WARNING: Sexual assault depicted in this chapter ... discretion is advised.
The day after New Years, with one week left to the resumption of the trial and just five days before Tammy's and Patrick's twins were due, Lucy was spending another day at her church's office in Glen Oak. After taking a few calls, she settled in for what she thought was going to be another ordinary day.
At about three in the afternoon, she heard a car pulling into the parking lot. At first she thought this was unusual, but she remembered that like her father Eric, she had an open door policy and was always willing to meet with a parishioner or anyone else who wanted pastoral advice. There was the squeaking of the old front door, then footsteps. Finally, there was a knock at the door.
"Who is it?" Lucy asked.
"Please let me in," a male voice said.
"I need a name first, and why you're here."
The next thing she heard was a cocking of a handgun.
"We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Open up, now." The voice was deadly serious.
"All right, but make this quick. I'll cooperate with you the best I can," said Lucy, "but that is all I can promise. Tell me what you want, then leave."
Lucy unlocked the bolt and slowly opened the door. She had no chance. It happened so fast that she had forgotten she had a gun of her own, inside the desk.
A man wearing a ski burst the door open, grabbed Lucy fiercely by her left arm, and shoved her to the ground. He was continuing to hold the arm and slowly began twisting it. Lucy screamed in agony.
The man took his fist and began sucker punching Lucy. Her eyes, her nose, her ears and just above her chin until her whole face was bleeding. He then grabbed a rope and tied Lucy up, her arms to a leg on her office desk. Her legs were left unbound, but she had been shoved so hard to the ground the man was sure she had broken them.
He did not pretend to care. Lucy's screams kept getting louder and louder as he ripped off her blouse, yanked her skirt, then progressed to pull off her shoes and stockings. All that was left was her bra and her panties. These too soon went. The man fiercely grabbed her bosom and kissed both sides, to even more tormented screams from Lucy. Finally, he pulled down the zipper of his pants, let his middle leg fly out, and he forced his way into her.
Lucy vividly remembered a year and a half before, when due to a medication mix-up Kevin subjected Lucy to the craziest and most painful lovemaking she ever had had with her husband. It was insane, but they still made love. But this wasn't even sex. It was savagery.
Something roiled inside of Lucy. She was mad as hell and she wasn't going to take it anymore. Using all the strength she thought she had left, she lifted her legs behind the man's back. Now this is better, he thought, as he was able to slide even deeper into her. He went in as much as he could, but that was what Lucy was waiting for. She lifted her legs off his back, then slammed them down on his body as hard as he could. He recoiled and withdrew from her. Lucy put her legs back on the ground and just as he pulled out totally she kicked his crotch so hard that he did a one-eighty and landed on his back.
He got up and made a second run towards Lucy. This time, she punched his face so hard that he now was bleeding too. He rushed her one more time and placed his hands on her face to try to smother her. But Lucy caught a third wind, and pulled the hands so much that he landed on his back again.
Lucy stood over the masked man. Finally she grabbed her gun and cocked it. In a voice that was hoarse but still audible, Lucy said, "Get the fuck out of here! Get out of here, and run as far as you can. Sooner or later, I'll find out who you are, and when I do, my baby sister and my sisters-in-law - " Lucy was referring to both Hope and Felicity - "will hunt you down, blow your fucking brains out, and while you're still alive grind your whole body into ground meat! Fuck off and out, now!"
Struggling, the man grabbed his jacket and ran out the room, having forgotten that his fly was still open and his meat was still hanging out. He ran to the car and drove away.
Lucy was in so much shock she could not remember to look out the window and get the registration tag. Instead, she clumped into her seat and picked up the phone.
"Nine-one-one," came the operator's voice. "Please state the nature of your emergency."
"This is Lucy Camden," said Lucy, having forgotten her married name. "I need paramedics and the cops here ASAP."
"May I ask the nature of your emergency, Reverend Kinkirk?" said the operatior, gently correcting the minister.
"I've been raped!" screamed Lucy. "And I think I'm going to faint!"
"They're on the way right now, ma'am. I'll stay with you on the line until they get there. If you want to vent, vent. I can handle it."
About five minutes later, a team of paramedics showed up, along with Kevin, Billie and Chief Michaels.
"My God, Lucy, are you okay?" asked the Chief.
"Yeah, Mike," Lucy replied. She was totally naked and shaking out of control. "I can't believe this happened."
"Kevin, you need to step out for a minute. You too, boss," said Billie. She grabbed an oversized towel from the paramedics and wrapped it around Lucy for the sake of modesty.
"She's my wife!" sputtered Kevin. "She needs me!"
"Kevin, we need to do a rape kit, now! The longer we wait, the smaller the sample will be."
"Fine. Sorry. Do what you have to do, Billie." Kevin kissed his wife on one of the few spots on her head where she wasn't bleeding.
As soon as he stepped out, one of the paramedics began the solemn procedure while the other sutured her wounds. They were used to doing this, but they were also friends of Lucy's and the knowledge of what had happened made them sick to their stomachs. While they went about their tasks, Billie set up two black lights. One was aimed at the paramedics and Lucy so they could see in the dark and continue the task. Meanwhile, Billie took the other one in her hands, drew the curtains and turned off the office lights.
"What are you looking for, Billie?" asked Lucy after a few minutes, squirming with pain as she was being probed. She knew rape kits took a while to procure and was trying to hold still.
"Maybe your attacker left some of his semen stains on the carpet, as well as inside of you," Billie replied. "The bigger the sample we have along with what he put inside of you, the better DNA sample we will have. I'm also looking to see if he left anything else behind. Hairs, personal effects, that kind of thing."
"I'm presuming I'm getting the morning after pill?"
"As soon as you get to the hospital. Hank has reserved a room for you already and has the pack ready."
"Tell my uncle thank you!"
"You can tell him yourself. He's a really cool dude - he delivered my and Jay's baby last year!"
"Cool! Um, by the way, how long do you think it'll take to get results, Billie? A match or something like it?"
"Two to six weeks, Luce."
"I thought it takes an hour!" said Lucy. She was finally comfortable with the paramedics, and managed to follow their instructions.
"You've been watching way too much CSI," Billie said. "I think the producers and actors should be manhandled for lying to the American public. No Lucy, you first have to hope the offender is already in the database. Often times, they aren't."
Billie was slowly working her way across the carpet with the blacklight, a few inches at a time.
"Even if they are," she continued, "you have to find the pool of suspects who match all six of the groupings we run at the initial level. And it has to be all six. If even one is a mismatch, they are excluded. Then you run a second test, where all the chromosomes are sorted. And that takes a long time in itself. Even with the supercomputers the Fibbies have, it takes a long time to sort through them, one at a time. I'm sorry Luce, I'm just telling you the way it really works."
"Well, we don't have that kind of time, Billie!" Lucy said. The kit was almost completed. "I have no doubt I was attacked because of the investigation my family got dragged into. It could be one of the key players, an accomplice, or someone we haven't even looked at. Whatever way, if he attacked me, he's going to strike again. And I'm positive his next mark is Felicity. Or worse, Hope."
"I agree, and I know why you think it may be one of them. The feds have already been notified. They'll be taking a statement from you as we will, as soon as we get to the hospital. Hey, wait a minute."
"What?"
Billie donned a pair of gloves. She bent down, and picked up a man's ring.
"Have you seen this, Luce?" Billie asked.
"I haven't," the minister replied, "but I know I had one hell of a struggle with the son of a bitch. I think when I managed to pull him out of me, I grabbed his hand and ripped that off of him."
Billie put the ring into a plastic bag and onto Lucy's desk. The officer continued walking around the room for a minute, finding some hair samples as well as more of the rapist's personal stains. These were added to the rape kit.
"We're clear."
By this time, the kit was finished. Lucy put her clothes back on, with help from the attendants, and sat back in her chair. She was still in a state of shock, not knowing where to sit or where to stand. But she had a thought.
"Billie, may I see the ring please?" she asked.
Billie handed her a pair of gloves. She turned the lights back on, and let Kevin and Michaels back in.
Lucy held up the ring to her eyes. There was nothing distinguishing on the outside. She then examined the inside, and gasped.
"There's an inscription," Lucy said. "It's in Hebrew. Do you guys have a magnifying glass?"
Kevin pulled out his multitask knife, and handed it to his wife.
Lucy took a closer look at it. And looked at it.
"Oh man," she said. "It's been so long since I looked at something with Hebrew in print. I can't read this anymore. Unfortunately, both Richard and Marvin are out of town -" Lucy was referring to Matt's father-in-law as well as the other rabbi in the city. "- so we're stuck." She handed the ring back.
"How are we going to find out who this ring belongs to?" asked Kevin. "If it's a common Jewish expression, there could be thousands of these rings."
"Perhaps not," replied Billie. "You know my twin brother, Russell, runs a jewelry shop. He's a member of the trade's association, and they have a lobby group. We take a picture of this in landscape. If the lobbyists send an e-mail blast to the other members, maybe one of them will recognize it."
"Won't that blow the case right open, Billie? This is the kind of thing we normally want to withhold."
"We'll use their secure members-only site, Kev. You never know. Any lead is a lead. Come on, Luce, let's get you to the hospital."
Lucy was helped on the gurney. It was at this point she could not bear it anymore and started crying a torrent of tears. She embraced Kevin and they shared a long but uncomfortable kiss. At the hospital waiting for her were her and Kevin's children, Charles, John, Rhiannon and Bill. They were crying too, asking how anyone could hate their mother so much.
The news quickly made its way to Saint Louis. The entire gang expressed various amounts of outrage, but none more so than Ruthie and Felicity, who both customized their homes' walls with a fist punch. Hope controlled her anger, but went to her and Ruthie's basement and grabbed a rifle. Her wife's blood had been hurt. Now it was personal.
Billie's hunch proved right. Three hours later, she got a call from the police department in Bismarck, North Dakota. An elderly Jewish jeweler said he had made a ring just like it, nearly forty years prior.
"Lucy's right, Kevin," Billie told her partner at the hospital. "We don't have time. But you and your kids need to stay with your wife for the next day or two until she gets over the shock. Jay and I are going to fly up there tomorrow. LAX to Bismarck with a one hour stopover in Minneapolis. We'll liaise with the locals there, then meet with our potential witness."
"What about your kid?" asked Kevin.
"Eric and Annie have agreed to babysit him until we get back ... probably the day after tomorrow."
"Good luck." Kevin kissed Billie on her cheek. "Thanks for coming through for Lucy. I'm glad you're my best friend."
"You're welcome. And I feel the same way about you." Billie hugged Kevin. "And tell Lucy I'm so sorry this happened to her! If she wants to talk, I'm just a call away."