Cat In An Aqua Storm

17

Official Abuse

“I hate this,” Temple muttered, tears and a blood taste mingling on her lips.

She leaned against the welcome support of the faded chartreuse wall outside her condominium. Matt had set the tote at their feet and was frowning at her key ring in the dimly lit entryway.

He had reacted to her breakdown with swift, masculine action. He had taken the tote bag in one hand, then scooped her up and carried her in, up in the elevator, and to the door of her unit.

Not long ago she would have adored being swooped away in Matt Devine’s strong, lightly tanned arms. Of course in her imagination she would have been perfectly coiffed, gowned and made up and they would have been heading for a devoutly mutual rendezvous somewhere high above the city. She had not yet decided where.

But now the ease with which he had swept her off her feet, however gallant and practical the intention, only reminded her how easily the two thugs had overcome her free will by the same expedient. Besides, now she felt like a child who’d been in a scrape at school—dirty, humiliated and in the wrong, somehow, for being hurt at all.

The right key finally clicked and Matt picked up her bag and took her elbow to guide her inside. Her right elbow. She cringed away, sucking in her breath.

His hand dropped as if he had touched a hot burner. Temple tottered in on her own power, through the hallway and into the living room, where she sat on the white-muslin-upholstered sofa.

Matt gingerly set the tote bag down on the cocktail table in front of her. “Can I get you anything?”

“Water.”

He vanished, and Temple looked around cautiously, toting up her possessions, marking their unchanged presence, becoming thankful for that.

He returned with a lowball glass full. Apparently he hadn’t found the twelve-ounce tumblers in the next cabinet. She found it hard to swallow, and the liquid didn’t help her stomach.

Matt sat on the edge of the cocktail table, a sturdy wood-framed square of thick glass, facing her. He laid the keys on the table, and the broken heel, then bent to gently pull her shoes off, the damaged one first, then the other.

Temple curled her toes into the white faux goat-hair area rug under the cocktail table. At least they didn’t hurt.

“Can you tell me now?” he asked.

“I must look awful.”

He nodded gravely, and she almost rose to consult a mirror, but his fanned hand stopped her.

“How do you feel?” he asked in a kindly tone as impersonal as a doctor’s.

The question, and the distance, set her at ease. “Awful,” she admitted. She shrugged. “I suppose my clothes are ruined.”

“Maybe not. Can you talk about it.”

Temple sighed, sorry immediately afterward. The small inhalation hurt her shoulder. “Two men accosted me in the Goliath parking ramp. They got pretty physical.”

“Robbers?” he asked incredulously. “Did you resist that much?”

“I couldn’t resist at all, except kick a little. Until a couple of drivers had a near-brush and got into a loud argument. Then the men... melted away.”

“What did they get?”

“Nothing.”

Matt frowned again, which only emphasized his warm brown eyes under slanted sun-bleached brows. “What did they do to you?”

Her left hand lifted to pat her right shoulder. “Twisted my arm halfway around.” The hand touched her cheek. “Slapped me for not keeping quiet. Everything happened so fast... so fierce. I hardly knew what hit me, or how I was hit—” Saying it was reliving it. She stopped, her teeth clattering together as uncontrollable shivers battered her aching frame. “It’s like I’ve got a fever and chills.”

“Shock.” Matt confirmed her earlier instinct. He rose and went into the kitchen, ran some water, put something in the microwave. She could hear the high-pitched wheeze of the machine as it zapped whatever was inside. His face appeared around the kitchen wall. “Got a blanket somewhere?”

“Not out in summer,” she murmured. “Left bedroom, in the bathroom linen closet.”

He returned with a thick rose-colored wool blanket she’d forgotten about, and wrapped her in it. The microwave tinged and he vanished into the kitchen again. Cupboards banged. Matt returned with a hot cup of black coffee and a box of soda crackers.

“Coffee will help. And eat some crackers.”

She sipped the bitter, steaming liquid, tried to gum down the cracker. Her jaws hurt. Her teeth hurt. The cracker paste oozed down her esophagus like rubber cement, but a little clarity was seeping into her foggy brain.

Matt came to sit beside her on the couch, to hold the cup between sips because she was still shaking. “Could you identify these guys?”

“I don’t know. Can you identify a hurricane? Maybe.”

“Did they say anything, have any reason for accosting you?”

Temple was silent. Matt took her reserve for weakness and brought the coffee cup to her lips. She sipped the strong brew gratefully. The heat was reaching a place inside her that had become very cold and indifferent.

The excuse for not speaking allowed her to consider her answer. To tell the truth meant mentioning Max, whom she couldn’t explain to herself, much less to Matt Devine. And the more people who knew about Max, perhaps the more danger they were in.

She finally looked at him and shook her head, trying to indicate that it was no use asking or answering such questions. He took the gesture for a no, and she let him. “Let me see.” He reached for her face.

She winced but held still.

“You cut the inside of your cheek on your teeth. Bleeds a lot, but not serious. Looks like some swelling near the left eye. May swell more later.”

The calm cataloging of her injuries made them seem remote, removed. Her chills were subsiding, but the pain was deepening.

“Why are you holding your arms like that?” Matt was asking.

“Like what?” She looked down where her hands clutched the blanket’s satin-bound edges. She was sitting huddled over herself, as if cold, her arms crossed over her midriff, the left one cradling the right.

“They”—just mentioning it revived the shock of the blows—“punched me.”

He gently lifted her right arm, supported the wrist. “Wrist isn’t broken, or you’d be screaming.” He pulled until her elbow straightened, and she hissed through her teeth. “A bad wrench, I’d guess. It could be sore for a while.”

He shot her an apologetic glance for hurting her, then rotated the arm. The pain wasn’t as intense as when she tried to do something with it. Matt was watching her arm and her face with that same distant consideration, like a doctor, or a personal trainer. Of course. He practiced the martial arts. He’d know about... combat injuries.

“Ice,” he said.

“Huh?” How odd, not long before she had been urging ice on someone else.

“You’ll need ice packs on it, to bring the swelling down. I’ve got some gel packs you can have.”

He pulled the blanket away, releasing a hoarded store of body heat she immediately missed. “This side?”

She nodded as his fingers probed softly along her rib cage, and crossed her arms over her breasts to keep the precious heat in. The third rib up she felt a stab of pain and cried out before she could pretend to be a big person and ignore it. The next rib was no easier.

Matt’s frown grew deep. “Looks like they did a real job on your ribs. They used their fists?”

Temple nodded. Matt’s eyes went to her arms, again cradling each other. “That arm shouldn’t be that painful if it’s just a wrench. Think. Why are you holding your arms that way? Where does it hurt?”

She hadn’t been able to differentiate the miasma of ache and pain besieging her body into specific zones, but Matt’s words made her realize why she assumed her defensive posture.

“They didn’t just punch me in the ribs,” she remembered suddenly.

Matt’s face whitened beneath the tan. He turned his head away, saying something curt she didn’t hear, then put a hand to his eyes as if seeking inner control. When he turned back to her he was calm, but grim.

“Temple, you’ve got to go to a hospital, an emergency room.” He read the reluctance in her eyes and went on.

“You could have serious internal injuries. What were these guys—gang punks? Did they try to rape you?”

She shook her head. Adult white males. Mean. Max’s enemies. Ok, God, Max, what were you into?

“No,” he asked, “they didn’t try to rape you, or no, you don’t want to go to the hospital?”

His splayed fingers rested lightly on her ribs, a healing touch that almost made up for the trauma of assault. “No. No attempted rape. And no... hospital, please.”

She anticipated the objections forming on his face and said quickly, said lightly, “Couldn’t we just stay here and play doctor? You seem awfully good at it.”

His expression remained troubled, then he laughed wearily, but pulled his hand away. “Not good enough to substitute for the real thing. Don’t be like one of my callers, Temple. Don’t fight against your own good. I’ll take you to the emergency room. Please let me.”

He was right, dam his big brown honest eyes. She’d known she was hurt even during the adrenalin-anesthetized flurry of the attack.

“I hate this,” she repeated.

“I know.” Matt looked deep into her eyes. “It’s scary and humiliating to be a victim. But the worst is over, I promise.”

His tone was so reassuring, his eternally attractive expression so sincere. He was wrong, of course. The worst was still to come, when she had time to wonder what Max had been involved in—and with whom—and when someone would come for her again. But she couldn’t tell Matt that. Couldn’t tell anyone. The matter was too complicated, and now it looked like it might be too dangerous.

Temple also hated being a passenger in her own car. From the moment the two men had trapped her in the parking ramp, she had lost control of her life. Even the fact that it was Matt driving the Storm—he couldn’t afford a car on his hotline salary, he told her apologetically—didn’t lessen the insult of how much had been taken from her in a few, cataclysmic minutes.

Besides, the Storm’s stops and accelerations, its occasional turns, burdened a body no longer anesthetized by the shock of injury. Temple concentrated on not adding a chorus of moans to her unwanted progress to the hospital.

In the glow of an orange-purple sunset, Las Vegas was beginning to light up the sky with artificial candlepower. Strip traffic was thinning to a constantly moving stream of pallid headlights after the rush-hour logjam. Matt drove straight to the University Medical Center emergency room on Charleston, and helped her in. The moment the automatic door whooshed open to receive them, Temple felt a cold stone in the pit of her stomach that said that this was a mistake.

Glaring overhead fluorescents. Functional walls and plain, tiled floor. The inevitable plastic chairs lining the wall, some filled with waiting people whose harshly shadowed faces never looked up. A ballpoint pen chained to a clipboard. A lined form demanding that Temple remember long strings of numbers and write down personal information—like her age—in front of Matt, who might be younger, and who was supposed to care anymore but people did?

They sat together, waiting in a pair of inevitably orange molded chairs. Temple kept her sunglasses on to fend off the threatening headache.

An ambulance siren whined in the distance, then grew louder and louder, like a baby working itself up for a good long bawl. Just when Temple thought she would scream to keep it company, it choked off. What followed was worse. A man’s cries—deep, guttural, repeated over and over. Only searing pain would make a man cry out like that. Temple’s aches suddenly seemed minor.

A knot of people plowed through the waiting room, a small storm of activity in the stagnant pool of becalmed patients, and rushed back to the examining area.

One person in the group stopped, paused, then walked slowly over to chairs by the wall. Temple was watching the floor, too tired to hold her head up, when she saw the feet and legs stop in front of her.

She looked up. And up. And up.

“What are you doing here?” Lieutenant C. R. Molina asked with open surprise.

“Minor accident,” Temple replied quickly.

Matt turned to stare at her, and drew Molina’s notice. Temple watched Molina’s policewoman’s eyes rapidly tour Matt from head to toe, from clothes to posture to speculated vocation and possible vices.

“This is Matt Devine,” Temple said, “the neighbor who brought me in.”

“Nice to have good neighbors,” Molina remarked cryptically, her expression as flat as ever.

She was looking at Matt Devine, boy dreamboat, Temple thought with irritation, and all Molina could do was look suspicious. She finished the introduction, because Molina obviously wasn’t leaving without it.

“Lieutenant Molina of LVMPD.”

Matt turned to Temple again, confusion in his eyes, and his lips parted to inform Temple that she could tell the police of her assault right here and right now very conveniently.... Sweet Shalimar!

“That man who was moaning,” Temple said quickly to Molina, “must be in dreadful pain. Is he why you’re here?”

“Yes, unfortunately. Nice meeting you, Mr. Devine.” Molina's remarkable ice blue eyes rested on Temple with a hint of speculation. “Take care of yourself.”

She wheeled and was gone. Temple let her shoulders slump. One protested. She had known that showing an interest in Molina’s business would be the fastest way to get rid of her.

“That’s Lieutenant Molina? And why didn’t you tell her?” Matt demanded. “It was a perfect opportunity, if you know a police officer personally.”

“Molina was on the ABA case. We don’t get along.”

“Still, it’s her job—”

“Not the small stuff. Matt, I don’t want to tell her, and I won’t. Maybe I don’t need to go to the police at all.”

He was about to argue, but at that moment her name was finally called. Matt squeezed her hand as other eyes glanced up to follow her into the examining area. She didn’t limp, but neither did her footsteps announce her assertive progress. Instead of a click, she padded as silently as Midnight Louie, only she owed her subtle approach to L.A. Gear metallic pink sneakers.

They made her feel like a kid, as the two men had made her feel helpless, as Matt’s solicitude had made her feel like a teenager with a hopeless crush, as Molina’s presence had made her feel found out. Hopeless and helpless.

“I hate this,” Temple gritted between her teeth just before the nurse bearing a clipboard led her into an examining room.

“Come along, hon.” The nurse was a chubby, cheerful soul with bright blond hair cut into a modified punk crew cut, plus the obligatory rattail trailing down her broad, white-covered back.

She took Temple’s blood pressure and wrote it on the clipboard. She handed her a hospital smock. “Just undress from the waist up. Opens in the back.” The nurse was almost out the door when Temple remembered an embarrassing fact.

“Uh, wait! You’ll have to unhook me. My arm won’t go back.”

“Sure thing,” the nurse said. “Should have remembered. You said your shoulder was really wracked up. Terrible what happens.” And she glanced at Temple from under blue-shadowed lids, her eyes holding a puzzling trace of blame.

Tied by the nurse into the limp cotton smock and finally left to herself, sitting on the sanitary paper liner accorded each of the sequence of patients, her feet swinging free at the end of the examining table, Temple felt sore and tired and helpless.

She had a while to wait for that feeling to end. The doctor didn’t come in for twelve minutes. Now he carried her life data on a clipboard. He was an Indian man with skin the color of brown shoe polish, blue-black hair and fine features. Like many professionally trained natives of that land, he radiated a benign good cheer reminiscent of Gandhi. Dr. Rasti.

“Shoulder, arm, jaw and midsection.” He enumerated her injury zones in a pleasant singsong. “You are an unfortunate young lady. Let us see.”

Away went the charade of the hospital gown as he drew it back in stages to poke and prod and examine.

“Muggers, you say?”

Temple nodded. She had wanted to write “car accident,” but then the police might want to know why it hadn’t been reported. Besides, her injuries were not consistent with a close encounter with a dashboard, even she knew that. Dr. Rasti scribbled a long entry between the fine lines of her clipboard sheet.

His verbal diagnosis mirrored Matt’s: no serious—seerius, he chirped like a friendly bird—damage, only bruises and contusions. No X-rays needed. Ice packs. Rest. A prescription for painkillers. Call your own physician if any symptoms persist unreasonably.

“As for here”—his hands thumped his white coat, his own chest—“perhaps bad bruises, discomfort. Will be fine.” Then he frowned at the clipboard. “Muggers very bad. More than one?”

Temple nodded.

“Two? Big men, bad men?”

Temple nodded.

Dr. Rasti shook his head and regarded her narrowly. “Very bad. I will have nurse step in. Little more business needed.”

Temple sighed when he left and started to pull her bra on. The nurse rustled through the door, hooked the back and helped her pull her loose top over her head.

The nurse held the clipboard, gave Temple a prescription, and finally flourished a brochure.

“Now, Miss Barr.” She licked her lips. “Dr. Rasti is very worried. Your injuries...well, they are most unusual for a mugging. Usually scraped knees, a fractured elbow. Your injuries are the result of punches. I have a brochure from the Women’s Shelter—”

“No. It wasn’t a battering.”

“Sometimes it’s not easy to tell the difference. Sometimes it’s hard to say. Please, just check out the Women’s Shelter. You can call this number anytime, you don’t have to leave your name. Talk to them.”

“Thanks, but I don’t need to. I’m not a victim of abuse.”

“Nobody likes to think of themselves that way, but sometimes, when we love someone, it’s hard to be objective. We know they don’t mean it. We know they say they’re sorry—and they are—but they can’t guarantee they won’t be that way again. And again. It’s a cycle. You have to take some action to stop it.”

“I tell you, there’s no need! All right, I’ll take your brochure. But I think it’s a free country and I can go now.”

“Maybe I can help,” came a voice from the hall.

A voice Temple knew well. She could have died.

Lieutenant Molina walked in, her professional face on. The moment she saw Temple, the self-possessed expression melted as Temple had never had the satisfaction of seeing before. All that taut confidence grew slack and confused for an instant.

The two women stared at each other in individual stupefaction. Molina recovered first, but she was on her feet and she wasn’t half-dressed.

“I’ll handle this,” Molina told the nurse, in control again.

“Thanks, Lieutenant.” The nurse vamoosed, brochure and all, but Molina held out her hand wordlessly for the clipboard. And got it. Now Molina was in full possession of all the facts of Temple’s life. She loved it, Temple thought savagely.

“I can see,” Temple said, fuming, “why poor people hate coming to emergency rooms, if they’re going to be harassed as well as treated.”

“Spotting battering cases is important.” Molina scanned the bottom of the clipboard, her heavy eyebrows lifting once or twice. She looked up at Temple. “You took quite a beating.”

“Yes, I did, and I don’t need a verbal one now.”

“The doctor and nurse did what they’re supposed to. Any trained medical or police personnel would recognize that you were the recipient of a deliberate beating.”

“Recipient. What a nice, bureaucratic way of putting it.”

“Calm down. I know you’re tough. I know you’re stubborn. You don’t have to pretend to be stronger than you are.”

“Yes, I do, because I’m not six-blooming-feet tall and I don’t get to carry a badge and a gun!”

Molina froze. She shrugged and backed up. Then she did something amazing. She stepped out of her low-heeled shoes and dropped an inch or so. “That better?”

Temple’s righteous rage huffed and puffed and had nowhere to go. “Some. Listen. If I had been a victim of abuse, I’d be the first to cry ‘Wolf!’ Honest. These were strangers.”

“Muggers hit and hurt on the run. They don’t hang around for the fun of it.”

“Maybe these were sadistic muggers.”

“I don’t buy that. Who is this Devine guy?”

“I told you. A neighbor. What a world if he takes me to the emergency room—and if he hadn’t insisted, I wouldn’t have come—and ends up getting accused of being an abuser! So much for the survival chances of good Samaritans.”

“We have to ask these questions,” Molina said patiently. “Doctors, nurses and police personnel haven’t done it enough in the past, so women and children have paid for it. Did you know that one-third of the women who come into an emergency room are victims of abuse?”

Statistics hit home when argument would not. “No, I didn’t know. That many?”

“And those are just the ones who come in. That doesn’t count the tough customers like you who refuse to go.”

“Ouch. Okay, I can see why you have to ask. But you have to listen, too. And intimate abuse is not my problem, believe me.”

“So many deny,” Molina said, then raised her hand as Temple bridled again. “Still, your story doesn’t wash.”

“Maybe because it’s not the whole story.”

Molina leaned against the wall. “Tell me.”

So Temple did, hating it, but hating being thought an abusee worse. Molina listened, but her face never reflected her thoughts.

“You could identify the men?” she asked at last.

“I like to think so, but when you’re in the middle of a thing like that, it’s hard to look for identifying moles.”

“We need you to look at some mug shots. Maybe tomorrow after you get some sleep.”

“Okay.”

“And they wanted to know Max Kinsella’s whereabouts?”

Temple nodded.

“Did you tell them?”

“How could I? I don’t know.”

“So you say.” Molina pushed herself away from the wall and resumed her shoes. She slid Temple a glance from under her dark wings of eyebrow. Lord, that woman could benefit from a little female artifice, Temple thought.

“Why now?” Molina asked when she stood, tall as ever, in front of Temple again. “Four months since Kinsella’s disappearance.”

Temple just shook her head.

“You need to take this seriously, so I’ll have to tell you something I don’t want to.”

Temple perked up. It was about time the shoe slipped onto the other foot, even if it was a clodhopper.

Molina’s lips worked reluctantly. Then she came out with a hail of words as blunt as bullets. “After Kinsella disappeared, the night he disappeared, a body was found in the surveillance area over the Goliath’s gaming area. Stabbed, once and well. The hotel’s assistant security director. You know all the casinos have skymen on watch through one-way mirrors and video equipment over the gaming areas? Well, the man’s body was found in an unauthorized peephole carved out of the air-conditioning vent. Only a clever and agile person could have managed that spy-hole, and getting someone else in it.”

“You think Max—”

“A magician could have done it, but whether he ran because he knew his accomplice was dead and figured he’d be next, or just because the man was dead and he’d done it, I don’t know. Nor do I know what was involved—abetting confederates at the tables below, or blackmailing cheaters, whatever.”

“Whatever, in your book, Max’s a murderer or the prey of one.”

“And if someone’s after him because he knows too much, they may not have bothered with you because they didn’t know who you are, or where you were: until you came back to the Goliath this week. You did frequent the place when Kinsella was appearing there?”

“ ‘Frequent.’ Come on, Lieutenant, that makes me sound like a gun moll. Yes, I met Max there for a drink or dinner now and again. I went to a few shows.”

“Didn’t you know the act by heart by then?”

“His illusions may have been familiar, but Max and the audience were different every night. That’s what Max did. He never made anything seem the same twice.”

Molina contemplated the interesting ramifications of that assessment without losing her cool, then nodded soberly. “They saw you again and decided to get some answers. That means they’re familiar with the Goliath and that you’re in danger working there. No chance you’d quit?”

“The show must go on.”

Molina shook her head. “Then it’ll go on with police all over the place. You’re tiptoeing around something a lot uglier than you’ve ever imagined. You’re lucky those two drivers had a set-to in the ramp, because even if you really don’t know where Max Kinsella might be, those thugs wouldn’t have stopped. They sound as if they enjoy their work.”

Temple nodded. Lucky.

“All right.” Molina stepped aside. “Come downtown tomorrow first thing for a mug-shot tour. I’ll alert the staff. If those men want Kinsella, I want those men.”

“Better them than him,” Temple muttered as she hopped—ouch! —off the table.

“What?”

“I’ll do what I can, Lieutenant,” Temple said from the doorway. And then she skedaddled.

Matt’s blond head hit her bleary eyes like a puddle of sunshine in the dreary waiting room. She headed straight for him and collapsed on the adjoining chair. It had been a long and traumatic evening.

“I’m free to go. No X rays, no casts, no permanent injuries. They tried to lay an abuse rap on me, can you imagine? And we need to stop for a prescription on the way home.”

Matt glanced at the white slip in her hand and nodded, then picked up Temple’s tote bag. He let it ease back to the floor again as Lieutenant Molina approached them.

She suddenly squatted on her heels in front of Temple, her piercing eyes and serious face impossible to avoid.

“I know you don’t listen to officials much, but no matter how your injuries happened, you’re a victim of a crime. You need to deal with that. Here’s the number of a self-help group. Give them a call. You’ll have a lot of rage. Your self-esteem has taken a body blow, too. Don’t be dumb. Talk to someone else who’s been through it.”

Temple sat in silence.

“She’s right,” Matt said.

Temple glanced at the number. Heck, maybe they needed a freebie PR person. “Okay.”

Molina patted Temple’s knee—Molina!—and rose. She flashed Matt a smile Temple had never seen, approving. “Thanks for the sensible support.”

“I have to give it. I’m a hotline counselor.”

Molina’s expressive eyebrows lifted before she nodded. “Then you’ll see that she does it.”

“I’ll see that she’s encouraged to do it. Temple will do what’s she thinks is best for her.”

“What’s best for her is what I suggested.”

“Grrrr,” Temple remarked softly as Molina walked away. “What an insufferable woman.”

Matt grinned as he watched Molina’s iron-straight navy-blue back disappear. “Insufferably right. Tacky of her. Reminds me of a mother superior. Come on, I’ll drive you home.”

Home. A nice word. And nice to have someone to go there with.