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There s a twenty-six-year-old woman in the psych wing. She was emotionally
disturbed as a teenager. Tried to kill herself with an overdose when she was
seventeen. Been in a coma ever since. Almost ten years and the most she can do
is move her eyelids from time to time. They ve had her on life support, in
long-term care, at Stuyvesant for all that time.
I remember being struck by the horror of that story four months ago when
Mercer first came to me with the case. It still hurt to hear him describe the
unthinkable.
Well, she s about four weeks away from giving birth. The fact that she
hasn t been conscious for a decade didn t stop somebody from climbing on top
of her bones and raping her. The security s real tight on her wing, so if it s
not her old man her parents and sisters are her only visitors after all these
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
years it s obviously some sick bastard who works there.
McGraw and the others who had not known about the case were shaking their
heads in amazement.
Suspects? Lieutenant Peterson asked.
Everyone from the broom pushers who swab her cubicle to the head shrink on
the service, Mercer responded. Cooper got us a court order so we could draw
blood and do DNA on the fetus. Then we ll be getting the same thing from every
one of the guys who had access to her. We ll nail him.
I continued on my institutional odyssey around Manhattan in which not a
single private or public hospital seemed to have been spared the indignity of
some kind of sexual assault on the premises within the past three years.
Occasionally, the assailants were health-care professionals themselves;
frequently, they were technical workers who were assigned to the departments
essential to the operation of these little villages maintenance, food
services, janitorial staff, aides, and messengers. Sometimes they were
patients, free to move about from one area of the hospital to almost any
other, and often they were interlopers who wandered into these enormous
structures with no business being inside at all.
Obviously, we ve got to look at everybody from the professional staff to the
underground population. I had already learned the hard way that it was better
to cast a very wide net at the start of an investigation in order not to
overlook any potential suspects.
By the time we had gone around the room and each of the detectives had
described his actions for the day, it was close to ten o clock. McGraw told
Wallace to turn up the volume on the television and switch it to Fox 5 News to
catch the headline stories. One of the guys who had retired from the squad was
now covering the crime beat for the station, and from the posture of attention
McGraw suddenly assumed it was obvious he had leaked something to his former
protégé in order to get his face on the tube.
Mike shook his head and suppressed a snide remark as all our business stopped
so McGraw could admire himself on the screen, telling the public that his
detectives had a lot of great leads and expected to have someone in custody by
the weekend. The guys in the room didn t appear to be surprised by his phony
optimism, just annoyed. The moment the camera lens shifted to the Mayor s
face, McGraw rejoined our group.
Who s got the autopsy?
The Chief s doing it himself in the morning, Chapman answered. I m
observing.
Good news for me. I had enormous respect for the Chief Medical Examiner, Chet
Kirschner, and an easy relationship with him. I was likely to have preliminary
results of the procedure by tomorrow afternoon.
Motives, McGraw went on. Who s thinkin what?
Could be a straight-out sexual assault, Jerry McCabe offered. Pick from
any one of your categories of guys walking around these empty halls at night.
Late Monday, around midnight, say, he comes across a woman alone in her
office. She s strong. Thinks she can fight him off. Can t overcome the knife.
Bingo.
Just as easy for it to be a burglary, and Dogen surprised him in the middle
of it, countered Wallace. Even though the wallet s still there, doesn t mean
there isn t something missing and we re not yet aware of what it is.
Wallace was one of the most thorough detectives I had ever worked with. His
methodical mind would be certain to go over every object in the doctor s
office, looking for any paper, file, or book that had been moved or rifled
through. He went on. Maybe he was in there, starting to look for something to
steal, when she showed up in the office. He panicked and what started as a
robbery became a sexual assault.
Yeah, but which came first, the rape or the stabbing?
McGraw was too stubborn to throw that question directly at me and too stupid
to know that I wouldn t be able to answer it, either. Most people liked to
think that logically the forced sex act had occurred before Gemma Dogen s
Page 26 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szkicerysunki.xlx.pl
There s a twenty-six-year-old woman in the psych wing. She was emotionally
disturbed as a teenager. Tried to kill herself with an overdose when she was
seventeen. Been in a coma ever since. Almost ten years and the most she can do
is move her eyelids from time to time. They ve had her on life support, in
long-term care, at Stuyvesant for all that time.
I remember being struck by the horror of that story four months ago when
Mercer first came to me with the case. It still hurt to hear him describe the
unthinkable.
Well, she s about four weeks away from giving birth. The fact that she
hasn t been conscious for a decade didn t stop somebody from climbing on top
of her bones and raping her. The security s real tight on her wing, so if it s
not her old man her parents and sisters are her only visitors after all these
Page 25
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
years it s obviously some sick bastard who works there.
McGraw and the others who had not known about the case were shaking their
heads in amazement.
Suspects? Lieutenant Peterson asked.
Everyone from the broom pushers who swab her cubicle to the head shrink on
the service, Mercer responded. Cooper got us a court order so we could draw
blood and do DNA on the fetus. Then we ll be getting the same thing from every
one of the guys who had access to her. We ll nail him.
I continued on my institutional odyssey around Manhattan in which not a
single private or public hospital seemed to have been spared the indignity of
some kind of sexual assault on the premises within the past three years.
Occasionally, the assailants were health-care professionals themselves;
frequently, they were technical workers who were assigned to the departments
essential to the operation of these little villages maintenance, food
services, janitorial staff, aides, and messengers. Sometimes they were
patients, free to move about from one area of the hospital to almost any
other, and often they were interlopers who wandered into these enormous
structures with no business being inside at all.
Obviously, we ve got to look at everybody from the professional staff to the
underground population. I had already learned the hard way that it was better
to cast a very wide net at the start of an investigation in order not to
overlook any potential suspects.
By the time we had gone around the room and each of the detectives had
described his actions for the day, it was close to ten o clock. McGraw told
Wallace to turn up the volume on the television and switch it to Fox 5 News to
catch the headline stories. One of the guys who had retired from the squad was
now covering the crime beat for the station, and from the posture of attention
McGraw suddenly assumed it was obvious he had leaked something to his former
protégé in order to get his face on the tube.
Mike shook his head and suppressed a snide remark as all our business stopped
so McGraw could admire himself on the screen, telling the public that his
detectives had a lot of great leads and expected to have someone in custody by
the weekend. The guys in the room didn t appear to be surprised by his phony
optimism, just annoyed. The moment the camera lens shifted to the Mayor s
face, McGraw rejoined our group.
Who s got the autopsy?
The Chief s doing it himself in the morning, Chapman answered. I m
observing.
Good news for me. I had enormous respect for the Chief Medical Examiner, Chet
Kirschner, and an easy relationship with him. I was likely to have preliminary
results of the procedure by tomorrow afternoon.
Motives, McGraw went on. Who s thinkin what?
Could be a straight-out sexual assault, Jerry McCabe offered. Pick from
any one of your categories of guys walking around these empty halls at night.
Late Monday, around midnight, say, he comes across a woman alone in her
office. She s strong. Thinks she can fight him off. Can t overcome the knife.
Bingo.
Just as easy for it to be a burglary, and Dogen surprised him in the middle
of it, countered Wallace. Even though the wallet s still there, doesn t mean
there isn t something missing and we re not yet aware of what it is.
Wallace was one of the most thorough detectives I had ever worked with. His
methodical mind would be certain to go over every object in the doctor s
office, looking for any paper, file, or book that had been moved or rifled
through. He went on. Maybe he was in there, starting to look for something to
steal, when she showed up in the office. He panicked and what started as a
robbery became a sexual assault.
Yeah, but which came first, the rape or the stabbing?
McGraw was too stubborn to throw that question directly at me and too stupid
to know that I wouldn t be able to answer it, either. Most people liked to
think that logically the forced sex act had occurred before Gemma Dogen s
Page 26 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]