A Balm in Gilead: A Novel

By Marie Green-McKeon

A woman survives a harrowing assault on a college campus. Ten years later, she is stunned to hear of a murder case with markings chillingly similar to her attack. This is the story of how a rape victim reluctantly heads down the path she most fears in the hope that she can stop the attacker, find some measure of justice, and, most of all, heal herself.
After enduring the kidnapping and sexual assault as a college student--and watching her attacker be brought to trial only to be set free--Quinn Carlisle has managed to put her life back together. A decade later, a young woman is murdered, found with the same word tattoo, carved with a knife in the same manner as Quinn suffered in her attack. The news explodes her rebuilt, fragile life. But it also forces Quinn to make tough choices: plow back into the world of law enforcement and perhaps stop her attacker once and for all, but also facing her demons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Marie Green-McKeon
• Release date: Jul 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9780990433811

Marie Green-McKeon

Marie Green McKeon has been a journalist, an advertising and marketing copywriter, and an editor, as well as an author of fiction. She lives near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

Book preview

A BALM IN GILEAD

A Novel

By Marie Green McKeon

A BALM IN GILEAD Marie Green McKeon Copyright (c) 2014 by Marie Green McKeon. Published by White Bird Publishing at Smashwords.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in cases of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, contact the publisher:

White Bird Publishing

E-mail: [e-mail]

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, institutions, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design: Rachel Caldwell

Editing: NY Book Editors

ISBN 978-0-9904338-1-1

First Edition

To Jack, with love and gratitude,

and in memory of my mother

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Early April 1987: a university campus, Pennsylvania

Chapter 2

A decade later, moving on

Chapter 3

Early April 1987: a university campus, Pennsylvania

Chapter 4

1997: Maryland

Chapter 5

April 1998: a state park in Maryland

Chapter 6

April 1987: the university

Chapter 7

Spring 1998: Maryland

Chapter 8

Fall 1997: San Antonio, Texas

Chapter 9

Spring 1998: Maryland

Chapter 10

July 1988: a county courthouse, Pennsylvania

Chapter 11

December 1997: San Antonio, Texas

Chapter 12

Spring through summer 1998: Maryland

Chapter 13

End of summer 1998: to Ohio

Chapter 14

Fall 1998: Maryland

Chapter 15

Fall 1998: Maryland

Chapter 16

Fall 1998: Maryland

Chapter 17

December 1998: Maryland

Chapter 18

Winter Solstice 1998: Maryland

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

There is a balm in Gilead

to make the wounded whole.

There is a balm in Gilead

to heal the sin-sick soul.

—from an African-American spiritual, based on Jeremiah 8:22

Prologue

It must have been about seven years later that I came upon her: an anonymous co-victim, a secret companion who, like me, bore the brunt of a terrible crime.

It was a chance encounter a good number of years after what my friends, family, and law enforcement gingerly and euphemistically referred to as the attack. We would speak of it in a near whisper, as if speaking louder might resurrect all sorts of horrors. Certainly by the time I saw this young woman, a long enough period had passed so that few people would even broach the topic of the crime, or the series of events that followed. It wasn’t necessary to dredge up the past, really. Everyone—including me—believed that this brief but ghastly chapter in my life was over.

I was waiting my turn in the doctor’s office, my head aching and feeling as pumped up as a balloon. I suspected a sinus infection and I had been waiting for about forty-five minutes for a doctor to confirm it. At first I resisted touching anything in the waiting room for fear of smearing my germs about. I became so bored that I convinced myself that it was probably a non-contagious infection and began flipping through the old magazines that were scattered on the wide table separating the banks of occupied chairs. Soon I was bored with this activity, too. Still, there seemed nothing better to do than to reach over and sift through dated issues of Good Housekeeping, Time, and, curiously, Bon Appétit. I was thinking that someone in this practice must be into cooking, when I happened to glance up at the newly arrived patient who was picking her way through the crowded waiting room.

She was young, attractive but pale, with a look that could only be characterized as stricken. Sinking into the vacant seat opposite me, she pulled a book from her bag and buried her face in it, leaning over so that her long, silky hair became a screen that hid the book jacket.

I couldn’t help staring. Something about her was recognizable, I thought. It could have been something in her expression that looked familiar. After less than a minute of reading, the young woman picked her head up and sat back, as if reading was too much for her. Holding a finger in her book to keep her place, she leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. She seemed exhausted and sad.

I glanced at her book, which was held at an angle that let me read part of the title. I could make out the words rape victims.

She’s just like me, I realized. Immediately I felt the old, weird rippling sensation in my face: the skin flattening against my cheekbones like I was on an amusement park ride, the cartilage in my nose vibrating like a tuning fork. You couldn’t exactly say it was like someone striking your face. It was more of a phantom pummeling, like a ghost was punching me.

My face carried the memory of my attack. The rest of me could manage to forget, but my face had total recall. In the immediate aftermath, I experienced this sensation all the time, sometimes from the most innocuous occurrences. It rarely happened anymore. Except that here in the waiting room, without warning, the muscles and bones were bringing back everything I wanted to forget, from the first powerful, surprising blows to my terrifying escape. Once again, my face betrayed me.

I looked again at the young woman. From the raw, bruised look of her, I could tell this girl had recently gone through her own experience. I’m not sure how I didn’t recognize the symptoms immediately—the impression of a piece of butchered meat that had been thrown unceremoniously from a cold storage locker, and then kicked into the street to be run over by traffic. I didn’t need a doctor to diagnose her as a member of the same secret club that I belonged to.

I thought about talking to her. I really did. I pictured myself getting up, moving around the big coffee table, dropping to my knees at her feet. I would let her know that I understood perfectly because I had been through a similar experience. I would tell her . . . tell her what? Keep your chin up? That everything would be okay?

I was a coward for not saying anything, for letting her suffer alone. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk waking the sleeping monster inside me, not after all my hard work to normalize my life. And it was normal. I was very proud of that fact.

So I sat there watching the inner turmoil playing out on the girl’s waxy face before I had the sudden thought that I could be wrong. She’s just here to see the doctor about a physical ailment, she’s not feeling well, and she’s reading this book for a college sociology course. It’s a coincidence. She’s not my secret companion after all.

No, I thought. No, my first reaction was right. Even so, it was better not to take the chance. I had a history of projecting my problems on others. I recalled, with embarrassment, that brief period early in my recovery. It was long after the physical injuries had healed, after the trial. I was seeing one of the psychologists my parents were always sending me to. This doctor suggested that talk might be the best therapy. I think she meant within the context of some sort of support group, but for several months I had the bright idea to tell my story, to expel it, to rid myself of it for good.

The first time I ventured a complete narrative of my attack and the subsequent trial was an exceptionally poor choice. It was during an evening out at a local club with a group of friends. I didn’t want to go; they insisted it would help. A boy, with whom I was only slightly acquainted, sat next to me at the large round table and offered to buy me a drink. I’m sure he was expecting bantering or flirting, not a confession.

I don’t know how I got started or what brought it on. All I knew is that, while halting at first, the story eventually poured from me like a rush of water down an unclogged drain. I talked faster than I thought possible, my words tumbling over each other. I began experiencing that facial distortion. At times I had to cup my hand around my nose to stem the tuning fork vibration. Midway through, I had a more violent physical reaction, and my whole body began to shake uncontrollably. I wrapped my arms around my torso to try to control the tremors. I went on like that, talking and talking and barely stopping for breath, all while clutching myself and occasionally, spastically, grabbing at my face.

I stopped only because I had run out of words. When I looked up, the face of my listener registered with me for the first time. He had the look of a traveler stuck on a bus or plane next to a nutty passenger. I had to give the guy credit for not bolting from the bar halfway through my story. But then again, I was blocking his exit.

Over a period of several months, I couldn’t stop the strange compulsion to buttonhole strangers, the merest of acquaintances, anyone, really. I would tell my story to anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. It didn’t matter how it affected the listener. The point was to cleanse my soul. It was verbal bulimia and, once finished, I was spent but relieved, momentarily free.

In the end, only one person listened to the story with true interest. It turned out to be the last time I felt the need to relate it for a long time.

She was an older woman, a captive audience on public transportation, so it could easily have gone bad, the way it did with my first listener in the bar. It was during a long New Jersey Transit ride into Manhattan, when I was once again with a larger group. There were few open seats in the car, and I slid into one next to an elegant woman who reminded me of a small bird. She had bright brown eyes and a bird-like way of cocking her perfectly coiffed head. It didn’t take long for me to find an opening to launch into my tale, and she appeared somehow calm rather than fidgety as she trained her bright eyes on me. She asked a few questions. It was clear she was neither put off nor unsettled.

This person had had a similar experience. I was quite certain in this realization as we solemnly shook hands good-bye at Penn Station. I watched the woman walk away on her bird-like legs and thought, What, did you think you were the only victim in the world? The woman might have said that herself. Instead, kindly, she had only listened.

My friends that I had traveled with were urging me to join them, but I lingered a moment to watch the woman make her way across the crowded floor. Perhaps the woman felt my gaze because I saw her stop and search around. She spotted me, sent a brief smile, and disappeared into the sea of commuters.

It was after this telling that I gave up the practice altogether. After that, I rarely mentioned the attack to family or friends, to those who were with me throughout the ordeal. Most of the people I met afterward—especially those I met after my talking cure, as I came to think of it—knew nothing about the experience. I liked it that way. It helped me to see it all as a mere aberration, however unfortunate, from the ordinary progression of my life.

I remembered all this as I watched the woman across from me at the doctor’s office. Maybe I owed this person the same kind of assistance that the bird-like woman on New Jersey Transit had given me. It was probably an unspoken rule of our secret society. You help the next victim, pay it forward.

I shifted in my seat and started to sweat. Despite the fact that this person was clearly drowning in her own despair, I couldn’t make myself get up to help her. I couldn’t even reach out a hand. Something held me back. A voice inside said, You’ve done more than your share already.

I became angry, suddenly and unreasonably angry. I was even angry with the girl across from me. It should have been enough that I had suffered and—thank God—survived a brutal attack, but the fact remained that I had done more. I had done everything I could, everything I was asked to do, to try to stop the creep who had done this to me, so that others wouldn’t have to suffer the same fate. I listened to all of them—the police, the lawyers, the health professionals—when they went on and on about how it may be a bit of rough going through the legal system, it’s no day at the beach, but you’ve got to do it. You’ve been given a big gift, you know. You have the power to stop this guy from hurting other girls. All you need to do is to go into court and tell the truth and everything will be fine.

Except everything didn’t turn out fine.

No, I’ve managed to successfully shove those old demons into some secret closet where no one—most of all me—had any business entering. I had tried valiantly to do the right thing and let justice take its course, and it all went wrong. What could I, one little victim, do? I was damn lucky to survive the attack, even if it meant I had to endure the subsequent humiliation of the courtroom. I certainly couldn’t have stopped the chain of events from unraveling the way it did.

I felt tears welling, and angrily brushed them away. But the anger was no longer directed at the victim across from me, or the well-meaning people in my past, or even the horrid judge who presided over my case. I was angry because now I realized it wasn’t good enough that I had survived. A certain truth also survived. Little pieces of this truth had been buried all this time in that dark closet. It was the truth was that it wasn’t really over. I may have accomplished a semblance of a recovery, but it wasn’t going to be over until there was more than recovery. Someday there would have to be a reckoning.

The door opened and the nurse appeared. She glanced down to check the file in her hand. Quinn? Quinn Carlisle? We’re ready for you now.

I rose and walked toward the nurse with my head high, and not even a glance at the waxy-faced girl across the room. It was time for me to move on.

Chapter 1

Early April 1987: a university campus, Pennsylvania

I should have known when I woke without the alarm.

My eyes fluttered open of their own accord. I assumed that my inner clock had roused me ahead of the buzzing of the clock radio, which I kept in a far corner of the bedroom. The strategy behind this positioning was a simple one: it forced me to get out of bed in order to shut off the alarm.

Even though I was like any other college student who keeps late hours and has trouble waking early—I had fallen into bed the previous night after one o’clock, exhausted both from working late and then trying to squeeze in some reading for a literature class—in my fuzzy haze, I thought waking on my own made sense. Of course today I would wake naturally, because today I needed to get to the bus stop on the other side of the campus. My body knew I needed to get up in time to catch the morning bus home.

I was stretching my limbs to full length to try to push the fuzziness away and to gain full consciousness when I froze. Something was wrong with the light.

My bedroom in the semi-basement apartment has one small casement window. But even from my severe angle of view from the bed, the sun seemed too high in the sky for it to be near dawn.

I bolted from the bed and lunged at the clock radio. Its rectangular silent face stared back at me. As I held it, the large numbers clicked from zero-nine-five-nine to ten o’clock. I had overslept by two and a half hours.

I checked the top of the clock radio and groaned. I had forgotten to switch on the alarm. This morning, of all mornings, when I had to get home for the funeral.

I stood there a minute, swaying, still clutching the radio, and considering my options.

The obvious choice would be to call my parents for a ride. But I didn’t have the heart. My mother was distraught over the loss of her mother, whose funeral I was supposed to attend. My father would be busy supporting my mother and helping with the funeral arrangements. He would not be able to miss the wake this evening. My brother, Frank, could drive, but was without a vehicle, having recently totaled his in an accident. Our parents had been holding fast, refusing to lend him the family car on principle. They certainly wouldn’t trust him to drive the six-hour round-trip to retrieve me from the university.

I compiled a mental list of friends and acquaintances (lengthy), who owned cars (much smaller), and whose homes were relatively close to mine (nearly nonexistent).

There was one other option. I could ask my roommate to drive me home.

Judith was from Ohio, so she didn’t live anywhere near my family. But she did own a car. Maybe she would like to explore my part of Pennsylvania. We could invite Judith to stay at our house. Come for the funeral, but stay for the after-party! It was an insane idea, but I had to try.

As usual, I struggled to yank open the cheap bedroom door. The wood tended to warp in the damp apartment. In fact, most things felt slightly wet, which was not exactly comfortable, especially during the harsh winter we had only recently emerged from. But the place was more spacious than typical student digs, and we had yet to see any vermin, which gave me some comfort. I was a little wary of my living quarters, since the guy from the third floor said both ends of his apartment floor were listing toward the center. Since then, I’ve been worried that his bathtub might come crashing into our apartment. Even with the safety hazards, living arrangements like this, on the fringes of the university, were more desirable than the cramped and noisy dormitories. I should have been satisfied with this place, but what really made me feel trapped was my roommate, Judith.

I tugged hard on the door and burst into what served as our living room. The heavy shrubbery that covered the single small glass block window allowed little light to filter into the room.

Judith? It came out in a whisper. I could see the door to her bedroom was ajar. I peeked in cautiously because you never knew if her boyfriend was over. But the room was empty.

Great. Normally Judith spent Wednesday mornings the same way she spent every waking moment that she wasn’t in class or with her boyfriend: studying like mad. She was always hunched over the small metal kitchen table, and would growl if I had the audacity to pour corn flakes into a bowl or—heaven forbid—if I stirred soup in a pot and scraped the spoon along the bottom.

Must you make that racket? Judith hissed once, keeping her eyes glued to a textbook page almost entirely covered in hot pink highlighter. Some people are trying to study.

Yeah? Well, some other people like to eat once in a while. To prove I was only joking, I tossed the spoon up to the ceiling with the intention of catching it. I missed. Actually, I ducked when I saw the spoon heading directly at my face and was forced to chase after it as it clattered to the floor near Judith’s feet. You skipped highlighting a word there, I told her on my way under the table.

Judith’s absence today could signify that most rare of occasions: when Little Miss Stiff-Necked took her nose out of her books and let herself have some fun. I felt a little guilty at my uncharitable characterization. But it was difficult to like Judith, mostly because Judith detested me.

I wasn’t quite sure where this hatred, with its great depths, came from. Among my friends, the general consensus was that Judith was jealous. It infuriates Judith that you’re popular, my friends told me. She wishes that she were like you.

There could be some truth in that. Most of the time Judith had only her boyfriend, Sal, for companionship. Sal idolized her, but he could be whiny and annoying. He got on my nerves during his lengthy stays in our apartment.

Judith and I weren’t acquainted when we agreed to take the apartment. In my first two years of college, I had several roommates I hadn’t known prior to sharing a dorm room or an apartment, and those situations had turned into fast friendships. I guess I had expected this arrangement to follow the same pattern. But this roommate deal wasn’t working out at all, contrary to what Eloise, the mutual acquaintance who had brokered the arrangement, had predicted. Judith has this place. She needs a roommate. You need a place and would be a great roommate.

I headed to my room to pack. There was nothing left to do but see if I could catch the next bus. Hopefully there would be a next bus. They ran irregularly despite all the college students in the area.

I was shimmying under the bed to retrieve my good black shoes, when the door rattled open. As soon as I heard Judith drop her keys on the kitchen table, I pulled myself with difficulty from under the bed and leaped out of the bedroom, blurting out my request. Thank God you’re back. I have a huge favor to ask and I promise I’ll never ask anything again.

Judith looked annoyed. What is it?

I know it will really be an imposition—

Quinn, just tell me. Judith was unpacking her book bag in her usual intense, deliberate manner. She began to rifle through one of her many notebooks, glaring at the pages. That’s when I remembered that Judith had recently mentioned something about cramming for an important test.

I stumbled over myself. You know my grandmother’s viewing is tonight . . . you do know my grandmother died? Anyway, I missed the bus and I was hoping you could . . . that you might drive me home . . . My voice trailed off. It sounded pathetic, even to me.

Judith’s withering look didn’t help. You’ve got to be kidding. I have classes the rest of the week.

Judith plopped herself on the kitchen chair and began arranging her study materials with precision. As a matter of fact, I have plans and a phenomenal amount of studying to do. If you’re too lazy to get up in time for the bus, that’s not my problem.

What a bitch. I stifled the impulse to say it aloud. My mother’s voice echoed in my head: No matter how rude someone is, never sink to their level.

I headed back to my bedroom to finish packing. Glancing back, I saw that Judith was already hunched over her textbooks.

Well, she had taught me a lesson. It was, after all, a lot to ask someone to drive two hundred miles out of her way. But let’s face it. Judith was too mean-spirited to drive two hundred feet.

It was later than I had anticipated and already well past dusk on Saturday evening when I finally arrived back on campus. The Greyhound bus had dumped me in the unpaved lot that served as the bus depot. I had been forced to scamper down the steps of the bus, my bag providing so much momentum that I nearly fell out. The ill-tempered bus driver had made it clear that he wasn’t planning to linger in this godforsaken university town in the middle of nowhere.

You best get off quickly if you don’t want to end up in Pittsburgh, the driver announced as he slammed on the brakes. One second I was perched at the top step, hanging on to a metal pole, and the next moment I was on the ground, barely landing on my feet as the bus pulled away.

Coughing out the last of the diesel fuel exhaust from my lungs, I looked around the depot. Rather, I tried to. It had been cloudy and damp all day, and now a thick, black night had overtaken the campus.

Sighing, I hoisted the long strap of my purse over my shoulder and picked up the boxy, fabric-covered suitcase. It was light but awkward to carry, as I had discovered the other day after Judith gave me the brush-off. On the return trip, the mile or so to my apartment seemed an impossibly long distance.

I was exhausted, and not just from the stress of getting home or the uncomfortable bus rides. It was the emotion of the last few days. Not that I wished death on anyone, but if it had to be someone old and also a relative, why didn’t God see fit to take, say, a very old, never-seen great-aunt? I hadn’t been prepared to lose Nana, who had moved in with us after my grandfather died twelve years ago. She had been in failing health for the last two, but I had refused to acknowledge it.

At the funeral, I nudged my brother and whispered, Remember when we talked Nana into buying all those lottery tickets? You had her convinced that your mathematical mind could figure out the winning numbers if only you had enough to work with. We chuckled, but I had to look away when I saw Frank’s eyes starting to water.

As children, Frank and I had basked in the pure pleasure Nana took in us for our smallest accomplishments at school or in sports, or in her fretting over our slightest illness. I don’t think either of us felt that one was favored over the other. But I secretly felt a special bond with my grandmother that was mine alone. My unusual first name, Quinn, was my grandparents’ surname, my mother’s maiden name. Don’t you pay any mind to what they say about your name, Nana would tell me, smoothing my hair when I ran into the house sobbing after another merciless teasing on the school bus. "Did you know that I’m the one who suggested your name to your mother and father? I’m proud that you’re carrying on the Quinn family name,