Stranglehold (30 page)

"My position?"

"Yes."

She wasn't stupid. There were danger signs everywhere.

She knew what he was after. She just couldn't believe that Judge Burke was allowing it.

Careful
, she thought. There's got to be some way to deal with this.

"My position is that my ex-husband is a rapist," she said.

Wood looked stricken. It was pure phony melodrama, playing for the judge. But she thought maybe it actually might give her an opening. Maybe she could put him off balance for a change.

"Is it the
word
that bothers you, Mr. Wood?" she said. "Maybe you'd prefer something like 'morally challenged'?"

"Unresponsive, Your Honor."

"Please answer the question, Ms.
Danse
," said Burke.

It hadn't worked. She'd have to scramble for some other way. She needed time.

Think.

"I'm sorry, Your Honor. What was the question again?"

"What is your position regarding Arthur
Danse
receiving free and unrestricted visitation rights, if that should be the decision of this court?" Wood said.

"That he absolutely shouldn't have them and that the court shouldn't order it. Not under any circumstances whatsoever."

"But if that should be the
case
, Ms.
Danse
."

"I don't believe it will be, Mr. Wood."

"But if it
is
."

"Mr. Wood is badgering the witness, Your Honor!" said
Sansom
.

"Overruled. The witness will please respond."

Get control, she thought. Tear it off him. Tear it away from him. One last time. Rage simmered hard in her just below the surface.
Use it. But get control
. Turn this around on the son of a bitch.

"You're asking me, Mr. Wood," she said, "if I could comply with an order that would give a child molester, a rapist, access to an eight-year-old boy who also happens to be my son. Is that right? I don't understand. Why would you want to do that?"

He smiled as though to say,
pretty good
, and then covered it immediately.

He sighed dramatically. "Ms.
Danse
, your ex-husband, my client, is not a rapist until this court
finds
him a rapist. Hasn't everyone made that clear to you from the beginning?"

"Yes. But your client's sexual proclivities ought to be clear to you by now too, shouldn't they?"

Wood turned to the bench, arms spread wide, imploring. "Your Honor ..."

Burke leaned down to her.

"Ms.
Danse
," he said, "the issue here is strictly a question of compliance with the law. Mr. Wood is attempting to determine your willingness to uphold the law as a citizen of this county and this state, as that law is handed down to you. We are not now addressing the question of what Mr.
Danse
may or may not have done to your son. We are not addressing his guilt or innocence. Only this single issue. So I am ordering you now to answer Mr. Wood's question with a simple yes or no. Could you comply with any judgment the court may arrive at in this matter,
whatever that judgment might be?
"

You're not going to scream, she thought—though she wanted to out of sheer frustration. And you're not going to cry. She looked at Owen
Sansom
. She thought she'd never seen a man look quite so tired, and certainly never a lawyer look quite so sad.

She looked at Andrea Stone. Her eyes seemed hard and angry and compassionate all at once—angry at the unfairness of this and compassionate with her in its inevitability.

She drew herself up.

If this failed because of her, if they lost this now, she would have to find other ways.

"Not if it hurt Robert," she said. Her voice was clear and unbroken.

"No, Your Honor. Not if it hurt my son."

It was 5:45 and Duggan was nursing a headache that aspirin wouldn't budge, wishing he were already home an hour ago with Alice lying on the sofa in the living room while Alice fussed around him, getting hot towels for his forehead and cups of tea. She wouldn't bother him about being behind on the mortgage. She wouldn't complain about the work hours. Alice was great when you were sick. The mother-mode kicked in and everything was all of a sudden you name it, you got it.

He sure could wish for that.

But this arrest he had in front of him here was a
doozy
.

The guy's name was Elmo Lincoln—his mama had named him after Tarzan, no less. He'd held up a convenience store out on route 3A. Emptied the cash register, pointed his .22 pistol at the owner and told him to hand over his car keys. At some point the owner—a scared old guy of sixty-five with glasses thick as hubcaps—had managed to hit the silent alarm. But Elmo didn't know that. He went outside and started up the car.

Then realized he couldn't drive it.

The car was a '63 Chevy. Fully and lovingly restored. Cherry-red and polished to perfection.

With a manual shift.

And Elmo couldn't drive manual.

Realizing that made him mad at the owner so he went back inside and started yelling at the guy, what the fuck was he doing with a car that was practically older than he was, and Elmo knew the owner had another car, a real car, sitting somewhere the fuck around so where was it? He pulled the owner outside to look.

Elmo badgered the old guy and shook his pistol at him for ten whole minutes.

When Duggan arrived Elmo took one look at the squad car and then just dropped the gun into the dirt and shrugged.

"I
coulda
got away," he said.

No shit, Duggan thought.

Duggan was doing the paperwork on this idiot and musing through the dull throbbing headache on the amazing clarity of the criminal mind—
I
coulda
got away
—when the phone rang.

"I got another one here,"
Whoorly
said.

"Oh shit. Where?"

"Canaan. Dumped her off the side of the road this time, but the coroner says the MO's right on the money. Raped, anally and vaginally, nail holes in the palms of her hands, beaten, burned ..."

"And staked through the heart."

"You got it."

"This asshole's got women all fucked up with Dracula."

"What?"

"Nothing. He place the time of death yet?"

"Last night. Somewhere between three and four in the morning. You want the file?"

"I want the file."

He hung up the phone and wondered where Arthur
Danse
was last night.

He wondered how his custody hearing was going.

He wondered if it was maybe making him angry at somebody.

He filed away the great Elmo Lincoln auto-theft caper for tomorrow and got up to check it out.

He talked to the bailiff and then drove out to Arthur's place.

Arthur wasn't pleased to see him. He opened the door and rolled his eyes and said, "What, Ralph? I've had a long day."

"Not the days I'm interested in, Art. It's the nights."

"What?"

"Tell me how you spent last night, Art."

"Went to the restaurant, stayed until about ten and then came home, watched TV, and went to bed. Why?"

"All alone, I guess."

"I'm afraid so, yes."

Duggan peered in through the doorway. From what he could see the place was spotless, the furnishings practically Spartan.

"How 'bout inviting me in for a quick cup of coffee. I really could use one."

"Another time, Ralph. Like I said, it's been a hell of a day."

"Sure. How's the hearing going?"

"Fine."

"Must make you mad, doesn't it?"

"What?"

"I mean, mad at your wife. What's '
er
name. Lydia. Hell, at women in general. I'd be mad."

"The important thing is winning."

"Think you will?"

"My lawyer says we will."

Duggan smiled. "Course, you know, her lawyer's telling her the same thing.
Lawyers'll
do that."

"Naturally. I have to go, Ralph. Really. I still have to get over to the restaurant yet tonight."

"I understand.
G'night
, Art. I'll stop by again sometime."

He shut the door and Duggan heard him throw the lock.

No alibi. But no way to bring him in either. And no good reason to search the place. He'd talk to some of the people over at The Caves tomorrow. Shake the tree. Maybe find out nothing. But maybe it would make
Danse
a little nervous, a little angry, help him slip somewhere. Right now he was a little too cocky for his own damn good.

He pointed the car back toward town and home and couch and Alice. The headache, he realized, was gone.

Maybe thinking about
Danse
behind bars had a tonic effect on him.

One slip and I'm on you like flies on
dogshit
, he thought.

He lit a Newport
Lite
. I bet I could even quit smoking.

Lydia woke to the sounds of screaming.

Robert
, she thought, and was out of bed and halfway across her room when she realized that the sounds were coming from outside, not in. She crossed to the window.

In the moonlight she could see them, gray and colorless against the spiky grass, a cat and two dogs, the dogs of no particular breed but big, heavy, dwarfing the cat, the cat stuck between them not far away from a big blue spruce tree, hissing and clawing at them and backing away and then screaming again, trying to angle his way toward the safety of the tree, the dogs lunging repeatedly, snapping, not even barking, deadly serious, they were concentrated on a kill here—so concentrated it was scary. She could see their eyes wide and glinting like polished stones.

She flung open the window, found a shoe on the floor and threw it at them yelling "
get out of here!
" at the top of her lungs, not feeling the slightest bit silly about the cliché shoe, wanting the cat to live. Her aim was lucky and the shoe hit the bigger of the dogs at the shoulder and for a moment everything stopped except the cat started backing away the way they did, almost in slow motion. It was as though the dogs were waiting to see if more and bigger was forthcoming. A shoe or a boot wasn't going to do it. So more and bigger it would have to be.

Beside her on the wall there was a framed English sampler,
Remember Now Thy Creator In The Years Of Thy Youth, Hannah East, Aged 14, In The Year 1863
. She had bought it back in Boston when she was married to Jim. She pulled it off the wall and leaned out the window screaming "Fuckers!
Get! Out!
" and hurled it at them, wincing as it almost hit the cat and then smashed in front of him, glass flying, the dogs startled and the cat taking his advantage and dashing for the tree. And then up the tree.