I glanced at Amelia. She was staring out the window, no doubt reliving the night’s events and losing more of herself each time she did. Up to this point she’d been spared the emotional landmines that had littered my life and Hilary’s. I reached over and took her hand, welcome to the club.
From Forest Ave. I took a right into what had once been an upper crust neighborhood before Staples and CVS invaded. Most of the stately Victorians were now apartment buildings for students at the nearby university or working class people, like Amelia. I parked in front of her blue-gray, three story and helped her out of the car. At the door she stopped, staring at the lock with the keys hanging from her hand as though she’d forgotten what to do next. I took them from her and let us in guiding her past the row of mailboxes and step-by-step up the frayed oriental runner that lined each tread. Neither of us spoke, muted by disbelief, fear and a sadness that went decades deep.
Inside Amelia’s apartment, the ornate furniture, velvet draperies and dark hardwood floors created a refuge right out of the eighteen hundreds, but nothing would console her now. Not here, not anywhere. I followed her into the bathroom and started the shower. When I turned to look at her, she was staring at her face in the mirror and I saw it too. Not the hip, one-night-stand Amelia, who never let anyone get too close, but the small, frightened nine-year-old girl who’d been with me in the railcar.
“I want to take a bath in Clorox,” she said. “I want to peel the skin off my own body. I let him touch me. Do you have any idea what I feel like?” She dropped her head and stared at the floor. “I wanted him to.”
I had no words that could make it right. I pulled back the curtain, reached for her hand and guided her into the spray. “Wash,” I said, then went into the kitchen and put on water for tea.
When the kettle whistled, she wandered in looking like a little girl lost and took the steaming mug of Earl Grey I held out for her. We sat across from each other at the kitchen table, neither of us knowing where to begin. I laid one hand over hers, wrapping the other around my cup, hoping the warmth would stop my shakes.
“You know without a doubt it’s him?” I tried to speak as gently as I could.
“I told you,” she said. “Yes.” Her eyes stayed focused on the batik tablecloth.
“But why would he risk coming back here? Why would he talk to you? Why would he ever take you outside and...”
“He didn’t know it was me. How could he? I look a lot different now than when I was nine. And he didn’t spend much time looking at either one of us that day in the railcar. I never would have known it was him if I hadn’t seen the tattoo. He doesn’t have a clue who I am, I’m sure of that. What the fuck am I going to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“How can I tell Hilary?”
“Why do you need to?”
“We have to go to the police. They’ll arrest him. It’s all going to come out.”
“She’s in rehab. We can stall telling her until we know what’s going to happen.”
“But we tell each other everything.”
I stood up and walked across the kitchen. “Maybe it’s time that changed.” There was no way I was telling anyone that I’d taken out the board last night and started this ball rolling. Hilary might be right, but that didn’t mean she had to know it. I turned back to Amelia. “Tell me what happened.”
She rubbed the backs of her hands over her damp cheeks, sniffed and took a breath. “We sat at the bar for a while and had a couple more, then he said he had some weed in his car so we went outside for a smoke. We got in the car and one thing led to another and you know...”
“So how did you actually see it? His butt, I mean.” I flashed on the image I’d had over the weekend of Amelia on his lap. I held my tongue and wiped the sweat from the back of my neck.
She shrugged. “Afterward, he stepped out of the car to fix his pants. He had his back to me. I was sitting on the front seat. It was eye level, pretty hard to miss.”
She rested her forehead on her hand. I reached over and caressed her arm, feeling a ripple of goose bumps beneath my palm. When she lifted her head, her face was so pained I had to look away.
“I liked him,” she whispered. “I really liked him. I thought maybe...”
She folded her arms on the table and laid her head on top of them “What’s wrong with me?”
“You didn’t know. It’s been years.” But the question I’d had before repeated itself and made my stomach clench. “Do you think he knew it was us?”
Amelia met my eyes, considered it for a moment, but shook her head. “I’m sure he thinks we’re long gone.” She dropped her gaze to the floor.
“But what if he came looking for us?”
“Why would he?” She shook her head. “He was just another loser looking to get laid and I...” Amelia bit her lip and blinked back tears. “Anyway, they never released our names. If he’d known it was us at the bar I’m sure we’re the last women he would have approached.”
I nodded. “Okay, so that’s a dumb theory, but what did you do when you saw it?”
“I thought I was going to be sick. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run. I was afraid, but then I realized that there was nothing he could do to me that he hadn’t already done.” Her tears started again. “And I’d asked for it.” She covered her mouth and ran for the bathroom.
I listened to her gag and forced myself to take a mental step back. I needed to focus on logistics, not let emotions clutter my thinking. I’d talk to Ben and put together an airtight case. I’d waited years to have this guy within reach. I could already hear the clanging of a cell door and then, off with his head.
When Amelia came out of the bathroom, I helped her gather a few days’ worth of clothes and threw them into a suitcase. I didn’t want her to be alone and she didn’t fight it when I told her she was going to stay with Ben and me for a while.
By the time we entered the apartment, Ben was halfway through the morning paper and a bagel, Stitch resting comfortably in his lap. He looked at me with a million questions on his face and opened his mouth, but when he looked at Amelia he closed it. She looked like hell.
We told him the story and he listened, asking for clarity here and there, gathering facts. Ben didn’t try rape cases, but I did and he knew the process. He looked at me when she’d finished. “Too close to home for you. Maybe we better call Michael.”
Michael Steele was the DA in Portland. “Not yet,” I told him. “We need to build our case.”
“That’s his job.”
“Not this time. Not this case.”
“Cecily...”
“I’m building the case. He can try it, but I’m putting it together. Besides we’re a long way from that.”
Ever since leaving Amelia’s apartment, I’d thought about going to the cops and knew they weren’t going to listen. We didn’t have enough. I turned to Amelia now and said the words I’d been avoiding. “You have to keep seeing him.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
Ben combed his fingers through a bed-head of chestnut waves. “No way, Cecily. What are you thinking?”
“I know it’s a lot to ask,” I said, “but if we lose track of him we may not find him again and we need to have more on him before going to the police.”
“I’m not doing it.” Amelia swallowed a mouthful of Jack Daniels from the shot glass Ben set in front of her and wiped a stray tear from her cheek.
I could feel the depth of her shame, the utter stupidity of her actions scraping her insides raw. It would have been just another of her one-night stands. A guy whose face she’d forget the moment she closed the door behind him, but not this one, not ever.
“Then I’ll watch him,” I said.
“Right.” Ben nodded. “That’s like Sylvester minding Tweetie. Thanks for the offe
r, but I don’t think so. We’re going to the police.”
I looked at Amelia and raised my eyebrows. “You can’t see him again?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But I can make a positive ID.”
“Of his butt,” I said. “It’s been too long. No one’s going to care and the case will slip through the cracks on some asinine technicality. No pun intended.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.” Ben stood and put his mug in the sink. “Maine has no statute of limitations on child sexual abuse. They have to listen. Isn’t this why we went to law school? Speaking of which, I’ve got to get to work.”
I turned to face him. “Dobbs is my Holy Grail. There’s no way I’m letting him slip through some crack in the system.”
Ben shook his head. “Then why are you practicing law?”
“Look, there’s nothing more gratifying than watching some asshole get led away in orange, but the reality is a case this old isn’t going to pull any heart strings, but ours. What if they bring in a tattoo artist who says that tat’s as common as Reebok running shoes?” I pointed at Amelia. “She had no idea who he was until he took off his pants. A positive ID of somebody’s ass isn’t going to carry a lot of weight. Dobbs could walk.”
“We don’t even know if Dobbs is his real name,” Ben said. “He’d have to be pretty stupid to come back to a town where he committed a crime using his real name.”
“You’re forgetting they chalked the rape up to a drifter passing through. Dobbs believes he’s free and clear. He’s got no reason to think he needs an alias. And if someone recognized him from years ago, it would seem kind of strange if he’d changed his name.” I crossed the kitchen for another shot glass and poured in two fingers of the amber liquid. “If I want the police to pay attention, then I have to bring them something intriguing. They won’t waste manpower based on the artwork on some guy’s rear end.”
I moved the whiskey out of Stitch’s reach. In the time we’d had him, I’d found him licking the mouth of the bottle on more than one occasion. He’s the only cat I know who has an affinity for Jack Daniels.
Ben’s advice to go to the police was the same thing I’d say to someone in my position and I wasn’t about to give up on my career after racking up thousands of dollars in student loans and countless hours in the law library. But what if the cops didn’t care? Even worse, what if they cared a little? Enough to question him, hear his bullshit alibi, and let him go. I’d lose my chance and it would never come again. But what was I doing with my life everyday if, when it was my turn, I didn’t trust the process?
“All right,” I said. “We’ll go to the police first, but if they’re not interested we do things my way.”
Ben looked at me with a half smile and nodded. “Deal.”
I looked at Amelia. She pressed her lips in a tight line and nodded.
Chapter Eight
“You recognized his what?” Sergeant DeLonge leaned forward, planted his elbows on his desk and looked from Amelia to me. When he grinned, I saw an opportunity to knock a row of nicotine-stained teeth right down his throat and wanted to wring Ben’s neck for setting me up to make a fool of myself.
DeLonge’s eyes were small and set too wide apart, emphasizing his blocky face. The skin around his jaw hung loose and swayed when he talked, like jowls on a bulldog. When neither of us returned his smile, he suppressed a laugh and said, “Counselor, you should know better. I understand that this is a bad memory for you girls, but I can’t reopen a cold case because you recognized some guy’s ass. Let’s get real, Cecily, you’re smarter than this.”
You condescending dick, I thought, wishing I had the chutzpah to say it out loud.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Amelia asked him.
The sergeant shook his head and shrugged. “Either forget it or get me more.” He flipped his ballpoint in the air and let it fall to the stack of papers on his desk. “I’m not wasting my men’s time chasing down some tattoo.” He turned to me. “Give me a reason to bring him in for questioning, ’cause right now, I don’t have one.”
Exactly what I told them, I thought, though I’d never let the sergeant know I’d predicted his response before we’d even arrived at the station.
Amelia pounded her fist against the desk. “But I know it’s him.”
“You’re telling me that you can recognize a derrière you saw when you were nine years old? Aside from the tattoo, which any number of people could have applied to their butt over the past eighteen years, what makes you such an expert on the male anatomy?”
“Don’t go there,” I said to her under my breath.
She gave me a dirty look and stood up. “Let’s get out of here.”
We stepped away from the sergeant’s desk. A few uniforms were bent over a game of cards. Others were overseeing, nursing their coffee.
“Looks like they’re right out straight,” I said.
Sergeant DeLonge cleared his throat. “Sorry I can’t be of further help, ladies.” He stifled a smile.
“To be of further help means you’d have actually done something already,” I said. “And just so we’re clear, you haven’t.” I was rewarded with a few snickers from the peanut gallery.
Without responding, the sergeant turned his back to us and walked away.
On the sidewalk, Amelia and I headed for the waterfront.
“I hate to say I told you so, but I did.”
“I don’t understand how he can just say no,” she said. “Don’t police have to investigate someone linked to a crime? Don’t we pay their salary?”
“Evidently, he doesn’t think there’s enough of a link between Dobbs and the rape. It’s his prerogative to make an educated guess.”
“Well, I doubt he made it past second grade, the moron.”
I rubbed her back. “Don’t worry, we’ll get him. If they need foolproof evidence handed to them before they’ll get off their duffs, then that’s what they’ll get. We’ll bring it to them ourselves.”
Amelia looked at me. “I’m in.”
“No matter what?”
She nodded. “No matter what.”
I pulled back the ornate oak door at the Fisherman’s Grill and Amelia and I searched the darkened restaurant for Ben. We’d planned to meet him for an early dinner after our appointment with DeLonge.
“I knew it wouldn’t work,” I said to him as I slid onto the red leather cushion in a corner booth. “He was a real jerk and made us look like fools.” I glanced at Amelia and she nodded her agreement. “I wish you could have just believed me when I said the cops wouldn’t be interested. Sometimes I actually know what I’m talking about.”
Ben held up his hand to quiet me, a behavior I ranked right up there with a door being slammed in my face. When I’d told him that, he’d said it was a calming signal. Calm my ass. I took a deep breath on cue. Okay, maybe I was a little riled up.
“So how do we proceed?” he asked.
In Ben’s world it’s the guy who saves the girl and for most of our relationship I’d let him think that was true. In reality, girls save girls after men fuck them over. Now he was going to learn that, and with the shoe on the other foot, I wondered if what had been a comfortable fit for the past two years would become too tight.
“The first thing we have to do is find a way to keep him around.”
Amelia looked at me. “I’ll help. I really will, but I don’t know if I can...” Her voice trailed off.
“I know,” I said, “but what if you just keep him hanging?”
Over appetizers we tossed around ideas and by dessert we had a plan. Amelia would work Dobbs by phone. If we felt like we were losing him then maybe, and it was a big maybe, she’d see him in person as long as it was in a public place. We came up with some borderline erotic telephone conversations that would hopef
ully keep him interested long enough for us to find out what he was doing in Portland. In other words, Amelia would be working in her area of expertise, dangling the carrot. But this time the prey wouldn’t get close enough to bite.
I was relieved to see Ben lighten up. He got into the idea of Amelia’s lewd and lascivious phone dates with Dobbs, a little too into it. On a more useful note, he also provided her with some legal sleight-of-hand to entice Dobbs into disclosing information he’d have no idea he was revealing.
We walked a fine line around how much she could share about herself without triggering his memory. Above all, Hilary was not to know; she could freak out and blow the whole thing. And I was to stay out of the picture. There were plenty of black women in southern Maine these days, but it was still a rare sight in Millers Falls. He’d already seen Amelia and me side by side once, well twice. He couldn’t be given the opportunity to put two and two together, though I didn’t peg him for being all that bright.
I tried to hold tight to my faith in the system and believe that if we got enough information we could turn DeLonge’s head. But I’d seen assholes walk even when everyone in the courtroom knew they were guilty and that had me jittery. I couldn’t let it happen this time. Dobbs was going to pay one way or another. So while Ben and Amelia talked phone sex, I came up with an idea of my own. I needed someone who wasn’t afraid to get dirty, at least as dirty as Dobbs.
Chapter Nine
The first time I’d met Nick Marquette was the same day Hilary was raped. I’d just finished a dead-silent dinner with my mother and Jarod. There were so many questions sitting on my tongue it was hard to fit the food in past them, but every time I ventured to ask one my mother just shook her head and stared at her plate. I tried not to look at Jarod, but I could see his grin from the corner of my eye.
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