Behind Closed Doors

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