LAURIE HAD TO pee, which was ridiculous. It was a bodily betrayal. That goddamn coffee in dispatch. She couldn’t go to the bathroom now, because she couldn’t leave this chair in case Jojo looked for her.
Jojo had been twenty feet from a murdered man.
Omid had texted that they’d identified him as a friend of Leeds’s, and that Leeds had lost his total shit when he’d been told he was being arrested. Omid had to help take him in, and then he’d get here. It should be soon.
Until then Laurie would stay right here in this chair. In case Jojo needed her.
Surely if Jojo insisted, Gloria would let Laurie be in the room for the kit, right?
The kit.
Laurie had said it a million times at work after rape calls.
Did they do the kit yet?
That question came right before the next, inevitable one:
You think it’s a good rape?
It was just what they said. What cops had always said.
A good rape.
“Good” meant that it fulfilled the categories to fit the penal code for the crime. A good robbery wasn’t a guy stealing a toolbox out of your truck while you were getting breakfast—it was when your toolbox got taken out of your hands, using force (strength) or fear (a threat or a weapon).
A good rape meant a forced rape by a stranger.
A good rape was one that hadn’t been committed by a boyfriend after a few drinks. Sure, Laurie knew that one was still a rape. But it wasn’t the kind the papers wrote about or the kind that got a whole department upset. A good rape was a grab-from-the-bushes horror show. The kind of rape all women feared, that almost never happened in this small, affluent, Bay Area city. A good rape was one that left evidence behind, as opposed to the kind that many women called in about days later, with no proof.
And Laurie was just like everyone else at the station.
Doubtful.
Callous.
Sure, we’ll see what the rape kit says. Probably not a good one.
God. They were fucking awful. The air left her lungs in a whoosh, and she leaned forward, wrapping her arms around her knees. Blood rushed back to her head, and the urge to urinate increased.
Her baby girl, with her feet in stirrups. It was so invasive. And that wasn’t the half of the invasion that had—no, make that might have—taken place.
God fucking forbid something like that had happened to her daughter. She gagged on the rage that twisted up her throat.
Her phone pinged.
Omid. Almost there.
Another text had come in at some point from Sarah Knight at work. She okay?
Sarah worked in the jail. That meant the news was all over the department. Laurie dragged her hand across her mouth. She typed, I have no idea. She might have been raped by a football player or maybe by his dead friend. She pushed SEND.
A second later her phone rang.
Sarah’s voice was intense and tight. “You want me to come there?”
“You’re working.”
“You need someone.”
“Omid’s coming.”
“He’ll be busy, you know that. I can pull in a rookie to help Bob, and I can be with you and our girl. Just sit with you.”
A tight warmth wrapped around Laurie’s heart. The department was her home, her safety. “No, stay there.” The jail was running on even slimmer staffing than dispatch was. “I’ll—we’ll—take you up on it later, okay?”
“I’ll help you kill him. If you need me to.” Sarah cleared her throat. “Of course, let me state for the record that I’m joking.”
Laurie knew she wasn’t. “Thanks, friend.”
“Hang in there. I’ll call again later.”
Laurie slipped her cell into her pocket and rubbed her forehead.
Her mind raced. There had to be more she could do. There had to be something to fix this entire situation. It wasn’t too late.
The image of flames dancing up a white wall rose in her mind.
When Laurie was twelve, the dryer had caught on fire. The lint. She’d forgotten to take it out for a month, maybe more. She’d managed the rest of the house as her father drank himself to sleep by two every afternoon, as her mother—sober but just as absent as her father—painted late into the night. Laurie had learned early to write out the rent check and slide it to her father to sign before she stuck it in the mail. She bought groceries at the local convenience market. Her parents weren’t terrible people, they were just neglectful. They loved her, but as soon as Laurie had proved herself trustworthy, they’d gratefully relied on her, bragging about her to their friends. She handles it all—she wants to! Cutest thing.
But everything had been a crisis to Laurie; any slip of focus could bring the house crashing down around her. Emergency: the sink, when it stopped up and flooded the kitchen. Emergency: when the bird smashed through the front window. Emergency: when the furnace went out. Laurie handled each, learning who to call, what to say, how to avoid further disaster.
That day, as she’d watched the flames lick up the wall behind the dryer, she knew she’d failed. Everything her family owned would turn to ash, and it would be her fault.
But her father had come to life behind her, shoving her outside onto the porch while with the other hand he sprayed the fire with the extinguisher Laurie had made her parents buy. Everything had turned out fine, but for that split second as the fire hissed and snapped and grew faster than anything should, Laurie had felt it all slip away.
Catastrophe was inevitable, how had she dared to think anything else?
Now, as she sat in the hospital chair, three more texts bounced across the screen. Steiner. Dyer. Rogers. The department was a better family than the one Laurie had grown up in. And Jojo was one of theirs. This was just the start of the onslaught of questions.
How is she?
What’s happening?
Is she okay?
Laurie pressed her hand against her upper abdomen. Was she having a panic attack? She’d never had one before, but she’d heard them thousands of times on 911, and her breathing was sounding familiar to her—it was hitched, caught on the spines of terror in her throat. She had no time for it.
No. This was just normal panic, rising out of a good reason. Laurie shook her head. There was that idiotic word again: good.
Think about something else.
Harper.
Harper was back? What the hell was going on?
It was impossible. She would know if Jojo and Harper were hanging out. Wouldn’t she?
Laurie scanned her phone again, ignoring the sweat that ran down the center of her spine and her increasingly desperate need to pee.
No new messages. Jojo hadn’t texted saying she needed her yet.
The image of Kevin Leeds filled her mind, so huge and wide-shouldered. The dead man in the closet, his teeth gleaming white through the ripped lip, through the mouthful of blood.
How did her daughter know men like that?
And for the love of God, Jojo and Harper hadn’t spoken for the last two years. If this was truly happening, it had to be Harper’s fault.
Everything had always been Harper’s fault.
Jojo didn’t have a spot in her body for hiding things. She was easy to read, open, generous with her thoughts and affection.
What the fuck, then, was happening?
Laurie crossed her legs tighter. And she waited.