She said nothing at first, and Burke had the experience not to push her. Leigh stared at the numbers in the upper right-hand corner, watching the time tick by until, forty-eight seconds later, Tammy finally spoke.
“I don’t—” She cleared her throat again. Her esophagus wasn’t raw just from the strangulation. During the rape exam, a nurse had stuck a long swab down her throat to find traces of semen. “Sorry.”
Burke stretched to his left and opened a mini fridge Leigh had not noticed before. He took out a bottle of water, twisted open the top, and placed it on the table in front of Tammy before sitting back.
She hesitated, but finally took the bottle. Leigh winced as she watched the woman struggle to swallow. Water dripped from the corners of Tammy’s swollen lips, pooling into the collar of her scrubs, darkening the green.
Burke said, “There’s no rule to this, Ms. Karlsen. You start the story where you feel comfortable. Or don’t. You can walk out of here at any time.”
Tammy’s hands shook as she returned the bottle to the table. She looked at the door, and Leigh wondered if she was going to leave.
But she didn ’t.
Tammy took a few tissues from the box on the table. She wiped her nose, flinching from the pain. She worked the tissues in her hand as she started talking, slowly walking Burke through the beginning of a normal evening that had turned into a nightmare. Getting off work. Deciding to go out for a drink. Leaving her car with the valet. Sitting alone at the bar as she drank a gin martini. She’d been ready to leave when Andrew offered to buy her another drink.
Leigh flipped back in her notepad. She counted off the two and a half gin martinis that the security cameras at Comma Chameleon had recorded Tammy consuming.
As Tammy told the story of moving to the rooftop deck, she was off her alcohol consumption by half, but most people didn’t remember how much they drank. It didn’t matter. Leigh would look petty in front of the jury if she pushed the woman on actually ordering three martinis instead of two.
She turned her attention back to the video.
Tammy was describing Andrew the same way anyone would describe him—a little hard to read, but nice, professional, an adult at an age when a lot of her generation was not. Tammy was clearly cut from the same cloth. She told Burke that she felt like they had hit it off. No, she didn’t know Andrew’s last name. He worked at a car dealership, she thought. Maybe a mechanic? He liked to talk about classic cars.
“I let him—I kissed him,” Tammy said, the guilt in her tone implying that she thought that made everything that had happened afterward her own fault. “I flirted with him, then at the valet, I kissed him for a while. For too long. And then I gave him my business card because—because I wanted him to call me.”
Burke let her sit in silence. He was clearly making the connection that Tammy had spent so much time talking about Andrew for a reason, but he was wise enough not to try to put words in her mouth.
For her part, Tammy was looking down at her hands. She had shredded the tissues. She tried to clean up the mess, gathering the stray fibers on the table. When she reached down to the floor, she groaned, and Leigh was reminded of the damage that the Coke bottle had done.
Burke leaned to his left again, this time to pick up the trashcan. He placed it by the table. He was so big and the room was so small that he did all of this without leaving his chair.
Tammy worked to get every single wisp of torn tissue into the wastebasket. Seconds passed. Then minutes.
Burke patiently watched. Leigh imagined he was processing the story so far, checking his own boxes, making sure that he’d gotten answers: Where did the victim first come into contact with the suspect? How much alcohol was consumed? Were they taking illegal drugs? Was the victim with friends? Who could be a potential witness?
Or maybe Burke was considering the next batch of questions: Did the victim shove, punch or kick her assailant? Did she say “Stop” or “No” at any time? How did the assailant behave prior, during, and after the assault? What was the chronology of the sex acts performed? Was force or threat used? What about a weapon? Did he ejaculate? Where did he ejaculate? How many times?
Tammy had finished cleaning up the tissue. She sat back on the couch. Her head started to shake back and forth, as if she’d heard Burke’s silent questions and already knew her response. “I don’t remember what happened next. When I got to the valet. I was in the car, I think? Or—I don’t know. Maybe I remember some things. I can’t be sure. I don’t want to—I can’t ruin—if I don’t remember—I know I need to be sure.”