Behind Closed Doors

He’d track down the bastard responsible for the boy’s death now that he had a body—concrete evidence. He couldn’t save the life.

But this one…

Even after five years in the sex crimes bureau, Daniel couldn’t just go home and rest when he was close to solving a case. Taking a break might mean the difference between a young woman living with strength and confidence—and one constantly having to fight fear and panic to recover the slightest hint of peace.

As always, memories of Sheila, or at least an awareness of those memories, kept him awake and working, even if that meant missing a night’s sleep. He rarely thought consciously about his older sister. Couldn’t allow himself to get that close. But history had taught him that this near the end of a case, he’d miss his sleep one way or another—either working though the long night hours or lying alone in the dark, remembering.

Daniel’s phone rang. There’d been another rape. Grabbing his jacket, Daniel called out to his partner who was just leaving, dispatched a forensics team to the crime scene and headed for the hospital.

“Laura! Honey! Open the door!” Harry rattled the doorknob, overwhelmed by helplessness. “Please?”

Wiping dried blood from his nose, which he figured probably wasn’t broken, he stared at the door separating him from his wife. “Laura?”

Getting the same response he’d been receiving for the past five minutes—none—Harry slumped his good shoulder against the frame, his swollen face an inch from the jamb.

He could hear movement, the toilet flushing, sniffling.

“Honey?” Shaking with the need to get to her, Harry tried not to feel the throbbing in his face and head.

“Laura? Don’t shower. We have to get you to a doctor, baby.”

Should he storm the door?

And have her think he was violent, too?

Laura, a botanist who studied the medicinal properties of desert plants, had locked herself in with her closet full of remedies.

Please, God, don’t let her be destroying evidence.

“I called the police. They’re on their way.” They were going to scout the area, as well, in case anyone wearing black leather gloves and a hood happened to be hanging around. That wasn’t too damn likely, he supposed, but he wanted them to look.

“They got in through the sliding glass door in the family room,” he continued. Talking because it was the only connection he had to her.

“They lifted if off the track, although I have no idea how. It’s back on and I’ve got a broom handle in the track. The officer said that would keep intruders out.”

More movement in the bathroom. He listened carefully, hoping, but the sound wasn’t coming closer.

“They assured me that the chances of anyone trying to get in again tonight are almost nonexistent.”

Didn’t make him feel any better.

“Laura? Please?” He drew out the last word until his voice broke.

And then he heard the shower.

She hid her nakedness behind the curtain, aware of the water pulsing down around her. Little cold pellets. Striking her skin. She should turn the dial, heat up the water.

But didn’t care enough to bend down.

Or have enough strength to do so.

Just then, a warm flood hit her inner thigh, galvanizing her into action. She had to get that vile stuff off her. Out of her. Dripping, she hurried over to the cupboard for a new bar of soap—unable to touch the bar she and Harry had both used the morning before. She tore off the paper, dropping it on the floor, and started scrubbing her skin before she was even back beneath the spray. She scrubbed until her skin hurt. Scrubbed everywhere. Her arms, her neck and face. Places they’d touched. And places they hadn’t.

They’d touched her. They’d left traces of themselves behind.

And she couldn’t get rid of them.

Because they weren’t just on the outside.

Yerba Mansa.

Out of the shower again, standing in front of the linen closet across from the toilet, Laura snatched the jar of dried, crushed root and the douche bag. She filled the bag with hot water, then opened the jar and inhaled the herb’s eucalyptus odor.

Calm. It will make you calm.

Hands shaking, she spilled as much of the precious, healing powder as she managed to pour into the bag’s opening, screwed on the applicator lid and listened to her mind repeat pages of botanical facts about the root, let it take care of her as she lay in the bathtub, with the cold water still stinging her skin, and applied the mixture.

Mixture of this root with a cup of hot water, injected vaginally, treats venereal disease, uterine cancer and stops excessive bleeding after childbirth. A sitz bath with yerba mansa will heal tearing….

The muscles in her arm twitched, but she held on to the bag until she’d completed the dose. And then, as if this last effort had taken every ounce of strength and determination left in her, Laura curled into the fetal position, closed her eyes and waited to die.

Harry’s entire upper body throbbed. Standing outside the bathroom door he struggled to concentrate, to focus only on the here-and-now.

He realized all movement in the room had stopped. He could still hear the shower but no Laura.

He couldn’t wait any longer. Dignity and respect were secondary to more immediate concerns. Like Laura’s safety. Her life. His chances of breaking down the door with his injured shoulder weren’t great, so Harry hurried out to the garage for an Allen wrench that would be thin enough to let him pick the lock.

Minutes later, the door gave way and Harry stumbled inside.

The police were going to be there soon.

“Laura?”

With one panicked glance, he took in the sight. The floor was soaked. Some kind of powered herb littered the countertop and spilled into the sink.

He couldn’t see Laura’s shape in the shadows behind the shower curtain. Yanking it open so forcefully he ripped one of the plastic-lined holes holding it in place, Harry spotted Laura immediately.

Oh, God. “No!”

Down on his knees, completely uncaring about the cold water that was spitting on them, he hauled his beautiful wife out of the tub and onto his lap on the floor.

“Laura?” he cried softly, hating the weakness in his voice, his limbs, his heart.

She was breathing. And conscious if the tears were any indication.

“Oh sweet baby, we’ll take care of you, I promise,” he said, conviction behind every word. “We’re going to make this better. We’ll get them.”

He didn’t know how, but he knew, in that second, that he’d keep this promise to her.

Harder sobs were Laura’s only response to his vow—to his presence in general. Tears streamed from beneath her closed lids. She wouldn’t even look at him.

Harry prayed to God she was still in there. Laura was a peacemaker, always had been. A gentle, loving person.

Had they wreaked irrevocable damage on that precious spirit he loved so completely? Broken her?

“Come on, sweetie,” he said. He pulled a blanket from the bottom shelf of the still-open linen closet, wrapped it around her shivering, limp body and hugged her to his chest. The pain in his shoulder was growing more noticeable, yet he welcomed it—needed the immediate feeling to focus on. He had to get away from the horror, the fear of what this night had done to Laura, if he was going to get them through these next hours.

“It’s okay now, love,” he crooned, his bruised face close to her neck. “I’m here, I have you. You’re safe.”

He didn’t know if her shiver was from the cold or in reaction to him. God, he needed her to talk. To yell at him, to whisper her fear or blame him for not being man enough to protect her. In their own home, their own bed.

“You’re strong, Laura.” He had no idea where the words came from, but he couldn’t stop them. “You know that. Anytime a fight’s been necessary in your life, you were ready for it. You stood up to your parents when you fell in love with me, fought like crazy to be a black man’s wife.”

“Y-y-y-our…. wife…”

Tears prickled his eyes again as he heard that soft voice. The love of his life was still here with him.

With a silent oath, Harry once again dedicated himself to finding out who’d done this to Laura—and to making sure they were locked up and put away forever. If all he could give her was peace of mind from knowing that they’d never be able to get her again, then he’d risk whatever it cost to see that she had it.

And anything else she needed.

By the time the two forensics officers from the investigative services bureau, sex crimes division, were at their door, Laura was calm and dressed in sweatpants, T-shirt and a jacket zipped up to her chin—in spite of Tucson’s June heat. Clinging to Harry’s arm, she went with him to the door. He wouldn’t have it any other way. He couldn’t seem to let go of her, either.

“Can you describe what happened?” Jim Mendoza, the older of the two officers, asked before they were even in the door.

As succinctly as possible, Harry did as they asked, somehow getting words past the emotion.

“Did you recognize either one of them?” The speaker barely glanced at Laura, though his question was clearly directed at her.

She shook her head.

“Can you describe them?”

“One was taller than the other,” Harry said, the vision imprinted on his brain. He named approximate heights and weights. “They were dressed identically in black jeans, leather jackets that came to just above their hips and black hoods made out of some kind of cotton. The hoods tucked into the jackets. They both wore black leather gloves.” Harry handed over the scrap of leather he’d bitten off.

The younger cop, Bill Warren, got on his cell phone, relaying the information to others in the field.

“We’ll need to get more information from both of you.” Mendoza was moving slowly into the house. “But first, we need to get her to the hospital.” Once again, he barely glanced at Laura.

Or at Harry, either, for that matter. Warren clicked off his cell phone, eyeing them both, his face lined with compassion.

“An ambulance is waiting outside for you, ma’am,” he said to Laura. “An officer will accompany you to the hospital.”

She squeezed Harry’s arm and he looked down to see the fresh tension tightening her upper lip, panic in her eyes.

“I’ll drive her,” he said. The grip on his arm loosened to a more comfortable pressure—notwithstanding the sharp pain shooting from his shoulder to his fingers.

“We’d rather your wife didn’t leave the custody of a police officer,” Warren began. “That’s so—”

“There’s less chance of any claim of evidence tampering that way,” Mendoza inserted.

Laura’s weight fell against him, her shaking intensifying. “Listen, gentlemen,” Harry heard himself saying the words without conscious thought. “We appreciate your position, but right now, my only concern is my wife. She doesn’t want to ride in an ambulance and as she’s not in major physical distress, I’m not going to ask her to do so.”

Mendoza looked at Laura fully for the first time, staring at her hair, still damp from the shower. “You didn’t bathe, did you?” he asked, his voice urgent.

“She did,” Harry told him.

“They didn’t tell you not to?”

Not wanting to waste another second on something that couldn’t be changed, Harry shook his head. “The dispatcher mentioned it, but Laura’s comfort seemed more important.” he said.

Not that those instructions would have mattered. Based on Laura’s somewhat incoherent behavior, he didn’t think he would’ve been able to prevent her from getting in that shower, even if he’d thought of the Allen wrench earlier.

“They’ll still be able to use a rape kit,” Warren said. “You two go on ahead and we’ll talk to the detectives in charge.”

Harry nodded.

“We need to look around here first, though.”

“Fine.” Harry opened the door wider, moving so that his good arm was around Laura as he led her through their house to the garage and saw her safely buckled into the front seat of his car.

He wanted her as far away as he could get her before the police turned their bedroom into a crime scene.

“Did either of you get a glimpse of their faces?”

In a private office at the hospital, Laura tried to concentrate. She had no idea how long it’d been since she and Harry had been whisked through emergency-room protocol and ushered into separate treatment rooms. She’d not only lost track of time, but all sense of herself.

Her body ached everywhere, as though she’d been rolled down a twenty-mile hill of rocks wrapped in burlap. Her wrists were raw and burning in spite of the salve they’d put on them. And she had what felt like menstrual cramps.

The policemen, Detective Boyd and his partner, Robert Miller, were looking at her. So was Harry.

The last she’d heard, Harry had been describing the dark hoods and black leather gloves again.

“Do you have anything to add to what your husband said?” Miller asked, pen poised above a pad of paper.

“That’s all I saw, too,” she said, relieved that she sounded so…human. Sane.

Capable.

She didn’t feel any of those things.

“What about voices?” Boyd asked, his gaze intent as it moved between her and Harry. She liked the way he looked at her, as though she was someone he really cared about. Someone he had faith would be able to help him.

She wanted to help him.

Except that she needed to go. As far and as fast from this night as she could get. And never, ever, ever think about it again.

“Did you notice any identifying features?”

She shook her head. “The smaller one never spoke.”

With a raised eyebrow, Daniel Boyd turned to Harry. “Not a word?”

“He whispered something at the end, but never actually spoke—not so we could identify a voice.” The sight of Harry’s misshapen, swollen face almost made her start to cry again. His shoulder was in a sling.

“What about the other one?”

“He didn’t say much, either,” Harry said. “A warning not to move if I didn’t want to get hurt any worse.”

“Was his voice low or high? Gravelly? Did he have any kind of accent?”

Laura couldn’t even remember hearing the man speak.

“Deep. No accent.” Harry wasn’t as calm as he’d appeared before they’d arrived at the hospital. But he might’ve been putting on an act for her sake. “He said I’d have more than an AC injury if I didn’t keep still.”

“An AC injury?” Miller asked.

Harry nodded. And Laura just felt lost. It was like they were talking about two different incidents in two different rooms. She’d had no idea.

“Some type of medical background?” Miller said to Boyd

“Yeah. AC refers to acromioclavincular,” Harry offered. “I’ve just been told it’s a medical term for shoulder joint. Whether he has medical training or not, the bastard was articulate.”

Miller and Boyd both wrote in their notebooks.

“Harry’s a professor at U of A,” Laura blurted, in case the detectives failed to take him seriously.

Boyd watched her for a long moment.

“And neither of them spoke again?” he finally asked, his forehead creased as he glanced from one to the other.

She shook her head. And held her breath to stave off her immediate dizziness.

“They each said one more thing,” Harry muttered. “The same thing…”

Blocking out the rest of her husband’s sentence, Laura watched him as though from far away.

“I wasn’t sure about the first time, but afterward, when I heard it again…”

Harry swallowed, and Laura couldn’t look at him anymore.

“Tell me about the first time,” Boyd said, his voice softer.

“When the smaller guy was approaching Laura, he paused, like maybe he wasn’t going to do it….”

Cold as ice, Laura read Boyd’s name tag again, wondering why only the Y had faded.

“…and the guy behind me says ‘white stays with white.’”

What? Laura raised her head, shaking inside all over again. What was Harry saying?

“You’re sure about that?” Detective Boyd asked, writing some more on his little pad.

“Yeah.”

“Did you hear it?” the other detective piped up.

Laura could hardly breathe as Miller looked her right in the eye.

“No,” she said as quickly as she could. She’d already answered his questions once.

“And the second instance?” Detective Boyd asked.

“When he’d finished with Laura, the smaller guy whispered the same thing.”

No. Laura didn’t want to talk about this anymore. She didn’t want to see the pointed glance the detectives exchanged, or think about what it all meant.

“We were targeted because I’m black,” Harry’s words were both a challenge and a cry of pain and tore at Laura’s already raw insides.

“Or it was a random attack by bigoted jerks who, when they found a white woman with a black man, used that to fuel their hunger for violence,” Miller said.

“You don’t think they picked us out ahead of time?” Laura asked him. Please, God, let that be so.

Shrugging, Miller said, “Chances are good they didn’t, but we’ll have a better idea after we go over what we’ve got here, along with whatever our team found at the scene.”

It wasn’t the absolute affirmative answer she’d wanted, but Miller’s words comforted Laura.

Boyd took over then, asking more questions, and she was able to answer him without losing her breath. He was kind, like the doctors and the counselor she’d already seen. Compassionate. Guiding her through the interview as unobtrusively and gently as possible—which was saying something, since he—and the doctors before him—had to intrude in the most intimate ways.

“You’re sure neither one of you noticed anything familiar about either one of them? Think of everyone you’ve seen in the past month. Maybe a gas station cashier? Grocery clerk? Anyone?”

As they shook their heads, Miller asked permission to access their credit card and cell phone records to follow up—just in case they’d missed something.

He really seemed to want to rule out the possibility that the men who’d violated them had known them.

Laura wanted that ruled out, too. Random violence was hard enough to deal with. If she had to fear every single person she smiled at through her day, how could she go on?

Harry got pretty agitated when Boyd reported that so far, they had a disappointing lack of evidence. Desert ground was hard and there were no obvious footprints, although they’d be investigating again in the light of day. The gloves precluded fingerprints. They were checking for similar crimes in the state, but the detectives didn’t expect much there. They’d already know if there’d been any. And since neither Harry nor Laura had noticed any telling characteristics about their attackers, other than approximate height and weight, which could describe thousands of men in the city, they had nothing.

Except a piece of leather glove with Harry’s saliva all over it.

“When you find them,” Harry interrupted and Laura stared at him, wondering if her husband had heard the near-hopelessness of their situation, “look at the larger one’s penis. He got it caught in his zipper and I’m betting he’ll have either a cut or a bruise.”

Eyes narrowed, Boyd studied Harry while Miller wrote. Laura squeezed Harry’s hand. God, she loved this man.

“This won’t help us find him, of course,” Boyd said. “But it could certainly help with a post-arrest identification.”

“Which we’ll need,” Miller said, pushing pen and pad into his shirt pocket. “Our chances of a clear rape kit reading are slim.”

Her holistic healing had destroyed the evidence.

Maybe, if they were lucky, there’d be a hair on the bedclothes, but while that could give them some identifiers—if there was a root—it wouldn’t point to an exact individual.

“We got fibers from under Harry’s fingernails,” Boyd continued. “But no skin. We can only hope there’s semen on the bedclothes that can be processed for a DNA sample.”

Harry’s face blanched at that last piece of information; his hands clenched into fists.

Watching her husband, Laura wanted to tell him it was okay. To let the attackers go and never see or hear of them again. She just wanted to know that she and Harry had been a random pick.

She most certainly didn’t want the intruders to have any reason to seek revenge.

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