Beyond Eden

6

Taylor

He heard her screams and reacted immediately because he was a cop. He tried to get up, tried his damnedest to go to her and help her, but he couldn’t. He staggered to his feet, then fell back against the examining table, clutching his broken left arm. He felt nauseous and dizzy from the concussion, and the pain in his arm was becoming more than he could handle.

He was in the emergency-room cubicle next to hers and he’d seen a policeman carry her in a few minutes before, a young girl wrapped in a blanket, her hair disheveled, her face terribly bruised, her eyes wild and vague. She was deeply in shock. He recognized it for what it was. She’d been raped, he’d heard them saying.

Okay, so she’d been raped. Why was she screaming now? What were they doing to her? He gleaned quickly enough that she was American and didn’t speak French or understand it. Taylor spoke French fluently. He was a Francophile; he had flown to France at least twice a year since he’d turned eighteen. This time he’d spent two weeks riding his motorcycle through the Loire Valley, then back to Paris for three days. And now this. What the hell were they doing to her?

She screamed again and again, deep tearing cries that were liquid with pain and fear and hopelessness, and he could hear the doctors clearly now because they had to talk over her. They were pissed that she couldn’t understand them, pissed that she was giving them trouble, pissed that she was fighting them and the girl was so strong to boot and they couldn’t hold her down. They were impatient and hassled and they wanted her to shut up so they could get it over with. He should go in there and help her, he thought again, at least translate for her, but he knew that if he moved he would fall on his face. He listened now, for they were speaking even more loudly over her cries.

“. . . raped by her brother-in-law, the cop said. Look at her face—the man’s an animal.”

“Help me get this blanket off her. No, stop fighting. Damnation, she can’t understand a word. Hold her, Giselle! Jacques, would you look at the mess here. She was a virgin, just look at all that blood. The guy reamed her good. Dammit, hold her still!”

“Get her legs wider, I’ve got to get my fingers in there. That’s it, press her legs back to her chest. Stop it, no, hold her! Damn, she can’t understand me! Ow! Jesus!”

She’d struck the doctor. Hard, from the sound of it. Taylor could hear him lurching around, heard an instrument tray fall to the linoleum floor. He smiled. Good for her. He saw another doctor run into the cubicle. The girl had been raped and they were stripping her and prodding her about like she was a slab of meat. She was quite probably terrified, hysterical, and in pain. There’d been a three-car pileup, he’d heard, which was why he was lying here unattended. At least they were seeing to her.

But couldn’t they go a bit easier with her?

He could hear her crying, gasping for breath. He heard the nurse, Giselle, tell the doctors to stop being pigs, she was just a young girl and afraid of them because they were men and she’d just been raped, for God’s sake. And one of the doctors said, “Not all that little, Giselle. Hold her down, will you?”

“Yeah,” another one of the doctors said, “not little at all, and her body doesn’t look all that young either.”

The third doctor didn’t say anything, he was breathing too hard to catch his breath.

Taylor wished he could hit the bastards. But he just lay there listening to the doctors talk about her, listening to them curse because she wasn’t cooperating with them. He listened to the girl’s cries, his own pain washing over him. He closed his eyes, but it didn’t really help, and he knew he wouldn’t forget her screams for a very long time.

“. . . Two fingers, dammit, you’ve got to go deeper and clean her out good. The cops want all the guy’s sperm and you need to feel for torn tissue. She’s probably torn inside.”

She was crying helplessly now. He saw the third man finally emerge from the cubicle, wipe his hands on his pants, and come into Taylor’s small enclosure. He nodded to him, then asked him a question in French, speaking very, very slowly. Like Americans did, to make themselves understood to stupid foreigners. Taylor answered him quickly in French, fluently and with no accent, saying without preamble, “The girl who was raped, how is she? Will she be all right?”

The doctor muttered something about Americans minding their own business, to which Taylor looked hard at him and repeated his question. The doctor shrugged as he bent over Taylor’s arm. “She’s eighteen, an American, and her brother-in-law, a damned Italian prince of all things, split her up really good. He bashed up her face, tore her a bit internally, and she’s bleeding like there’s no tomorrow. But she’ll be all right, at least her body will heal in time. I heard the girl’s sister shot him and he’s upstairs in surgery. Jesus, what a mess.” Then he shrugged, a typical French reaction, as if to say: What do you expect from foreigners except endless stupidities?

Then the doctor was talking about his broken arm, Taylor realized, clucking, turning it and making him grit his teeth, punishment, Taylor assumed, for being pushy. Taylor said in a stony voice that did little to mask his pain, “I’m a cop with the NYPD. How long will it take to heal? I’ve got to get home and back to work.”

The doctor raised his head and smiled, and shot off in his fastest French, “Give it six weeks and stay off your motorcycle. As for your head, you’re lucky you were wearing a helmet. Damned machines will kill you.”

“Not a scrap of luck to it,” Taylor said easily. “I’m not stupid.”

The doctor did a sudden about-face. “Say, you’re French, aren’t you? You just moved to the United States?”

“Nary a bit,” Taylor said with a big smile. “Born and bred in Pennsylvania.” He paused and added, “I’m just good at languages and, truth be told, French is pretty easy.”

He wished he hadn’t said anything, because in the next instant he sucked in his breath.

“Sorry. I’m sending you to be X-rayed now. No drugs yet, not with that concussion. Wait here a minute and I’ll send someone for you. Oh, yeah, I could tell you weren’t really French.”

Taylor sighed, closed his eyes, and heard the girl sobbing low now. Her throat must hurt badly, for the cries were hoarse and raw. He waited another five minutes. He was still there when she was wheeled out on a gurney. He saw her briefly again—hair in thick tangles around her face, and God, her face, all bruised, one eye puffed shut, her upper lip swelled and bleeding, a lot worse now than when she’d been brought in. She was unconscious, probably drugged. She looked very young. She looked helpless, utterly vulnerable. At least her sister had shot the bastard.

He didn’t understand what would make a man do such a thing, but the good Lord knew he’d seen enough of it his past two years on the force, at his home in the Twelfth Precinct.

A bloody Italian prince. Nothing figured anymore. Taylor sighed again, wishing someone would come and just get all the pain over with.

He was discharged two days later, his arm in a cast. He still suffered nagging headaches. He’d paid out eight hundred dollars in cash for all the hospital services. He had just enough to go home to New York. As for his motorcycle, he’d insured the Harley since he’d rented it here in Paris, so he was only out a hundred bucks for the deductible.

He was tired and felt sorry for himself, even though he knew, objectively, that he was lucky to be alive. The guy had gunned his white Peugeot from a narrow side street and smacked him hard, sending him flying, not onto the pavement, thank God, but into a stand of thick bushes. Those bushes had saved his life. The guy had driven away, leaving him there to curse and hold his arm and wait for the cops to come. And they had. They’d brought him to St. Catherine’s Hospital and he’d lain there listening to that poor girl screaming and screaming. He was a cop; he should have just endured it with a shrug. But he couldn’t, somehow.

In another day, Taylor was at Charles de Gaulle Airport waiting for his Pan Am flight to be called when he saw one of the Parisian dailies screaming headlines about a Prince Alessandro di Contini having survived the two bullets shot into him by his wife. Taylor’s flight was called. He left the small kiosk, aware of the beginnings of yet another headache. He read a bit more, then left the newspaper on the counter. He accepted two aspirin from a flight attendant, leaned back, and closed his eyes, saying his usual prayer that the plane would make it into the air.

He thought of Diane, his fiancée of four months, wondering yet again if it was smart for them to get married. They’d lived together in Diane’s spacious East Side apartment for the past six months. She was rich and he wasn’t. He was a cop and she was trying to talk him off the force, but he was young and arrogant and confident and he didn’t buy it. She’d come around. It was her responsibility. They were good in bed together. His trip to France was his bachelor’s last fling the way he saw it. Diane thought he was nuts because he wanted to vacation by himself, riding a motorcycle all over a foreign country, but she’d only bitched a little bit, content to warn him a good three times not to catch anything with French girls. Everyone knew how promiscuous they were. Taylor didn’t, but he didn’t bother to correct her. He’d tried to explain that it was the country itself that drew him, that he really couldn’t explain it, but when he’d hitchhiked there when he was eighteen, he knew, simply knew that at one time or another he’d lived here, been part of the land, part of the culture. A previous life? He didn’t know, but he did know that he felt wonderful when he was riding a motorcycle beside the Loire River, smelling the ripening grapes in Bordeaux, gazing in awe at the ancient Roman ruins scattered throughout Provence.

He’d be home soon, a couple days early. He wondered when he’d be able to go to France again. There was already the longing for it growing in his gut. He would be twenty-five in two weeks and married in three.

He thought again of the young girl in the emergency room. He knew he wouldn’t forget the rape, nor would he forget her battered face and her screams. Nor would he forget her name, the name beneath the prince’s in that newspaper at the kiosk at the airport—Lindsay Foxe. Not that it mattered, he thought. Not that it mattered.

Lindsay

It was very hot and it was only the beginning of May. Lindsay sat on a stone bench under an oak tree on the Columbia campus. She was wearing loose-legged khaki walking shorts and a short-sleeved white blouse. Reeboks and thick white socks were on her feet. She wore a tennis bracelet on her right wrist, a gift to herself. She admired Martina Hingis enormously. Her legs were already tanned from playing tennis every day for the past two months. She was very good but nowhere near great. Her forehand was a killer, her backhand two-handed but still unpredictable. As for her serve, she got an ace at least one in twenty times. She wasn’t playing tennis until tomorrow morning with Gayle Werth, her best friend from the Stamford Girls’ Academy, also a senior at Columbia, majoring in physical education. Gayle was her doubles partner and the better player.

Lindsay had one more final exam. She would graduate with a B.A. in psychology in two more weeks. From Columbia, a school with a good reputation.

Then what would she do? There had been company reps on campus a few months before, but nothing they had to offer interested her in the slightest, except for the foreign service, which sounded exciting, at least until she’d met the young man who was their primary representative. He couldn’t talk about any place but Italy. Lindsay was never going to Italy.

Her stomach growled and she realized she hadn’t eaten since the previous night at Marlene’s apartment. Salami pizza with extra cheese and a can of light beer. It had made her sick.

The pizza had been god-awful, but it alone hadn’t done her in. It was also that guy, Peter Merola, a friend of Marlene’s, a classmate. He’d been persistent, and when he’d pretended to accidentally rub his hand against her breast, touching her nipple, she’d bolted to the bathroom and been sick in the toilet. When she’d come out, Peter was coming on to another girl and this one looked interested.

She was safe.

Lindsay rose even as she pulled a sheaf of notes from her large floppy purse. It was fine cordovan leather, soft light brown, and it grew softer by the year, four of them now. She carried everything in it, her cell phone, her books, some tennis balls, a razor, and an extra pair of socks and underwear. She fanned the notes out on her lap. This was her last course and it was taught by Professor Gruska, who was an ardent Freudian, a dying breed, thank God. He had intense eyes, looked like a professor, and lived with his father on the West Side at Eighty-fourth Street. He was at least fifty and had never been married. He was strange, but he thought she was stranger. Dr. Gruska had come to the conclusion that Lindsay was screwed up after he’d read a short play she had written, an assignment showing how members of a family related to each other. Lindsay had made up a family, but Dr. Gruska had probed and prodded. He’d gone so far as to read some of her play aloud in class. Then he’d called her to his office after class. He’d asked her questions about her father, wondering aloud if she had a thing for him. He suggested to her that he could help her sort things out. They could begin right now if she liked.

Lindsay had walked out, saying nothing. She was shaking and cursing and afraid within five minutes of leaving his wretched little office. Time had dealt with the worst of it, but not her intense hatred of Gruska, hatred coated with a goodly dose of fear. She would have never gone back, but she needed the class to graduate. She’d forced herself to apologize two weeks later; it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. He’d nodded, looking grave. He’d said only that she could call him or come to his office at any time. She could trust him. She realized then that he’d probably looked her up in old newspapers, and now he knew she’d been raped by her brother-in-law. She realized then that she wasn’t certain what the papers had reported; she’d refused to read any of them. For all she knew, she’d been the one to seduce Alessandro and to shoot him. She closed off her memories. Now she was taking Gruska’s final—essays, he’d told the class, because they were graduating seniors, psych majors, and reportedly somewhat literate. She read her notes as she walked toward the cafeteria, thinking it was a great deal of bullshit. She’d never had a thing for her father; all she’d ever wanted was for him just to recognize that she was there and that she was his daughter. Was that abnormal? Probably no more abnormal than her choosing psychology for a major because she’d hoped, deep down, that she would gain some insights, some self-awareness, to help her stop trembling with terror whenever a man came close to her. Some courses, some professors, had been helpful. Outwardly, no one would ever be able to guess what had happened to her—she’d filled herself with insights from every psychological theory; she’d grown up; she understood that the prince was mentally ill and she had been just a helpless girl drawn in by him; she accepted her fear of men as not being normal, but quite natural, of course, because of what the prince had done to her. She accepted all of it, took it in mental stride, smiled occasionally with cool objectivity at the idea of anyone being actually afraid of the opposite sex, but in the stillness of the night, when she was alone, the pain of those memories could still overwhelm her, the pain and the humiliation, her own stupidity. But she handled it now. At the very least, psychology had taught her how to handle it. Except handling Gruska, the jerk.

She was stuffing papers back into her purse when she saw the letter from her grandmother that had arrived yesterday afternoon. She’d forgotten to read it. She pulled it out and put it to her nose, still smelling the faint odor of musk roses, her grandmother’s favorite scent, made especially for her in Grasse, France, by one man named d’Alembert, after the eighteenth-century French philosopher. Gates Foxe was eighty-two and d’Alembert had made her perfume for nearly forty years now. Lindsay had flown to San Francisco at Christmas at her grandmother’s request. Lindsay hadn’t seen her in several years. She’d slowed down, but her mind was still sharp and she still loved life and still tried to control those around her. Only there wasn’t anyone around her anymore. Royce had remarried the year before. His new wife had been there for Christmas and it hadn’t been very much fun. The new wife, formerly Holly Jablow, widow of the former Washington state senator, Martin Jablow, was thirty-five. She was vain and greedy and when she wasn’t focused on her new husband, she was focused exclusively on herself. She loved mirrors. She quickly saw her husband’s dislike for his daughter and adapted in the next moment. She was grating and sweetly patronizing, giving Lindsay advice on her clothes, on her hair, on her fingernails. Lindsay had suffered her in silence. As for Jennifer, Lindsay had seen her mother only once. She was too thin, too nervous, smoked incessantly, and was sleeping with a man who was twenty-six years old. Jennifer had been forced to introduce Lindsay to the man when she’d come to her apartment one afternoon unannounced. She treated her daughter like a rival. Lindsay had left quickly, feeling cold and very sad and very alone. She’d felt all ties to San Francisco falling away from her.

Lindsay pulled the two pages from the envelope, a smile on her face, expecting to hear chatty news about friends and vagaries about the rich and richer in San Francisco. Her grandmother had a light touch with her at least. The letter began as she’d expected.

Just news at first, chatter about Moffitt Hospital and how the board of directors was loath to spend enough money to modernize the new radiology rooms. She mourned the horrible proportion of Democrats to Republicans in northern California. Then Lindsay stopped smiling.

“I don’t think anyone bothered to tell you because you really don’t exist to your father, as you well know—his fault, not yours. Sydney is pregnant. I have no idea if the prince is the father, nor does your father know, by the way. I suppose the family will pass the child off as a di Contini regardless. They really have no choice, since Sydney stayed with Alessandro and played the contrite wife wrapped in a coat of endless remorse. I found I could still be surprised, even after all these years. Sydney is different in some ways, Lindsay, but you would have to see her for yourself to understand how I mean it. She was here by herself a couple of weeks ago. There’s a brittle hardness about her, but also an inwardness, an awareness, that makes her not quite like her former self. It’s as if she were now responsible for the world. Odd, but true somehow. It’s been four years, hasn’t it, since you last saw her? Since that awful time in Paris?”

Lindsay went still. Her grandmother knew she hadn’t seen Sydney since that horrible time in Paris. Why was her grandmother calling that all up? It didn’t matter; an intelligent adult with sharpened insight always dealt with things and smiled and went on with life.

“She told me the prince is as he always was, and I take that to mean that he still likes young girls. Forgive me if this makes you uncomfortable, Lindsay, but it has been four years now and it’s time for you to face up to it. I saw at Christmas how guarded you were, how you wouldn’t even get near that nice boy, Cal Faraday, who is Clay and Elvira’s son and a very smart boy in his first year of medical school. I know what your father says, Lindsay, this damnable litany of his, but he’s wrong and you mustn’t believe him. The rape wasn’t your fault, none of it. Grow up, my dear girl, put this behind you—”

Lindsay raised her head and looked out over the Columbia campus. How very easy it was to analyze and to judge, to proffer well-meant advice to another person. That was something else she’d learned as a psychology major.

She quickly folded the letter and stuffed it back into the depths of her bag. She walked to the psych building, up the indented stairs to the second floor and into room 218, and sat down in her usual chair. No one said much of anything. Every male and female in the room scented the finish line. Everyone just wanted it done and over with. Dr. Gruska and his graduate assistant handed out blue books; then they handed out a single sheet of paper with essay questions on it. She pulled out her ball-point pen and began to write.

She wrote for three hours, filled up two blue books, handed them silently to the graduate assistant, didn’t look at Dr. Gruska, and quickly left the building. The day was even warmer now. She had no more classes. She was free. She was through with Columbia. Soon she would have a B.A. degree and no job and no ideas for a job.

She took the ferry across to the Statue of Liberty and sat there in the hot sun watching early tourists wander around and exclaim and gawk, and thinking about precisely nothing.

That evening, to her surprise, Cal Faraday called her and asked her out to dinner and a movie. He’d just finished his first year at Johns Hopkins and was in New York for a few days visiting friends. She said no, her voice very friendly, and went to bed with a mystery.

Taylor

Taylor was off-duty. He was wearing his favorite dark brown corduroy pants, a white cotton shirt, and a leather jacket slung over his shoulder. He was on his way to pick up Dorothy Ryan for dinner at her apartment at Lexington and Sixty-third. He was whistling, feeling better about things and about himself. Dorothy was pretty, funny, and quickly climbing the ladder in advertising. He’d first seen her at a Giants game when the Tennessee Titans had carved up his team like a Christmas goose. She’d been yelling and cursing and soon he found himself watching her instead of the game. He’d bought her a beer and a hot dog and they’d gone to bed that night.

She had fun with sex, teasing him, kissing him all over, making him squirm and moan, and then letting him bring her to orgasm. She was loving and kind and utterly content with her life the way it was. When she said she wasn’t interested in marriage, he believed her. It was a relief. He started whistling louder, his step picking up, when suddenly he heard a loud scream, then another, then a series of gulping cries. It was from a two-flat brownstone just to his left, a building with the smoothness of age and an air of discretion. Suddenly an older woman erupted from the beveled front doors and down the six stone steps, her arms flapping wildly, yelling her head off.

The woman looked like a domestic with bad taste, with her hair tinted a violent red, her fingernails lacquered orange, her dress a South Seas print in bright colors. Odd, but she wore old ladies’ shoes on her feet and her nylons were baggy around her knees. She was large, her face heavy, her brows thick across her forehead. She wore too much makeup. She was shrieking now, incoherent. Taylor registered all this in a moment; then he was running to her.

“I’m a police officer. What’s wrong?”

She tried to get her breath, eyeing him as if she couldn’t believe that a cop was standing right in front of her, then frowning as if she didn’t really want him there, as if this was her one chance at drama. He tightened his hold on her upper arms and shook her lightly. Another scream, thankfully, died in her mouth.

“Oh, Jesus, Jesus! My little girl, she’s up there bleeding to death!”

“Did you call an ambulance?”

The woman shook her head and her eyes rolled.

“Take me to her now.”

He had to shove her to get her moving. Several people hurried by them, heads down, eyes averted. It was, after all, New York. Something like this shouldn’t be happening in this neighborhood.

Taylor followed the woman up one flight of stairs, wide stairs in polished oak. Beautifully maintained. No filth, no Flatbush Avenue smells, just a dull rich scent of an expensive room spray. The stairs resounded beneath their steps, deep and full.

“Did your daughter cut herself? What happened? Why is she bleeding?”

The woman shook her head and turned down a wide immaculate corridor and shoved open a thick mahogany door.

“Ellie?” she shrieked. “Where are you, girl?”

Taylor heard a wispy cry. He pushed past the woman and ran through the long spacious living room into a hallway. He turned into the first room, and there she was, lying naked on a single bed, a girl of no more than fifteen. Her face was blotchy and swollen and there was blood smeared all over her legs and onto the white sheets. She was gasping for breath, and when she saw Taylor, she grabbed the sheet to cover herself and jerked back against the headboard. Her eyes were dilated with terror and swollen with pain and tears.

Taylor immediately stopped and smiled. “What happened? I’m Taylor and I’m a police officer and I won’t hurt you. Let me help you, okay? Tell me what happened?”

“Bandy poked it into me and he hurt me and now I’m bleeding like I’m going to die.”

“What’s your name?”

“Ellie.”

“Ellie,” he repeated, smiling. Rape, he thought. He saw a phone on the table by the bed. He smiled at the girl even as he moved toward the phone. “It’ll be all right. I’m going to call an ambulance. All right? No, don’t cry out. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She was frozen with fear but she didn’t make another sound. Her small face, if anything, got even paler. Taylor dialed 911 and ordered an ambulance, turning to see the woman standing in the doorway, wringing her hands, her eyes fastened on the girl. He asked her the address. He had to ask her again. Once done, he replaced the phone in its cradle.

“Now,” he said, smiling, “tell me about Bandy.” He leaned over her and gently pulled the sheet from her fingers. “No, I’m not going to hurt you, but I’ve got to see how much blood you’re losing. Please trust me, okay, Ellie?”

The girl nodded. “Bandy hurt me bad.”

“I know, I know. Now, let me see. Hold still.” Even as he said those words, even as he was pulling the bloodstained white sheet down her body, he was remembering that long-ago night in a Paris hospital emergency room. And he knew why Ellie was bleeding.

“Who’s Bandy?” he said again as he eased the sheet to her knees. Poor little tyke. He flinched at the sight of a man’s sperm mixed violently with so much blood, and the blood was still flowing out of her. “Don’t move, Ellie.” He turned to the woman. “Bring me four towels, quick!”

He lifted the girl’s hips and slid two pillows beneath her. When the woman silently handed him the towels, he pressed one of them against Ellie and covered her lower body with another. He sat down beside her, applying as much pressure as he could.

“Tell me about Bandy.”

“No!”

It was the woman, and now her face was flushed and she was shaking. “Bandy didn’t do anything, not a thing! This stupid girl, she came onto him and what was he to do?”

Oh, God, Taylor thought, that night in the Paris hospital so clear again in his brain, and then the Paris newspaper of several days later, telling how the girl, Lindsay Foxe, had seduced her brother-in-law—and then he hadn’t read anymore, but he still remembered what that doctor had told him. He’d boarded his plane and come home. He looked down at Ellie. Hell, this pathetic little scrap hadn’t cried out a thing, only her fear and her pain. He looked up at her and said again, “Tell me about Bandy, Ellie.” And to the woman when she opened her mouth, “Shut up. Go outside and bring the paramedics up when they get here. Go!”

“She’s a liar! Don’t believe a thing the ungrateful little slut says!”

Jesus, Taylor thought. He raised his right hand and gently touched his fingertips to the girl’s soft cheek. “It’s going to be all right now, Ellie.”

“Bandy’s my uncle, my mama’s brother. I’ve known him forever.”

Taylor nodded. He didn’t think he could have stood it if she’d said it had been her brother-in-law.

“Is this the first time he stuck himself inside you?”

The girl nodded. “He made me do things to him for a long time now, but he never stuck that fat thing of his in me until today. I didn’t want him to, but he made me. He made me bend over and he stuck it in me.”

“Where is he?”

“He ran off when Mama came back early. He left me.” Tears were seeping out of her eyes, falling into her mouth, choking her.

He felt the wet of her blood on his hand, soaked through the towel. He pulled it away, tossing it to the floor. He saw that the flow was still steady, cursed softly, and pressed another folded towel against her. “Just hold still, sweetheart. You’ll be fine in just a little while. I’ll get Uncle Bandy for you. I won’t let him get away with this.”

But Taylor knew in his heart that if she hadn’t hemorrhaged her mother would never have panicked and come tearing out of the apartment to find him, and the little girl’s rape would have gone unnoticed, unreported, and Uncle Bandy would probably have enjoyed her until she managed to escape from home.

When the paramedics arrived not five minutes later, a man and a woman, Taylor told them what had happened and showed them what he’d done.

“Good job, Lieutenant. Come on, Linda, let’s get this poor kid to the hospital. You’ll be along later, Lieutenant? The doctors will want to speak to you.”

“Yeah, I’ll be along. Take good care of her.” He smiled at the girl and said quietly, “Don’t worry. They’re going to treat you like you’re the president.” And added to the paramedics, “I want to nail the bastard who did this to her. Tell the doctors to be careful about how she’s examined. We’ll need sperm samples. You know the routine.”

He called Dorothy from a public phone and canceled out the evening. He heard her sigh, but she was game, and dutifully asked after the girl.

He took a taxi to Lenox Hill and strode into the emergency room. He could hear Ellie sobbing from the moment he walked into the long narrow room. And the memories flooded him. He unconsciously rubbed his left arm where the break had healed long ago.

He hadn’t been able to help Lindsay Foxe. He walked into the small cubicle without hesitation. A woman doctor was working on Ellie and she looked up, frowning.

“I’m Lieutenant Taylor. I found her. I was worried and heard her crying. Can I do anything?”

The doctor nodded. “Okay, Lieutenant. Talk to her. Tell her she’ll be fine.”

Taylor stroked Ellie’s face, pitching his voice low and soft. When she shuddered, he held her, never ceasing his meaningless words.

“I’m done now, Lieutenant. Thank you. Oh, here’s the mother. Mrs. Delliah?”

“Yes, I’m her mother. She’ll be all right, won’t she, Doctor?”

“Yes, but I want to keep her for a couple of days. The bleeding’s nearly stopped now. I’ve got all the samples I need for the police.”

“No police,” said Mrs. Delliah, crossing her arms over her large breasts. “No police.”

“I see,” the doctor said in an emotionless voice. “Which family member did this to her? Father? Uncle? Brother?”

Taylor looked up, startled. Then he realized that the good doctor had seen her share of ongoing sexual abuse and rape cases. Probably too many. She looked incredibly weary, the anger dull in her eyes.

“Nobody,” said Mrs. Delliah firmly. “The girl was playing with a coat hanger. She did it to herself.”

Ellie started crying, deep gulping, very ugly sounds. Taylor wanted to strangle the woman.

“Why would she do that?” Taylor asked, still holding Ellie’s hand. “No, no more lies. Why are you protecting your brother, Mrs. Delliah? Look what he did to your child! For God’s sake, are you just going to let him get away with this? The man’s sick.”

He was shouting, trembling from the force of his anger. The doctor laid a hand on his shoulder; Mrs. Delliah had backed up two paces.

Ellie cried and cried.

Taylor returned to his apartment on Fifty-fifth Street at Lexington at midnight. He was exhausted and disgusted. But he was going to get Uncle Bandy. Oh, yeah, he was going to nail the miserable bastard. No one was going to stop him.