Memories Ch. 01

Author's notes.

This story is quite light on the sex part and definitely not meant as stroker/written porn. Don't expect many explicit sex scenes. It is about recollections of sexual activity rather than about having sex directly.

Synopsis

A young, pretty woman is found lying unconscious on the road, naked. She is taken to hospital, where a check-up reveals she's had sex with no less than five different men.

Oswald Jones, detective, is in charge of the investigation in this strange case. Together with his colleague Julia, a police counsellor, and his friend Thelma, a news paper journalist, he tries to figure out what has happened to this lady.

During the investigation they find out that this lady is not alone in her ordeal. Oswald and his friends dig in deeper and deeper, to uncover it all.

* * * * * *

Chapter 1. The case of "Unconscious Naked Female Found."

It is said that in the career of an investigator there is always a case that stands out. A case so unique, so bizarre, that it defines one's career. Or at least, one that you can never forget, or stop thinking about. This is the story of my most unique investigation, one that shaped not only the rest of my career but the rest of my life as well.

The case began when I had been working well over a decade as an investigator, I was in my mid 30s by then, young enough to be interested in new things, old enough to not be shocked too easily. I had pretty much seen it all by then, or so I thought. How little did I know.

It started off with a Saturday morning call from a colleague telling me that a naked, unconscious female had been found next to a road, and that she had been taken to the hospital. He contacted me first as I was the one responsible for the indecent crimes cases in our precinct, and in this case an indecent crime was suspected for the simple reason that she had been found naked.

Of course it's not an everyday occurrence to find people sleeping on the street, however it had happened before and as such was not all that remarkable. But, it had always been just a drunk who couldn't make it back home and had passed out on the way. The remarkable part here was that she was naked, and that hadn't happened before.

The woman was estimated to be in her mid to late twenties, of slightly full build and a bit taller than average. No recent missing persons report matched her description. No external injuries were found. Of interest was that her clothes were not recovered, they were just not there. This also meant no wallet with ID card or driving license or anything else to easily identify her.

As an indecent crime was suspected, she was subjected to a full physical check-up. It is always hard, legally speaking, to do this on an unconscious person as he or she can not give permission. However time was of the essence and we had to find evidence before it was gone, so Dr Whitewater was called upon to do the check-up. Although he regularly works as a doctor at the hospital, he is also an experienced forensic medical expert, who has been involved in many suspected crime cases over the past two decades.

The doctor performed a full physical check for visible injuries, took blood samples, and as this woman was suspected to be the victim of a sexual crime, a smear of her vagina. He made the preliminary report that she had no visible injuries, and appeared to be in good overall health except for the obvious lack of consciousness. There was sperm in her vagina showing she had had sexual intercourse shortly before she was found. The doctor could not immediately explain why she was unconscious, or why she wouldn't wake up.

That afternoon I contacted my colleague Julia, a pretty lady a few years my junior who joined our precinct five years ago. Her speciality is interviewing and counselling victims of all kinds of crimes, which I figured might come in handy here. I expected this woman to have the shock of her life when being told she was found on the street with no clothes on, and Julia could certainly handle this more tactfully than me. A big guy like me might also be quite scary for a woman who had just been raped, if that's the case. Oh and mind you, that's just big, not fat. I do try to take care of myself.

The following Monday morning the doctor called me with the medical test results.

"Mr. Jones, this is Dr Whitewater. I'm calling you regarding the naked female case."

"Ah, thank you for calling, doctor. What do you have for me?"

"The blood test results are just in, and it's not what I expected."

"Go ahead."

"The patient had an BAC of 0.08, indicating she had been drinking the night before. It is hard to estimate how much she had, as we don't know how long it was between her drinking and the moment the blood sample was taken."

"No surprise there, alcohol makes people do crazy stuff. However that is not exceptionally high and doesn't explain her unconsciousness."

"Indeed, it may make people sleep deep but not for this long. So I suspect she was drugged. However when I checked her blood for common party drugs, and some less common ones, all tests came out negative."

"Interesting. So some uncommon or even unknown drug may be in play."

"Indeed. We've taken extra blood samples, and put them in storage for future tests, when we know more about what substance we may be looking for. Also we have sent a sample out to a more advanced toxicology lab who will receive it today and start working on it right away. I expect their results in about a week."

"Excellent. Anything else?"

"Yes. We checked for traces of her having had sex, and found sperm in her vagina, and sperm traces elsewhere on her body. Subsequent tests revealed it's a mix of no less than five different males, four of which were from the sample taken inside her vagina."

"So that's either been one hell of a party, or a serious group rape. I hope it's been the former, to be honest. It's an interesting case, thank you very much for this information, doctor. I'm looking forward to your detailed report."

"You will have my formal report shortly. The patient has awakened. She can talk, but we couldn't get anything coherent out of her yet, not even her name. She is very confused. She woke up late last night and has been sleeping on and off since, which is why I didn't call you about this earlier. You may visit her at your convenience. She is improving rapidly, and you might try to interview her later this morning."

Now it was getting interesting. Some unknown drug implied she was not a truly willing participant in this. And the lady had finally awakened.

I picked up Julia, and together we went to the hospital, hoping to get some more information out of the nameless female. We didn't talk much during the ride there, not wanting to jump to conclusions about what happened before having talked to the victim.

Upon arrival at the hospital we made our way to the room in which our victim was being treated. She looked rather attractive. Sweet face, long dark hair. We identified ourselves to her, and tried asking some questions. The lady was responsive, and fairly coherent in her answering.

After our first introduction I let Julia do the talking. I retreated to the background a bit to observe and listen to what she had to say. I would maybe ask a question or two of my own later.

The woman introduced herself as Emily Locatelli. She lived in town, and could give us her address and other details. She told us she had left the previous Friday morning for work, a wholly uneventful day, but she didn't remember much of the day and nothing of what happened after she left work. She just remembered she was supposed to go to some party, a party hosted by a Facebook friend, some kind of birthday party or so she thought, but no details of whose birthday or where it should have been. Nothing at all, her memory appeared to draw a complete blank of the time between leaving work and waking up in hospital.

She was visibly shocked when Julia told her in what condition she was found. We carefully explained to her the physical tests we did, and she was even more shocked when we revealed the results.

"I'd never do such a thing," she exclaimed, trying to sit up in her bed. "I'm a decent woman. Never done a one night stand. Let alone have sex with several men at a time. The idea alone, it's just disgusting, it can't be true!"

"We suspect it was not voluntarily, which is why we're here," Julia explained. "Also we'll treat this with utmost discretion as we fully understand how you feel."

"This can't be real. There must be some mistake." She relaxed a bit, and sank down on her bed again, looking totally confused.

"We suspect you were drugged somehow, and we're going to find out what happened. We consider you to be the victim here."

After a while we convinced her we were fully on her side, and that we did not think her to be some bad woman or anything. She seemed to relax a bit, and tried to come to terms with what we had told her. We gained her permission to enter her home to find more clues, and Julia gave her contact details to Ms Locatelli just in case she remembered anything else.

"And please get me some clothes from my home. Somehow mine seem to have been lost," Ms Locatelli requested.

With her information we also started the search for her car, starting at her home and workplace.

After confirming her name matched that of the registered occupant of the home, Julia and I arranged for some police officers to help break into and enter Ms Locatelli's home.

The lock was picked and we entered the place. It was a simple apartment, not much about it, smallish, not much furniture, enough for a single person to live comfortably. The apartment was overall clean and tidy. There were a few dishes in the kitchen sink. Apparently she hadn't done them after having breakfast. There were no signs of the place having been entered while she was out.

A diary on the dining table had an entry for the fateful Friday night: "PARTY!" it said in big letters, with an address added to it. We made note of the address, which was close to where she had been found, and I immediately called upon my colleagues to visit that place for follow-up. No other clues were found in the flat, nor did we find her car in the car park of the building, where she told us she normally parks it.

That afternoon Julia and I visited Ms Locatelli again, handing her the clothes that we collected at her home.

"Thanks," Ms Locatelli said.

"How are you doing now?" Julia asked.

"Much better. The doctor says I should be able to go home tomorrow, but he recommends I don't drive for a few more days just to make sure. It seems I'm fully healthy, except for feeling a bit weak."

"And your amnesia."

"Indeed. I still don't remember much of what happened last Friday. I've been thinking hard of what happened, and the only thing that I seem to remember is walking on the street, alone, searching for my car."

"Were you naked?"

"I don't know. Naked or clothed, I don't remember. All I remember was walking on an unfamiliar road, not recognising much. I was scared, worried I couldn't find my car. That's about it. My memories are foggy."

"Scared of what?" I asked.

"That I wouldn't be able to find my car, and get back home."

"Any other emotions?" Julia added.

"Nothing that I remember. Just the scary feeling of being lost. And being tired, just wanting to go home to sleep, typical feeling of having had a good party."

"Afraid someone would be out to get you?"

Ms Locatelli thought for a while. "No, I believe not," she said, thoughtfully. "Not running away or so. I just felt lost, as I couldn't find my car."

Julia told Ms Locatelli about the place where she had been found.

Ms Locatelli shook her head, "I have no idea about that place, really. Never heard of it, I wouldn't know where it is or how I got there."

"Any idea on how you ended up on the street?"

"No idea, there is no beginning, it is like a dream. I just remember myself being scared and walking around, searching, lost, not knowing where to go."

"Thank you very much," Julia said. "Whenever you remember anything please let us know, even if you think it's nothing it may just be the clue we need."

On the way back to the office I received another call. It was one of the officers who had visited the address of the "party". He told me it was a large multi-storey commercial car park, and that her car was found there. They had cordoned off the immediate area, waiting for my colleague Cart Petersen and me to do forensics.

I dropped off Julia at the station, and made my way over to the car park. Cart was there already. We found her car was unlocked and her wallet, phone and keys were in the glove compartment. The contents of the wallet seemed to be complete. It also contained an ID and driver's license in the name of Emily Locatelli, confirming her identity.

The car was a bit messy on the inside, we found some fast food wrappers with a receipt from some fast food joint dated the previous Friday night. Apparently after work she had a fast food meal in her car, and then drove over to this place, without bothering to throw out the garbage. We found some hairs, all of which appeared to belong to Ms Locatelli. No other clues were found in the car.

The car park itself was quite nondescript. It was old, built at least forty years ago, probably in the 1970s when dark spaces and low ceilings were in fashion. This was the epitome of a thriller movie grade car park, the one where bad guys may be lurking around every corner. Except we didn't find any bad guys, just some other parked cars. It was rather empty overall, as was the adjacent shopping mall.

When asked, the car park attendant claimed to not have seen anything suspicious that night. The car park's records showed her car checked in at 20:14, which was confirmed by their CCTV footage showing her driving her car. The car park had cameras at all exits, so we took a copy of the CCTV footage, to see when and where she left the building.

Discussing the case with Cart, we agreed that everything pointed to her arriving there by car of her own accord, putting her phone, wallet and keys in the glove department, and leaving them behind as she left for the party. The remaining questions now were where exactly that party was held, and how she got to that place.

Late that afternoon I returned to the station, and walked over to Julia's office, to report to her that Ms Locatelli's car had been found and to discuss the whole case.

"What do you think of it?" I asked her.

"It's an odd case," she replied. "How can someone walk on the street not realising she's naked, while consciously searching for her car?"

"Some kind of unknown drug is in play, for sure."

"Making people lose both their memories and their normal inhibitions."

"Indeed. It's hard to imagine anyone having sex with so many strangers," I pondered.

"It seems she wasn't forced, at least not physically, maybe she was coerced into it. She seems to have allowed it to happen and indeed to have enjoyed it, or she would have felt differently when searching for her car. I don't sense any fear or feelings of violation in her, which I normally see in rape victims. She appears quite relaxed overall, considering the whole situation. I think she may not fully realise what may have happened."

"Do you think she may not want to remember, considering it merely a bad dream?"

"That's possible, and then bad as in I-shouldn't-enjoy-that-but-I-did kind of bad rather than the nightmare kind of bad."

I nodded in agreement.

She continued, "Suppressing memories, pretending it didn't happen, that is a very real possibility. People sometimes deal with unwelcome events in that manner... And with the memories so dream-like as they are already, she may very well continue to tell herself it is just a dream, it is just her own fantasy, and nothing bad really happened to her. And she'd have likely not even considered it could be real if not for our evidence.

"However if drugs were fed to her without her consent or knowledge, and those drugs caused her to lose inhibitions and make her willingly participate in the sex, it's still rape. It just makes the counselling process a whole lot easier for me. At least for now."

"Absolutely, and that's what we have to find out," I concluded. "Plus how she ended up on the street like that."

We checked her phone, and found that the last outgoing call was made that fateful Friday evening at 20:18, lasting for just over a minute. So that was a few minutes after she entered the car park, probably right after parking her car. When I tried to call the number, a computer voice told me it could not be connected. Other calls she made and received earlier that week included a few calls to and from her workplace and a call to her mum.

Back in my office I started to clear my desk, and just as I was about to call it a day, the phone started ringing again.

"Jones speaking."

An enthusiastic voice greeted me, "Oswald? It's Thelma. How are you?"

Thelma Alderman, from the Daily Gazette, a regional newspaper. She was the one reporting on crime cases, and we had had contact before. Every now and then she would get wind of some interesting crime that we were investigating and call me for more information. Hers was a cheery personality and I was always happy to work with her.

"Hi Thelma, long time no hear. How's life?"

"Life's good. And for you? I hear it's been getting exciting lately."

"What do you mean?" I asked, not willing to volunteer any information. I guessed she was probably calling about the Emily Locatelli case, but first I wanted to know what she knew already, before giving out any more information. Not that there was much I could give in the first place, as the investigation had just begun.

"I heard you found a naked girl on the road."

"Really? How so."

"Well, girl, maybe I should say woman. Young adult, unconscious. Found on Canterbury Road near West Gate Road. Said to be a rather pretty one, too."

How did she know all that?

"I can confirm we found an unconscious naked female at that location," I said rather stiffly. I didn't intend to say it like that but again I didn't want to give out extra information just yet.

"Thanks. Unfortunately this is all I know about it, can you tell me more? Was she raped? Drugged?"

"Sorry, I can not comment on this, as an investigation in the case is ongoing."

"Mmm... Is she alive?"

"Yes."

"Awake?"

"Yes."

"What has she told you?"

"She has been talking to us and we have identified her, but I can not give you any details on what she said or who she is."

"Investigation ongoing, right?"

"Right. That, and her privacy."

"Criminal case?"

"Maybe."

"What crime are you looking at?"

"Well, as you know we found a naked female lying unconscious on the street, so lets start with indecent exposure. Good enough for you?"

"It's always the same problem with you," she pouted. "You can never give me any really spicy stuff, and I have newspapers to sell. And why indecent exposure? That'd make her the offender, not the victim. I can't write it like that, unconscious offender. Will you bring out a press release about this?"

"Not for now - you were not supposed to know about this at all. Where did you get your information?"

"Oh, reported by a passer-by who saw the scene, the same guy who called the emergency services thought we'd also be interested to know about it. So all I know is that you found a naked woman sleeping on the street, and that she was taken to Northborough Hospital. This doesn't happen every day, and I guessed you'd know more about it."

Of course, I should have known. The location where she was found is a public place. It is not likely that this could have remained a secret for very long.