The cop took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He tapped his pen against his notepad, upon which he had written absolutely nothing. He hadn’t taken a single note about anything she had said.
It was apparent to Sarah that he wasn’t planning on doing a single thing about her intruder and was just humoring her. She was almost tempted to tell him that they weren’t dreams and that she knew for a fact that she had been raped but she didn’t. She was still not sure how much of what she remembered was a dream and how much was real. She couldn’t remember a thing from last night. Not being attacked. Not firing the gun. Nothing.
If this was all in her head and she was going crazy she’d be putting the neighbor through hell for nothing and causing him all kinds of problems. People only tended to remember when someone was accused of a crime not when they were exonerated. A rape charge might get him fired or chased right out of the neighborhood. He might even retaliate by suing them or calling the homeowner’s association on them every time they were late bringing in their trash can on trash day or when they parked on the driveway instead of in the garage or if they didn’t trim their shrubs or calling the Nevada Water Authority when they didn’t change their sprinkler clocks on drought days or calling the police whenever their stereo was too loud or any of those other petty things neighbors did to one another to make their lives hell. It might even wind up with him and Josh in a fight or worse. She thought about Josh storming out of the house with a gun in his hand. What if Dale had a gun? That could get really ugly. She definitely did not want to start a feud with the new neighbor.
“What if she’s been drugged, and that’s why she can’t remember anything? You could do a urinalysis while she’s at the hospital.”
“Still no way to prove the neighbor did it or that she didn’t take the drugs herself.”
“But if they find that she’s been raped and they find some kind of date-rape drug in her system, that should be enough for a warrant then, right?”
The policeman looked down at his patent leather cop shoes and shook his head, raising his arms in surrender.
“All right. I’ll take you down to the hospital.”
“I’ll get my purse.”
Sarah walked into the living room and snatched her purse off the couch. She walked past Josh without looking at him. She was still angry that he’d doubted her about the drugs. As she walked out the door she hoped that if Dale had really drugged her, he hadn’t used meth.
The ride to the hospital was loaded with tension as the police officer attempted to talk them out of it during the entire ride.
“You sure you want to do this, right? These examinations can be pretty invasive. I’ll have to call a rape counselor. That’s just procedure. And she’s going to ask you some pretty tough questions.”
“I’ll tell her everything I can remember.”
“They might have to ask you about your marriage. You know, to rule your husband out as the rapist.”
“My husband didn’t rape me.”
“I’m not saying that. I’m just trying to prepare you for some of the questions they might ask you.”
“It sounds to me like you’re trying to talk me out of it.”
“I’m taking you, aren’t I?”
They fell silent for the rest of the ride. Sarah was
grateful for the break. She needed to think. She wanted to try to remember as much as she could.
Sarah still could not remember much of the previous night. She remembered changing the sheets. She remembered surfing the Internet and then putting the laptop down beside the bed and grabbing her gun. She remembered falling asleep with the gun clenched in both hands and held tight to her chest. And she remembered waking up when Josh walked in. Everything in between was completely gone. But she could remember the previous night clearly.
She remembered waking up and reaching out for her husband, only to feel that warm wetness and hearing him wheezing and gurgling as he drowned on his own blood. She remembered looking up and seeing Dale stab Josh again and again. And she remembered what he had done to her. She could not forget the image of his tiny penis thrusting between her blood-soaked breasts. The problem was that she could also remember waking up unmarred with no visible wounds or scars and seeing her husband…alive. It had to have been a dream. But then she’d started finding things, things that didn’t add up, things that supported her memories. The only thing that didn’t make sense was the fact that she and Josh were alive.
They arrived at the hospital with the police officer still visibly annoyed at being inconvenienced. There was a nurse waiting for him along with a victim advocate from the LVPD.
“We’ll take it from here,” the female detective said, and the young officer looked like he could just barely contain the urge to jump for joy.
“Have fun, guys,” the officer said, and saluted them
with a flip of his hand as he turned and walked out the hospital’s sliding doors, weaving around a gurney that was being rushed in by some paramedics with a man on it screaming his head off and bleeding from a huge wound in his leg. The officer gave the bleeding man the same flippant salute as he strode out into the parking lot.
“Asshole,” Sarah and Josh said in unison as they watched him leave.
The female detective smiled at Sarah as she ushered them into a small examination room.
The victim’s advocate from the police department was a tall black woman in her late thirties with thick curves. She had a kind face with a scar in the corner of her mouth that ran from the right corner of her lip up to her nose.
“My name is Detective Trina Lassiter.”
“Sarah Lincoln.”
“Okay, Mrs. Lincoln, tell me what happened,” she said as she and the nurse pulled on a pair of latex gloves.
“I’m not really sure. I remember being attacked but I’m not sure it wasn’t a dream.”
The nurse just nodded without looking up.
“That’s normal. Your mind sometimes suppresses unpleasant memories,” the nurse, a Latino woman in her fifties, said.
The detective opened a big plastic bag and withdrew cotton swabs, Q-tips, and little plastic jars.
“When do you think this happened?” Lassiter asked.
“The memories are from two nights ago but I think something may have happened last night as well.”
The nurse finally looked up. She looked at Detective Lassiter and then they both looked back at Sarah.
“You think you’ve been raped twice?” Lassiter asked.
“At least. I think the neighbor is doing it. I think he might be drugging me.”
Detective Lassiter turned to the nurse who was still staring with her mouth open.
“Let’s get blood and urine samples. Check her for GHB and rufinol.”
She turned back to Sarah.
“Okay, let’s get your clothes off. Is this what you were wearing during the attacks?”
“No. They happened at night when I was sleeping. I was just wearing my underwear but somebody washed them.”
She related the entire incident, as much as she could remember including being stabbed and then waking up the next morning without a mark on her. She told the detective about the bloody sheets and then the missing sheets the next day. The tall black woman listened patiently.
“Okay. Okay, let’s just get you undressed.”
Sarah took off her clothes and slipped into the hospital gown. She put her legs into the stirrups and closed her eyes as the nurse swabbed the inside of her vagina and anus and then swabbed beneath her tongue and inside her cheeks, bagging each Q-tip and labeling it before placing them back into the plastic envelope. She winced as the nurse slid a syringe into the vein on the inside of her elbow and withdrew three vials of blood. Then she gave Sarah a cup and helped her into the bathroom to take a urine sample.
When she came out of the bathroom she could tell by the demeanor of the two women that something had changed.
“What did you find?”
“Nothing. We’ll send the samples to the lab but there’s no sign of vaginal bruising or tearing. No sign of rectal trauma either. It doesn’t look like you’ve been raped.”
Sarah just stared at them, trying to figure out what it all meant.
“But…? But those memories? Those fucked-up horrible memories? Am I going crazy?”
“I’m not saying that nothing happened. If you were drugged your muscles may have relaxed, making it easier for him to penetrate. You may have even had an involuntary reaction and been lubricated enough that he didn’t tear any tissue the way he would have if you weren’t lubricated. That’s normal and it doesn’t mean you enjoyed it or anything. The body just acts funny sometimes and there’s nothing we can do about it. You also said his penis was small. All of that may have contributed to the lack of evidence. A lubricated condom on a small penis could leave very little evidence of bruising or tearing.”
Sarah nodded in agreement, barely listening. She kept thinking about what the detective had said about her being lubricated. Had she subconsciously enjoyed it? Maybe all the porn she watched had fucked up her head. How could she have enjoyed being raped by that perverted little freak? The woman had said that it happens all the time and it didn’t mean that she was enjoying it or that the sex was voluntary but Sarah still questioned herself. She could only guess what Josh would say. He already thought she was a nymphomaniac. But there was, of course, another possibility. It might have all been in her head. She might have never been raped at all.
“Like I said, we’ll test the samples. It might be a
good idea to get a semen sample from your husband too so we can exclude his semen.”
Sarah nodded. She didn’t want to talk anymore. She just wanted to go home.
Sarah didn’t say anything to Josh when they left the hospital. She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t make her sound insane.
“Let’s call an alarm company when we get home. We’ll see if we can get someone to install it tonight.”
Sarah shook her head slowly, still staring ahead, eyes glazed, looking out the windshield at nothing.
“No. We don’t need to spend any more money on this. But I can’t take another night in that house. Not tonight. Let’s just go home and get some clothes and I’ll go with you to work. See if you can get us a hotel room.”
“Okay. Okay. That shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll speak to the hotel manager. I should be able to get us a few nights for free. That will give me enough time to get that door fixed. I think I’m going to get an alarm installed anyway. I should make some good tips tonight and that cop was right. The neighborhood is changing.”
Sarah nodded again, still staring out the windshield at the desert rushing by. The mountains surrounding the valley were still an odd sight to her. In Indianapolis there was nothing to see but trees and more buildings. Though, the mountains were the
only
things about the town that Sarah thought of as beautiful. This
was a town that destroys its own history. Any building older than thirty years was threatened with demolition leaving only row after row of cookie-cutter stucco tract homes, most less than ten years old. More and more Sarah was coming to despise this city.
The collapse of the economy had devastated the town, leaving brand-new houses standing empty, vacant strip malls, and towering office buildings standing unfinished, little more than steel frames without the bank funding to complete them. And the crime rate had been steadily increasing year after year. There were more red and blue bandanas hanging from the back pockets of sagging jeans than she had ever seen before.
Their car pulled into the driveway and Sarah turned to look at the house across the street. She thought she saw the blinds close as she turned. A sudden fury rose inside her and she stormed down the driveway and started across the street toward the neighbor’s house.
“Fuck this bullshit! I’m not going to let anyone terrorize me and scare me out of my own damn house!”
“Sarah!”
Josh came running after her, catching up to her in the street. Sarah did not slow her stride.
“Sarah? Sarah? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to let this bastard know that I know what he’s been up to. I want him to know that I’m not afraid.”
Sarah walked up the neighbor’s steps and pounded on his front door. It felt good to be doing something, to be taking control again instead of just sitting back waiting for him to break in and attack her again. Even if the entire attack was all in her head and the neighbor didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, it
would still feel good to be doing something. After being probed and examined and being told by those fucking nurses that she might have gotten wet when she was being raped, it felt great to go on the offensive. She waited. There was no answer. She pounded on the door again.
“Open this goddamned door! I know you’re there. I saw you looking at me through the blinds!”
The door swung open and Dale stood there in a robe that was too big for him and made him look even smaller, weaker, and emaciated.
“Yes?”
“I know what you’ve been up to and if I ever catch you sneaking into my house again I will kill you. Do you hear me? I will blow your fucking head off!”
Dale looked terrified. His eyes shifted nervously from Josh to Sarah.
“I-I-I haven’t been in your house. What are you talking about? I wouldn’t do anything like that.”
Josh tried to step in front of Sarah.
“My wife has been under a lot of stress lately.”
Sarah whirled on him, pushing him back and jabbing a finger in his face.
“Don’t! Don’t you fucking dare!”
Josh fell silent and dropped his head. Sarah turned back to Dale.
“I don’t know how you’re doing it, but we are going to catch you and then your ass won’t go to jail. I won’t call the cops. I’m going to send your scrawny ass to the fucking morgue!”
Dale smiled. It was quick. He suppressed it almost immediately and resumed his look of fear and confusion. But Sarah saw it. He had smiled. Before she could think, question herself, talk herself out of it, she drew
her hand back and slapped him. She turned her shoulders into the blow, giving it her all. He fell against the doorjamb and a big, angry red welt in the shape of four fingers rose on his left cheek. The expression on his face was one of stunned outrage but then she saw it again, that quick smile. Sarah balled up her fist and pulled back and Josh grabbed her, dragged her off the steps and into the street.