She looked at it, turning it back and forth. "Think so?"
"Have you filed a report?"
She shook her head. "Not yet."
"Where's LaRue now?"
"I don't know. He was gone when the drug wore off four hours later."
David's emotions had been shut off for so long that now, when a wave of despair and anger hit him, he didn't know how to deal with it.
He sprang to his feet and turned away, hiding his face. Too much reality. If LaRue had stepped into the room at that moment, David would have killed him.
The intensity of his reaction scared him.
Get a grip, Gould.
Focus.
Put it away for now and do what you have to do.
He pulled in a deep breath and turned back around.
"Elise…" He paused, swallowed, then asked, "Do you need a rape kit?"
She looked surprised, as if it was something she hadn't considered. "N-no."
"Are you sure? Can you remember what happened during those four hours?"
She seemed uncertain. "Yes… and no."
She struggled to pull everything together. He imagined she was going over possible signs of rape in her head.
"I was there, and I wasn't." She gave it more thought. "No," she finally said. "It didn't happen."
"Okay. Good." He let out a breath and relaxed a little. "We've got to get you to the police station. You have to file a report. We need to catch this guy. Bring him in. Jesus. He's probably the one killing all these people."
"I don't know. Seems too easy. Too obvious."
"Every crime doesn't have to be hard to solve. Not if the perpetrator is a fucking idiot."
She closed her eyes and leaned back. "Too much anger" she said, her voice weak with exhaustion. "I don't feel like arguing."
"Right. Sorry." He raised his hands as if to choke an invisible person in front of him. "I'm upset." He dropped his hands.
He crossed the room, grabbed the phone receiver, and began punching numbers. "I'm ordering a crime scene team to LaRue's. They have to scour-" He stopped midsentence to direct his attention and dialogue to the person on the other end, making the arrangements that needed to be made.
"You should go to LaRue's and oversee the search," Elise said once David disconnected.
"I'm taking you to headquarters." He picked up the receiver again. "A late night visit to LaRue's seems just the thing for Starsky and Hutch."
After telephoning Starsky to give him an abbreviated version of what had happened, he packed Elise in his car and drove to the police station.
She wasn't accustomed to being on the victim side of the desk. It felt strange and a little surreal, the remnants of the drug in her system giving everything the sensation of a waking dream. After she signed the forms she needed to sign, they sent her to the crime lab to get six tubes of blood drawn.
While Gould waited in the break room, residue swab tests were taken of her mouth, lips, hands, and random places on her body. After that, she was stuck in a shower for fifteen minutes in case any small grain of TTX remained on her skin. That done, she was given a set of clean scrubs, her own clothes kept as evidence.
Butterfly bandages took care of her hand. On the way home, Gould swung by a Chinese restaurant, left the car idling by the door, and ran inside. He reappeared two minutes later with a white paper bag. "I called ahead," he explained, getting back in the car and passing the bag to her.
At Elise's house, they sat on the floor in the living room and ate from carryout containers.
She wore the green scrubs the lab had given her, hair still damp from the shower. Gould was dressed in jeans and the T-shirt he'd thrown on. His hair had dried funny.
Elise opened her fortune cookie.
Ah, she thought. Generic Fortune Number 75. Good deeds bring rewards. She should write fortunes. She could come up with much better ones.
"Damn," she said. 'Too bad I didn't read this earlier."
Gould paused, chopsticks in his hand. "What?"
Elise pretended to read the slip of paper. "An unquenchable thirst leads to an overabundance of knowl-
He put down the cardboard container and chopsticks, then opened his fortune cookie, popping half of it in his mouth while smoothing out the tiny strip of paper. "A wise person refuses candy from a stranger."
"Ha-ha." She pulled the paper from between his fingers. "You always have to one-up me, don't you? What does it really say?"
He tried to get it away, but she turned her back to him, the paper clutched to her stomach. " 'The past is never really the past.'"
"Hmm," Gould said. "A fortune cookie that paraphrases Faulkner. I think the actual quote is "The past is never dead. It's not even past.'"
"Do you think that's true?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
It was late. After midnight.
"Where do you sleep in this place?" Gould asked, looking around.
"Upstairs. On the third floor. Why?"
"I'm not leaving you alone with TTX in your system."
"That's completely unnecessary." The thought of Gould holing up in her house was a little too personal. They'd gone from I-hardly-know-you to a sleepover in a nanosecond.
The phone rang. It was crime scene specialist Abe Chilton.
"I'm at LaRue's place right now," he explained. "We're almost done collecting evidence."
"Find anything that could be TTX?" Elise asked.
"Nothing obvious."
"Any sign of LaRue?"
"Nope. But how are you? Would you like me to come by? Do you need company?"
"My partner's here," she said.
"Gould?" Chilton sounded puzzled. "Keep an eye on him. I've heard things."
She couldn't believe he was joining the conspiracy. "What kind of things?"
"That he's unstable as hell, for one."
She glanced over at Gould. He was gathering up the empty carryout containers, stuffing them in a bag. At the moment, he looked as stable and domestic as a fifties sitcom dad.
Chapter 26
The edges of Elise's dream were dark and blurry, like looking through a camera lens with no depth of field. She was walking down an alley with a brick, graffiti-covered wall. Water ran across the ground. She stepped in a hole and was submerged to her knees.
The streetlights were off, and the scene had a dark, apocalyptic feel.
She felt something brush against her leg and looked to see a floating body gently bump against her.
The corpse attached itself, wrapping its arms around her ankle. Elise shook herself loose and began moving through the dark street.
Now she noticed that the silhouettes she thought were unlit streetlights were really people.
Like something choreographed, they fell into step beside her as she drew even with them-until the street was full of dark forms, moving toward the river.
What did it mean? She felt the answer was there somewhere in the dream. If only she could reach the river…
She woke up, suddenly aware of her bedroom, her bed, the open doorway. The pillow beneath her head.
David lay in the dark of Elise's house, listening.
Had he been asleep? He didn't think so, but wasn't sure.
Somewhere a clock ticked and a small motor ran.
Her place was dusty halls and broken plaster exposing a wooden skeleton. Very little furniture. A few rugs here and there, but not enough to keep the echo down.
A work in progress.
He strained his ears for sounds of her breathing.
Silence.
"Elise?" he whispered.
No answer.
He tossed back the light blanket and rolled off the inflatable mattress they'd set up in the corner of her room. In the murky darkness, he reached across her bed.
Nobody.
In the haze of a blue night-light, he made his way down the hall, then the stairway, with its curving banister, to the first floor.
He stood there a moment. Light from the street fell through tall, curtainless windows.
He smelled cigarette smoke.
He followed the smell to a small sitting room at the front of the house.
"Come on in," Elise said from the depths.
He heard a rumble from beneath his feet; then a cool breeze hit him in the face as the central air kicked on.