Page 78 of Precise Justice

When Kathy had the correct amount of morphine in the syringe, she injected it into Robbie’s IV. Before that, she had taken Robbie’s temperature and a pulse reading. As Robbie was falling back asleep, Kathy told her the vitals were almost normal.

Robbie slept through lunch. When she awoke, she saw her father, Blake, sitting next to the bed. He saw Robbie’s eyes open, stood and went to her.

Leaning over Robbie, who tried to smile at him, Blake said, “I’m here, Robbie. They tell me you’re going to be fine.”

Through her wired teeth, Robbie tried to speak. What came out was a guttural sound from her throat.

“Ssssh, don’t try to talk. I’ll get the nurse. You wait here,” Blake said, making a little joke.

Robbie tried to smile and said, “Hmm,” through her teeth.

“We’re going to keep her for a few more days,” Doctor Groves told Blake.

He then looked at Robbie and said, “You’re going to heal just fine. We want to keep you to be careful. There was some internal bleeding. It has stopped but we want to be sure it doesn’t start again. Okay?”

Robbie tried smiling while nodding her head a little.

“There are two police detectives here. Do you feel up to it? Do you think you can write one or two word answers to their questions on a white board?” Dr. Groves asked.

Again, Robbie tried speaking and said what sounded like the word, try.

“I’ll get them for you. Do you want me to sit in and make sure you’re okay?” Groves asked.

Robbie shook her head once and pointed at Blake.

“I can have a nurse come in. Okay?” Groves said.

Robbie nodded and gave Groves a thumbs up. The nurse who found Robbie awake in the morning, Kathy, was quite pretty. Robbie hoped it would be her. It was not.

“Hello, I’m Detective Lucy Compton. My partner is Detective Melissa Myles,” one of the detectives quietly, politely told both Robbie and Blake.

“We are with the homicide division helping out with the sexual assault division of the Minneapolis police. We’ve been assigned to your case. We’ve worked cases like yours before so don’t worry about that.

“The first thing we want to say is how terribly sorry we are that this happened to you. You can believe we are going to give you our very best effort to find out who did this.”

“And put them in prison,” Melissa Myles said.

“You think there was more than one of them?” Blake asked.

Blake was standing on the left-side of the bed holding Robbie’s left hand. One of the day-shift nurses, an older woman whose name was Rose was in a chair to Robbie’s right.

“Due to the extent of her injuries I’d have to say it was likely, yes,” Lucy told Blake.

“Do you think you can use this whiteboard to answer some questions? We’ll try to keep it simple,” Melissa asked.

Robbie nodded her head once while Blake said, “She’ll try.”

Blake held the one square foot whiteboard while the detectives asked the questions.

The questioning itself only lasted about fifteen minutes. There was not much about the rape and assault Robbie could remember. Being experienced detectives, the two women were not surprised. Between the physical damage of the concussion, the blackout from losing consciousness and the brain’s reactions to block out the trauma, Robbie remembered very little.

“Sorry,” Robbie tried to say through her teeth.

“Don’t be,” Lucy said. “We’ve handled enough of these to know the victims typically don’t remember much.

“We have samples to run through a DNA analysis. Hopefully, whatever we come up with will be in our system. If not, if we do find suspects, the DNA evidence will usually nail him or them.”

“Okay, good. Will you keep us informed?” Blake asked.