Wrath White - The Resurrectionist

Detective Harry Malcovich was sitting with Detective Torres. They were watching TV and Torres was flicking the strap on his gun holster on and off as if he were just itching to pull his weapon. Sarah came and sat with them. She could tell that Harry was dealing with the whole thing no better than Josh was. He looked up at her and manufactured a smile for her. It looked every bit as artificial as it was. His eyes were haunted, swimming with dark shadows.

“Did everything go okay? You okay?” he asked.

Sarah shrugged.

“As good as I can be I guess.”

“Don’t worry, Sarah. This will all be over soon. If this wasn’t personal before, it damn sure is now. And if they find that that sick fuck touched me anywhere I’m going to hurt him as much as I possibly can before I blow his fucking head off. Fuck prison and fuck this badge. If they want it they can have it but I’m going to kill that pervert. You can bet on that.”

“And don’t worry, I’ll help you,” Detective Torres said. “This weird-ass case is taking up too much of my damn time. I’m starting to dream about that little motherfucker myself.”

“What kind of dreams?” Sarah asked, showing more interest than she’d intended.

“Not those kind of dreams. No offense to either of you but ain’t nobody raping me no time soon. Just thinking about it makes me want to eat my pistol.”

“Will you shut the hell up you insensitive son of a bitch. Sarah has been raped and she doesn’t need you sitting there talking about how you’d kill yourself if it happened to you. I don’t need that shit either. I don’t know what that twisted nutcase might have done to me. I don’t even want to think about it until and unless I have to. So, just be quiet would you? Thank you.”

Harry leaned his head back, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes.

“Ay, look Harry, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Skip it. I know you didn’t mean it, you ignorant bastard. Just watch it. I won’t launch a complaint against you for that kind of shit but someone else might. Sarah is a victim of something no one should ever have to go through and it’s our job to try to make her feel safer, not to make her even more depressed.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah…uh…Mrs. Lincoln. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s okay.” Sarah turned away and stared at the television anchored to the wall in the corner of the room. There was a cooking show on with some chef making deep-fried Twinkies and Oreos. Sarah didn’t feel the least bit hungry and all the fried junk food flashing across the screen was making her nauseated. She knew Detective Torres hadn’t been trying to deliberately offend her but he had nonetheless. She tried her best not to stereotype him as a typical macho, chauvinistic Latino man but she had her prejudices no matter how liberal and enlightened she considered herself to be and guys like Mike Torres brought them all to the fore.

The three of them sat there in a tense, uncomfortable silence. Sarah turned to Detective Malcovich.

“Harry? When we’re done here, can you take me to see Dorothy Madigan?”

The detective turned to look at Sarah.

“Why?”

“I just need to see her. I need to speak to her. I want her to know that I believe her.”

“You’re right. We should go. Okay, I’ll take you. You sure you want to go right now? We can wait until tomorrow.”

“I think I should see her now. I think…for my sanity too.”

“Okay. We’ll go.”

Josh walked out looking shell-shocked. Sarah rushed over to her husband and wrapped her arms around him. They called Harry in next.

“Oh great. I can’t fucking believe I’m doing this. I’m going to kill this fucker when I catch him.”

He walked to the examination room, grumbling the entire way. Detective Lassiter turned to walk in behind him and he stopped her.

“You must be crazy. Go sit down, Trina. I can hold my own hand. You too,” he said to the rape counselor. He walked into the room with the nurse, leaving Trina and the counselor out in the hallway.

Sarah looked up at her husband.

“Is everything okay?”

“They’ll have the lab tests back tomorrow but they didn’t find any evidence of rape. Not that that means anything. They didn’t find any tearing or abrasions on you either. But the detective said that she didn’t see anything that looked like semen on the swabs, but you never know until the lab results come back.”

“I asked Harry to take me to see Dorothy Madigan, the woman who Dale raped before me, the one who set herself on fire.”

“Jesus. Why? I mean, are you sure?”

“I think I have to. I want to hear what he did to her. I want to tell her what he did to me. I want her to know that I believe her. And I want to make her a promise.”

“A promise?”

“I want to promise her that I won’t let Dale hurt anyone else like he hurt us. I want to promise her that I’m going to stop him.”

The Nevada Mental Health Institute was a drab gray building with dash stucco walls, large bronze tinted windows and an eight-foot sculpture out front that looked like a cross between a brain and a solar system made out of aluminum and stainless steel. The institute sat across from Sunset Hospital on Eastern Avenue, and Sarah must have driven past it more than a dozen times since she’d lived in Las Vegas without ever realizing it was there.

It was nearly the size of the hospital itself and was surrounded by a small private park for the residents with walking paths, a bocce ball court, and even a tennis court. The parking lot in front of the building was cracked and spalling, with weeds growing up through the fissures. There were only a handful of cars in the lot, including an ambulance parked in the red fire-zone directly in front of the building. If it wasn’t for the beautifully maintained lawn surrounding the back of the building it would have looked like yet another foreclosed property.

Sarah and her husband parked their Saturn directly in front of the building next to the detectives’ vehicles. She was surprised when Trina and Torres stepped out of their car and began walking toward the building with Harry.

“We’re all going in?”

“Yeah, I want to hear her story. Try to make some sense of what’s going on. I still can’t believe this,” Detective Lassiter said.

“I damn sure don’t believe it,” Detective Torres offered.

“Don’t tell Dorothy that. We’re here to let her know that she’s not crazy, not to put even more doubts in her head.”

They all walked into the building together. Sarah held Josh’s hand tightly. He was still shaken after his exam and Sarah felt like he needed her strength, whatever little strength she had left.

Harry flashed his badge at the receptionist and asked to see Dorothy Madigan. Trina and Detective Torres flashed their shields as well. The obese woman behind the receptionist desk asked them all to sign in and then gave them visitor’s passes.

“Room 511. I’ll let the nurses know to expect you.”

The building looked and smelled just like a hospital except everything that would have been white in a regular hospital was either pale gray or sky blue. Sarah supposed the colors were meant to have a calming effect. She just found them depressing.

When Sarah and her entourage arrived on the second floor the sky blue theme grew increasingly dominant, replacing the gray almost entirely. Even the nurses’ uniforms were blue or green. An orderly the size of an NFL linebacker walked by carrying a mop and a bucket and even he was wearing light blue. He looked like a Smurf on steroids.

Sarah had imagined that all the patients would be locked in their rooms, maybe strapped into straitjackets but most of the doors were open and patients lingered here and there in the halls or wandered aimlessly. The few doors that were shut were not locked and Sarah jumped as a door flew open and one of the patients, an old man in his late sixties or early seventies, scurried past her mumbling to himself and scratching the flaking skin on his bald, crinkled scalp.