Blindsighted (22 page)

"What?"

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing."

"I don't believe you." He waited for her to answer his question, but she just stared at him.

He asked, "Why won't you let me kiss you?"

"I just don't feel like kissing." Her smile was not as sly. "On the mouth."

"What's wrong?" he repeated.

She narrowed her eyes at him as a warning.

"Answer me," he repeated.

Sara kept her eyes on him as she let her hand travel down past the waist of his shorts. She pressed her hand against him, as if to make sure he got her meaning. "I don't want to talk to you."

He stopped her hand with his own. "Look at me."

She shook her head, and when he made her look up she closed her eyes.

He whispered, "What's wrong with you?"

Sara didn't answer. She kissed him full on the mouth, her tongue forcing its way past his teeth. It was a sloppy kiss, far from what he was used to with Sara, but there was an underlying passion that would have buckled his knees had he been standing.

She stopped suddenly, dropping her head to his chest. He tried to make her look back up at him, but she wouldn't.

He asked, "Sara?"

He felt her arms go around him again, but in a very different way from before. There was a desperate quality to her tightening hold, as if she were drowning.

"Just hold me," she begged. "Please just hold me."

Jeffrey woke with a start. He reached out, knowing even as he did that Sara would not be there beside him. He vaguely recalled her sneaking out some time ago, but Jeffrey had been too tired to move, let alone stop her. He turned over, pressing his face into the pillow she had used. He could smell lavender from her shampoo and a slight trace of the perfume she wore. Jeffrey held the pillow, rolling over onto his back. He stared at the ceiling, trying to remember what had happened last night. He still could not get his head around it. He had carried Sara to bed. She had cried softly on his shoulder. He had been so afraid of what was behind her tears that he had not questioned her anymore.

Jeffrey sat up, scratching his chest. He could not stay in bed all day. There was still the list of convicted sexual offenders to complete. He still needed to interview Ryan Gordon and whoever had been at the library with Julia Matthews the last night she had been seen before the abduction. He also needed to see Sara, to make sure she was okay.

He stretched, touching the top of the door jamb as he walked into the bathroom. He stopped in front of the toilet. There was a stack of papers on the sink basin. A silver sliding clip was across the top pages, binding together what looked to be about two hundred sheets of paper. The pages looked dog-eared and yellowed, as if someone had paged through them a number of times. It was, Jeffrey recognized, a trial transcript.

He looked around the bathroom, as if the transcript fairy who had left it might still be around. The only person who had been in the house was Sara, and he could not think why she would leave something like this. He read the title page, noting the date was from twelve years ago. The case was the
State of Georgia v. Jack Allen Wright
.

A yellow Post-it note was sticking out from one of the pages. He flipped the transcript open, stopping at what he saw. Sara's name was listed at the top of the page. Another name, Ruth Jones, probably the district attorney who had prosecuted the case, was listed as the questioner.

Jeffrey sat on the toilet and began to read Ruth Jones's examination of Sara Linton.

Q. Dr. Linton, could you please tell us in your own words the events which took place on the twenty-third day of April, this time last year?

A. I was working at Grady Hospital where I was a pediatric resident. I had a difficult day and decided to go for a drive in my car between shifts.

Q. Was there anything unusual you noticed at this time?

A. When I got to my car, the word
cunt
had been scraped into the passenger's side door. I thought perhaps this was the work of a vandal, so I used some duct tape I kept in the trunk to cover it.

Q. Then what did you do?

A. I went back into the hospital for my shift.

Q. Would you like a drink of water?

A. No, thank you. I went to the rest room, and while I was washing my hands at the sink, Jack Wright came in.

Q. The defendant?

A. That's correct. He came in. He was carrying a mop and wearing gray coveralls. I knew he was the janitor. He apologized for not knocking, said he'd come back later to clean, then left the bathroom.

Q. Then what happened?

A. I went into the stall to use the bathroom. The defendant, Jack Wright, jumped down from the ceiling. It was a drop ceiling. He handcuffed my hands to the handicapped railing, then taped my mouth shut with silver duct tape.

Q. Are you sure this was the defendant?

A. Yes. He had on a red ski mask, but I recognized his eyes. He has very distinctive blue eyes. I remember thinking before that with his long blond hair, beard, and blue eyes he looked like Bible pictures of Jesus. I am certain that it was Jack Wright who attacked me.

Q. Is there any other distinguishing mark that leads you to believe it was the defendant who raped you?

A. I saw a tattoo on his arm of Jesus nailed to the cross with the words JESUS above it and SAVES below it. I recognized this tattoo as belonging to Jack Wright, a janitor at the hospital. I had seen him several times before in the hallway, but we had never spoken to each other.

Q. What happened next, Dr. Linton?

A. Jack Wright pulled me down off the toilet. My ankles were pinned by my pants. They were on the floor. My pants. Around my ankles.

Q. Please, take your time, Dr. Linton.

A. I was pulled forward, but my arms were back behind me like this. He kept me pulled forward by putting one arm around my waist. He held a long knife, approximately six inches, to my face. He cut my lip to warn me, I suppose.

Q. Then what did the defendant do?

A. He put his penis in me and raped me.

Q. Dr. Linton, could you tell us what, if anything, the defendant said during the time he raped you?

A. He kept referring to me as "cunt."

Q. Could you tell us what happened next?

A. He tried several times to bring himself to ejaculation, but was unsuccessful. He pulled his penis out of me and brought himself to climax [mumbled]

Q. Could you repeat that?

A. He brought himself to climax on my face and chest.

Q. Could you tell us what happened then?

A. He cursed me again, then stabbed me with his knife. In the left side, here.

Q. Then what happened?

A. I tasted something in my mouth. I choked. It was vinegar.

Q. He poured vinegar into your mouth?

A. Yes, he had a small vial, like a perfume sample would come in. He tilted it into my mouth and said, "It is finished."

Q. Does this phrase have any particular significance to you, Dr. Linton?

A. It's from John, in the King James version of the Bible. "It is finished." According to John, these are the last words Jesus says as he's dying on the cross. He calls for something to drink, and they give him vinegar. He drinks the vinegar, then, to quote the verse, he gives up the ghost. He dies.

Q. This is from the crucifixion?

A. Yes.

Q. Jesus says, "It is finished."

A. Yes.

Q. His arms pinned back like this?

A. Yes.

Q. A sword is stabbed into his side?

A. Yes.

Q. Was anything else said?

A. No. Jack Wright said this, then left the bathroom.

Q. Dr. Linton, do you have any idea how long you were left in the bathroom?

A. No.

Q. Were you still handcuffed?

A. Yes. I was still handcuffed and I was on my knees looking down at the floor. I was unable to right myself, to sit back.

Q. Then what happened?

A. One of the nurses came in. She saw the blood on the floor and started to scream. A few seconds later, Dr. Lange, my supervisor, came into the room. I'd lost a great deal of blood, and I was still handcuffed. They started to help me, but they couldn't do much with the cuffs on. Jack Wright had rigged the lock so that they would not open. He had shoved something into the lock, a toothpick or something. A locksmith had to be called to cut them off. I passed out during this time. The position of my body was such that blood continued to pool from the stab wound. I lost a great deal of blood during this time from the stab wound.

Q. Dr. Linton, take your time. Would you like to take a short break?

A
. No, I want to continue.

Q. Could you tell me what happened subsequent to the rape?

A. I became pregnant from this contact, and subsequently developed an ectopic pregnancy, which is to say that an egg was implanted in my fallopian tube. There was a rupture which caused bleeding into my abdomen.

Q. What effect, if any, has this had on you?

A. A partial hysterectomy was performed wherein my reproductive organs were removed. I can no longer have children.

Q. Dr. Linton?

A. I would like to take a recess.

Jeffrey sat in his bathroom, staring at the pages of the transcript. He read through them again, then once more, sobs echoing in the bathroom as he cried for the Sara he had never known.

Chapter Nineteen

LENA lifted her head slowly, trying to get some sense of where she was. All she saw was darkness. She held her hand inches from her face, unable to make out her palm and fingers. The last thing she remembered was sitting in her kitchen talking to Hank. After that, she drew a complete blank. It was as if she blinked one second and the next was transported to this spot. Wherever this spot was.

She groaned, moving to her side so that she could sit up. With sudden clarity, she realized that she was naked. The floor underneath her was rough against her skin. She could feel the grain in the wooden planks. Her heart started pounding for some reason, but her mind would not tell her why. Lena reached in front of her, feeling more rough wood, but it was vertical, a wall.

Pressing her hands into the wall, she managed to stand. In the back of her mind, she could make out a noise, but it was unfamiliar to her. Everything seemed disjointed and out of place. She felt physically as if she did not belong here. Lena found she was leaning her head against the wall, the wood pressing into the skin of her forehead. The noise was a staccato in her periphery, pounding, then nothing, pounding, then nothing, like a hammer on a piece of steel. Like a blacksmith fashioning a horseshoe.

Clink, clink, clink.

Where had she heard that before?

Lena 's heart stopped as she finally made the connection. In the darkness, she could see Julia Matthews's lips moving, voicing the noise. Clink, clink, clink. The sound was dripping water.

Chapter Twenty

JEFFREY stood behind the one-way glass, looking into the interview room. Ryan Gordon sat at the table, his skinny arms crossed over his concave chest. Buddy Conford sat beside him, his hands clasped in front of him on the table. Buddy was a fighter. At the age of seventeen, he had lost his right leg from the knee down in a car accident. At the age of twenty-six, he had lost his left eye from cancer. At thirty-nine, a dissatisfied client had attempted to pay Buddy off with two bullets. Buddy had lost a kidney and suffered a collapsed lung, but was back in the courtroom two weeks later. Jeffrey was hoping Buddy's sense of right and wrong would help move things along today. Jeffrey had downloaded a picture of Jack Allen Wright from the state database this morning. Jeffrey would have a lot stronger leg to stand on in Atlanta if he had a positive ID.

Jeffrey had never considered himself an emotional man, but there was an ache in his chest that would not go away. He wanted to talk to Sara so badly, but he was terrified that he would say the wrong thing. Driving in to work, he had gone over and over in his mind what he would say to her, even talking out loud to see how his words sounded. Nothing would come out right, and Jeffrey ended up sitting in his office for ten minutes with his hand on the phone before he could coax up enough courage to dial Sara's number at the clinic.

After telling Nelly Morgan that it wasn't an emergency but he would like to talk to Sara anyway, he got a snippy "She's with a patient," followed by a slam of the phone. This brought Jeffrey an enormous sense of relief, then a feeling of disgust at his own cowardice.

He knew that he needed to be strong for her, but Jeffrey felt too blindsided to be capable of anything but sobbing like a child every time he thought about what had happened to Sara. Part of him was hurt that she had not trusted him enough to tell him what had happened to her in Atlanta. Another part of him was angry that she had flat out lied to him about everything. The scar on her side had been explained away as the result of an appendectomy, though, in retrospect, Jeffrey remembered the scar was jagged and vertical, nothing like a surgeon's clean incision.

That she could not have children was something he had never pushed her on, because obviously it was a sensitive topic. He was comfortable leaving her at peace with that, assuming that it was some medical condition or that perhaps, like some women, she just was not meant to carry a child. He was supposed to be a cop, a detective, and he had taken everything she said at face value because Sara was the type of woman who told the truth about things. Or at least he had thought she was.

"Chief?" Maria said, knocking on the door. "Guy called from Atlanta and said to tell you everything's set up. Wouldn't leave a name. That mean anything to you?"

"Yes," Jeffrey said, checking the folder he held in his hand to make sure the printout was still there. He stared at the picture again, even though he had practically memorized the blurred photo. He brushed past Maria into the hallway. "I'm leaving for Atlanta after this. I don't know when I'll be back. Frank will be in charge."

Jeffrey didn't give her time to respond. He opened the door to the interview room and walked in.

Buddy took on a righteous tone. "We've been here ten minutes."

"And we're only going to be here another ten more if your client decides to cooperate," Jeffrey said, taking the chair across from Buddy.

The only thing Jeffrey knew with any certainty was that he wanted to kill Jack Allen Wright. He had never been a violent man off the football field, but Jeffrey wanted so badly to kill the man who had raped Sara that his teeth ached.

"We ready to start?" Buddy asked, tapping his hand on the table.

Jeffrey glanced out the small window in the door. "We need to wait for Frank," he said, wondering where the man was. Jeffrey hoped he was checking on Lena.

The door opened and Frank entered the room. He looked as if he hadn't slept all night. His shirt was untucked at the side, and a coffee stain was on his tie. Jeffrey gave a pointed glance at his watch.

"Sorry," Frank said, taking the chair beside Jeffrey.

"Right," Jeffrey said. "We've got some questions we need to ask Gordon. In exchange for his being forthcoming, we'll drop the pending charges on the drug bust."

"Fuck that," Gordon snarled. "I told you those weren't my pants."

Jeffrey exchanged a look with Buddy. "I don't have time for this. We'll just send him up to the Atlanta pen and cut our losses."

"What kind of questions?" Buddy asked.

Jeffrey dropped the bomb. Buddy had been expecting a simple plead on yet another drug charge against one of the kids from the college. Jeffrey kept his tone even when he said, "About the death of Sibyl Adams and the rape of Julia Matthews."

Buddy seemed to register a little shock. His face turned white, making his black eye patch stand out even more against his pale face. He asked Gordon, "Do you know anything about this?"

Frank answered for him. "He was the last person to see Julia Matthews in the library. He was her boyfriend."

Gordon piped up, "I told you, they weren't my pants. Get me the fuck out of here."

Buddy gave Gordon the eye. "You'd best be telling them what happened or you're gonna be writing your mama letters from jail."

Gordon crossed his arms, obviously angry. "You're supposed to be my lawyer."

"You're supposed to be a human being," Buddy countered, picking up his briefcase. "Those girls were beaten and killed, son. You're looking at walking on a felony possession by simply doing what you should be doing in the first place. If you got a problem with that, you need to get yourself another lawyer."

Buddy stood, but Gordon stopped him. "She was in the library, okay?"

Buddy sat back down, but he kept his briefcase in his lap.

"On campus?" Frank asked.

"Yeah, on campus," Gordon snapped. "I just ran into her, okay?"

"Okay," Jeffrey answered.

"So, I started talking to her, you know. She wanted me back. I could tell that."

Jeffrey nodded, though he imagined Julia Matthews had been very upset to see Gordon in the library.

"Anyway, we talked, got a little lip action going, if you know what I mean." He nudged Buddy, who moved away. "Made some plans to see each other later on."

"Then what?" Jeffrey asked.

"Then, you know, she left. That's what I'm saying, she just left. Got her books and all, said she would meet me later, then she was out of there."

Frank asked, "Did you see anyone following her? Anyone suspicious?"

"Naw," he answered. "She was alone. I would've noticed if anyone was watching her, you know? She was my girl. I kept an eye on her."

Jeffrey said, "You can't think of anyone she might know, not just a stranger, who was making her uncomfortable? Maybe she was dating somebody after y'all broke up?"

Gordon gave him the same look he would give a stupid dog. "She wasn't seeing anybody. She was in love with me."

"You don't remember seeing any strange cars on campus?" Jeffrey asked. "Or vans?"

Gordon shook his head. "I didn't see anything, okay?"

Frank asked, "Let's go back to the meeting. You were supposed to see her later on?"

Gordon supplied, "She was supposed to meet me behind the agri-building at ten."

"She didn't show up?" Frank said.

"No," Gordon answered. "I waited around, you know. Then, I got kind of pissed off and I went to find her. I went to her room to see what was up, and she wasn't there."

Jeffrey cleared his throat. "Was Jenny Price there?"

"That whore?" Gordon waved this off. "She was probably out fucking half the science team."

Jeffrey felt himself bristle over this. He had a problem with men who saw all women as whores, not least because this attitude usually went hand in hand with violence toward women. "So, Jenny wasn't there," Jeffrey summarized. "Then what did you do?"

"I went back to my dorm." He shrugged. "I went to bed."

Jeffrey sat back in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. "What aren't you telling us, Ryan?" he asked. "Because the way I'm looking at it, the 'forthcoming' part of our deal isn't being met here. The way I'm looking at it, that orange jumper you're wearing is gonna be on your back for the next ten years."

Gordon stared at Jeffrey with what Jeffrey assumed the young punk thought was a menacing look. "I told you everything."

"No," Jeffrey said. "You didn't. You're leaving something out that's pretty important, and I swear to God we're not gonna leave this room until you tell me what you know."

Gordon turned shifty-eyed. "I don't know anything."

Buddy leaned over and whispered something that made Gordon's eyes go as round as two walnuts. Whatever the attorney had said to his client, it worked.

Gordon said, "I followed her out of the library."

"Yeah?" Jeffrey encouraged.

"She met up with this guy, okay?" Gordon fiddled with his hands in front of him. Jeffrey wanted to reach over and throttle the punk. "I tried to catch up with them, but they were fast."

"Fast meaning how?" Jeffrey asked. "Was she walking with him?"

"No," Gordon said. "He was carrying her."

Jeffrey felt a knot in the pit of his stomach. "And you didn't think this was suspicious, her being carried off by a guy?"

Gordon's shoulders went up to his ears. "I was mad, okay? I was mad at her."

"You knew she wouldn't meet you later on," Jeffrey began, "so you followed her."

He gave a slight shrug that could have been a yes or no.

"And you saw this guy carrying her off?" Jeffrey continued.

"Yeah."

Frank asked, "What did he look like?"

"Tall, I guess," Gordon said. "I couldn't see his face, if that's what you mean."

"White? Black?" Jeffrey quizzed.

"Yeah, white," Gordon supplied. "White and tall. He was wearing dark clothes, all black. I couldn't really see them except that she was wearing this white shirt, right? It kind of caught the light, so she showed up, but not him."

Frank said, "Did you follow them?"

Gordon shook his head.

Frank was silent, his jaw taut with anger. "You know she's dead now, don't you?"

Gordon looked down at the table. "Yeah, I know that."

Jeffrey opened the file and showed Gordon the printout. He had used a black marker to cross out Wright's name, but the rest of the statistics were left uncovered. "This the guy?"

Gordon glanced down. "No."

"Look at the fucking photograph," Jeffrey ordered, his tone so loud that Frank started beside him.

Gordon did as he was told, putting his face so close to the printout that his nose almost touched it. "I don't know, man," he said. "It was dark. I couldn't see his face." His eyes scanned down the vitals on Wright. "He was tall like this. About this build. It could've been him, I guess." He gave a casual shrug. "I mean, Jesus, I wasn't paying attention to him. I was watching her."

The drive to Atlanta was long and tedious, with nothing but the occasional patch of trees with the requisite kudzu to break the monotony. He tried twice to call Sara at home and leave some kind of message, but her machine wouldn't pick up, even after twenty rings. Jeffrey felt a rush of relief followed by an overwhelming shame. The closer he got to the city, the more he convinced himself that he was doing the right thing. He could call Sara when he knew something. Maybe he could call her with the news that Jack Allen Wright had met with an unfortunate accident involving Jeffrey's gun and Wright's chest.

Even going eighty, it took Jeffrey four hours before he got off 20 and onto the downtown connector. He passed Grady Hospital a little ways past the split, and felt tears wanting to come again. The building was a monster looming over the interstate in what Atlanta traffic reporters called the Grady Curve. Grady was one of the largest hospitals in the world. Sara had told him that during any given year the emergency clinics saw over two hundred thousand patients. A recent four-hundred-million-dollar renovation made the hospital look like part of the set for a Batman movie. In typical City of Atlanta politics, the renovation had been the subject of an explosive investigation, kickbacks and payoffs reaching as far up as city hall.

Jeffrey took the downtown exit, then drove by the capitol. His friend on the Atlanta force had been shot on the job and taken a guards position at the courthouse rather than early retirement. A call back in Grant had scheduled a meeting for one o'clock. It was quarter till by the time Jeffrey found a parking space in the crowded capitol section of downtown.

Keith Ross was waiting outside the courts building when Jeffrey walked up. In one hand, he held a large file folder; in the other, a plain white mailing envelope.

"Ain't seen you in a coon's age," Keith said, giving Jeffrey's hand a firm shake.

"Good to see you, too, Keith," Jeffrey returned, trying to force a lightness into his voice that he did not feel. The ride up to Atlanta had done nothing but get Jeffrey more wound up. Even the brisk walk from the parking garage to the courts building had not alleviated his tension.

"I can only let you have these for a second," Keith said, obviously sensing Jeffrey's need to move this along. "I got it from a buddy of mine over at records."

Jeffrey took the folder, but he did not open it. He knew what he would find inside: pictures of Sara, witness testimony, detailed descriptions of exactly what had happened in that bathroom.

"Let's go inside," Keith said, ushering Jeffrey into the building.

Jeffrey flashed his badge at the door, bypassing the security check. Keith led him into a small office to the side of the entrance. A desk surrounded by television monitors filled the room. A kid wearing thick glasses and a police uniform looked up with surprise as they entered.

Keith took a twenty-dollar bill out of his pocket. "Go buy yourself some candy," he said.

The kid took the money and left without another word.

"Devotion to the job," Keith commented wryly. "You gotta wonder what they're doing on the force."