by Lis Wiehl
Allison and Nicole exchanged a look.
“We’ll check it out and see if it’s a match, but that’s going to take several days. But right now, I have to tell you I kind of like the idea.”
Just showing that the drug was fentanyl wouldn’t be enough to prove that Glover had done it. They needed more evidence. They had to work fast and hope that Glover wasn’t one step ahead of them. Allison hurriedly drafted an affidavit for Nicole to swear off on. When it was done, they would take it to a judge to get search warrants for Glover’s car, offices, and homes, both in Portland and in DC.
“What are you doing?” Allison asked Nicole as she put the finishing touches on the affidavit.
Nicole had been absolutely silent, tapping away on her laptop.
“I had a hunch, so I googled Glover and smoke grenades. Look at this.” She handed over her computer to Allison. “It’s a press release put out by Glover’s office two years ago.”
Congress Passes Funding for Oregon Defense Project
Congressman Quentin Glover has secured $2 million to replenish training and operational stocks of the M18 Grenade produced at Oregon’s Umatilla Arsenal. The M18 Grenade is a small handheld grenade, approximately the size of a soup can, that emits a dense colored smoke and is used by all military services for signaling, marking, or screening operations. The M18 Smoke Grenade has been in high demand as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Congressman Glover was honored for his support at an event in Umatilla.
Allison looked up at Nicole. Quentin Glover had just become their prime suspect.
CHAPTER 33
Channel 4 TV
The cameraman counted down with his fingers, and then Cassidy was on. Brad was sitting next to her, but this was her segment, and the camera focused only on her.
Even covering the gas leak downtown had been easier than this. But Allison had called to offer encouragement—and give a tantalizing hint about Glover—and even Nicole had sent a quick e-mail wishing her luck.
Cassidy took a deep breath. “These days, everywhere you look there are heart decorations and candy-filled displays. Valentine’s Day is rapidly approaching. On the big day, many of us expect affection, romance, roses, chocolates, dinner out—or at least a card. But for others, the day only brings anxiety, fear, and violence. One in three women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.” She paused to give her words added weight. “I know, because I was one of these women.”
Cassidy lifted her chin and looked directly into the camera. “Why am I coming forward now? To help others who are in the same horrible place I was. These victims need validation. They need to know they aren’t alone. While I was dating my ex-boyfriend, I felt so isolated. I was in the public eye, but I felt cut off from everyone. Over time, my self-esteem was completely destroyed.” She was thankful that her makeup hid the purple shadows under her eyes. Last night she had needed two and a half pills before she finally slept.
“My ex-boyfriend manipulated me and got under my skin. He took every grain of confidence I had. He called me names. He belittled me. And eventually he began to hit me. He also isolated me from my family and friends. The emotional manipulation took longer to get over than the bruises.”
Cassidy took a deep breath. “I have decided to speak out to help any of our viewers who are being hurt and who will hear this broadcast. You need to know that you don’t have to live in pain and isolation. You are not alone. I have stood in your shoes, I have walked the paths you are walking, and I managed to come out on the other side. I’ve reclaimed my life, and you can too.”
With every word, Cassidy felt lighter. It had been a big, scary step to charge Rick with assault. But now she was the one who had the power. She was taking the skills she used every day at work—researching and telling a compelling story—and turning them into weapons against the man who had first proclaimed his love for her, then terrorized her. She imagined him sitting at home, watching her, grinding his teeth in impotent anger. And even if he wasn’t watching, she was sure word would get back to him. All of his friends had known he was dating Channel 4’s Cassidy Shaw. Rick had liked to show her off.
“Domestic violence can include sexual assault and physical violence. But it often starts small, with emotional abuse. Does your partner tell you that you are stupid, ugly, and unlovable? Does he insist that you no longer have contact with your friends and family? That is abuse. And the frightening thing about domestic violence is that it escalates. The abuser may destroy items you love. He—or even she—may threaten or actually harm your pets. May take control of your money. And the abuser may eventually attack you. The sad fact is that in America, a woman is at much greater risk of dying at the hands of a loved one than a stranger’s.
“But we can break the cycle of domestic violence that is destroying our families, devastating our communities, and adding to an already overcrowded prison population. It begins with making a personal commitment to get involved if you suspect someone you know is affected. Yes, it is difficult. You might feel that it’s not your business or that you don’t know how to help. But if you don’t reach out, it’s possible that no one will.
“You can help by listening, without judging. When a person is being abused, she feels responsible, ashamed, and inadequate. She is afraid she’ll be judged. I know I was.” Cassidy nodded thoughtfully as she spoke. “But again, you can help by telling the victim that the abuse is not her fault. And that there is no excuse for violence—not alcohol or drugs, not being under financial pressure or being depressed, and certainly not any behavior of the victim’s.
“Tell her she is not alone. Let her know that domestic violence tends to get worse and become more frequent with time, and that it rarely goes away on its own. And give your friend the number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-SAFE.
“Domestic violence is a brutal crime that can be prevented if we join hands. Hands are for holding, not hitting. Remember that this year on Valentine’s Day.”
After Cassidy walked out of the studio, staffers broke into spontaneous applause. People clapped her on the back, thanked her for her courage, and smiled at her.
She went into the bathroom. In the stall, she sat on the toilet and rested her head against the cool metal wall for a few blessed minutes. It was over. She had done it. She had come forward and shared the secret that had paralyzed her for weeks.
Back in her office, Cassidy opened her work e-mail. The station had long made a practice of listing e-mail addresses for all of the on-air talent. Viewers responded by sending an amazing number of tips, photos, and videos. It took her e-mail a few seconds to open up, and when it finally did, Cassidy blinked. More than one hundred messages filled her in-box.
The first one heartened her. “You are so brave for coming forward and giving voice to the voiceless. Thank you for inspiring others.”
Feeling much lighter, she clicked on the next e-mail.
“You’re a fat whore” was all it said. And signed, strangely enough, Your fan.
The next few e-mails Cassidy opened continued to alternately delight and horrify her. But even though the vast majority were good comments, they did not hold as much weight as the bad, at least as far as Cassidy was concerned. People remarked on how she looked, acted, dressed, and even her age, calling her old and washed-up. It was as if, by opening up her own life to viewers, she had shown that she was just like them, and had only been pretending to be someone who deserved to be on camera. Who deserved to tell others the news.
Cassidy had thought she would be helping others. But now she wondered—had she only hurt herself?
She had thought that her viewers would love her more for knowing that she had faced adversity and ultimately triumphed. Instead, many of them mocked her for it.
Had they ever loved her at all?
CHAPTER 34
Chapel Pub
Sunday, February 12
Nic sat with her back to the wall. She liked it that way. Something solid and imp
enetrable against her shoulder blades. And facing the door. She always wanted to see what was coming.
She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved red shirt. Long-sleeved because her left arm was a wreck—bruised, cut, scraped—from all the elbow work she had been learning from her Thai boxing trainer. Out of old habit, Nic rested her hand over her glass of beer when she wasn’t drinking it. Chapel Pub was nothing like the bars she had gone to when she was fresh out of college. Those had been dimly lit, with dance music thumping in the background. This place had white walls, dark rafters, and worn Oriental carpets, with plenty of babies and retired folks. If there was music, she couldn’t hear it.
On a TV in the corner, she caught a glimpse of Cassidy with an inset of Congressman Glover over her left shoulder. The lab had taken away boxes and boxes from his offices, homes, and cars, and was now painstakingly processing the evidence, looking for paper and fiber matches. Among the evidence were a number of fentanyl pain patches. But no smoke grenades.
Nic was so nervous she felt like she might explode. Or possibly implode. Or just shatter. But she had promised that she would be here.
The main door opened, and Leif walked through. His eyes found hers in an instant. He smiled, and warmth spread through Nic.
“Hey.” He sat down and poured a glass from the pitcher she had ordered. “I see you thought ahead. I’ll get the next one.”
“This is my limit,” she said. “And that’s kind of why I need to talk to you. There are things you need to know about me. Before anything happens.” She wanted to add “between us,” but now it seemed too presumptuous. Her hands were slick, and she wiped them on the thighs of her jeans, glad they were hidden by the table. She sighed. “Look, I don’t tell people this, okay? I don’t tell anyone. And I would never tell someone at the Bureau.”
Leif laid his hands flat on the table and leaned forward. “I’m not talking to you as a special agent, Nicole. I’m talking to you as a friend. This is for my ears only.”
She looked into his light-colored eyes and thought of another pair of eyes, green ones, and her stomach twisted. Wanting to trust Leif, not knowing if she could or should. “The only person who knows everything is my mama.” She dropped her gaze again. “And even she doesn’t know everything.”
Leif nodded. He didn’t raise his beer to his lips, and his eyes never left her face.
“It was the summer after I graduated from college. I was still deciding what I wanted to do. I was thinking about going to law school, or getting an MBA. Maybe even going to medical school. I probably could have done anything. I know that sounds vain, but I’m good at school. But nothing really called to me. And it’s not like employers were beating down doors to hire an English major. In the meantime, I was working as a waitress and living at home, saving money while I figured out what I wanted to do. One night I served these two guys just before closing. One was black and one was white. They were funny, smart, nice. At least they seemed that way.” She could feel her upper lip curling as she spoke. “They invited me to have a drink with them at the bar next door after I got off work. I said yes.” She swallowed. “That’s how stupid I was.”
“Nic,” Leif protested softly.
She continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “I remember having one drink. I remember ordering a second drink. After that, I don’t really know what happened. Somehow I must have gotten home and made it into my bed. I woke up the next morning wearing all my clothes, but my panties were on inside out. I should have realized what that meant, but at the time I thought it was just one more weird thing I had managed while I was drunk, like getting home and not remembering it. Like getting bruises on my wrist but not remembering what happened.
“The next day I had a terrible headache, but I just assumed it was a hangover. But that night, the nightmares started. I woke up screaming, sweating. And it was the same thing the next night. And the next. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes Mama woke me up because I had woken her and Daddy up. The only thing about the dreams that I remembered was that I felt like I was trapped. Like something was on top of me. Crushing me.”
Leif was completely still. His face could have been carved from stone. His eyes looked directly into hers.
“I thought it was the stress of trying to decide what to do with my life. My period was late, but I hadn’t had sex in over a year. Finally I bought a test, even though I knew it couldn’t be true. I just didn’t want to believe I was that kind of girl. Some drunk slut.”
Wincing, Leif shook his head, but Nic was caught up in her memories.
The grocery store had been full of pregnant women. Some lumbered, while others sported cute little bumps. One woman, belly jutting alarmingly ahead of her, sauntered along on four-inch heels Nic could never have worn, pregnant or not. She bought the cheapest pregnancy test, so generic it didn’t even have a name.
At home, she made sure the bathroom door was locked before she peed on the white stick. A moment later, she watched the first pink line form. According to the instructions, that meant the test was working. When the second line began to appear, at first Nic told herself that she was imagining it. It wasn’t that dark. It must be a false positive. She couldn’t be pregnant. Not really.
Nic looked at the instructions again. Any line, no matter how faint, meant it was positive.
She called the advice nurse. “Is it possible it’s a false positive?”
“Bless your heart,” the nurse said.
Something inside Nic died.
Then the nurse added, “May I ask you something? Are you married?”
Instead of answering, Nic had hung up.
Now she told Leif, “I was going to have an abortion. I felt like garbage. Like a whore. I felt like everyone could tell, just by looking at me, what I had done.”
Leif looked at her, bit his lip, looked away. Was he ashamed of her, embarrassed by her?
“Then my mama found me throwing up in the bathroom and figured out what was going on. You have to understand, my family is religious.”
“And you’re not?” Leif asked gently.
She thought of how she had begged God to make it not so, to take it away so that she could go back to her old life. “Not anymore, no. I don’t want any part of a God that would let things like what happened, happen. If that’s a problem for you”—her eyes flashed up to his—“then it’s good you know it now.”
“I’m listening,” he said softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“So my mama quoted some psalm to me, about how God knits babies together in their mothers’ wombs. I tried to tell her it was just a blob of tissue. See, at that point, we both thought the same thing. That I had gotten drunk and made a mistake. We didn’t know the rest. My mama and my daddy and my pastor—they all said people would help with the baby, that I could go back to school later, that God had given me this baby for a reason. And I listened to them. And then—and then the other shoe dropped when I was five months along and it was too late to do anything.”
“What was the other shoe?’
“These two guys—Roy Kirk and Donny Miller—were arrested after a housekeeper found a videotape, still in the player, of them having sex with a passed-out woman. Roy had stacks of tapes like that, but only two of them had Miller too. When I saw their photos in the paper, I came forward. I wanted to see my tape.” She took a deep, shaky breath. “But there wasn’t one.”
He put his hand over his eyes and asked, “What did they use, do you think?”
“At the trial, they said GHB.”
Leif sucked air through his teeth and dropped his hand to the table. Colorless and odorless, GHB, or gamma-hydroxybutyrate, had a slightly salty taste that was easily disguised. A few drops could render a person close to unconscious for four hours or more, leaving them with little or no memory of events. And GHB exited the body within twelve hours, so victims were often tested too late. Five months after the fact, any proof would have been long gone.
Leif ’s low voice was edged with bitterness. “Ye
ah, why bother to use a gun or a knife when you can slip something into the drink of the girl of your choice? Not only will she not fight back; she won’t even remember being attacked.”
“You say that, but inside, even when everyone else started calling it a rape, I knew it was my fault. I had flirted and laughed with them. I had gone to the bar with them when they suggested it.”
He groaned. “Nic, no.”
“And now I was going to have a baby whose father was a monster. In an odd way, I felt sorry for it. For the baby. No one cared about it. I was its mother, and I didn’t want it. I told Mama I was going to give it up for adoption. I couldn’t raise it.”
She remembered Berenice’s reaction.
“Nicole, no,” Mama had protested, dropping the wooden spoon she had been stirring a pot of soup with. “Have you prayed about it?”
Nic had straightened up. Anger shot through her, from the top of her head to the tips of her fingers. She felt more alive than she had since the night it had happened.
“Prayed about it? What kind of God would let two animals rape me in the first place? They drugged me and they used me like a piece of Kleenex. I don’t care what God thinks. He didn’t protect me. It’s up to me to make decisions now.”
“Oh, Nicole, don’t say that!” Mama put her hand to her chest. Her eyes were bright with tears. “Look, when our people were slaves, many, many children were conceived in rape or from forced breeding. But those mothers still loved those children.”
“Mama, I’m not a slave. And I can’t do it. If I keep it, what kind of life will I give it? What will I tell people who want to know who the father is?”
“You just hold your head up high and say you are the mother and the father.”
“And when the child asks me who the father is? What then? A child can’t live with that burden. A child can’t live knowing that their father is the devil.”
