Special Operations (Badge of Honor 2)

“Do you remember if the windows in your bedroom were open?” Hemmings asked.

“I told you they were; it was hot.”

“How big was the knife?” Hemmings asked, extending his index fingers as he spoke, and then moving his hands apart.

“That big,” Mary Elizabeth Flannery said, when she thought his hands were as far apart as the knife had been large.

“And it was a butcher knife, right?”

“I told you that.”

“I mean, it couldn’t have been a hunting knife, or a bayonet, or some other kind of a knife?”

“I know a butcher knife when I see one.”

“Miss Flannery, I’m on your side.”

“Why do you let people like that run the streets, then?” she challenged.

“We try not to,” Hemmings said, sincerely. “We try to catch them, and then to see that they’re put behind bars. But we need help to catch them.”

There was no response to this.

“What happened then, Miss Flannery?” Hemmings asked, gently.

“I told the cop what that filthy bastard did to me.”

“But I have to know, and in some detail, I’m afraid,” Hemmings said.

“He threatened me with his knife, and made me…oh, Jesus!”

“Can you tell me exactly what he said?”

She snorted. “You want to know exactly what he said? I’ll tell you exactly what he said, he said ‘Very nice,’ that’s what he said.”

“What kind of a voice did he have?”

“What do you mean, what kind of a voice?”

“Was it deep, or high pitched? Did he have any kind of an accent?”

“He had a regular voice,” she said. “No accent.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then…he came over to me, and cut my clothes.”

“You were sitting where? In an armchair? On a couch?”

“I was laying down on my couch.”

“What part of your clothes did he cut? What were you wearing?”

She flushed and turned her face away from him.

“Jesus!” she said.

“Miss Flannery,” Hemmings said. “Sometimes, when it’s hot like this, and my air conditioner’s not working, and there’s nobody around to see me, when I watch television, I do it in my underwear. Was that what happened with you?”