As soon as the girl saw them standing in the doorway, she began screaming and flailing against her bonds.
"Get me out of here!" she shrieked. "That madman did this! He tied me up and raped me! He's crazy! Get me out of here!"
Gillian seemed frozen to the floor. Mary slid her gun back into the shoulder holster and pushed her sister forward. Gillian took a few halting steps, then stopped again.
"Find a knife," Mary told her. "Scissors, anything to cut her loose."
Gillian nodded and left the room.
Mary pulled out her mobile phone and punched number one on her speed dial. Anthony answered and she quickly explained the situation, asking him to call Wakefield and Elliot Senatra. Then she hung up to concentrate on the victim.
Gillian reappeared with a steak knife. "This is all I could find."
"I wish we had latex gloves," Mary said. "This is a crime scene, and the less we mess it up the better."
"Get me out of here!" The girl was hysterical.
"I'm an FBI agent," Mary explained calmly. "And this is Officer Cantrell, from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. We're going to free you, but we have to be careful not to destroy any evidence."
"Evidence? Why do you need evidence? I know who did this to me!"
"We'll still need evidence to back up your story. You want him to pay for this, don't you? You don't want him to get away with it, do you?"
"Fuck no!"
"Hold still, and when you're free, try not to touch anything."
"I want my clothes!"
"I'll get them," Gillian said, handing Mary the knife.
She'd been bound with clothesline cord. Mary cut through the bindings and the girl came shooting off the bed, grabbing her clothes from Gillian. Now that she was on her feet, it quickly became evident that she was drunk.
"I wanna cab," she said, staggering around, trying to get into her clothes, giving up on the panties, which she tossed on the floor along with her top.
"We have to wait for the police to come and take your statement," Mary explained, picking up the top and turning the triangle of fabric this way and that, trying to figure out what was what. "Then you're going to have to go to the emergency room so you can be processed with a rape kit."
"No."
The girl had managed to get into her shorts-tiny little things that her butt hung out of. Mary helped her with the crop top, tying it in back with strings as big around as pieces of spaghetti.
"Don't you want to see this guy convicted?" Mary asked.
"They'll check my blood alcohol. I'm under twenty-one. My parents'll kill me."
"Let's get out of here. We should wait where there's no risk of evidence contamination. Is there a room you haven't been in?"
"The kitchen."
Mary wanted to question her, but knew it would be best to wait for the police so the information wouldn't become diluted by repetition.
Everybody showed up at the same time. The police. Anthony. Elliot.
"I met him at a bar," said the girl, whose name turned out to be Cammie Curtis. "He asked me if I wanted to ride around and I said, Yeah, sure. Why not? He brought me here instead. I'm not the kind of girl who has sex with a guy she's just met, so he got mad and raped me. He tied me up!" She began to cry, and one of the female officers put an arm around her.
"We're going to have to ask you to come to the hospital so we can run some tests," she said quietly.
Seemingly subdued by the appearance of officers in uniform, Cammie sniffled and nodded. "Okay."
"After that, we'll take you down to police headquarters to get a more in-depth statement."
Again, the girl nodded.
Cammie lived in Wisconsin and was attending school at the U of M. "You're going to have to stay in town," Mary said, willing to play unpopular again. "At least for a couple more days." She knew Cam-mie's instinct would be to run for home and security.
"Fax us a copy of everything, will you?" Elliot asked.
The female officer nodded, then led Cammie from the house to the patrol car. Two officers remained to secure the scene and wait for the crime lab. Another officer took Mary and Gillian's statements.
When the crime technicians arrived, it was almost five o'clock.
Cammie had said that the first assault took place in the living room. Then he moved her to the bedroom to rape her a second time. The technicians went over everything inch by inch, bagging up fibers, body secretions, hairs. They dusted for fingerprints, coming up with what looked to be three sets-a small number of prints to find in one person's house, but then Gavin didn't know many people.
A butcher knife was found on the floor near the couch.
At that point, Mary realized she hadn't seen Gillian in a while. She searched the house and finally found her sitting outside on the front steps. The sky was beginning to lighten.
"I can't believe it," Gillian said, elbow on her knee, forehead to her palm. "He must have really killed Fiona."
Mary sat down beside her. She could feel the cold of the cement through her jeans. She put her arm around her sister and gave her a gentle shake. "Don't feel bad about trusting him." Mary had spent years trying to convince Gillian that Gavin was bad news, but now she experienced no satisfaction in knowing that her sister finally saw him for what he was. Instead, Mary felt incredibly sorry for Gillian. "There's nothing wrong with having faith in people."
Gillian lifted both hands as if cupping a huge bowl. "But he was right there in front of me the whole time. I'm supposed to be a cop. How could I have been so blind?" She grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged at it-something she used to do years ago when she was frustrated.
"I came to visit him the other day," Gillian saidl "I wanted him to know I wasn't going to be around for a while…"
Mary waited, but Gillian stopped in midsentence, swallowing her next words.
"What happened when you came to see him?" Mary prodded.
Gillian seemed to change her mind, as if she immediately regretted mentioning her visit. "Nothing. Not really. You know Gavin." She let out a tense, false laugh and motioned toward the inside of the house and the evidence of what had recently taken place in there. "You know how weird he can be."
The door slammed behind them as Anthony stepped outside. "There's one more person we need to talk to," he said. "If he's still alive."
Nobody had to ask who he was talking about.
Gillian had been staring at her hands. Now she looked up. Mary couldn't recall ever seeing that expression on her sister's face-a mixture of fear and revulsion. What had happened between her and Gavin? What had he done to her?
"There's no reason for you to go," Mary said. "You don't have to see him."
Gillian got to her feet. "I'm going. I know him better than anybody else. He'll talk to me. I may be the only one who's able to get a confession out of him."
Chapter 21
"He's breathing on his own."
The emergency room doctor made the announcement to the group of police and agents in the waiting room. Then he succinctly filled them in on details. "The patient rated a fourteen on the Glasgow Coma Scale. He was lucky-at twelve we usually intubate. Unfortunately, we had to give him another injection of naloxone, which has been associated with seizures. With Mr. Hitchcock's history of epilepsy, we'll have to monitor him closely for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours."
"Can we speak with him?" Anthony asked.
"Two people for not more than ten minutes. And I mean speak to him. No interrogation."
It was decided that Gillian and Detective Wakefield would conduct the brief interview, even though Mary offered to go in Gillian's place. They followed the doctor down a long hallway with mint green walls and a cracked linoleum floor that had turned yellow. The fluorescent lights were unnaturally bright, and no one cast a shadow.