Beyond Eden

by Catherine Coulter

  He felt the wet of her blood on his hand, soaked through the towel. He pulled it away, tossing it to the floor. He saw that the flow was still steady, cursed softly, and pressed another folded towel against her. “Just hold still, sweetheart. You’ll be fine in just a little while. I’ll get Uncle Bandy for you. I won’t let him get away with this.”

  But Taylor knew in his heart that if she hadn’t hemorrhaged her mother would never have panicked and come tearing out of the apartment to find him, and the little girl’s rape would have gone unnoticed, unreported, and Uncle Bandy would probably have enjoyed her until she managed to escape from home.

  When the paramedics arrived not five minutes later, a man and a woman, Taylor told them what had happened and showed them what he’d done.

  “Good job, Lieutenant. Come on, Linda, let’s get this poor kid to the hospital. You’ll be along later, Lieutenant? The doctors will want to speak to you.”

  “Yeah, I’ll be along. Take good care of her.” He smiled at the girl and said quietly, “Don’t worry. They’re going to treat you like you’re the president.” And added to the paramedics, “I want to nail the bastard who did this to her. Tell the doctors to be careful about how she’s examined. We’ll need sperm samples. You know the routine.”

  He called Dorothy from a public phone and canceled out the evening. He heard her sigh, but she was game, and dutifully asked after the girl.

  He took a taxi to Lenox Hill and strode into the emergency room. He could hear Ellie sobbing from the moment he walked into the long narrow room. And the memories flooded him. He unconsciously rubbed his left arm where the break had healed long ago.

  He hadn’t been able to help Lindsay Foxe. He walked into the small cubicle without hesitation. A woman doctor was working on Ellie and she looked up, frowning.

  “I’m Lieutenant Taylor. I found her. I was worried and heard her crying. Can I do anything?”

  The doctor nodded. “Okay, Lieutenant. Talk to her. Tell her she’ll be fine.”

  Taylor stroked Ellie’s face, pitching his voice low and soft. When she shuddered, he held her, never ceasing his meaningless words.

  “I’m done now, Lieutenant. Thank you. Oh, here’s the mother. Mrs. Delliah?”

  “Yes, I’m her mother. She’ll be all right, won’t she, Doctor?”

  “Yes, but I want to keep her for a couple of days. The bleeding’s nearly stopped now. I’ve got all the samples I need for the police.”

  “No police,” said Mrs. Delliah, crossing her arms over her large breasts. “No police.”

  “I see,” the doctor said in an emotionless voice. “Which family member did this to her? Father? Uncle? Brother?”

  Taylor looked up, startled. Then he realized that the good doctor had seen her share of ongoing sexual abuse and rape cases. Probably too many. She looked incredibly weary, the anger dull in her eyes.

  “Nobody,” said Mrs. Delliah firmly. “The girl was playing with a coat hanger. She did it to herself.”

  Ellie started crying, deep gulping, very ugly sounds. Taylor wanted to strangle the woman.

  “Why would she do that?” Taylor asked, still holding Ellie’s hand. “No, no more lies. Why are you protecting your brother, Mrs. Delliah? Look what he did to your child! For God’s sake, are you just going to let him get away with this? The man’s sick.”

  He was shouting, trembling from the force of his anger. The doctor laid a hand on his shoulder; Mrs. Delliah had backed up two paces.

  Ellie cried and cried.

  Taylor returned to his apartment on Fifty-fifth Street at Lexington at midnight. He was exhausted and disgusted. But he was going to get Uncle Bandy. Oh, yeah, he was going to nail the miserable bastard. No one was going to stop him.

  7

  Taylor

  He took a taped statement from Ellie the next day. He arrived in her private room at just after seven in the morning, early enough, he hoped, that her mother wouldn’t have yet made an appearance. Lord knew what the woman would say today.

  Ellie smiled when she saw him and held out her hand to him, shy, as a child would to an adult who had been kind to her. He’d thought about his questions, about how to phrase them, and he spoke slowly and gently. Her pitiful tale nearly broke his heart. She’d been abused by her uncle since she was ten years old. He’d told her that she was his sweet little girl and she had to keep being sweet or she and her mother wouldn’t be able to live in this beautiful apartment and she wouldn’t be able to go to her nice private school and play with all her nice friends. At least he’d waited to rape her vaginally until she was nearly fifteen. Taylor didn’t know whether or not he’d sodomized her and he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Uncle Bandy always gave her nice presents, but he hurt her and she was afraid of him. This time he’d made her bleed real bad.

  Taylor got all he needed and was just listening to Ellie tell him about her private school and the friends she had there. He delighted in the normalcy of her talk and wished he could take her home with him.

  Mrs. Delliah arrived. She was subdued this morning and her clothing was less garish. She was wearing an expensive camel-hair coat over a plain wool dress of expressionless brown. Her face was scrubbed clean and he realized with something of a surprise she wasn’t yet forty. Her red hair, less dubious this morning, was drawn back in a bun. She looked even more like a domestic today, one who wasn’t a hooker on the side. To Taylor’s relief, she didn’t verbally attack her daughter. She was stiff with him, but at least she wasn’t cruel to Ellie. She kissed her and petted her and told her she wanted her to come home.

  Taylor said, “I would like to speak with you, Mrs. Delliah, after you’ve assured yourself that Ellie is all right. I’ll wait for you in the hall.”

  Ten minutes later, Mrs. Delliah joined him. She looked wary and defiant. He motioned her to a waiting room. He said without preamble, “Your brother is sick. He needs psychiatric treatment immediately. Hell, he probably needed it twenty years ago. He could have killed your daughter. You’ve got to stop this and press charges and see that he gets help.”

  She was wringing her hands, scraping her knuckles on the heavy rings. “I can’t.”

  “If you don’t, he will continue to rape Ellie. Surely you know that. Didn’t you know that he was abusing her for the past five years? Well, even if you didn’t know, this is different, this is the real kicker. She’s been completely violated now. She has nothing left and soon she will know it and not be able to deal with it. Is that what you want for your daughter? She’ll take the abuse only until she can run away, and then she’ll be alone and on the streets and then it’s drugs and prostitution and God knows what. Is that what you want for her?”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “There are organizations to help you. You aren’t stupid, Mrs. Delliah. You can get a job.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand that you are pimping for your brother, using your own little girl. If you don’t press charges, I will report you to the authorities and Ellie will be taken away from you.”

  She started crying. Taylor wasn’t moved. She disgusted him.

  “Will you press charges or do I see that Ellie is given to a family who will protect her?”

  “He’ll kill me,” she moaned, hugging herself now, rocking back and forth.

  “Don’t be crazy. Of course he won’t kill you. Tell me his name now, Mrs. Delliah.”

  “I didn’t know he was gonna rape her. I didn’t know he was doing things to her, I didn’t! I just thought he—” No, she wasn’t stupid. She was smart enough to stop herself.

  He wanted to hit her, but said instead, “Will you press charges?”

  In the end, she agreed. He took her to the precinct station and she signed a warrant and her statement. It was late afternoon when Taylor and his partner, Enoch Sackett, went to Uncle Bandy’s address.

  Taylor supposed he really wasn’t surprised, but Enoch, tall and thin as a cane, just stood in front of the
magnificent brownstone saying, “Shit, Taylor, this guy torments little girls? And he lives here? It looks like a set for the rich and famous. Why? A guy who has all this? Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Uncle Bandy was Mr. Brandon Waymer Ashcroft of the brokerage house of Ashcroft, Hume, Drinkwater, and Henderson, Water Street, New York, New York. He answered the door wearing a smoking jacket that shrieked London, with soft striped wool pants and leather slippers on his feet. He had a handsome angular face, was sitting firmly in his forties, slender, with a manner smooth as vintage Bordeaux. He appeared bewildered by their presence, a neat dark eyebrow edging up as he surveyed them on his doorstep, but utterly civilized. After inspecting their I.D.’s he stepped back and waved them in. They followed him over a beautiful old Tabriz into a study that was all smooth mahogany and built-in bookshelves with uncut heavy books covered in dark rich colors, and the smell of rich pipe tobacco.

  “What can I do for you, gentlemen? Please, be seated. Something to drink perhaps? A sherry? Forgive me. Beer?”

  “Perhaps,” Taylor said, “you should put on your shoes and leave the Savile Row jacket in your closet. A nice conservative sport coat might be just the thing. An American label. You’re under arrest, Mr. Ashcroft, for the rape of your niece, Miss Eleanor Delliah.”

  His bewildered look intensified, his brow furrowed. He appeared to be intellectually insulted. He never lost his smoothness. He worried with a pipe he never lit, a ruse Taylor recognized to give him time to think. He was content to let him think until hell froze over. It wouldn’t do him any good. “I really don’t understand, gentlemen,” he said at last, adding quickly, “I should call my lawyer, I believe.” He also thought he should see his sister, poor woman, for an explanation of this madness.

  Taylor agreed.

  Enoch winked at Taylor and smoothly cuffed Mr. Brandon Ashcroft, his hands behind his back. There wasn’t really any need, but Taylor wanted this touch of humiliation. The man deserved it. On the way to the station, Mr. Ashcroft told them freely that his poor sister had gotten pregnant years before and he had forced the man to marry her—paid him off, actually. But the man had left her and Ashcroft had freely and willingly supported her and her daughter for the past fifteen years. They had seen her apartment. It was very nice. Both mother and daughter were well provided for. Didn’t they agree? There had to be some confusion here.

  Taylor turned in the passenger seat to face Mr. Ashcroft. “I do understand, Mr. Ashcroft. You provide housing and food in exchange for sexually abusing a little girl.”

  If his hands hadn’t been cuffed, Mr. Ashcroft would have airily waved them. “That is nonsense, Lieutenant, utter nonsense. I am a successful man. I am a sensible man. I am an educated man. Why on earth would I, a man of high station, do something so despicable, something so completely incomprehensible, as to sexually abuse a child? It makes no sense, gentlemen.”

  “Perhaps the shrinks will figure that one out.”

  Mr. Ashcroft was never incarcerated. His lawyer was there within the hour, a judge duly called, a low bail posted, and he was out and free and on his way back to his lovely brownstone.

  Taylor was disgusted, but it wasn’t anything new. Money was a man’s most powerful legal weapon. But he would nail Ashcroft. He had the mother’s testimony and Ellie’s. He had the doctor’s evaluation as well, Ashcroft’s sperm, and everyone involved in the case was mad as hell.

  Still, Taylor fretted aloud to his captain, Dennis Bradly, a man of singular patience and goodwill, who watched him silently as he paced the confines of his office.

  “The man is used to power. He’s used to getting what he wants because he’s got money. He’s going to intimidate his sister and Ellie. You know it. I know it. The D.A. knows it. The question is, how do we protect them? How do we get this bastard?”

  “Look, Taylor—” Bradly stopped and ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair. “I know you’re up to your neck in this thing, what with you finding the girl and all and probably saving her life. You’re too close, it screws up your perspective, makes your thinking muddled. You’ve got to back off.”

  “Back off what, Captain?”

  “Ashcroft’s big-time.”

  “He’s a big shit.”

  “That too. We’ll see. Look, the case is strong, airtight for the moment at least. The D.A. will try to keep it that way, but—” He shrugged and reached for his cold coffee in a Styrofoam cup. “Don’t lose your head over this thing, Taylor. I know that Kreider case a couple months ago really got to you. You did the best you could, we all know that, but the law says that the accused has a right to face his accuser.”

  “Yeah, what a pity that the accuser gets iced two days before the trial. A real pro job, and our boy walks away with a big smile on his face, and a twenty-one-year-old woman who never did a bad thing in her life, except see Kreider shoot another lowlife, gets shot in the head because I talked her into testifying against him.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. Things like that happen. We tried to protect her, you know that. Sometimes it just isn’t enough. Hell, Taylor, you’ve been on the force long enough, what is it, six years now?”

  Taylor nodded. “Ashcroft won’t get away with this, Captain.”

  “I hope not,” Captain Bradly said, but he didn’t sound at all certain.

  Taylor met with the assistant D.A., a young man who was bright enough but who didn’t have a whole lot of experience, a young man who was still capable of burning with righteous indignation. He was pleased with the preponderance of evidence against Ashcroft. He was certain they would have the man bound over for trial. He told Taylor that Ashcroft’s lawyer had already approached the D.A. but his boss wasn’t going to bend on this. Taylor felt good. He felt hopeful. At last there would be justice. As for his partner, Enoch just looked at him, shook his head, and told him not to expect too much.

  A preliminary hearing was set for the following Tuesday morning. Taylor couldn’t wait. Ashcroft, with all his money and his slick lawyer, wouldn’t weasel out of this one. No way. He’d be nailed.

  He was delighted to hear that Judge Riker would be presiding. He was tough as rawhide and mean as a pit bull. Nobody put a thing over on him. He hated violence and criminals. When it came to rapists, he became nearly rabid with fury. The story was that his niece had been raped some ten years before and the punks responsible had escaped because the cops had seized the evidence improperly.

  Judge Riker strode into the small courtroom, his black robes flowing, his thick white hair making him look like Moses, and told the assistant district attorney to get on with it.

  The assistant D.A. did get on with it, and it went downhill from there.

  The samples of sperm that unequivocally matched Mr. Brandon Ashcroft’s to that found in Ellie’s body were missing from the lab. No one could find them.

  Mrs. Delliah took the stand and told Judge Riker that her daughter, it turned out, had let one of the boys in her school play with her until he’d hurt her and that was what had caused all the bleeding. Ellie had been frightened and blamed her uncle because he was the only man she knew. It was too bad, Mrs. Delliah said, touching a handkerchief to her eyes, because Ellie’s uncle loved her very much. And now he had to go through this.

  The defense attorney smiled and said there were no questions. He requested that the judge dismiss the case.

  Judge Riker stared hard at the assistant D.A., then said quietly, “Do you want the girl to testify?”

  “In chambers, Your Honor, please.”

  “Very well.”

  Taylor waited, pacing the corridor outside the courtroom for forty-five minutes. It was over quickly when Judge Riker returned.

  “I am dismissing the charges against Mr. Ashcroft. Next case.”

  It was over. Simple as that. Nothing more. Just over and the man was free. Taylor went to the men’s room and vomited up the three cups of coffee he’d drunk. Enoch tried his best to calm him.

  “Look, Tayl
or, it happens this way. You know that, I know that. Hell, what else can you do?”

  Taylor looked at him and pulled the small cassette tape from his suit pocket. “Play this for the judge,” he said.

  Judge Riker sat still as a stone as he listened to the tape of Ellie Delliah telling Taylor about her rape.

  When the tape was over, Judge Riker reached out a thick finger and pressed the erase button.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant, but the girl swore that what her mother said was right. She did refuse to give us a boy’s name, however. I believe you. Of course I believe you. I believe the uncle is guilty as sin and he needs psychiatric help. But there’s not a thing I can do about it. Forget it, Lieutenant. I’m as sorry as you are, but the law’s the law. Get back to work and just forget it.”

  Taylor rose, still staring down at the now-erased tape. “That little girl’s life will be hell, you know that. You can’t believe he’ll stop now. He’ll think now that he can do anything to her with impunity. He just proved he’s above the law.”

  “No, I think the uncle paid off the mother to change her story. Paid her a ton of money, probably. You can take it to the bank that the mother and daughter will be decamping very soon now and heading for parts unknown. So you see, some good came out of it. The girl will be free from him.”

  Taylor found little consolation in that, but he nodded, shook Judge Riker’s hand, and left the building. He prayed it was true. What with the case being dismissed, the social workers couldn’t get involved. There was no way to remove Ellie from her mother’s care.

  Two weeks later, when Taylor had come off a cocaine bust that had left three teenagers dead and a nineteen-year-old dealer still loose, his captain called him into his office, closed the door, and told him that Ellie Delliah was dead.

  “I’m sorry, Taylor,” he said quietly. The kid had jumped out of a rest-room window in her private school at Eighty-first and Madison. Three flights up. She’d landed on a concrete sidewalk.