She closes the curtain behind her, and it feels like I’m ensconced in a thin cocoon. On the other side is a big soup of ER sounds—quick bursts of conversation, footsteps, beeping, clanging, clicking, announcements heard over a loudspeaker. It must be similar to the kind of sound track playing when I was brought in March to the ER in Massachusetts, though I recall none of that one. My initial memory is of waking up in the ICU.
For the first time I’m conscious of my body beyond the throbbing in my ankle. My head is pounding lightly, my right elbow aches, probably from being banged during my trip down the chute, and there’s this weird jittery sensation in my arms and legs,
Out of nowhere a thought streaks through my mind: I’ve got to call Guy. But it’s an old instinct, one I’m going to have to eradicate. I’m on my own again. At least, I think grimly, Guy isn’t a murderer. He’s just the person who set everything horrible in motion.
I take a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself, and lie back with my head on the pillow. After a couple of minutes, I feel some of the tension seep away and my body soften a little. And then, improbably, I find myself smiling. Because the bottom line, despite whatever nightmare unfolds from here and how it must be faced alone, is that I’m alive. I saved myself. Maybe some of my recent decisions have been stupid ones, but back in that dilapidated bathhouse, as I stood in terror before the laundry chute, the lizard part of my brain, fueled by adrenaline, weighed the odds and made a choice that saved my ass.
It’s a full two hours before I’m on the way to police headquarters, sitting in the back of a cruiser. My ankle sprain has been designated as the grade 1 variety, meaning it will fortunately heal within a couple of weeks. It’s been taped up, and I’ve been issued a set of crutches.
I know from email and phone communication that a lawyer is waiting for me at the station. It’s not the original one recommended by Susan—he’s now tied up on another matter—but one of his partners, Tina Oliver.
When I enter the station, Oliver is sitting in the small vestibule, dressed in a navy gabardine suit and looking ready for action. She’s about fifty, African American, with hair cropped close to her scalp, and a round face. She shakes my hand, and conveys that there’s a small room available for us inside. I can tell from her brisk manner that she doesn’t want me uttering a word until we’re safely in that room.
The uniformed cop must have let Corcoran know we’d arrived because she comes striding out less than a minute later. She eyes the crutches I’ve been issued but doesn’t comment on them, though she at least dishes out some respect to Tina Oliver. She directs Tina and me through the door into the center part of the precinct.
There are only two words to describe what it seems like back there: overturned beehive. There are about a dozen cops huddled around the open seating area, either talking to one another or speaking into phones. Based on their uniforms, a few belong to the sheriff’s department. Almost all of them glance in in our direction as we pass through the space and start down a short corridor.
“We’d like to get Ms. Harper’s statement as soon as possible,” Corcoran tells Oliver as she shows us into a small cramped room with a table and couple of chairs.
“Understood,” she replies. “But I do need to speak to my client privately. We’ll let you know when we’re ready.”
The first question she asks me as soon as Corcoran has shut the door behind her is whether I’m up to giving a statement at all today.
“You’ve been through a lot, Bryn—may I call you that? I can easily have this postponed until you feel up to it.”
“No, I want to get it over with,” I say. “Particularly while it’s all fresh in my mind. First, though, I have to know. Have they caught her? The woman who attacked me?”
“From what I’ve picked up, they’ve apprehended a woman named Lisa Wallins who has a small PR firm. I’m assuming it’s the same person.”
“Is she here?”
“No, don’t worry. They apparently took her to the county correctional facility. That suggests they’ve got reason to hold her. The private detective our firm uses did a background check, and the woman has two different stalking charges against her, several years apart. Neither involved jail time.”
“Oh, wow, so she has history as a nut job. Thank God she’s not here. I couldn’t stand seeing her again.”
“I should warn you, though. Your husband is apparently in the building.”
My body tenses at the revelation. After Sandra, he’s the last person on the planet I want to set eyes on.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been in communication with Mr. Maycock, explaining that I’m taking over, and he said he was headed down here, too. I saw him come in an hour ago with a man I can only assume is Guy Carrington. He looked very shaken.”
“He should be shaken,” I say, not hiding my anger.
Tina withdraws a legal pad from her soft leather briefcase, drops it on the table, and motions for us to sit.