Steven James - Opening Moves

We passed through the doors. “Has she said anything?”

“Not yet, no. You should know Captain Domyslawski contacted the FBI last night after the abduction. There are a couple agents from the NCAVC coming over this morning.”

Oh, great.

The FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime was the division of the Bureau dedicated to providing investigative support for tracking and capturing the country’s most violent offenders. I hadn’t worked with the Feds before, but I’d heard horror stories about doing so, and that didn’t give me a whole lot of confidence on how all this might play out. I trusted the officers I worked with here on the force, but consulting with a couple of desk jockeys from Quantico didn’t exactly thrill me.

Radar was on the same wavelength. “Let’s hope they don’t get in the way,” he said.

“You read my mind.”

There wasn’t a gentle way to frame the next question, but it had to be brought up and direct is usually best. “Do we know if Colleen was sexually assaulted?”

“The docs who helped her last night didn’t find any evidence that she had been. So at least there’s that to be thankful for.”

“Yes,” I said. “At least there’s that.”

We found Colleen Hayes’s room, showed our IDs to Thompson, the officer in our department who was stationed as a sentry outside it, knocked and, at her invitation, stepped inside. She’d been mute since she was found, so hearing her voice surprised me, but when we entered, I realized it wasn’t Colleen who’d called us in after all, but rather the stout nurse who stood beside the bed, checking the IV.

The nurse seemed taken aback when she saw us; perhaps she’d been expecting a doctor on rounds or maybe another nurse. She didn’t hide her scowl when we showed her our badges, but she held back from making any sort of a scene, perhaps just to keep from upsetting her patient.

Colleen lay on the bed, her legs beneath a blanket, her arms also tucked beneath it, no doubt to hide the stumps where her hands used to be. She was conscious and was staring away from us at the shrouded window on the south side of the room. With the curtains drawn, there was no view, but I had the feeling she wouldn’t have really been seeing it if there was.

Once again I was struck by the horrifying nature of this crime. Without prosthetics she would never again comb her hair, type on a keyboard, flip the page of a book, slip a key into a lock-the little things we all take for granted.

And the big ones.

Like feeding herself. Or caressing her fingers across her lover’s cheek.

Radar and I introduced ourselves and took a seat beside her bed.

The nurse finished her duties and exited, leaving Radar and me alone with Colleen Hayes.

To me, hospitals don’t just smell sickly clean, they also seem to be permeated with the stench of death from those who’ve died inside them. And-

Man, there was just too much death on my mind today. With the weight of my job and my troubling dreams, the morning already felt heavy, too heavy. I needed to find a way to lighten things up.

But, unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen at the moment.

“First of all, Ms. Hayes…” I saw a rosary on her bedside table and was hit with the tragic truth that she would never be able to work her way through the beads again. “I’m very sorry you were attacked. I promise that we’re going to do everything we can to catch the man who did this and we’re going to put him away.”

She was quiet.

“I want you to know that Vincent is alright. He’s in-”

“What,” she said abruptly, “did he make Vinnie do?” The fact that she was already speaking to us took me aback. Her words were tight with concern, but also sharp with anger: “The guy who sawed off my hands.” She paused. “The doctors told me Vinnie is okay, but that he couldn’t come to visit me because he’s in jail. What did that man make my husband do?”

It was her right to know what Vincent had done and I summarized what’d happened last night concerning Lionel. I didn’t mention Vincent’s flight through the neighborhood or the fact that he’d physically assaulted me when I was apprehending him, but Colleen stared at the bruise on my jaw and I imagined she was able to put two and two together. I slid my left hand over my right to hide the swollen, discolored finger.

“So my husband is in jail.” It didn’t sound like a question.

“I understand you must be-”

“You understand what? Exactly?” She glared at me, then pulled her arms out from under the blankets and held them up in front of me. Where her hands used to be were nothing but thick bandages. That was all. “What is it you understand?”

I felt so underqualified to be here. She needed a minister or a psychiatrist rather than a detective. “I’m sorry,” I told her truthfully. “You’re right. I don’t understand. I couldn’t possibly.”

“And this man…” She fumbled to stick her arms under the blanket again. Radar was closer to her than I was and he quietly helped pull the blanket back for her. She finally got her arms beneath it. “… Lionel, he’s alright?”

“He is,” Radar answered. “He’s already back home and it doesn’t look like he’s going to press charges.”

She said nothing, looked toward the window again.

I waited a few moments to let her sort things through, then pulled out my notebook and said softly, “Mrs. Hayes, can you tell us anything about the man who hurt you?”

She took a deep breath but didn’t answer. I noticed the tear in her eye and felt even less qualified than before to be here. Thankfully, Radar put one hand on her shoulder, and with the other, he wiped away her tear. He was a married man, had a daughter and a son; I was neither a father nor a husband. He knew a lot more than I did about how to comfort hurting people and I was glad he was here.

Neither of us told her things would be okay; rather, both of us were silent and that seemed to be the better choice at the moment. She began to instinctively reach for her face to dry her tears, but stopped just short of removing her arm from beneath the blanket. I found some tissues, handed them to Radar, and he gently pressed away her tears.

At last she took a deep breath. “He wore a black ski mask. But I saw his skin. He was white. Had brown eyes. I saw that too, before he blindfolded me. After that I only heard his voice.”

“Could you tell how tall he was?”

“Big. I’d say over six feet tall.” She looked at me. “Kinda like you. And strong too.”

“Was there any indication that there was more than one person?”

“No. I mean, nothing that I could tell.”

Radar cut in, “Colleen, do you have any idea where he took you?”

“No. I was in his trunk.”

Good. That was something. The car had a trunk. The man drove a sedan of some type.

“He never took off the blindfold. My arms were tied up when he did it. I was in a chair. He didn’t knock me out when he cut off my hands. I screamed, I just kept screaming. Then he gave me a shot and I fell asleep. I woke up in the hospital like…” She let her voice trail off, then stared down at the blanket covering her arms.

I leaned close. “Think about the drive there, Colleen, the time you were alone with him. Could you tell how long you were in the car or how many times he stopped at traffic lights or stop signs?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know how many times we stopped or how long we drove. I was too scared. It seemed like forever.”

“Did you hear anything unusual-sirens, trains, whistles, alarms, anything? Or notice any odd smells that might help us narrow down our search? Cologne, body odor, anything like that? Maybe he was a smoker?”