by Frank Zafiro
“Sounds serious.”
Crawford gave him a withering look. “It is. Did they say anything else?”
“No, not really. They were working pretty frantically on her before the ambulance got here. I got the impression they thought she might not make it.”
Crawford glanced toward the car inside the crime scene. “That their mess?”
“On the ground, yeah.”
Crawford grunted. “You start a canvass for witnesses yet?”
Gio shook his head. “Not yet.”
“Do it. Call down to the General Detectives if you need more bodies.”
Gio walked away, keying his mike. “Adam-254?”
“Adam-254, go ahead.”
Gio recognized Trina’s voice. That made him smile for a moment. When he’d gone out with her, she had liked to do this little thing with her—
“Gio!” Crawford bellowed after him.
“Adam-254, go ahead,” Trina repeated.
Gio nodded to the lieutenant. As he walked toward him, he transmitted. “I need two more units here to help with the witness canvass.”
“Copy.”
“Yeah, El-Tee?”
“You get the names of all the medics that were inside this crime scene?”
“Jack has that.”
Crawford glanced over at Stone.
Stone shrugged. “I got everybody but the guys on the paramedic unit over there.” He pointed at the small paramedic truck on the other side of the crime scene. One medic was busy repacking the equipment while the other stood by, watching the cops work.
Bullshit, Gio thought. He knew Stone had those names. He just wanted to get back at him by sending him on an errand.
“Go get those names,” Crawford directed him.
Gio opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. Crawford would still send him no matter what. And if he argued, all that did was provide more entertainment for Stone. Instead, he turned on his heel and trudged around the crime scene to the medics.
“How’s it going?” he asked the one packing the gear. He wore no rank insignias on his uniform, so Gio figured the other guy was a boss.
“It’s going,” the medic answered. “Too bad about that lady, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“She reminded me of my tenth grade teacher, Mrs. O’Halloran. Very nice lady.”
“I know the feeling,” Gio said. “Listen, can I get your names for the crime scene report?”
“Sure. I’m Terry. That’s Art.”
Gio took out his notebook. “Last names?”
The medic laughed. “Oh, sorry. Mine’s Wylie. His is Hoagland. We’re out of Station Three.”
Gio jotted the information down. “Thanks. Did you work on her?”
Terry shook his head. “No, it was mostly Art, at least until the ambulance got here.”
At the sound of his name, the tall, slender medic turned toward the two of them. “What’s that?”
“Just talking bad about you, boss,” Terry said.
“Like that’s anything new.”
Gio smiled lightly at the banter and turned to go.
“Officer?”
Gio stopped. “Yeah?”
Art stepped closer to him. “I’m no cop or anything, but there’s something I think you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I noticed something strange about her clothing.”
“Damaged?”
“No, not really. But when I first arrived, I noticed that her skirt was pushed up a little bit. I didn’t think anything of it, but then we ended up cutting it off while we were working on her. It was one of those long thick denim skirts and it was getting in the way. Anyway, when we pulled it aside, that’s when I saw that her undergarments were pulled down.”
“Pulled down?” Gio repeated.
Art nodded. “Yeah. About three quarters of the way down from the hip toward the knee.”
“Could that happen by accident?” Gio asked, though he figured he already knew the answer. “From her thrashing around in a fight or something?”
Art shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. This was too far down for anything like that. I think they were deliberately pulled down by her attacker.”
“Which means...”
“Which means this isn’t just an assault,” Art finished. “Yeah.”
“Way to go, Columbo.” Terry said. He looked up at the sky. “Is it raining?”
Gio didn’t bother giving him a disapproving look. He turned and trotted back to the crime scene, ducking underneath the tape. He heard Stone’s infuriated yell from the opposite side, but ignored it.
“Finch?” he asked the detective surveying the scene.
Finch looked up at him calmly. “What is it?”
“The medic over there said that when he got here, the victim’s underwear was pulled down almost to her knees.”
Gio expected some surprise, but got none. Instead, Finch merely pointed his pen at the ground. “That would explain the condom.”
Gio followed his gesture. An unopened condom lay on the ground in the midst of all the medic’s torn gauze wrappings.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
Finch turned his head and called over his shoulder. “El-Tee!”
“What?” Crawford bellowed back.
“You better call Tower.”
And after that, the crime scene went quiet for a while.
1811 hours
Detective Tower stood outside of the sheet drawn between the patient’s bed and the rest of the emergency room. When the doctor exited the patient area, they dispensed with any pleasantries.
“Do you believe she was sexually assaulted, doctor?”
The doctor nodded. “I would say so. There’s some obvious vaginal trauma.”
“Any semen?”
“None that I could see. The swabs will tell the true story, though.”
Tower didn’t hold out much hope for that. Not if his hunch was right. “Is she still unconscious?”
The doctor nodded. “Yes. She was struck numerous times with a blunt object in the face and head.”
“Like a club?”
The doctor shrugged. “Could have been, but it looks more like a fist to me. We’re going to do a CAT scan on her to see what the extent of the injuries are.”
Tower shook the doctor's hand briefly and thanked him. The doctor gave him a short nod and walked away quickly to the next patient. Tower had learned long ago not to detain emergency room doctors for any longer than necessary. There was always another patient waiting.
Ridgeway appeared at his side. “She wake up?”
“No.”
Ridgeway shook his head gravely and said nothing.
“Mark, do me a favor?”
“Yep.”
“When the rape kit is ready, will you run that and all her clothes over to property?”
“Sure.”
“Not that it’ll speed things up, but mark the lab items as a rush, too.”
“You got it.”
Tower nodded his thanks and left the emergency room. As he walked to his car, he tossed things over in his mind. The engine rumbled to life and he headed for the station.
A flare of anger shot through his chest as he recalled Wendy Latah's swollen and bruised face. Her driver's license photo had shown an elegant older woman with delicate features. The slender woman in the hospital bed had resembled a badly pummeled boxer after a lopsided match.
Who would do such a thing?
Exactly my problem, Tower thought. Who?
He tried to consider alternatives to what seemed almost like a certainty to him. He forced himself to spend the time to look at it from another angle, even though, in his heart, he knew.
Maybe it was a student? He gave the thought a half-hearted analysis. Why would a student attack a teacher? Vengeance for a poor grade? Just plain cruelty?
Well, if by some strange confluence of events it actually was a student, that student’s identity wo
uld come out very shortly. It was obvious that Wendy Latah had put up a good fight. The empty canister of pepper mace found in the vehicle spoke to that. Even without the canister, there was no mistaking the lung-biting odor of cayenne pepper in the air. Whoever she sprayed looked like a pumpkin-head right now. A parent was going to notice that and get to the bottom of the story, either from the kid or from the news.
If it were a student.
Tower frowned. He knew it wasn’t. That condom seemed to scream the obvious at him.
This was the Rainy Day Rapist, not some vengeful student. And he had a feeling that no one was going to notice this pumpkin-head and call it in. Things were not going to be so easy. And why should it be? Nothing on this case had been yet.
He allowed himself a half-hearted hope that Diane in Forensics might be able to life a print from the unused condom. But the way his luck was rolling so far on this case, he didn’t invest a lot of emotional energy into that small hope.
Tower pulled into the station and parked.
He knew he had to go see Crawford. The Rainy Day Rapist was escalating. It was time to change the way he was doing things on this case.
2008 hours
Captain Michael Reott slid open his desk drawer. Reaching inside, he brought out a cigar box. Then he flipped open the box and pulled out one of his remaining four cigars.
Lieutenant Crawford watched him from his chair on the opposite side of the desk. “You’re not going to light that.”
Reott looked up at him. “Hell I’m not.”
Crawford allowed a slow smile to spread across his round face. “That’s what I like about you, Mike. No respect for authority.”
Reott bit off the butt-end of the cigar and spat it into the trashcan. Then he offered the box to Crawford.
Still smiling, Crawford took one.
“It isn’t about not respecting authority,” Reott said. “It’s about finishing out on my own terms.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that it doesn’t hurt a single soul if I want to smoke in my own office. I’ve been doing it since I made captain eleven years ago.”
“Well,” Crawford said, “there you have it. What’s a little thing like state and federal law to stand in the way of tradition?”
“Shut up,” Reott said, striking his silver Zippo lighter. “And open that window.”
Crawford twisted the latch and opened the window while Reott drew smoke from his cigar. The pungent smell of burning tobacco filled the room. When he’d finished, he handed the lighter across the desk to Crawford, who lit his own cigar.
The two men sat in silence for several moments, smoking and thinking.
Finally, Crawford said, “Tower wants to put together a task force.”
“We should.”
“Investigations or Patrol?”
“Both,” Reott answered. “You run it. Tower will be lead investigator, but use patrol officers to flesh out your numbers.”
Crawford nodded, recognizing the wisdom in Reott’s decision. Using patrol officers kept the Patrol captain’s hand in the operation. Crawford’s boss, the Investigative captain, was generally considered second only to Lieutenant Hart in the dipshit category. The presence of patrol officers in the operation kept Reott involved. Between the two of them, they could fend off any goofy ideas Captain Dipshit came up with.
“We should get some information out to the public, too,” Reott said.
“Not about the task force?”
“No. Not yet, anyway. Just some general personal safety information.”
Crawford drew in a deep drag of the cigar. He let it out in a billowing blue cloud. “That’s probably way overdue. I imagine people are getting jumpy out there.”
“They are.” Reott took a large puff of his own cigar. “I met with a downtown business group over lunch today. They’re worried about their families and their female employees. And the Chief told me on his way out of the office that the Mayor called him twice today. Apparently, a large number of people are calling City Hall.”
“It’s the goddamn media,” Crawford said. “They go and call this freak The Rainy Day Rapist and all of the sudden everyone is scared.”
“You have a wife, right?”
Crawford paused in mid-puff. “You know I do.”
“You want her going out by herself right about now?”
Another puff. Then, “No.”
“There you go.”
“Fine,” Crawford said. “I see your point. But mine still stands. The media fans the flames.”
“Maybe. But we’ll get some personal safety information out there in the short term. Meanwhile, you fire up your task force. Get the Prosecutor’s Office on board, too.”
“You want me to let a lawyer get involved? Mike, you want us to catch this guy or just sue him?”
Reott waved his comment away. “Just get him involved. It’ll mostly be for show this early on. But when we catch the guy, having a prosecutor ready to step in will streamline the process. Might not be a bad idea to have him help Tower with any search warrants, too.”
Crawford sighed. “All right. You’re the boss.”
“Don’t forget it,” Reott said, but his voice was mild.
“How can I, what with you throwing your authority around all the time?”
“Captain’s Prerogative,” Reott said. “And here’s one more thing—I’m going to use Pam Lincoln at the newspaper for the personal safety stuff. If she’s game, I also want you to give her some background on the case. See if she wants to cover the task force from the inside.”
Crawford gave Reott a wide-eyed stare. “Well, why don’t we just send out a flyer to the guy? With the newspaper reporting every step we make—”
Reott leaned back and put his feet up on his desk with a weary sigh. “Try to keep up, huh?”
Crawford fell silent. He thought for a moment, drawing smoke and blowing it forcefully toward the open window. Then he said, “You think she’ll hold the story until we catch him?”
“Of course she will. It’s an exclusive.”
“I don’t know...” Crawford said, trailing off in a doubtful tone. “I think that might be going too far.”
“She’s an honest woman,” Reott told him.
“She’s also a reporter,” Crawford replied. “A reporter with bosses. And from what I’ve seen down at the River City Herald over the past twenty-some years, they’ve got such a thing down there called Editor’s Prerogative.”
It was Reott’s turn to fall silent. He smoked and thought.
Crawford waited.
Finally, Reott sighed and shrugged. “She’s never screwed us over yet. I should at least keep her updated ahead of the rest of the crowd.”
“Okay,” Crawford said. “That’s fair, I suppose. But I don’t know how long she’ll be able to hold out if we don’t nail this guy.”
“Then I guess your task force better get the job done.”
Crawford gave Reott a mock salute with his cigar hand. “Yes, sir.”
Graveyard Shift
2334 hours
Thomas Chisolm sat in the dim light of his living room, staring at the dark television. He’d cracked open a Kokanee shortly after an evening run and sipped it in the bathroom while showering and drying off. Once dressed in his rumpled boxers and gray Army T-shirt, he flopped on the couch, hoping that the beer and television would help him find sleep.
Instead, he’d sat staring at the dead screen, the remote untouched on the small coffee table. He stared at the shadowy figure of himself reflected back at him. Every so often, he took a pull from the bottle of beer until it was empty. Then he rose and opened another.
Back on the couch, he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He wanted very badly to sleep, but knew it was a virtual uncertainty. Not when the ghosts wanted to visit him. Not when they wanted to cry out to him, accuse him.
He thought briefly of Sylvia, the woman whose picture remained taped to his refrigerator despite the fact she’d
gotten married to someone else almost two years ago. Why couldn’t he let her go?
He knew why. Because she could see him. She understood him. That is why he had loved her so much.
And that was why she had left him.
Chisolm took another long drink of Kokanee. He pushed back against the pain, muttering to himself.
“Pussy,” he said. “Mooning like a fifteen year old boy in love with a cheerleader.”
His words fell flat in the silence of his home, so he followed them up with some more.
“Here’s to you, T.C.,” he said, raising his bottle. “The one person in the whole world who truly understood you decides she doesn’t like what she sees. What does that tell you?”
Not everyone can handle the ghosts, that’s what it tells me.
“Bullshit,” Chisolm muttered unconvincingly, but he knew it wasn’t. People just wanted to live in their pretty little worlds where everything is easy. They didn’t want to see the hard side of things. “They don’t want to see the ugliness,” he said aloud. “And when they do see it –”
He broke off, because the answer was too plain. When people saw the ugliness, they reacted by blaming the ones who were confronting it. That’s what happened in Vietnam. That’s what happens every day in police work. And that’s what happened with Sylvia.
Chisolm drank again, then lowered the bottle to his chest.
“Fuck that,” he whispered.
He pushed against the memory, opening his eyes and staring at the ceiling.
But there were other ghosts in his mind that would not be still. When he forced Sylvia away, another set of eyes came forward.
Young eyes, but hard.
Eyes that did not blink. They only stared.
Pleaded.
Accused.
“It was just another direct action,” he said huskily, staring at the twisting texture of the ceiling. “Some fucking NVA colonel that military intelligence had pegged as an up-and-comer. We go in, Bobby Ramirez and I, to this little village in the middle of nowhere. Our job is to take the guy out, quick and silent.”
He stopped. Sipped his beer.
“We did,” he said, his breath whistling across the bottle mouth.
That’s not all, though, is it?
“No,” Chisolm whispered. “It isn’t.”