Miami, It's Murder (20 page)

Something cascaded soundlessly to the tiled floor outside the stall, just within my range of vision. It spread out in billows on impact. A wig. Dark hair, long and shiny.

I froze, holding my breath. No sound came from outside except for a slight rustling. A garment landed on the floor: the wraparound skirt the woman had been wearing. This room has no windows, I thought, stomach tightening in panic. Buttons on the long-sleeved blouse clicked against the tiles as it too was discarded. I cursed my carelessness. Horrified, I stood up, hands shaking as I adjusted my clothes. As I reached for the gun inside my purse, hanging from the door hook, my feet were suddenly jerked out from under me.

I fell, striking my shoulder blade painfully on the toilet seat. Strong hands gripped my ankles, dragging me under the door. I heard myself screaming. Two realizations flashed clearly through my mind in that moment of terror: what had troubled me about the woman was the Adam's apple, and I had to pee again.

I clung desperately to the door with both hands, struggling and thrashing.

He scrambled up my body, tearing my right hand loose from its grip on the bottom of the door. He was smiling. My attacker was the woman I had seen. But now she was a naked man, wearing only tattoos. They covered his chest and forearms.

He grabbed my hair and yanked hard as he leaned back. “
Chupen
,” he whispered, smile widening into a triumphant grin. “
Chupen
.” His tattoos were a dull, almost turquoise, hue. A crude dragon extended across his right shoulder from his back. A woman's face with the body of a snake stared from over his left breast. Words on his left shoulder. Arrows everywhere.

“No! Let me go!” I screamed, struggling. The knife had to be somewhere. The thought terrified me.

We grappled and he reached behind him—for the knife, I thought. No, a roll of duct tape. Clutching it in his left hand, he reached for my wrist with his right. Wrenching out of his grasp, I scrambled on hands and knees. I embraced the wire wastepaper basket in the corner, thrusting it between us, glimpsing the knife and the round box of dusting powder on the sink. He reached for the knife, his eyes on me, and the powder box flew off the sink. The room exploded in a cloud of sweet-smelling white dust.

My screams bounced off the floor, walls, and ceiling as in an echo chamber, but in this solid old building I knew they would not be heard out in the hall, much less the nearby offices.

The out-of-order sign must be posted on the exterior door, I thought, trying to evade his grasp. No help was coming. I willed Dr. Wyatt's receptionist to wonder why I wasn't returning the key and come looking for me.

The choking powder cloud began to settle. On the floor, in my hair, on my eyelids. He did not seem alarmed by my screams. His eyes revealed that he enjoyed them.

He savored the chase, sidestepping and parrying like a wild creature toying with helpless prey. He wants me to struggle and then he will use the knife, I thought.

My gun. Hanging out of reach, inside a locked cubicle.

He yanked the wire basket from my grasp, hurling it to one side as I skittered backward. No way to get past him to the heavy wooden door.

Screaming and choking, I staggered back into the last stall in the row, fell into a sitting position on the toilet, and kicked out with both feet as he advanced. Naked, his sex was vulnerable, and he danced back a few steps, like the practiced ballet of a boxer in combat. I saw the knife in his hand, the words tattooed on his shoulder:

Mis amigos son los muertos
. My friends are the dead.

Sweat glistened in the Brillo-like pubic hair surrounding his testicles and hooded penis.

I thought of Marianne Rhodes. The disease he carried. The son of a bitch! I leaped up, whimpering, gritting my teeth, and slammed the stall door. I threw the metal bolt to keep him out, aware, as tears stung my eyes, that it was only temporary.

My gun was three stalls away. So much for carrying the weapon with me at all times, I thought, breathing hard. Thanks for the advice, Dan.

A sound in the stall beside me. He hurtled over the top, feet first, making an ugly guttural sound. Dropping to my knees, I scrambled under the bottom, screaming. No time to keep going. He reached beneath, long arms groping, knife blade glinting, then backed out. I slammed the door, now two stalls away from the gun.

My future as a rape victim, if I had a future, crazed me with fear and revulsion. K. C. Riley, McDonald, Harry reminding that he had warned me. People at the paper.

I stared in horror at the top of the stall, expecting him to clamber over at any moment. Instead, he came sliding underneath on his back like a mechanic sliding under a car. His grin was terrible, lips curled, exposing what looked like an arrow tattooed inside his lower lip. I kicked viciously but he grabbed my right ankle in a cruel grip, mouthing obscenities. I flailed about in panic for something, anything, to use as a weapon.

Twisting, I wrenched the heavy porcelain cover off the toilet tank, raised it over my head, and brought it crashing down on his face. He reacted in time to deflect it slightly with one hand, never releasing his hold on my ankle. Blood spurted, spattering the tile and the interior walls of the stall. The porcelain split in two. Still kicking and grunting, I snatched up the larger piece and smashed it down again. It caught him just above the hairline, then shattered on the floor as he slid back out of the stall, shouting a string of imprecations and curses in Spanish.

If he found the gun now, I was dead.

All was silent for a moment. I saw his bare feet. A drop of blood splashed to the tile floor. Then a loud rapping. Rattling, a pause, then a key turning in the door. I screamed for all I was worth. If it was Wyatt's secretary or a cleaning crew, they would surely call the police.

Quick movements outside the stall. Panting, I inched back, feet up as I sat on the toilet seat, heart pounding, waiting.

The lights went out. He had hit the switch. Total darkness. My skin crawled, fear rose in my throat. I heard the door open, a sharp exclamation, then a shout and somebody running.

Was he gone? If so, we had to stop him! I did not dare open the stall. Light flooded the room. I blinked, stepped up on the toilet seat, balanced myself, and peered over the door into the startled eyes of a short, gray-haired, dark-skinned woman wearing a blue cotton smock. Behind her stood a cart containing a mop, rags, cleaning materials, and a pail. I started to cry.

She looked annoyed. “What's going on in here?” She stared in open-mouthed indignation at the powder everywhere.

I jumped down to the floor and burst from the stall screaming, “Stop him! Stop him! It's him, the Downtown Rapist!”

She turned, did a double take, eyes widening, then started to scream.

“Get him! Get him!”

Didn't take her long to catch on.

I did not know I was capable of producing such a high volume sound. It hurt my own ears, warbling as I pounded down the hall back to Wyatt's office. I burst through the door, into a room full of dental patients, shouting, “Dial Nine-one-one! Call the police! Call the police!”

Wyatt's receptionist, who had been expecting me to return the rest-room key, looked up, blinking. “What happened to you?”

“Call the police!” I screamed. “The Downtown Rapist! He's in the building!”

She dialed the three numbers and almost threw the phone at me.

The 911 operator's professionally serene voice infuriated me as I screamed at her to hurry. “He's still in the building! Send somebody, fast!” I cursed when she made me spell my name and hung up when she asked the rapist's name. But as I stepped back out into the corridor, now teeming with people rousted from their offices by the duet of shrieks from me and the cleaning woman, I heard the approaching static of a police radio above the din of voices and questions.

It was Harry, barking into his hand-held walkie-talkie, loping down the corridor, trailed by a panting building security guard.

“Oh, my God, Britt.” He stared at the powder on my clothes and in my hair.

“It's him, Harry, the rapist. Catch him!”

He put a hand on my shoulder, and I resisted the temptation to fall limply into his arms. “Did he rape you, Britt?” He looked embarrassed.

“I'm fine.” There was no time for this. “It's him! It's him!”

“Don't go crazy on me now, Britt.” Harry looked me straight in the eyes and raised one hand. “What was he wearing?” His tone was urgent. I jerked my head at the cleaning woman, who now stood down the hall talking to the security guard and a patrolman who had appeared out of nowhere.

“She saw him last, when he went out the door. I was locked in a stall.” I was out of breath. My voice faltered and I choked back tears. “He's still got his bag, it's brown. He could be wearing a denim wraparound skirt, a white long-sleeved blouse, and a black wig. He was dressed like a woman, Harry! That's why nobody ever saw him. No one ever saw the rapist in downtown office buildings because he came and went as a woman!”

Harry looked like he wanted to slap his palm to his forehead, my exact reaction when I had realized the rapist's secret. He began issuing instructions and descriptions into his radio, coordinating the manhunt. I recognized in his face the same flush of excitement, the throbbing intensity of somebody hot on the trail of the big one.

It had never occurred to me that we share the same addictive exhilaration.

I watched him stride down the hall, quickly confer with the woman, who gestured animatedly, then brief more cops as they arrived. I knew he never felt more alive than at that moment.

I joined them. “He almost got me, Harry.” My knees were trembling. “He must still be here somewhere!”

“I know,” he said. “We've got the lobby covered, and we're gonna do a floor-by-floor. I don't think he had time to get out. But they're setting up a perimeter and we're cordoning off the block.”

“How'd you get here so fast?”

“I was already here,” he said, shamefaced, lowering his voice. “We had a tail on you, in case you drew him out.”

“You've been following me?” I croaked indignantly, my throat raw from all that screaming.

“Yeah, ever since he left that little present in your car, we figured the best place to look for him was wherever you were.”

“Where the hell were you when I was locked in the bathroom with him?”

“I wasn't sure which office you went to. Jesus, Britt, you know you're a real pain in the ass to follow. You never even stop for lunch. I did a walk-through, went back to the lobby, and called somebody to sit on your car in case you'd slipped by me. Then security started getting calls about screams on this floor, and as we were coming up, dispatch broadcast the info from your call. I think we've got him boxed in.”

“You were
following
me?” I thought of where I'd been recently, happily on a trail, unaware I
was
a trail.

The cops had used me as a decoy without my knowledge. My editors would not approve. Ethically I had the right to go out and gather the news without being trailed by police, a perfect right to be raped and murdered on my own, without being subjected to police scrutiny. But it worked, I thought. That's what counts. If they get him, it's worth it.

The rapist must have been stalking me, I realized. He'd probably seen me making bathroom pit stops virtually everywhere I went. I had surprised him still in his woman's attire. The big bag was where he carried his clothes and wig—and the knife.

As the building was evacuated with each employee or visitor showing ID as they left, it began to fill with cops, police dogs, and the SWAT team. They found his bag in a stairwell between the fifth and sixth floors. Ninety minutes later they pulled him feet first out of an air-conditioning duct on the fourth floor.

The press was kept at a distance but I was on the inside, regarded not as a reporter but a victim witness who could identify the perpetrator.

Both the cleaning woman and I did exactly that. It was not difficult, since his nose was broken and bloodied and the top of his head cut by the toilet tank lid I had tried to bounce off his face. I wanted to shout insults at the man but merely trembled and said nothing. Blood-smeared, bare-chested, in his beads and skirt, he wept like a baby. His only remorse, if any, was over being caught, the weeping a result of the tear gas the cops used to force him out of the vent.

Harry wanted me to go to the rape center, despite my assurances that the only damage was the bruises the man's fingers had left on my ankle. Police photographed my injuries, and Harry continued to insist that I might want to talk to a counselor. When I said I was fine, they wanted to whisk me off to headquarters for a statement. We struck a deal: they would take the cleaning woman's statement first, and I'd be there in an hour for mine. They weren't crazy about it, but grudgingly agreed when I insisted I had to check in with my bosses. I wanted to get back to the paper and write a quick version of the story for the next edition.

I arrived at the
News
with only forty minutes left of my hour and went right into Fred's office with several editors to tell them what had happened.

“Are you all right, Britt?” he asked. His ashen expression made me aware that despite my efforts to brush it away, powder was still visible in my hair and clinging to my clothes.

“I'm fine. But I don't have much time,” I said. “I have to write for the state edition, then go make a statement to the police.”

Fred rubbed the back of his neck as though it pained him, exchanging glances with Mark Seybold, the paper's lawyer, who had joined the meeting. “What about the problem of identifying you as the victim of a sex crime?”

“No problem,” I said, my hand touching the red and white beads at my throat. “His intent may have been rape, but he got no farther than simple battery.” The room was quiet. “He grabbed my wrist and my ankles.” I realized my voice was shaking, as were my knees under the table. Hoping they would not notice, I stopped for a moment and swallowed. “The cops may charge him with attempted rape, but technically I'm not really a sex crime victim.”