Dark Passage

by Marcia Talley

  ‘Mommy, Mommy … I don’t feel so good, Mommy.’ Her voice was softer than a whisper, her words slurred, but nobody could mistake their meaning.

  A nurse elbowed her way into the room carrying a tray of instruments covered by a sterile cloth. As she passed by, Fortune asked, ‘Is the girl drunk?’

  Georgina’s head shot up and schrapnel shot out of her eyes. ‘My daughter is not drunk. It’s perfectly obvious she’s been drugged. Just look at her!’ Georgina picked up one of Julie’s hands, raised it a few inches then let it drop where it lay, limp, lifeless, on the sheet. ‘Use your eyes, people!’

  The doctor stepped forward. ‘I’m Doctor Springer. Which one of you is Mrs Cardinale?’

  ‘I am,’ Georgina said, her voice laced with exasperation at the dim-wittedness of the question.

  ‘Mrs Cardinale, I understand your concern, but I’ll need to examine Julie, and the sooner I can do that, the sooner I can prescribe appropriate treatment. Now, will you kindly step aside? Please?’

  Georgina stood her ground. ‘Well, I’m not leaving, and neither are my sisters.’

  Dr Springer eased a pair of rubber gloves, one glove at a time, out of a dispenser that sat on a glass-fronted steel cabinet. ‘That’s fine, but bear in mind that I’ll need space in order to conduct a proper medical exam. Pick one of your sisters, Mrs Cardinale. I don’t work with audiences.’

  Officer Fortune took the hint and backed out of the examination room. ‘You’ll let me know what you find, won’t you, Doctor?’

  He nodded. ‘Of course. Nurse? Where’s my stethoscope?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Ruth said graciously, saving Georgina the embarrassment of having to choose one sister over another. ‘Georgina, do you want me to try to contact Scott?’

  ‘God, no! Please don’t call Scott until we have something definite to tell him!’ A fat tear rolled down Georgina’s cheek. ‘Scott is going to kill me, he’s absolutely going to kill me!’

  I wrapped an arm around my little sister and drew her close, trying to comfort her as she sobbed. ‘This isn’t about you, Georgina, it’s about Julie. And if we’re passing the blame around, sweetheart, it was Scott who insisted you take Julie along on the cruise in the first place. But, you know what? Nobody is responsible for what happened to Julie except the person who attacked her. Not you, not Scott, not even those overworked young counselors in the Tidal Wave. Now, let’s give the doctor space. Let the man do his work.’

  Georgina resisted my efforts to pull her away from Julie’s side. She seemed stuck there, like glue. I tugged again on her arm, and she stepped away with me so suddenly that I stumbled. I recovered quickly, though, and dragged her aside until we were standing with our backs pressed against the wall, watching anxiously from the sidelines as Dr Springer moved a stethoscope around Julie’s chest, listening carefully each time, then lifted each eyelid and shone a light into her eyes.

  ‘Are you a real doctor?’ Georgina wanted to know.

  Dr Springer didn’t bother to look up. ‘Yes, ma’am, with a medical degree from Baylor and everything. It’s hanging on the wall out there in the office if you want to see it.’

  ‘So why are you working on a cruise ship?’ she sneered.

  Dr Springer snorted in amusement, but chose to ignore her. He picked up one of Julie’s arms, resting her small hand on his beefy palm. ‘Julie, can you move your fingers for me? Julie?’ He laid a hand on her ankle. ‘Can you move your toes, Julie? C’mon, wiggle those piggies.’

  From where I stood it looked as if, from the neck down, Julie was about as capable of moving her extremities as a rag doll.

  The nurse arrived and clipped a blood pressure monitor on Julie’s index finger, then drew a sample of blood from her arm. I’d taken Julie to the doctors before, when she was a child, and the fact that she wasn’t cringing, whining pitifully and backing away from the needle now simply broke my heart.

  Nonetheless, I was impressed with the thoroughness of Dr Springer’s exam. In the bedside manner department, I gave him an ‘A,’ too. He talked soothingly to my niece throughout the whole process, just as if she were awake. ‘Julie, I’m going to examine your abdomen, now – you might feel a little pressure. And I’ll need to lift your dress.’

  Springer lifted the hem of Julie’s sundress and eased the dress up to her waist. Georgina gasped then, and I noticed it, too. Julie’s underpants – white cotton with tiny rosebuds, childlike and innocent – were torn. ‘My God, my God, somebody’s raped my baby!’

  ‘We don’t know that yet, Mrs Cardinale.’ Dr Springer turned to the nurse who had been hovering at his elbow. ‘Jeannie, please escort these women into the waiting room, then bring me a rape kit.’ His arm shot out, grabbed the track-mounted cubicle curtain and drew it around the gurney on which Julie lay, cutting off our view. His well of patience with my sister had clearly dried up.

  Moving Georgina the ten feet from the examination room into the outer office was a feat of strength; her shoes must have been made of lead. Eventually I managed to haul her to a chair next to Ruth, and I plopped down gratefully in the chair on the other side.

  ‘Where’s Security now, that’s what I want to know!’ Georgina folded her arms across her chest and scowled.

  ‘They’re probably securing the crime scene,’ I told her. ‘That’s what professionals do.’

  ‘We need to call somebody,’ Georgina said. ‘The F.B.I. has jurisdiction. Isn’t that what George Whatshisname said?’

  ‘Warren, and it’s David. Yes, I believe that’s what he said.’

  ‘Whoever did this is going to pay.’

  I had to agree with that and, if he valued his genitals, he’d better hope the F.B.I. found him before we did.

  After ten agonizing minutes, Dr Springer rejoined us. ‘We won’t know until the blood work comes back, but I’m almost certain your daughter was drugged. From her symptoms, I’m guessing Ketamine, possibly Rohypnol or GHB, commonly known as date rape drugs. Ketamine can cause paralysis, loss of time, memory problems, distortions of sight and sound, among other symptoms. I think you should be prepared for Julie not being able to remember much about what happened to her.’ He paused to let this soak in. ‘The good news is that there is no evidence that Julie was raped. She has bruises on her upper arms, and on her thighs, but there’s no sign of vaginal trauma. Your daughter is still virgo intacta.’

  Georgina began to weep again, more quietly this time. ‘Thank God, oh, thank God.’

  ‘Is there an antidote for Ketamine?’ I asked.

  The doctor shook his head. ‘She’ll have to sleep it off, I’m afraid. Wait for the drug to pass out of her system. We’ll keep her under observation here for a while to make sure there are no problems with her respiration. This can be an issue when she wakes up, particularly if she begins to vomit. And once your daughter does come out of it, Mrs Cardinale, you’ll need to see that she drinks plenty of water.’

  Georgina nodded. She understood. ‘Can I stay with her?’

  ‘Of course.’ He tucked his pen into his pocket. ‘One more thing.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘She’ll need a change of clothing. I asked the nurse to bag up the clothes that Julie was wearing in case they’re needed as evidence.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, feeling grateful that the doctor seemed to know what he was doing. ‘Can we see Julie now?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Back in the examination room with Julie, with the privacy curtain pulled around us, I eased my iPhone out of my pocket and tapped the camera app.

  ‘Hannah! What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘I’m taking pictures, Georgina, for evidence.’ I photographed Julie’s face, smoothing her hair back to get a better view of the bruise on her forehead. I took pictures of the marks on her arms and on her thighs. I captured a close-up of the broken fingernail – our girl had put up a fight – and the torn underwear.

  Better to be safe than sorry, I thought. If the ship’s security was not o
ur friend – if Dr Springer’s test results mysteriously vanished … I tucked the iPhone into my pocket and patted it protectively. Julie’s insurance policy.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Georgina asked, stroking her daughter’s hair.

  ‘We wait until Julie wakes up; hopefully she’ll remember at least some of what happened.’

  FOURTEEN

  ‘A ship on the high seas is as good as lawless.’

  60 Minutes, ‘Ships of Shame,’ April 8, 2012

  When Julie finally awoke, it was nearly dinnertime. The first thing she asked for was a glass of water.

  They had transferred her to a hospital bed, so I cranked up the headboard. She managed to take a couple of sips from a water bottle, while I busied myself adjusting the pillow more comfortably behind her head. Julie patted the sheets, lifted the blanket, then gazed around the room in apparent confusion. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in the ship’s clinic, Julie.’

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘We were hoping you could tell us that.’

  Julie closed her eyes, squeezed them tight and rocked her head from side to side against the pillow. ‘I don’t remember.’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘What happened to my clothes?’

  Georgina leaned a hip against the edge of the mattress and laid a hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘They found you down in the recycling area, near the ship’s kitchens, Julie. Do you know how you got there?’

  Julie rubbed her forehead and winced. ‘No! I’ve never been to the kitchens.’

  ‘We came to pick you up at the Tidal Wave after the pizza party, but you weren’t there. What did you do after the pizza party, Julie? Please think!’

  Julie screwed up her face until her eyes almost disappeared. ‘It’s kind of a blur. I remember that it was early, so Katie and I decided to go to the bar and get a smoothie or something.’

  ‘Julie, you have to tell me the truth. You weren’t drinking again, were you?’

  Julie’s eyes grew wide. ‘Alcohol? No, mom, honest! I had a coconut smoothie, I swear! Katie had a Coke.’

  I glared at my sister. Upsetting Julie wasn’t going to get us anywhere. ‘The doctor suspects that somebody put a drug in your drink,’ I said, trying to defuse the situation. ‘Something that made you pass out. Did you see anybody do that, Julie?’

  Julie sucked in her lower lip and shook her head.

  ‘Did you leave your drink unattended?’

  ‘No, never.’ In spite of the direction of the conversation, she brightened. ‘Nobody could put something into the drink anyway, Aunt Hannah, because it was in a plastic glass with a cover on it, you know, with a little hole for the straw!’

  ‘That leaves the bartender, I suppose, or one of the waiters,’ I suggested.

  Julie folded her arms and frowned. ‘No way. Not Wes. Not Ally.’

  Wes had to be Wesley, but who was Ally? The female bartender we talked to wore a name tag that said ‘Kira.’

  ‘His real name’s Aloysius,’ Julie explained when I asked. ‘He’s from the Philippines.’ She turned to Georgina. ‘He’s really nice, Mom, and he sends all his tip money back home to his mom. She lives in Olongapo, near where the naval base used to be.’

  Dad had been in the navy, so I knew all about ‘Gapo,’ a city on Subic Bay near the naval base that the U.S. had turned back to the Philippine government following the Vietnam War. From what I understood, it was now covered with volcanic ash from the eruption of nearby Mount Pinatubo in 1991. What surprised me was that Julie knew so much about Gapo. Clearly she’d spent time chatting with Ally.

  ‘When you left the bar, did Katie go with you?’ Georgina asked.

  Julie looked blank. A single tear rolled sideways down her cheek. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What I want to see is the security camera footage,’ Ruth said. ‘That should tell us who was sitting with who and when. I wonder when we can talk to Officer Martin? Surely he’s had a chance to review the tapes by now.’

  ‘He told me he’d be looking at the tapes and getting back to us as soon as he had anything to report, and I trust him to do that,’ I said. I felt as if I’d lived a hundred years since that morning, and now that Julie was safe, all I could think about was sleep. ‘Georgina, if it’s OK with the doctor, I think we should get Julie back to her own bed. And I don’t know about you all, but I’m not thinking too clearly just now. We could all do with a little sleep.’

  In the middle of the night, Julie was shaking me awake. ‘Aunt Hannah, I remember something.’

  I sat up in bed, not sure for a moment exactly where I was. I squinted at my niece in the dim light. ‘Where’s your mother, Julie?’

  ‘She must have taken a sleeping pill. I tried to wake her up, but she just groaned and rolled over. I have to tell somebody before I forget.’

  ‘Sit up here next to me, then, sweetie. I’m listening.’

  Julie crawled onto the narrow bed and snuggled up against me. We leaned against the bulkhead and, although it was comfortably warm in the room, I covered our legs with the duvet. ‘It’s all fuzzy, like a dream, you know? But, there was this man,’ Julie began.

  My heart did a somersault, so I took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘He was wearing this black shirt with a little squiggle on it.’ She pointed to her left breast. ‘Right here, like on the pocket? I’ve tried and tried to remember his face, but it goes all weird on me. But I know the man had a ball cap on.’

  Well, that narrows it down, I thought. Every man on board the ship must have a polo shirt and a ball cap in his suitcase, and half the women, too.

  ‘Did the ball cap have any writing on it?’

  Julie looked puzzled, then her face brightened. ‘I was going to see the dolphins!’

  That brought me up short. ‘Dolphins?’

  ‘Well, I missed the dolphin trip, Aunt Hannah, so when he said there was a place on the ship where I could see dolphins …’ Her voice trailed off. ‘That was pretty dumb, wasn’t it?’

  I put my arm around Julie and drew her close. ‘You’re the bravest girl I know, Julie. And what you’ve just told me is important. I think we need to wake your mother up now, and talk to Officer Martin. You probably don’t remember him, but he’s the head of security on this ship.’

  Julie’s lower lip quivered. ‘Do I have to, Aunt Hannah?’

  I nodded. ‘We don’t want the man who attacked you to get away with it, do we? What if he tries to do something to another girl? You were very lucky to get away.’

  Julie’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘I think I’m going to be sick!’

  The room stewards liked to surprise passengers by folding towels into whimsical animal shapes. On our first night at sea we had giggled over an orangutan clipped to a pants hanger. That night, Pradeep had transformed my towel into a floppy-eared puppy and had propped my sunglasses up on its nose. I’d set the ‘dog’ on my bedside table and I grabbed it now, sending the sunglasses flying. I pressed the towel into Julie’s hands, and she held it to her mouth as she raced to the bathroom.

  All the time I was dialing the telephone I could hear Julie retching miserably. There’s nothing worse than being sick to one’s stomach; any chemo survivor will tell you that. As I listened to Julie moan, I fantasized about going after whoever had done this to my niece with a pair of rusty garden shears, then dumping him – and his parts – overboard.

  When I got through to Officer Martin, he agreed to meet us in our cabin right away, even though it was nearly one-thirty in the morning. While I waited, I shook Ruth awake and explained about Julie, then I went to the cabin next door to try to rouse my younger sister.

  The four of us were sitting on the beds in the stateroom I shared with Ruth when Officer Martin arrived along with Molly Fortune who, judging from the notebook she was carrying, was there to listen and take notes.

  We asked Julie to repeat what she’d told me earlier.

  Hands folded on her lap, Julie oblige
d; then she bowed her head and studied her thumbs. ‘He said he was taking me to see the dolphins.’ She looked up. ‘You don’t have dolphin tanks on the Islander, do you?’

  Martin smiled sympathetically. ‘No. The owner has deep pockets, but not that deep.’ After a moment, he asked gently, ‘When you went to see the dolphins, Julie, where did this man take you?’

  ‘There was this room, like a living room, with chairs and a coffee table and a sofa and things.’ She rubbed her eyes with her fingertips as if trying to clarify the vision.

  ‘Was there a window?’ he pressed.

  ‘I don’t remember. I suppose there was a window.’

  ‘Was it a room like this one?’

  Julie’s head wagged from side to side. ‘No, I said like a living room. It didn’t look like a normal cabin. And, wait! There was candy on the table! The kind that comes in the gold box!’ She inspected her thumbs again, put one to her mouth and chewed on the nail. ‘I can’t believe I was so stupid!’

  ‘Gold box?’ Martin asked. Apparently he’d never bought the women in his life posh chocolates.

  ‘Godiva,’ Ruth and I answered simultaneously.

  Impatient with waiting for Martin to get around to telling us about it, I asked, ‘Have you been able to review the security tapes, Officer Martin?’

  ‘We have. They captured Julie and her friend going into Breakers! and placing their orders at the bar. We see the two girls sitting at a table near the window, then three boys come up and join them …’

  Georgina exploded. ‘Crawfords, I’d bet my life on it! I am going to kill …’

  Martin raised a hand to silence her. ‘None of the other teens touched Julie’s drink. We’re sure of that. We’ve located Julie’s friend, Katie, and interviewed her. She confirms everything that we can see on the tapes. The boys join them at the table, the waiter delivers the drinks, everyone is laughing and having a good time, the boys leave, then, according to Katie, Julie says she feels funny and has to go to the bathroom.’

  ‘I don’t remember that,’ Julie said.

  ‘On the way to the restroom, Julie goes around the corner and moves out of camera range. We have security cameras in all the lobbies, Mrs Cardinale, and Julie never got to the restroom, not on deck ten nor on any other deck. But what we did notice before she vanishes is that Julie is already weaving and staggering, holding on to the handrails for support. Ketamine is fast-acting, so we know that the drug had to be introduced into her drink by someone – either crew or another passenger – while Julie was at Breakers!’