Finding You

by Jenna Bennett

  “That?”

  “The two of them.” I nodded toward the corner, where Ty and Carmen had their heads together.

  “I don’t see anything going on,” Juan said, taking a sip of his drink. It was pale green and looked like a slushy, but was probably a Margarita or something.

  “They look chummy.”

  “They were chummy last year, too.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but then Carmen was Ty’s liaison with your brother and the police. He’s not undercover now.”

  And then I thought about it. “He isn’t, is he?”

  Juan shook his head. “He’s just here for the trial, same as you.”

  Right. I took another sip of Sprite. “So there’s nothing going on?”

  “Nope,” Juan said. And added, “Last year, I assumed you and Ty would end up together.”

  Me, too.

  “We did,” I said. “For a while.”

  Juan looked at me, a tiny wrinkle between his brows.

  He’s a good-looking guy: twenty-six maybe, with the same big, brown eyes and curly, black hair as his sister. She keeps hers long, Juan keeps his short. He looks like a younger, prettier version of Enrique, all smooth golden skin and white teeth, with a stud in one ear. The white jeans he had changed into were tight enough to show off a very nice butt he was currently sitting on, and the turquoise polo-shirt clung tight to his biceps and chest.

  He caught me looking and flashed a grin.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No problem. So what happened?”

  I sighed and turned my attention back to reality. “With Ty? He kept disappearing. Things were great when he was around, but every few weeks he’d get sent out on another undercover assignment. He couldn’t tell me where he was going or what he was doing. He couldn’t contact me while he was gone. And he couldn’t talk about it when he got back. So I spent half my time worrying that he was dead, and the other half worrying about when he was leaving again.”

  “Being involved with someone in law enforcement is hard,” Juan said, sipping his drink. “Enrique just sticks around Key West, it’s not like he disappears for days and weeks at a time, but every time he straps on a weapon, we all know there’s a chance he’ll run into trouble and won’t come back home.”

  I nodded. “I managed to keep it together for six months. We broke up the day before Thanksgiving. I haven’t spoken to him since.”

  I shot another glance over into the corner, where Ty and Carmen were leaning toward one another. She whispered in his ear, and I felt my eyes narrow.

  Mine!

  Except he wasn’t. Not anymore. And I was the one who had broken up with him, so I had only myself to blame.

  “I don’t suppose you want to be my boyfriend?” I asked Juan wistfully. A nice, safe bartender, one who stayed in one place and didn’t go off on missions to save the world, was just what I needed.

  He looked at me like I’d lost my mind. I guess that was probably a no.

  “Or maybe you can just pretend to be my boyfriend.” That way, it would look like I had moved on, too. Like I wasn’t sitting over here watching every move Ty and Carmen made.

  Juan grinned. “It isn’t that I don’t appreciate the offer, querida. I guess nobody told you I bat for the other team?”

  I blinked at him. What other team?

  “I’m gay,” Juan said.

  “Oh.” I blushed. “I’m sorry. No, nobody mentioned that.”

  “No reason why they would,” Juan said easily. “So while I like you, I don’t wanna sleep with you. Or pretend I’m sleeping with you.”

  “Of course not.” Gah.

  “Besides, I’m pretty sure Carmen knows. Ty probably does, too.”

  Probably. He was much better than me at picking up on subtle clues like that.

  Not that this one had been all that subtle. Juan had pretty much had to hit me over the head with it.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “No problem. I’m flattered you asked.”

  Sure. “I’m just going to go,” I said and slid off the stool. “I’ve been stupid enough for one night. And I don’t want to sit here and watch them any longer.”

  Juan glanced over into the corner and then at his watch. “I’ll walk you back to your hotel. I have to cut out soon in any case.” He left enough money on the counter to cover his drink and my Sprite, in spite of my offers to pay for my own. “C’mon.”

  He put his hand on my lower back on the way to the door. I didn’t look back as we exited, but it probably didn’t matter, anyway. Ty wouldn’t be watching.

  “HOT DATE?” I asked Juan as we walked down Duval in the direction of Richardson’s.

  He glanced over. He wasn’t all that much taller than me. Ty’s height, more or less. Five-ten or so. “Scuse me?”

  “You said you had to cut out soon in any case. Are you meeting someone?”

  “Oh.” He smiled faintly. “Yeah. I’m not sure it’s a date, though. Especially not a hot one. But yeah, I’m meeting someone.”

  “I’ll be OK on my own,” I said, “if it’s going to be a problem for you to walk me to the motel and get back in time.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not. And besides, Enrique would have my head if I let you walk alone.”

  “I could take a cab.”

  “It’s just a few minutes,” Juan said and changed the subject. “So are you nervous about tomorrow?”

  We spent the rest of the walk talking about the trial and what the prosecutor had told me to expect in the morning. I told Juan of my impression that the public defender was going out of his way to make all the victims seem like tramps, and he nodded, his handsome face darkening. “That’s the reason a lot of women never report rapes, you know. Court turns into a circus where the victims are on trial as much as the rapist.”

  I nodded. “It’s awful. Bad enough to be assaulted in the first place, but then to have to deal with a second sort of assault to prove that the guy who raped you really did rape you, and you didn’t do anything to encourage it—”

  “You’ll be OK,” Juan told me. “You’re strong. I’m more worried about the other girl.”

  “Paula.”

  He nodded. “What she went through was terrible. And she’s very brave to come back to testify.”

  Yes, she was. Stan hadn’t harmed me. He’d beaten and raped her. And if I felt a twinge of unease about facing him in court tomorrow, I could only imagine what she must be feeling. “I’ll try to talk to her,” I said. “I’ve spent the past year volunteering at a rape hotline. I’ve talked to a lot of girls who’ve been assaulted. I’ve gotten better at knowing what to say.”

  Juan nodded.

  “Will you be there tomorrow?”

  “I’ll try to be. At least in the morning. I have to go in to work in the afternoon, so I can’t stay all day, but I’ll be there for a little bit.”

  “Thank you,” I said, happy that at least there’d be one friendly face in the room when I took the stand.

  He walked me to the front entrance to the motel and stopped, because I did. “You gonna be OK from here?”

  “I’m sure,” I said, since I’d noticed him looking at his watch a couple of times on the walk. “I’m sorry if I’ve kept you too long.”

  “Not a problem.” He flashed a smile. “You sure you don’t want me to come inside and check under the bed before I go?”

  “It’s a platform. Nowhere for anyone to hide underneath. There’s no proper closet, and if anyone’s hiding behind the shower curtain, I’ll bludgeon him with my curling iron. Just go, so you’re not late.” The last thing I wanted was to screw up Juan’s love life. Bad enough how thoroughly I had screwed up my own.

  He nodded. “I’ll see you in court tomorrow, then.”

  I said he would, and then I watched him turn and walk away—his white jeans like a beacon in the dark—for a few seconds before I turned toward the motel.

  The office was closed for the night, but this was Key West, so the pool
was still open and people were still lounging and splashing. The sun had set at least an hour ago, but the pavement still held the heat, and the air was still warm. I walked to my door, fumbling my key out of my purse, and inserted it in the lock. Each unit had its own little light above the door, so I had no problem seeing what I was doing. And because I’d realized I might be back late, I had kept the bathroom light on when I left. The bedroom was empty, nobody was lying in wait to attack me, and the shower curtain was pulled back and the shower empty. I didn’t need to use the curling iron.

  I took my makeup and clothes off, brushed my teeth, and spent a little time reading. And then, when it got quiet outside, I turned the lights off and went to sleep. The more I thought about it, the larger tomorrow’s ordeal was looming in my mind, and I figured the best thing I could do was just stop thinking about it for a while.

  I had set the alarm to go off early so I’d have plenty of time to get ready and to the Courthouse by eight forty-five. And because I was nervous, I woke up before the alarm and lay there for a while, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, waiting for the sound.

  My stomach was churning too much for breakfast, so after I showered and dressed—demurely, as ordered, in a white eyelet dress with a full skirt—I tucked my still-damp hair behind my ears, left most of my makeup off, and started walking to the Courthouse.

  I wasn’t the first witness of the day, and when I got there, to the little anteroom where the prosecutor had told me to report for duty, I found him at a table, busy talking to Paula, the girl who had run afoul Stan on the night when he’d tried and failed to hold on to me.

  Like me—like all the girls Stan had attacked last year—she looked sweet and innocent. Long, blond hair, big, blue eyes, demure dress. Unlike me, she was crying, shaking her head back and forth. “I can’t do this. I can’t face him.”

  The prosecutor was patting her hand, telling her he had faith in her and she could do it, while a middle-aged woman—Paula’s mother, I assumed—hovered a few yards away, looking uncertain.

  When I walked in, they all turned to me.

  I blinked. “Hi. I’m Cassie Wilder.”

  The prosecutor straightened. He looked relieved. “Cassie is testifying today, too.”

  Paula looked at me. So did her mother.

  “Remember everything we talked about?” the prosecutor asked me.

  I nodded. “I’m ready.” Or as ready as I’d ever be. “Ready to get it over with,” I added, as much to make Paula feel better—we were in the same boat here—as because it was the truth.

  “You were in the hospital,” Paula said.

  “Yes. I was.”

  “When I was there.”

  “Yes. I was.” I had seen her. I hadn’t realized she’d seen me. At that point, I hadn’t thought she’d been aware of anything outside herself and her nightmares.

  “Did he drug you too?”

  I nodded. He had, yes. Drugged me, and then lost me, and then taken his frustration out on her.

  “We’re not going to think about that now,” the prosecutor said firmly. “We’ll talk about it on the stand. You’ll testify, and then you’ll go sit down. Or leave, if you prefer. And Cassie will testify. And then we’ll all go have lunch and celebrate that we’re here and he’s in jail.”

  Sounded good to me. Something nice to look forward to. Not only was I not going to enjoy delivering my own testimony, but I would have to sit and listen to Paula go into detail about what had happened to her, too, with the knowledge that it had been my fault.

  Or not my fault, exactly, but if Stan had been able to hang on to me that night, Paula wouldn’t have been attacked, and wouldn’t have to be here now.

  Then again, if Stan had been able to hang on to me that night, I wouldn’t have been in a position to help Enrique and Ty catch him two days later, so maybe it had all worked out the way it was supposed to.

  “I want the two of you to wait here until the bailiff comes and gets you,” the prosecutor told us. “Mrs. Carlson,” he looked at Paula’s mom, “you may choose to stay here with your daughter, or come to the courtroom with me. She’s our first witness of the day, so it doesn’t matter either way.”

  “In that case I’ll come with you,” Mrs. Carlson said, “and find a seat. If that’s OK with you, Paula?”

  Paula swallowed, but nodded.

  “We’ll be OK here on our own,” I said.

  So the prosecutor left and took Mrs. Carlson with him. Paula and I looked at one another.

  “We’re going to be OK,” I told her. “It’s going to be hard, and scary, and we’ll have to look at him, but we’ll get through it. And then he’ll go to prison and we’ll go home.”

  She nodded, and took a shuddering sort of breath. “Where are you from?”

  I told her I’d grown up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Ohio, but that I went to the University of Chicago. “You?”

  “Wisconsin,” Paula said. “Nursing school.”

  “I was studying English. But I switched to journalism this year.”

  “Because of what happened?”

  I nodded. “I wrote a couple of articles about it, for the school newspaper. It helped. Me, and the girls who read them. So I thought maybe that was something I could do. To help. Become a journalist. And write about the bad stuff.”

  Paula nodded. “That’s what I want to do, too. Help.”

  “And you will. We’ll go out there and tell the jury what happened, and we’ll help put him away. And then we’ll go have ice cream or something. I’ll need ice cream after that.”

  Paula smiled, the first smile I’d seen so far. “I wouldn’t mind some ice cream.”

  “It’s a date,” I said. “You and me and your mom and the prosecutor.”

  I held out my hand. She took it, and we sat there together and waited to be called into the courtroom.

  The prosecutor did things in chronological order, so Paula went first. I went into the courtroom with her, because I thought it might encourage her. I held her hand until we got to the front of the room, and while she went up to the witness box, I took a seat at the prosecution’s table. I didn’t look around, and I certainly didn’t glance over at Stan. I’d have to look at him later, when it was my turn to testify, and that would be soon enough.

  Paula put her hand on the Bible the bailiff held up, and promised to tell the truth. Then she sat down behind the microphone and twisted her hands together in her lap.

  The next ninety minutes are some of the longest of my life. Wrestling with Stan on the ground at the Key West Cemetery, feeling him tugging at my clothes and wrapping his hands around my throat, was pretty bad. Breaking up with Ty was awful. But listening to Paula’s voice shake as she recalled her encounter with Stan a year ago, hearing her describe the things he said and the things he did, the names he called her, the impact of his fists hitting her face... that was agonizing. I’ve never been so glad for anything to be over as when the prosecutor said he had no further questions.

  And then he turned to Lew Berryman, the public defender. “Your witness, counselor.”

  I braced myself, and saw Paula do the same. Behind me, I heard a sniff from Mrs. Carlson. I think we were all blown away when Berryman said, “No questions.”

  The judge nodded to Paula. “You may step down, Ms. Carlson. Thank you for your testimony.”

  Paula got to her feet and executed a tiny curtsey. Either that, or she found herself weak in the knees. “Thank you.” She scurried out of the witness box and across the floor.

  “Call your next witness, Mr. DeWitt,” the judge told the prosecutor, who gave me the eye and a tiny nod.

  “The state calls Cassandra Wilder, Your Honor.”

  I got up, noticing I was a little weak in the knees myself. But Paula had gotten through it, with a harder story to share than the one I had. How could I do less?

  I made it across the floor and into the witness box. The bailiff brought the Bible again, and I put my hand on it and promised
to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.

  And then I sat down and folded my hands in my lap and waited.

  Mr. DeWitt got to his feet. “Where are you from, Ms. Wilder?”

  I told him I was born in Braxton, Ohio. “But I came here from Chicago. I attend UC.”

  “But your parents live in Braxton? What does your father do for a living?”

  “He’s a minister,” I said.

  “So you’re a preacher’s daughter.” He sent a significant look toward the jury, to make sure they understood this very important point. I was a nice girl. I was brought up to tell the truth. They could trust me.

  “Yes, sir.” I did my best to look like my father’s daughter.

  “And your mother?”

  “She’s the minister’s wife. She takes care of my father, and helps him write his sermons, and ministers to the congregation, and teaches Sunday School...”

  “And did you teach Sunday School, Ms. Wilder?”

  “Every Sunday until I went to college,” I said.

  Mr. DeWitt smiled, pleased. “Tell us about the first time you visited Key West, Ms. Wilder.”

  “It was for Spring Break last year,” I said. “I came down with two friends and stayed a week.”

  “And during the course of this week, you had occasion to cross paths with the defendant, Stanley Laszlo.”

  I hadn’t looked at Stan yet. Now I did, with my heart thudding a little harder in my chest than usual. “Yes, sir.”

  He looked the same. Maybe a little older, like a year in prison hadn’t agreed with him. Ty had told me Stan hadn’t been able to make bail, so I knew he’d spent the past year behind bars. And former cops don’t have an easy time of it when they have to mingle with criminals. Even when they’re criminals themselves.

  But for the most part he looked like he had a year ago. Small head on a long neck, with a beaky nose and blue eyes that were fastened on me. When I looked at him, he smirked.

  Smirked.

  I looked away, like it didn’t bother me, although it did. He had no right to smirk. After what he’d done, he had no right to sit there and make those of us who were testifying against him feel uncomfortable.