“Oh, you got jokes.” Lance was happy to see Arykah alert and in a good mood. Since she’d arrived at the hospital, she had been drugged and asleep for most of the time.
“I wanna talk to you about something, Bishop.”
“Uh-oh. Whenever you call me ‘Bishop,’ it means that I’m in trouble.” He swung his feet around and placed them on the floor. “What’s up?”
Arykah exhaled. “I heard you crying the day I was brought here. I heard you saying to me that you blamed yourself that you weren’t home to protect me.”
“I do blame myself. I am your husband, your protector, your bodyguard.”
“But we’re not joined at the hip, honey.”
“Well, maybe we should be.”
Arykah exhaled again. Lance was showing signs. The kind of signs she didn’t like. He was becoming overprotective. Arykah imagined him nailing all the windows and doors shut at their home. She imagined Lance going so far as to hiring her a personal bodyguard that would sleep in one of their guest bedrooms. Arykah imagined Lance demanding that she quit her job and stay at home where she could be watched twenty-four hours a day.
“Listen, you can’t be with me every second of the day.”
“But a personal bodyguard can.”
Arykah shook her head from side to side. “I knew you were gonna go there. You’re flipping out on me, but I’m gonna reel you back in. I don’t want, nor do I need, to be treated as if I’m some sort of mental patient that can’t be left alone. You’re not gonna lock me in the house, Lance. I don’t need a big, burly, scary-looking dude named ‘The Crusher’ living in my guest room. When I get released from this hospital, I’m going home and get my life back to normal. That’s what’s best for me.”
“But what if that is not what’s best for me?”
Arykah shrugged her shoulders. “How is me getting my life back to normal not what’s best for you?”
Lance looked at Arykah’s swollen right eye and the stitches on her top lip. Her nose was still disfigured. Yesterday the doctor told him that Arykah’s ribs would heal on their own in time. But when Lance bathed Arykah, he saw purple bruises above her abdomen and on her side. And there was still the baby that Arykah had lost. He hadn’t yet told her. “Babe, it kills me that I wasn’t home to protect you on Monday. You’re not a man, Arykah.”
“Thanks for telling me that. I had no idea.”
“I’m not kidding.”
“You’re not kidding that I’m not a man?”
“Cheeks, please. I’m so serious right now. You’re not a man. You’re not a husband. It’s a man’s job to protect his wife, his family, and his jewels. When a man fails to protect his jewels from harm, it puts him in a state of panic.”
“And I understand that, honey. Really I do. But you can’t hide me from the rest of the world. Life goes on.” Arykah poked herself in the chest with her index finger. “My life will go on.”
Lance hung his head. He sat on the cot in a somber mood. Of course he couldn’t hold Arykah hostage in their home, but there had to be a way for him to better protect her. He’d have to figure something out.
“I know about the baby.”
Lance’s head jerked up. For the longest moment he didn’t say a word. “You do?”
Arykah nodded her head. “I was conscious when the paramedics brought me here. I heard and felt everything. I feel like I’m sitting on a rolled up beach towel.”
He wanted to chuckle about Arykah’s reference to the super-sized Maxi pads the hospital provided their patients, but Lance felt the matter at hand was a serious one. He tried to read Arykah’s mood. If she was sad she hid it very well. “Tell me how you’re feeling about the miscarriage.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “To tell you the truth, Lance, there’s nothing to feel. I mean, had I known about the baby, I’d probably be in a different place. But I didn’t even know I was pregnant. I never got the chance to become attached.” She cocked her head to the side and looked at him. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yeah, I do.” Lance was the one who had always brought up the subject of having kids. Arykah told Lance that she didn’t have a strong desire to have any. If she and Lance conceived, she’d be fine with it. If they never conceived, she be fine with that as well.
Arykah heard voices outside her hospital room door. She looked down and saw shadows passing by. “Share with me your feelings about the baby. I know you want children. Are you sad?”
Lance opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
“You can be honest with me,” she encouraged him.
He gave her a slight smile. “I’m okay.”
“You’re not a good liar.”
Of course he lied. Lance wanted children like he wanted his next breath. But Arykah had survived a traumatic experience. He wasn’t going to lay his emotions on her. She needed to heal. If he confessed to Arykah that learning that she had miscarried really saddened him, Lance knew she’d feel guilty for her nonchalant attitude.
“No, really. I feel the same way that you do.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Lance said. He was grateful for the interruption.
The female detective pushed the door ajar and peeked inside. “Good morning. May I come in?”
“Absolutely,” Lance said. He stood from the cot and stretched. “Babe, this is Detective ...” It dawned on him that he didn’t know her name. He never gave her a chance to introduce herself on Monday when he sped home. He was too anxious to find out where Arykah was. And at the hospital later that day, when she had interrogated him, Adonis, and Carlton, he hadn’t asked her what her name was there either.
“Rogers. Detective Cortney Rogers,” she said, coming further into the room. She came and stood next to Arykah and smiled. Arykah’s face hadn’t healed much since Detective Rogers had first come on the scene in their home. There was so much blood coming from beneath Arykah’s head at the time that Detective Rogers assumed she was deceased. But when she pressed her fingers against Arykah’s neck, she felt a pulse. “How are you coming along, Mrs. Howell?”
Arykah placed her hand on her side. Her bruised and broken ribs were starting to hurt again. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.”
Lance saw that Arykah was becoming uncomfortable sitting up. “You want to lie down, Cheeks?”
“Perhaps you should,” Detective Rogers encouraged.
“Yes, I do want to lie back,” Arykah said, wincing at every move she made.
Detective Rogers stepped back and allowed Lance to adjust Arykah’s bed; then she watched as he fluffed her pillows and made sure that she was as comfortable as she could be. Love poured from Lance. It was evident right then just as it was evident on Monday when Lance demanded to know where his wife was.
“Mrs. Howell, I’d like to ask you some questions about what happened at your home on Monday morning. Do you feel up to talking about it?”
Arykah moaned at the pain in her side.
“Maybe now isn’t a good time, Detective,” Lance stated.
“No, it’s okay,” Arykah countered. “Let’s get it over with.”
Detective Rogers pulled a notepad and a pen from her interior coat pocket. “What do you remember?”
Arykah exhaled. “Well, I was in the shower when I heard the telephone ring. It was Mother Pansie.”
“What did she want?” Lance asked.
Detective Rogers jotted the name on her notepad. “Mother Pansie,” she said out loud.
She turned back a few pages of the notebook and looked at her previous notes. “Mother Pansie,” she said again. She looked at Lance. “That’s the same name that Mrs. Howell’s best friend gave to me. And you also stated that this woman should be considered as a person of interest.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Lance confirmed. “Um, what did Mother Pansie want when she called?” he asked Arykah again.
Arykah looked from Lance to Detective Rogers, then back at Lance again. “Wai
t. You think Mother Pansie did this to me?”
“Well, Monique seems to think that the mothers may have had something to do with what happened to you. And I do too.”
“Have you had any problems with the mothers of the church, Mrs. Howell?” Detective Rogers asked Arykah.
Arykah wanted to chuckle, but her ribs were singing a song. “Problems? Humph, that’s really putting it mildly. They hate me. Both of them.”
Detective Rogers looked over her notes again. “You’re speaking of Mother Gussie as well, right?”
“Those old hags have been torturing me ever since the first day I came to the church.”
“And when was that?”
“Almost six months ago,” Lance answered. “But I wanna know what Mother Pansie wanted when she called.”
“The same thing she always wants whenever she calls, Lance. I didn’t even give her a chance to tell me what she wanted. I knew she was calling to speak with you. When I heard her voice, I told Mother Pansie that you weren’t home and she should call you at the church.”
“And then what happened?” Detective Rogers encouraged Arykah to keep talking.
“She hung up on me.”
“Just like that?” Lance asked.
Arykah looked at Lance. “Does that surprise you?”
“Okay. So,” Detective Rogers started as she was writing, “you were in the shower when the telephone rang. You answered the call, and Mother Pansie said what exactly?”
“She said my name,” Arykah answered.
“So, Mother Pansie said, ‘Arykah.’”
“She said, ‘Lady Arykah?’ It was a question; like she was verifying that it was me who had answered the telephone.”
Detective Rogers was writing fast. “What happened next?”
“After Mother Pansie hung up on me, I headed back to the shower, but the doorbell rang. So, I shut the water in the shower off, then put my robe on, and went to answer the door.”
“How much time had passed between Mother Pansie’s call and the doorbell?”
Arykah thought about it. “Hmm, I’d say about ten or fifteen seconds. It wasn’t long at all. As soon as I put the phone back on the base, I headed back to the shower, but the doorbell rang before I actually reached the shower.”
“How many feet are there from your telephone to your shower?”
“I don’t know.” Arykah looked at Lance. “Honey, how many feet?”
“You answered the telephone on your nightstand, right?” Lance asked her.
Arykah nodded.
Lance looked at Detective Rogers. “It’s probably about twenty to twenty-five feet from Arykah’s nightstand to the shower.”
Detective Rogers jotted down what Lance said. “Okay, so, Mrs. Howell—”
“Please call me Arykah.”
Detective Rogers smiled. “Okay, then, Arykah, I want you to concentrate on what I’m going to ask you next. You can take your time to answer because I need you to be as precise as you possibly can. From the moment you put the telephone back on the base and headed back to the shower, how many steps had you taken before you heard the doorbell?”
Arykah looked up at the white ceiling above her. She closed her eyes and pictured her surroundings and where she was standing when the doorbell rang. “I’d say that I had gotten to my vanity table when I heard the doorbell.”
“Her vanity is halfway between the nightstand and the shower,” Lance offered.
“So, between ten and maybe fifteen feet?” Detective Rogers asked Arykah.
She nodded her head. “That sounds about right.”
The detective jotted down more information on the notepad, then took her cellular phone from her interior pocket. “Let’s try something.” She gave Arykah her telephone. “Lay the phone down on the bed and I’m going to start walking toward the wall across the room. This is a small room, and it won’t take me long to reach the wall. I want you to stop me when you think that enough time had passed from when I start to walk and time you think you heard your doorbell ring.” She looked at Arykah. “Got it?”
“Yep. Got it.”
“Whenever you’re ready.”
Arykah laid Detective Rogers cellular telephone on the bed next to her. The detective started walking toward the wall across the room while at the same time watching her wristwatch.
“Ding-dong,” Arykah chimed when she felt that enough time had passed.
Detective Rogers stopped walking and turned around. “Thirteen steps. Two more and I would’ve gotten to the wall.”
“What does all of this mean, Detective?” Lance was curious.
“It took nine seconds for Arykah to stop me. I’m wondering if nine seconds was enough time for Mother Pansie to have called whoever rang your doorbell to report that Arykah was home alone.”
“If it happened that fast, then the guy was already waiting on the porch,” Lance stated.
“And Arykah didn’t give Mother Pansie a chance to ask if you were home. When she heard Mother Pansie’s voice, Arykah immediately announced that you weren’t home and that she should call you at the church.”
“And that’s when she hung up on me.”
“And nine seconds later your doorbell rang. Coincidence? Maybe; maybe not.”
“This is unbelievable,” Lance said.
Detective Rogers began writing on her notepad again. “Okay, Arykah, you put your robe on and what happened next?”
“When I was a few feet away from the front door, the doorbell rang again. I asked who was at the door, and the guy said that he had a delivery for me. I thought it was Rafael, and I yelled to him that I was at the door.”
Detective Rogers wrote the name down on the notepad. “Who is Rafael?”
“Her young Puerto Rican boyfriend that brings her secret packages that she thinks I don’t know about.”
Arykah’s light complexion turned crimson red. She had been caught. “What are you talking about, Lance?”
“I’m talking about bags and boxes that are hidden in all of the closets throughout the house.”
Arykah could do nothing but chuckle. She felt her stitches pull when she smiled.
“Rafael is the delivery guy that is assigned to my area. He drives the UPS truck.”
Arykah looked at Lance. “I admit that I’m a shopaholic.” Then she looked at Detective Rogers. “Rafael comes about two to three times a week.”
“So, you didn’t look through the peephole?” Lance asked.
“No,” she was ashamed to admit. “I assumed it was Rafael because it was always Rafael.”
“Except that time it wasn’t him,” Detective Rogers stated.
“Nope. It wasn’t Rafael on the other side of the door, and I found that out when I opened it and got hit in my nose.”
Detective Rogers could see Arykah tensing up. “What happened next?”
“I fell back on the floor. The guy came inside and kicked me in my left side. I heard the front door slam, and the next thing I knew I was being dragged by my arms into the living room. I was kicking and screaming and scratching. I remember getting hit in my right eye, and he told me to shut up. I’m not sure at what point my lip got busted. But the more I screamed, the angrier and stronger he got. He used his fingers on me at first—then he shoved himself inside me.”
Lance twitched in his chair. That was the first time that he’d heard in detail what happened to Arykah. Listening to her describe the torture she suffered made him want to go out and buy a gun.
“Arykah,” Detective Rogers started, “can you remember anything particular about him. What was he wearing? Did he have any visible tattoos? Was he light or dark skinned? Was he a short man or a tall man? Anything at all.”
“I couldn’t see his face,” Arykah said.
“Did he wear a mask?”
“I don’t think he wore a mask. I got hit in the nose as soon as I opened the door, and I fell down. He kicked me and ran around my head to drag me inside. At some point I got punched in the eye, and I
just couldn’t get a good view even when he was on top of me. But I do know that he was a bald man because I was scratching at his face and head and I didn’t feel any hair.”
“Was he wearing any cologne?”
“He was funky,” Arykah remembered. “He smelled horribly, like he hadn’t bathed in months, and his breath was foul.”
“Did he say anything to you?”
“I remembered screaming for Lance, and the guy said that the bishop couldn’t save me.”
Lance stood and walked to the window and looked out of it. What Arykah had just said pierced his soul. The rapist was right. Lance wasn’t there to save his wife.
Detective Rogers frowned at Arykah’s last statement. “Do you generally call your husband ‘Bishop’?”
“Huh?” Arykah didn’t understand the question.
Lance turned around fast. He knew exactly where Detective Rogers was going with her question. “Oh my God,” he said out loud.
Detective Rogers saw the look on Lance’s face. She knew that he was reading her mind. “Mr. Howell, don’t say anything.” She concentrated on Arykah. “When you’re talking to your husband, what do you call him?”
Arykah looked at Lance and wondered why Detective Rogers ordered him not to say anything. “What’s going on?”
“Just answer her question, Cheeks,” Lance said.
“What do you call him?” Detective Rogers asked a third time.
“I call him ‘babe,’ ‘honey,’ ‘my love.’ I have lots of pet names for him.”
“Do you ever call him ‘Bishop’?”
Lance came and stood at the foot of Arykah’s bed. His blood was running hot through his veins. He and Detective Rogers were on the same page.
“Of course I call him ‘Bishop’ sometimes. Especially when we’re at church. Or when I’ve asked him to do something and three hours later the task still isn’t done, I may call him ‘Bishop.’ And sometimes I call him ‘Bishop’ when we’re playing.”
“Playing?”
Arykah tried to smile. “You know. Playing.”
Detective Rogers knew what Arykah meant. “Oh, playing. Playing with each other. I get it,” she smiled. “But what I wanna know is when you were calling out for your husband while you were being raped, what name did you call?”
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