Termination Man: a novel (35 page)

And what about the police? Would the police protect her? Well, the police hadn’t been able to protect her so far, had they? What protection could they provide, given that they obviously had no intention of arresting Shawn Myers and holding him in jail? Would they assign her and her mother police escorts every time they left home? Would they maintain a patrol car at the end of their driveway?

She knew better. New Hastings was a small town, and she was no one important. She and her mother were on their own.

So this was the only way. If pushed further into a corner, Shawn’s next response would be to kill Donna. Shawn had explicitly promised as much. With her father no longer a regular part of her life, Alyssa had lost one parent already. She couldn't afford to lose her mother as well. Therefore, the best thing to do was to let this go—and then Shawn Myers would most likely go away and leave them alone.

“Alyssa, I don’t understand—”

Suddenly, she felt the floodgates open. She began to cry, right there in front of her mother and the county prosecutor. On one level, the outburst was a response to the situation before her, this impossible dilemma. Whatever she did, she would likely bring harm to both herself and her mother—without even punishing the man who threatened them both.

She knew, though, that beneath those tears were tears for something else: She had been so hopeful that she and Noah would be able to overcome their mutual shyness and finally connect. She had been waiting, tentatively taking small steps of her own in Noah’s direction.

But now that was probably ruined forever, too: Only yesterday Noah had approached her in the hallway at school, smiling that irresistible, shy smile of his. But Alyssa had detected that he was a little nervous, too.

She had known even as he approached what his intentions were: He was planning to ask her to the school’s Holiday Dance. That would have been the gesture that would have gotten them started—a bridging of the gap of awkwardness that separated them.

Noah had begun, trying to sound more casual than was his usual manner: “Hey, Alyssa, I was wondering if—”

And she had turned abruptly away from him, giving him the literal cold shoulder. It was not that she didn't want to go to the dance with Noah. (
She desired it more than anything, in fact.
) However, she couldn't be with Noah while she was still trying to rid herself of the tactile memory of Shawn Myer’s hands on her breasts. Shawn’s hands on her
privates
.

She needed time. But there had been no way to explain that to Noah, so she had simply turned her back on him. The boy had walked away, crestfallen, almost certainly convinced that she wanted nothing to do with him.

And how wrong that was.
How horribly wrong!

Recalling all of this, she saw the prosecutor staring at her across the wide expanse of his desk with searching eyes. He didn't understand.
How could he?

Alyssa leapt up, knocking over her chair in the process. Her mother called out for her to wait; but Alyssa yanked open the door of Tim McKnight’s office and ran into the hallway.

After catching up with Alyssa, Donna requested, demanded, and finally pleaded for the girl to explain her actions. Why did she now refuse to testify against the man who had violated and humiliated her? It didn’t make sense.

Finally she had ushered Alyssa into the lobby of the county building. They would go, but first she would have to apologize to the county prosecutor for the unexpected twist that her daughter had delivered. She owed the man no less.

Also, she would ask McKnight if the case against Shawn Myers could still be salvaged. McKnight had already told her that much would ride on her daughter’s formal testimony.

Walking back to the office, Donna was completely bewildered—and more than a little annoyed—at her daughter’s behavior. And this was only the beginning of her bewilderment and annoyance. No—her disillusionment and her
rage.
She had caught Shawn Myers red-handed. He had already been arrested once—or at least questioned by the police. The prosecutor seemed inclined to press forward with criminal charges. But
the prosecutor’s
intentions came with
conditions and
caveats.

Donna assumed that Alyssa’s stubborn refusal to cooperate would change matters. It would have to. There had been no rape—
thank God
—but that also meant that there was no concrete evidence. Only the word of her and her daughter against a powerful man whose father was even more powerful.

Correction: Now it was only
her
word against the powerful man and his father. 

“I’m sorry,” she told Tim McKnight as she closed the door to his office behind her. “Alyssa is hysterical. I should probably take her home. But first I need to ask you: Can you still move this forward?”

Tim McKnight let out a long sigh before speaking.

“Okay, I’m going to level with you here. This weakens our chances if I were to press charges. Your daughter wasn’t penetrated. She wasn’t bruised. This means that there is no physical evidence of a crime having been committed.”

“But I saw what happened,” Donna said. “I was there.”

“You saw what appeared to be a struggle between your daughter and Mr. Myers,” McKnight said. “You didn’t see the entire confrontation.” 

Donna felt her temper begin to rise. They had been through this before. She checked her anger; she needed to control her frustration for her daughter’s sake.

“But I saw what happened,” she repeated. “I saw that man put his hands on my daughter.”

“You may have seen Shawn Myers tussling with your daughter, Ms. Chalmers. But there could be a lot of possible explanations for that; and not all of them come down to sex. Shawn Myers could even manage to turn this around, and claim that your daughter
assaulted
him
because he reprimanded her for using foul language or for performing her cleaning duties improperly.”

“Would anyone actually buy that?” Donna asked incredulously.

“Teenagers assault adults all the time,” Tim McKnight said. “Shawn Myers could also claim that
she
came on to
him
in a sexual manner, and the struggle ensued when he pushed her away.”

“But she’s only
fifteen year
s
old
.”

“And only two years younger than Amy Fisher was when she had a consensual affair with a man who was eighteen years her senior. Do you remember that case, Ms. Chalmers? Fisher subsequently shot her lover’s wife in the face.”

“You’re comparing Alyssa to the ‘Long Island Lolita’?” Donna asked, recalling the sensationalized attempted murder case from twenty years earlier.

“I’m simply pointing out that not all teenaged girls are angels. And yes, some of them do initiate sexual relations with much older men. Some of them commit acts of violence. I’m saying that we can’t build a case solely on the grounds that there was a mostly verbal altercation between your daughter and Mr. Myers, not without some corroborating evidence or testimony that proves your version of the events.”

Donna felt momentarily overwhelmed by what McKnight was saying. She understood the gist of his words, all right: She was trapped in a legal grey area, where so much would come down to a matter of interpretation. Shawn Myers could lie and get away with it—unless they could
prove
that he was lying.

“Ms. Chalmers,” McKnight continued. “There are many things that would make a difference here: It would make a difference if your daughter had been raped, and I could point to semen samples and evidence of vaginal trauma. It would make a difference if there had been another person present when the altercation took place. But now it’s your word against the word of Shawn Myers. And you can bet that he’s going to throw every resource that he can at the county if I decide to formally charge him with sexual assault.”

Donna shook her head. It all came down to money again.

McKnight lifted a stack of folders from his desk. “Do you know what these are, Ms. Chalmers? These are all potential criminal cases. Every one of them represents a person who is probably guilty of something. My job as county prosecutor is to analyze each one of them, and make a determination of how to best serve the victims and the public, with an eye to utilizing the county’s resources most effectively.”

“Okay,” Donna said, defeated. “I understand.”

“Listen, Ms. Chalmers. Get your daughter into counseling. Obviously something occurred between her and Shawn Myers—something that is deeply troubling her. We may not be able to turn it into a successful criminal case, but that doesn’t mean that you should forget all about it. Your daughter needs help.”

McKnight began thumbing through the open Rolodex atop his desk. “I happen to be aware of an excellent counseling program for victims of sexual assault, Ms. Chalmers. It’s subsidized by the state, so it’s mostly free of charge. Here—take one of their business cards.”

Having left McKnight’s office empty-handed except for the business card of the counseling service, Donna contemplated her next move.
Did she even have a next move?
Perhaps not.

As McKnight said, it would probably be a good idea for her to contact a sexual trauma counselor. As she started the van, Donna glanced at the card. The generic-sounding organization apparently operated throughout the state. The card that McKnight had given her contained the telephone number and email address of a volunteer counselor named Tina Shields.

Yes, she would give this woman a call, or send her an email. It couldn't hurt.

From the passenger seat, Alyssa gave the business card a questioning stare. Donna decided to raise the subject of counseling a bit later, after Alyssa had calmed down. She tucked the card into her purse and put the van in gear. 

What accounted for Alyssa’s sudden about-face? The girl said nothing as they left the county building’s parking lot and began the drive home. Finally, during the drive home, Donna broached the subject again.

“That man didn’t threaten you, did he?”

Alyssa had almost never tried to lie to her. And on those rare occasions when she did, she had never been a very convincing liar.

Donna was discovering that the truth had to be extracted from her daughter in bits and pieces. Only a few nights ago, Alyssa had revealed that Shawn Myers had nearly touched her another time. But this time he had been interrupted by another UP&S employee. According to Alyssa, this man had grabbed Shawn and thrown up him against the wall.

What had that man seen? And why hadn’t Alyssa told her about this incident the night it occurred?
Had she known, she could have taken action sooner.

Donna stopped the van and pulled over to the edge of the road. There was the sound of a horn blaring, then a pair of headlights sped past them.    

“Is there something that you haven’t told me? Anything else?”

Alyssa was staring out the window, deliberately looking away from her.

She thought about Todd, Alyssa’s absentee father, and her anger flared. Lately, after several stern letters from her attorney, Todd had become more regular about sending his court-mandated child support checks. But where was he at times like this, when Alyssa was hurting, and she didn’t know what to do about it? It wasn't fair—to either of them.

“Alyssa. Tell me the truth.”

Alyssa whirled on her. There were tears in her eyes. “
Mom, would please just drop
it!
”

She burst into tears. Another car slowed down and laid on the horn. The cleaning van was partially blocking one lane of the highway.

“There is nothing else
to tell you
!”
Alyssa shouted through her tears.
“Nothing else at all. I just don't want to do this anymore. Why won’t you let me move on? Why won’t
you
move on?”

Donna put the van back in gear, checked her rearview mirror, and eased back into the flow of traffic. She decided not to press Alyssa any further. Not tonight. However mature the Long Island Lolita might have been at seventeen, Donna knew that her own fifteen year-old daughter was still very young, still naïve and inexperienced in the ways of the world. Alyssa was certainly no match for Shawn Myers. That much was certain.

And another thing was certain as well: Donna had seen the truth in her daughter’s face, heard the truth in her voice—when she claimed that there nothing more to tell.

Alyssa had been lying.

She was waiting for me by my car one evening, out in the parking lot of UP&S: the cleaning woman, the mother of the teenaged girl who
m
Shawn Myers had harassed in the hallway that night.

I had known, of course, that the matter wouldn’t have ended right there in the hallway
of UP&S
. You don’t slam a man up against
a
wall without consequences. There is always another shoe that has to drop.