“Did the angel seem familiar at all? Her voice, or the way she moved?”
“No. She had a mask on, kind of like . . .” She trails off, frowning, then looks back up at me. “Not the Halloween masks. This is a fancy kind. Heavy. The kind artists paint on. My friend Julie collects the painted ones. She’s got a whole wall of them, all different designs. Her mom writes the date she gets each one on the inside.”
“I think I collected the same masks when I was a kid,” Holmes notes. “My dad swore they were from Venice, and it took years before I realized he was lying. Still loved the masks, though.”
“The angel’s was bigger. It covered her whole face and wasn’t painted at all. It was just white. And . . .” She shudders. “Blood. There was blood on it.”
“Could you see her eyes? What color they were?”
Sarah shakes her head. “The eyeholes had mirrors. It was creepy.”
I glance at Holmes. “One-way glass?”
“Would have to be, wouldn’t it? Sarah, you’ve been saying she this whole time. How did you know the angel was a woman?”
“I . . .” Her mouth works soundlessly for a moment, then closes. A furrow creases her brow. “She had long blond hair. Light blonde, I think, and straight, and I don’t know. I guess it just sounded like a lady. It wasn’t a super high voice, so . . . I guess it could have been a guy. I don’t know.”
We continue to ask her questions, carefully spacing out where we push for extra information or clarification so we don’t overwhelm her. Eventually, when we’re out of questions for the moment and Holmes has called one of the paramedics back over, Sarah gives me a tremulous smile. “She said we’d be safe with you, that you’d help,” she says, her voice soft and shy. “She was right. Thank you.”
I hug her again, rather than try to answer.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl who was scared of cameras.
Cameras were entirely too honest; they didn’t know how to lie. They could be made to lie, by a clever enough operator, but neither of her parents was that clever.
They showed how Daddy’s fingers curled hard into her collarbone, into Mama’s hip.
They showed how she and Mama both leaned away—from Daddy, from each other—and how Daddy pulled them in.
They showed her eyes.
They showed everything.
She hated seeing herself in pictures because her eyes always yelled the things she wasn’t allowed to say, and still no one listened.
Then Daddy started bringing the camera with him at night.
He’d look through the photos whenever he wanted, even out in the living room like he was daring Mama to say anything.
She didn’t. Of course she didn’t.
And he’d bring them out for a select group of friends, men who all called her angel and pretty girl and beautiful. They’d look through the pictures together, and any they really liked, Daddy would print them copies. But he’d never let them forget that he was in control, that he had what they wanted. No matter how much he gave them, he could take it all away again.
8
Holmes lets me accompany them to the hospital this time, because Sarah’s confession of the abuse means they have to do a pelvic exam. I don’t know if it’s because I was the one holding her or because mine was the name the killer gave her, but either way, Holmes agrees that my being there with her will probably help her stay calm.
Eddison and Vic are off to the Wong house to meet Mignone. Sterling comes with me, grave and silent in a corner of the ambulance with another bottle of water in her hands. She doesn’t try to say anything to the children, though, or even to the officers and paramedics. She just watches and drinks her water.
At the hospital, Ashley and Sammy are bundled off together with a grandmotherly pediatrician whose slow, syrupy Tidewater drawl seems to fascinate and soothe them in equal measure. Sterling refills her bottle from a fountain and takes a seat in the emergency room with her phone. At this point, she’s basically sober, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she asks the hospital to do a BAC test before she engages with the case in any way.
In a curtained-off exam room, I help a nurse and female officer change Sarah for the exam. Her pajamas are folded and placed in a bag that gets sealed and signed, and then the giant camera comes out. She gives me a startled look.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “We have to have a record of any injuries you came in with. That camera has a kind of filter that helps them see bruises better. We can make sure the doctors know about it, and having that information in your file will help the social workers decide which counselors you need to talk to.”
“Oh.” She looks at the camera and steels herself with a breath. “Okay.”
The bruises are terrible. Large handprints overlap on her hips and the inside of her thighs, and one side of her chest is almost uniformly indigo and yellow. Lighter bruising wraps around her neck, front and back, and brackets her face. Through the filter, we can see the shape of fingers.
“In a few minutes, the doctor is going to come in,” I say, taking her hand as the officer packs the camera away. “Those metal things at the end of the bed that look kind of like bike pedals? Those are called stirrups, and she’s going to ask you to put your feet in them so she can prop them up. You’re going to feel uncomfortable, kind of like you’re on display, but she is the only one who will see anything, I promise. No one is going to walk in, and even if someone tried, her sitting there between your legs will block everything from view.”
“Do we have to?”
I wish I could give her a different answer, but I’m not going to lie to her. “Yes. This is something we have to do. If you need the doctor to stop, or explain something she’s doing, just say so, okay? I know this sucks.”
“Is it like getting a pap smear? Mom talks about that. She says when I get older I’ll have to do those.”
“It’s pretty close. This is maybe a little more thorough, though.”
“Why?”
“The doctor is going to make sure you don’t have any injuries down there. When men hurt girls like this, things can tear, or get swollen, or infected. If those tears have been happening for a while, there could be scars that cause problems later on. So she has to make sure all the wounds are identified, so they can be treated.”
“Oh.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “Sarah, I was just a couple years younger than you when I had my first exam, and for the same reason.”
Her hand spasms in response, fingers digging into mine. “Really?”
“Really. So I promise you, I know that this is going to be uncomfortable, but it really is important. We wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t.”
“You said you’re an FBI agent.”
“I am.”
“Do you . . .” She swallows hard, but when she looks back up at me, her eyes glitter fiercely. “Do you think I could be one someday?”
“Sweetheart, if you want to badly enough, and work hard enough, I genuinely believe you could be anything you want to be. FBI agent included.”
“I want to protect people.”
“You already do.” My heart breaks a little at the confused tilt of her head. “Sarah, he would have gone after Ashley. You’ve been protecting your sister for years, and you’ve done such a good job of it, she didn’t even know she was in danger.”
The doctor comes in while she’s chewing on that, a woman not much older than me with kind eyes and a gentle voice, and a way of explaining every step without making it overly technical or insultingly simple. In between parts of narration, she asks Sarah easy questions, things to get her talking without being too personal. Sarah squirms a little through the examination, and yelps once or twice when even the warning wasn’t enough to prepare her, but the doc gives her a warm smile as she peels off her gloves.
“You did really well, Miss Carter.”