He was sidetracked a few times on his way to the E.R. He was certain they could handle this without him. If it were truly an emergency, they would have paged him. God, he hated rape cases. Always felt like the enemy.
He saw her first through the little square window of the treatment room. She sat on the examining table with her back to him, clutching Kit’s arm through the warm-up jacket. Janni stood in front of her, talking, writing things on her notepad. The inch or two of the girl’s back visible beneath the ties of the hospital gown looked as if she’d been dragged by her heels across a bed of nails.
Janni came out of the room to greet him. She rolled her eyes as she handed him the girl’s chart.
“Good luck with this one, sweets,” she said. “She’s not going to let you near her. She’s afraid of her own shadow.”
“What’s wrong with her back?”
Janni looked through the window of the treatment room. “Scraped raw. So’s her front. Plus a cracked rib. And she needed seven stitches in her chin. She’s bleeding, too. Don’t know what that’s all about—that’s your department.” She paused to take a breath. “There’s a couple of swine running loose on the Mantoloking beach. Mantoloking. Do you believe it?”
“What do you mean, a couple?”
“There were two of them. Real bastards. I tell you, this kid’s a mess. And her family situation leaves something to be desired, too. Said she ran away ’cause her mother’s boyfriend was beating her up. I’ve got to call Protective Services—she’ll have to go to the Children’s Center for a while, where she’ll very likely be eaten alive.” Janni made a face. “Poor little kid. She’s sweet.”
He wasn’t really listening. “Did they take evidence yet?”
“Nail scrapings, I think. They’re leaving the rest for you. No one wants to hurt her. The doc stitching up her chin stumbled all over himself apologizing to her.”
The girl wanted nothing to do with him.
“Hello, Rennie. I’m Dr. Perelle.” He held out his hand, but she didn’t look up from her lap. He dropped his hand to his side.
Kit moved in front of the girl. “Rennie, Dr. Perelle is a good friend of mine.”
Rennie hung her head, the tips of her long, earth-colored hair touching the gown that covered her thighs. Her hands rested limply in her lap, the fingers thin and delicate, the nails chewed short.
“Your chart says you’re having some bleeding. Could you be having your period?”
The girl shook her head without looking up. He could see the stitches in her chin, the skin around them raw and bruised.
“Can you tell me when your last period was?”
She shrugged.
He shifted the chart to his left hand. “I know you’ve had a terrible time, Rennie, and no one here wants to make it any harder for you, but we have to make sure you’re all right.”
“I’m okay.” The childish voice surprised him.
“Do you know what a pelvic examination is?”
“I don’t need an examination.”
“I explained it to her,” said Kit.
“It’s very important to find out what’s causing the bleeding,” he said.
“Please don’t.” She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide.
Wendy and Becky, he thought. She had his nieces’ eyes, ten years from now. He looked at Kit, wondering if she saw the resemblance, but her gaze was on Rennie. She brushed a strand of the girl’s hair back over her shoulder.
“It’ll all be over in a matter of minutes,” she said.
Rennie began to cry, head in hands, shoulders shaking, and he shook his head at Kit. He was not about to hurt this girl with his nieces’ eyes.
He called Barb Chrisman in the Maternity Unit and told her there was a rape victim in the ER who could use a woman gynecologist. She examined Rennie while he told the police officer the little he knew. It was hard to concentrate on the questions when he could picture what was happening in the treatment room, step by step. Would they have to take pictures? Probably, with all those scrapes and bruises. And pluck fifteen pubic hairs for forensics. He cringed at the thought. He’d always handed the tweezers over to someone else.
After the police left, he sat in the waiting room watching a rerun of M*A*S*H. Next to him a woman cuddled a feverish-looking toddler, and across the room, a man held a wad of tissues to his son’s bloody nose. He focused his attention on the TV. He felt more squeamish out here than he did in the treatment room.
Janni came out of the reception office and sat next to him, her notepad covered with telephone numbers. There was something strange about the way she was looking at him.
“Cole, I did something crazy,” she said, her tone confessional. “I talked Protective Services into letting us take her . . . temporarily, I mean, until they find a foster home.”
“Are you nuts? What are we going to do with a fourteen-year-old kid?”
“We’re going to make her feel welcome and safe, that’s what.” She took off her glasses and leaned toward him, her bangs grazing the bridge of her nose, and he knew he was in for one of her lectures.
“The county social worker called her mother, who hadn’t even notified the police that her daughter was missing. And you know what she said? She said, ‘can you keep her somewhere for a while? I’m going on vacation.’ Apparently they lived with Rennie’s grandmother, who died in June—she was sort of Rennie’s protector, I guess—and things have fallen apart since then. Plus, she’s got old bruises on her. Stuff from her mother’s boyfriend. He’s beaten her a few times, and she ran away ’cause he was telling her he’d sneak into her room at night. So tell me, sweets, would you really want to see a girl like that stuck in the Children’s Center with all the rowdy kids they’ve got there?”
“Did you check this idea out with Jay?”
“He’ll say yes.”
Of course he would. Cole shook his head, thinking that Janni would be delighted if she could fill all ten bedrooms in the Chapel House. “You’re one of a kind, Jance,” he said.
Rennie’s injuries were worse than he’d imagined. Kit came out of the treatment room, glassy-eyed. “They brutalized her,” she said.
“Why was she bleeding?”
“A tear. Barb had to stitch it. She has a cracked rib. Plus, one of them sodomized her.”
He winced, happier than ever that he’d turned this one over to Barb.
“I don’t think she should be coming home with us,” Kit said. “She’s afraid of men. She’s afraid of you.”
That bothered him, and he was suddenly glad she would be at the Chapel House. He wanted to win this kid over.