The Resurrectionist by Wrath James White

to know if someone had been breaking into their house.
    The police officer checked the windows in the living room, the kitchen, and the den. He checked the front door and the rear sliding door.
    “Sir? Ma’am?”
    “Yes?” Josh walked over to the sliding-glass door where the cop was standing. Sarah came with him.
    “How do you lock this door?”
    “You just flip this latch at the bottom of the door.”
    “Up or down?”
    “You just push it down with your foot.”
    “Uh huh. Go ahead. Flip the lock.”
    Josh stepped on the latch.
    “Now, open the door.”
    Josh pulled on the sliding-door handle and the door slid open easily on its track.
    “Try it again.”
    This time Sarah pushed past her husband and steppeddown firmly on the latch. She grabbed the door handle and once again the door slid easily open.
    “You should get yourself a security bar for this door. With all these empty houses around it might not be a bad idea to get a security alarm too. Gangs and drug addicts sometimes squat in these abandoned houses. It’s a real problem. These foreclosures send the crime rate through the roof.”
    “So, do you think someone has been breaking in here?” Sarah asked a little too anxiously.
    “There’s no sign of forced entry but then an intruder wouldn’t really need to break anything to get in when he can just slide the door open.”
    “We’ll get it fixed.”
    “Get that security system installed too.”
    “We will.”
    “Is that it?” Sarah asked. Her voice rose higher than she had intended it to, giving a panicky edge to it.
    “That’s all I can do with the evidence we have right now. If you remember anything more, then you can come down to the station and file a report. But I can’t go across the street and arrest some guy because you had a bad dream.”
    “But you can question him?”
    “Do you really want me to do that? I can. You’re right. I could go across the street and ask him if he’s been breaking into your house and attacking you when you’re sleeping. But if he didn’t do anything and all you had was a really scary realistic dream, then you might just piss him off and start a war between you.”
    “He’s right,” Josh said, and Sarah knew he was too, but that’s not what she wanted to hear. She wanted the neighbor fingerprinted. She wanted her entire house dusted for fingerprints, checked for blood and semenand hair fibers and whatever the hell else they could find. She wanted him locked up and interrogated until he admitted the things he’d been doing to her.
    “What about fingerprints? Can’t you check the house for prints?”
    “We would need to get his prints to compare them to and that would require a warrant. Unless you can tell me right now that you know for a fact that he attacked you, I can’t get that warrant. If you tell me it wasn’t a dream and you remember him breaking in here and raping you, I’ll have that warrant in minutes and we’ll get fingerprints and semen samples from him, run a rape kit at the hospital and dust the entire house for prints and blood and any other body fluids. Without that, there’s nothing we can do. I can’t get a warrant or call in for a CSU team based on a dream and some clean sheets.”
    “Could you run a rape kit on me anyway? Just to make sure it was only a dream? I haven’t showered yet so if something happened there might still be…” Sarah paused. The words did not want to come out. A shudder went through her body once more and she grimaced as if she had tasted something foul, as if she could still taste him. “…evidence.” She turned away in embarrassment, then turned back and forced herself to meet the cop’s eyes, not wanting him to know that she was embarrassed, trying not to appear weak. She had no idea why that was so important to her. But she hated the idea of appearing weak in front of anyone except Josh and not even him most of the time.
    The cop took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He tapped his pen