by Todd Borg
Street stared into her coffee. “It doesn’t look good, does it?”
“It never does,” I said. “But a possible severe result from her leaving and pressing charges is – at least to my way of thinking – a much better option than the certain severe result that will come from staying with him. She’s already experienced terrible beatings. Any number of them might have been fatal if his hand had struck her ear and temple or her throat instead of her jaw. Likewise, his punches to her body could have killed her if he’d hit just over her heart or caught her abdomen in a way that would rupture internal organs. He’s smart enough to strike the big muscles or to use open-handed blows that bruise and hurt but don’t kill as long as they are well-aimed.”
Street winced at the image, and I was immediately sorry that I’d spoken of details.
“I have a question I want to ask,” I said, “and I understand if your answer is no.”
Street looked at me and made a little nod.
“I wonder if you’d sit down with Simone. Let her know that you understand abuse, that you survived abuse.”
“I only survived because I ran away,” Street said.
“Exactly. If you told that to Simone, it might make a huge difference. I think she’s a classic victim in that she feels powerless. She thinks she’s the only person around who has to endure this. She’s embarrassed about it and is afraid to talk about it.”
Street thought about it. “How do you think I should approach her?”
“I’d go to the café where she waits tables. If you sit in her section, you’d have at least a little opportunity to talk to her. Beyond that, you would know a hundred times better than I would what approach might work best. If you think it would serve the situation, you can of course tell her that you’re my girlfriend and that you know about her situation.”
“Let me think about it.” Street sipped coffee.
I thought back to my childhood, which was blissfully free from abuse. I grew up never even imagining that men could ever beat on children or women. The time that I was first exposed to it was a disappointment larger than nearly any I had experienced growing up.
“Do you think she’s working today?” Street asked.
“I don’t know. I’d be afraid to call the restaurant to find out because word might get to her and make her run. Best to just show up and hope to catch her shift. When I saw her there before, it was morning, so she likely works the morning shift.”
“I think I’ll go give it a try. But it is a little scary.”
“Because of the memories it conjures up,” I said.
“Yeah.”
I gave Street a hug. “Thank you for the effort. You want me to drive you? Wait for you in the car?”
“No. I think I better do this by myself.”
That afternoon, I went to Joe’s and gave him a full report. I hoped that Joe would think my meeting with Bob Hinton of RKS Properties was progress, but I don’t think he was fooled.
That night, I went to bed feeling like I’d gotten nowhere. Since Joe had called me, two people had died, Simone had endured multiple beatings, and I still had little idea of what was going on.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The next morning my office phone rang at 11 a.m. I answered.
“Owen!” It was Street, breathless. “Owen, my God, Simone’s been hurt! Ned beat her up. I called nine-one-one!”
“Where is she?”
“They took her to the hospital. I followed. I’m in my car, outside the Emergency Room.”
“Where is Ned?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The police went into his house with him. Maybe he’s still there. Or maybe he’s nearby watching me.”
“The police didn’t arrest him?”
“I don’t know. It was my fault for being here!” Street nearly shouted in my ear.
“What happened?”
“I went and talked to Simone at the restaurant. She told me things. You let me know that her situation was very bad. But it was even worse than I thought based on what you said. After a short while, she said she had to go home. I feared for her life, so I followed her home and got out and spoke to her before she could get into her house. Just then, Ned came home. He shouted at me, then dragged Simone into the house. In a moment, I heard her screaming, over and over. So I called nine-one-one.
“The police came to their house. Ned came out and acted very concerned. He told them that Simone had fallen and hit her head. I spoke up and said that he dragged her into the house and beat her. So the police asked me if I was inside, if I’d seen him beat her. Of course, I said no. But I told them that I’d seen him grab her arm and drag her inside and that her screams started immediately.”
“Did Ned get a good look at you?” I asked.
“Yes. Now you think I’m in danger, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll come down to the hospital and find you. Promise me that you won’t get out of your car until I get there?”
“I won’t.”
“Check your door locks?”
“They’re locked,” Street said.
“Be there in a few,” I said. I hung up.
I trotted down the stairs and out the door with Spot. I ran under the scaffolding, stepping on something hard and painful. I looked down, kicked away another errant bolt, and ran to the car. I dialed the South Lake Tahoe PD as I drove away. I was breaking the law, but I thought the law needed to know about Ned Cavett’s abuse more than it needed me not to talk and drive.
Two transfers later, I had Mallory on the phone.
“Commander,” I said, “I just got a call from Street about a domestic with Ned Cavett beating on Simone Bonnaire. Did your boys arrest him?”
“We’re holding him, waiting on word of whether she’ll agree to press charges.”
“You don’t have probable cause?”
“Look, McKenna, you and I both know that he beats on her. But no, we don’t have probable cause. No one witnessed the beating. Just like all the other beatings. Street heard a scream, nothing more. When my officers got there, the man said Ms. Bonnaire fell, and the woman nodded agreement. My boys know that was bullshit. But if the woman won’t agree to cooperate, we’ve got nothing. If we charged him with assault with no probable cause or any witnesses who will testify, then any two-bit counsel with a fake law degree could get him off.”
“Street said she’s still in the hospital,” I said.
“Pro’bly.”
“Will you consider putting an officer at her hospital door when you let Ned go?”
“If I can’t arrest him, on what basis could I give her protection? I’m short staffed, anyway.”
“It’s a stakeout on the suspicion that the perpetrator will show up at the hospital. Crime prevention, duty to keep the peace.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said.
I got to Third Street, took a left, headed toward the hospital. I went around back, saw a patrol unit not far from Street’s VW beetle. I parked nearby. Street got out as I got out.
“No sign of Ned?” I asked.
She shook her head.
We walked together into the ER door.
“Wondering if Doc Lee is in,” I said to one of the nurses at the counter.
“Hardest working doc in town,” she said. “Seems like he’s always in. But he’s busy.”
“Can you please tell him that Detective McKenna would like to talk to him when he gets a chance?” The logical inference that I was part of official local law enforcement was false in specific but accurate in general principle.
The woman looked at me, no doubt trying to decide if she should follow protocol and tell me that he couldn’t be interrupted. But there was always the possibility that I might have some special pull with the doctor.
The woman picked up a phone, pressed some buttons, waited, then spoke. She hung up.
“Please wait,” she said.
Ten minutes later, Doc Lee came out. He ushered us down a hall and into a small of
fice. “You’re calling about Simone Bonnaire,” he said.
“Yes. How is she?”
“Shaken, upset, and bruised. Her facial injuries look bad, but, by great luck, are not severe. There is no fracture and no significant swelling. The facial bones range from very fragile to very strong. The man struck her hard with an open hand across the top of her forehead. He knows how to inflict the maximum pain without breaking bones. The blow split her skin and gave her a major bruise. But the bone is strong.”
“A good place to hit someone if you don’t want to break the skull,” I said.
Doc Lee pointed to his own forehead. “If you are well in from the temporal ridges, here, and substantially above the supraorbital process and glabella, here, then the bone is very strong.” He pointed farther back behind the crest of his forehead. “Of course, you have to stay forward of the coronal suture.”
“Of course,” I said.
Doc Lee made a wan smile. “She is a diminutive woman. Change the nature of how he hit her just a bit, and she could die from such a blow.”
Street grimaced.
“In addition to her head bruising, she also has a major bruise on her upper arm as if her boyfriend had tried to crush it in his grip and dragged her by it.”
“There is no doubt that her injuries didn’t come from a fall?” I said.
“Correct. But it is visceral knowledge only. Technically, this kind of blunt force facial trauma could happen any number of ways. Were I in court, I’d be forced to admit that she could have gotten a similar injury from any number of accidents, in a car for example. The arm injury could come from a range of trauma as well.”
“What’s her prognosis?” Street asked.
“She’ll be sore for several days, somewhat at the bruised area but possibly more so in her neck as she appears to have sustained a Grade One whiplash. Minor, but worth watching.”
“When can she go home?” Street asked.
“I’d like to keep her under observation for the next twenty-four hours. If there is no additional pain or swelling, she can go home. The poor girl doesn’t have insurance, so she indicated to me that she is worried about the cost. No reason to keep her longer than necessary.”
“May we see her?”
Doc Lee nodded.
THIRTY-NINE
There was a young cop I didn’t know at Simone’s closed door.
“Glad to see you here,” I said. “Mallory told me he was short on staff.”
“I brought her in. Seemed like I should hang around for a bit.” I was pleased to sense a bit of chivalry in his manner. A young woman gets beat up, a young male cop feels protective. At least until he acquires the jaded perspective of some older cops.
“I’m Owen McKenna, this is Street Casey. We’d like to see Simone.”
He pulled out his cell and dialed. “A guy named Owen McKenna and a woman are here,” he said. “Okay to let them in to see the victim?” He paused. “I’m not playing bodyguard. I was supposed to escort her to the hospital, right? Well, they just brought her to the room.” Pause. “No one gave me another assignment, so I’ll be here when you need me.”
He hung up, nodded, and we opened the door and walked inside.
Simone’s shirt sleeve had been cut from the cuff up to the shoulder. There was a large purple bruise on her upper arm. Her forehead was covered with a large bandage, and there was a small bandage on her left cheekbone. Her eyes darted from us to the door and back. She looked terrified.
“Don’t worry, Simone,” I said. “Ned is currently at the police station. There is a cop outside your door. You are safe.”
“I won’t be as soon as I leave here.”
“You will if you agree to press assault charges against Ned.”
“He will kill me if I do! Don’t you understand that?”
“If Ned is arrested and if you stay hiding in a safe house, he won’t be able to find you. You need only see him when you testify in court. Once he is convicted, he will be sent to prison.”
“The trial would last more than a day or two, right?” Simone said.
“Probably.”
“Then he won’t immediately go to prison. There would be evenings after I testify when he could follow me, find me, and kill me.”
“I can detain him. There are ways of making certain that you get to your safe house without him knowing where it is.”
“You don’t know Ned,” she said, and looked away from us.
Street said, “It’s my fault, Simone. I came to your house, and that’s why Ned got angry. I am so sorry!”
“Don’t be sorry,” Simone said. “Ned doesn’t need any reason to get angry. He probably would have hit me anyway.”
Street looked at me, a question on her face. I shrugged. There was an uncomfortable silence.
“I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror,” Simone finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I don’t feel real bad, but the bruise on my face is pretty bad. I peeked under the bandage. My head is the color of an eggplant. Not that I’m not used to it. You probably think I look horrible.” She turned and gave us an expectant look.
“You look bruised, that’s all,” Street said. “The parts that aren’t bruised look beautiful.”
She paused. “Nothing about me is beautiful.”
“Your eyes are,” I said.
“You think my eyes are beautiful?” The surprise in her tiny voice was heartbreaking.
“They remind me of Liz Taylor’s.”
Another pause. “I saw her in A Place In The Sun,” Simone said. “I guess part of it was filmed here in Tahoe.”
A change of subject. I’d seen it before, an insecure woman who changes the subject when complimented.
“Parts of it were filmed here, yes,” I said.
Simone gazed off as if seeing the film set. Eventually, she said, “Have you ever had a dream about something that you would give anything for, and then you realized that it was out of reach? That it was never going to happen?”
“Sure,” Street said. “What’s your dream?”
“That I can run fast. Ski fast. I think it’s about escape. I’ve spent a lot of my life wishing I could escape.”
“From Ned,” I said.
“And my stepfather before Ned.”
Another difficult silence.
“I’m sorry,” Street said.
“My mother married him when I was ten. She was excited that he was going to take us from rural France to Montreal. But she didn’t know that he was more interested in me than in her.”
Street had been lightly holding the back of my arm. At Simone’s words, Street’s fingers dug into my forearm.
Simone took several deep breaths. “I never had many friends in France, but I didn’t know anyone in Montreal. Not that it would have made any significant difference. But I think the loneliness made me even more vulnerable. I had nowhere to turn.”
I waited, thinking that it was better to say nothing than risk saying the wrong thing.
“And I had no way to fend him off,” she said. “Ten is awfully young.”
My turn to wince.
“You’re the first people I’ve ever told,” she said. “I never even told...” she cut herself off. After a moment she said, “My therapist.”
“You didn’t tell your mother?” Street said.
“She wouldn’t have believed me. She thought I lived in a make-believe world, which, I suppose, is true. If I had told her, she would have thought I was making it up to punish her for leaving my father and marrying another man.”
Street said, “Is your father still in France?”
“He died a year after my mother left him. They said it was from some kind of blood disease, but I think it was from a broken heart.”
“What kind of man was your father?” I asked.
“A good man. Plain and unpretentious, but good. He was a stone mason. He did stone carving for buildings. He even worked on a medieval church once. Like a lot of artisans, he was often
unemployed. My mother hated that, hated not having money. She wanted a more exciting life. My stepfather was a salesman. He sold real estate in Paris and then in Montreal. My mother loved finally having nice clothes and a fancy car and traveling. Although she had to travel alone or with friends because he didn’t want to travel.”
“Did your mother take you on her trips?”
“She didn’t like traveling with a kid.” Simone’s tone wasn’t angry, but matter-of-fact. “She left me home with him.”
After a moment, Street spoke, her voice wavering, “Do they still live in Montreal?”
“She does. My stepfather died a couple of years after we moved to Canada. A heart attack.” Simone swallowed. “He made my life hell on earth. I wish there were a literal hell, so he would know what it’s like.”
I wanted to learn more about Ned. I said, “How did you meet Ned?”
It was several seconds before Simone spoke. “After high school, I was determined to change my life. I was afraid, of course. Since my stepfather took over my life, I’ve always been afraid of everything. But I looked at the map and decided to apply to colleges that were a long way from Montreal. After my stepfather died, my mother had no money, so I also had to get financial aid. I found both distance and financial help in a little college in Colorado. That was when I first tried skiing. I was no good, but it was exciting, and scary, to try something where you go fast. It’s the opposite of me. I’m not a fast person. I’m not exciting, either.
“Last summer, after my senior year, I went to a high-altitude ski camp. A group of us stayed for three weeks in yurts on a snowfield at thirteen-thousand feet in the San Juan Mountains. The camp’s mission was to teach us ski mountaineering. Ned was one of the instructors. All the girls were crazy about him because he was rough and impossibly good looking. But he singled me out. I couldn’t believe that he was paying attention to me. But I was too naïve to be suspicious.
“I now know, from talking with Rell, that the reason he singled me out was that I fit the personality type that he could dominate. I was meek, so he could take total control over me. Once we started spending time together, he took ownership of me. I had to do everything exactly as he wanted or he would beat me. I feared for my life almost from the first moment. But I was powerless to do anything about it. It was like my stepfather all over again. My life is ruled by fear.”
