She opened the door wide enough for him to pass. “They’re in the back yard. Please, be quick.”
Jeffrey walked into what he was expecting, a rectangle chopped up into small rooms with a bowling alley hallway down the middle. He glanced at the photographs hanging on the walls. He assumed that Tommi Humphrey was an only child. The pictures showed a happy young woman, usually surrounded by a group of friends. She had played flute in the marching band. She had competed in several science fairs. She had a series of dogs, then a cat, then a boyfriend who had taken her to the prom. The last photo was of Tommi holding a moving box outside what was obviously one of the dorm rooms at Grant Tech.
There were no more pictures after that.
Jeffrey pushed open a sliding glass door. He could see Sara sitting at a picnic table with a painfully thin young woman. Bright white skin. Her hair was short and black now. Tommi Humphrey must’ve been in her early twenties, but she looked somehow older and younger at the same time. She was smoking a cigarette. Even from several yards, he could see the tremble in her hand.
Sara did not look surprised to see him. She told the girl, “This is Jeffrey.”
Tommi turned slightly, but did not look at him.
Jeffrey took his cue from Sara. She indicated the other side of the table.
He sat back on the bench. He kept his hands in his lap. He had interviewed many rape victims in his law enforcement career. The first thing he’d learned was that they never acted a particular way. Some were angry. Some entered into a fugue state. Some wanted revenge. Most desperately wanted to leave. A few had even laughed when they told their stories. He had noted the same unpredictable affects among veterans returning from war. Trauma was trauma. Every person reacted differently.
Sara spoke to Jeffrey, but she looked at Tommi. “Sweetheart, what you just told me is so important. Can you tell Jeffrey?”
Jeffrey gripped his hands under the table. His only option was to sit still and be quiet.
Sara said, “If it’s easier, I can tell him. You’ve already given me permission. We want to do whatever is easiest for you.”
Tommi tapped her cigarette on the side of an overflowing ashtray. Her breath had the audible rasp of a chain smoker. Jeffrey thought about all of the photographs lining the hallway. Sara was right to compare what had happened to an atomic blast. Before the assault, Tommi had been ebullient, popular, happy. Now, she was a dark shadow of her former self.
Sara said, “We could leave right now, if that’s what you want. But it would be helpful if Jeffrey could hear it in your own words. I promise you on my life that nothing will happen. This isn’t official. You’re not making a statement. No one will even know about this conversation. Right?”
She had asked Jeffrey this question. He struggled to answer, not because he didn’t agree but because he felt like saying the wrong thing at this moment could break this poor woman all over again.
All he could risk telling her was, “Right.”
Tommi’s chest rose as she inhaled deeply on the cigarette. She held the smoke in her lungs. She finally looked up. Her eyes still did not meet Jeffrey’s. Her gaze fell somewhere behind him. Smoke plumed out of her mouth. “I was a junior.”
Her tone was monosyllabic. There was something final about the way she spoke about herself in the past tense.
“I was walking back from the campus gym. I don’t know what time it was. It was dark.” She put the cigarette to her lips. He could see her fingers were stained from nicotine. “I heard someone behind me. He was swinging something at my head. I didn’t see what it was. It was hard. I was stunned. He grabbed me. He dragged me into his van. He tried to get me to drink something.”
Jeffrey found himself leaning forward, ears straining to hear.
“I choked on it. Coughed it up.” She put her hand to her neck. “It was in a bottle. The liquid.”
Jeffrey watched tears roll down her face. He started to reach for his handkerchief, but Sara pulled a tissue from her sleeve.
Tommi didn’t wipe her eyes. She clenched the tissue in her fist.
She said, “It was Gatorade. Or another sports drink. The blue flavor. It made my neck sticky.”
Jeffrey saw the quiver in her fingers as she touched her neck to show him where.
“He was mad that I spit it out. He hit me on the back of the head. He told me not to fight back. I didn’t fight back.”
She shook a cigarette out of the pack and tried to light a new one off the old. Her shaking hands were barely able to make the connection.
She placed the smoldering cigarette between her lips.
She said, “Then we were in the woods. I woke up in the woods. I guess I swallowed some of the Gatorade. It knocked me out. Then I came to. He was sitting there. Waiting. Then he saw that I was awake. He covered my mouth with his hand, but I wasn’t screaming.”
She inhaled again on the cigarette. She let the smoke sit in her lungs, puffing out with each new word. “He told me not to move. That I couldn’t move. That he wanted me to act like I was paralyzed.”
Jeffrey felt his lips part. He tasted the sharp burn of nicotine in the air.
“He had this thing. Like a knitting needle. At the back of my neck. He said he would paralyze me forever if I didn’t comply.”
Jeffrey’s eyes found Sara’s. He couldn’t read her expression. It was like she was trying to make herself disappear.
“I didn’t move. I let my arms fall to my sides. I forced my legs to stay straight. He wanted me to keep my eyes open. I kept my eyes open. He didn’t want me to look at him. I didn’t look at him. It was dark. I couldn’t see anything. I could only feel … ripping. Tearing.”
The cigarette dangled between her lips. Smoke curled into her face.
“Then he finished. Then he cleaned me down there. It burned. I was cut. Bleeding. He wiped my face. My hands. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move. I kept pretending. He dressed me. He buttoned my shirt. He pulled up my underwear. He zipped up my jeans. He told me if I told anybody, he would do it to someone else. If I kept quiet, he wouldn’t.”
Sara bent her head. Her eyes were closed.
“I tried not to look at him,” Tommi said. “I thought if I couldn’t identify him, he would let me go. And he did. He left me in the woods. On my back. I stayed there. He told me to act paralyzed. I was still paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I don’t know if I was breathing. I thought I was dead. I wanted to be dead. That’s it. That’s what happened.”
Jeffrey was still looking at Sara. He had questions to ask, but he didn’t know how.
Sara took a breath. She opened her eyes. She asked, “Tommi, do you remember what color the van was, or anything about it?”
“No,” she said, then, “It was dark. The van was dark.”
Sara asked, “How about the general location where you were left in the woods?”
“No.” She tapped ash off the cigarette. “I don’t remember getting up. I don’t remember walking back to campus. I must have taken a shower. I must have changed my clothes. The only memory I have after is thinking I had started my period. And being happy, because …”
She didn’t have to explain why she had been happy about getting her period.
Sara took a shallow breath. “Do you remember what he cleaned you with?”
“A washcloth. It smelled like bleach. My hair was—” She looked down at the cigarette. “Down there, my hair was bleached.”
“Did he take the washcloth with him?”
“He took everything.”
Sara looked at Jeffrey. If there was anything else he wanted, now was the only time he was going to be able to get it. “Tommi, Jeffrey has just a few more questions, okay? Just a few.”
Jeffrey received the order loud and clear. He worked to keep his tone soft. “Before this happened, did you feel like you were being watched?”
She rolled the cigarette in the ashtray. “It’s hard to think about my other self. To think about the before. I don’t—I don’t know that person anymore. I don’t remember who she was.”
“I understand.” Jeffrey looked at the back of the house. He could see Tommi’s mother standing at the kitchen sink. She was watching them carefully, every muscle in her face tensed. “Do you remember if anything was missing? A personal item, or—”
She looked him in the eye, startled.
“Can you—”
The back door banged open. A large man in work coveralls filled the doorway. He had a wrench gripped in his hand.
Jeffrey was standing, hand on his gun, before the man could get a word out.
“What the fuck are you doing?” the man demanded. “Get the fuck away from my daughter.”
Jeffrey tried, “Mr. Humphrey—”
Sara grabbed Jeffrey’s hand. The contact was enough to break him out of the moment.
“Who are you?” Humphrey walked down the steps. “Why are you bothering her?”
“I’m a police officer,” Jeffrey said.
“We don’t need no fucking cops.” Humphrey swung the wrench as he crossed the yard. “This is a private matter. You can’t make her talk to you.”