Wrath White - The Resurrectionist

The cop looked like he’d just gotten out of high school but he already had that disinterested look of someone who was used to seeing the worst of humanity. He had that look of one who had grown bored with anything short of gunfights and fatal car accidents, that superior cop swagger as if everyone without a badge owed their existence to him. His prematurely thinning copse of blond hair, acne scars on his cheeks and forehead, and bulbous Adam’s apple were clear indications that he had probably been on the wrong end of many insults and ass-kickings during his school years.

“We’re not sure. That’s why we called you. Someone has been in the house though.”

“Someone came in and scrubbed your floors and walls and did the laundry but didn’t take anything?”

“Someone raped my wife and cleaned up to hide the evidence. I mean…someone might have. She just keeps having these dreams and then all this stuff in the house that’s out of place.”

“And why do you think it’s your neighbor?”

“My wife saw him. I mean…she thinks she did. She has these dreams and in them it’s him. He’s there and he’s raping her and killing her.”

The police officer, who looked like a young blond Anthony Perkins, stared at Josh. He was obviously suppressing a laugh. Sarah felt terrible for putting Josh through this.

“Look, I know this all sounds crazy. Can you just check the house and see if there’s any sign that someone has broken in?”

The cop sighed deeply.

“Okay, I’ll check the doors and windows.”

Sarah and Josh looked at each other. Sarah felt so foolish, she couldn’t hide her embarrassment. She was blushing and fidgeting. She wished they hadn’t called the police but she wanted to know. She had to know if someone had been breaking into their house.

The police officer checked the windows in the living room, the kitchen, and the den. He checked the front door and the rear sliding door.

“Sir? Ma’am?”

“Yes?” Josh walked over to the sliding-glass door where the cop was standing. Sarah came with him.

“How do you lock this door?”

“You just flip this latch at the bottom of the door.”

“Up or down?”

“You just push it down with your foot.”

“Uh huh. Go ahead. Flip the lock.”

Josh stepped on the latch.

“Now, open the door.”

Josh pulled on the sliding-door handle and the door slid open easily on its track.

“Try it again.”

This time Sarah pushed past her husband and stepped down firmly on the latch. She grabbed the door handle and once again the door slid easily open.

“You should get yourself a security bar for this door. With all these empty houses around it might not be a bad idea to get a security alarm too. Gangs and drug addicts sometimes squat in these abandoned houses. It’s a real problem. These foreclosures send the crime rate through the roof.”

“So, do you think someone has been breaking in here?” Sarah asked a little too anxiously.

“There’s no sign of forced entry but then an intruder wouldn’t really need to break anything to get in when he can just slide the door open.”

“We’ll get it fixed.”

“Get that security system installed too.”

“We will.”

“Is that it?” Sarah asked. Her voice rose higher than she had intended it to, giving a panicky edge to it.

“That’s all I can do with the evidence we have right now. If you remember anything more, then you can come down to the station and file a report. But I can’t go across the street and arrest some guy because you had a bad dream.”

“But you can question him?”

“Do you really want me to do that? I can. You’re right. I could go across the street and ask him if he’s been breaking into your house and attacking you when you’re sleeping. But if he didn’t do anything and all you had was a really scary realistic dream, then you might just piss him off and start a war between you.”

“He’s right,” Josh said, and Sarah knew he was too, but that’s not what she wanted to hear. She wanted the neighbor fingerprinted. She wanted her entire house dusted for fingerprints, checked for blood and semen and hair fibers and whatever the hell else they could find. She wanted him locked up and interrogated until he admitted the things he’d been doing to her.

“What about fingerprints? Can’t you check the house for prints?”

“We would need to get his prints to compare them to and that would require a warrant. Unless you can tell me right now that you know for a fact that he attacked you, I can’t get that warrant. If you tell me it wasn’t a dream and you remember him breaking in here and raping you, I’ll have that warrant in minutes and we’ll get fingerprints and semen samples from him, run a rape kit at the hospital and dust the entire house for prints and blood and any other body fluids. Without that, there’s nothing we can do. I can’t get a warrant or call in for a CSU team based on a dream and some clean sheets.”

“Could you run a rape kit on me anyway? Just to make sure it was only a dream? I haven’t showered yet so if something happened there might still be…” Sarah paused. The words did not want to come out. A shudder went through her body once more and she grimaced as if she had tasted something foul, as if she could still taste him. “…evidence.” She turned away in embarrassment, then turned back and forced herself to meet the cop’s eyes, not wanting him to know that she was embarrassed, trying not to appear weak. She had no idea why that was so important to her. But she hated the idea of appearing weak in front of anyone except Josh and not even him most of the time.

The cop took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He tapped his pen against his notepad, upon which he had written absolutely nothing. He hadn’t taken a single note about anything she had said.

It was apparent to Sarah that he wasn’t planning on doing a single thing about her intruder and was just humoring her. She was almost tempted to tell him that they weren’t dreams and that she knew for a fact that she had been raped but she didn’t. She was still not sure how much of what she remembered was a dream and how much was real. She couldn’t remember a thing from last night. Not being attacked. Not firing the gun. Nothing.

If this was all in her head and she was going crazy she’d be putting the neighbor through hell for nothing and causing him all kinds of problems. People only tended to remember when someone was accused of a crime not when they were exonerated. A rape charge might get him fired or chased right out of the neighborhood. He might even retaliate by suing them or calling the homeowner’s association on them every time they were late bringing in their trash can on trash day or when they parked on the driveway instead of in the garage or if they didn’t trim their shrubs or calling the Nevada Water Authority when they didn’t change their sprinkler clocks on drought days or calling the police whenever their stereo was too loud or any of those other petty things neighbors did to one another to make their lives hell. It might even wind up with him and Josh in a fight or worse. She thought about Josh storming out of the house with a gun in his hand. What if Dale had a gun? That could get really ugly. She definitely did not want to start a feud with the new neighbor.

“What if she’s been drugged, and that’s why she can’t remember anything? You could do a urinalysis while she’s at the hospital.”

“Still no way to prove the neighbor did it or that she didn’t take the drugs herself.”

“But if they find that she’s been raped and they find some kind of date-rape drug in her system, that should be enough for a warrant then, right?”