The Witness: A Novel (23 page)

“After I was injured, I couldn’t regain combat readiness. I wanted it, but I couldn’t do it.”

“So—an injury prevented you from going back to the way you were,” she said slowly. “Sounds like me. My life has been changed forever by what I’ve experienced. I can’t imagine going to graduate school now. Become absorbed in the study of fictional characters? I don’t think so.”

“Texas, then?”

“I don’t know. My family lives in such an innocent world. It’s hard to see myself fitting in there.” She smiled. “I know—no quick fix.”

They sat together finishing their tea in companionable silence.

“I’m sorry I was so afraid of you at first.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. We expected it. Trust is earned, love.”

“It certainly is,” she agreed.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I
n the morning she was putting on her exercise clothes when she heard an unfamiliar voice. The man it belonged to was too short to be Brian and too wide to be Danny. Besides, he had curly blond hair. When he turned around, she saw that his eyebrows were curly, too, and they gave his ruddy face a look of surprise. She hadn’t been expecting anyone, and it startled her.

“PC Wilcox,” the man said. “Joseph Wilcox. Didn’t mean to scare you, Miss.”

“I’m Jenny. Just Jenny.”

“Nice to know you, Just Jenny.”

“Tea?” Danny asked. “I’ll be the mum.”

“No, my stomach’s upset. I’ll have a Coke.”

Danny poured cups for Wilcox and himself. “Davies took a short leave this morning,” he said. “I’ll take off when he gets back. Wilcox is
going to fill in for both of us.”

She tried to smile. “What dastardly thing did you do to receive this assignment?”

“Four days with a lovely lass? It’s winning the lottery, isn’t it?”

Wilcox’s voice had a lilt to it. She didn’t know enough about regional accents to place it, but it was relaxing to hear. Chivalry was not dead: He had called her lovely, and no one looked lovely in sweatpants. “Are you qualified to do this?” she asked him. “You need to be a poor poker player, a good listener, have an endless supply of handkerchiefs, and—”

“No one’s as poor a poker player as you are, Sis,” Danny teased. “Give the bloke a chance!”

Wilcox leant forward. He reached toward her cheek, the unmarked one, with a closed hand. She tensed, but he didn’t touch her. “There’s a little something already!” He held a fifty pence coin in his fingers.

“Magic,” she breathed. “We could sure use some of that around here.”

W
ilcox’s four day shifts passed quickly. He entertained Jenny with his magic and his accent. Really, it was more than an accent—he was from Wales, and he spoke whole sentences which were unintelligible to her, all while remaining alert and armed.

Several days later it was Sergeant Casey’s turn to be gone, and another new man arrived. She couldn’t guess Sergeant Nick Howard’s age. He had thick brows and dark hair receding slightly at the temples. There was no gray, but his lean face was weathered, with a myriad of fine lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. She was uncomfortable with his dark stare and couldn’t get a conversation going with him. When she asked where he was from, he replied, “No place in particular. And I go where I’m sent.”

“What do you tell people when you arrest them? ‘I’m Nick, and you’re nicked’?”

Howard did not laugh. Perhaps to compensate for his lack of humour, Danny declared it Comedy Week and rented funny movies. Like Gilbert and Sullivan, Monty Python made fun of established customs and rituals, and some of the characters had as much dialogue as a G&S patter song. However, many of the skits embarrassed her with their frankness about sex and bodily functions. She escaped to her room.

She could hear Danny and Brian laughing, but she had been infected with Sergeant Howard’s sober demeanor. She could no longer ignore the fact that she might be pregnant. It was too much to bear—like having a second and then a third wave crash over you when you hadn’t regained your footing from the first. The beating she’d received at the hands of the monster and his violations of her had crushed her. Now she might be carrying his child. What could she do? Was abortion legal in England? How could she arrange for one? Was it too late? Did she even want an abortion? No, she didn’t think she could go through with it. She didn’t want anyone touching her below the waist, not even a doctor.

What would happen to her? Would the police buy her maternity clothes? No, they wouldn’t want her—how effective would she be in court if her belly crowded the witness stand? What if she went into labor during the trial?

She cried until she tired herself out.

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I
n the morning Howard was back, and so were her apprehensions. Did she look fatter already? How long could she hide her condition from the men? Casey would feel contempt for her. A good and decent man like Brian would never respect her. Danny wouldn’t be able to find anything funny to say. And Colin: He was too elegant to listen to another sordid tale. She couldn’t go home—Colin hadn’t told her parents she’d been sexually assaulted, and neither had she. If a long-standing boyfriend had gotten her pregnant, they wouldn’t be happy. If pregnancy had resulted from a casual encounter, that would be worse. But being impregnated by a criminal? Inconceivable.

When Sergeant Casey returned and learned she’d had only a Coke and a few biscuits to eat, he demanded to know why. Davies and Sullivan were clueless—they’d been watching comedies all day. “Howard’s a bit formidable,” Sullivan ventured.

Casey found her already in bed. “You have to eat.”

“Are you going to make me?”

“If I have to.”

She managed to get down part of a baked potato before turning off the lamp by her bed.

In the morning she felt a terrible weight on her chest, and the ghosts from the night haunted her. She’d dreamed she’d been watching
Rosemary’s Baby
on late-night TV, but she had taken the place of Rosemary.
She’d
been the one who’d been raped by a monster.
She
was the one who’d become pregnant.

She couldn’t keep down the breakfast Sergeant Casey brought, but she had no other kinds of discomfort to report to him. He pronounced her vital signs normal.

Rosemary’s baby. What would happen to
her
baby? She couldn’t keep it, but if she gave it up for adoption, some innocent family would be cursed with the devil’s child. Better if it were never born. Better if it died. Better if she died.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

S
inclair was concerned by Casey’s call. Not one to overact, Casey had described Jenny’s situation as “worrying.” She was withdrawn. Didn’t dress. Wasn’t eating. Wanted sedation. Cried until it took effect.

“She was functioning, sir, until the last day or two,” Casey reported when Sinclair arrived.

“Could she have become upset by the change in personnel?”

“She adjusted to Wilcox. According to Sullivan, she kept out of Howard’s way, but there was no conflict.”

Sinclair was impatient to speak with her. “How long has she been in the shower?”

“Too long,” Casey realised. He and Sinclair walked into her bedroom. The bathroom door was locked.

A catalogue of dire possibilities flashed across Sinclair’s mind. “Let’s have it down,” he said. All it took was Casey’s well-placed kick to break through. When he yanked the shower curtain aside, they saw her huddled at one end of the bath.

Sinclair put a towel over her shoulders and lifted her out of the water. It didn’t cover her enough, so he took off his coat and wrapped it around her. “There’s no blood.”

“Let’s get her in bed, and I’ll have a look.” Casey stepped close to the bed and opened Sinclair’s coat briefly, revealing the pale skin and soft swell of her breasts. The left bore no scar, no evidence that she had been defiled so cruelly. Her face reflected the same before-and-after contrast, the pure, smooth, unmarred cheek on one side and Scott’s signature on the other. “No new injuries,” he said.

Sinclair sat down on the edge of the bed and took her hand, hoping to create a connection, a bridge, that she could cross. “Will you let me help?”

“You can’t,” she whispered.

“I want to try. What is it you want? Tell me, Jenny.”

The silence lasted so long he wasn’t sure an answer was coming.

“I want to sleep without dreams, dreams that are real.”

“I can’t grant that wish, Jenny,” Sinclair said softly.

“I want to turn the clock back, before all this happened. Before the scars, before the shame. When my body belonged to me.” She was lying on her side, her tears pooling on the bridge of her nose before spilling over.

Sinclair and Casey waited, neither sure what to do next. They could hear Davies and Sullivan talking in the kitchen, something being set on the counter, a cabinet being closed.

“Why did you take a shower?”

“To wash the monster away, but I can’t. He’s inside me. I can’t get him out.”

“Jenny, you’re safe from him. You’re alive. And I believe God preserved your life for a reason.”

“For this? How could He?
How could He?
Damn Him! I don’t even believe in Him!”

“Jenny, God is there whether we believe in Him or not. When we can’t speak with anyone else, we can speak with Him. He’s where we turn when we come to the end of the road.”

“It’s a dead end road.”

“No, Jenny. I don’t believe that. Choose life, the life God has for you.”

As the mother of the monster’s child? She shook her head very slowly. “Not this life.”

“We need you, Jenny,” Sinclair said.

“What about what I need? Sergeant, will you help me? I can’t hold on any longer. Please…”

Casey retrieved his kit, ready to give her the tablets.

“That’s not strong enough,” she objected. “Or fast enough.”

“You want a jab?” She’d never requested an injection before.

“I want you to knock me out.”

He looked at Sinclair for permission. At Sinclair’s nod, he filled a syringe.

The cold alcohol was a shock, but the sting was welcome, because she knew oblivion would follow. “To sleep, perchance to dream.”

“No, Jenny!” Sinclair protested. “Not that sort of dream. Not Hamlet’s.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

When her eyes closed, Sinclair rose to his feet. “I have an unpleasant task to do, and I could use your help, Sergeant.” He opened the door to her wardrobe. “A search of her personal spaces is in order.”

“What are we looking for, sir?”

“Anything that could be dangerous to her. That line she quoted—when Hamlet said it, he was contemplating suicide.”

Sinclair examined the contents of the closet, including the luggage. He checked every pocket in the neatly-folded clothes in her chest of drawers. Casey was equally thorough in her bathroom and bedside table. They found no loose razor blades but did confiscate her shaver and nail scissors.

“Any medicines here, even over-the-counter ones?” Sinclair asked.

“I keep everything,” the sergeant replied.

“Brief Davies, if you will. I’ll want him to be vigilant if she comes into the kitchen.” He looked at her sleeping form. He knew he couldn’t provide any comfort to her, but he was loath to leave. Strangely, he thought he might be comforted
by
her, by seeing her chest rise and fall, much the way watching his ill father breathing had given him solace. It had, however, not brought hope. Life was the first and most important step, the foundation for all the rest, but only the first step. A beating heart, a sustaining breath, these were only the beginning. What did the human spirit need to survive? Faith. Hope. Love. A reason for living. Whatever the cause of her upset, he must get to the bottom of it. He rang Dr. Knowles and arranged to bring him to the protection flat in the morning.

W
hen Sinclair and Knowles were admitted to the flat, Knowles took a moment to survey the surroundings. The flat was a bit dingy and dark with the curtains drawn; not a beneficial environment for a troubled young woman. PC Davies was rugby size. Sullivan was younger and quite a bit shorter, with a friendly face. Casey’s was lean and stern—hardly the sort to confide in. Jenny’s bedroom had a British flag on one wall. What looked like family photos were displayed on the chest of drawers.

“Jenny, I’ve brought someone to talk with you. This is Dr. Knowles,” Sinclair said. She was wearing the nightshirt with the torn sleeve. His coat was nowhere to be seen.

“Sergeant, I’d like you to stand by,” Knowles said. He sat down next to the bed. “I’m a psychiatrist, Jenny.” He noted the shadows under her eyes.

Jenny saw a slender man with a placid expression, round nose, and graying hair. The lines in his face looked like laugh lines, and that made her feel terribly sad, because she couldn’t remember anymore what it felt like to laugh.

“I realise there’s a big difference between the absence of fear and the presence of trust, but perhaps together we can bridge that gap.” He waited for a reaction.

Was she supposed to say something? She couldn’t think.

“I know rather more about you than most patients I meet for the first time, and I’m sorry about that. I’d have preferred for us to start on an equal footing.” He knew her history, and Sinclair had briefed him on her recent behaviour.

“Are you a medical doctor?”

“Yes, I completed medical school before choosing to specialise in psychiatry. I understand how severe your injuries were, both physical and psychological.”

“I didn’t know it was possible to hurt that much and still live.”

“Are you in pain now?”

“I need Sergeant Casey. He puts me to sleep, like a vet putting down a dog, only I wake up.”

“Listen to the doctor, Jenny.” Casey’s voice was firm.

“What’s the point?”

“To ease the anguish you’re feeling,” Knowles answered.

“Are you going to put me in the hospital?”