“Then you’ll use me?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Starla leaned over her notes. “Now, here’s the way this works. I’ll prepare a transcript which you will then read at the hearing. I’ll—”
“A transcript?” Vanessa hadn’t counted on having to read her statement. But of course. That was the way these things were done. She should have anticipated it.
“Yes. It’ll make it much easier on you, and copies of it will be distributed to the committee members, so they can follow along with you.”
Vanessa forced herself to nod, to keep her face from giving away the fact that this was an unexpected development.
“Now”—Starla looked thoughtfully at her notes, rapping her knuckles lightly on the table—”ordinarily, your testimony would be vetted. You know, I would verify the facts of your story. I realize in your case we don’t even know the identity of the perpetrator, but I’d usually check on the other facts to gain you credibility.”
Vanessa’s heart thudded miserably in her chest.
“Given your credentials, however, and the fact that we are in a major time crunch here”—Starla winked at her—”I think we can safely dispense with the vetting process, if you have no problem with that.”
Vanessa shook her head. “No problem.” She could barely get the words out.
“Fine.” Starla stood up. “One more thing you should know is that the hearing will probably be televised, at least in part, on one of the cable channels. You’ll barely know they’re there, though.”
Televised. Lord. “All right,” she said.
She stood up and followed the attorney to the office door, where she turned to ask her, “What compels you to do this for no pay?”
Starla looked briefly surprised, then offered a small smile. “You know very well why I’m doing it,” she said. “I’ve been watching you watching me, and I can tell that you know. It’s just that you and your fellow witnesses have more courage than I do. I’m doing the little bit I can to contribute.”
Oh, she liked this woman! Vanessa squeezed the attorney’s hand instead of shaking it. She only hoped that Starla would be able to forgive her the following day, when she changed her story once again.
47
WASHINGTON, D.C
VANESSA KNEW SHE WAS losing weight. She stood with Brian in one of the wide hallways of the Senate office building, waiting to enter the hearing room, and she felt as though the skirt of her green suit was merely hanging from her hips. She’d managed to get down half a baked potato at dinner the night before, but that was all she’d eaten since her meeting with Starla yesterday morning.
There were many other people in the hallway, so many that she had quickly given up trying to separate her fellow witnesses from the reporters and the members of a curious public.
Shortly before eight, a security guard opened the wide doors, and the crowd in the hallway funneled into the room.
Starla stood inside the door. She touched Vanessa’s shoulder and told her where to sit.
Brian was allowed to sit with her in the second long row of chairs. Several other women shared the row with them. The heavy-set, dark-haired woman sitting to her left smiled at her.
“Are you testifying?” the woman asked. Vanessa guessed she was in her early thirties.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Me too.” The woman held her hand toward Vanessa. “Maggie Rowan,” she said.
“Vanessa Gray.” Vanessa shook Maggie Rowan’s hand. It was wet with perspiration. She imagined her own hand felt no different.
Starla and another woman sat in the first row, directly in front of Vanessa and Brian. Vanessa turned to look behind her. The room was quickly filling with people. She caught a glimpse of a television camera in the rear of the room, took in a deep breath, and reached for Brian’s hand.
In the front of the room stood a long table, the half-dozen chairs behind it facing the crowd. A second, shorter table faced the first, and it was graced by a single chair. She would sit in that lone chair and face that long table of men—yes, Starla had told her the committee was entirely composed of men—and tell her story. She could still back out. Feign illness. No. She owed this to herself and to Brian, if not to the AMC programs. She rested her hand lightly on her flat belly. She owed this to the future. She closed her eyes and leaned her head on Brian’s shoulder.
“You going to be all right?” he asked.
She nodded without lifting her head, and when she finally did open her eyes again, the committee members were entering the room. She watched as they took their seats. Some old, some young. Rickety or bulging or lithe. Most wore very serious, almost sour, expressions on their faces. They looked like unhappy men.
He sat near the center of the long table, fingering a wooden gavel. Senator Walter Patterson. He rummaged through the stack of papers on the table in front of him, rubbed his chin with his hand, turned to say something to the jowly gentleman on his left. He was quite thin. It was the thinness of a man who probably ran every morning, who ate right, who treasured his body and worked hard to preserve it. His hair was a graying blond, sparse, but well cut. Even from where she sat, Vanessa could catch the glint of blue in his eyes when he looked out toward the crowd. She forced herself to study him. She wanted to harden herself to the sight of him before it was her turn. She was scheduled to speak fourth, and she prayed that would be before lunch. She didn’t want to struggle through another meal.
Zed Patterson raised his gavel and brought it down hard on the table. He proceeded to tell the assembly the purpose of the day’s hearings—to provide the committee with graphic evidence of the need for the Aid to Adult Survivors Bill. He spoke about the bill for a few minutes, his folksy style of speech making Vanessa’s skin crawl, and then the witnesses began their testimonies.
Maggie Rowan was first. Her story was one of incest at the hands of an uncle, and it was ugly and sad, but nothing Vanessa hadn’t heard dozens—hundreds—of times before. It looked like news to the committee members, though. They frowned and shook their heads and twisted their mouths in disgust as Maggie read word-for-word from her transcript, her eyes glued to the paper in front of her. Patterson followed along in the transcript as she read, occasionally raising his sharp blue eyes to the witness herself, listening attentively, nodding with sympathy.
Vanessa barely heard the next two witnesses. She watched the clock on the far wall as the hands slipped past nine, then ten, and the reality of what she was about to do sank in. A small voice inside her head kept barking at her, “Are you crazy?” but the clock ticked on, and soon she had no choice but to take her turn in front of the committee.
Brian squeezed her hand as she rose from her seat, and Starla stood to touch her arm. “You’re going to be fine,” the attorney said.
Someone had placed her transcript on the table in front of her. Waiting to begin, she looked directly at Zed Patterson, searching for a sign that he recognized her, but his eyes only brushed over hers as he spoke to the senator on his left, who chuckled in response, jowls quivering.
She was told to begin. She licked her lips, took a breath, and started reading from the transcript.
“I was abused at the age of eight,” she read. “Unlike your previous witnesses, my abuse consisted of only one incident. Yet it had tremendous repercussions for me, some of which I’m still dealing with.”
She looked down at her hands where they were folded on the table, then up at the committee.
“During the summers of my childhood, I lived on my grandparents’ farm in a small town in Pennsylvania called Jeremy.”
The transcript read only “a small town in Pennsylvania.” Zed Patterson, who had been jotting something on a sheet of paper in front of him, suddenly jerked his head up. His eyes seemed to focus on her for the first time, and she felt the quick beating of her heart in her throat.
“My grandfather carved carousel horses for a hobby,” she continued, not reading from the transcript at all now. “He had actually bu
ilt a carousel in the barn on his property.”
Zed Patterson sat back in his seat, and the jowly senator lifted his copy of her transcript in the air.
“You’re not following your printed statement, Miz, um—” He hunted through his papers for her name.
“Gray,” she said.
“Yes. Ms. Gray.”
“Is this information relevant?” one of the other senators asked. His thick eyebrows were knitted together in a frown.
Vanessa stole a look at Starla, whose mouth was open as if she wanted to speak but was not sure what to say.
“Yes,” Vanessa said. “It’s extremely relevant. Please bear with me.”
“Go on.” The senator unknitted his eyebrows and rested his arms on the table.
“The summer I was eight years old, my grandfather hired a young man to do some work on the carousel,” she continued. “One day, the man asked my sister, who was ten, to help him in the barn. She didn’t want to go and sent me in her place. I went out to the barn, and the man gave me a doughnut—chocolate-covered. He was disappointed I wasn’t my sister, though. He said he preferred dark-haired girls—my sister was dark—but that I would have to do.”
In the harsh overhead lights, Zed Patterson’s face looked skeletal. The color had drained from his skin, which was pulled tightly over high, pallid cheekbones. His lips were a thin line of white.
“He then proceeded to tell me how pretty I was, and how smart,” Vanessa said. “He asked me which was my favorite horse on the carousel, and then he lifted me onto it, his hands touching me between my legs, but I remember thinking, ‘He’s an adult. I can trust adults.’ I’d been brought up thinking that all adults were honest and protective of children.” She hesitated. “I was wrong, of course, but that’s what I thought at the time. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that he might want to hurt me.”
Vanessa stole another look at Starla, who was nearly as pale as Zed Patterson under her teased blond hair. Starla had to be wondering what had happened to the sunlit hay on the floor of the barn. What had happened to her excellent, unvetted witness?
“He started the carousel, and he stood next to me as the ride spun around. He was touching me, and I was beginning to feel afraid, but I didn’t know what to do.” Vanessa felt the first threat of tears. She wouldn’t let them out. She pressed her palms hard together in her lap. “As we were going around, he lifted me off the horse and took my hand and led me over to the chariot. He sat me down there and told me how beautiful I was and how excited I made him. I remember clearly that he used that word, ‘excited,’ because it seemed like a strange word to me at the time. I didn’t know what he meant. He said he was going to do some things to me—to my body—and that I must never tell anyone. He was smiling and calm. He said some of the things might hurt a little, but he would try to be gentle. I started crying then, and he held me and told me I was brave, and he would try very hard not to hurt me any more than he had to.” For a moment, Vanessa couldn’t speak. She pressed her fingertips to her forehead, eyes down, and felt one tear, then another slip over her cheek.
Brushing the tears away with her fingers, she looked up again. “I was confused,” she said. “He seemed so nice, and this seemed like something that had to be done. Like going to a doctor and getting a shot. An adult who had no choice but to hurt me.”
The room was still, hushed. Although she couldn’t see the crowd behind her, she imagined all eyes were riveted in her direction. She wished she could steal a look at Brian. She didn’t dare.
“He laid me down on the seat of the chariot, took off my underpants, touched me, and then tried to insert his penis inside me. Which was, of course, difficult, and at that point he lost his tenderness and concern for me. He didn’t seem to care if he was hurting me or not, and I started fighting and screaming. He held his hand over my mouth, though, and raped me. I had no idea what was happening to me. All I knew was that I felt as though I was being torn apart, from head to toe.”
Vanessa looked at Starla again, trying to convey an apology with her eyes. “I told Starla Garvey, the attorney responsible for screening the witnesses presenting testimony here today, that I didn’t know the identity of my abuser, other than the fact that he worked for my grandfather. Because I knew that if I told her, I wouldn’t be allowed to testify. But I do know who he was. I have always known. He was the deputy sheriff of Jeremy, Pennsylvania, at that time, and today he is Senator Walter Patterson.”
The room was deadly still for several seconds before Patterson let out a burst of laughter. “I beg your pardon?” He leaned toward her, smiling. “Want to run that by me again?”
“No.” She drew in a deep breath, and along with it, a welcome sense of relief and power. “Running it by you once was difficult enough. I’ve been waiting a lifetime to do it. I never thought I’d get the chance. The statute of limitations has long ago run out for me.” She leaned toward him over the table, locking her eyes with his. “This is the best I can do, and it feels great, you bastard.”
Patterson’s eyes widened. He raised the gavel from the table and banged it down hard. “Recess!” he proclaimed. But no one moved. The crowd behind her began to buzz.
“If only I’d had the guts to come forward when you were on trial for molesting that little girl last month.” Vanessa had to shout above the din. “Maybe people would have realized she was telling the truth, and you’d be locked up by r ow.” She was losing it. She could feel any semblance of poise or pride slipping away from her. Patterson crashed his gavel on the table again.
Vanessa stood up. “I fear for any child you have access to,” she said. “I fear for your own chil—” Her microphone suddenly went dead, and her words were swallowed by the clamor. A security guard reached for her as Starla chased after the committee members who were filing quickly out of the room, several of them darting anxious looks in Vanessa’s direction.
Brian was trying to get past the uniformed security guard, who was hanging on to Vanessa’s arm but didn’t seem to know what to do with her. Shaking the guard’s hand from her arm, she reached for her husband, and she was relieved to see that Brian wore a grin. He pulled her into a hug.
“Holy shit, woman,” he said into her ear, and she laughed.
The crowd was beginning to press around them, and the guard no longer seemed to know whether Vanessa was a danger to others or in need of protection herself.
“Can we get out of here?” she asked Brian.
He nodded. “Come on.” With his arm around her, he led her quickly through the crowd. People followed them into the hallway, and she and Brian kicked into a run. They turned down another hall, where Brian yanked open a door and pulled her inside.
They were in some sort of broom closet. The light was off, but a small window illuminated shelves of cleaning supplies. The scent of bleach was strong. Brian was trying to still his own laughter as he pressed a finger to her lips to keep her quiet. In a few seconds, they heard the thunder of footsteps in the hall outside the closet.
Brian leaned against the wall and closed his arms around her. “That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do,” he said. “Was it impulse or did you plan it?”
“A little of both.” She made a wry face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before I did it. I was afraid you’d—”
“You’re right, I would have. Don’t apologize.”
He bent low to kiss her, and she thought of what else she hadn’t told him. She could tell him now, but the time didn’t seem right. It could wait. She kissed him hard.
“I feel good,” she said. “I feel happy.”
He touched her cheek. “God, I’m glad to hear you say that. It’s been a while.”
“Did you see his face when I said the farm was in Jeremy?”
Brian laughed. “That was rich, but when you identified him as the guy, he looked like he was going to have a coronary. Like he wished he could have a coronary.”
She started laughing herself, almost uncontrollably. “
I got him,” she said. “I nailed the bastard. And now I’m hungry.”
The footsteps in the hallway had subsided, and Brian nodded toward the door. “Let’s go,” he said.
They walked calmly through the halls without encountering anyone who recognized her.
“You know what I feel bad about, though?” Vanessa said as they approached the exit.
“What’s that?”
“I should have planned it better,” she said. “Timed the revelation better. I never got to talk about how it affected me as an adolescent. Why we need AMC programs.”
She pushed open the door, and they walked out into the sunlight—and the waiting jumble of television cameras and reporters. Brian wrapped his arm protectively around her shoulders, gesturing with his other hand toward the eager crowd. “I think you’re going to have the opportunity to talk about whatever you like,” he said.
48
VIENNA
THE SKY WAS DARKENING outside the foundation windows when Jon appeared in the doorway to Claire’s office.
“Patterson’s called a press conference,” he said. “Should be on in ten minutes. Want to watch with me?”
“Yes.” She was supposed to go to the Chain Bridge Theater tonight, early. It was opening night for the play Randy was directing, and she wanted to spend some time with him first, but she couldn’t miss seeing the press conference. “I’ll be right there.”
It had been two days since the hearings on Capitol Hill, and Vanessa’s outburst had been telecast over and over on the news. Claire had been shocked by the public reaction to her sister’s allegations. The media was tearing her apart. The victim was being systematically beaten into submission, while no one cast a doubting eye in Patterson’s direction. Even women’s groups, which Claire had expected to rush to her sister’s defense, were keeping silent, unwilling to derail the man they saw as their champion. She’d left several messages for Vanessa at the Omni, but her calls hadn’t been returned.
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