No mistake, this was the place.
The stone house had been built on two different levels to accommodate the mountainous terrain. Its gothic gables and flying buttresses, meant to guard against the heavy winter snows, lent the house a medieval tone. Spooky was an apt description.
Caity let out a low whistle as he helped her down from the Jeep. She’d been banged up enough already. He didn’t want her slipping in this mud.
“This place is something.” She gazed up as if expecting bats to fly out of a belfry.
“Agreed.” The house looked more like it belonged in Transylvania than at the borderline of private land and public wilderness in the state of Colorado. He pressed the bell, and it chimed out a few bars of “Edelweiss”—ah, much more Rocky Mountains.
The door opened, and he heard a quick intake of breath from Caity when she took in the woman in front of them. Her jet-black bob framed a heart-shaped face. Her unadorned lips were full, her eyes . . . columbine blue.
“Ms. Lisa Blake?” he asked.
She nodded.
He flashed his creds. “I’m Special Agent Atticus Spenser—I go by Spense. This is my partner, Dr. Caitlin Cassidy. May we come in?”
She didn’t unlatch the storm door.
“We just have a few questions for you.”
“Sorry, but I don’t have any answers. As you can probably tell by where I live, I like to keep to myself.”
Caity stepped forward. She shed her outer jacket and pushed up her sleeve, revealing her battered arm. She tucked her long hair behind her ear and turned a bruised cheek toward Lisa. “I’d like to talk to you about Grady Webber.”
Lisa touched her fingers to her mouth. “Grady did that to you?”
“He did. May we come in?”
“I—I’m sorry about whatever happened to you, but like I said, I can’t help you.”
“Lisa.” Caity’s tone was sympathetic and firm at the same time. “If this wasn’t important, we wouldn’t be bothering you, but we’re here on a matter of the utmost importance. So let me come straight to the point. We’ve been told that you once pressed rape charges against Grady Webber.”
“I dropped them.”
This was a good start. Lisa still hadn’t unlatched the door, but she had answered a question. Spense kept quiet and let Caity take the reins. He could tell she was already developing a rapport with Ms. Blake.
“We’d still like to ask you a few questions. We’re investigating the case of a missing coed, Laura Chaucer,” Caity said.
Lisa’s face drained of color.
She opened the door with a shaky hand.
He and Caity exchanged a glance. Lisa had seemed much more affected by the mention of Laura Chaucer’s name than by Grady Webber’s. And that was a surprise—after all she had a very real, and very troubling connection with Webber. She’d no doubt heard about Laura on the news, but it wasn’t as if she knew her personally—at least not as far as they were aware.
They stepped through the doorway. Inside, Lisa Blake’s home was every bit as imposing as outside.
“You have a gorgeous house.” Caity continued with the rapport building, not commenting on Lisa’s obvious reaction to the mention of Laura’s name. “Did you decorate it yourself?”
“I helped my mother before she passed.” The color returned to Lisa’s face and the composure to her voice.
“Well, it’s very impressive. Do you have professional training—as a decorator, I mean?”
“I studied interior design in college.”
“Before you dropped out.”
Lisa crossed her arms over her chest. “I thought this was about Laura Chaucer, and it seems you already know the answers to the questions you’re asking.”
“Look.” Caity touched Lisa on the shoulder. “I appreciate your straightforwardness. I’d like to be straightforward with you, too. Is that okay?”
Lisa’s eyes lowered. “Please.” She uncrossed her arms and led the way into a living area.
Spense sat down in a sturdy chair that looked like it had been used in the Spanish Inquisition, leaving the sofa and love seat for Caity and Lisa.
“I’m afraid these questions are going to get personal, but, as I mentioned earlier, they’re important,” Caity said.
“Will they help you find that missing coed?”
Lisa now referred to Laura as a coed, like she couldn’t even remember her name. Yet Spense was becoming more and more certain that she not only knew Laura’s name, she must have some personal connection to the young woman—a connection she wasn’t eager to volunteer.
“I want you to be honest with me, so I’m going to be honest with you,” Caity replied evenly. “I can’t say if your answers will help find Laura or not, but they might. I won’t know until I hear them. Now, if you’re ready, I’d like for you to tell me everything you remember about the night you were assaulted at an off-campus fraternity party.”
Lisa’s jaw relaxed out of its clenched position, her eyes opened wider, and her gaze softened. It took Spense only a moment to understand why. With that one simple question, Caity had made it perfectly clear that she didn’t doubt that Lisa had been raped. She was ready to take her at her word—a decency not always afforded women who were brave enough to come forward and report a sexual assault.
Lisa brushed her hair back and lifted her eyes to meet Caity’s. “I’m ready.”
“Just start at the beginning, and we’ll interrupt with questions, if that’s okay.”
But Lisa didn’t seem to know where to begin. So Spense decided to get her started. He could back off and let Caity take over anytime, if needed. “You told the police you’d been raped by Grady Webber.”
She rested one hand on top of the other. “Yes. But I made a mistake. Grady never hurt me. That’s why I dropped the charges.”
“You don’t seem like the kind of person to make something up out of spite,” Spense said, knowing it was common for victims to recant their stories for a multitude of reasons. “So maybe go back to the beginning and tell us what actually happened that night. We can take a break anytime you want.”
“I won’t want a break. I just want to help. And it’s better to get it over with.”
“I’m sure it’s not easy for you to talk about this, Lisa,” Caity said.
“It’s not.” She straightened her back. “I—I went to a frat party with my boyfriend. Only he wasn’t my boyfriend at the time.”
“That was your first date with Grady.”
“It was our first date, but Grady wasn’t my escort, his best friend was. But Grady was there. It was a double date. Nothing bad is supposed to happen on double dates, right?” One corner of her mouth lifted wryly. “Anyway, there was a lot of drinking at this party and some drugs. I had too much alcohol, and I passed out. Later that night, I woke up in the basement of the house where the party was taking place. My panties were missing, and I was bleeding. I—I was a virgin.” Her voice went quiet. “I knew I’d had sex, only I didn’t know with whom. The next day Grady called me. He was very solicitous, kept asking how I was feeling, and if I was okay. I just assumed that since Grady knew something was wrong, it had to have been him. How else would he have known? And the boy I went with was my dream date, I didn’t believe he would hurt me in a million years.”
“Seems logical,” Spense said.
“So I went to the police. They took me to the hospital, and the doctors did an exam and collected some swabs and a blood test, they checked my body for hairs and fibers and used some kind of special light on my skin.”
“Did they call what they did a rape kit?”
“Yes. After the cops interviewed Grady, they came back and told me he’d denied everything, but it was my responsibility to press charges against him, so I did. I also wrote an article for the school newspaper warning other women to watch their drinks at parties.”
“I’m confused,” Caity said. “I thought you said you drank too much and that’s why you passed out.”
“And you dropped the charges because . . .”
“The rape kit showed the presence of semen. But it wasn’t Grady’s. They ruled him out because his blood type didn’t match. Grady Webber did not rape me.”
“But, someone did,” Caity said.
“Yes.” She pulled her shoulders up. “Someone did.”
“I could use some water.” Spense offered, because whether she said so or not, he could see Lisa needed a break. She had tears in her eyes, and she was wringing her hands raw. “I can find my way to the kitchen. Anyone else want something?”
“Might as well bring water for everyone,” Caity said.
Lisa didn’t object.
Spense took the opportunity to wander the house a little in his search for the kitchen. He ventured into a room with more comfortable décor, a piano, and what he presumed to be family pictures atop a mantle. He spied photos of an older couple, and some that looked to be Lisa as a child. He picked one of them up, and even before his brain could process the information, his chin snapped back. He’d seen this exact photograph, of a dark-haired blue-eyed little girl eating a wad of pink cotton candy before . . .
In the war room.
He went for his cube. As his fingers worked furiously to sort the puzzle, the room disappeared around him. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to focus on the image of the little girl. He imagined the sweet smell of spun sugar, the sticky feel of it beneath his fingertips. The girl smiled at him and asked: Do you see, now? It’s so simple.
The puzzle solved, he put his cube back in his pocket. He did see, and the implications made his heart sting like it’d been hit with a Taser. He opened his eyes, and looked around the room, concentrating on the solidness of the work they had yet to do.
It had taken him years to learn not to bury his feelings, because emotion and instinct often helped solve a case. The hardest part was acknowledging those feelings, and then getting straight on with business. The cube helped—not only to clear his head, but to slide his emotions into a safe slot.
He found the kitchen and took three glasses of water into the living room, passed them around and sat back down in the uncomfortable wooden chair. “Lisa, why didn’t the police pursue your rape case further?”
“Because by then, I didn’t want them to. By then, I knew who’d raped me . . . only at the time, I didn’t believe it was really rape.”
A familiar refrain, even now, when date rape awareness was much higher than then. “Because he’d been your date?” Caity asked.
Lisa nodded.
“Whit Chaucer,” Spense said.
Caity’s eyes widened. She hadn’t seen what he’d seen.
Lisa’s gaze darted all around the room then found Spense again. She gripped her hands together tightly in her lap. “Yes. But if you ask him now about that night, he’ll not only tell you he didn’t rape me, he’ll tell you he wasn’t even my date.”
“Why would he deny that he was your date?”
“Because he’s a liar. He lies about things even when he knows you know they’re lies. He’ll look up at a clear blue sky and tell you it’s raining and somehow, he can get you to believe it.”
“What did he get you to believe?” Caity asked.
“That I said yes. He made me believe I asked for it.” Lisa’s mouth quivered, and she quickly looked away.
No one pressed. He and Caity simply waited for Lisa to regain her composure. He suspected Caity might need a minute herself. She identified with Lisa. He could tell by the way Caity’s posture mimicked the other woman’s, by the way her eyes glistened with empathy, and by the way he itched to put an arm around her shoulder to shore her up.
After a couple of minutes, Lisa looked up and started talking again. “When I found out the semen wasn’t Grady’s, I confronted Whit. He admitted he’d had sex with me that night, but he said it was consensual.”
“You were unconscious, Lisa. You can’t give consent under those circumstances,” Caity said.
“Whit said I was high, but willing. They were passing around Quaaludes at the frat party like candy, and he said I asked him to get one for me so that I would be brave enough to lose my virginity. I told him that was impossible, because I didn’t do drugs. Then he said that I did do drugs when I was drunk.”
Blood surged to Spense’s face. He wanted to punch a wall, or better, Whit Chaucer. But there was work to do. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward, concentrating on what Lisa was telling them.
“Whit said that I came on to him. He claimed that I begged him to take my virginity. He said he really didn’t want to, and that he was doing me a favor.”
Spense didn’t think he could speak and keep his cool at the same time. Best to let Caity take that one.
“Why didn’t Whit come forward with his version of events before you filed charges against Grady?” Caity asked.
“He said he knew the charges against Grady would be disproven, and he didn’t want anything spoiling his reputation, or his family’s.”
“Earlier, you called him your boyfriend, but you said he wasn’t at the time. Does that mean you continued to see him afterward?” Spense found his center again.
Lisa averted her gaze. “I was so stupid.”
“This isn’t your fault, Lisa.”
“No. It’s his fault—it took me years of therapy to really accept that. Sometimes I fall back into my old mindset, but I don’t let myself stay there.” She let out a slow breath. “Anyway, Whit was very handsome, and to say he was a ‘big man on campus’ would be an understatement. I was infatuated with him. When he said I asked for the Quaalude, I thought, maybe, I really did. I didn’t believe that a guy like Whit Chaucer would rape me. He was president of his fraternity, and an academic all-star. He was even a youth leader at church.
“And after the incident, he was a perfect gentleman to me. He said we would wait until I was sure I was ready to fool around again. I wanted to believe him. So I continued to date him, and I didn’t say a word to anyone.”
“Why did you finally break things off? Or did he?”
“I did. Because it happened again. I still didn’t understand that it was rape, but I knew I wasn’t in control of what was happening to me, and I didn’t want it to continue.”
Spense forced himself to breathe slowly and keep the expression on his face neutral.
“There’s a cabin about a mile from here—a forest service hut. I woke up with him there one morning. We were both naked.” She laughed—a nervous laugh. “Whit acted like nothing was wrong. Hey babe, where do you want to go for breakfast? Was it as good for you as it was for me?”
Caity looked like she was going to leap from the couch directly onto the chandelier, but Spense stayed on point. “And you couldn’t remember anything, could you?” he asked.
“Not a damn thing,” Lisa said. “I was so confused. He insisted it wasn’t rape. And even though it felt wrong, I knew I couldn’t go to the police for help. I’d already filed a false complaint against Grady Webber, and I’d continued to date Whit for several months after the first incident. He was a golden boy, and I was just some slutty dropout who drank too much and took Quaaludes. Who would believe me if I didn’t even believe myself?”
Caity locked eyes with Lisa, “This is not your fault. But I am wondering why now, after so much time has passed, and you understand what really happened to you, with Whit so much in the public eye, why haven’t you come forward?”
Spense had been waiting for the right moment to confirm his suspicion—and this was it. “For Laura’s sake,” he answered the question for Lisa. “She’s your daughter, by Whit Chaucer. Isn’t that right?”
Lisa opened her mouth and closed it again. A gurgling sob came out of her throat. Caity, looking nearly as flustered as Lisa, got up and handed her a tissue she’d pulled from a pack in her purse.
Wiping her tears, Lisa said, “Whit
and Tracy adopted Laura when she was six months old. Neither Tracy nor I knew it, but he’d been dating Tracy the whole time he was seeing me—he said he loved me, but I wasn’t good enough for his family, or for his aspirations. He said he and Tracy could give Laura a better life than I could—and they did . . . up until someone kidnapped her, and I could hardly blame them for that. But now, she’s missing again, and they’re saying awful things about her on the news.”
Caity’s mouth parted in seeming disbelief. “Lisa, help me understand. Whit was the father, but you said he adopted Laura. Walk me through how that came about.”
“You mean walk you through how I could ever give my daughter up to a rapist?”
The silence in the room was mercifully short. Lisa rushed to fill it. “Believe me, I’ve asked myself the same question just about every day for the past decade. But the truth is, I did the best that I could for Laura at the time.” She let out a long, shaky sigh. “I was a basket case. Literally. When I found out I was pregnant, I was terribly confused and depressed. I wanted to give the baby up for adoption, but my parents didn’t want me to make a decision while I was in that state of mind.” She offered a weak smile. “I guess parents don’t always make the right decisions for their kids, but mine had my best interests at heart. They convinced me to wait until the baby was six months old and then revisit the idea of adoption. They hoped I’d be well by then, and that I would have bonded with the baby.”
“But that’s not what happened?” Caity asked gently.
Lisa shook her head. “No. I didn’t get well. I got worse. And I didn’t bond with Laura. My doctors said post-partum depression compounded a pre-existing mood disorder. I tried to kill myself more than once. I was in and out of hospitals for the first six months of Laura’s life while my parents took care of her . . . and then Whit stepped in.
“At the time, my parents and I believed he really wanted to take care of his daughter. Now I think he just wanted her because she was his. You know, like a possession—but back then, I still blamed myself more than him for what had happened. My parents thought he was a good guy, and that I was confused and ill, which I was.”
Stolen Page 24
