Perfect Trust: A Rowan Gant Investigation (3 page)

Her mind trudged through a thick fog as she
tried to center on just exactly what it was she feared so much.
Each passing thought bringing her closer to the surface of
consciousness. Her muscles finally began to relax as the
wakefulness blossomed from half to full, though the murkiness that
obscured her thoughts remained.

And, so did the fear.

Heather’s head was throbbing in agonizing
pulses. This was a mother of a migraine, she thought. No, she
decided after a moment, it wasn’t just a mother. This was the great
matriarch of the entire clan. It had to be the very one that had
spawned all the others throughout history, and it had apparently
elected to go into labor inside her skull.

Slowly, bracing herself against the still
unknown terror, she opened one eye. It seemed as though it took
forever before she stopped squinting and allowed herself to see. As
her blurry vision adjusted, she took note of the gradient
blue-black shadows slicing angular paths through the room.

Nothing moved…

Nothing leapt at her from the darkness…

Nothing.

She allowed herself to relax a little
more.

Letting her monocular gaze roam, she scanned
the room. Her eyeball hurt as she moved it, and she realized
quickly both of them were sore and itching. They felt gritty and
allergic, like something foreign had invaded their sanctity. She
blinked hard, but the feeling remained.

At least what she saw was intimately
familiar, shrouded by darkness though it was. There was the TV in
the corner with a cheap plastic, tabletop Christmas tree sitting on
top of it. The second hand papa-san chair was sitting
catty-cornered from her—a basket of wrinkled, to-be-folded-someday
clothing occupying it as usual. Everything looked just like it
normally did whenever she was sprawled out on her couch in
sofa-spud mode.

And to her relief, there was still nothing
there that shouldn’t be.

This was definitely her apartment, and she
found that comforting. However, something still wasn’t right about
it all, and although it was continuing to dull, she just couldn’t
fully shake the feeling of terror deep down in the pit of her
stomach.

Giving in to a sudden attack of
bravery, s
he moved to sit up, and pain lanced through
the center of her head from back to front. She eased herself back
down and lay perfectly still, not wanting to further aggravate the
troll with the jackhammer that was apparently excavating inside her
brain.

This was not good at all. It was unnerving.
Along with the pain, there was an increasingly desperate feeling of
disorientation, as if the fog of sleep had given way only to be
replaced by another obscuring mist in wakefulness.

Between staccato bursts of agony, Heather
took mental inventory, searching to put her finger on a reason for
the headache. It felt a little like a hangover, but not exactly,
and she didn’t remember doing any drinking last night. In fact, she
didn’t remember much of anything at all from last night. She
remembered leaving work, driving home, and then…

Then what?

She didn’t know. She concentrated for a
minute but gave up almost immediately when she realized that it
only served to make the pain worse.

Her tongue felt thick. She swallowed hard,
and the dryness in her throat formed a lump that hesitated for a
moment before painfully making its way downward.

She tried to approach the situation from a
different angle. She could see that it was dark. So maybe that
meant it was still last night…or tonight…or whatever…night, anyway.
Hopefully it wasn’t already tomorrow night. No, it couldn’t be.
Could it?

It made her brain hurt too much to think
about it, so she gave up again.

“Oh man,” she muttered. “This sucks big
time.”

She waited, considering how apropos the
statement was. Eventually, there was a temporary lull in the
migraine, and she gave thinking another shot.

She was at home, that much was for certain,
but she couldn’t quite remember how she had arrived here or even
when. She wasn’t even sure if she could really remember the last
thing she remembered. Now wasn’t that a kick?

So, she was at home, on her couch, and
it was dark. In the overall scheme of things, that really wasn’t
much to go on. But at least she was at
her
home, and she hadn’t gotten drunk and gone
home with some sleazy bar asshole.
Or had
she?

A different kind of fear rippled
through her abdomen.
Had she screwed up,
gotten trashed, and brought some dumbass home with her?
God! She hoped not! If only she could remember.

Without thinking, she lifted her arm to check
her watch and regretted it instantly. A new ache added itself to
the growing list, this one taking the form of a burning soreness in
the vicinity of her ribcage. It seemed isolated to her left side,
for the moment at least.

Opening both eyes this time, she
struggled to focus on the face of her wristwatch. Fumbling with her
free hand, she managed to press the button to illuminate the
digital timepiece, although she was fairly certain that said button
had always been on the opposite side from where she finally found
it. Centered in the eerie blue glow, she watched as the liquid
crystal flickered from something that looked like the number
9l
followed by the letter
E
, to suddenly become the
word
Ll:E
.

The jumble of LCD segments made little
sense to Heather’s clouded mind, and she blinked several times,
trying unsuccessfully to get a clearer picture. The digits still
read
Ll:E
.

“Lie?” she mused aloud, her voice hoarse and
thick. “What the? Awww, screw it…”

The fear had finally become a faded shadow of
what it had been a few minutes before, and she told herself that
her earlier flashback to childhood must have been dead on. She
probably just had a nightmare. She gritted her teeth and pushed
upward once again until she was in a sitting position. Swinging
first one leg, then the other, over the edge of the cushions, she
let her feet touch the floor, then she leaned forward. Elbows on
her knees, she cradled her head in her hands and massaged her
temples.

The big question on her mind now was whether
or not a nightmare could make you forget what you had done when you
were conscious.

After something just short of forever, she
stood and almost immediately fell. With a grimace she kicked off
her heels, absently wondering why she hadn’t bothered to do so
earlier. “Of course, since I can’t remember much of anything else,
why should I be surprised?” she thought.

Heather stumbled through her apartment toward
the bathroom on a single-minded quest for aspirin. If she could
make the pain go away then maybe she could concentrate. Surely she
would be able to remember how she got here. People don’t just lose
entire chunks of time out of their lives, except maybe in those
alien abduction movies.

“Yeah, right,” she laughed as she
mumbled to herself. “Get real, Heather. You
weren’t
abducted by aliens.”

Her fingers found the light switch
automatically and flicked it on. She squinted and turned her head
away as the sudden flood of luminance assaulted her. She groaned
audibly and wondered why her entire body seemed to ache. Flu,
maybe? That could be it, she thought. Flu, fever, and the whole
nine yards. Yeah, maybe that was the explanation.

Still squinting, she looked up and reached
for the medicine chest over the sink. Through slit eyes she caught
a glimpse of herself in the mirror and gasped.

Her shag of blonde hair was an absolute mess,
but that wasn’t what startled her most. Bright crimson smears
streaked across her mouth, and her face looked splotchy, uneven. It
was as if someone had haphazardly wiped away layers of heavy
makeup. Reddish-purple bruises stood out against the pale skin of
her neck, almost as if they were glowing.

The visual trigger set hidden memories in
motion, and it was at this very moment that the source of her
earlier fear called out from the secret places inside her skull
where they had been laying in wait.

The parking lot…

The pain in her side like an electric
shock...

The medicinal bitterness on the back of her
tongue…

The darkness…

The feeling of helplessness as rough hands
groped her without apology…

A deep feeling of violation bludgeoned her
now. She backed away from the mirror as the earlier terror returned
full force. Hot tears were already streaming along her cheeks, and
she soon found her back pressed against the tiled wall. She allowed
herself to slide down to the floor and hugged her knees against her
chest even though it hurt like hell.

Heather Burke sat on the cold floor and
sobbed for a solid hour before finally summoning the courage to
drive herself to the hospital.

* * * * *

“Did you already do a rape kit?” Detective
Charlene McLaughlin asked before taking a cautious slug of her hot
drink.

She was still working on a chai latte from
the corner stop ‘n grab she had hit on the way here and was already
regretting it. She knew better than to be adventurous and try
something new this morning. She should have just stuck with her
regular large coffee—two creams, four sugars. That way she would
have known exactly what to expect. Charlee hated surprises, and
what was in her cup this morning definitely fell into that
category. What was worse, it wasn’t of the good variety.

Everyone called her Charlee. Some even
shortened it to Chuck, but only if they knew her very well. Even
fewer people actually called her Charlene, mostly because it just
didn’t seem to go with the overall picture. Petite and sporting an
ash blonde pageboy coif, she could almost always be found wearing
jeans and running shoes. Given her tomboyish appearance and tough
demeanor, the moniker just seemed to fit.

Before her recent transfer to the sex crimes
unit, she had been assigned to City Homicide. Among that close knit
group of cops, there had actually been a running bet that she
didn’t even own a dress or skirt. Catching wind of it, she’d made a
deal to split the pool with an office worker then showed up one day
wearing a nicely tailored skirt and jacket ensemble. She’d been
totally uncomfortable the entire day and vowed to never again wear
pantyhose for as long as she lived, but it had been more than worth
the looks on their faces—the hundred bucks cash she got from the
split was just icing on the cake. She never did tell them that
she’d had to borrow the outfit from a friend.

This morning she was dressed in her usual. A
well-worn leather bomber jacket fit over her torso, hanging just
loose enough to hide the nine-millimeter Beretta riding in a
shoulder rig beneath her left arm. Her badge was clipped on her
belt, visible, but unobtrusive.

“The nurse is finishing up with her now.” The
doctor nodded as they walked, answering her query about the kit
before adding, “We called it in as soon as she arrived.”

Generic instrumental Christmas music was
filtering softly in from overhead to mix with the ambient sounds of
the ER. It wasn’t doing much to lift Charlee’s spirits though. She
had been on edge with an itchy, nervous kind of energy for over a
week now. She’d had the feeling before and she’d known what was
coming—this. The truth is, she’d been fully expecting this call
ever since that second case file hit her desk, and she’d been
dreading it all the while. Now that it was here, the dread wasn’t
subsiding.

“Good, good,” Charlee nodded as she
absently took another swig of the latte then screwed up her
face.
Yeah, this stuff was definitely an
unpleasant surprise
. Trying to ignore the bizarre
taste in her mouth, she asked, “Get anything?”

“Unfortunately, not much.”

“Did she wait?”

The doctor had traveled this road before and
immediately understood the meaning behind the question. “No, not
long. She said it had only been an hour or so since she regained
consciousness. She’s a smart girl. She had enough wits about her
not to shower or clean up, so there’s definitely evidence of the
rape. We did collect semen, and that will be on its way to the lab
shortly.”

“So she was unconscious? I’m already not
liking the sound of this, Doc. You get pictures?”

“The regular routine, yes,” he returned. “But
she wasn’t really abused. There are a few bruises, but it seems to
profile almost like a date rape.”

“This may sound crass, but what I wouldn’t
give for a simple date rape right now… She say whether she can ID
the guy?”

“She can’t remember anything other than that
she thinks she was attacked in the parking lot of her apartment
complex.”

“She
thinks
she was attacked?”

“She appears to be suffering from anterograde
amnesia. Possibly drug induced.”

“Yeah, that actually fits.” Charlee nodded as
she spoke, her mood darkening even more as the conversation
progressed. “Blood test?”

“Of course. We’ll screen for Benzodiazepines.
Rohypnol, GHB, etcetera.”

They came to a stop outside the door of the
treatment room.

“This’ll probably sound strange, but how
about hickeys? She have any of those?”

“Actually, yes, there are a few large
hematoma on her neck,” he answered with a hint of surprise.

“I was afraid of that. Okay, let me see if I
can bat a thousand here,” she continued. “This woman is in her
early to mid-thirties, petite, and blonde—Am I right?”