A Fistful of Rain Read Free Page B

truck?”
    “It was a Ford, a big one.”
    “What color?”
    “Blue, maybe green? It was dark.”
    “You didn’t see the license?”
    “It was an Oregon plate, that’s all I know.”
    Dunn spoke on his radio to someone, telling them that they were looking for a big Ford truck, blue, maybe green. I didn’t hear the response he got.
    “And you say your things were inside when you got back?” Watanabe asked. “Is anything missing?”
    “No, not that I can tell. I haven’t had a chance to look.”
    “But it doesn’t look like anything’s missing?”
    “No, but I haven’t had a chance to look.”
    “I understand that.” He glanced around the kitchen. “It doesn’t look like there was a break-in.”
    “It happened outside!”
    Dunn and Watanabe nodded.
    “When was your last drink?” Dunn asked.
    “I had a drink, I had a drink when I was on the phone with the dispatcher person.”
    “Before that?”
    “I told you,” I said, and I really did try not to sound shrill, but I was seriously starting to fray. “I’d just gotten home, I’d been on tour. I just got back from Australia.”
    “You were drinking on the flight?”
    “That was hours ago!”
    “How long have you been on tour, Miss Bracca?” Dunn asked.
    “A year, almost exactly.”
    “And this house has been empty all that time?”
    “No, I’ve been home a couple times, and I had my brother checking on the place.”
    “What’s his name?”
    I hesitated, then figured if my brother had done something so bad they knew who he was, they’d certainly already know his name.
    “Mikel,” I told them. “With a
k
and not a
c
and an
h.
But I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
    “We’re just trying to be thorough.”
    “My brother didn’t force me to strip in the back of a pickup truck!”
    “We’re not saying he did.”
    “You’re saying you think I’m making this whole thing up.”
    “There’s no physical evidence here, Miss Bracca,” Dunn said. “There’s nothing missing, you don’t appear to have been injured; in fact, you maintain you weren’t. We’ve got cars out in the neighborhood, they’re looking around, but all we’ve got right now is you, and frankly, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
    “I’m not making this up,” I said, more to myself than anyone else.
    “You’re describing a kidnapping, that’s serious stuff. And then what looks like the start of a sexual assault. But it doesn’t track, it doesn’t execute.”
    I stared at the cops opposite me. “Why would I make this up?”
    “We’re not saying you’re making this up.”
    “There was a
man
with a gun, he made me take off my
clothes
—” But Watanabe interrupted me, holding up his hands, trying to soothe. “Miss Bracca, we’re taking a report, and we’ll put out a description for this guy, have a car stay in the area. But this doesn’t really sound like a stalker, or even a break-in. It sounds like maybe, just maybe, this was a guy thinking he had a mugging or something, and then he realized who you were, and he realized how far over his head he’d gotten.”
    “You don’t believe me.”
    “We certainly believe that you believe something happened,” Dunn said.
    “So that’s it?” I asked after a second.
    “We’ll file a report,” Dunn said, and from his tone I could tell he was moving into wrapping-up mode. “Keep an eye out, and there’ll be a patrol in the area. You should have some detectives calling you to follow up tomorrow.”
    “And that’s all?”
    “Miss Bracca, I understand your frustration. But there’s really no evidence of any crime having been committed.”
    I nodded, not because I agreed. It wasn’t enough to say that I’d been terrified and humiliated, and trying to convince either of them that it hadn’t been just some mugging gone wrong, that it had been a stalker, seemed suddenly like a very egotistical claim to make.
    And I was tired and out of cigarettes and still feeling a little