Silent Scream

by Maria Rachel Hooley

  She huddled in the depth of her sweater, clinging to its fuzzy warmth. Peering through the hair in her face, she read the clock on the wall: 10:30. Sam would be here soon to talk about...it.

  Her heart rate sped up, and she could feel the panic catching inside. She couldn’t escape. Yanking the hair from in front of her eyes, she pulled it back and merged it with the length at her backside. She gathered it into a pony and twisted it, slowly drawing it up into a bun she secured with a pencil from the dresser top.

  As she started to stand, she put weight on the weak ankle and fell against the dresser, banging her outer thigh. “Damn!” she whispered and half fell across the top of it, forcing her to pay attention to her reflection. She drew back sharply, shocked at the pallor of her skin and the way the scar seemed so obvious in the harsh brilliance of morning. Without realizing it, she had raised her hand and traced the uneven length of it, feeling remembered pain.

  Gasping, she pulled her fingers away. Stumbling back to the bed, she slumped upon it, still staring at the wide-eyed woman peering back at her, a woman so haunted she appeared unrecognizable, and looking at that reflection, she couldn’t find the doctor who had been so self-assured once, so poised and ready for anything.

  Anything.

  Her eyes widened even more and glistened with the tears pooling there. She tried to blink them back, but the glistening grew and overflowed, streaming down her face in large streaks. How do I do this? she wondered, quickly brushing her hands across her face, soaking her fingers in tears she couldn’t contain. For a moment, she released herself to the pain, and quietly sobbed as her shoulders curved into a brokenness she couldn’t fight any longer. Slowly, she rocked back and forth, waiting until she’d emptied herself of the grief, but her body was full of it—too full for words.

  “Maddie?” Yolanda lightly rapped on the door. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Maddie forced a calm to in her voice as she inhaled sharply and straightened. She frantically rubbed her face, trying to erase the flush left behind.

  “Do you need anything?”

  “No. I’ll be out in a minute.” She turned to the door, half-expecting it to open, but instead she heard Yolanda slowly depart, leaving her to try to find a way to conceal her rising panic.

  Trying to force her heart to slow, she looked one last time at her reflection, trying to find the person she’d once been, the one she wanted to be yet again. I know you’re in there somewhere, she thought. You have to be.

  Before Yolanda returned or, worse yet, sent Gabriel to check on her, Maddie forced herself to leave the sanctuary of the room and hobble into the living room on an ankle still telling her off. As she stepped across the threshold, found the fireman sitting on the couch, reading the TV Guide. Although she was used to seeing him in tee-shirts, this morning he wore a navy cable sweater that buttoned at the neck and black jeans. She spotted the black shoulder holster and gun l in place. His dark hair, still wet, she assumed from a shower, glistened in the morning light. Although he’d brushed most of it away from his face, a few strands fell toward his eyes. He noticed her enter, lightly tossed the magazine to the coffee table, and looked at her.

  “How are you feeling?” He stood and studied her ankle and bare foot. “You look like you’re limping less.” He pushed the sleeves of the sweater higher on his forearms.

  Maddie’s gaze joined his as she, too, scrutinized her ankle. “I guess it’s better, even though it still hurts like hell. It is a little easier to walk.” She took a step and winced. “Or limp, I should say.”

  “Come sit.” He pointed to the couch. “The last thing you need to do is keep weight on it.”

  Although she wanted to argue, she shuffled through the room and finally sat on the couch, not far from where he had been sitting.

  “Did you sleep okay?” His dark midnight eyes, peered at her, searching the depths of her face for...something, though what she didn’t have a clue; still, she found herself returning the stare, focusing on the line of his jaw.

  “I didn’t dream, if that’s what you mean.” She forced her voice to an emotionless tone, and she toyed with the edge of the cast, her forefinger tracing its roughened edge.

  He shrugged and joined her on the couch. “Maybe it was that god-awful coffee I made last night. Sam used to tell me I couldn’t make a pot worth drinking to save my soul. Maybe it was enough to scare away your nightmares.” He lightly patted her shoulder.

  “Maybe,” she finally agreed. The doorbell chimed, and Maddie jumped.

  “Relax.” Gabriel lightly squeezed her shoulder. He started to reassure her she was safe by telling her it was probably Sam and then realized that wouldn’t exactly ease her tension, either, not with the statement she was about to give. Instead, he said, “I’ll be right back.” He gave her shoulder one last squeeze and walked to the front door to find his brother had arrived.

  “You’re early,” he said, opening the door.

  “Better than late,” Sam ansered, stepping into the foyer and unzipping his coat. He pulled it off and hung it on the coat rack.

  “Still ticked off about last night, I see,” Gabriel said.

  “There’s nothing to be mad about,” he retorted, jerking off his hat and hanging it on the rack as well. “Do me a favor. Let’s just leave the past where it belongs, little brother.”

  “Sure, Sam,” he said sarcastically.

  Sam leveled a baleful stare at Gabriel and shook his head. “How’s Maddie this morning?”

  “Nervous as hell, I expect.” He headed toward the living room, leading his brother to where Maddie sat. Yolanda had joined her, and the two women were whispering.

  “Good morning, Maddie,” Sam said, nodding toward her.

  The color drained from her face. “Morning,” she finally responded, then turned her attention to the hand that rested in her lap. “You’re early.”

  He looked from Maddie to his brother. “So Gabriel told me. It’s kind of a nasty habit I have.” He stepped into the room and sat in a chair across from the sofa. “I guess you know why I’m here.”

  Maddie nodded as she stiffened and squinted her eyes closed, wishing she could erase everything around her.

  Clenching his teeth, Gabriel crossed the room and sat beside Maddie on the couch. Although he wanted to touch her shoulder to reassure her, he forced his hands to rest idly in his lap, unsure whether she would react positively to his touch.

  “I know this won’t be easy for you, but I’ll try to make it as smooth and quick as I can.” Sam pulled out a palm-sized tape recorder from his pocket and showed it to her. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to record your statement as another form of evidence.”

  She looked at the tape recorder with dull eyes and slowly nodded. “All right.” Her deadened gaze traveled the room and ended up focusing on Yolanda, who mouthed the words, “It’s going to be okay.” Leaning against the couch, Maddie closed her eyes and began to relay the story one more time, amazed at how clear the details seemed even weeks after the assault. She forced herself to reduce the events to words given in a monotone voice, even as images from the assault flashed into her mind, refusing to release her.

  She would never be free.

  The rapist’s blond hair flashed in the moonlight. The blade he held cut her face. Drops of his spittle sprayed her cheeks as he yelled at her. There came the sound of fabric tearing in a single, savage rip.

  Her eyelids snapped open.

  “It’s okay.” Gabriel frowned and leaned toward her. “You don’t have to keep blurting things out. Take your time. Whatever you need.”

  “No.” Maddie shook her head. “You don’t understand. I want it out. I want it to be gone. I want a hole in my memory as big as Texas so I won’t have to think about this anymore.” She started rocking back and forth, her good arm folded across her chest. She exhaled each breath in a light, frantic burst, suggesting she was about to become hysterical at any moment.

  “Take it easy,” Gabriel said
. “Just focus on your breathing.”

  Sam and his brother watched Maddie, waiting until her breathing slowed before Sam began to question her. “When you went to the station to give your statement just after the break-in, did you recognize anyone as the man who raped you?” Sam asked softly.

  “Yes.”

  “Was it one of the teenagers?”

  Shaking her head, Maddie replied, “No. It was a cop.”

  Sam exchanged relieved glances with his brother. “Can you be more specific?”

  The rocking motion sped up, and her fingers toyed with the outer edge of the cast. “The blond cop who brought in the second boy. He was the rapist.” Her voice cracked, threatening to snap beneath the weight of emotion bearing down on her.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Sensing the weakness surging within Maddie, Gabriel hesitantly reached over and patted her hand. He could see tears glittering in her eyes, pooling until they finally streamed down her face in twin streaks. As he rested his fingers atop hers, he could also feel the violent trembling within her, but she refused to look at him.

  “Is that it? Can I go?”

  Switching the tape player off, Sam nodded. “Yeah, that was what I needed.” As Maddie started to rise and hobble away, he said, “I’m sorry I have to ask you this, but I’ll need you to come back down to the station to make a positive ID from a line-up, Maddie.” He, too, stood, the frown on his face etching hard lines across his forehead. With his empty hand, he rubbed the back of his neck.

  She stopped, and her shoulders slumped slightly as her head bowed. Yolanda rose from the couch and bustled to her side. “Please don’t ask me to do that. I...I can’t face him.”

  “You have to,” Sam replied, his shoulders rigid with frustration as he tapped one hand against the other in a rapid succession. “If you don’t, he’ll be free to hurt other women.”

  “It won’t be like last time,” Gabriel said, also standing. “You’ll identify him from behind a one-way mirror so he won’t be able to see you.”

  “I can’t,” she insisted.

  “I’ll go with you.” Yolanda drew her arm around Maddie. “We’ll do it together, Maddie.” As Maddie’s shivering intensified, Yolanda tightened her embrace, trying to still the panic, wishing she could help her feel safe again.

  Brushing a trembling hand across her face, Maddie finally asked, “When? When do I have to do this?” Her voice wavered, almost warbling in a broken song of pain.

  “It’ll be sometime today. We have to get the ball rolling down at the station first. Once that’s taken care of, I’ll call and let you know,” Sam said, stepping toward the doorway. He peered at the tape recorder and fumbled for the rewind button. He pressed it, watched the tape back up, turned it off, and shoved it into his pocket.

  Without another word, Maddie, leaning against Yolanda, hobbled from the room, leaving the two brothers in a silence too thick to maintain.

  “I shouldn’t have snapped at you last night,” Sam said, dragging the keys from his other pocket. “I wasn’t expecting to see Tammy, especially not in a case like this. Had it been the rape case or running into her, I wouldn’t have lost it. But both of them together just did me in, and I reacted without thinking.”

  Although Gabriel wanted to say, “Yeah, it reminded you too much of our sister, didn’t it?” he didn’t. Instead, he replied, “It happens.” Gabriel raked his fingers through his hair as he puzzled over the apology his brother gave him—an apology he expected only when chipmunks learned to do the Twist. Hell, he could count on one hand the number of times his brother had apologized.

  “You think Maddie can handle this?” Sam asked, setting his hands on his hips.

  Although Gabriel wished like hell he could just say, “Oh, yeah, I think she can handle anything,” he wasn’t so sure, so he replied, “God, I hope so.” No matter how hard he tried not to think about it, he still saw her bruised and bloodied face as it had appeared the night of the assault. No one-way mirror was ever going to make her feel safe when the man who had left that kind of a calling card was on the other side, not when he was a cop. Nothing in this world would ever make her feel safe around him again, but at least if he was locked up, she wouldn’t be constantly looking over her shoulder, waiting for him to reappear.

  They slowly walked down the hall and into the foyer where Sam slid his hat on his head and tugged on his coat. “You going to stay here until I call for Maddie to come?”

  Nodding, Gabriel replied, “Yeah.”

  “Keep her chin up,” he said, opening the door. As he stepped onto the porch, he peered at the solid wall of slate clouds overhead. “Looks like it might snow again—just what we need.”

  “Yeah,” Gabriel agreed. He watched his older brother standing on the stoop, his mouth half open as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words, and he wondered what thoughts remained inside. What was it that Sam couldn’t say?

  And why?

  Although Gabriel started to ask, his brother shuffled away before he could utter a word, and the cruiser quickly pulled out of the drive.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Although Gabriel knew it would take Sam the better part of the day to prepare the line-up, he still spent the early afternoon pacing, trying not to think about the future neither he nor Maddie wanted to face. But it was a future coming to them both.

  Besides his furious pacing, he kept looking down the hall toward Maddie’s room, expecting her to open the door and walk into the hallway. The bedroom door, however, remained tightly closed, the hallway completely still, empty in that silence. Turning back to the kitchen, he almost ran into Yolanda as she exited the bathroom. One hand touched the doorjamb, and the other hung at her side.

  “Is everything all right?” Her gaze scurried anxiously about the room, searching for details out of place.

  Nodding, Gabriel stepped back, his gaze drifting toward Maddie’s room. “Fine. How’s Maddie?”

  “A nervous wreck.” Yolanda brushed a strand of hair from her face. “She can’t shake this fear, and I can’t help her, no matter how I try.” She also peered down the hall at the closed door. “What can I say that would assure her things will be okay after this?” Tears pooled in her eyes.

  Without realizing it, Gabriel touched her arm gently. “You’re her best friend, and your presence is the best comfort you can give her.”

  Yolanda’s tears spilled down her face, and the silence of her grief gave way to soft sobs. He took her into his arms and held her, trying to comfort her. When her sadness fell silent, he pulled away. “You can tell her time will help even this pain. It will not make it forgettable, but it will make accepting it easier.” He took a step back and rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ve never forgotten the pain of my sister’s murder, and there isn’t a day that goes by I don’t miss her with every part of me. But the years have blunted the pain somewhat. Perhaps one day Maddie will know the sweetness of life she should.”

  “It’s getting close to four o’clock. Do you think Sam will still call today?”

  Nodding, Gabriel said, “Yeah, he’ll call. It just takes time to set things like this up. Do you think Maddie will be okay with this?”

  Yolanda folded her arms across her chest. “If you mean do I think she’ll do what she is supposed to, then yes, I think she’ll testify. I don’t think it’s going to be easy, and perhaps the price will be more than she can bear in the end. Either way, she loses. She’s damned if she testifies, and she’s just as damned if she doesn’t. We both know that.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Gabriel asked, shoving his hands into his jeans pockets and staring at his bare feet, his toes curling into the carpet and releasing.

  “Just hang around to see this through.” Yolanda leaned against the doorway. “Maddie’s been brought up in a world just as sterile as the emergency room where she works. Always before, she’s kept a tight lid on the emotional stuff. If she couldn’t control it,
it didn’t happen. Suddenly she’s realized there’s much more of her life she can’t control than what she can. For all that, I half expected her to tell you to take a flying leap off the Grand Canyon.” As she noticed Gabriel’s expression harden into a frown, she said, “No insult meant to you. I would’ve thought she would have done that with anyone, including you. But this guy has scared her, and she feels like she’s blind. For whatever reason, she trusts you—not that it’s bad, but for her it’s pretty amazing. You want some coffee or lunch?”

  “Coffee would be great.” He followed her and yanked out his wallet, rifling through the business cards until he spotted Tammy’s. He grabbed his cell, punched the numbers, and waited until she answered.

  “This is Gabriel.” He paused, listening. “Yeah, I know. I think he’s cooled down somewhat. Listen, we’re going to be taking Maddie down to the station for a line-up this afternoon. Maybe you should be there to help pick up the pieces.” Another pause. “Yeah, Sam will be there, too....No, I don’t think it’s a problem. I’ll call you when he’s set it up. Thanks.” He closed the phone before setting it on the table next to the mug Yolanda had placed next to him. Furls of steam rose from it, and he enjoyed the scent. Perhaps that had always been his favorite part of the drink—not the taste but the smell. As he took his first sip, the doorbell rang.

  Jumping up, Gabriel said, “I bet that’s Sam.” He rushed to the door and peered out the peek hole. Although he would have bet money on his brother, instead he spotted another cop, dark-haired, standing on the porch with his hands on his hips. “What the hell?” Gabriel whispered, pulling the gun from its holster and backing toward the kitchen to get his cell as Yolanda’s phone rang.

  The ringing stopped as Yolanda picked it up. Then silence. Something wasn’t right. He should have heard her speaking into the phone. Silence. He leaned against the wall and peered into the kitchen. Empty?