Detective Will Clark and his much younger partner, Tory Strauss, entered the hospital room. A petite woman with dark wavy hair just past her shoulders sat by the hospital bed crying. As they stepped further into the room, they had a better view of the victim, also petite, lying in the bed. She too had dark hair that was bound in a long braid. Her features were so bruised and swollen that they were barely recognizable.
Was she pretty? Was she plain?
There was just no way to tell.
“Please, baby. Please wake up,” sobbed the woman by the bed over the sounds of the beeping machines.
Will cleared his throat, and then the woman, eyes puffy and red from crying, looked up at them.
“Miss Haddad?” asked Will.
“Yes,” she said in a sad, tired voice.
“I’m Detective Clark, and this here is my partner, Detective Tory Strauss,” he said, extending his hand to the woman.
Nadirah took it reflexively.
“Sorry for your recent ordeal,” Detective Strauss said. “Any change in prognosis?”
The woman shook her head dubiously. “On top of a broken nose, three cracked ribs, and a million cuts and bruises, the doctors don’t know that she’ll ever wake up. When she hit her head and went into a coma, she had a brain aneurysm that caused bleeding in the brain and…” her voice became shaky and broke off. “Have you found anything out yet?”
Will studied the woman. He’d seen her once or twice before from a distance, and he knew she was chief of forensics and that she had seen her share of heartbreak and catastrophe.
But something wasn’t quite right. Nothing had been said or done to suggest it, but something just wasn’t kosher. He just hadn’t yet figured out what it was.
He studied her eyes, for the eyes truly were the windows to the soul. They held a very sad, tired, and defeated look. But they also held other things as well, which he knew most others probably wouldn’t pick up on. Yet as he gazed deeply into those cold, dead brown eyes, he saw something else within them besides sorrow and weariness.
He saw guilt.
“No, nothing yet, I’m afraid. I know this is a horrible time for you, ma’am, and that you already gave your statement to the police,” Will said, pulling his notes from his pocket. He not only wanted to take notes of his own but wanted to compare her statement with the one she’d given to the police earlier. “We’re going to need you to go over things one more time so we can have a better understanding of what happened.”
The woman sniffled and abruptly nodded.
“Why don’t we step right outside?” Will added.
They stepped just outside the room. On the way, the woman glanced back at the seemingly lifeless figure on the bed.
“Okay, Miss Haddad?”
“Nadirah.”
“What’s that?”
“Just call me Nadirah.”
“Oh, okay. Now, Nadirah, as painful as I know this has got to be for you, could you please recount what happened from beginning to end?”
Nadirah sniffled again, reluctant to talk for a minute, but slowly, in a voice choked with emotion, she spoke. “There was a knock on the door.”
“About what time was that?” Will asked.
“Around six-thirty or seven o’clock. Joni had returned a few minutes ago from a friend’s house. I thought the friend forgot to tell Joni something and that she had turned right around and come back to the house.”
“Who was the friend?”
“I only knew her as Irene. She works at a deli, which is where they met. Irene needed help with some computer problems she’d been having, so she picked Joni up while I was still at work. I’d been home for about an hour when Joni was dropped back off.”
“Where exactly does Irene work?”
“I don’t remember the name of the deli, but she said it was near Archer Street in Niantic. Maybe Family Deli or something like that.”
Eyeing Nadirah intently as she spoke, he asked, “What happened when you heard the knock?”
Nadirah took a deep breath and looked downward. “I opened the door. Joni was standing next to me.”
“And?” Will urged.
Nadirah looked at the black detective. With his dreadlocks hanging nearly to the middle of his back, he hardly looked like a detective. His white and very blond partner was a stark contrast in appearance, though she didn’t look much like a detective either. She seemed too young and rather shy for such a job.
Taking another deep breath, Nadirah said, “The guy immediately slugged Joni in the face and then he tied me up in a chair.”
“What did the guy look like?”
Nadirah shrugged. “Just a guy. Average height, average weight. Dark hair and eyes.”
“Did anything stand out about him? Any tattoos, scars, or anything like that?”
Nadirah shook her head.
“What happened once you were tied in the chair?”
“Joni was getting back up off the floor and was trying to get to the phone when he grabbed her and started kicking and punching her.”
“Did he speak at all?”
“He kept saying some crap about her being the devil’s spawn.”
“How long do you think he was there?”
“It seemed like an eternity, but in reality, I’d say ten to fifteen minutes.”
“Why do you suppose he attacked Joni and not you?”
“I don’t know why, Detective.”
“Will.”
“You think I know what goes through the mind of a psycho like this?”
“No, of course not,” Will said, treading lighter so as not to cause the woman to clam up on him. If there was, in fact, some bastard on the loose going around beating the crap out of women, he wanted to know about it so he could stop the prick and maybe save some lives while he was at it before anyone got killed. As it was, it was a pure miracle that Joni Gilstein was still alive. “When the police combed through the place looking for evidence, several beer bottles were present. Did he drink or eat anything while he was there?”
“No. I had those beers myself over the last few days.”
“Joni didn’t drink?”
“No.”
“Did he go to other parts of the house, or did he remain where the attack occurred?”
“He didn’t go anywhere else. Just the living room.”
“Did he take anything on his way out?”
“No, not that I noticed.”
“Did he abuse Joni sexually in any way?”
Fresh tears welled up in Nadirah’s eyes. “I couldn’t stand to watch him hurt her, so I looked away a lot of the time, but no, I’m sure he didn’t rape her or anything like that. Just beat the crap out of her and screamed at the top of his lungs. I never felt so helpless in my life being forced to just sit there unable to do anything.”
Will looked at her with what he hoped appeared to be true sympathy. “What else did he say besides his rap about the devil’s spawn?”
“Nothing sensible. Just that she was the devil’s spawn and she needed to be dealt with, or else the world would go to hell… shit like that.”
“How did you get free of the duct tape that bound you?” Will asked, throwing in a trick question.
“It wasn’t tape. It was rope. It took me forever, but I was eventually able to pull my arms up from my sides and then free of the rope.”
“And when was this?”
“Not long after he left. I struggled the entire time the lunatic was in the house, but I couldn’t get free until after he was gone.”
“Any way you could tell what he was driving?”
“No. Not from the angle I was at and the fact that it was dark out.”
“We have just one more question for you, Miss Haddad… Nadirah.”
Nadirah gave a brief nod.
“The front window was broken. Can you tell us how that happened?”
“Joni tried to smash it and scream for help, but the guy dragged her back into the middle of the room and away from the window as soon as she broke it.”
“That would explain why one of her hands was badly cut.”
Nadirah nodded. “And my feet.”
“You were barefoot at the time?”
“Yes. The first thing I did was run to Joni when I could finally get out of the damn chair. I wasn’t even thinking or caring about the shattered glass. I just wanted to get to Joni. I thought she was dead, but I wanted to get to her as soon as I could and call 9-1-1.”
The detectives thanked Nadirah for her statement, said they’d be in touch with any new updates, then left the hospital.
“What do you think?” Tory asked her partner on their way out.
“Something ain’t right.”
“How?”
“Well, her statement matches her initial statement, but I don’t know. Something just doesn’t jive here. Maybe it’s just bad vibes I get from the woman.”
“The chief of forensics of all people?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“Maybe it’s the rope,” said Will. “If she was struggling to get free of the rope she said was wrapped around her chest and upper arms, then why are there no bruises on her from pushing and straining against it?”
“Good point. But certainly, you don’t think she had the guy attack her wife, do you?”
“No. I think she attacked her by herself.”
Tory’s eyes widened in surprise. “What? You’re kidding!”
“Nope. ‘Fraid not, Detective.”
“But she’s so small! Her wife is short too, but seems heavier.”
“Like I said, stranger things have happened. And if Joni’s like most people, she wouldn’t know what Nadirah knows. Nadirah’s had more training than just basic self-defense. Try a black belt in karate along with a very short temper.”
“Oh,” Tory said in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.
“Yeah, we got a few so-called character witnesses saying she can be pretty impatient and quick to explode at times. Some were surprised that she’d even consider a woman like Joni because she simply didn’t seem like her type, and they thought Joni’s abundance of energy would really grate on her nerves. Guess they didn’t have much in common either and have been known to argue a lot.”
“I see.”
“There’s more. Supposedly, they had a run-in twenty years ago.”
“Really? How so?”
“From what I gather, there was some argument that pissed Nadirah off and into never wanting to hear from Joni again, but hear from her she did when Joni started making prank phone calls to her. A complaint was filed, but nothing ever came of it. Apparently, Joni was busy beating other people over the head with her phone even worse than she had with Nadirah. Ended up getting probation for it.”
“But then she and Nadirah obviously patched things up.”
“In a strange sort of way,” Will said. “They didn’t hear or speak to each other until five years ago. They even moved on to other states. But then Nadirah returned from North Carolina, and Joni was sent in on a job from California.”
“Oh, was she?” asked Tory.
“It had to do with computers and foreign languages and that sort of thing, which Joni specializes in. And being that it was at the Forensics Institute, that’s how they met up again. Joni didn’t know who she was at first because she only knew Nadirah by her old nickname in the past.”
“Wow,” said Tory.
“Oh, you ain’t heard nothing yet. Joni—out of the blue—suddenly asked Nadirah to marry her one day not long after she arrived here so she could have insurance just long enough to see a doctor about a birth defect that was giving her trouble. She only worked part-time and so she had no insurance.”
“Really?” asked Tory, even more surprised.
“Yeah, something about her ear. I guess she needed surgery.”
“That’s how they got married?” Tory asked, almost with the anticipation and curiosity of a child.
Will laughed. “Yeah, that’s how, alright. And so the story goes that they actually came to love each other in the end because while Nadirah thought it would be a nice tax break while she was doing Joni a favor, they decided not to untie the knot a few months later like they’d originally planned on doing.”
“Aw, how romantic,” said Tory. “I hope you’re wrong in suspecting Nadirah’s the perpetrator. I mean, why? Why would she attack her wife?”
Will shrugged and said, “Why do people attack their wives, girlfriends, husbands, or boyfriends? Greed, passion, jealousy, rage, money… those are usually the top motivating factors. Another strange thing is the jacket.”
“The jacket?”
Will nodded. “The wife had a jacket on when she was attacked. Why would you wear a jacket indoors?”
“Maybe the attacker showed up just seconds after Joni got back to the house, but like I said, Will, I hope you’re wrong. She sure seemed genuinely sad for her wife. You think that was an act?”
“No. It was guilt.”
“Well, I still hope you’re wrong, for Joni’s sake.”
“So do I,” Will said.
The only problem was that his gut rarely fooled him.
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