Protect and Serve: Soldiers, SEALs and Cops: Contemporary Heroes from NY Times and USA Today and other bestselling authors

by J. M. Madden

  But just in case, maybe I’d mention it to him later.

  That was if the guy we were looking for was inside the clubs at all, of course. He could be waiting outside, in his bona fide or pseudo squad car, keeping an eye on the women who came out, and when he saw one he liked, he followed. He might not be inside at all.

  The idea of that made me feel better, since it meant I didn’t have to worry until I walked out at the end of the night.

  For the next three hours, I danced and drank—rum and Coke, minus the rum—and flirted and tried to enjoy feeling like the old me. I told anyone who asked the truth, or most of it: that my name was Carmen and I was from Key West, and although I appreciated the offers of drinks and sex and more drinks and sex, I had a boyfriend back home I was staying faithful to. I was just here to have fun.

  Most of the men accepted it. A few didn’t, but it never got to the point where Will had to intervene. I heard him talking to Cal in my ear, though. “We should keep an eye on that guy. I don’t like his attitude.”

  I didn’t hear Cal’s reply, but I assume he agreed. I certainly did. Men who cop attitudes because you refuse to go out with them, are the kind of entitled bastards who think they have the right to assault you later.

  Finally, past midnight but not quite one o’clock in the morning, Will told me, “Time to go home.”

  Thank God. My feet were killing me. I was out of practice of dancing on four inch heels, and my toes were screaming.

  “Head outside. Let’s see if anyone follows you.”

  My heart started knocking against my ribs. This was it.

  But of course I didn’t get out the door without one last drunk lecher making a pass at me. “Where you goin’, sugar? I’ve got what you need right here.”

  “I seriously doubt that,” I told him, and stepped on his foot on my way out the door. “Idiot.”

  Will chuckled in my ear, but didn’t say anything. “Cal’s got eyes on you,” he told me. “Just keep moving. Walk to the corner. Look around for a cab. Stop to rub your feet. Do whatever you need to do to give this bastard enough time to catch up.”

  I kept moving. To the corner, where I stopped to look for a cab, and when I didn’t see one, to rub my feet. I’m sure when I bent over, my skirt rose so high that whoever was behind me could see my underwear. And that was probably the point.

  My heart was beating so hard it hurt, and there was a rushing sound in my ears, so loud I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear someone approach, if they came up behind me.

  But nothing happened. Just Will’s voice in my ear.

  “Looks like we struck out. Cal says there’s a cab coming. Flag it down and get in. He’s gonna follow you home. I’ll be right behind him.”

  I flagged down the cab and got in. And hoped the man behind the wheel wasn’t the man we were looking for.

  FIVE

  He wasn’t. He took me back to my apartment, and told me how much I owed him. And when I paid him, he drove away. I unlocked the front door and went upstairs.

  Will knocked on my door a few minutes later.

  “I’m just going to take the mic off and dismiss Cal,” he told me. “Then you can go to bed.”

  I nodded. I was ready. Partying was harder work than I remembered. Or maybe that was because I’d been on high alert all night, when in the past, I’d just been focused on having a good time.

  He dipped in fingers into my cleavage and peeled the microphone and fabric patch off my breast. “OK,” he told Cal. “I’ve got it. You can shut down for the night and go home. Tomorrow night we do it again.”

  He listened while Cal said something, and then he nodded. “Yeah. Me too. But we’ll get him. If not tomorrow, then eventually.”

  Another pause, and then, “Yeah. You too. Good night.”

  He dropped the microphone in his shirt pocket. I plucked the earbud from my ear and handed it to him. “Sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Will said, putting it in his pocket. “He just wasn’t there tonight.”

  “Or maybe he didn’t like me. Maybe I did something that turned him off.” Maybe he’d seen another Latina woman he’d liked better, and tomorrow morning, Will would get the call that the rapist had struck again. Just not against me.

  “I don’t think so,” Will said. “I don’t think there was a man in Courant tonight who wasn’t turned on.”

  I wondered whether that included him, and then I remembered why I didn’t care.

  “I had to be rude to a couple of them.”

  “That’s life,” Will said. “If they can’t handle rejection, they have no business making passes at beautiful women.”

  “Sometimes men who can’t handle rejection turn into rapists.”

  He tilted his head to look at me. “Was that what happened to you?”

  The question was so natural, so unemotional, that for a second it didn’t register. Then I felt it, like a punch to the gut.

  My voice came out half-choked. “Yes.”

  “I thought it had to be something like that,” Will said calmly. “Was it Laszlo?”

  I nodded. “It happened the same year you were down there. I didn’t even know about it until two years later.”

  “I’m sorry,” Will said. “He used drugs on the women he assaulted, didn’t he?”

  “Roofies. Ketamine. And you have to understand, I was drinking a lot back then. And sleeping with a lot of guys. It wasn’t uncommon to wake up in a strange bed and wonder who I’d slept with the night before. It didn’t even cross my mind that I’d been raped.”

  There was a pause.

  “I guess that explains me,” Will said. His tone was light, but with an undertone of something else. Hurt feelings, maybe. Or disgust.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m not like that anymore.” Not that it mattered, when everyone remembered what I’d been like.

  Will nodded. “Sorry to make you talk about it.”

  I laughed, but I’m afraid it sounded more like a sob. The laugh got caught in my throat. “Don’t worry about it. I had to testify at the trial.” Twice. “I’ve answered a lot more difficult questions than yours.”

  He nodded. “You sure you’re up for this job? Not that you didn’t do well tonight, but it must have been hard.”

  “I’m fine,” I told him. In blatant disregard of the truth, but what was I supposed to say? “Besides, you told me you don’t have anyone else.”

  “I could call Port St. Lucie and ask Bianca to come back.”

  I shook my head. “I can do it. This is why I wanted to become a cop.”

  “If you’re sure,” Will said, and turned to the door. “Get some sleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  This time he made no attempt to kiss me. It didn’t look like he even thought about it. I closed and locked the door behind him feeling like crap. I hadn’t wanted him to kiss me, but I didn’t want to disgust him, either.

  Although what did I expect, when I’d just told him the reason I couldn’t remember sleeping with him, was because I’d slept with so many men they were just one big blur?

  For all I knew, Will thought I deserved what had happened to me, too.

  I crawled into bed hating myself.

  I’d been looking forward to sleeping in the next morning. Instead, I was woken from dead sleep by a series of hard knocks on the door just after eight.

  “It’s me,” Will’s voice said from the other side. “Open up.”

  “Just a minute.” I rolled out of bed with a groan and pulled the robe around myself as I staggered to the door. “It’s barely dawn. What do you want?”

  I didn’t bother with the chain this time, just pulled the door open and glared at him.

  “Sheesh.” He took a step back, eyeing me warily. “Not a morning person, are you?”

  I growled wordlessly.

  “Get dressed,” Will said. “I’ll be downstairs in the lobby.”

  “I don’t want breakfast.” Especially not at the crack of dawn. If
he came back in, say, three hours, I might feel differently.

  “We’re going to the hospital. He raped another girl last night.”

  He didn’t wait for me to answer, just turned on his heel. “Don’t take forever,” he told me over his shoulder.

  I didn’t take forever. I splashed water on my face and brushed my teeth, but I didn’t bother with makeup or with doing my hair. It was still crazy from blowing it out last night, anyway. I just scooped it back with a rubber band and called it a day. Less than five minutes after I’d rolled out of bed, I was in Will’s car, on my way to the University of Miami Hospital.

  He didn’t speak, just focused on maneuvering the car through the city streets as fast as possible. When I glanced at him, his jaw was tight and his expression grim. I thought it better not to ask any questions.

  It wasn’t until we walked through the doors of the hospital and Will showed his badge to the nurse at the desk, that I realized that this experience would be far more difficult than putting on a tight dress and high heels and going out trolling for a sexual predator last night.

  The smells and sounds of the hospital brought me back to my own hospital stay. The beeping noises and squeaky soles, the bright lights and subdued voices. The nurses asking, solicitously, how I was feeling, with a mixture of pity and horror in their eyes. The pain, and the nightmares. Waking up screaming, and then the feeling of a needle going into my arm and numbness descending.

  I turned to Will. “I’m not sure I can do this.”

  He didn’t even look at me, just watched the glowing numbers of the elevator descending. “It’ll help to have a woman there.”

  Sure, but—

  “Probably easier for her to talk to you than to me.”

  And again, sure. Especially if she thought her attacker had been a cop. She might even be afraid of Will. But I wasn’t worried about her. I was worried about me.

  “You don’t understand,” I said.

  Will turned his head to look at me. “I need your help. This woman went through a horrible experience. If I could, I’d leave her alone. But I need to know if she noticed anything. Something we don’t know already.”

  “Yes, but—”

  The elevator doors opened, and he stepped through and waited for me to do the same. When the doors had closed again, he addressed me. “This was what you wanted to do. To stop people like this guy from preying on people like you. This woman deserves justice. To give it to her, we need to know what she knows.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but—”

  “You can do it. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But I need your help. She needs your help. You need to do this.”

  He turned away to watch the glowing lights on the elevator panel, ascending this time. As far as he was concerned, the discussion was over. I had signed on for the job; there was no question that I’d do it.

  His confidence was nice, that unquestionable belief that I’d do the right thing.

  I had none of that confidence or belief, but I did my best to ignore the tight knot of panic in my stomach, and when the elevator stopped on the third floor and Will walked out, I followed.

  When this was over and I was back in Key West, I would definitely petition Enrique for that desk job.

  Her name was Maria, and she was actually calmer than I was. “He didn’t hurt me,” she told us, in a voice that only shook a little. “Other than, you know, raping me.”

  Right. Because that didn’t count at all.

  She was twisting a gold ring around and around on her finger, watching it rather than us as she spoke. “I have a little girl at home. Flora. She’s four. My mother was watching her last night so I could go out with a couple of girlfriends.” She shrugged jerkily. “Sometimes it’s hard, being a single parent.”

  Will and I both nodded, although neither of us had any idea. Or at least I didn’t, and I assumed Will didn’t, either. He wasn’t wearing a ring.

  “When I realized what he was going to do,” and there was no need to specify who ‘he’ was, “I decided to do whatever he said, so he wouldn’t hurt me, or worse. I wanted to go home to Flora.”

  She glanced up, and then down again. Will and I both nodded.

  “I just went along with what he wanted. I didn’t scream. I didn’t fight. I didn’t do anything. I just let him do what he wanted to me.” Two big, fat tears rolled out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

  “And you’re here,” Will told her, glancing at me. Like most men, he probably didn’t like to deal with weeping women. “I’m going to ask you some questions, OK? Do you think you’re up for that?”

  Maria nodded, and sniffed.

  “So you were out with a couple of girlfriends. How did you come to be alone at the end of the night?”

  “I left early,” Maria said, dashing at her cheeks. “I wanted to take Flora to early mass at Holy Family this morning.”

  “So you left and they stayed. Then what happened?”

  “I was walking down the street looking for a cab. But there weren’t any, so I kept walking. And this car pulled up to the curb behind me and a man got out.”

  Her voice tensed as she described it. I tried not to think about myself seven or eight months ago, walking up to my apartment in the dark, and hearing the sound of footsteps behind me. And turning and seeing Stan, and seeing the gun, and that sick realization in the pit of my stomach that there was nothing I could do to get away...

  “What kind of car?” Will’s voice asked, yanking me out of the memory.

  “Dark,” Maria told him. “Black or dark blue. Sedan.”

  “Did it have flashing lights or anything like that?”

  It hadn’t. Or if it did, they weren’t in use. It was just a dark sedan.

  “And the man?”

  “Shorter than you,” Maria said, looking up at him. “Dark uniform. Utility belt. Cap pulled down over his face. I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  “Police uniform?”

  But Maria didn’t know. “They were just dark clothes. Pants and a short sleeved shirt. And it was dark out. And the first thing he did was tell me to turn around and put my hands on the hood of the car and spread my legs. Then he talked to me while he patted me down. I thought he was a cop.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He asked what I was doing there. Where I was going. I told him I was going home, but he said he didn’t believe me. He said he thought I was a hooker.” Her voice shook. “He touched me. My breasts. My thighs. Between my legs. And I could feel him, behind me...” She glanced at me, to see if I understood.

  I nodded, through the nausea. She’d felt his erection at her back. Sick bastard. “So if he was behind you, you probably never really saw his face.”

  My voice was scratchy, unfamiliar in my own ears.

  Maria shook her head, obviously grateful for the reprieve. “Just for a second when he first got out of the car. And he was wearing the hat. I didn’t get a good look at him.”

  “What about skin color?” Will wanted to know. “Was he black? White? Hispanic?”

  Maria said he’d been white, or maybe a light skinned Hispanic. Definitely not black.

  “Did you get an impression of his age? Young? Old?”

  “Not old,” Maria said. “But not a kid, either.”

  “Thirty? Forty?”

  She twisted her hands together. “He told me not to look at him. That if I just did what he said, he wouldn’t hurt me. So I did what he said.”

  “What did he tell you to do?” Will asked.

  “He put handcuffs on me, and put me in the back of the car. And then we drove for a while. I thought he was arresting me.” Her voice broke. “I was thinking how I’d have to call my mother and ask her to come bail me out because I’d gotten arrested for prostitution. And she’d have to bring Flora, and my little girl would see me in jail...”

  Tears were rolling down her cheeks again. I grabbed a box of Kleenex from the bedside table and put it on the bed. “But that didn’
t happen.”

  My voice was a little better this time, a little more like mine.

  She shook her head, pulling out a tissue and starting to shred it, until it was a pile of tiny scraps on the blanket. “He drove into this dark alley, and stopped the car. And then he took me out of the back. And he raped me. And then he took the handcuffs off and told me to count to a hundred before I left. And then he drove away.”

  “And you left the alley and called 911,” Will said.

  Maria nodded. “I was afraid. I thought, if he really was a cop, maybe I shouldn’t call anyone. Maybe I should just go home and forget it happened. But then I thought about Flora. What if it was her? And I called anyway.”

  “You did the right thing,” I told her. It was hard to get the words out past the lump in my throat. “And when your daughter gets older, you can tell her what happened to you, and why she has to be careful, and you can tell her that because you called 911, you helped us catch this guy so he couldn’t hurt anyone else.”

  Maria nodded, her eyes filling with tears. I reached out and took her hand.

  “We’ll get him. And when we do, you’ll know that he’s in jail and he can’t hurt anyone else again.”

  “Thank you,” Maria whispered, clutching my hand as tears dripped into her lap.

  I didn’t break down until we were in the car. Will drove and let me cry, without comment, until I was all cried out, slumped in the seat, with my eyes swollen and my face puffy.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “Not your fault.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought you to see her.”

  I sniffed. “I wasn’t much help. Sorry.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t realize...”

  Not his fault, either. When you haven’t been through it, you just don’t know.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “It’s just harder when someone else’s experience brings back your own. You relive what happened to you when you listen to them talk about what happened to them. You remember your own fear, and your own pain. And then you feel guilty, because you’re thinking about that—about yourself—and not them.”