The Silhouette Girl

by V. C. Andrews

  Carefully, I reached down and, grasping the top of the frame, pulled the picture back and up.

  And then the world caved in on me. My scream was so shrill, such a strain on my vocal cords, that I went mute.

  My mother was looking up at me. She was lying there with her eyes still open, and she was wearing the gown she had worn on her anniversary, the gown she wore in the portrait.

  Pru

  THEY LED ME directly to the interrogation room. Before I could take a seat, Chandler was at my side. Lieutenant Julio and Detective Gabriel left us, telling us they’d be right back.

  Chandler spun around as soon as the door closed. “What didn’t you tell me?” he demanded.

  How do I put this gently and make it sound less than it is? I wondered. How do I keep from hurting him? She had put me in this place. She had designed a way to destroy my relationship with him. It suddenly occurred to me that she might be someone who worked in his office, someone who had a terrible crush on him. Hadn’t her calls begun about the time Chandler and I first met? Her jealousy was like a sharp knife cutting into my heart. I had gone too far out alone. She had baited me, drawn me into her world, a world where she had more control, and I had let her do it, never anticipating she would go this far.

  “Well?” he said. “They’ll be back any moment, Pru. Talk. I have to know everything in order to represent you right now.”

  “He might have raped me,” I said.

  It always amazed me how quickly blood could rise into someone’s face. I saw it often when a doctor related undesirable results to a patient or informed him or her how something serious, something invasive, had to be done. The crimson in their faces was darker and lasted longer than a blush from embarrassment. Chandler’s face was almost ruby red.

  “Who?” he asked, pulling back as if I had contracted something contagious.

  “Douglas Thomas,” I said.

  He knew the answer, but like anyone who was hoping it wasn’t true, he’d asked as if he didn’t.

  “What are you saying? When? In the hospital?”

  “No. He came to my apartment. He was waiting at the door with a bottle of champagne. He said he had returned to work and wanted to celebrate with me. I told him he was wrong to track me down, but he pleaded for the opportunity to share his joy with the nurse who he still believed saved his life. I think he had been waiting there in the hallway by my door for more than an hour. Who would do that? I thought the fastest way to get rid of him was to have one glass, toast his health, and send him on his way. I told him I had to clean the apartment because you were coming very soon.”

  “What do you mean, he might have raped you? How could you not know if someone raped you? Did he attack you?”

  “Not attack. He wanted a picture with me holding the glass of champagne and wearing the pearls, so I went to get them, and while I was gone, he must have put something in my champagne, maybe GHB.”

  “How do you know that’s what it might have been?”

  “I had it once as a teenager but not that great a dose, of course. Some call it the date-rape drug. When I awoke, I was naked on my bed, and Douglas Thomas was gone. I went to the bathroom to look at myself, and I saw a used condom floating in the toilet. I thought he might have deliberately left it so I’d see it.”

  “Why?”

  “Perhaps he was bragging. I had no marks on my body and no awareness of penetration.”

  “Why didn’t you call the police? Go to have a rape-kit test?” Chandler asked. He was firing his questions at me as if I was on the witness stand in a trial.

  “I thought about it, but if he did rape me, he used a condom.”

  “Yes, exactly, but you had it. It surely still contained enough of his sperm to reveal his DNA. Why not use it?”

  “That’s true, but . . .” I hesitated.

  “But what?”

  “He did more. It’s almost indescribable.”

  “Describe it, and quickly.”

  “I was washed clean, almost sterilized, so there wouldn’t be a hair, even a skin cell, left behind on my body. In fact, the entire apartment had been cleaned, vacuumed, every glass and dish washed, the coffee table dusted. It looked polished. I realized that there would be no fingerprints. He even had changed my sheets and pillowcases and washed the previous set. The bottle of champagne was gone. There was no trace of him having been there. Everything was pristine. I was afraid you might notice that and start asking questions.”

  Chandler stared at me for a long moment, so long I thought he didn’t believe me.

  “I know how bizarre it sounds, but it all happened just as I described, Chandler.”

  “You still should have called the police and explained. It’s important to report something like this as close to the crime occurring as possible. How could you not?”

  “I did think about it, but in the end, I realized what they might think, how they would respond to my claims. I had let him into my apartment, I still had those pearls, and there was nothing that indicated force of any kind.”

  “Why do you still have the pearls?” he practically screamed.

  I shook my head. It was difficult to explain. I didn’t understand it myself, but there was something about those pearls that kept me from getting rid of them, and it wasn’t just how valuable and pretty they were.

  “You’re a nurse, Pru. You know you could have had blood taken and have proven you were drugged?”

  “The window was closed on discovery. I know the limits of the drug when it comes to toxicology. And just because it’s in your system doesn’t mean you were drugged. People overdose, get too excited about it. The ER is often busy with teenagers who do it.”

  He grimaced, shook his head, and thought. Then his eyes widened with an idea. “How did he get into the building in the first place? If you told the police, they could have started with that.”

  “I did think of that, but then I realized that even if they discovered how, like followed someone in or pressed other tenants and one let him in without questioning, that would only prove he was there, nothing more. And they could very well think I buzzed him in to begin with, and I didn’t, as I described, find him already there at my door. The building has no cameras, lacks security.”

  “So then what happened after he did this? Did he call you, try to visit you again?” he asked.

  “No. I tried to forget it. I thought if he posted pictures on the Internet, then I might do something, because then I’d have some sort of proof of his maliciousness at least.”

  “And he didn’t?”

  “As far as I know, no. Believe me, if he had, there are people at the hospital, especially on my floor, who would have had them circulated by now.”

  He thought a moment. “That night at dinner, when I had the champagne brought to the table . . . is that why you acted like that?”

  I nodded. “It happened to be the same champagne.”

  “You could have told me then.”

  “I knew how much it would upset you, how angry you would be at me for letting him in. You’d be like you are now. Blaming me.”

  “I’m not blaming you, but, Pru, this is different. They’re considering you a suspect in a murder.”

  “I know. I was hoping I could just forget it all. And I probably would have managed to do that, but today . . .”

  “But today what, Pru? For God’s sake, what else?”

  “She called and left a message. She said, ‘I know what he did to you. He’ll pay.’ ”

  “Scarletta?”

  I nodded.

  “Christ. Why didn’t you show me that message?”

  “I would have had to tell you everything and I was hoping—”

  “How could she know what he had done to you?” His eyes lit up. “Maybe she worked with him. That’s how she knew what you had done for him in the hospital. He bragged about your stopping the wrong medication. He might even have told her or others that he had given you those pearls. Maybe she liked him and thought y
ou were taking him away from her.”

  “Maybe,” I said. That did make more sense than her working with Chandler and being in competition with me, but in any case, she was driven by jealousy.

  “This is so twisted, but we can play that message for the police and get them off your tail.”

  “No,” I said. “We can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I erased it.”

  He simply stared as his lips moved. The words wouldn’t come.

  “How could I play it for you and not tell you everything? Don’t you see?”

  Before he could answer, the door opened, and Lieutenant Julio and Detective Gabriel returned, Lieutenant Julio carrying a folder. They sat across from us, and Lieutenant Julio pressed the button on a recording device, beginning their interrogation with the time and who was present.

  “We’ll do your fingerprints and your DNA sample after this,” he said. “Unless you make it unnecessary.”

  “We will not respond to any questions until you reveal how and when Mr. Thomas was murdered,” Chandler said, gathering his thoughts and sitting up firmly. “I’m not going to permit Miss Dunning to be a part of some fishing expedition.”

  Lieutenant Julio nodded, turned to me, and then, as if Chandler hadn’t spoken, asked, “Did you have anything to do with Douglas Thomas after he was released from the hospital, Miss Dunning?”

  “I just said we’re not going to respond unless—”

  Lieutenant Julio put up his hand to stop Chandler, opened the folder, and, like someone laying out cards in solitaire, spread out pictures of me naked on my bed, the pearls prominent between my breasts. There were different views, pictures taken from different angles. It was clear that in one, he had been standing directly over me, shooting down, and in another, he had been lying beside me. After those were displayed, Lieutenant Julio put out an additional one with me facedown but my legs spread as far apart as they could be. The photographs were better quality and more graphic than pictures in porno magazines.

  “I have placed photographs collected as evidence from Mr. Thomas’s apartment,” Lieutenant Julio said for the recording. “They are pictures of Miss Dunning nude in her own bed.”

  Not only could you hear a pin drop, but you could hear particles of dust colliding with the walls.

  “As you can see,” Lieutenant Julio said, “this is far from a fishing expedition.”

  Chandler turned to me. “Tell them all that you told me,” he said. “In as much detail as you can recall.”

  Before I began, he added, “As you can see, her eyes are closed in all the pictures where you can see her face. Keep that in mind as she explains.”

  Neither Lieutenant Julio or Detective Gabriel changed expression, but both turned to me and waited.

  I began by describing my stepping out of the elevator, explaining why I had decided to take it and not walk up the stairs as I usually did, and my shocked reaction at Douglas Thomas’s presence. From there, I included every moment, every word spoken between myself and Douglas Thomas that I could recall. Neither detective interrupted me with a question, so I went on to describe the aftermath, how I had found my body and my apartment immaculate and then explained why that, plus what I knew about the drug he had used, had convinced me it would be useless to call the police or go to the hospital.

  “Without a shred of evidence to prove what he had done to me, it would end up being one of those he said, she said things,” I said, and looked at Chandler to see if he was satisfied. I guessed my describing it all in such detail had left him stunned again. He just stared at the detectives, his face still crimson.

  “So you were angry, enraged?” Lieutenant Julio asked, smiling.

  Chandler realized why he looked so pleased before I did. I had just established motive and made their job easier. He leaped on it.

  “There’s more. Miss Dunning has been stalked for some time. It’s been mostly through phone messages, but on one occasion, the stalker, a woman, was waiting for her outside her apartment and followed her. She lost her, but the stalker continued calling and leaving messages.”

  “Threats?”

  “All sorts of things,” Chandler said. “Implications, sexual innuendos. We know only her name or the name she used, Scarletta, but we have suspicions that she is somehow involved with the hospital or perhaps works at Mr. Thomas’s firm and maybe was unhappy he was talking about Miss Dunning so much. She had obviously been watching Miss Dunning’s every movement and haunted her apartment building. She knew Douglas Thomas had been there to see her.”

  “And you know she knew this how?” Lieutenant Julio asked me.

  I repeated Scarletta’s last message.

  “She even sent Miss Dunning a bouquet of roses,” Chandler told them.

  “Do you still have the card?” Lieutenant Julio asked.

  “There was no card. It was just there at the door, so we know she knew exactly where Miss Dunning lived.”

  “Maybe Douglas Thomas sent it,” Detective Gabriel suggested.

  “He would have put his name on the card. He told everyone at the hospital how indebted he was to Miss Dunning. He gave her those pearls,” Chandler said. “Why would he hide the fact that he had sent her roses? It has to be the stalker.” His voice was straining like someone struggling to keep relevant.

  “So you think this stalker is also a nurse with a crush on you or, what, a jealous lover angry at Douglas Thomas for being with you?” Detective Gabriel asked me. She was grimacing skeptically, her tone quite condescending.

  “Possibly,” Chandler said. “We’re not sure about her motives, but she’s certainly a more likely suspect.”

  Both detectives were silent. Then Lieutenant Julio took out his mobile.

  “I’ll have the answering machine brought here,” he said. He rose to go make the call.

  “Unfortunately, Miss Dunning erased the messages, even the last one,” Chandler revealed, painfully.

  “Why would she do that?” Lieutenant Julio asked, lowering himself to his seat.

  “She didn’t want me to know what had happened to her. I didn’t know all this until a few minutes ago,” Chandler said. “We both realize that was a mistake now, but her intentions are understandable. She isn’t the first woman to hide being sexually attacked or abused for fear of how she would be viewed by other women and men or what it would do to her current relationship,” he said, directing himself more to Detective Gabriel.

  There wasn’t an ounce of sympathy in her face. She’d probably enjoy being raped, I thought, and said as much through the expression on my face. She looked away.

  Lieutenant Julio thought a moment. “This message was left on a landline?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” Chandler replied for me.

  “We’ll pick up the machine and check it out. Maybe there still could be something if it’s digital. I have to call my team over at her place anyway to see where they’re at with the search. Just sit tight,” Lieutenant Julio said, turned off the recording device, and left the room.

  I smiled at Detective Gabriel, who looked uncomfortable being left alone with us.

  “Could you leave us for a moment?” Chandler asked her. She stood up fast, obviously delighted to do so, nodded, and left.

  “Pru, did you have any contact with Thomas after the incident, anything else you can remember? Did he try to call you at the hospital, for example?” he asked as soon as the door was closed.

  I shook my head.

  “And you never called him and threatened him with prosecution?”

  “No. I’m so sorry now that I kept it all from you, Chandler,” I said.

  The pictures were still on the table. He looked down at them, thought a moment, and then turned to me.

  “We’ve got to locate Scarletta. I’ll have Ben Mallory check out the other employees at Douglas Thomas’s firm, and I’ll get a new answering machine for your landline since they’ll hold on to your present one, and we’ll—”

  He stopped w
hen Lieutenant Julio and Detective Gabriel returned.

  “We’ll need that DNA sample and we’ll be taking your fingerprints, Miss Dunning,” Lieutenant Julio said. He looked at Chandler. “We’ll be booking her.”

  “Why? We just explained that—”

  “You asked how he was killed. Friends at work were concerned when he didn’t arrive. His secretary, Florence Wilson, who had a duplicate key to his apartment, was sent to check on him. They knew about his surgery, of course. She discovered his naked body on his sofa and immediately called for an ambulance. The paramedics couldn’t revive him. The police were called as well as the medical examiner. My team,” he added proudly, “is headed by a sharp guy, Dr. James Gaede. He’s been featured often in the LA Times. He spotted the localized irritation from the injection at the heart and got the body into a toxicological examination as quickly as possible.

  “Douglas Thomas was killed with an injected overdose of propofol, an anesthetic. The overdose would cause respiratory failure.” He looked at me. “Get the idea from Michael Jackson’s death?”

  “Now, just a minute,” Chandler said. “Just because Miss Dunning is a nurse—”

  “A small box containing syringes and two vials of propofol were found in a corner of the floor of Miss Dunning’s clothes closet in her bedroom,” he said.

  Chandler turned to me, the fear visible in his eyes, hoping I had an explanation.

  “She must have gotten in and planted it,” I said.

  Lieutenant Julio smirked. “Do you want to explain to your client how much better it would go for her if she offered a confession now, especially after the events she described?”

  I looked at Chandler. He was juggling everything in his mind.

  “I didn’t do it,” I said. He nodded.

  Lieutenant Julio opened the door. “Let’s go,” he said.

  I rose slowly. Chandler did not, as I was anticipating, take my hand. He stood back so I could walk ahead of him, and he was looking down at the floor as if he was afraid to look me in the face now. Detective Gabriel quickly gathered up the photos and shoved them back into the folder Lieutenant Julio had brought with him.