When the coffee was ready, Mitch filled three mugs and asked his folks if they wanted to check out Big Sister while they drank it. They did. He led them down the path toward the lighthouse and the narrow strip of beach. There was a soft early-morning haze hanging over the tranquil water. A great blue heron was having breakfast at the water’s edge. It took flight in the direction of the river. Mitch could hear the flapping of its wings.
“This is just lovely, sweetheart,” Ruth said as they strolled along. “It’s the sort of a place that you dream about.”
“I still can’t believe I actually live here. I keep waiting for someone to notice me and yell, ‘Hey, you with the curly hair-get the hell off our island!’”
“I was hoping for real autumn weather,” Chet groused. “The McCoy.”
“Soon, Pop. We’re supposed to get a storm tonight.” Mitch took a sip of his coffee and said, “Okay, give it to me straight-which one of you is dying?”
His parents exchanged a confused look.
“Dying?” Chet repeated dumbly.
“Is it you or is it Mom? Tell me everything right now. I mean it.”
Chet shook his head. “What in the heck are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about all of those ‘appointments’ that you had in the city. I’m talking about you showing up here in the middle of the night.”
“We like to beat the rush hour traffic.”
“Pop, you practically caught up with last night’s rush hour traffic. I know you two. Something’s up.”
“Nothing’s up. Everything’s sa-weet.”
“And will you please stop saying that? You’re driving me ka-rayzee.”
“Everything’s fine, sweetheart,” Ruth assured him. “We’re both fine.”
“Oh, yeah? Then what’s going on?”
“Lots of stuff,” Chet said. “We’re ‘happening’ people.”
“Pop, I swear…”
“We’ll discuss it tonight, okay? First, we want to meet Desiree. You can understand that, can’t you?”
“Not really.”
“Sure you can.” Chet squinted at the beach up ahead of them. “What’s that lying in the sand-is it a seal?”
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.
CHAPTER 7
By the time Des 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.”