Unexpected Dismounts (17 page)

I turned back to India. “How will anything really change if the way we do things stays the same?” I said.

She swallowed hard and walked away.

The washing of the feet went on until every foot that was willing to be clean had been bathed. Not every one of the people who stayed took part. The Reverend Garry Howard watched curiously from the side porch, though I didn’t see a
tsk-tsk
in his eyes, necessarily. Chief had his boots off and his jeans rolled up, but he never actually got to have his feet bathed. He was involved in a conversation with Owen by the gate that went on for some time. A few of the Garden Clubbers weren’t keen on removing their shoes, but Bonner and Hank didn’t press them. Hank brought out some walnut oil from the kitchen and massaged their hands instead. Erin O’Hare would allow Desmond to wash her feet only if he would let her wash his. A reverent stillness fell over the property when she dried them with her hair.

And then, of course, she broke the spell when she looked up at us, laughing, and said, “Don’t anybody report me to the Board of Education. I’ve just broken so many rules, I’d be in court for the rest of my life.”

“It’s all good, Miss All Hair,” Desmond said. “I know me a good lawyer.”

I looked for Chief again. He and Owen had finished talking and he was poking something into his cell phone. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was dealing with the health department, probably called by one of the women who had also seen the footwashing as an Amtrak pileup and escaped before she could be caught in it. There was nothing sexier than Chief handling a crisis without so much as twitching an eyebrow.

He looked up suddenly, as if he felt me watching him. I felt myself blush like a teenager. Actually, I’d never blushed as an adolescent. Not even when the boy I thought was the love of my life—who turned out to be the hate of my life—smiled at me across a room, over the heads of all the other girls who would have jumped him in a heartbeat if he’d given them a sideways glance.

I shuddered. Ms. Willa was right about that poison.

“What’s going on, Classic?” Chief said.

“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” I lied.

He took my elbow and edged me away from the small circle of people who had pulled the wicker furniture into a circle in the center of the yard and were lingering over Hank’s
panforte
. There was plenty of it left, since more than half the guests had departed before dessert was served.

“Owen told me he saw that car today ‘that’s been cruising past here on a regular basis.’ Any particular reason why you haven’t mentioned that to me?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t actually seen it myself, and you know how Owen is. He believes everybody wants to buy Palm Row out from under us.”

“He thinks there might be more to it than that.”

“Oh?”

“He said Desmond asked him about it the night we went to the beach with the HOGs. Owen sensed he was more freaked out by it than he was letting on.”

I couldn’t help smirking. “Owen used the phrase ‘freaked out’?”

“No. He described it as ‘putting a mask on it. Putting up a front. Going at it by the way of Cape Horn.’”

“Right. No wonder you were talking to him for so long.”

“That’s not the half of it.” Chief consulted his phone. “He gave me twenty minutes worth of him getting the description of the car.”

“He told me that. Beige Mercury Sable?”

“Yeah. And how he didn’t want to stare at the driver too long in case the person caught him and thought he was a peeping Tom, an old Becky—”

“Stop,” I said.

Chief’s eyes laughed. “So he and Desmond went and asked Miz Vernell, who has no problem with being mistaken for a voyeur. She said she’d been watching the woman through her binoculars.”

“Of course she had.”

“And as soon as Desmond heard it was a woman, according to Owen he dropped that burden like a ton of bricks, like the weight of the world had just been lifted from his shoulders, and, my personal favorite, like Sisyphus letting go of the boulder.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I said.

“He’s better than Comedy Central. But …”

“I knew there was one in there.”

“When Owen saw her drive past three times today, which was no small feat with all the cars parked here, he wasn’t comfortable with that, so he took the risk of looking like a nosy neighbor and got a real good look at her face. He said she was madder than a wet hen, et cetera.” Chief tilted his head at me. “I know Owen’s an alarmist, but he seemed genuinely disturbed. I think it’s worth looking into if you don’t object.”

“Looking into how?” I said.

“I got the license number. I can have it checked out.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Just taking care of what I care about.”

“Miss Allison.”

I was never less excited about having a conversation with the Reverend Garry Howard than I was at that moment, and that was saying something. Chief was stepping away from a promising conversation, and for that I could have cheerfully clobbered the good reverend with a bucket.

But I closed my eyes for a few seconds and made a space for God, somewhere around my tongue.

“It’s been a while,” I said.

Garry gave his head of winged white hair a pastoral nod. “Too long,” he said. “I took Bonner’s invitation as a sign that you might be open to talking with me again.”

“I’ve been open,” I said. “I just wasn’t sure we’d get much further than we have before.” And then because his eyes dropped at the corners, I added, “I’m sad about that. You were good to me when I needed you.”

Reverend Garry cringed visibly. “You make it sound like our relationship is all in the past tense.”

I didn’t have a reply for that. He pulled his hands behind his back and clasped them there.

“This was very powerful today,” he said. “Very moving.”

He looked about as moved as an anvil, but I nodded.

“I don’t think our ministries are as diametrically opposed as you do,” he went on. “And I’d like to show you that.”

“Show me how?” I said.

“Tomorrow we’re breaking ground for the Christian school we’re building.”

I stiffened. “The one Chamberlain Enterprises is giving the money for.”

“The Chamberlain Foundation,” he said, as if that should make a difference. “I know you have issues with that.” He put his hand up to stop the barrage about to burst from my mouth. “And I respect that. But it would mean a great deal to me for you to experience the spirit of what we’re doing, just as I’ve done here.”

I felt my eyebrows shoot up. “Did you experience it?” I said. “Did you have your feet washed?”

“No, I didn’t do that.”

“Talk to any of the Sisters?”

“I did talk to one woman, yes.” He turned and pointed to Jasmine, who was currently dancing barefoot with Desmond in the grass. “I invited her to come and she said she’d have to talk it over with Miss Angel.”

Did you tell her it’s going to be a celebration of the same money that’s being used to threaten the program that’s saving her life?
I wanted to say. I even tried to say it, but the words caught in my throat, caught deeper than that, where a contraction squeezed away my breath.

“It’s at ten a.m. tomorrow,” Reverend Garry said. “We’re holding our worship service there.”

“And where is ‘there’?” I said.

“A very convenient location for you. Right at the corner of San Luis and Old Moultrie.”

Three doors down from Sacrament House. I’d forgotten that, or maybe I’d just hoped Troy had, once he’d gotten the satisfaction from my flipping out over it last December.

He reached over and patted my hand. “If we’re going to be neighbors, Miss Allison, we should get to know each other in a new way.”

Once again the words I wanted to say caught in my gut, or I would have spewed them out in one long venomous stream.
I know all I want to know, and that is that you have taken the thirty pieces of silver.

The ones I needed to say made their way through.

Wash their feet, Allison. Wash
all
their feet.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the Reverend Garry. “I can’t be a part of what you’re doing because I think it’s wrong.” I put my own hand up before he could protest. “Like I said, we’ve been through this before and there’s no need to go there again. But I want you to know, we’re about loving the people who are most separated from God.”

“I’m not quarreling with that, Miss Allison. These women and that boy of yours, they need what you have to offer.”

“I’m not talking about them, Reverend Garry. I’m talking about you.”

After Garry Howard left, wings ruffled, I didn’t have a chance to talk to Chief again until the place was cleaned up and everyone had left, including the Sisters in the van and India in Stan’s truck with all of her furniture piled in the back. I didn’t have a chance to talk to her either—by her design, not mine.

“It’s a lot for her to process,” Hank said to me. “After all, you did basically tell her she’s going to have to reconfigure her entire approach to society. You might as well have told her she must now be a man.”

“I didn’t tell her she
has
to do anything,” I said.

“Yeah, you did, Al,” Hank said. “Yeah, you did.”

As for Ms. Willa, she must have left while the Reverend Garry had me cornered. I didn’t look into the helmet someone had passed, but Bonner hadn’t said anything about a big check finding its way in there. She must have taken me at my word when I said I didn’t really want their money. Come to think of it, Bonner hadn’t said anything at all to me. And no wonder.

So it was only Chief and me in the living room at almost midnight. Desmond had protested going to bed until I relented and told him he could sleep in his tuxedo. It was so covered in red sauce and grass stains, it was going to have to make a trip to the dry cleaner anyway.

By the time I was curled up in the red chair-and-a-half and Chief was putting a cup of cocoa in my hand, I wasn’t sure I had the energy to continue the conversation Garry Howard had interrupted.

“Did you make this?” I said.

“Hank did. I was under strict orders to warm it up in the microwave and make you drink it.”

He actually stood over me until I took the first sip. Then, as I’d hoped, he parked himself on the ottoman, just an arm’s length away. Even that was too far, but I settled for it.

“You never got your feet washed today,” he said.

A sip’s worth of cocoa startled over the edge of the cup and onto my fingers. Chief wiped it off with his hand and smeared it on his jeans.

“Why was that?” he said.

“Why was what?”

“Why was it that no one washed your feet?”

“I guess it just didn’t occur to anybody,” I said.

“It occurred to me.”

I could only gaze at him, all contradiction and paradox and everything else I couldn’t figure out. Why was it at such times that the phone always rang or some random person inserted himself into the conversation? This time it was the front doorbell that nobody ever rang.

I started to climb out of the chair, but Chief shook his head at me and went himself. He was back in a matter of seconds, his face grim.

“I think you better come,” he said.

Heart dropping to my feet, I untangled myself from the chair and went to the door. Standing in silhouette was a willowy figure, bowed over as if the wind were beating it down. The eyes that came up to me were almond shaped. And as swollen as the cheeks that came up to meet them even as I stared.

“Can you help me?” said the St. George Street hooker. “I’ve been raped.”

CHAPTER NINE

I got her into the red chair, where so many before her had sat wrapped in blankets and shock, and joined Chief in the kitchen, where he was putting water on for tea. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket.

“Who are you calling?” he said.

“Nicholas Kent.”

“You sure?”

I stared at him as he opened the canister of chamomile tea bags. “Of course I’m sure. A prostitute’s been raped. Do you really think anybody else in the police department is going to take that seriously?”

“
He
isn’t going to take it seriously either until we know what we’re dealing with.” He cut off my next sentence with his eyes. “I know a rape is a rape, Classic. I get that. But if we don’t talk her through this first,
whoever
interviews her is going to think she had it coming to her.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just as long as
you
aren’t thinking it.”

He dropped the tea bag into the cup and without looking at me said, “I can’t believe you even had to ask me that.”

“I didn’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say anything. I went back to the living room, muttering, “Why don’t you ever show up in my conversations with
him,
God?”

The girl in the chair had shriveled in my absence. Chief was right. If I didn’t get her mind wrapped around whatever had happened to her, she was going to lose it in the deep hole she was already sinking into.

“Chief’s making you some tea,” I said. “You need another blanket?”

“I can’t get warm,” she said. Even her voice was shivering.

“We’re going to need to get some ice on your face,” I said, “but let’s wait on that. Here.”

I motioned for her to lean forward so I could tuck an afghan around her. I stifled a gasp when I saw her back, exposed by the undersized jacket and an angry, ripped opening in the leopard pants. The skin on either side of her backbone was striped with gashes, each the width of a fingernail. The blood that still bubbled in them told me this travesty had taken place no more than thirty minutes ago. I shifted into triage mode so I wouldn’t fall into the same hole she was headed for.

I finished wrapping her and sat on the ottoman Chief had vacated. Her hands plucked at the fibers, so I took them into mine. They were cold as death.

“What’s your name?” I said.

She searched for focus for a full ten seconds before she said, “Ophelia.”

“Ophelia what?”

“Sanchez.”

“I’m Allison,” I said, because I wasn’t at all sure she really knew where she was.

“You’re the one,” she said.

I decided not to follow up on that.

“Have you washed your hands since this happened?” I said.

She shook her head numbly.

“Have you used the bathroom? Wiped yourself?”

“No.”

“You haven’t tried to wash in any way.”

“I came right in when he dumped me here,” she said.

I heard Chief enter, but I put my hand up to stop him from handing her the tea. I had to catch this before she disappeared before our eyes.

“Who was ‘he’?” I said.

“The man who raped me.”

Chief set the tea on the table and nodded for me to go on.

“Do you know who he was?” I said.

Ophelia tried to lick her lips, but I could see that her tongue was coated and dry.

“Water,” I whispered to Chief. To her, I said, “Ophelia, do you know who he was?”

She shook her head and winced.

“Ice, too, Chief,” I called toward the kitchen.

“I never saw his face. Only his shadow.”

“You said he brought you here. Can you tell me what happened?”

Ophelia pulled her gaze from her lap and lifted it to the wall above my head. This time she didn’t find her focus. I knew before she got one syllable out that she was going to say the three words most likely to suck the life out of her case.

“I don’t remember,” she said.

Chief handed me the water. “I don’t think we should treat the swelling until they’ve seen her in the ER.”

Ophelia’s head jerked back down to me. “No hospital. And no police.”

“We need to—”

“They won’t believe me. They won’t do anything about it.”

I scooted forward on the ottoman and kept my eyes on her until she couldn’t look away anymore.

“Do you want our help, Ophelia?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “
Your
help. Not somebody who’s gonna tell me it was just a john who got too rough. It was not a john. Randi fired me because she said I got us kicked out of our place. I haven’t turned a trick since that day.”

I put the glass of water in her hand. “Do you remember where you were when this guy—what? Came up to you someplace, maybe?”

She bowed her head. “I was drunk. I couldn’t handle what happened to me here, today, so I drank. And I went someplace.” She tried to squeeze her eyes closed, but they were nearly swollen shut already. “And all I remember is him dragging me into a car and hitting me and raping me and then it was all black.”

I felt Chief’s hand on my shoulder. Only then did I realize I was shaking, from someplace inside myself and out to the legs that quivered against the footstool and the hands that pressed, trembling, against my mouth. My face ached with every punch this jackal had inflicted on her.

“Ophelia, is it?” Chief said.

She flinched, as if she was seeing him for the first time. He took a step back and another until she nodded at him.

“Ophelia, we’re going to take you to the hospital.” He continued over her moan. “You need treatment, and you’re going to want them to gather information that’ll help them find out who did this to you.”

“They won’t believe me,” she said again.

“But we do,” I said.

“I know!” Her voice cracked open. “I don’t know why he brought me here, but I came in because I saw something here when they were washing the feet.”

“What did you see?”

“You,” she said. “I saw you and I knew you were the one.”

“The one?” I said.

But she covered her ravaged face with her hands and then she pulled them away, as if touching herself was too painful. There were no tears, and I knew why because I couldn’t cry either. We were both too bruised to weep.

While Chief went back to the kitchen to make phone calls, I took the glass of water and put the warm mug in her hands, but she didn’t seem to know what to do with it. I was spooning tea into her mouth when he came back.

“They’ll be ready for us at the ER,” he said. “Nick Kent’s going to meet us.”

“Have you figured how we’re getting there?” I said. “The Sisters have the van, and I can’t take her on the bike. Obviously.”

“I called Hank. She’s coming over with her car and she’ll stay with Desmond.”

I love you
, I told him with my eyes. But he was at the window. I turned to Ophelia.

“You’re not alone,” I said. “I’ll be with you every minute. With the doctor, the police officer, everything. When it’s over, I’ll bring you—”

I stopped when Chief turned sharply to look at me over his shoulder.

“I’ll bring you back here,” I said, my eyes on him. “And then we’ll decide what to do.”

“Can I be in the house?” she said.

“This house?”

“Whatever house you were talking about today. That house.”

“Sacrament House?” I said.

“Can I be in it?”

“Yeah,” I said thickly. “You can be in it.”

When I looked back at Chief, he had turned to the window again, his eyes closed in the reflection.

Ophelia’s prediction was absolutely correct. None of the doctors or nurses or rape counselors said it outright, but their lack of faith in her story was clear in the way they took down her answers and gathered evidence from her body for the rape kit, all without actually seeing her. Every time I started to tell them they were unfeeling pieces of coal, Chief squeezed my shoulder or touched my elbow or told me with the lines around his eyes that it wasn’t worth it for me to blow my cool with people who already thought I was nuts for even being involved in this.

Only Nicholas Kent showed any compassion when he questioned her, but he didn’t glean any more than we had.

“I asked them to do a blood test and see if she’d been drugged,” he told us when Ophelia was in the restroom. “They told me this is what they consider ‘an occupational hazard,’ and I told them … Well, I pushed. And there was enough evidence for a DNA sample.”

“How long will it take to get a match?” I said.

“Forever if there’s nobody to match it to. She can’t even lead us to a suspect.”

“She’s traumatized,” I said, hackles rising.

Chief put his hand right on the back of my neck as if he’d seen the hair standing up. “Do you think she’ll remember more when she comes out of shock?”

“She might,” Nicholas said. “Unless she
was
drugged. In that case, she might never be able to recall anything.” He looked at me closely. “You okay?”

I was shaking again, and this time I couldn’t hold down the bile that rose from the clench in my stomach. I barely made it to the trash can.

Even after I’d retched, I stayed there, bent at the waist with the blood crowding painfully into my head. There was no denying what was going on here. I was feeling everything Ophelia was so very obviously going through, just as I had with Zelda the day she was arrested. I told my mind to get it together, that what was happening to them wasn’t happening to me. But I couldn’t convince my body.

When we got home, I tucked Ophelia in on the couch, where she promptly fell into an exhausted sleep. When I got back to the kitchen, Hank said, “Desmond stayed crashed out through the whole thing.”

“Good.”

“What are you going to do about this, Classic?” Chief said.

I’d already been there several times on the way home with Ophelia’s head lolling on my shoulder in the backseat.

“I have to keep her here tonight,” I said. “She’s been through too much for me to do whatever I would do if I even had an idea.”

“And what about after that?” Chief said. “Vickie Rodriguez would pull those adoption papers in a New York minute if she found out you had a prostitute staying here with Desmond in the house, recovering or otherwise.”

“That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” I said. “Desmond grew up on the streets with hookers who, unlike this one, never had any intention of changing.” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Don’t get me started.”

“Here’s my suggestion,” Chief said. “Desmond can stay with me for a few days until you get something figured out for Ophelia.”

“Are you sure?” I said. “It could take more than a few days. I can’t put her in Sacrament House yet. She’s not ready, and I’m not sure there’s room anyway. What if we get Zelda back?”

“You going to keep chasing your tail, or are you going to let me give you a chance to take this one ride at a time?”

I couldn’t help smiling at him. “You’ve been spending way too much time with Owen.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow around ten and take him home with me. We’ll go out to the beach first. I promised him that.”

“He’s going to be thrilled.” My voice was thickening again. “You just have to promise to let me have him back.”

I’d seen Chief look like he wanted to kiss me enough times to know it wasn’t just wishful thinking on my part. But Hank was there, and in spite of her tactful exit into the pantry for no apparent reason, Chief just squeezed my neck and gave me a look that stole my breath. “See you tomorrow, then.”

Almost before the door to the side porch closed behind him, Hank poked her head out.

“For somebody who has it all together in almost every other area of his life, that boy is dense as a brick when it comes to romance.”

I thought I was going to laugh, but what came out was something between a wail and a sob as I slid down the cabinets to the floor. My shoulders caved as she put her arms around them.

“This isn’t about Chief, is it?” she said.

“No. It’s all this stuff I feel that I shouldn’t be feeling because it isn’t my stuff.”

“You’re going to have to give me a little more to work with, Al.”

I raised my head to look at her. “I wasn’t the one who was raped tonight. I didn’t snort up a speedball and drive somebody’s car up a pole. But here I am, feeling like I’ve been punched in the face and handcuffed to a wall and it isn’t like I’m just imagining it.” I pressed my hands to my abdomen. “It’s physical, Hank. Only I can’t treat it with ice or a pain pill. It’s throbbing and I can’t do anything about it.”