Good Morning, Killer - April Smith [31]
“I need a narrative account of what happened to her,” I told the nurse quietly.
“There’s a period of time she can’t remember. It’s possible she was drugged.”
“Drugged?” Fear snagged me.
“Roofies. We see a lot of it.”
Rohypnol and GHB are two “rape drugs” you can buy on the street. Put into a drink, they will render the victim unconscious, then he or she wakes up, mauled, in another part of town with no memory of how it happened. Because these drugs can metabolize quickly without a trace, they are currently the preferred weapons in sexual assaults.
“No,” I moaned and trotted after her. “You understand why I have to ask questions.”
“She has the right to decline to answer.”
“I know all about her rights. I’m not suggesting we traumatize her further in any way. But in order for the investigation to move forward—”
“Nothing is going to happen to her that she doesn’t want to have happen,” reiterated the nurse in the same calm tone.
“I see that, but, with respect, I think we can press just a little harder, given the fact this guy is out there and likely to do it again.”
“You’re impatient, and I don’t blame you.”
The door to the exam room was open and Juliana was just inside. I could tell from Nancy’s preoccupied look she was not about to leave her alone for more than another few seconds.
“I’m asking for your cooperation,” I said urgently. “You’re the expert, you know how to get her to disclose.”
“I’m impatient, too,” Nancy said. “I want to proceed with the evidentiary exam so she can go home and be with her family. But she has the right to withdraw her consent at any point in the examination, and if she does, I will stop. She needs to feel comfortable in her medical care.”
“I need to move. I’ve got a task force ready to go—”
“I don’t give a shit what you need to do,” Nancy said, still serene.
Still, every doorway holds an opportunity, and inside the exam room there were two.
Juliana’s body: a crime scene. Evidence would be recovered, as in any crime scene, and as in any crime scene, a story would be told.
Juliana’s trust: she asked me to be in here. In the long run her confidence would be invaluable.
It was another carefully muted room, not like the bus terminal where I see my gynecologist at the HMO. Pale wood. Beige-on-beige, a subtle cloud pattern embossed on the wallpaper. There was a computer in a corner and an examination chair in the center where you could sit up and look into your nurse’s eyes. Her mom would be relieved to know that Juliana did not have to lie back on a paper-covered table with stirrups.
“You’re worried about being able to have a baby.” Nancy was close, maintaining eye contact. “You’re worried about the injuries inside your vagina. I’ll have a better idea when I take a look. I’ll tell you what I see. I’ll never withhold information. I’ll always tell you the truth.”
Juliana scanned the room.
“How … are you going to look?”
“Oh!” said Nancy brightly. “We’re going to see it all right here on this screen,” and she patted a monitor on a cart, which held a VCR and a video camera. “If you want to watch, I’ll explain it to you as I go. But that comes later.”
Later, Nancy would explain to me it was a colposcope, a camera at the end of a long stalk that magnifies sixteen times. She would flick switches and point the lens at the pattern on a sheet covering the examination chair, slowly zooming in on a teardrop-shaped paisley, and I would watch on the monitor as the paisley became a country with green boundaries, a continent of blue, a universe of emptiness; until we were looking at the spaces between the cotton threads.
Later, we three strangers would become linked by the shared sight on the TV screen of the lacerations inside Juliana’s vagina—invisible to the naked eye but vast as crimson canyons when magnified—and deep, mysterious half-moon cuts in a row.
The livid marks of a man’s fingernails.
But now Nancy broke the seal on a rape kit and began to unpack white envelopes for evidence collection.
Step one was debris.