The Silent Wife (Will Trent 10)

Lena nodded.

Jeffrey sat back in the chair. He could think of a lot of things you did out of habit. “When you checked her neck and wrist for a pulse, do you remember if you straightened her clothes?”

“No, sir.” She was shaking her head before he finished the question. “I wouldn’t do that. Her shirt was straight, or, like—” She put her hand to her hip. “One side was here, the other side was here, which is what you’d expect from somebody falling.”

“What about her shorts?”

“They were pulled up to her waist,” Lena said. “Honest. I didn’t touch her clothes.”

Jeffrey steepled together his fingers. “Did you smell anything?”

“Like what?”

Jeffrey became aware of a lot of different things at the same time. That Lena was a woman. That he was her boss. That the door was closed. That they were about to talk about uncomfortable things. But she was a cop, and they were both professionals, and he couldn’t treat her any differently than he would any man in uniform. “How many sexual assaults have you worked?”

“Actual sexual assaults?” she asked. “You mean, where the woman was really raped?”

Jeffrey’s headache started to throb again. “Go on.”

“None of them ever got past the paperwork stage.” She shrugged. “You know how students are. They’re away from home for the first time. They drink too much. Start things they don’t know how to stop. Then the next morning, they remember the boyfriend back home or they panic that their parents will find out.”

If she was going to sound like Frank, then Jeffrey was going to talk to her like Frank. “Did she smell like she’d had sex?”

Jeffrey forced himself not to look away while a blush exploded up Lena’s neck and into her face.

He listed the possibilities, “Lubrication, condoms, semen, sweat, urine, a man’s cologne?”

“N-no.” She cleared her throat. Then she cleared it again. “I mean, if anything, she smelled clean.”

“Clean how?”

“Like she’d just taken a shower.” Lena retrieved her notebook. She tucked it back into her pocket. “I guess that’s weird, right? Because she took off from the college, and it wasn’t really cold but it sure wasn’t hot, but she was at least a mile into her run, so why would she smell clean and not sweaty?”

“Tell me what clean smells like.”

Lena thought about it. “I guess, like, soap?”

“Do you think she could’ve been sexually assaulted?”

Lena shook her head immediately. “No way. I talked to my sister about her. Beckey was a total nerd. She spent her nights at the library. She always sat at the front of the class.”

Jeffrey wasn’t pleased to hear his own words to Sara come back at him. “Who she is doesn’t matter. Our job is to find out what happened to her. I want you to pull all of the unsolved rape reports for the tri-county area—Grant, Memminger, Bedford. Focus on anyone who was attacked in or near a wooded area, especially if they have physical characteristics that match Caterino’s. Remember, rapists have a type. Also, I need you to make copies of your notebook. All the relevant pages. And keep this between us. Got it?”

Lena looked like she wanted to argue, but she nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“I want to talk to your sister. See if you can get her to come by this morning.”

Lena’s mouth opened. Then it closed. “She’s blind. My sister.”

“I can go to her house.”

“No!” Lena had shouted the word. The blush came back like wildfire. “Sorry, Chief. I’ll call her now. She’s probably on her way to class. She gets around on her own. She’s fine. Just don’t talk to her about personal stuff because she’s very private.”

Jeffrey hadn’t planned on delving into Sibyl Adams’ intimate details. “Let me know when she’s here. Leave the door open.”

“Yes, sir.” Lena kept her head down as she walked back to her desk.

Then, because his day hadn’t started out bad enough, Jeffrey saw Sara talking to Marla Simms over by the reception counter.

Sara looked up. She waved. He frowned.

Sara was undeterred. She left Marla. She stopped just outside his office doorway. Her briefcase dangled from her hand. “I apologize for the way I said what I said.”

“But not for what you actually said?”

She gave a tight smile. “Yep.”

Jeffrey waved her in. He caught a glimpse of the photograph of his mother and felt his headache pound up a notch.

Sara closed the door. She dropped her briefcase. She sat back in the chair. “Three things. One is the apology.”

“Was it really an apology?”

“Two is, Dr. Barney is finally retiring. I’m buying out the practice. We’ll start telling patients next week. I’ll probably need to hire another doctor. I thought you should know ahead of time.”

Jeffrey wasn’t surprised. Sara had talked about taking over from Dr. Barney for years. Now that she wasn’t helping Jeffrey pay off his student loans, she had plenty of money lying around. “Number three?”

“I spoke with Beckey Caterino’s surgeon this morning. All on the QT. He agreed to let me take a look at her films. I gave him your private email address.”

“Why didn’t you give him yours?”

“Because I’m a doctor and I am legally bound by HIPPA to protect patient privacy.”

“Did it occur to you that I’m a police officer and I am legally bound to the Constitution of the United States?”

She shrugged, because she knew that she had him exactly where she wanted him.

He asked, “What did the surgeon say?”

“That the skull fracture looked unusual. He wouldn’t go into detail. I tried to press him on the puncture in her spinal cord, but he wouldn’t speculate. Or, he didn’t want to be called to the stand.”

Jeffrey guessed he wasn’t the only man who was afraid a lawsuit was going to damage his career. “I got a warning from Nick that the father is feeling litigious.”

“I don’t blame him. His daughter’s life has been irrevocably changed. She is going to need a lifetime of medical support. He can either go bankrupt trying to take care of her at home or he’ll have to turn her over to the state. You can imagine what that would look like.”

Jeffrey thought about all of the time they had wasted standing around while Beckey Caterino fought for her life. “Do you think thirty minutes would’ve made a difference for her?”

Sara’s face took on a diplomatic expression. “She was already exhibiting bradycardia and bradypnea when I knelt down beside her.”

Jeffrey waited.

“Her respiration and heart rate were dangerously low.”

He said, “I read your resuscitation notes. Three minutes is a long time to go without oxygen.”

Sara could’ve crushed him right now. Three minutes was a benchmark for serious brain injury. Jeffrey had looked up the information online, but she had learned it in medical school.

“Every second counts,” was all that Sara would say. Then she had the generosity to change the subject. “Do me a favor, though. Brock doesn’t know I’m making phone calls. He didn’t make it to the body, let alone assess her, but I don’t want him to think I’m stepping on his toes.”

Brock would have no problem with Sara stepping on his neck. “Did you smell anything on Caterino?”

“You mean intercourse?” Sara had brought up the possibility the previous day, right before they had gotten into a one-sided screaming argument, so he wasn’t surprised she had given it some thought. “If Rebecca was sexually assaulted, she was thirty minutes out. She was paralyzed, so she couldn’t move. But, her clothes were in place. There were no signs of a struggle, no signs of bruising or trauma from what I could see of her thighs. I didn’t smell anything at all. But honestly, I wasn’t going to stop and sniff her once we realized that she was still alive.”

He appreciated the we. “I asked Lena if she smelled—”

Sara barked a genuine laugh. “How did that go?”

“Fine. She’s a professional, Sara. You need to respect her.”

Sara looked around his office. She was giving herself space to back away from that line where they were at each other’s throats again.

He said, “Lena told me Caterino smelled clean. Like soap.”

Sara chewed her bottom lip. “Okay. Let’s walk ourselves through this. What would it mean if Rebecca Caterino was attacked?”

Jeffrey opened his desk drawer. He had no fear of the line. He tossed his calculator in her direction in case she needed help counting up all of the fucks she didn’t give.

All Sara said was, “That’s fair.”

The admission didn’t make him feel any better. “It’s been a year.”

“It has.”

“I want to know about your car.”

“It’s a BMW Z4 with an inline six.”

He had already tortured himself with the details. “Your Honda was four years old. You’d just paid it off.”

Sara looked around the office again. “When I bought the Honda, I was a cop’s wife. And when I walked out of the house that day, I knew I wasn’t going to be a cop’s wife anymore.”

“What I did, it was a stupid mistake.” He told her, “It didn’t mean anything.”