Dr. Sheffield said, “Mrs. Mercer, where is your husband now?”
“He’s at home.”
“You drove yourself to the hospital?”
“Yeah. I mean, he’s busy.”
“Mrs. Mercer, pardon me for being blunt, but I don’t think you’ve given us an honest history. Did you really fall down the stairs?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Or did you and your husband have an argument?”
“Well . . .”
“Mrs. Mercer, we can’t help you unless you give us an adequate history. Did your husband hit you?”
The patient sighed. She said, “He didn’t . . . mean to. He’d been drinking and I called him something and he pushed me down.”
“Was that it?”
“And then he kicked me.”
“In the stomach?”
“. . . Yeah.”
After a moment, Dr. Sheffield said, “Okay, then. We’ll need you to sign some forms, and then we’re going to conduct the surgery. I don’t foresee any problems.”
•
The surgery went well. After it was finished, Dr. Sheffield instructed the ER chief nurse to notify the police and report Mrs. Mercer’s husband for assault and battery. He further instructed her to notify him when the police arrived so that he could give them a statement for their report.
Dr. Helen Krans caught up with him in the hospital cafeteria. He was sitting at a table by himself with a cup of coffee and reading the New England Journal of Medicine. He looked up at her and gave her a gentle smile and said hello.
“Hi,” Helen said. “I just wanted to tell you that you were terrific. I didn’t know—I didn’t think about the spleen being ruptured. What I’m saying is, you saved that woman’s life.”
Dr. Sheffield said, “She’s a patient.”
“I know,” Helen said. “But you followed it up and called the police and—well, it was very impressive. May I sit?”
“Of course.”
Helen said, “How did you know?”
“How did I know that the spleen was ruptured?”
“Well, yes, that. But what I meant was, how did you know that she’s been abused?”
Dr. Sheffield said, “That was simple. Obviously the trauma had to come from somewhere. She could have fallen, but that didn’t really comport with her injury. I presumed she’d either been punched or kicked. She was kicked.”
“Yet she tried to protect him.”
“Tried to protect her husband, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Yes. Well, that’s very typical.”
“Of women in general?”
“Yes. Of victims, I suppose.” Raymond Sheffield smiled. “I don’t mean to sound callous about it.”
“You don’t . . .”
“I suppose I do. I’m in my early thirties, by no means old. Not even middle-aged. But it wasn’t that long ago that I did my internship. In Boston. And I came out of there a much different person than when I went in.”
“I understand.”
Raymond frowned, paused. He wanted to convey that he was a sensitive, thoughtful person. He held the pose for just long enough. Then he said, “You learn to form a shell. Not just to sickness and trauma, but perhaps to human trauma as well. Spousal abuse, child abuse. When I first started, I wondered if Boston was the most violent, hateful place in the world. But then I found out that it was no worse there than it was anywhere else. St. Louis or Bedford Falls, Pennsylvania. It’s not the place, it’s the species.”
Helen said, “Don’t you worry?”
“About the patients?”
She smiled, seeming to believe in that moment that he was selfless. She said, “No. I mean, about yourself. That you’re getting too hard.”
“Yes. There’s always that concern. That you can become inured to it. But if you give in to those feelings, you won’t be much good as a physician. What you have to do is find that line. That midpoint. Find it, become comfortable with it, and somehow straddle it. It helps to have faith.”
“Religious faith?”
“Yes. And faith in humanity as well. And your work. We did something good, didn’t we?”
“You did,” Helen said. “Do you go to church?”
“Not as much as I used to,” Raymond said. “Not the Catholic Church. But I feel myself searching for something. I believe I’m a spiritual person, if not an orthodox one.” He smiled. “I suppose that makes me sort of an anachronism.”
“No,” Helen said. “I think it’s nice, actually.”
Raymond gave her a brief look. His expression became shy, perhaps even embarrassed. He said, “We should probably get back to work.”
THREE
Carol McGuire opened her eyes and closed them. Opened them again to see the numbers on the alarm clock take form. A little after eight o’clock. Her alarm was set to go off at six thirty, but she had not set the alarm last night. It was Saturday. Saturday morning.
Saturday morning. Hadn’t . . . George stayed with her last night? He had. They had made love after they got back from a party. The party had been hosted by a schoolteacher who was married to a public defender, and they had both invited friends from their respective workplaces. The teachers and the lawyers had not mixed well. The teachers being decent, upright sorts who laughed at clean jokes and the lawyers being morbid and cynical. George had found one or two people he thought were tolerable if not interesting and then stayed in conversation with them to make the evening pass more quickly. Carol knew that George was not much of a socializer. His stomach was too sensitive for wine, and he had never been much of a drinker. Plus he was quiet in the way that some cops are quiet. While the loud ones were like cowboys, the quiet ones always seemed to be watching. George was a quiet one, his eyes not resting even when they seemed to be.
Carol would say, “You’re always judging, aren’t you?”
“I don’t judge,” he’d say. “Sometimes I watch, but that’s not the same thing as judging.”
Carol did not consider him restless. She would not have wanted to spend much time with someone like that. But the more she got to know him, the more she came to believe that he was the sort who could relax only on his terms. He would go to a party with her and not complain about being bored or put off by people, but she could see that he was doing it for her. Not enjoying himself, but being dutiful. She knew that policemen were tribal and, in their own way, quite snobbish. She had known that going in.
One of the differences between them was that he was incapable of sleeping in.
This morning, she knew that he was still in her apartment. Indeed, she could hear him moving around the kitchen now. Probably he had already made a pot of coffee and was sitting at her kitchen table reading the newspaper. He could be in bed with her, but she was asleep, as far as he knew. On a weekend, she could sleep to eleven or even noon. He seemed incapable of that.
She heard movement. Out of the kitchen now . . .
He was standing in the doorway of the bedroom. Wearing pajama bottoms and a white undershirt. She almost laughed at him. She knew that he had forced himself not to get fully dressed. At least he had given her that much consideration. He was holding a cup of coffee.
Carol said, “What are you doing in here?”
George Hastings said, “Just came to say good morning.”
“You’ve probably finished reading the paper, haven’t you?”
“Yep.”
“And you could’ve been here.”
“Doing what? Sleeping?”
“Holding your girlfriend. Keeping her warm. Making sweet jungle love to her.”
“While she’s asleep?”
“You just can’t sleep in, can you?”
“I would if I could.” He walked over to the bed and set his coffee cup on the nightstand. He sat on the bed and leaned down to kiss her.
“Wow,” she said. “Brushed your teeth and everything.” She pulled him down on top of her. They were pulling each other’s clothing off when t
he cell phone rang. Once, twice, and then a third time.
Hastings said, “Shit. It’s mine. Hold on.” He walked over to the chair where his pants were hanging and got the cell phone out of the pocket.
“Yeah?”
“Lieutenant? This is Sergeant Wister. We got a body down here by the river. Sorry if I called at a bad time, but you’re the one listed on call.”
“That’s all right. Tell me where you are.” He shook his head at Carol to tell her he was sorry.
•
Hastings’s police unit was a brown 1987 Jaguar XJ6 with a powerful, rumbly Corvette engine. It had belonged to a drug dealer who was a car buff until it was seized by the police pursuant to the RICO act and given to the homicide squad.
Hastings loved the car. A few months ago, he had smashed it into another car to prevent an assailant from shooting him. The assailant had died of internal injuries. The Jaguar had been considered a total loss by the department’s insurance company. They’d asserted that even with the Corvette engine, the car was not worth salvaging. But Hastings had taken it to the city’s maintenance division and persuaded them to rebuild the front end. It would not have been easy to replace a car like this one.
Carol’s apartment was in Clayton. Hastings picked up a coffee to go at the Starbucks on Wydown Boulevard, leaving the Jaguar running in front, its Police tag prominently displayed in the windshield. There was a time and a place to exploit the little benefits he had, and he didn’t mind doing it. He set the coffee cup in its holder, picked up Interstate 64 at Hadley, and took it downtown.
It was a cold morning, gray and overcast. St. Louis weather in the fall.
Hastings had grown up in Nebraska. They hadn’t discussed such things when he was a kid, but as a man he realized that his roots had been what people called lower middle-class, if that. Luck and athletic ability had gotten him a baseball scholarship to Saint Louis University. His hopes of a baseball career had more or less petered out by the time he was twenty. But he had finished college and gotten a degree in something called communications. Within a year of graduating, he had enrolled in the police academy with the goal of becoming a detective. In that he succeeded, and he felt fortunate to have done so. He had been in St. Louis longer than Nebraska now. St. Louis was his home.
He pulled the Jaguar off the exit ramp near Busch Stadium and descended into the city. South of the Poplar Street Bridge and drawing toward abandoned buildings looming by the river. He slowed the car and the scene came into view. Emergency vehicles and police cars, their bright authoritative colors set off against the brown and gray background. Hastings parked the Jag and walked toward the yellow tape cordoning off the primary crime scene.
He signed the crime-scene sheet, indicating his time of arrival. Then he found the patrol sergeant in charge, whose name was Paul Wister.
Sergeant Wister said, “This way.”
They walked toward the river.
The Mississippi, as big as they say when you get up close to it. Big enough that you can hear it and smell it. It can intimidate you when you’re next to it. Hastings remembered the flood of 1993, when the water got high enough to dislodge entire houses from the ground and send them downstream like bathtub toys. The river commanded respect.
They were in the shadow of the Poplar Street Bridge and the coal-black railroad bridge that was south of the interstate. They got close to the shore and Hastings saw the medical examiner bent over the body of a girl.
Hastings walked closer, and Henry Donchin, the M.E., looked up and acknowledged him.
“Hey, Henry. What have you got?”
“It looks like a strangulation. There’s a contusion to the face that may have knocked her unconscious before she was strangled.”
Hastings said to the sergeant, “Identification?”
“Yes. Her name is Reesa Woods. She has a driver’s license and a student identification. University of Missouri, St. Louis.”
Hastings looked up at the bridges. Traffic rumbled over the interstate bridge, probably thousands of vehicles in the past few hours. Who would look down and see a dead girl? Who would be able to?
In the middle of the river, a set of massive barges was being pushed downstream.
Hastings said, “Who reported this?”
“A river-patrol boat. They saw her near the shore about a half hour after the sun came up. They figured she’d jumped off the Eads Bridge and washed up. They didn’t know.”
The crime-scene photographer walked up. He exchanged greetings with the other officers and asked if he could start taking his pictures. Hastings said he could and stepped back. He looked around again. Empty, abandoned buildings, bridges passing over, maybe a mile south of the Arch. The killer had hidden the girl in plain sight. If she had screamed, had anyone heard?
Hastings said to the sergeant, “Have your patrol officers found any witnesses?”
“No, Lieutenant. There was a car here. We can see that.”
“Where?”
The sergeant pointed. “Probably there, we think.”
Hastings walked away from the body. He used his hands when he spoke, playing it out with the sergeant.
Hastings said, “Parked here, killed her in the car, if not already, and then threw her out. Or . . .”—and now Hastings was looking at the river—“or, he tried to take her to the river and throw her in. But got close and realized that would be harder than he thought.”
Because when you got close to the edge, the banks of the river sloped down. You could see that when you got close. You could slip on that slope and end up in the river yourself. Slide in and good luck getting back out when the current got hold of you.
But, Hastings thought, you’re surmising. Maybe the killer had just pushed her out the door and taken off.
Hastings said, “Her identification was on her?”
“Yes.”
“Anything taken from her? Jewelry, money?”
“No.”
The crime-scene van was pulling up now. The technicians climbing out and walking over to the sign-in sheet. Middle-aged guys with stomachs and pasty faces who looked like they worked for county government, which they did. The crime-scene-unit guys always complained about not getting enough funding for their work, and they had a point. Their van was a Chevy panel truck painted black and white like any other police vehicle; they weren’t getting a shiny new Humvee anytime soon.
Hastings returned to the M.E. and said, “Are there any indications of rape?”
Henry Donchin said, “It’s only been cursory, George. But . . . so far, no. Just death by strangulation.”
Hastings was looking at the girl again. Pretty, young . . . dressed professionally. Classy, yet not really looking like a student.
Hastings said to the patrol sergeant, “Is this girl a prostitute?”
The sergeant said, “We checked her wallet for ID. But her purse is, well, we haven’t looked through that yet.”
“Where is it?”
“Over here.”
Hastings pulled a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and tugged them over his hands. The handbag was an imitation Gucci. The real one would have cost about four hundred dollars; this one might have been worth about thirty. When he found a packet of condoms and tubes of jellies and lubricants, he thought his instinct correct. Then he found the card that said TIA’S FLOWER SHOP.
FOUR
Hastings called his supervisor Captain Karen Brady to tell her that he wanted a couple of detectives to assist him. It was Saturday and it would mean overtime. Karen had told him last month that she wanted him to get clearance from her before authorizing overtime. Hastings thought this request was unreasonable, as neither he nor his people had ever abused it, but past experience had taught him that Karen needed to be satisfied on the little things. That way, she wouldn’t question him about the bigger things.
His professional relationship with Karen was something that had to be handled delicately. Karen had never been more than an average detective. She
was not dumb, but she was not particularly smart either. She was inoffensive and unimaginative and she had the administrative knack for not making enemies. The sort that appears to be everyone’s friend, but at the end of the day isn’t really anyone’s.
But, to Karen’s credit, some part of her recognized her own mediocrity. She was aware that her lieutenant would protect her to the degree that she would defer to him. Yet she could not openly acknowledge this deference. This was why every couple of months she found it necessary to assert her authority. Her latest attempt to do this was on the subject of overtime.
Now she said, “What’s up?”
Hastings said, “We’ve got a young girl’s body out here by the river.”
“Dead?”
The homicide detective paused. “Er, yes.”
“Who is she?”
Hastings knew that Karen was smart enough not to ask if the deceased was black or white. Not directly, anyway. But she wanted to know.
“Young white female,” Hastings said. “About twenty-two years of age.”
“Hmmm. Any witnesses?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Suspects?”
“Not yet.”
“Have you ordered a canvass?”
“Well, we have patrol officers doing that now. But I’d feel better with a couple of experienced homicide investigators doing it. At least assisting with it.”
“Right, right. Well . . . is it something you need detectives for?”
“Yes, I believe so. It’s a strangulation, Karen. There are no signs of robbery or sexual assault. Not yet, anyway.” Hastings paused. “She’s a college student.”
“Oh?”
Hastings kept quiet.
Karen Brady said, “How long do you think it’ll be?”
“No idea.” Hastings said. “Maybe through the afternoon.” Which probably wasn’t true. But he wanted the authorization.
“Okay, George. You got it.”
“Thanks, Karen. I’ll let you know how it goes.”
They said goodbye, then George dialed the cell number of his sergeant, Joe Klosterman.
Three rings and then Joe’s voice, a tone lower than a bark.
“Speak with me,” Klosterman said.
The Assailant Page 2