Diana Chan lived all the way across Bos-Wash, in the area still known as Harvard, but we made excellent time with our top-priority clearance. Our on-board computer stopped us directly in front of her building, a tall, rambling structure that was on its last legs. Built before plasteel had been developed, it stood almost anachronistically on the edge of the city, a tall chrome and glass tower stretching some fifty-odd floors into the smoggy artificial sunlight. We put on the flashing lights in our car, to indicate we were on official business, and we entered the lobby of her building.
There was no doorman or any roboserv, but we managed to find the building directory in an alcove just to the left of the entrance door. Miss Chan's apartment was listed simply D. Chan, which made me immediately suspect that the rapist, whoever he was, must have known her by sight, for certainly he hadn't gotten any clue from the directory. There were buttons next to each name, and a speaker in which to talk, but no wall screen.
"It's an old building," I said, waiting for Miss Chan to respond to my ringing of her bell. We knew she was at home, and expecting us, for we'd spoken to her before we had left my office.
"Hum…" Jocelyn said, non-committally.
"Yes?" The voice through the speaker sounded metallic, but not enough to disguise its feminine origin.
"Miss Diana Chan?"
"Yes, it is. Who am I speaking to?"
"This is plain-clothes Detective Browne. I spoke to you a little while ago from my office."
"How do I know you're the same man?" she questioned.
I smiled at Jocelyn and shrugged. "Can't you tell from my voice?"
"Well… you sound like the same man, but how do I know for sure?"
"Policewoman Wolfe is here with me. You remember her, don't you? She spoke to you also. See if you recognize her voice." Then, to Jocelyn, I said: "Say something to her."
Jocelyn leaned into the speaker. "Hello, Miss Chan. This is Policewoman Wolfe. You remember me, don't you? We spoke over the wall screen. I'm the blonde who was sitting next to Detective Browne."
"Well… I guess it's all right. You both sound like the people I spoke to. I guess it's safe for you to come up. I'm apartment 33-J."
"Thank you, Miss Chan," I said. "We'll be right up."
The antigrav shaft was out of order, so we were forced to take a rickety elevator up to her floor. It was the second time in as many days that I'd been on an elevator. Probably I wouldn't ride another for another few months. Sometimes things went like that.
"She seemed very suspicious," I observed.
"Wouldn't you?" asked Jocelyn. "Especially after what she went through."
Apartment 33-J was the last door at the end of a long, winding corridor. It was a large metallic door with the number painted on. I knocked loudly.
"Who's there?" Miss Chan called from behind the door.
"Detective Browne and…"
The door opened a crack, and Miss Chan peered out at us. "Show me your identification."
With a patient sigh, I passed my I.D. card to her. It slipped behind the door, and then a moment later, it reappeared in her hand. "Policewoman Wolfe's identification, too."
Jocelyn handed it to her.
Miss Chan opened the door. "Ail right," she said, still behind the metal door, as if she were using it like a shield. "I guess it's safe…"
The apartment was small, but clean and orderly. We were led into the living room where I observed that rarest of rarities, a real wooden floor. Through the years of continual scrubbing, the wood was almost bleached white. Against the far wall was a small-sized wall screen, obviously new because the wall around it was freshly poured plasteel where it flowed into the older, plaster wall. We sat on an organic pillow which molded itself to our bodies' shape. Miss Chan sat in an imitation wood straight-back chair across from us.
"I hope you don't think me suspicious," she said. "It's just that since the… the incident I'm quite nervous. It upset me more than I like to admit."
"Not at all…" I said.
"That's quite understandable," Jocelyn said.
"Can I offer you something?" She glanced over at the food-dispenser in the dining room. The dispenser was very small, barely functional. "Something to eat, perhaps? A cup of caffnil?"
"Nothing, thank you. If you don't mind, I'd like to get right to the questions."
"Oh… yes, of course," she said nervously. "The questions. Always the questions. I swear I must have gone over this a hundred times with the other policemen. You know, the ones in the uniforms…"
"Well, just one more time, then," Jocelyn said. "I don't think you'll have to be bothered with this again after today."
"I see… yes." Miss Chan shrugged in tired resignation. "Oh, well, then… where shall I begin?"
She was a small slender woman, in her early twenties, with short straight black hair, worn in that upsweep that has become so fashionable of late. She was wearing a student's green smock through which her small but firm breasts protruded. Except for a slight elongation of her eyes and her somewhat high cheekbones, her oriental heritage was hardly discernible.
"If you don't mind I'd like to set up our recording equipment first." I unsnapped the top of the portable quadcorder, then placed it on the floor between us. I activated the start button. "Now we can begin."
Miss Chan looked at the machine apprehensively. "What is that?"
"It's a quadcorder," Jocelyn explained, setting the young woman at east. "It records not only your words and image, but it picks up the beating of your heart and your respiration as well. It's standard practice to use this in all interviews."
What Jocelyn failed to mention was that the quadcorder, through its monitoring of heartbeat and respiration also acted as a completely reliable truth verifier. In short, a lie detector.
"Now then," I began. "I'm going to begin with some general questions, and then well get to the details of the… attack."
Miss Chan, nodded nervously, but didn't speak.
"Would you state your full name and address, date of birth and occupation…"
She did, indicating that she was indeed a student. "What are you majoring in?"
"Alien psychology…"
Jocelyn cut in. "Oh, really? How fascinating. I minored in that. Where are you studying?"
Miss Chan warmed to Jocelyn. "Did you really? Not too many people are interested in that subject. That's really nice… Oh, yes: where am I studying? Bight here at Harvard. At the Symposium."
Two points for Jocelyn, I thought, observing her technique. Maybe she does have some police qualities. "You're not originally from Bos-Wash, are you?" she went on, gently pumping the young woman.
"No, I'm not." Miss Chan smiled and visibly seemed to relax in her chair. "I'm from Hawaii originally. I'm only in the city because of school."
"Do you come from a large family?"
"Do I?" Miss Chan laughed. "I have thirteen – no, make that fourteen – brothers and sisters. Mom's had another since I began school. I'm the number three daughter: third oldest."
Skillfully, Jocelyn went on like that, eliciting bits and pieces of information, building up Miss Chan's background, until it was time for me to take over. I began asking her questions about the rape.
"Now, Miss Chan, in your own words, could you please tell us what happened…"
"Well, I went down to the lobby – I got a call, and when I got back…"
"Just a second. You said you got a call. From whom?"
"I don't know. A man called over the downstairs speaker saying that he had a package for me. He said he didn't want to bring it all the way up, so he was going to leave it in the lobby. I said all right, and then I went down to get it. Only it wasn't there. I looked all over but there was no package. So I went back upstairs to my apartment. He was in the apartment when I got here. He was hiding in the bedroom…"
"Wait a second. Can we go back a bit. When you left the apartment to go downstairs, did you lock your apartment door?"
"Yes I did. I always do. Besides, it has an automatic lock. Even if I would have left it wide open, the roboserv mechanism would have swung it shut."
"I see. Does anyone else have a voice card? Is the lock programmed for any other voices?"
Her head shook solemnly. "No, I am all alone. I have brought up an occasional man, but that has only been for sex. No one but I has ever lived here. That's what frightens me: how could he have gotten in?"
I laughed cynically. "That's easy enough: a forged voice card. He must have made an unsuspecting recording of your voice, pressed himself a transposed voice print, and impressed it on the card. Unfortunately, it's done every day."
"Is there anything I can do?" The girl looked sincerely frightened.
I was going to shrug helplessly when Jocelyn cut in. "There is something new on the market. Of course it's still experimental, but it seems to work quite effectively. It's a mechanism that's attached to the inside of your apartment door. A piece of metal which only you have is inserted into the mechanism, and that throws some tumblers, and a metal bar clicks into a housing in the doorjamb. The door is locked. A heavy metal bar holds the door shut. No one can get in unless he has an identical metal insert like the one you have. It's almost foolproof. I'm thinking of getting one myself."
I waited while Miss Chan took down the information, then I went on with my questions.
"Tell me again what happened from the time you decided to return to your apartment?"
"Well, I came up when I couldn't find a package…"
"Did you see any one going in or out of the antigrav shaft? Either the up or down side?"
"No one."
Jocelyn said: "He probably took the elevator."
I nodded. "Then what happened?"
"I walked down the hall to my apartment, I opened the door, and I walked in. I remember that I was veil angry. At first I thought that someone had stolen the package, but then I realized it must have been a hoax. I was angry because I had been studying. I had an examination the following day in Conversational Turiops Truncatus." She paused. "Well, anyhow, he was waiting for me when I went into the bedroom…"
"Can you describe him?" Jocelyn quickly cut in. She leaned forward intently.
"No… I never saw him. He told me not to turn around. But I heard his voice. I would remember that I ever heard it again." Miss Chan shuddered. "I don't think I'll ever forget that voice."
"What did he say to you?"
"I don't remember his exact words: He said something about not turning around. He said he would harm me if I did. His being there terrified me, so I did as he asked. I didn't think to question him."
"What did he ask you to do?" Jocelyn wanted to know.
"First he told me he was going to rape me. I asked him what he meant. I had heard the word before, but wasn't sure exactly what it meant. He told me it was an old-American word, pretty much obsolete now because it had fallen out of use. He told me it meant fucking – but forced fucking." Miss Chan shuddered again, then shut and opened her eyes. "I said that I didn't under stand that: how could fucking be forced? It was some thing that two consenting people did together: how could that be forced? He said that the man would insist on fucking, even if the woman didn't want to, and that he would make her do it even if, he had to hurt her. That's silly, I said. No man would insist that a woman fuck him. If she said no, he would go away. No one would be that rude…" She shuddered again. "I guess I just didn't understand…"
"What happened then?" I asked.
"He threw something to me and told me to put it over my head. It was a leather sack. A small black leather sack with a drawstring around the opening. He told me to put it over my head. I did. Then he told me to pull the drawstring tight so I couldn't see out. There was a hole for my mouth so I could breath, and holes near my ears so that I could hear him, but it was quite terrifying to wear that… thing. It was like death-mask."
"My God…" Jocelyn said softly.
"So I put it on," said Miss Chan, "and I pulled the string. He came up to me and tied the string in a knot so that I couldn't take the mask off."
"Then what happened?"
"He told me to strip. He told me to take my clothing off – all my clothing off. What a strange request, I remember thinking. If he wanted to see me naked, he could have easily met me in the street somewhere and told me honestly and openly. I am not a prude. If he were nice-looking maybe we could have fucked. Why did he have to do it this way? It was so… sick!"
"The world is full of sick people," Jocelyn said, her voice quivering with bitterness. "Go on, please."
"So I undressed… feeling foolish and frightened at the same time. When I was naked, he told me to play with myself. You know… to masturbate. But, I cried out through the mask, if you want to fuck me why not do it the right way? Let me take off the mask. He said masturbate, so I did."
"Did he tell you to do anything specific?"
"No, he just said masturbate. To do myself the way I do when I want to come. So I began to play with myself. I rubbed my cunt and pinched my clitoris and played with my breasts. Well, you know how it is with sex: once you start you naturally begin to enjoy it, and I began to get wet. I began to finger my cunt, shoving up one, two, three fingers – while I'm standing there, with my legs wide open…"
"Did he touch you at all?" I asked.
"No, not while I was masturbating."
"Go on."
"I began to enjoy it a lot after awhile, and I guess I forgot where I was and what was really, happening to me. I began to masturbate as if I really wanted to come. I have this thing – this way of masturbating – that is really great and really works for me. When I started to get hot I began to do it to myself. What it is, is that I separate the lips of my cunt so that my clitoris is exposed, and then, instead of rubbing it or rolling it, I take my fingernail of my index finger – that's why I keep it so long, see?" She stopped to show us her fingernail. "Anyhow, I scrape the fingernail across my erect clit very rapidly, very roughly. Usually it brings me to orgasm within minutes…"
"Did you come from masturbating?" I asked.
"No, I didn't. I was building toward it, and thinking about it, and I suddenly realized how sick the whole thing was. I mean, this man must have been crazy to ask me to do such a normal thing in such a perverted situation. I mean it would have been just as absurd if he would have forced me – under threat of physical pain to eat my dinner. More than anything else, it was the normalcy of his request that frightened me. God, if he only had asked me to do anything else, I would have understood. But to force me to masturbate, to tell me that he was going to fuck me – only a madman would have forced me to do what I readily would have done without being forced!"
"And then what happened?"
"I stopped masturbating and I told him to leave me alone. I told him I was going to scream. He got angry and yelled at me. Then I heard him walk closer, and he sprayed something at me. I remember it smelled funny, and then I don't remember anything. The spray, whatever it was, must have caused me to fall unconscious."
"Or it was an amnesia inducing chemical," I offered, "and you've just forgotten what happened. Go on."
"Then I woke. He was gone. And I… I was raped. I knew then what the word meant."
I thought for a moment. "If you were unconscious, how do you know you were raped?"
Miss Chan snorted in disbelief. "Are you kidding? This maniac must have had a cock a foot in length and at least four inches across. My cunt was all bloody. I was ripped wide open. I couldn't walk for a week. Even now, I still can't fuck without some pain."
Jocelyn shook her head. "The despicable animal. Some woman should fuck him and then he would know how it felt. Someone should shove a cock like that up his ass and then…"
I gave Jocelyn a long hard, look. She knew what the look said: she was thinking with her emotions and not her intellect.
"And you're sure you can't identify him?" I continued.
"No, I'm sorry."
"Might he be someone you might know?"
Miss Chan shook her head. "I just don't know."
"And his voice – did it sound, even remotely, like the voice of anyone else with whom you're familiar? Even if there's just the slightest similarity?"
"No."
I sighed. "All right. Now can we go over this just one more time. From the top…"