The Blood Red Indian Summer (12 page)

It lay a hundred feet ahead of them at the edge of the water. It was dark-skinned and shiny. But it was no seal. It was a young black woman. She appeared to be naked. She also appeared to be dead.

Mitch dashed toward her with his father in hot pursuit. She lay facedown in the sand. She was not naked. Her thin, sleeveless undershirt and panties were just so plastered to her wet skin that they were see-through. The undershirt had been torn in several places. Mitch turned her over. She was freezing cold to the touch—the air was warm but the water in the Sound wasn’t. She was a teenager, no more than eighteen. A beautiful girl with a voluptuous figure. Her knees were badly scraped. There were fresh bruises around her wrists and throat. Also atop her thighs. Someone had gotten rough with her.

“Here, let me…” Chet had been a lifeguard at Jones Beach in his youth. He fell to his knees, wiped the caked sand from her face and stuck his ear to her mouth, listening closely. “She’s alive but she’s barely breathing.” He performed mouth-to-mouth on her, then listened once again, shaking his head. “She’s full of water. Got to get it out of her.” He flipped the girl back over onto her stomach, turned her head to one side and pressed firmly against her back with both hands. She coughed up some seawater. He pressed again. More water came up. “Mitch, I’m going to stay with her. You run back to the house and call an ambulance, okay? And bring back plenty of blankets.” He turned her back over and tried more mouth-to-mouth on her. “Hurry, son. We don’t have a lot of time.”

The girl coughed once again—except this time she abruptly regained consciousness, her big brown eyes gazing up at them wildly. “Don’t make me go back there!” she cried out. “
Please
don’t make me go back there!” Then she passed out and stayed out.

C
HAPTER
7

B
Y THE TIME
D
ES
got out to the island Marge and Mary Jewett had already loaded the girl into the back of their EMT van in Mitch’s driveway. Mitch was standing there with an adorable little sun-browned couple who were instantly identifiable as his parents. Mitch had his mother’s dense curly hair and busy little rabbit nose. And his father’s bright, probing eyes. Happily, Mitch did not share his father’s fashion sense. Mr. Berger’s salmon-colored slacks were yanked up so high it was a wonder the man could swallow.

“Morning, Des,” Marge said wearily as Des climbed out of her cruiser.

“Back at you. Feels like I just saw you ladies ten minutes ago.”

“It
was
ten minutes ago,” Mary said.

Des hopped into the van with the girl, acutely aware of Mitch’s parents watching her. “What have we got here?”

“Collateral damage from that party, we’re figuring,” Mary said. “Meet Jane Doe.”

Jane Doe was an African-American in her teens. She had an oxygen mask over her face and an IV tube in her forearm. She was swaddled in blankets.

“The Bergers got most of the water out of her,” Mary said. “Her lungs sound pretty clear now. We’re oxygenating her and giving her fluids for dehydration. Her blood pressure’s a little low but she’s stable and conscious—although she won’t tell us who she is or what happened to her.”

“All she has on is her underwear,” Marge said, lowering her voice. “Her panties are intact but her T-shirt’s torn. She has fresh bruises on her thighs and around her wrists and throat. Her knees are all scraped up, too. We’ve phoned ahead to Shoreline Clinic for a SANE.” Meaning a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner.

Mary bent down and removed the oxygen mask from the girl’s face. “How are you doing, hon?”

“Fine,” she answered hoarsely. She didn’t look fine. Panicky was more like it.

“Would you like to tell us your name now?”

“I can do that,” Des said, studying the girl with great concern. “It’s Kinitra Jameson. Her older sister, Jamella, is married to Tyrone Grantham.” Des crouched down close to her. “What happened, Kinitra?”

Kinitra wouldn’t say. She just shook her head.

“Were you out on a boat? Did someone attack you? How did you get all of those bruises?”

Kinitra shook her head again, then started to cry—huge, wrenching sobs.

Des turned to Marge and said, “Get her up to the clinic. I’ll be along after I speak to the Bergers.”

“And you’ll notify next of kin?”

“That, too,” Des said as she climbed out.

“Lucky you.”

“Yeah, I’m just lucky all over.”

Mary pulled the rear doors shut from the inside as Marge got behind the wheel. The van started its way back toward the causeway.

Des strode toward the Bergers, her pulse quickening.

Mitch was grinning at her in a most unfamiliar way. He looked as if his upper lip had been Krazy Glued to his top teeth. “I guess this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for,” he said, his voice soaring at least an octave higher than usual. “Ruth and Chet Berger, I’d like you to meet the one and only Desiree Mitry.”

“This is a real pleasure, Desiree,” Chet said effusively. “Mitch has told us so much about you. Except he
didn’t
tell us you were so beautiful.”

“Or so tall,” Ruth said, gazing up, up at her.

“It’s the hat,” said Des, who suddenly felt as if her own top lip had been glued to her teeth.

“Is that poor girl going to make it?” Chet asked.

“She’ll be okay.”

“I marked the spot where we found her,” Mitch said. “Want to see it?”

“Is there anything to see?”

“Not really.”

“Then it can wait. I need to contact her family now.”

“So you’ve got an I.D. on her?”

“I know her. She’s Tyrone Grantham’s sister in law.”

His face dropped. “Uh-oh…”

“Uh-oh is right.” Des turned back to his parents and said, “This is really not how I planned to meet you folks. And now I’m afraid I have to run.”

“Do what you have to do, Desiree,” Chet said. “Besides, the best way to get to know someone is to watch them at work. Not at some artificial dinner party.”

“Which we will, in fact, be having later on,” Mitch pointed out. “Artifice and all. But you’re absolutely right, Pop. It so happens that the two of us met because of her work. Dinner came much, much later. First, she had to make sure I wasn’t a murderer.”

Chet’s eyes widened. “You thought Boo-Boo was a murderer?”

Des blinked at him. “I’m sorry, what did you just—?”

“Nothing,” Mitch blurted out. “He didn’t say anything.”

“Really? Because it sounded like … did he just call you—?”

“Pop, I begged you.”

“No, no. I like it large, Boo-Boo. And for the record, Chet, I never thought he was a murderer. Wouldn’t have brought him Baby Spice if I did.”

“Who’s Baby Spice?” demanded Chet, who had some volume control issues. Talked a bit on the loud side. Maybe it was the pants.

“From the Spice Girls,” Ruth said to him. “That English singing group, remember? One of them’s married to David Beckham. The one with those huge, fake boobs.”

Chet shook his head. “Who’s David Beckham?”

“The soccer player.”

“He has huge, fake boobs?”

“No,
she
does.”

“Who
does?”

“Des was referring to Clemmie. Her name used to be Baby Spice.” Now Mitch’s voice had a semi-adolescent edge to it. The poor man was growing younger by the minute. Before long his testicles would be retreating back up into his pelvis. “I’ll be right back,” he said to them, steering Des across the driveway toward her cruiser. “You saw all of those bruises?”

“I saw them.”

“When she came to, she said, ‘Please don’t make me go back there.’ She seemed really, really terrified.”

“I’ll take down your formal witness statement later. Your folks, too. Will they be okay?”

“Are you kidding? They spent their entire working lives in the New York City public school system. They’ve seen shootings, knifings—don’t worry about them.”

Des looked out at the water. “I’m all turned around. Where’s the Grantham house from here?”

“A mile or so that way.” He pointed up river. “The river current sends all sorts of debris our way. Tree limbs, plastic bottles—everything washes up here. She’s lucky she did. Otherwise she would have drifted out into the open Sound. Then again, maybe that’s what she wanted to do.”

“You mean commit suicide?”

“Why else would she go for a swim in the middle of the night—in her underwear?”

“Could be some guy was getting rough with her. She jumped in the water to get away from him but the current was too strong and she couldn’t get back.”

“That plays,” he conceded. “Especially if she was drunk or high. There
was
a party there last night.”

Des shoved her heavy horn-rimmed glasses up her nose and said, “I don’t like this.”

“I wouldn’t either if I were you.”

She waved good-bye to Mitch’s parents, got in her Crown Vic and drove back across the causeway, stopping when she reached the Nature Preserve. She’d input Tyrone Grantham’s unlisted home number in her cell phone. Chantal answered the phone, sounding sleepy and grumpy.

“Sorry to disturb you so early, Chantal. It’s Resident Trooper Mitry. Is Jamella awake yet?”

“She been up since dawn with her morning sickness. Poor thing hasn’t gone a day without vomiting since she got pregnant. You need her?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I’ll go get her.”

Des gazed out across the undulating green meadows of the Nature Preserve, cherishing this fleeting moment of serenity.

“Hello?…” Jamella’s voice sounded guarded.

“It’s Resident Trooper Mitry, Jamella. I’m calling about Kinitra.”

“She’s asleep in bed. You want me to wake her? Chantal could have done that for you.”

“Kinitra’s not in her room. I’m afraid she’s being taken by ambulance to Shoreline Clinic.”

Jamella let out a gasp. “She’s
what
?”

“A resident of Big Sister Island just found her washed up on the beach there. She nearly drowned, but she appears to be okay.”

“Oh my lord!…”

Des heard noises in the background. And a man’s voice demanding, “What’s going on?”

“Tyrone, they’re taking my baby sister to the hospital! Trooper Mitry, are y-you still there?”

“I’m here. But I’m afraid I have more bad news. She’s pretty bruised up. It’s possible that she may have been sexually assaulted.”

“Are you telling me one of those punks at Clarence’s party
raped
her?”

“Who
raped her?” Tyrone hollered in the background.

“Oh, my sweet girl,” Jamella sobbed. “Where’s this place you’re taking her to? No, wait. Baby, you talk to her. I can’t. I just can’t.”

“This here’s Tyrone,” he said angrily. “Where do we go?”

“Shoreline Clinic on Route 153 between Westbrook and Essex.”

“Will you be there?”

“I’m on my way right now. Tyrone, you need to find Kinitra’s wallet with her driver’s license and other forms of I.D. Bring it with you, okay?”

“Is this an insurance thing? Because I got her covered no matter how much it costs.”

“It’s not an insurance thing. It’s an age of consent thing. They need to verify that she’s eighteen.”

“Why’s that?”

“They’ll explain everything to you when you get there.”

*   *   *

Shoreline Clinic was a small, highly efficient emergency response facility affiliated with Middlesex Hospital up in Middletown. Des accessed the emergency room directly from the driveway through the ambulance doors and found herself in a bustling bullpen of nurse’s and doctor’s stations. The examining and treatment rooms formed a big U around the bullpen.

The Jewett girls had come and gone by the time she got there. Kinitra was being examined by a doctor. The door to her room was closed. Des, who was several hours shy of sleep, fetched herself a cup of coffee from the nurses’ lounge. Sipping the coffee gratefully, she returned to the E.R. and peeked through the glass door to the admitting desk and waiting area. Tyrone and Jamella were seated out there with Rondell, all three of them looking tight-lipped and grim. There were only a few other people out there at this early hour. By nine o’clock the place would be mobbed.

The door to Kinitra’s room opened now and the SANE, a chubby young redhead, came out clutching the results of the CT100 Sex Crimes Kit—Kinitra’s T-shirt and panties, the vaginal swabs, all trace and biological samples and photographic evidence. Every item was bagged and tagged separately. She led Des over to the nearest counter so that Des could sign for it, thereby maintaining the chain of custody.

“Dr. Tashima will be out in a minute,” the young nurse informed her before she went bustling off.

Des used that minute to lock the evidence bags in the trunk of her cruiser. When she returned Dr. Cindie Tashima was coming out of Kinitra’s room, closing the door softly behind her. Des had worked with Cindie on numerous occasions. She was a Harvard-trained Japanese-American whose parents had been born in an internment camp in Utah during the Second World War.

Right now, she had a very unhappy look on her face. “The Jewett girls told me to expect you.”

“How is she?”

“Stable, comfortable and lucid. Also quite adamant that she wasn’t raped last night. I advised her to consent to a rape kit anyway just for her personal safety. She consented even though she swore it wouldn’t show anything. And it didn’t.”

“Her being in the water like she was would wash away all of the evidence, wouldn’t it?”

“That’s a ‘yes’ as to someone else’s pubic hair. And a ‘no’ as to semen. There should still be traces of it in her vagina even after two hours in the water. But we found nothing when we swabbed her.”

“Say he wore a condom.”

“We found no fresh internal or external vaginal abrasions. Kinitra wasn’t raped.” Cindie let her breath out slowly. “Not last night, anyhow.”

Des frowned at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that I found extensive scarring. Someone has been sexually abusing this young woman for months. I’m talking about repeated, forcible vaginal and anal penetration.”

“Damn, this just keeps getting better and better.”