Did you kick his sweetbreads before you got away?”

Giulia kept her eyes on the nurse. Another minute of the doctor’s precise, cold hands on her, and she’d forget manners and slap him so he’d remember it.

“He stuck his—penis—in my mouth. I bit it.”

The nurse crowed. “You are my kind of woman!”

The doctor frowned at the nurse. “I shall return in a moment.”

When the door swung closed behind him, the nurse helped Giulia sit up and she closed the useless gown.

“He’s a robot, but he knows his stuff. I try to team up with him when women come in here because we’re such opposites.”

Giulia held both her hands. “It works. Thank you.” She glanced at the door. “Why did he leave?”

“To tell your cop friends to call a police photographer.”

“What? What for?”

“To take pictures of your injuries. Gotta have ’em for when they catch the pig.”

Giulia buried her head on her knees.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll be in here the whole time. You want your friends in here, too?”

Her head jerked up. “No!”

“I didn’t think so. A woman’s gotta have some privacy.” She squeezed Giulia’s hands. “I’ll keep them out.”

The doctor returned with two syringes, a color-capped vial, and more packaging. “The police photographer will be here shortly, Ms. Falcone. Did I understand you to say that you inflicted a bite on the attacker’s penis?”

“Um, yes.”

“I must assume you drew blood and thus put yourself at risk for various STDs and HIV. I have a combination Hepatitis A and B vaccine here. The complete Hep B requires two more vaccines from your primary physician within the next six months.” He frowned at Giulia. “The STD tests require a cervical swab. Nurse.”

“Real quick, over in a minute.” The nurse rolled a lamp to the foot of the bed and switched it on.

Giulia gripped the sides of the bed and opened her legs. A cold speculum touched her, then disappeared.

“Done, honey.”

Giulia clamped her legs together and sat up. The nurse wrapped the tourniquet around Giulia’s upper left arm and drew blood. Then she injected the vaccine into her right arm.

The doctor closed the laptop. “Ms. Falcone, you are free to leave after the photographer finishes. Your primary physician’s office will notify you of the test results.” He held out his hand, and Giulia shook it. “You should be proud of your resourcefulness. Goodbye.”

A new policeman came in as the doctor left, carrying a digital camera, a ruler, and Captain Hogarth’s laptop. He looked all of eighteen years old.

Giulia leaned her arms on the bed to hold herself upright. It was clinical. Nothing more. She wanted Pot-Breath caught and thrown in jail. Therefore she had to let this kid take pictures of her torn breasts. Oh, God.

“ ’Evening, ma’am. This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.” He opened a different form on the laptop.

Noise from the hall crept in as the top of Frank’s head appeared around the door.

“We’ll let you know when you can come in, gentlemen.” The nurse’s hand hit the door closed.

The photographer pointed to the wall next to the bed. “All right, ma’am, if you’ll stand there and take the gown down to your waist, we’ll get the first set.”

Giulia faced forward, left, and right. She didn’t think. She looked above his crew cut to the pain-indicator chart on the opposite wall and counted its smiley and frowny faces. She repeated all three positions a second time, holding the ruler beneath each breast.

“To get the correct scale of the injuries, ma’am.” He snapped one more photo and took the ruler. “All done. I’ll fill in the rest of this form outside so you can get dressed. ’Night, ma’am.”

Giulia pulled up the gown and sank onto the bed.

“Betcha can’t wait to get home.”

She smiled at the nurse. “You know it. Half of me wants to hang from the ceiling and scream, and the other half is so tired I could almost sleep here.”

The nurse handed Giulia her underwear. “It’s three o’clock in the morning. I sure wish I was in my own bed.”

When her bra and underpants were on, Giulia felt secure. Illogical, really. They were just a thin layer of cotton between her and anyone touching her. Despite logic, these might just become her favorite jeans and shirt. A security blanket for the paranoid adult.

“Thank you for staying here with me.”