“Fine with me. You can have the spare bed—I’m going to pull the mattress off the daybed here and sleep on her bedroom floor in case she needs me.”

Audrey’s teeth showed momentarily, white against her mahogany skin, as she gave a snort of laughter. “No need to be a Victorian damsel, Vic. She’s really going to be all right. You don’t need to sponge her with lavender water or whatever they used to do for fever victims.”

“It’s not that—it’s just that she was badly frightened. If she wakes up disoriented I want to be there for her.” It was the least I could do, after all.

“Whatever you want.… How about a snifter of that brandy before I head back into the rain?”

22

Bedside Watch

Before Audrey left she reminded me that she needed to report the assault to the police. She spoke belligerently, as though expecting me to try to conceal it.

“No, I agree,” I said. “In fact, I want to call the local station and see what they know about it. You want to wait while I do that? They might send someone around.”

Audrey went to the kitchen to make coffee. Like Lotty, she’s an abstemious drinker—one glass of brandy would tide her over for the rest of the month. Max was on his second snifter, but then Lotty only buys Cordon Bleu for him.

I was in luck when I called the district station. Conrad Rawlings, a sergeant I know and like, was working the four-to-midnight shift. He promised to look up what they had on the assault and send someone over to talk to Audrey and me. Half an hour later, as Audrey, Max, and I were making laborious conversation, Conrad showed up in person. He had another officer, a young woman whose head barely cleared his armpits, in tow in case Lotty was up to making a statement.

“Absolutely not,” Audrey said firmly. “She’s sleeping now and I hope she’ll keep on doing it until morning.”

“Skolnik and Wirtz—the officers who interrupted the attack—got a sketchy statement from her,” Rawlings said. “So I guess it can wait until tomorrow. But she wouldn’t let them take her to a hospital—kept telling them she was a doctor and she would make decisions about her health care. They thought she was in a pretty good state of shock, maybe concussed besides, but her car was drivable and she could drive it, so they couldn’t force her.”

He waved an arm at the young woman. “This is Officer Galway. She’ll be keeping some notes as we talk. Since we can’t ask the doc, you tell us what happened, Warshawski, and why.”