“Let’s share,” she said. “Your stuff knocks me off my feet.”
He sparked the first, offered it over. “When was the first time you got high, Caitlin?”
“High school.” She took a drag. “Classic peer-pressure situation.” She handed the joint back. “Two hours later my father picked me up from the principal’s office. I hadn’t been able to get a full sentence out since my first toke, which was a big deal. I’m a bit of a talker. Dad was a cop, so he took me to the Hollywood station and walked me desk to desk, made me tell everyone he could find that drugs were for losers, laughing his butt off the whole time.”
Scott exhaled with a chuckle. “What’d your mother say?”
She went with a variation of the answer she’d given Lakshmi. “There wasn’t a mother figure in the picture in those years. What about your first time?”
“In Nam. Pot was the only way I could sleep without nightmares.” He sent the weed back her way, then raised her folder from his lap. “I’m ready to face your ghosts, if you are.”
Caitlin took another hit. Always a chance that her high could go south, that she’d end up in the middle of a lake, paranoid and miserable, but Scott’s pot hadn’t failed her yet. She exhaled and nodded.
He opened the folder. Like handing a story in to an editor, Caitlin’s urge to watch him read hit strong.
He glanced up and caught her gaze. “I’ll give it a look and we’ll talk after.”
She swallowed and reached for her phone. “No worries.”
He gave her a hard stare. “What are you doing?”
“I still haven’t heard from Lakshmi.”
“And you won’t,” he said. “No signal out here. Phones scare the fish. Enjoy nature’s majesty.”
She turned away, watched a heron dip under the surface, then lost herself to faraway sounds. The rolling knock of an unseen woodpecker, the flap of a duck’s wings launching into flight, the slight lap of the water against the hull.
Minutes later, Scott tapped her shoulder. “All done.”
He folded his sunglasses and hung them on his vest. “What a piece of shit.”
Caitlin’s tears appeared like a surprise party; unexpected, unwanted, and messy. She tried to fight them back, but Scott’s words, so good to hear, so validating, struck deep and true. Her chest ached with each shake.
Scott waited for a gap between sobs, then offered a handkerchief. “Hardly any snot on that.”
Caitlin took the cloth and wiped her upper lip. “Not anymore.”
“When your tears came, what emotion burst through the barrier?”
She crumpled the handkerchief, squeezed it like it wanted to run away, and bounced her tight fist on her knee. “Anger.”
“At Troy Woods, the police, who?”
A word slipped out, barely any breath behind it.
“I have old ears,” Scott said. “Too much amazing music and loud sex. Can you say that again?”
She flattened her fist on her knee, tried again. “I was angry at myself.”
“What did you do wrong?”
She looked toward the shore, pictured herself getting in the car and driving away. “I trusted someone with a secret, and Woods found out and used it against me.”
He gestured toward the file he held. “The part about your mother is true?”
She nodded. “I’d seen her maybe four times in my life up to that point. She had me at twenty-two, gave me up the same day.”
“And your father?”
“Who knows? She never tried to pinpoint the accidental donor. Matthew Bergman, my dad, took her to prom years before all of that. When she got pregnant, he was already a cop and a better person than anyone she’d ever known. He and his wife adopted me.”
“What did your birth mother’s profession have to do with you?” Scott flipped the folder open again. “She’s only mentioned in Woods’s statement, not in the BPD’s reports.”
Both of Caitlin’s hands drew up into fists. “I guess Chief Hartman left out our little meeting.”
CHAPTER
33
Twenty Years Ago
WITH HER RIGHT eye still swollen one week later, Caitlin closed it and used her left. Chief Hartman had a certification from a law enforcement union, a picture with John Mellancamp, and piercing Paul Newman eyes.
“Sorry about that.” He sat behind his desk. “You need anything? Water, tea?”
She didn’t say her first answer. Less rape. “No. Will Officer Sugar be joining us?”
“Deputy Sugar,” Hartman corrected. “I know Lyle took your initial statement, but he works for the Sheriff’s department. Since your incident happened within the city limits, the BPD will take care of you from here on out.”
He leaned forward with a smile. “Do you like Bloomington?”
“Is this small talk?”
“No, Miss Bergman. I know you’re in a delicate condition.”
The bandages over her knuckles strained to prevent her cuts from breaking open as she clenched her fists. “You mean because of my torn vagina?”
He put out a hand, tried to slow her. “Miss Bergman—”
“Or my torn asshole? Is that the delicate situation you mean, Chief Hartman?”
“There’s no need for that kind of language.”
“Sorry,” she said. “My torn anus.”
He started again. “Bloomington’s got to be different from what you’re used to, growing up in Los Angeles.”
“Well, no one raped me in Los Angeles.”
“I want you to know I’m here to help you through this, to make this as easy for you as possible.”
Caitlin took a breath, realized she was sweating, wiped her forehead. “Sorry.”
“No need to be,” he said. “In a big city, horrible things like this happen every day. Small towns like Bloomington? I’m sure you’re aware we still have fights between locals and college students over meaningless boundaries and imagined slights.”
“Such as what the word no means?”
He laced his hands together. “I understand the counselor has gotten in touch.”
“Yes.”
“And Warren from the prosecutor’s office?”
“Who sent me here.”
“Yes, good. Have they told you about Troy’s account?”
“Let’s see that piece of shit talk his way out of DNA evidence.”
“People said the same thing about OJ Simpson. Do you know why rape is such a hard thing to prove?”
The tightening in Caitlin’s chest prevented her from interrupting.
“It’s not like murder. Someone shoots someone, there’s a gun. Someone owned that gun, bought bullets. Ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, we find those killers, give a jury enough evidence to send them away. But rape? Most cases of rape happen between two people in a remote place, no witnesses, with no evidence left behind.”
“What about his semen, my skin under his nails? What about my face?”
“Horrible, but look at his statement. He says you’re into rough sex, that you asked him to treat you this way.”
“Who would ask to be beaten to death?”
“You’re not the first girl in town to have sex with Troy Woods.”
“I don’t really care who he finger-blasted after a football game. He raped me.”
“None of the other women have claimed to have been raped.”
“Claimed?”
“Don’t misunderstand me. He’s going to fight this. He already has a lawyer. They’re going to find everything they can in your past to suggest this was what you wanted.”
“I never wanted to be raped.”
Hartman moved some papers on his desk, held up a single sheet. “Do you know Darren Thompson?”
“What are you talking about?”
He read from the paper. “ ‘Last night was amazing, especially when you spanked me. Ever tie anyone up? ’Cause I’d be into that.’ ”
“Where did you get that?”
He didn’
t stop. “ ‘Saturday night you should use me however you want. Make me your whore.’ ”
He handed her the email exchange between her and her ex.
“Darren gave you that?”
He picked up another page from the stack. “Do you know Steve Toblowsky?”
A blow job in his car.
“Tony Jeong?”
A one-night stand after nickel beer night at the Bluebird.
“Ellen Shaub?”
“Good fucking God.”
“Him too?”
She looked up into Hartman’s blue eyes. “What did you say?”
“The defense will have a lot to work with.”
“I like to have sex. That doesn’t mean I wanted to get raped.”
“Will a jury believe that? A jury of God-fearing Monroe County residents, most of whom married their only lover?”
Caitlin looked at the man’s desk, noticed a family picture. “Would you talk to your daughter like this?”
“Would I try to help my daughter?”
“Would you tell your daughter it was okay she was raped because she’d slept around?”
“I’m not saying it was okay if you were raped. But my daughter doesn’t have your perclivities.”
“Proclivities.”
“What?”
“The word is proclivities. If you’re going to use it to judge me, you should know how it’s pronounced.”
Hartman raised his eyebrows. “That’s the kind of attitude a small-town jury won’t feel sorry for. Plus, they’ll bring up your mother.”
Caitlin’s hands shook. “I don’t have a mother.”
“No, you have an aging porn star so far past her youth that she specializes in double penetration and BDSM. You think that won’t come up?”
“I don’t know. Does your daughter fuck like your wife, or don’t you compare?”
“Miss Bergman—”
She couldn’t hold back. “You’d tell your raped and torn daughter what exactly?”
“I understand your father is a policeman.”
“LAPD.”
“And I can guess why you haven’t told him yet. If someone attacked my daughter—”
“Raped.”
“If they harmed a hair on her head, I’d drive across the country with a knife, a roll of duct tape, and a sledgehammer, and I’d break every bone in his body, then feed him his own privates, no matter what it cost me. If your father’s anything like me—”
“My father’s nothing like you. He’s the best man on the planet.”
“Who you don’t want to see spend the rest of his life behind bars because of an overreaction to an unnecessary scandal.”
CHAPTER
34
SCOTT’S ANGER MADE him look twenty-five. “He said these words to you?”
“Hartman presented me with a choice. To prove I was raped, I’d have to go to trial and publicly air every slutty thing I’d done in my life. But if I left the rape out of my complaint, Troy would say an addiction to self-prescribed steroids made him violent, and he’d plead guilty to aggravated assault, no trial, no press. He’d go to jail and I’d walk away with some bruises and my dignity.”
“You’re angry because you chose the deal.”
Caitlin nodded. “It wasn’t enough to fight for my life. I didn’t want to defend my lifestyle.”
“Your lifestyle? When I was twenty-one, I was shooting blindly at men I’d only meet later in piles of the dead. All you had was a healthy sex life.”
“And tits,” Caitlin said, looking around the lake. Therapist or not, Scott was still a man, and even the best men often forgot the world’s biggest double standard. “Have I ruined fishing for you?”
“You’re a great fucking woman, Caitlin. Pardon the obscenity.”
Caitlin laughed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Stop being angry with yourself.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You’ve been dragging this weight behind you. After the attack, when was the first moment you felt safe?”
“The hospital, I guess.”
“You shouldn’t have to guess. When did you feel like you weren’t under attack anymore, like Woods, or even Hartman, couldn’t hurt you?”
Caitlin closed her eyes, thought about her drive away from campus, her stop in the plains, a walk in the desert outside of Vegas, rolling back onto Sunset Boulevard.
She opened her eyes. “My father’s pool. I dove into my father’s pool.”
Scott nodded. “Good. Was he there?”
“No, I had it all to myself.”
“Okay, close your eyes again. Describe the moment.”
The gentle rock of the boat helped Caitlin go back. “The water was cold. His pool wasn’t heated or anything. I remember my fingertips brushing the grate at the bottom. I sunk down, turned up toward the surface.”
“What did you see?”
She pictured the fractured surface, the clouds above. “The sun.”
“Why was that safe?”
She opened her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t you?”
She did but shook her head no.
“Okay,” he said, then took off his vest and hat.
“Whoa, Scott, what’s happening?”
“How far do you think it is to shore?”
“Maybe a hundred and fifty feet?”
He untied his shoes, set them on top of his clothes. “Are you a strong swimmer?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
The addition of his wristwatch to the pile left him in only shorts and a T-shirt.
“Something very stupid. I want you to get back to that moment, and we just happen to be hovering over a body of water. I’m going to jump in the water and swim to shore, and if you want to, I want you to swim with me.”
“What about our stuff?”
“I have a plan for the boat, so you can leave your things. But I have to warn you, it’s only seventy degrees out here, so the water has to be cold, and there are fish, turtles, maybe snakes.”
“Then nothing about this is a good idea?”
“Exactly.”
“What about you? Any chance you’ll have a heart attack?”
“Yes, there’s a damned good chance. But if it helps you find that safe spot again, so be it.”
He tied a rope into a loop, fastened it to the boat’s bow, let it hang in the water.
“Well, shit. I did not see this coming.” Caitlin stripped down to her bra and panties. “You sure this isn’t just an excuse to get me naked?”
He laughed. “Only your soul, my friend.”
She stood on the metal bench, felt the goose bumps on her arms reach for the sun.
“Take a second,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”
Caitlin nodded, took a last breath, then plunged feet first into the cold. The bottom came faster than expected. Her bare heels touched a mix of grass and loose soil, maybe eight feet down at the most. She blew out to stay submerged and opened her eyes. The murky water around her melted into the searching sunlight above, not much visibility side to side. Her body’s shock gave way to acceptance, and she listened to the distorted sounds of life above. A perfect kind of white noise, a faraway memory, a fetal innocence.
She put herself back in her father’s pool and admitted what she hadn’t said to Canton. While down there staring at the sun, she’d blown out all of her breath and waited. The oxygen depleted, her chest convulsed, and the overhead sun went wavy. Seconds from collapse, she knew her answer: she could die right then, or she could live. Completely up to her.
That day, the weight of Troy’s attack had nothing on the need for one more breath.
Now, on the bottom of Lake Lemon, she made the same choice. She took one last look at the lovely blue above, brought her arms down, kicked to the surface, and broke into daylight.
Scott treaded water next to the boat. “Ready to swim?”
“Try to catch me,” sh
e said, then launched into a crawl stroke.
Her body pumped full force, one arm up, the other down, legs kicking, everything in synchronicity, a steam locomotive bound for glory.
No fear, no thought, only experience.
She took a breath, head out of the water, eyes open to the shore. Fifty feet to go. She’d left Scott behind, but nothing mattered. She fought on until her hands touched something reedy, green, alive. She lowered her feet, crawled through four feet of vegetation, hit earth, and didn’t stop. She ran twenty feet, jumped, both arms in the air, screamed in pure joy. “Woooooooo!”
She turned to see Scott reaching the shore as well.
“That was really stupid,” he said, already shivering.
“So stupid,” she said, yelled at the lake again. “Wooooooo!”
Scott joined her primal scream.
When they ran out of air, she turned to him. “Now how do we get our clothes?”
He smiled and pointed out to the boat, breathless.
Caitlin didn’t wait for his words to catch up. She ran down the bank and dove back under the surface.
* * *
Later, warming in the car, her head clear, her heart light, Caitlin checked her messages and let out a deep sigh. Lakshmi was alive and well: I found a corner boy. Want to help me nail these assholes?
CHAPTER
35
CAITLIN WALKED THROUGH a clump of aluminum-sided townhouses with uncovered central parking and found Lakshmi hovered over her laptop at a table on the back porch of Unit 3.
“Who lives here?”
“No idea,” Lakshmi said, “but there’s a week’s worth of pizza fliers outside the front door. We should be safe.”
Caitlin sat beside her. “Which apartment are we watching?”
“Lucky thirteen.” Lakshmi nodded to the two-story unit fifty feet across the parking lot and took a sip from a nearly empty cross-country-trucker-sized iced coffee. “You said to follow the corner boys, so I reached out to the girls in the Chapman Chapter to see if Frodo was still involved with the fraternity, who he was dating, and where he lives now.”
“Judging by your caffeine intake, you got a response.”
Lakshmi shook her head like a wet dog. “Not much sleep, but yes. So the Sig Eps threw a party last night.”
Come and Get Me Page 14
