Given that we had been discussing nothing that even remotely involved my doing anything, I was perplexed.
“The forensic exams,” he added.
I scowled.
“No, I’m not. No way on God’s green earth. That requires talking to people I do not know about things I do not wish to discuss, and I am no good at that even when there’s not a crisis involved. Leave that to the trained professionals.” I met his gaze directly and said again, “No. I am not. It’s not something I am capable of. They need a clinician, not me.”
One of the perks of my job is that few people want to tell me how to do it. Another is that I don’t have to listen to my patients. And I certainly don’t have to listen to a priest, or so I thought. A man who knows how to exploit silence as well as I do, he waited a few beats before he spoke again, and when he did, it was the cynic who spoke.
“A forensic exam is a forensic exam, whether the body is warm or cold. Don’t lie to me, Jane, that it’s beneath you. You can do this, you ought to do this, and you know it. You know like few others what it means to be touched by violence like that. You’ve seen it all. You’ll make sure everything is done right so there are no loopholes. You’ve survived the worst yourself. You should care about those who are in the middle of tragedy themselves.”
His eyes never wavered but one eyebrow lifted. I squirmed a bit. Fr. Matt never raises John's murder with me, knowing how raw it still is, even after all this time. To play the empathy card meant he had some serious agenda, and it involved me. Still, I wasn't ready to give in.
“I don’t think so, Father. I’m just not called to do that.”
I played my trump card. Most folks with any sense at all will back off at that point, unwilling to trespass on such sensitive ground. Not Father Matt. He laughed, a short bark of a laugh that let me know he wasn’t buying what I was trying to sell.
“Oh, please, spare me. You’re called, all right—you just don’t want to answer. Why not?” he asked, his tone brisk. “Not doing these exams is not going to bring John back, you know, and you don’t have anything better to do. All you do is work—this is just a little more.” His tone softened a bit, and he added, “Violence is increasing in the area, Jane, and it so often involves the migrants. They aren’t wealthy or powerful or able to take care of themselves.”
He paused, expectant. I thought of all the rich and famous and powerful who had slipped through the net of the law. Tommy Berton had tried that with John’s murder, and I’d expended every last breath to see that he’d not succeeded. Perhaps I did know what Fr. Matt meant, more than I wanted to admit.
Fr. Matt took a long breath and continued, this time sounding very much the earnest and devoted — if presently conniving — young priest, appealing both to my mind and my heart.
“They’re afraid to get help because they're afraid that it will mean being sent home. They need someone on their side who not only knows what to do so that legal justice is done, they need someone who's on their side and capable to see to it that social justice is too. That's you. Period.”
I was tempted to argue back, tempted to explain that as far as I was concerned, sending illegals back was exactly what social and legal justice required, if only for all the others waiting in line, but something both angry and hopeful in his expression made me stop.
“Oh, all right,” I snapped. I signed the agreement on the letter and thrust it at him. “Hand this to Tina on your way out, would you? Now get out of here before you make more trouble for me.”
So here I was, a couple of weeks later, being called out on that moment of weakness. I got the necessary information from the jittery Dakota and trotted down to the morgue to collect my camera and evidence kit. I punched out on the assignment board, yelled to Quick where I was going and headed off for the Regent Clinic at the far edge of town. I went out the back door and down the alley in hopes of avoiding the press. Because they were still taking the lay of the land and circling the courthouse in anticipation of Marla Kincaid’s arrival, I succeeded. I cut through Town Park, walking cross-lots to come out on the road just across from the cemetery. From there it was a short walk to the Regent Building and the clinic.
A perky brunette in a set of pink scrubs embroidered with the name “Regent Medical Services” met me at the check-in desk and showed me down a hall with pale green walls hung with tranquil local scenes, to an oak door with a surprisingly ordinary-looking medical chart in the basket on its face. I took the manila folder, muttered my annoyance at Father Matt and his schemes and went inside. Sitting on the examination table was a petite, dark-haired woman, whose face and figure proclaimed her Latin ancestry. She was hugging her legs to her chest and rocking back and forth, chin on her knees, staring off into the distance. On the floor, a small boy, perhaps four years old, played quietly with a stuffed toy. A well-coiffed, bottle-blonde, botoxed woman of indeterminate age stood beside her, with her hand on the woman’s shoulder. At least I now knew how she’d come to this clinic—the Mountain Village connection was alive and well. The hand was manicured, it sported a multi-carat diamond and there was a Tag-Heuer on the wrist.
I recognized the shirt the dark-haired woman wore as one I'd seen in the free box, a wall of shelves where locals leave their unwanted goods for the use of anyone who needs them. I had seen it a couple of days before when I dropped off some dishes and glasses. A group of Hispanic men had just pulled up with a pickup truck and were systematically examining the finds in the free box, sorting them into bags as they took what they needed. I remembered the bright blue top being tossed from one man to another, then stuffed in brown paper as they chatted in Spanish. Something about a new building project in Montrose.
I looked at the chart and spoke. “Isa Robles? I’m Dr. Wallace.”
She raised her head and turned to look at me. The left sleeve and the bodice of the blue shirt were torn, and her right eye was swollen and bloodied. “Si.” Her voice was soft, but steady, and she looked directly at me. Then she corrected herself. ”Yes. I am Isa.”
I was impressed. She looked frail, but there was some steel in that voice. I turned to her keeper. “And you are...?” I let the question trail off.
Steel in the blonde’s voice too, but a different kind. “Isa works for me.”
She pointedly ignored my question, probably unaccustomed to being questioned authoritatively by someone sporting worn jeans, muddy boots, a white oxford shirt, and unruly salt-and-pepper curls pulled back into a ponytail.
“Well, Mrs. Isaworksforme,” I said. “I appreciate your help, but I’m here to talk to this young lady, and you’re just going to be in the way. Perhaps you could take the boy out into the waiting room and watch him until we are done.” I held the door open for her and flourished my hand, giving her the look my kids used to call Mom-means-business. She hesitated, cast a disdainful look in my direction and picked up the toddler. She left the room without a word to either of us.
I turned back to the woman on the table, who had now sat up straight and was looking at me with a curious expression. “Habla usted inglés?” I asked as I washed my hands in the sink by the exam table.
There was great dignity in her voice. “Yes. I speak English.”
Relieved that my high-school Spanish wasn’t going to get a workout, I pulled on some gloves and asked whether I could take a look at her face. She nodded, still wary. I took her chin gently in my hand and carefully felt the bruise around her eye. She winced, but didn’t complain. “Can you tell me what happened?”
A tear slid down the brown cheek, whether from my probing question or my probing fingers, I couldn’t tell. She closed her eyes, then said simply, “I was raped.”
I recognized the control in her voice, in her expression. It was costing her dearly to distance herself from what had happened to her, to try to make it be something that had happened to someone else, someone in a dream, if she were lucky. I also knew that she wasn’t going to wake up from this nightmare any more than I had from mine. I ex
plained as gently as I could that I needed to take some photographs and collect some samples from her for evidence in court. She pursed her lips and nodded her permission, and I set about the collection checklist I had brought along, making notes and getting information. I had just finished photographing the bruises to her face and arms and breast, just starting to purple, when the perky brunette came in with a pill and some water.
I turned to face her, angry at being interrupted. This was hard enough without an audience. “We aren’t finished,” I told her, stepping between her and Isa, who was clutching a sheet to her chest.
“Dr. Brownmiller wanted me to bring this on in and give it to her. There’s no reason to wait. Here you go, hon.” She extended the pill and cup. I noticed the nametag on her scrub top. Sally, from Denver.
Isa gathered the sheet in one hand and took the pill in the other, looking at it, small and white against her palm. “What is this?” she asked, voice suspicious and face a little fearful.
“It’s your emergency contraception. It will keep you from getting pregnant. It will make sure that you don’t have a baby from this.”
We were both surprised, Sally and I, when Isa hurled the pill across the room with a resounding “No.” Her eyes flashed with anger and indignation.
Sally beat a hasty retreat, leaving me in the awkward silence that followed. Not knowing what to say or do, I took the time-honored course of ignoring what had just happened. Isa’s medical care was not my problem. Collecting evidence to nail her attacker was.
“Let’s finish these photographs,” I said, gently changing the subject and picking up the camera again. Isa relaxed a bit and dropped the sheet so I could finish what Sally had interrupted. One of the bruises on the upper part of her chest was beginning to show a peculiar, distinct form, a small horseshoe with sharp edges and tiny, dark points. “Does he wear a ring?” I asked. In another twenty-four hours, I suspected the bruise might well show the pattern of the design, one that might link the attacker very clearly to Isa, even if the DNA from under her nails and from the swabs didn’t.
She nodded in reply to my question. “A big one, on his right hand. Gold.”
I told her I’d have to see her again tomorrow to take some more pictures, and she agreed to come to the Center in the early afternoon. She paused uncertainly and went on.
“I cannot take her pill. It’s wrong. I cannot.”
This was not a discussion I wished to have, but Isa left me no choice. “It’s your health,” I told her as I helped her lay back on the table. “You get to decide. You don’t have to take it.” I was having trouble imagining why in her situation she wouldn’t want to. Her decision astonished me. It made me think. It made me remember John. This woman faced the possibility of a baby from a man she must hate, the result of violence, not of love. Amazing.
As if reading my mind she said, “What is my shame compared to the life of my child? It will be my child, if God sends it.”
Uncomfortable with the subject and anxious to move on, I did the rest of the exam, asking a few more questions as I collected the necessary samples. I was labeling the last of them when the door flew open again and a muscular woman, her brown hair cut short and gelled into spikes, burst into the room, a force of nature in a lab coat. A nametag identified her as Dr. Jennie Brownmiller, and she had rose tattoos on the forearms that stuck out of her rolled-up sleeves. Call me old-fashioned, but I find it hard to trust a woman physician with tattoos on her arms.
Brownmiller immediately set about confirming my prejudice. She had a big city bearing, tough and overwhelming. I found her a shock among the generally easy-going populace of Telluride. I suspected that was another reason the Regent Clinic wasn’t doing very well.
“Sally tells me you don’t want to take the morning after pill,” she announced with no preface. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t run the risk of getting pregnant. You can’t afford another kid. You can’t afford the one you’ve got.”
Again, that great dignity and resolve. “No. I do not want your pills. I cannot. It is wrong.” Isa looked to me for support, but I kept silent for the time being. She was doing fine all by herself. “Wrong,” she repeated.
Dr. Brownmiller snorted. “Oh, please. You’ll feel differently when you’re pregnant, and all you can think about is the rape. You’ll beg me for an abortion, and believe me, sister, we aren’t doing one for you unless that blond-headed bimbo of an employer pays for it. Now take this pill and let’s be done with it.” She shook the replacement in a medicine cup, ominously, under Isa’s nose.
I cleared my throat, and Brownmiller shot an annoyed look in my direction. “It appears to me that Ms. Robles has declined your kind offer of care,” I said in an even voice, but one underpinned with the slightest edge of a threat. “I think that if I were you, I’d document her informed refusal and leave it at that.” I was getting tired of asserting myself to jackasses. Was there no end of them in this town today?
Brownmiller scowled at me but didn’t back down. “In three months she’ll be a psychotic mess. Believe me, she’ll thank me when this is all over.”
I laid the last labeled and bagged sample into my kit and clicked it shut, then turned to face Brownmiller. “I don’t think so. And I think that if you don’t leave her alone and respect her decision, I’ll have your license on a silver platter.” I paused. “I can do that, you know.”
No need to leave any doubt about the matter, even if I was overstating the case just a bit. Well, quite a bit. Lawyers learn to use even empty threats effectively. Then I gave her a conciliatory look. “I’ll be happy to help you draft the butt-protecting language you need to stay out of court if she does change her mind.”
My tone warmed and Brownmiller caved. Feeling the serious need to find another line of work, I jotted a refusal of care on Isa’s chart and sent Dr. Brownmiller on her indemnified, if confused and unhappy, way. I spied a female deputy from Montrose County languishing in the hall and I motioned her in. Isa lived in a house on the outskirts of that town and the rape happened there; Tom Patterson would be spared this case.
“I’ve got everything I need,” I said. “I’ll send my report over as soon as it’s typed up.”
She gave me a tight half-smile and edged past me to introduce herself. Her voice was quiet and reassuring and I saw Isa relax a bit. I remembered what Father Matt had said about illegal immigrants not wanting to talk to the police. I eavesdropped for a moment and then I dialed Father Matt. If anyone was going to take care of a woman with this kind of starch in her drawers, it ought to be he. And for the first time in days, I smiled at the prospect of Father Matt’s schemes rebounding on him as I closed the door of the examining room.
*********
Tom Patterson slammed the phone down in irritation at Simon Clark, the state’s attorney who had fielded the Houston case. Damn fool still wanted to charge Marla Kincaid the next morning. Patterson had brought her in on suspicion, hoping to jar loose something that would seal the case against her, but that hadn’t happened.
She’d maintained a distant, frightened silence after calling her lawyer.
He picked up Maggie Gleason’s report. The case had been called in by a voyeur.
Houston dead as the proverbial doornail on the bedroom floor. A .22 found in the dresser, one shot gone, recently fired. The maid said that she’d heard an argument between the Kincaid woman and Houston just before leaving the house after cleaning the kitchen, a detail that tended to damn the suspect in custody. He smiled as he read on and found Maggie was an equal-opportunity reporter of unflattering facts. It seems the maid complained that it took her until almost ten to clean up the kitchen because Houston was both a messy cook and an exacting employer.
That put Houston alive and in Kincaid’s presence at ten, he thought. The peeping Tom—if that was a term he could apply to a woman— said she saw a body on the floor of the bedroom around midnight. We found Marla Kincaid standing over the body at about two in the morning. It was her gun, fo
und it in her dresser. There was no one else in the house. It had to be her.
Still, he thought, Clark was rushing to judgment. Doc Wallace’s report was still out, no ballistics, no fingerprints, nothing hard and fast to show a jury. Patterson had been a lawman long enough to know that no matter how tidy a case looked at first glance, there was always room for something to screw it up, especially when lawyers got involved, even the ones paid by the state. He disliked having the case out of his control before he had had a chance to finish it from his end. He tossed the papers back on his desk, rocked back in his chair, put his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes to think.
Any other perp and he’d be cheering Clark on. Hell, he’d have cheered him on when he first caught the case. What was it he’d said to Doc Wallace? Not much mystery to this murder. But that was before he’d arrested Marla Kincaid. Before he’d had a good long look into those storybook eyes.
He sat up abruptly, the legs of his chair rapping sharply against the floor. You’re getting old and soft, Patterson, he scolded himself. Good thing you don’t have to show up in court tomorrow.
CHAPTER THREE
JUNE 7
The San Miguel County courthouse is a picture-perfect building that dominates town, symmetrical, made of red brick with a tower, clock and silver roof so photogenic that I’d be willing to wager not a single tourist gets out of town without at least one image of it.
It meant dodging reporters and fighting my way past crowds, but I wasn’t going to miss the bail hearing if I could help it. My curiosity was up; this case was on the fast track for sure, and I wondered why. I supposed there was no harm in an early charge, given that there really wasn't room for any honest doubt that she had shot him. The lawyer in me understood that there are all kinds of mitigating circumstances that make guilt less than guilt. Even the Catholic in me understood that —depended on it, no less. The widow in me had no time for such soft-hearted nonsense.
Dying For Revenge (The Lady Doc Murders Book 1) Page 4