Detective Snow had already closed the door behind them and was pulling some binders off of one of the bookshelves and placing them on one corner of the table. Kate walked around the table and sat on the opposite side, putting as much distance between her and Detective Snow as possible. She had her back to the mirror on purpose to try and help her forget that it was there.
Kate sighed and fidgeted with her hands, nervous about beginning this interview. She began to wish she had asked Derrick to come with her when he offered this morning, but she knew that things were still fragile there. She had been worried that if she asked him to come, it would be too much for him and he would leave again.
She had seen it before when she was younger and her father couldn’t handle the abuse she dealt with then. She knew that men just were never going to be able to be there for her. She knew that Derrick was always going to disappoint her if she tried to lean on him for help. She didn’t know what she should do about that because it seemed so cynical, but had life ever proved to her differently?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Detective Snow finished bringing over four very wide and full binders to the table from the bookshelf in the interview room. She then picked the seat across from Kate and settled herself in, grabbing a notepad and a pen from the middle of the table. Kate put her purse on the table and slipped her jacket off, resting it on the chair behind her.
“Alright, Kate, so I would like to do a few things today if you don’t mind. First, I would like to just talk and get to know you, then hear in your own words what happened and anything that you remember about the night of your attack that could help us catch this guy.
Then, I have these binders full of mug shots and there are specific ones I would like you to look through just to see if you recognize anyone. It would also help because you can say well he had hair like this guy, a nose like that guy, and whatever other features you recognize and that could help me come up with a better idea of what he looked like.
This is a recorder. With your permission, I would like to record this interview just to make sure that I don’t forget anything. It can also be used later in court if we find this guy. Is that okay?” Detective Snow started explaining to her, Kate just nodded along silently.
“That is fine.” Kate agreed.
“So, how does all that sound? Doable?” She asked her, checking to see how Kate was feeling. Again, Kate just nodded silently that she understood. Detective Snow nodded and then pressed a few buttons on the recorder in the center of the table, turning it on.
“Great, well tell me a little about yourself then, what is your full name?” She asked.
“Kate Jackson.” Detective Snow scribbled it on her notepad.
“And what do you do?”
“I work in sales at an office furniture company. My uncle owns the business and hired me when I needed a job. I don’t want to do it forever, but it’s just to pay the bills for now as I figure out what I want to do.” Kate explained, her hands fidgeting. She always felt the need to explain her job because she felt inadequate stating that she was just a sales representative.
“Alright, how is your job? Do you get along with everyone there?” The detective asked, “Oh, and I hope you don’t mind that I am writing this down, I just want to make sure to get an accurate history of everything.”
“No, I don’t mind, Detective Snow.” Kate said.
“Call me Liz.” She smiled at Kate, trying to be warm and friendly, then going back to writing on her notepad.
“Okay, Liz, well work is fine. Like I said my uncle owns the company so everyone is pretty nice to me. There are always people you don’t like at work, but no one that I would think stands out enough to mention.” Kate said, specifically thinking about her irritating coworker, Frank, who was Lenny’s assistant.
“Well, on that topic, what about family? Where do they live?” Liz continued her interview of Kate.
“My little sister, Annie, lives in New York City. My Uncle Lenny lives here in DC, but he is actually not a blood relative. He was my dad’s best friend growing up and we just always knew him as our uncle. My dad died a long time ago and my mother left when we were young, so it’s pretty much just Annie and me now.” Kate told her, feeling a little sad at the memories of her broken family.
“I met Annie at the hospital, right? You two must be very close.”
“Yes, that was Annie. We try and see each other at least once a month and we talk on the phone a lot. We are very close. She is the one that I called first after everything happened.” Kate said, smiling at the thought of her sister.
“So, you called Annie after the attack? Why not call the police?” The detective looked at her with a puzzled expression. Kate shrugged, she wasn’t totally sure about the answer to that either.
“I don’t know, I just didn’t want to be seen like that by strangers. I just wanted somebody that I trusted.” Kate said, trying her best to explain something that she didn’t even understand.
“So who else do you trust?” Kate thought about the question for a moment, trying to figure out who else besides Annie she trusted with her whole heart.
“Well, I trust my boyfriend Derrick.” Kate said, but even as she said it she knew that that wasn’t completely true anymore. Before the attack, she would have said that without hesitation but now she knew it wasn’t the same. He had betrayed her trust and even with the events of last night and this morning, that wasn’t something he would just gain back instantly.
“Tell me about Derrick.” Liz said, scribbling everything down on her notepad.
“Well, his name is Derrick Kane. He is a lawyer, criminal defense mostly. We met about six months ago at a coffee shop that I go to a lot. We have been dating ever since.” Kate stated, fidgeting with her fingers again.
“And where was he on the night of the attack? I would like to get his contact information from you to we can talk to him as well if that is okay.” The detective looked up at her.
“Yeah that is fine. He had just left my apartment. We had been gone all weekend in Delaware for a small vacation. He had just dropped me off at my apartment and brought all my bags inside. I thought it was him at the door, which is why I answered it without looking.” Kate said.
“So, your attacker came in through the front door? Can you tell me more about that?” She asked Kate. Kate gulped and sighed, knowing that they were getting to the more serious parts of the interview now. She was fidgeting a lot and decided to sit on her hands to try and calm herself down.
“Well, Derrick had just left not even a minute earlier so when I heard a knock at the door, I thought he had forgotten something and come back. I just opened the door without looking through the peephole because I assumed it was him. I always look through the peephole.” Kate said, almost defending herself.
She was embarrassed that she had made that mistake and she thought that she needed to defend herself to the detective so as to not sound like an idiot. She didn’t realize but her voice was beginning to sound a bit panicky.
“Kate, let’s slow down for a minute. Just because you opened the door, with or without looking through the peephole, doesn’t change the fact that none of this is your fault. Your attacker did this to you and he is the only one to blame.” The detective put her pen down and leaned over the table, placing emphasis on the point that she was not at fault.
Kate nodded at Liz and appreciated the reassurance but deep down, Kate still felt the blame in her gut that she was the one who had made the mistake that allowed that man into her home and into her life.
No one else had opened that door, just Kate.
“Let’s sidetrack for just a moment, Kate, and then we can go back to that.” Detective Snow said in hopes of easing Kate’s anxiety.
“Is there anything you remember about what he looked like? Any sort of characteristic at all that could help us get a picture of what he looks like?” She asked Kate.
“Well, he was wearing a mask, Liz. I don’t think I would even r
ecognize him if he was standing in front of me right now.” Kate said, feeling like she was disappointing the detective and wishing she was able to help more.
“Alright, well you know there is still a lot you can tell about a person even if he was wearing a mask. How tall do you think he was? When you first opened the door, was he a little taller than you or shorter or same height?” She tried to pry a little deeper.
“He was definitely taller, I am pretty short to begin with.” Kate agreed, excited to have a small piece of information to give her.
“He was wearing all black, including the ski mask, which was definitely black and thick. There was no way I could even see through that. I remember at one point that I was surprised at how strong he was. I mean, he wasn’t wearing super bulky clothes but you could tell that he was pretty average. There were no bulging biceps or anything like that, you know?” Kate started remembering things that she hadn’t thought of before, even though she had experienced it. Detective Snow was scribbling furiously on her notepad, eagerly listening to Kate and clearly happy to be getting somewhere.
“Oh and when we were on the bed, I did get one good hit in. I remember because it surprised him and he fell to the side just a little bit, not enough for me to get away but enough that his ski mask moved a bit. I could see his hair sticking out a bit on one side. It was a light brown and maybe a bit shaggier than most men wear it, but still not very long. ” Kate finished stating everything she remembered about him and then sat back and sighed.
“Kate, that is great. This is really helpful information.” Liz encouraged her, still writing down what Kate had told her.
“Do you think that you are ready to talk a little bit more about what happened?” She asked Kate gently, looking up from her notepad to evaluate how Kate was handling the interview. Kate just nodded, she was feeling a bit calmer for a moment, just glad that she had been able to give some helpful information.
She didn’t know why, but something about being able to tell Detective Snow about her attacker made her feel a bit more in control, a bit stronger. She began to think that maybe going to the police was the right decision and that this is something that she could do.
“Well, once the door was open everything happened really fast and some of it is a blur. He hit me really hard right in the chest and all the air went straight out of me. I couldn’t breathe or make a sound and fell straight backwards. I was trying to scream but there was no sound coming out.” Kate said, her eyes glazing over a bit as she remembered the evening in her account to the detective.
“He must of closed the door at that point, but I don’t remember. My vision was pretty blurry from being hit so hard, everything looked fuzzy and I was just trying to breathe. Then, my hair was suddenly being pulled and my head felt like it was on fire.” Kate reached up and caressed her hair, comforting herself at the reminder of the pain.
Detective Snow was furiously scribbling away on her notepad, trying to keep up with everything that Kate was saying. She nodded her head and looked up at Kate every few moments to follow along.
“Next thing I know, I am on my bed and he is punching me and everything is just black. I had been trying to get away and I think I got one hit in which he wasn’t expecting, but that made him angry.
That’s when it got even worse and I think I might have lost consciousness for awhile because he just kept punching me and kicking me. I tried to stop, but he was much stronger than me.
I tried to scream but he had covered my mouth with his hand.” Kate told the detective, her speech slowing and becoming quieter as she recalled the event.
The pain of that night was still fresh in her mind and every time she closed her eyes, it replayed in front of her. Talking about it now brought it back clearer than ever, she had never actually sat down and talked about it with anyone.
The last week had just been about recovering and coming home and dealing with Derrick, but she hadn’t dealt with what had actually happened. She had been doing her best just to not think about it, pushing it away like the photograph hidden in her Bible. If it was hidden, then it was like it hadn’t happened.
“Is that when he sexually assaulted you?” Detective Snow broke the pause in Kate’s story, trying to nudge her to continue talking. Kate looked back up at her, realizing that she had been in her head instead of continuing to talk to the detective. Kate opened her mouth to answer but instead all she did was nod her head. She didn’t know what to say to Detective Snow, she didn’t know how to explain the rest of what had happened.
“I don’t know exactly how it happened because everything felt pretty distant and removed. I kind of zoned out because the pain was just so, it was just so…” Kate sighed and rubbed her eyes with her hands. There were no words that accurately described what had happened to her and there was no way to explain the pain that had overtaken her.
“I understand.” Detective Snow put her hand across the table, resting it on Kate’s forearm in an attempt to comfort her. Kate looked down at the table and blinked hard, trying to push back the threat of tears. She didn’t know where they had come from because she had initially thought that she could just come in and recite everything as facts, just like they had happened. She hadn’t accounted for the fact that she hadn’t dealt with any of her emotions surrounding the event.
“Kate, we are going to catch this man. Do you hear me?” Detective Snow said to her very seriously. Kate looked up at her and nodded, but she didn’t really believe it.
“How about we try looking through some of these mug shots now?” Detective Snow grabbed one of the binders and opened it, turning it to face Kate.
“Would you like something to drink while you look through it?” The detective asked Kate as she stood up and collected her notepad and turned off the recorder, pulling out the tape from inside.
“No, I’m good. Thank you.” Kate said politely, touching the first page in the binder and looking at the photographs.
“Alright, well just let me know if you need anything while you are looking through those. I am going to talk to my partner for a few minutes and update him on everything, okay?” She headed out the door and looked to Kate for confirmation, Kate just nodded.
Once Kate was alone in the room after Liz closed the door, she looked down at the pages in front of her. There were twelve small photographs on each page, three across and four down. Each photograph contained a mug shot of a man’s face but nothing else. There was no identifying information or names or explanation of why all these faces were in a binder staring back at her. She couldn’t help but wonder what each of these men did and if all of them were similar to her attacker or in there for other types of crimes.
She turned through the first few pages seeing nothing that stuck out to her or was even remotely familiar. The book was so thick that she almost expected to see someone she knew, but after almost an hour of turning pages she still hadn’t seen anyone she recognized. It actually was a bit depressing to Kate, realizing that there were so many criminals out there. Some of these men looked exactly like what you would picture a criminal to look like, but most of them looked pretty normal. She could have passed any of these men on the street without ever knowing that they were dangerous.
Kate sat back in her chair and sighed. She didn’t see anyone like her attacker in here but how would she even know? He had been wearing a mask, which she had told Detective Snow already, but the detective seemed convinced that something in here might jog her memory anyways. Kate yawned, a bit tired of looking through all these photographs for over an hour now. She continued to flip through the pages slowly, focusing on each photograph.
Suddenly Kate sat up in her chair and looked more closely at the page she was on. There was a face on the second row near the end that she recognized, but she couldn’t remember where she recognized him from. She stared at the photograph hard, racking her brain for where she had seen this man before. He had wavy brown hair that just reached over his ears. For most men with hair that way, it wo
uld look like they needed a haircut but somehow he pulled it off and it looked like he could be staring at her from the pages of a magazine.
He was very handsome but something about his gaze was very intense. It made him look frightening and not at all surprising that he would be in a binder like this. In the photograph he had a five o’clock shadow on his face and was wearing a dark gray t-shirt that looked like it could stand to be washed. She kept looking back at his face though, knowing that it was someone she had met before but unable to figure out where.
Kate sat back in her chair and sighed with irritation. She opened her purse and pulled out a bottle of water, opening it and taking a sip. As she drank the water, she suddenly remembered where she had seen this man before! She stood straight up in her chair and looked towards the door, she had to tell Liz.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Liz? Detective Snow?” Kate opened the door to the interview room and stuck her head out, looking around and calling for her.
Detective Snow was standing over the desk that Detective McCraig was sitting at and she looked up when she heard her name called. She smiled and nodded at Kate, finished saying a few words to her partner and then walked over to Kate.
“See anything you recognize?” She asked Kate as she walked back into the interview room and closed the door behind her. Kate went back to sit in her chair and pointed to the photograph of the man that she recognized.