by Ravenna Tate
“You will not.”
“You can’t stop me.”
“They’ll arrest you.”
“I know that.”
“Rosanna, I am not going to let you go through being booked for murder after what that asshole and your so-called boyfriend put you through. You were sexually assaulted by God only knows how many guys, and those two were the fucking ringleaders!”
“So what am I supposed to do, Houston? Pretend I didn’t kill Brian?”
“We don’t know that you did.”
“I pushed him, and he fell. The fall led to the brain bleed. The brain bleed killed him. It’s manslaughter, at the very least.”
“It’s not going to happen at all. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
“You’re a cop. You know a crime was committed. You have to do something about that.”
“I know one crime was committed. The one done against you.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Were all those guys around the same age?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“It’s statutory rape, and forcible rape at that, but it gets tricky because you were sixteen. If they all were no more than four years older than you, the statute of limitations has expired. The fucking pigs likely can’t even be prosecuted.”
“I know that, too.”
He gave her a long look that she couldn’t interpret.
“I work for a defense firm, remember? I’m familiar with ORC.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you would be. So if you know the DA can’t go after any of these guys for what they did to you, why the hell are you willing to risk going to jail?”
“Because one of them is dead, Houston.”
“He deserves to be.”
“No. No one deserves to be dead, no matter what they did.”
“Enough with the bleeding heart crap. I’m not letting the woman I love be prosecuted for manslaughter, or anything else, when she is the true victim.”
“Brian is a victim, too.”
His mouth opened several times, but nothing came out. The veins on his neck stood out, and she couldn’t recall seeing him this angry before. He let out a sound that was partly a growl, and partly a yell, right before he punched the end table. When he immediate sucked on his hand, she pried it from his grasp and ran her fingertips over the spot where he’d connected with the wood.
“Breaking this won’t change anything.”
“It’s not broken.”
The tender look he gave her nearly made her cry again. She couldn’t believe she still had any tears left. “Rosanna, I am not going to let you ruin your life.”
“It’s already ruined. It was the second I walked away and left Brian lying there.”
As Houston began to say something, his phone rang. “Fuck. Hang on.” He answered it, frowning as he listened. “Right. Got it. Be there in half an hour.”
“You have to go back in.”
“Yes. I hate leaving you like this.”
“I’m all right. I have chicken soup.”
“How can you be so flippant about this?”
“I don’t mean to be.”
“I love you.” He cupped her face and gazed at her with fierce intensity. “Do you hear me? I will move heaven and earth to keep you safe from this.”
“I love you, too. But you know in your heart that you have to do the right thing.”
After he kissed her like he might never do it again, he left without another word. Rosanna watched him from the window until she could no longer see his car, and then she slumped against the wall and tried to stop shaking.
****
Houston was grateful that he and Annie were so busy the next couple of hours, tracking down two solid leads on their new case. This one looked like it would be wrapped up without too many hiccups. A convenience store clerk had been shot and killed, but the surveillance video caught the whole thing.
On the way back to the station, Houston’s mind drifted toward his earlier conversation with Rosanna. Intellectually, he knew she was right. But how the hell could he put her in the path of what was sure to be an emotional shitstorm, even if the DA decided not to prosecute her? She had been traumatized by Brian, after all. And she blocked out the memories for twelve years. Would another psychologist have to examine her? Likely they would want that.
Unless you say nothing. No one needs to know.
“If you don’t tell me what the fuck is going on with you, I’m requesting a new partner.”
“Well, you’re SOL, then, because no one else will work with you.”
“Fuck you, Houston. What the hell is wrong? And don’t tell me it’s nothing.”
There really was no other choice. He totally believed that if he didn’t say something to Annie and Ty, Rosanna would. He could never convince her to wait a while and see if she felt the same way next week, next month, next year.
“I don’t want to talk about it at the station.”
They were stopped at a red light. Annie gave him a worried look. “This is serious, then.”
“As serious as it gets.”
“All right. I know a place where we can talk in private.”
Once they were seated in the seediest bar Houston had ever seen, Annie brought over two glasses of Coke. “We’re on duty, technically, or this would be beer.”
“This is fine. Thanks.” Houston didn’t drink a lot of soda, so it tasted really good right now. “Where do I even start, Annie?”
“At the beginning.”
Easy for her to say.
“I have an ethical dilemma, and it has to do with the Brian Wayside case.” Houston began with the time Rosanna told him about her vague images and nightmares, and ended with everything he’d learned in Dr. Thompson’s office the afternoon before.
“Holy shit.” Annie drained her Coke, eyed his glass, and picked them both up before she rose from the table. “Duty or not, we need something stronger than this shit.”
Once she returned, Houston drained half the bottle of beer. “Thanks again. This helps.”
“So let me understand this. The woman you’ve been dating for what … four months now?”
“Roughly that, yes.”
“She’s the same girl Jessica, Hollee, and Gareth described.”
“Yes. I’m positive she is.”
“And she was gang raped by her asshole boyfriend, by Brian, and by other boys at that party.”
“Yes.” The images that rose up in his mind led straight to the beer in his gut turning sour.
“Fucking pigs. Where’s the flash drive now? It would prove her state of mind. No way is the DA going to want to touch this if Brian recorded the rapes. Can you imagine the public outcry?”
At first, Houston was certain he’d misunderstood Annie. But once the words sank in, he slowly realized she wasn’t ready to head over to Rosanna’s apartment and haul her ass into the station. He also wanted to kick himself ten times over because he had no fucking clue where the flash drive was. Neither did Rosanna. She hadn’t recalled what she’d done with it.
“I wonder if Dr. Thompson could hypnotize her again?” he mused out loud. “Ask her what she did with that flash drive?”
“Can you convince her to have that happen? We have to find it.”
“And if we don’t?”
Annie drained her bottle of beer and signaled the bartender. “We have to. You know as well as I do that another psychologist might blow the focal retrograde amnesia diagnosis out of the water. If they do, and the DA buys it, it’s Rosanna’s word against cold, hard facts. They probably can’t, or won’t, prosecute any of the scum who raped her, but they can certainly still prosecute her for murder.”
Nasty shivers ran down his spine, and his stomach roiled. He should have stuck to the Coke. “It wasn’t premeditated.”
“From what you told me, I agree. But surely you can see how they might try to spin it as at least murder two without corroboration of the rapes.”
“We’d have had corroboration from
the get-go if those fucking assholes hadn’t all lied to us, Annie!”
“I know that. But what do you think would happen now if we found them and asked them? They’d simply admit what they did? Without that flash drive, this comes down to Rosanna’s word against everyone else’s, even with Jessica’s and Gareth’s statements. And even those aren’t much help. Gareth didn’t know about the rape, and Jessica didn’t say shit about it to us all those years ago, either. They’ll crucify her on the stand until she contradicts herself, or gets all confused. All a jury needs to see is one hint of a woman making up a gang rape story to get out of being convicted of murder, and Rosanna goes to jail.”
This couldn’t be happening, but he knew Annie was right. And if he hadn’t been romantically involved with Rosanna, how much of what Annie had just said would have gone through his mind, instead, as this came to light?
How fucking unfair was all of this? Rosanna had been traumatized to the point she suppressed a year of her life, yet she might end up convicted of the murder of one of the pieces of scum who raped her. He had to do everything he could to find that flash drive. It was her only hope.
“All right.” He unlocked his phone and called her. “Babe … babe, we need your help. Me and Annie. We need to find that flash drive.”
Chapter Twenty
Ty wasn’t as cooperative or forgiving as Annie had been. “Cassidy, you’re not a rookie. You should have come to me Monday night. Scratch that. You should never have been in the room with this woman and her therapist in the first place.”
“I realize that.”
“You already suspected she was the same person three witnesses described. You should have come forward as soon as you knew that.”
“I agree. I fucked up, Ty.”
“Fucked up is an understatement. What you’ve done is possibly make everything she told her psychologist inadmissible.”
“That’s up to the DA to decide, isn’t it?”
“Don’t get sideways with me.”
“I’m sorry, sir. You’re right.”
Ty banged his fists on the desk. “Damn! You know I need to go to the Deputy Chief with this. I have no choice.”
“I know that, Ty. I expected it.”
“Oh, you expected it. Well good for you. Now Annie needs to bring in Rosanna. Or did you expect that wouldn’t be part of it?”
“Are you asking me to arrest her?”
“No. I’m asking Annie to bring her in for questioning.”
“I had also hoped we could have a department psychologist examine her, to corroborate her own therapist’s diagnosis.”
Ty picked up his desk phone. “I’ll contact the ADA. She needs to sit in on this and make that call, not me.”
“Do I have your permission to continue to look for the flash drive?”
“What? No! Aren’t you listening to me? You’re off this case. Be lucky I don’t take your gun and badge right now.”
“What about—”
“Get out of here, Cassidy.”
****
Seeing JoElle again without Houston there wasn’t as easy as Rosanna thought it would be. She’d called JoElle’s answering service last night, and waited less than ten minutes for a return phone call. Once she explained what Houston had told her, JoElle fit her in this morning.
Rosanna hadn’t wanted to ask Houston to bring her, because he’d already told her it looked like he’d be at the station most of the night, so she’d driven herself here this morning.
Even with that accomplishment, it took half an hour for her to relax enough to allow JoElle to attempt to hypnotize her once more. But finally, she drifted into the same state as she’d been in two days earlier.
“Rosanna, you’re in a safe place. Do you understand that?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to return to the morning after the party you told me about Monday. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“All right. You said you retrieved the flash drive after it fell out of your duffle bag. Is that correct?”
“Yes. Brian fell down when I hit him with the bag.”
“And then you drove home to Kent.”
“I did.”
“Do you recall emptying out your duffle bag?”
“Yes.” It was all there. Why hadn’t she been able to remember this on Monday?
“Tell me what you did with the contents of the bag.”
“I threw away the clothes I’d worn the night before. Wrapped them up with the garbage in the kitchen trash can and buried that bag in the bottom of the trash bin we put out on the street once a week.”
“That’s very symbolic, Rosanna. Why do you think you did that?”
“I didn’t want to look at those clothes ever again. Even washing them wouldn’t be enough.”
“What else was in the duffle?”
“My phone, my wallet, some things like shampoo and stuff. And the flash drive.”
“Did you throw out your wallet or your phone?”
“No.”
“What about the shampoo and other personal items?”
“No. I didn’t throw out anything except the clothes.”
“Do you recall taking the flash drive out of the bag?”
“Yes.” There it was. As clear as day. “I took it to the basement. There was a trunk down there with things from my childhood. Dolls, schoolwork, things like that.”
“Is that where you put the flash drive?”
“Yes. In the bottom. I buried it under everything else.”
“Why didn’t you throw it away, Rosanna?”
“I thought I might need it one day. To prove what Mike and Brian had done to me.”
“That was very brave of you, Rosanna. Can you recall where the trunk is now?”
“Yes. It’s in the storage locker at my apartment complex.”
“Very good, Rosanna. It’s time to wake up now.”
****
As Houston drove to Rosanna’s apartment building, his phone rang. “Hey, babe, I’m on my way over. We need to talk, and we don’t have much time.”
“I’m at JoElle’s office. I need to tell you something.”
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. What was she doing there?
“Did you drive yourself?” Last night, she’d barely been able to walk to the bathroom alone.
“Yes. I’m fine. Honestly.”
Calm down. He had to stay in control for her sake. “Sweetheart, are you able to get home by yourself, as well?”
“Yes. I’ll be on my way in a moment. But don’t you want to hear this?”
“Let’s talk once you’re safe at home.”
Son of a bitch! He increased his speed, not that it mattered. He’d be lucky to have time to tell her what was going on before Annie got there.
****
When Rosanna arrived at her apartment, she retrieved the keys to her storage locker and the room that contained them from a drawer in the kitchen. As she went to open her door, with the intention of heading to the storage lockers, the downstairs buzzer sounded. Thinking it was Houston and he’d forgotten his key, she pushed the button to open the main door. But when she descended the stairs, it wasn’t Houston who greeted her. It was Annie.
“You know why I’m here, right?”
The sensation that someone had filled her veins with ice water coursed through Rosanna. “Where’s Houston?”
“I don’t know.”
“He told me he was on his way over.”
“Rosanna, I honestly don’t know where he is right now. When I left, he was still in Ty’s office.”
Oh my God. That meant he must have told his Commander everything. Annie was here to arrest her.
Their attention was diverted by the sound of someone entering the main door, two flights down. “Houston?” Rosanna brushed past Annie and ran down the stairs.
“Babe, are you okay?” He pulled her into his arms, and she immediately felt him stiffen. Rosanna let go of Houston a
nd turned around.
“Are you here to arrest her?” he asked.
“No. Only to bring her in for questioning.”
“I’m going with you.”
“This first.” Rosanna slipped the keys into his hand. “It’s in my storage locker. One key opens the door, the other my locker.”
His handsome face filled with relief. “You remembered what you did with it?”
“Yes. JoElle hypnotized me again, and the entire sequence of events came back.”
“Are you talking about the flash drive?” asked Annie.
“Yes,” said Rosanna. “It’s here.”
After reaching into her jacket pocket, Annie pulled out an evidence bag. “Let’s go and get it.”
Rosanna hadn’t looked inside the trunk since the day she put the flash drive into it, and had thought to do so would bring back a host of bad memories. Perhaps it would later, but at that moment, her full concentration was on retrieving it.
The guilt over Brian’s death was still as bad as it had been Monday, but at least now she could prove that everything she’d told JoElle was true. No matter what happened, no one would assume she’d made up the gang rape story.
While Annie sifted through the contents of the trunk, Houston and Rosanna stood back. He was doing everything by the book, but that was all right. She understood why he needed to. Finally, Annie spotted the tiny piece of hardware and held it up. “This it?”
“Yes.” The memories of that morning were still dark and frightening, but for the first time in twelve years, they existed. There was proof.
As Annie sealed the flash drive inside the evidence bag, Rosanna closed her eyes and forced her breathing to slow down. The data would corroborate her story. This was finally over, even if she went to jail for killing Brian. She was free from the dark images and nightmares, and none of the men on this video could ever hurt her again.
“I need to take her in now,” said Annie.
Those words reminded Rosanna that she wasn’t sure whether Houston still had a job. “Did they suspend you?” she asked him.
“Not yet.” His voice was tight, and his eyes held a warning not to ask anything else about his status at work. The crushing realization hit her like a slap to the face. Even though they had found the flash drive, he might lose his job, and it would be her fault.
