[February 16, 14:00]
Flack watched Juliana through the window, waiting for Stella to finish talking to the nurse that had attended to her when she awoke. She was sitting up in bed, her knees propped up on a pillow, a book in her lap. She was too immersed in her reading to notice him just outside her door. Her hair, brushed and considerably less disheveled than last time he'd seen her, fell in wavy blonde wisps, obscuring her face.
"Nurse says she's been very calm," Stella reported. "She says Juliana woke up, took stock of all the bandages on her, thanked the nurse and doctors for their care and asked if she could leave."
"What's the rush?" he wondered, his eyebrows scrunching together in confusion.
Stella shook her head, equally puzzled. She knocked twice, they stepped into the room, and she shut the door behind them. "Juliana?" Stella said softly, keeping Grayson's pronunciation lesson in mind.
She dog-eared her page and looked up, her face brightening. Her lips were turned up at the corners in a small smile. A dusting of light freckles fell across the bridge of her nose and a square of gauze was taped over the scrape on her cheek. And then there were her eyes. Piercing ice blue, lit up from within by a spark of pleasant surprise. "Spreek je Nederlands?" Juliana asked excitedly.
"Oh, um, I'm sorry?" Stella stammered.
Her face fell and her gaze dropped to her lap. "Never mind," she murmured. The whisper of an accent cloaked her English, some of her consonants ever so slightly off, but pleasant to listen to all the same.
"You could try me in Greek," she suggested, "but I'm afraid I'm no good in Dutch."
Juliana closed the book carefully, the injuries on her palms clearly still bothering her. "Αστυνομία?" she tried hesitantly. She was uncertain of the sounds, but it was understandable.
Stella couldn't stop her features from perking up the exact same way Juliana's had a moment ago. There was something special about hearing her native tongue in the middle of New York. And from a very unexpected source. "Yes, yes, I'm with the police. I'm Detective Bonasera." She gestured to Flack, pausing. Victims, women especially, tended to be less intimidated by the tall detective if he introduced himself. He looked every inch the hardened cop, but he became so much more approachable when he smiled. As the silence stretched on, Stella turned to him, her expression asking what the hell he was waiting for. Instead, she caught him staring at Juliana, mouth slightly agape, completely off guard. Stella elbowed him sharply in the ribs, then talked over him while he held his side and coughed. "And this is Detective Flack."
He cleared his throat and raised a hand in greeting, saying nothing as the redness began to creep onto his cheeks. Thank God Juliana had missed the whole thing, her eyes still trained on her knees. Grayson hadn't lied about her aversion to meeting people.
"We spoke to your husband a few days ago and he told us how to pronounce your name," Stella explained. She watched the woman carefully, looking for any sign of alarm at the mention of Grayson Bailey. It was hard to tell because she avoided eye contact, but Juliana didn't seem fazed. In fact, she might have smiled. Stella approached the hospital bed with measured steps while Flack remained by the door. The only thing worse than telling family what had happened was telling the victim the sequence of events. "Juliana, you were attacked on Saturday night," she said gently. "We found you in an alley. You were stabbed three times, in the back."
Juliana glanced briefly at Stella again, but remained silent. One finger ran up and down the edge of the front cover.
She sat down in the chair, putting herself a little lower than their victim. Juliana was getting increasingly withdrawn and Stella wanted to make herself as nonthreatening as possible. "The NYPD is already investigating," she reassured the woman. "We gathered evidence from the scene, your clothes, and your person. We are making progress, but we need to ask you some questions about that night."
Juliana thumbed the pages of the book, or tried to, then winced and stopped. "I have nothing to say," she said quietly, after a long pause, keeping her gaze down.
Flack frowned at her wording. It wasn't unusual for victims to be unwilling to discuss traumatic events, but they usually said something along the lines of 'I don't want to talk about it' or 'It was all a blur'. Juliana was sounding like a suspect in the hot seat, two seconds from demanding a lawyer.
"Juliana, I know you're scared," Stella said sympathetically. "It's okay. It was a brutal attack. But any information you can give us will help us find this criminal and put them behind bars." She leaned over to try and get a better view of the woman's face, but Juliana turned away, resolutely avoiding her gaze. "The hospital has security watching your room," she nodded to the uniformed man who was doing his rounds, "and once you're discharged, we can assign a patrol unit to watch over you. We can protect you. You're safe now," Stella assured her.
Juliana didn't look up, fingertips still toying with the book.
Stella's heart broke for this woman. She was so terrified she wouldn't talk, even now with detectives in her room. An educated guess might put enough of a crack in the dam that she would spill the whole story. "Was it your husband? Grayson?" she prodded gently. "You moved out of his place when the marriage fell apart. To get away from him. And he didn't take too well to that."
"It wasn't Grayson," the blonde said. He wouldn't hurt her, that much she knew.
Flack crossed the space between the door and the hospital bed in a few long strides. "I thought you didn't remember anything," he scowled, towering over her.
Juliana's head snapped up. Her face scrunched in pain and she groaned, the wounds on her back protesting sharply. Once she got them open, her icy eyes stared right into Flack's, watching, studying.
As the seconds ticked by, he barely managed to cling to his composure, crushed under the weight of her penetrating stare. He planted his feet stubbornly and stared right back. He wasn't going to let a bedridden woman intimidate him with nothing but her baby blues.
"Say that again?" Juliana said pensively.
"You heard what I said," he retorted. "Or did getting stabbed in the back mess up your ears?"
"Flack!" Stella shouted, aghast.
At Flack's harsh words, she conceded their staring contest, but there was a faint smile on her lips, like she was satisfied with something. "I said I have nothing to say," she corrected him.
"You know what? We could've done this the easy way, or the hard way. Now Stella here," Flack tipped his head towards her, "is nice. She tried to give you the easy way. Me?" he tapped a finger on his chest. "I'm old school. We didn't do the easy way back then." The detective walked up to the bed, his hands gripping the rails. He leaned down, his face inches from hers. He could see every thread of the gauze square on her cheek. The woman kept her eyes on the book despite his threatening proximity. "Here's the hard way. You've got one chance to tell us your story, and that is right now. Because if you don't, we're gonna figure it out. Whatever you're hiding, whoever you're protecting, sooner or later, we're gonna know." Flack warned. "You're up against New York's Finest, and you don't stand a chance."
Stella shot to her feet and seized Flack's wrist, pulling him towards the door. Pair protocol be damned, she wasn't letting him stay in Juliana's room for another second. "Out!" she snarled, thrusting him into the hall and slamming the door. She exhaled, thankful in that moment that Flack hadn't resisted. He wasn't a man that could be moved if he didn't want to be. "I am so sorry for his behaviour," she apologized, turning back to Juliana. "He's usually much more... professional than that."
"I have nothing to say," Juliana repeated, opening the book to the page she had marked. The interview was over.
Stella nodded. "Sure. Here's my card," she left it on the bedside table, "if, um, if you do have something to say." She left the room and made a beeline for the elevator, trusting Flack would follow. The silver doors slid shut and she rounded on him. "What the hell was that?" Never, in all her years working with him, had she seen him use his hardened cop persona on a victim without evidence to back it up.
"She's hiding something, I know she is," he sneered. "She wouldn't give it up, so I tried another way. It's called 'good cop, bad cop'."
"She's a victim, Flack. You had no right to treat her like that!" She could hardly remember the last time she had been so angry with someone on the team. Flack had crossed the line, and not by an inch, by a mile.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned to face the doors. "She knows something. She's protecting someone." You didn't have to be the son of a legendary cop to figure that out, it was blindingly obvious.
"Well you're not going to find out by treating her like that. Not on my watch," Stella snapped. She stormed out of the hospital, started her truck, and headed for the lab. Thank God they had each driven their own vehicles, because she didn't think she could stand a car ride with Flack right now.