Part 2
Sophie opened the curtains to a hospital cubicle as quietly as she could, ushering Amy and Kari inside. The pair found themselves face to face with a young woman – perhaps no older than Kelly – sitting on the hospital bed, her wrists and face covered in bruises. Amy felt her expression instantly soften into one of sympathy and reluctant remembrance, trying desperately to keep her own dark past at bay.
"Laura," Sophie introduced quietly, sitting down beside the obviously shaken young woman. Laura's short blonde hair failed to hide much of the terror and disbelief in her eyes. "These are Senior Detective Amy and Senior Constable Kari Izumi." Sophie motioned back to the two officers standing in front of the curtain. "They're the police I was telling you about."
Laura nodded hesitantly, her frightened blue eyes scanning the pair up and down critically. Amy glanced over to Kari, only to see that the younger officer beside her had chosen her own line of questioning. "Dr. Ash said that you had been at a party last night, correct?"
Amy narrowed her gaze at Kari, before looking back to Laura in utmost sympathy and concern. She didn't like her new colleague's tone one little bit. It was kind and soft, but lacked the true empathy that Amy had so often prided herself upon with rape victims. The woman across from Amy nodded, as if she wasn't brave enough to speak.
"Who were you at this party with, Ms. Davis?" Kari continued, causing Laura to finally speak out at last.
"My boyfriend," she managed in a shaky and barely audible voice that made Amy's heart break further than it already had. "Keith Richards. It was at one of his mate's houses."
Amy opened her mouth, unsure of what she was going to say, but anything had to be better than where she perceived Kari to be taking the questioning. Unfortunately, the new Senior Constable didn't give her the chance. "Were you drinking or using any sort of drugs on the night of the alleged rape, Ms. Davis?"
Laura didn't respond to this, looking at Kari and Amy blankly. Sophie's eyes narrowed in slight disapproval, something that was mirrored in Amy's expression ten-fold. The detective looked over to her younger colleague, grabbing her wrist tightly. "I think we need to have a word, Senior Constable."
Amy led her new colleague outside of the cubicle and down the corridor, pointing back in the direction from which they'd just come. "What the hell was that?!"
"You see this sort of situation all the time out at Drover's Creek," Kari explained, following the direction of Amy's finger briefly with her gaze. "I'm trying to rule out the possibility that it wasn't drunken love gone wrong."
"That woman," Amy interrupted, her eyes becoming very protective as she bore down upon the officer opposite, "is already going to be going through an emotional hell. Some bastard has just held her down and forced himself on her and she's going to have to live with that for the rest of her life."
Kari looked at Amy in uncertainty, the silence echoing through the corridor as Amy paused to take a breath. "She is already going to have lawyers and judges questioning her every memory and destroying every bit of her confidence when this case gets to court and it is not our job to make her life a hell of a lot harder! I don't know how you did things out at Drover's Creek or wherever, but that is not how we do it here, understood?!"
Amy shot Kari one final glare before storming off down the corridor again to the cubicle she had just come from, unable to quite believe the nerve of their new colleague.
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Amy returned the CI car keys to their hook as Kari headed into the muster room ahead of her, immediately sitting herself down at the desk that had once been Susie's and grabbed up the phone. The muster room was empty, save for Alex sitting at his desk with his head resting in the crook of his arm with a thoroughly defeated expression on his face. She joined her younger colleague, standing over her shoulder with her arms folded against her chest.
"What are you doing?" she demanded in a stern tone. There was something about Kari she couldn't quite like, a sort of strong 'lone ranger' personality that didn't gel at all with her own.
Kari looked up, lowering the phone from her ear as her fingers hovered over the keypad. "I'm calling the Keith Richards guy, getting him to come into the station for a chat."
Amy shook her head in confusion, narrowing her eyes. "And you think that he'd seriously come into the station having raped his own girlfriend the night before?" she demanded coldly, earning the attention of PJ and Mark and causing Alex to look up in mild interest. "You don't ring the suspects to tell them that you're onto them!"
"It's always worked in Drover's Creek," Kari explained with an uncertain shrug. "It's easier to get them on the phone than to spend the next hour searching their property."
"This isn't Drover's Creek!" Amy reminded her harshly, causing her other colleagues to jump slightly. PJ watched on from the CI office door, now regretting his decision to send Kari out with Amy. "Ringing Keith Richards to ask him to come down to the station is the same thing as telling him that we know he raped his girlfriend. All he's going to do is do a runner and put her life in danger."
Kari stopped, lowering the phone as she looked at Amy expectedly. "So what do I do, then?"
"You wait for my instruction to pick Keith Richards up," Amy replied, "I am in charge of this investigation and you will not act without my instruction. The same thing goes for questioning victims and suspects, clear?"
Kari paused, nodding slowly as she looked away. Mark and PJ shared a worried glance while Alex returned his head to the crook of his arm while he moved the mouse of his computer around slowly; obviously trying to pretend that he was doing something of any use. "Clear," she mumbled in stunned reply, watching as Amy looked down at her expectantly.
"Now," Amy continued, straightening herself up, "we will be going to Keith Richards' house to pick him up for questioning and I will be taking the lead."
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PJ emerged from the CI office to the charge counter as Amy and Kari led a man in his mid-twenties through to the interview room, despite his protests of police harassment. The man tossed his unkempt black hair back from his face as he caught sight of PJ standing in the doorway, arms folded cross his chest.
"This is crap, the lot of it!" the man – presumedly Keith Richards – protested as Amy and Kari near forced him into the interview room. "I love Laura, I'd never lay a finger on her, I swear."
Kari headed into the interview room, prompting Keith to take a seat, while Amy approached PJ, holding her clipboard tighter to her stomach.
"So this is Keith Richards…" PJ mused, looking the man up and down as he took a seat opposite Kari in the interview room. He looked at Amy, hoping that the concern in his features wasn't too obvious. "You'll be okay, won't you?"
"Of course!" Amy replied, looking up to him with an expressed that she hoped would allay his fears. "Why wouldn't I?"
PJ watched as Amy headed into the interview room, closing the door behind him. His mind could think of a hundred reasons why Amy wouldn't be okay with this case and one of them was definitely Kari Izumi.
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"Now, Mr. Richards," Amy began, pacing the area of the interview room behind where Kari sat as she surveyed the man sitting opposite, looking up at Amy and Kari with disbelief in his eyes. "You attended a party last night at 106 Penthope Road with Laura Davis, correct?"
Keith rolled his eyes, looking up to Amy pointedly. "You've already asked that question and I've already said yes."
"And you are aware that she was raped last night, yes?" Amy continued, pausing as she pulled her clipboard closer.
"Yes, you already said that," Keith answered impatiently, looking to Kari pleadingly. "She can't pull me in here like that, can she?"
Kari shrugged, glancing back to Amy. "Apparently she can."
"I don't know what you want from me," Keith mumbled, his gaze switching between Amy and Kari quickly. "I wasn't even there long."
Amy paused, glancing down to Kari before looking at Keith again. "What do you mean?"
"I left half an hour in," Keith explained with a roll of his eyes. "Laura got pretty tipsy pretty quickly. I don't like it when she gets drunk, so I left."
Kari didn't bother waiting for Amy's reaction before butting in. "So her commonsense was compromised when you left the party?"
Amy shot Kari one of her infamous death glares, heading for the door. "A word, Senior Constable?"
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"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Amy demanded as she rounded on Kari, waving an arm back towards the closed door of the interview room. "That bastard raped his own girlfriend and you're trying to prove that she was drunk!"
"You heard him yourself," Kari pointed out, following Amy's arm with her gaze momentarily. "He said he didn't rape her. He'd left the party long before."
Amy looked away, shaking her head in disbelief. Who the hell did Kari think she was? "And you're taking his word for it?" she asked in indignation. "He's covering his own arse, that's all! I don't know what the hell kind of criminals you dealt with out at Drover's Creek, but criminals here lie!"
The sound of Amy's shouting once again brought PJ out of his office and he approached Amy slowly as Mark emerged. PJ looked Amy up and down as he gently pulled her away from Kari, only causing her to pull away in frustration. Mark looked from Amy to Kari and back again, folding his arms across his chest.
"I think we need to take a break here," he told them firmly, "sort out whatever's going on between you two."