Her grandmother stopped brushing and let Kateri’s hair fall, smoothing it with her hands.
“I know you feel that way now,” she said.
“Ever,” Kateri said.
She’d lost both parents in four years, between twelve and sixteen. Heart attack, drug overdose. Her mother just didn’t wake up. They’d been watching TV, and when her mother passed out, which wasn’t unusual, Kateri went to bed.
In the morning she was in the same spot, cold.
Her immediate feeling had been rage. It took her years to feel any sadness or grief at her mother’s death.
Her grandmother kissed the top of her head. “It’ll change,” she said, and Kateri snorted in disapproval and rolled her eyes.
Now she makes a steeple of her hands and presses them against her face, breathing through them. The room is lined with alcoves of saints, most of them women. Both the hospital and the women’s college were founded by nuns. The stained-glass window behind the altar is a blazing immaculate heart, flowers laced between the swords.
She stands, woozy from the warmth of the room, and makes her way down each side of the chapel, stopping at each image. Bridget with her bowl of fire and reed cross. Monica, an old woman, the mother of St. Augustine. Bernadette, the girl saint in her grotto.
* * *
Kateri remembers that the sisters she failed slept on cheap blow-up pool mats instead of real beds. The two of them side by side on the living room floor, a string of Christmas lights hanging above them.
They’d been attacked by their mother’s boyfriend.
She remembers her own mother’s boyfriend grabbing her by the wrist and leaning close to her face with beer breath. “You could make a million fucking bucks,” he said, “with those tits, if you just had blue eyes.”
Kateri lights the candle underneath the girl saint and lets the red glass glow.
She doesn’t ask for anything. She doesn’t know how. But she stands for a moment, thinking of little Birdie, with her red hair and her green eyes, and waiting for the ache inside her to go away.
* * *
They admit the girl, settle her in a room on the pediatric ward, and give her a sedative. Kateri meets the attending in the hallway. He says the child is in shock.
“She doesn’t have a great grip on reality,” he says, and then adds, “which is difficult to tell sometimes in a child so young. We’ll run a full psychiatric evaluation tomorrow,” he says, “in addition to some further physical testing. She would not let us do a pelvic.”
Kateri’s eyes narrow. “Is there something that makes you think that’s necessary?”
“Well, if you want to rule out sexual assault by an invader,” he says, as if Kateri ought to know.
“I don’t know that there was an invader,” Kateri says, “and if there was, I don’t know that the crime was sexually motivated. And what do you mean, she wouldn’t let you, if you’d sedated her and she has, as you said, a poor grip on reality?”
“She bit a nurse.”
He’s still in his twenties, she thinks. Gingery, with a face that will always look younger than his age. She tries to imagine him someplace else, out at a bar, running. He is attractive, and that annoys her further.
“We tried,” he says. “But she thrashed. If she was assaulted, we are required by law to do a rape kit.”
“I’ll decide that,” Kateri says. “In the meantime, wait until it’s requested. It’s invasive. I don’t know that it’s necessary.”
“Well, it’s evidence,” the attending says. “And I would think that anyone who fought the kit that hard had likely been assaulted. It’s not like she didn’t know what we were examining or looking for.”
Kateri looks at her fingernails and not at the doctor. “Could be,” she says, and then shrugs. “She’s what, five? She may have been taught to fiercely guard her privates. She doesn’t know you. You’re a strange man to her.” Kateri’s lips are tight when she looks up at him. “All your rape kit proves,” she says, “is penetration within the last forty-eight hours. And nothing else if there’s no semen left behind. I’d like to speak with her.”
“We’re going to need ID and parental or state consent,” he says. “Who did she say she was?”
“Her name is Birdie.”
“That’s a pet name,” the doctor says.
“You don’t know that,” Kateri says.
“Her mother?” He asks.
“Is likely dead,” Kateri answers.
“Is there a guardian?”
“None specified,” Kateri says. “This is an active investigation.”
“I understand, Detective.” He looks off down the hall, low lit, where people walk by in pairs or push carts and announcements come on overhead. In a Catholic hospital like Mercy, the day begins and ends with a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. “I sent her clothing to the lab as you requested,” he says.
“Thank you.”
He looks quick over his shoulder and then says, “Can I ask you something?”
Kateri crosses her arms over her chest. “Of course,” she says.
“Do you think she’s responsible?”
“For what?” Kateri asks, her eyes suddenly wide.
“The murder,” he says.
“Why would you think that?”
“Detective,” he says. “She was covered in blood. She was very close to the crime. Very close,” he says again.
She feels a headache begin behind her eyes. “Doctor, we have not recovered a body,” she says. “This girl is what, forty pounds?”
“I’m just telling you what I saw,” he says.
“Maybe we can concentrate on our own roles in this,” Kateri says. “Unless you want me to conduct the medical testing? And you can investigate the crime scene?”
He sets his jaw.
“When can I talk to her?”
“Tomorrow,” he says, cold. He takes a step back from Kateri. “She’s resting,” he says. He clips his pen onto his coat pocket. “Good night, Detective Fisher.”
She watches him disappear down the hall, walking into the light, tall, thin, like a skeleton wearing clothes. She takes her phone out and calls Hurt.
“We haven’t found anything,” he says. “I shut it down for the night. It’s getting dark. We’ll resume at first light. How’s the kid?” he asks.
“Covered in blood,” Kateri answers.
“Injured?” he asks.
“Nothing apparent.”
“Interesting,” Hurt says. “If she were older, we’d arrest her.”
“She couldn’t have locked herself in that closet,” Kateri says. “It was locked from the outside.”
“I’d like to know what she saw,” he says.
“Me too.”
Before she goes, she asks the nurse if she can peek in on the child they have labeled Jane Doe. An officer has come to stand guard by her room. A kid, she thinks, just out of training.
“You are?” the nurse asks.
Kateri shows her badge. “I’m the lead detective,” she says. “I won’t disturb her,” she adds.