New York to Dallas (In Death #33)(3)

“Let me scan the door.” Peabody pulled out her PPC. “He might’ve rigged it.”

“It opens on a living area, kitchen behind, eating area to the right. Two bedrooms, one right, one left. Bathroom attached to the one on the right. Half-bath left of the kitchen. It’s a big unit, about five hundred square feet.”

“Scan reads clear,” Peabody told her.

“Baxter, straight back. Trueheart, Peabody, go left. I’m right.” She nodded to Trueheart and the battering ram. Counted from three down with her fingers.

The door crashed on its hinges, locks snapping. Eve went in low and fast, focused on the now, not the then. She heard the rush of feet as her team poured into the room.

She shoved open the bedroom door, swept with her weapon. She saw the figure on the bed, but continued to clear—left, right, closet, bath as she heard her team members call, “Clear!”

“In here,” Eve shouted, and now moved to the bed.

“You’re okay. It’s okay. We’re the police.”

She loosened the gag around the woman’s bloody, swollen mouth. The sounds she made were incoherent moans and whispers.

He’d stripped her; his pattern there hadn’t changed. Before Eve could give the order, Trueheart, his young, handsome face radiating compassion, lifted the thin bedspread from the floor to cover her shaking body.

“You’re going to be all right now,” he said gently. “You’re safe now.”

“He hurt me. He hurt me.”

Peabody moved in, pulling the knotted sheet McQueen had used to bind the woman’s hands from the hook screwed into the wall. “He can’t hurt you now.” Then she sat, drawing Julie against her to let her weep.

“He swore he wouldn’t hurt me if Tray did what he said, but he did. He did. He raped me, and he hurt me. And he did this to me.”

Eve had already seen it, tattooed in bloody red over Julie’s left breast, caged in a perfect heart.

“Bus is on the way,” Baxter told Eve. He angled away from the woman sobbing in Peabody’s arms, spoke quietly. “They’ll have a rape counselor on the other end. Do you want me to call the sweepers to go through the place?”

It wouldn’t matter, she thought. He wouldn’t have left anything behind he hadn’t intended to. But she nodded. “Let the boyfriend know she’s safe. He can go with her to the hospital. You and Trueheart step out, please. Peabody, get Julie some clothes. You can’t put them on yet.” She stood at the foot of the bed, waited until Julie met her eyes. “They’ll have to examine you first, and we’re going to have to ask you questions. I know it’s hard. You should know Tray did everything he could to get to me as fast as possible, to get me back here.”

“He didn’t want to leave. He begged him to let me go instead. He didn’t want to leave me.”

“I know. His name is Isaac McQueen. He told you something, Julie, something he wanted you to pass on to me.”

“He said I wasn’t right, wasn’t . . . fresh, but he’d make an exception. I couldn’t stop him. He hurt me, he tied my hands.” Quivering still, she held her arms out to show the raw bruising on her wrists. “I couldn’t stop him.”

“I know. Julie, I’m Lieutenant Dallas. Eve Dallas. What did Isaac want you to tell me?”

“Dallas? You’re Dallas?”

“Yes. What did he want you to tell me?”

“He said to tell you that you owe it all to him. It’s time to pay up. I want my mom.” She covered her face with her hands. “I want my mom.”

It was foolish to feel useless. She could have done nothing to prevent what Julie Kopeski and Tray Schuster had endured. She could do nothing to change how that trauma would change them.

She knew Isaac McQueen’s pathology, his particular style of torture. He was adept at instilling a sense of helplessness and hopelessness in his victims, at convincing them to do exactly what they were told, how they were told, when they were told.

She hadn’t been one of his, but she understood the victimology as well.

She’d been someone else’s.

It did no good to remember that, or to think about the girls she’d saved. Or the ones who’d been lost before, twelve years before, when she’d looked into the eyes of a monster and had known him.

Instead, she drew Tray aside at the hospital.

“They need to examine her, and Julie needs to talk to the rape counselor.”

“Oh God. God. I shouldn’t have left her.”

“If you hadn’t, she’d be dead, and so would you. She’s alive. She’s hurt and she’s been violated, but she’s alive. You’re going to want to remember that, both of you, because alive’s better. You said he was there when you woke up.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about that.”

“We overslept, or I thought . . .”

“What time did you wake up?”

“I don’t know exactly. I think it was about eight. I rolled over thinking, ‘Holy shit, we’re both going to be late for work.’ I felt off, strung out, like we’d partied hard the night before. But we didn’t,” he said quickly. “I swear. Julie doesn’t even toke zoner.”

“We’re going to need to screen both of you,” Eve began.