Blindsighted Page 20

  Lena counted to twenty, forcing herself to give the woman some time. She had counted in the Ryan Gordon interview; it was an old trick of hers and the only way she could make herself at least appear patient. When she reached fifty, Lena asked, “Ryan was there?”

  Julia nodded.

  “In the library?”

  She nodded again.

  Lena reached over, putting her hand on Julia’s arm again. She would have held her hand if it had not been wrapped in tight bandages. She kept her tone even, putting in just a little bit of pressure, as she said, “You saw Ryan at the library. Then what happened?”

  Julia responded to the pressure. “We talked a little while, then I had to go back to the dorm.”

  “Were you mad at him?”

  Julia’s eyes found Lena’s. Something passed between them, an unvoiced message. Lena knew then that Ryan had some kind of control over Julia, but that she wanted to break it. Lena also knew that as much of a bastard as Ryan Gordon was, he had not been the man to do this to his girlfriend.

  Lena asked, “Did you argue?”

  “We kind of made up, though.”

  “Kind of, but not really?” Lena clarified, sensing what had happened in the library that night. She could see Ryan Gordon trying to push Julia into making some kind of commitment to him. She could also see that Julia’s eyes had finally been opened as to what kind of person her ex-boyfriend was. Julia had finally seen him for what he was. But someone else more evil than Ryan Gordon could ever hope to be had been waiting for her.

  Lena asked, “So you left the library, then what?”

  “There was a man,” she said. “On the way to the dorm.”

  “Which way did you walk?”

  “The back way, around the agri-building.”

  “By the lake?”

  She shook her head. “The other side.”

  Lena waited for her to continue.

  “I ran into him, and he dropped his books, and I dropped mine.” Her voice trailed off, but her breathing became loud in the small room. She was nearly panting.

  “Did you see his face then?”

  “I don’t remember. He gave me a shot.”

  Lena felt her eyebrows furrow. “Like a shot with a syringe?”

  “I felt it. I didn’t see it.”

  “Where did you feel it?”

  She put her hand to her left hip.

  “He was behind you when you felt it?” Lena asked, thinking this would make the killer left-handed, just like Sibyl’s attacker.

  “Yeah.”

  “So he took you then?” Lena asked. “He ran into you, then you felt the shot, then he took you somewhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “In his car?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “The next thing I knew, I was in a basement.” She put her hands over her face, crying in earnest. Her body started to shake with grief.

  “It’s okay,” Lena said, putting her hand over the other woman’s. “Do you want to stop now? You’re in charge of this.”

  The room was quiet again but for Julia’s breathing. When she did speak again, her voice was a hoarse, almost imperceptible whisper. “He raped me.”

  Lena felt a lump in her throat. She knew this already, of course, but the way Julia said the word stripped Lena of every defense she had. Lena felt raw and exposed. She did not want Jeffrey in the room. For some reason, he seemed to sense this. When she looked up at him, he nodded toward the door. Lena mouthed a yes, and he left without a sound.

  “Do you know what happened next?” Lena asked.

  Julia moved her head, trying to find Jeffrey.

  “He’s gone,” Lena said, giving her voice an assured tone that she did not feel. “It’s just us, Julia. It’s just you and me, and we’ve got all day if you need it. All week, all year.” She paused, lest the girl take that as encouragement to stop the interview. “Just keep in mind that the sooner we get the details, the sooner we can stop him. You don’t want him to do this to another girl, do you?”

  She took the question hard, as Lena expected she would. Lena knew she had to be a little tough or the girl would simply shut up, keeping the details to herself.

  Julia sobbed, the noise filling the room, ringing in Lena’s ears.

  Julia said, “I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”

  “Me, either,” Lena answered. “You have to tell me what he did to you.” She paused, then, “Did you see his face at any time?”

  “No,” she answered. “I mean, I did, but I couldn’t tell. I couldn’t make the connection. It was so dark all the time. There was no light at all.”

  “Are you sure it was a basement?”

  “It smelled,” she said. “Musty, and I could hear water dripping.”

  “Water?” Lena asked. “Like dripping from a faucet, or maybe from the lake?”

  “A faucet,” Julia said. “More like a faucet. It sounded…” She closed her eyes, and for a few seconds she seemed to let herself go back to that place. “Like a metallic clinking.” She mimicked the sound, “Clink, clink, clink, over and over. It never stopped.” She put her hands over her ears, as if to stop the noise.

  “Let’s go back to the college,” Lena said. “You felt the shot in your hip, then what? Do you know what kind of car he was driving?”

  Julia shook her head again in an exaggerated sweep left to right. “I don’t remember. I was picking up my books, and then the next thing I knew, I was, I was…” Her voice trailed off.

  “In the basement?” Lena provided. “Do you remember anything about where you were?”

  “It was dark.”

  “You couldn’t make anything out?”

  “I couldn’t open my eyes. They wouldn’t open.” Her voice so soft that Lena had to strain to hear. “I was flying.”

  “Flying?”

  “I kept floating up, like I was on water. I could hear the waves from the ocean.”

  Lena took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Did he have you on your back?”

  Julia’s face crumpled at this, and she shook with sobs.

  “Honey,” Lena prompted. “Was he white? Black? Could you tell?”

  She shook her head again. “I couldn’t open my eyes. He talked to me. His voice.” Her lips were trembling, and her face had turned an alarming shade of red. The tears came in earnest now, marking a continual stream down her face. “He said he loved me.” She gasped for air as the panic took hold. “He kept kissing me. His tongue—” She stopped, sobbing.

  Lena took a deep breath, trying to calm herself down. She was pushing too hard. Lena counted to a slow one hundred, then said, “The holes in your hands. We know he put something in your hands and feet.”

  Julia looked at the bandages, as if seeing them for the first time. “Yes,” she said. “I woke up, and my hands were nailed down. I could see the nail go through, but it didn’t hurt.”

  “You were on the floor?”

  “I think so. I felt”—she seemed to look for a word—“I felt suspended. I was flying. How did he make me fly? Was I flying?”

  Lena cleared her throat. “No,” she answered. Then began, “Julia, can you think of anybody new in your life, maybe someone on campus or in town, who was making you uncomfortable? Maybe you felt like you were being watched?”

  “I’m still being watched,” she said, looking out the window.

  “I’m watching you,” Lena said, turning the girl’s face back toward her. “I’m watching you, Julia. Nobody is going to hurt you again. Do you understand that? Nobody.”

  “I don’t feel safe,” she said, her face crumpling as she started to cry again. “He can see me. I know he can see me.”

  “It’s just you and me here,” Lena assured her. When she spoke, it was like talking to Sibyl, assuring Sibyl that she would be taken care of. “When you go to Augusta, I’ll be with you. I’m not going to let you out of my sight. Do you understand that?”

  Julia seemed to be more frightened despite Len
a’s words. Her voice was raspy when she asked, “Why am I going to Augusta?”

  “I don’t know that for sure,” Lena answered, reaching for the water pitcher. “Don’t worry about that right now.”

  “Who’s going to send me to Augusta?” Julia asked, her lips trembling.

  “Drink some more water,” Lena told her, holding the cup up to her lips. “Your parents are going to be here soon. Don’t worry about anything but taking care of yourself and getting better.”

  The girl choked, and water spilled down her neck and onto the bed. Her eyes opened wide in panic. “Why are you moving me?” she asked. “What’s going to happen?”

  “We won’t move you if you don’t want,” Lena said. “I’ll talk to your parents.”

  “My parents?”

  “They should be here soon,” Lena assured her. “It’s okay.”

  “Do they know?” Julia asked, her voice raised. “Did you tell them what happened to me?”

  “I don’t know,” Lena answered. “I’m not sure if they know any of the details.”

  “You can’t tell my daddy,” the girl sobbed. “Nobody can tell my father, okay? He can’t know what happened.”

  “You didn’t do anything,” Lena said. “Julia, your dad’s not going to blame you for this.”

  Julia was quiet. After a while, she looked back out the window, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “It’s okay,” Lena soothed, taking a tissue out of the box on the table. She reached over the girl, blotting the water off the pillow. The last thing this girl needed to think about was how her father would react to what had happened to her. Lena had worked with rape victims before. She knew how the blame worked. Very seldom did a victim blame anyone but herself.

  There was a strange noise Lena found vaguely familiar. Too late she realized it was her gun.

  “Move away,” Julia whispered. She held the gun awkwardly in her bandaged hands. It tilted toward Lena, then back toward Julia as she tried to get a better grip on the weapon. Lena looked toward the door, thinking to call for Jeffrey, but Julia warned her, “Don’t.”

  Lena held her hands out to her sides, but did not back up. She knew the safety was on, but also knew it would take a matter of seconds for the girl to switch it off.

  Lena said, “Give me the gun.”

  “You don’t understand,” the girl said, tears welling into her eyes. “You don’t understand what he did to me, how he—” She stopped, choking on a sob. She did not have a good grip on the gun, but the barrel was pointed toward Lena and her finger was on the trigger. Lena felt a cold sweat overcome her, and she honestly could not recall if the safety was on or off. What she did know was that a round was already chambered. Once the safety was off, a tap on the trigger would fire the weapon.

  Lena tried to keep her voice calm. “What, sweetheart? What don’t I understand?”

  Julia tilted the gun back toward her own head. She fumbled, almost dropping it, before letting the barrel rest on her chin.

  “Don’t do that,” Lena begged. “Please give me the gun. There’s a bullet in the chamber.”

  “I know about guns.”

  “Julia, please,” Lena said, knowing she needed to keep the girl talking. “Listen to me.”

  A slight smile came to her lips. “My daddy used to take me hunting with him. He used to let me help him clean the rifles.”

  “Julia—”

  “When I was there.” She choked back a sob. “When I was with him.”

  “The man? The man who abducted you?”

  “You don’t know what he did,” she said, her voice tight in her throat. “The things he did to me. I can’t tell you.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Lena said. She wanted to move forward, but there was a look to Julia Matthews’s eyes that kept her rooted to the floor. Charging the girl was not an option.

  Lena said, “I won’t let him hurt you again, Julia. I promise.”

  “You don’t understand,” the girl sobbed, sliding the gun up to the cleft of her chin. She could barely grip the weapon, but Lena knew this wouldn’t matter at such a close range.

  “Honey, please don’t,” Lena said, her eyes going to the door. Jeffrey was on the other side, maybe she could alert him somehow without letting Julia know.

  “Don’t,” Julia said, as if reading Lena’s mind.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Lena said. She tried to make her voice firmer, but the truth was Lena had only read about this kind of situation in procedural manuals. She had never talked someone out of suicide.

  Julia said, “The way he touched me. The way he kissed me.” Her voice broke. “You just don’t know.”

  “What?” Lena asked, slowly moving her hand toward the gun. “What don’t I know?”

  “He—” She stopped, a guttural sound coming from her throat. “He made love to me.”

  “He—”

  “He made love to me,” she repeated, a whisper that echoed in the room. “Do you know what that means?” she asked. “He kept saying he didn’t want to hurt me. He wanted to make love to me. He did.”

  Lena felt her mouth open, but there was nothing she could say. She couldn’t be hearing what she thought she was hearing. “What are you saying?” she asked, aware of the sharpness in her tone. “What do you mean?”

  “He made love to me,” Julia repeated. “The way he touched me.”

  Lena shook her head, as if to rid this from her mind. She could not keep the incredulity out of her tone when she asked, “Are you saying you enjoyed it?”

  A snapping sound came as Julia disengaged the safety. Lena felt too stunned to move but somehow managed to reach Julia seconds before the girl pulled the trigger. Lena looked down in time to see Julia Matthews’s head explode beneath her.

  * * *

  The water from the shower came like needles against Lena’s skin. She was aware of the burning, but it was not uncomfortable. She was numb to all sensations, numb from the inside out. Her knees gave, and Lena let herself slide down into the tub. She pulled her knees to her chest, closing her eyes as the water beat down on her breasts and face. She bent her head forward, feeling like a rag doll. The water pummeled the top of her head, bruised the back of her neck, but she did not care. Her body did not belong to her anymore. She was empty. She could not think of one thing that had meaning in her life, not her job, not Jeffrey, not Hank Norton, and certainly not herself.

  Julia Matthews was dead, just like Sibyl. Lena had failed them both.

  The water started to run cold, the spray pricking against her skin. Lena turned off the shower and dried herself with a towel, feeling as if she was just going through the motions. Her body still felt dirty despite the fact that this was her second shower in the last five hours. There was a strange taste in her mouth, too. Lena wasn’t sure if it was her imagination or if something had gone into her mouth when Julia had pulled the trigger.

  She shuddered thinking about this.

  “Lee?” Hank called from outside the bathroom door.

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” Lena answered, putting paste on her toothbrush. She looked at herself in the mirror as she tried to scrub the taste out of her mouth. The resemblance to Sibyl was gone today. There was nothing left of her sister.

  Lena went down to the kitchen in her robe and bedroom slippers. Outside the kitchen door, she put her hand to the wall, feeling light-headed and sick to her stomach. She was forcing her body to move, otherwise she would go to sleep and never wake up. Her body ached to give in to that, ached to cut off, but Lena knew that as soon as her head hit the pillow she would be wide awake, her mind playing back the sight of Julia Matthews just before she killed herself. The girl had been looking at Lena when she pulled the trigger. Their eyes had locked, and Lena did not need to see the gun to know that death was on the younger woman’s mind.

  Hank was at the kitchen table, drinking a Coke. He stood when she entered the room. Lena felt a flush of shame and couldn’t look him in the eye. She had been str
ong in the car as Frank drove her back to the house. She had not said a word to her partner, or commented on the fact that despite her efforts to clean herself at the hospital, she had gray matter and blood sticking to her like hot wax. There were pieces of bone in her breast pocket, and she could feel blood dripping down her face and neck, even though she had wiped it all off at the hospital. It was not until she had the front door closed behind her that Lena let herself go. That Hank had been there, that she had let him hold her in his arms while she sobbed, was something that still brought a sense of shame to her. She did not know herself anymore. She did not know who this weak person was.

  Lena glanced out the window, noting, “It’s dark out.”

  “You slept awhile,” Hank said, going to the stove. “You want some tea?”

  “Yeah,” Lena said, though she had not slept at all. Closing her eyes only brought her closer to what had happened. If she never slept again, Lena would be fine.

  “Your boss called to check on you,” Hank said.

  “Oh,” Lena answered, sitting at the table, her leg tucked underneath her. She wondered what was going through Jeffrey’s mind. He had been out in the hallway, waiting for Lena to call him in, when the gun went off. Lena remembered the expression of absolute shock on his face when he burst through the doorway. Lena had stood there, still leaning over Julia, flesh and bone dripping from her chest and face. Jeffrey had forced her out of this position, patting his hands down Lena’s body, checking to make sure she had not been shot in the process.

  Lena had stood mute while he did this, unable to take her eyes off what was left of Julia Matthews’s face. The young girl had put the gun under her chin, blowing out the back of her head. The wall behind and over the bed was splattered. A bullet hole was three feet down from the ceiling. Jeffrey had forced Lena to stay in that room, drilling her for every bit of information she had gotten from Julia Matthews, questioning every detail of Lena’s narrative as Lena stood there, her lip trembling uncontrollably, unable to follow the words coming out of her own mouth.