Aftershock (18 page)

Dolly and I sat quietly. There had to be more.

“Here are some charts I prepared. Unlike the records, you can take this with you. In fact, I want you to—it is work I could not explain if I were asked.

“As you can see, the curve of those reporting rapes who could or would name their attacker has been steadily dropping, year after year. In fact, none such have been reported at all within the past eighteen months.

“It is not even a possible
hypothesis
that so-called acquaintance rape of girls between those ages no longer occurs in your area. Assuming you have not experienced an extraordinary population decrease, the only logical explanation is that reporting rapes is now universally considered to be a futile gesture among those within that age group.

“Girls between those ages continue to be examined, but, as I said, not a single one has acknowledged knowing her attacker. And
of those girls who previously
had
named their attacker, not one single prosecution has resulted.”

She handed Dolly the folder, as if to say, “I’m done now.”

“Some paper cannot be copied,” I said, very softly. “But if names on that paper were read aloud, they could be written down in another’s hand.”

She nodded slowly. Then she said, “But if the paper on which names were written in another’s hand were to be found, there could still have been only one single source.”

“What you say is not possible,” I told her. Before she could respond, I took out another sheet of that flash paper.

When the paper disappeared, the woman picked up another folder. She spoke thirty-nine names in a voice just above a whisper. Her cadence was steady, watching for my nod to indicate I had the names written down.

“You are a true warrior,” I said, bending my head slightly forward to show respect, but keeping my eyes up to show I wasn’t play-acting. Then I got up and opened the door, to let Dolly know that anything more she might say would be wrong. The time for manners was past, and the quicker we moved away from this spot, the better.

A
s soon as we hit the highway, Dolly pulled out a laptop from under her seat. She fired it up, impatiently tapping her nails against the machine as she waited.

“It’s a good thing I don’t need to go out to the Web. Who knows what kind of connection I could get out here. Give me that paper of yours, Dell. I want to write down the names she gave us so I can check them against my own work.”

“I can’t do that.”

“What?!”

“I can’t do that, Dolly. I gave my word that the names wouldn’t leave the paper I used. When we get home, I’ll read you the names, and you can put them in your computer. If you don’t go online with them—the names, I mean—there’s no way to connect them with the SANE boss.”

“Why can’t you just do that now? This has a partitioned hard drive, with a no-access firewall—it
can’t
reach the Net. Read me the names, burn the paper, and it would be just the same.”

“No. No, it wouldn’t. When we get home, we’re safe.”

“Safe? From what?”

“From some cop getting a look at your laptop, with those names on it.”

“How could that happen? We’re not speeding, that pistol you’re carrying is legal. Registered and everything.”

“Cops love to look in people’s computers. Any excuse would do.”

“Give me an example,” she said. If she hadn’t been sitting, her hands would have been on her hips by now.

“Some drunk crosses the median and smashes into us. We’re both taken to the hospital, unconscious. The license on this car traces to your friends, not to either of us. So, some cop could claim he looked in your laptop trying to find some medical information.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“Just ‘okay.’ You said ‘ridiculous.’ I’m saying, I heard you. That’s all.”

“But you’re not giving me that paper?”

“No.”

Dolly crossed her arms over her chest. I always get a kick out of that—she’s got a big chest and short arms, so she never quite pulls it off. But I didn’t think making one of my usual comments would be a good idea.

She didn’t say another word for the next couple of hours. Then
she shook off whatever was bothering her the same way a wet dog does as soon as he’s inside.

“It’s in there, Dell. I know it is.”

I knew what “there” meant. But I still didn’t see how Dolly could be so damn sure. I didn’t ask her, either.

I
t was past midnight when we rolled into the garage.

Neither of us was sleepy. Rascal wasn’t, either, but that was no surprise—he’d slept most of the way home.

As if we’d agreed in advance, we went straight to the basement. I could turn lights on down there without anyone’s seeing them from outside.

Dolly plugged in her laptop, turned it on.

“Now can I have that paper?”

I didn’t answer her. I closed my eyes. I pushed my thumb against my right nostril, drew in a deep breath, then switched, closing my left nostril and pushing the breath back through the nostril I’d closed. Then I reversed the whole thing, watching the white screen in my head fill with bold black letters.

“Abigail Zimmerman,” I said.

“Dell …”

“Amber Lang.”

“What are you—?”

“Brenda James.”

“Oh!” Dolly said. Then her fingers started flying, to catch up. When I said the last of the thirty-nine names, I took one final look at the white screen. Then I opened my eyes.

I was a little dizzy, shaky on my feet. Dolly jumped up, slipped my left arm around her neck, and slowly lowered us both to the floor.

“I’ll be okay in a minute,” I said.

“I know.”

I don’t know how much time passed, but Dolly was still right next to me when I came to the surface.

“Those names, the ones you said, they’re the same as the ones on that paper, aren’t they?”

“Yes.” I reached in my breast pocket and handed her the flash paper.

Dolly wiggled just a little. I knew what was going on inside her, so I said, “I’m fine, honey. Go ahead and check the names you typed against the names on the paper.”

She came back to where she’d left me. I was sitting in a position I had learned another lifetime ago. I could stay that way for hours if I had to.

“Dell, the names are the same. But they’re not in the order she said them.”

“Alphabetic. I used the first names, not the last.”

“That’s why you didn’t want me to—”

“Yes.”

Dolly held out the paper. Said, “Got a match, soldier?” like she was a B-girl in a cheap bar. But the giggle under her voice was a dead giveaway—I was way past “forgiven,” I was back to being her man.

I fired the flash paper.

“You need a nap,” Dolly said. Her battlefield nurse’s voice. I never argued with it.

W
hen I woke up, it was daylight—I couldn’t actually see it, but the big digital clock read 08:29.

I was about to go upstairs, but I stopped. I had to check and see if the info I’d asked for was waiting.

It was. The screen popped to life when I opened the program
that had cost me a titanium rod in my left forearm. The man who designed it was an ace cracker, who knew he still owed me. I hit the sequence to de-encrypt:

I went back to “encrypt” and typed in:

The punk I’d taken the jacket from had only the one tattoo: that same symbol, in the same place as Cameron had. But, unlike Cameron, he’d had no tattoo on his chest.

I’d work that through later, when the next answer came in. For now, I was drained, and I needed fuel.

D
olly was exactly where I expected her to be—at the butcher-block table. It was half covered with paper, and she had a whole bunch of different-colored markers lined up in a neat row.

I didn’t even get a chance to open my mouth. Dolly jumped up and went to work. I was eating an English-muffin sandwich—fried egg with all kinds of green stuff—and sipping at a glass of apple juice before I knew it. And Dolly was back to her work.

I ate slowly. Chewed every bite. Dolly never looked up, but she knew when I was finished. She jumped over to the refrigerator,
took out a bottle of something, and shook it hard. When she poured it into a heavy blue glass tumbler, it was hard to tell what color it was, but I knew I was supposed to drink it down, so I did.

“All right?”

“Yeah,” I said. Meaning, I was ready to work.

I didn’t have to wait long. “Dell, can you think of any reason why these girls … No, wait. Not these girls. Not the ones whose names we have, the ones whose names we
don’t
. Can you think of why the local SANE nurse hasn’t seen a single case prosecuted? Not one single case? Not for years?”

“It’s a dropping line.”

“I don’t understand what you’re—”

“Less and less, all the way down to nothing.”

“I see that. But I don’t see why.”

“If you saw a gunfight going on right across the street, would you call 911?”

“Of course.”

“What about if the last ten times you’d called 911, nobody answered?”

“You mean … You’re saying girls stopped reporting because they knew it wouldn’t do any good?”

“Why else?”

“I … don’t know. None of those names were my girls. I don’t even remember hearing their names.”

“We can’t find the ones who didn’t report. But the ones who did, they’ll have the answer.”

“Sure. But I wouldn’t even know where to start.”

“Take the last one who actually did report, and backtrack from her.”

“You?”

“Who else? They can’t be hard to find. It’s summer; they won’t be in school. Some of them could have left town. Or got married and changed their name. It’s a small town—I can find them.”

“But what could you ask them? How could you even explain where you got their names? And how would any of that help MaryLou?”

“We won’t know until I have those conversations, Dolly.”

“When are you going to start?”

“I need a shower, a shave, and a change of clothes. Suit and shirt, right? But it’s still too early.”

“If they have jobs, they’ll already be—”

“Dolly, let me do this, okay? There’s only one group that we
know
will talk. Talk to you, I mean. Your girls. They’ll be here soon enough, I’m thinking. I don’t want to be here when they show up.”

“But what do I ask them?”

“If one of them ever got raped—no, not that—if any of their
friends
got raped, what would they tell them to do?”

“Climate testing.”

“On the nose,” I said, kissing her cheek. She stood up, wanting a better one. I tried. It must have done the job, because her eyes got that sweet glow. I patted her bottom, telling her that I was going out. There were other ways to tell her, but I’d used that one so much that it became a signal. There were other ways to pat her bottom, too, but she never got them mixed up.

S
liding around the truth can work sometimes, but an outright lie risks blowing a whole operation. So I didn’t even think about telling any of the girls that I was working for the DA’s Office.

Swift was worth every penny of his “retainer” just for the paper shield he gave me. Whether he earned another dime past that would be up to him.

No Zimmermans in the local phone book. But there were five Langs—not much easier.

Not much harder, either. The good thing about being in such a
small town is that even the most trivial crap makes the papers. So, when I identified myself as “Warren Sims. From the PTA …?” not a single person showed the slightest surprise. Four of them—three males, one female—wanted to know why the PTA would be contacting them; after all, they didn’t have any children in school. The woman said she was an “empty-nester”; the men all said they were “retired.” None of them complained about being called; all of them sounded sober.

The last number was a cell. It took me right to voice-mail. That one had been listed as “Lang, Teresa.” Amber’s mother, turning off her cell while she was at work? No way to tell. But her address was in the phone book, too. And it was early enough so her daughter might still be hanging around the house. If she had a summer job, or if a man answered the door, I’d have to catch her alone somewhere else.

The address was a nicely kept little cottage, off-white, with a cedar-shake roof. The girl who answered the door was wearing jeans and a sleeveless purple sweatshirt with “Orcas” in white letters across the chest. Purple and white. The school colors, as per that twisted videographer I’d met in the woods. I guessed she’d cut off the white sleeves.

She wasn’t what you’d call fat, but she was well over the weight limit for her height and frame. Bad complexion, which she was battling with some kind of white stuff. Probably saw me through the peephole in the door, checked my age and my suit, and decided it wasn’t worth scrubbing it off.

“Ms. Amber Lang?” I said. Like it wasn’t a question, just verifying the information I’d been given.

“Who are you?”

I told her my name and got the expected blank look, but I had “I’m a private investigator” out of my mouth too quickly for her to hide the widening of her eyes.

“How come a—?”

“I’m working with Bradley Swift,” I said, as if that name would
mean anything to her. “He’s the defense attorney for MaryLou McCoy.”

“The one who …?”

“Yes.”

“What do you want with me, then? I mean, I go to Cove, but I’m not even in her—I mean, I’ll be a senior when I go back after the summer, but she’s already graduated. I’ve, you know, like, seen her, but I never talked to her. I don’t know anything about her except for … for what she did. And I wasn’t even on the same floor when it happened.”

“I know. But I assure you, I wouldn’t be coming out here unless I believed you could really be an enormous help.”