Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Blaise
NOW
I follow the directions to the place Houston told me about and drive down a long driveway lined by stone walls on both sides to a large Colonial-style house painted white with black shutters. As I park the car, a man comes out of the house wearing faded jeans and a flannel shirt. I notice he’s barefooted.
“Help you with something?”
I get out of the car. “Houston Rafferty sent me. He said you have short-term rentals.”
“I do.” He extends a hand. “Jack Olsen.”
I shake his hand as I realize he’s handsome with golden brown eyes to match dark blond hair that needed to be cut weeks ago. “Blaise Merrick.”
“Pleasure to meet you.” He gestures for me to follow him around the house, which gives me pause until I remember that Houston sent me here. That hesitation comes straight from what I witnessed on that long-ago night. Trust issues have caused me no end of difficulty in my sporadic dealings with men.
“Are you coming?” Jack asks, glancing over his shoulder.
“I’m coming.”
He leads me to the back of the property where three shingled cottages are positioned in a row along yet another stone wall. “Each has a bed, sofa, kitchen and bathroom. Our season is over now, so you can have your pick.”
“How much?”
“A hundred a week?”
I do some quick math to determine if I can swing that and my rent in New York without working for a while. I’ve got some savings, but it won’t last long. Thank goodness for credit cards.
“That sounds great, thank you.”
“Any friend of Houston’s is a friend of mine,” he says with a warm smile. “Never hurts to have the police chief owe me a favor.”
And he’s a bit charming, too, not that I care about such things. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be here.”
He shrugs as he unlocks the door to the middle cabin. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t have bookings until Thanksgiving, and it’s only for one of them. Take a look.”
As I cross the threshold, I’m greeted by the scent of lemons. “This is very cute.”
“My best friend from high school gets the credit for decorating. She’s a professional interior designer. Gave me a great deal.”
“She did a nice job.”
The navy-blue patterned quilt on the bed matches the navy sofa.
I turn back to him and startle when I realized he’s followed me into the small space.
“Easy.” He holds up his hands. “Nothing to worry about here.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. What do you think?”
“I’ll take it.”
Jack peels a key off his ring and hands it to me. “Make yourself at home. I’m right across the yard in the big house if you need anything. Do you know the area?”
“I’m from Hope but didn’t spend much time over here back in the day.”
He tells me where the grocery store is and mentions a fun, new coffee and garden shop at the Monroe four corners.
“Thank you very much. I’ll pay you in the morning for this week if that’s okay.”
“Sounds good. Let me give you my number in case you have questions.”
As he recites the number, I punch it into my phone.
“Text me so I have yours.”
After I send the text, he heads out through the door he left open when he followed me in. Something about that feels reassuring, as if he knew I wouldn’t want to be enclosed in that small space with a man I only just met. I’ve been called aloof, cold and distant by men who were offended by my need to feel safe. They say I take it too far.
I know better than most people that you can never take such things too far.
Jack has earned hard-to-get points with me for the small gesture of leaving a door open. “You can drive around the house if you take a right off the driveway,” he says over his shoulder.
“It’ll be a left on the way in.”
“Good to know. Thanks again.”
“No problem.”
I wonder if he lives alone or if there’s a Mrs. Jack.
What does it matter? I’m here only until Houston has a chance to figure out the next steps. I’ll be back in New York in a matter of days.
My phone rings with a call from Wendall that I take only because I need to tell him I’m taking some time off.
“Damn it, Blaise, where the hell are you?”
“Rhode Island.”
“What? Since when?”
“Since my mother called about a family emergency. I was going to text you later.”
It would be just like him to tell me that’s no excuse for missing work. Luckily for him, he doesn’t say that. “What am I supposed to do without you?” I can picture the pout that goes with the words.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine for a few days. I’ll send you the schedule for tomorrow shortly.”
“Fine.”
I wait a minute to give him a chance to add a thank you, but he doesn’t. Sometimes I wonder if those words exist in his vocabulary.
“I, uh, hope everything is okay with your family.”
I’m shocked he said that much. “Thank you.”
I end the call before he can say something that’ll ruin the goodwill he earned by showing the most basic kindness.
Returning to the driveway, I start the car and follow the directions Jack gave me to drive the car around to my cabin. After I unload my suitcase and computer bag, I send Wendall his schedule for tomorrow, so he won’t have a meltdown, and then contemplate what to have for dinner.
My phone rings with a call from my mother. “Hi, Mom.”
“I thought you were coming home?”
“I’m in Land’s End.”
“What’re you doing over there?”
“Taking care of some business.”
“What business, Blaise? What’s going on?”
I want so badly to tell her, but first I want to wait to find out what Houston plans to do with the information I gave him. There’s no point in exploding my life if Neisy or the AG decide not to pursue the matter.
“I’ll tell you when I can, Mom.”
“This is all very unsettling. First you stay away for years, then you come running back when you hear Ryder is running for Congress, and now you’re staying over there rather than here with me.”
“It’s for the best right now. I’ll come see you soon, okay?”
“And you’ll tell me what’s going on?”
“When I can.”
“Are you safe?”
“I am. Don’t worry.”
“That’s like telling me not to breathe.”
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry. I wish I could say more.”
“Call me tomorrow?”
“I will.”
“Love you, Blaise.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
I’m still holding the phone when I land on the sofa, exhausted from the turmoil of this day. But more than anything, I’m relieved. Someone else knows my terrible secret. It’s been released into the world, and no matter what happens next, that’s better than holding it inside me for all this time.
Or so I think.
Houston
NOW
My first call the next morning is to the longest standing assistant attorney general, the one most likely to remember the case from fourteen years ago. Neil DeGrasso retired five years ago.
“Vaguely,” Joshua Spurling says after I ask if he recalls the case brought against Ryder Elliott and dismissed at preliminary due to a lack of evidence.
“A witness has come forward.”
“A witness.”
“That’s right, someone who saw Ryder Elliott rape Denise Sutton.”
“And where has this witness been for the last fourteen years?”
“She was a teenager at the time, with deep ties to Elliott and his family after having grown up with him. She was scared to come forward then but is willing to do so now.”
“Why now?”
“After she heard he’s running for Congress, she couldn’t keep the secret any longer.”
“I don’t know about this, Houston. A defense attorney would shred her on the stand.”
“She understands that and had good reason for keeping quiet before. Or at least it made sense to her at the time, but to hear her tell it, she’s been sick over this incident since the day it happened.”
“Are you angling to reopen the case?”
“That depends on whether I’d have the support of your office.”
“I’ll talk to Roberts about it, but no promises.” The AG, Victor Roberts, has been in office just under three years, so he had nothing to do with the original case. “It might be too little too late at this point. Do we even know where the victim is?”
“No, but I could find out pretty easily.”
“Work on that while I pitch this to Roberts.”
“Will do.”
“I’ll be back to you with an answer as soon as I can.”
“Thanks, Josh.”
My next move is to find Neisy. After she left the area, we lost touch with each other. I start with social media, combing through Facebook and Instagram but find no sign of her. I move on to Google, which is just as frustrating. There’s no mention of a Denise Sutton after her graduation from a Virginia high school one year after the alleged incident.
People are easy to find in this day and age, unless they choose not to be, which she probably has. I wouldn’t blame her after the way people savaged her when she accused Ryder.
I wanted so badly to believe her back then, because she wasn’t the kind of girl who’d make up something like that to get attention. Her life at HHS had been rough, and I remember thinking at the time that there was no way she’d do anything to make it worse than it already was, but I couldn’t get past the feeling that Ryder wouldn’t do something like that. I told my father that, too.
One thing was for certain, she’d definitely lost her sparkle since we’d worked together the summer before she started school in Hope and had her whole life go to shit.
The restaurant is owned by her mother’s cousin, so I’ll stop in to see what he can tell me.
I grab my portable radio, tell the sergeant working the desk that I’m heading out for a bit and get into my SUV to drive to the seafood restaurant where Neisy and I worked together the summer before she started at HHS.
As I drive to the waterfront restaurant in Monroe, I remember the first time I ever saw her and how dazzled I’d been by her. She was far too young for me at sixteen, but you’d have to have been blind not to notice how beautiful and sweet she was. It was the first time in my life I’d yearned to be younger. A twenty-year-old college junior didn’t ask out a high school junior, no matter how mature they were, especially when she was the boss’s cousin.
Instead, I’d befriended her and later learned about her long-distance boyfriend, Kane, and how much she loved him and couldn’t wait for him to visit that summer.
A year later, when her dad came forward to report that she’d been raped by Ryder Elliott at my party, I’d been devastated. That something like that might’ve happened at my party and to someone I truly cared about… And Ryder Elliott… My brother, Dallas, had played football and run track with Ryder. They were close friends. So while Dallas had defended Ryder and called the charges preposterous, I’d made a lame attempt at defending Neisy as I’d come to the realization she’d have nothing at all to gain by making up such a thing. That was the first time I was ever seriously at odds with Dallas.
After the case was thrown out for a lack of evidence, it took Dallas and me a long time to get our relationship back on track. He never forgot that I doubted his friend, and I never forgot that he doubted mine. Eventually, we got to the point that we stopped talking about it and agreed to disagree, but that took years, and things were never quite the same afterward.
Dallas and Arlo recently left high-paying jobs, as did Ryder’s brother, Cam, to help get Ryder elected to Congress.
My stomach hurts when I think about the potential ripple effect of Blaise’s admission and what it could do to the lives of people I care about.
It would be easier to forget I ever heard what she said.
But then I think of Neisy and what she went through after the accusation became public, and I can’t go back to yesterday when I didn’t know there was a witness.
I pull into the lot at The Daily Catch and park as a million memories of summers spent hustling fried seafood come flooding back to me, including how my family used to make me undress outside because I stunk so badly after a shift.
As I walk inside, the bell jingling on the door sparks even more memories as does the smell of fried fish.
The owner, Ronnie, is working at the counter with a stack of paper, a pen and calculator. He looks up and smiles when he sees me. “This is a nice surprise.”
I reach across the counter to shake his hand. “Good to see you.”
“You, too. How’re things in LE?”
“It was a busy summer, but it’s gone quiet now.”
“I’m sure it has. Coffee?”
I slide onto a stool at the counter. “I won’t say no to that. How’s business?”
“Busier than ever, year-round these days.”
“Glad to hear it.” The restaurant is located on the shore of a placid inlet off the river, with picnic tables and a dock that make it a go-to spot for boaters looking to pull up and grab a meal.
“What brings you by, Houston?”
“I was thinking about Neisy the other day and wondered how she’s doing.”
“She’s great. Married to Kane with four kids, last I heard.”
I’m thrilled to hear things worked out for them. After seeing them together, I’d had no doubt they were the real deal. “Is she still living in Virginia?”
He nods. “They’re in Norfolk. Kane’s a lieutenant commander in the navy. They got back from a three-year tour in Italy about six months ago. Had a great time over there.”
“I’m glad to hear they ended up together.”
“Never had a doubt. He was it for her since they were kids.”
“Yes, he was.”
“What about you? Never got married, did you?”
“Nope. I still haven’t found someone I can’t live without.”
His guffaw of laughter makes me smile. “I hear you, brother. My Claire is a doll, but sometimes she makes me want to muzzle her.”
That makes me chuckle. “As I recall you couldn’t run this place without her.”
“That’s the truth, and she keeps our three teenagers in check. I got lucky, and I know it. You will, too. I’m sure of it.”
“I guess we’ll see. It’s good to see you, Ronnie.” I put a couple of singles on the counter for the coffee that he pushes back at me.
“My treat. Don’t be a stranger. Bring the folks in for dinner sometime soon.”
“I will. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Come by for a cup any time.”
“Will do.” I shake his hand and head out with the info I came for, feeling a bit guilty for deceiving Ronnie by not telling him why I was really asking about Neisy. He was good to me during the four summers I waited tables for him and his parents, who ran the place before he took over.
Now that I know Neisy married Kane and they live in Norfolk, it takes about four seconds on my phone to track down an address for them, even before I knew his last name was Messner.
Denise Messner.
Who is she these days and does she still think about what happened on that long-ago summer night? What would it mean to her to hear there’d been a witness? Would she want to reopen the case or keep it in the past? If the AG is willing to go forward based on Blaise’s eye-witness testimony, it’ll come down to what Neisy wants to do.
I send an email to Josh letting him know I’ve located the victim.
I’m back at the station when he replies. I’m meeting with Roberts at two. Will get back to you after.
I call Blaise to update her and to make sure she isn’t having regrets the day after her confession.
She answers on the first ring. “Hi.”
“How’re you doing?”
“Okay. I think. Jack’s place is great. Thanks for the recommendation.”
“I’m glad it worked out. I wanted to update you on what’s going on. I’ve notified the attorney general’s office that a witness has come forward. The assistant AG is meeting with the AG today. I’ve also located Neisy in Norfolk, Virginia, where she lives with her husband and four children.”
“Wow, she’s married with four kids.”
“She married her childhood sweetheart, Kane. He’s a lieutenant commander in the navy.”
“I’m glad she’s happy.”
“What about you?” I ask the question before I take two seconds to think about whether I should. “Are you married?”
“No. That hasn’t been in the cards for me. I’ve barely dated.” She pauses before she continues. “I want you to know… What I saw that night has haunted me in ways I can barely fathom let alone describe. I’ve had health problems, trust problems, emotional issues, anxiety… It messed me up badly, Houston.”
“The AG will ask why it took you so long to come forward.”
“And that’s a fair question. The only answer I have is that so many people I loved would’ve been hurt by me coming forward at the time, so I chose not to. I own that choice, but it was the wrong thing to do. My only excuse is I was seventeen, and the person being accused was someone I grew up with. He was my brother’s closest friend. My best friend was dating Ryder’s brother and is now married to him. All I could see at the time was everyone I loved turning on me for telling the truth. And that doesn’t account for the fact that I was expressly forbidden from being in LE that night. If my parents found out I was there, I would’ve lost their trust.”
“I understand all that, but it’s been fourteen years, Blaise. Surely you could’ve come forward at some point after you left home.”
“I almost did once.”
“What stopped you?”
“Ryder’s longtime girlfriend, Louisa, died. I lost my nerve after that.”
“I guess I can understand that.”
“I wish you knew how many nights I stared at the ceiling thinking about telling the truth. I have no defense for why I haven’t done it sooner. Maybe I wasn’t ready to blow up my life. I’m still not, but I can’t live with this anymore. I just can’t.”
“If the AG decides to reopen the case, I’m worried about it getting ugly. I want you to be prepared for that.”
“I tell myself I’d prefer that to the purgatory I’ve been in all this time.”
“You know how people are around here. They close ranks around their own, and Ryder is one of their own.”
“I know,” she says, sighing. “All I can do is tell the truth and let the fallout be what it is. I saw him rape her, and I’ve been sick with guilt over my own inaction ever since.”
“One thing you haven’t said is if you were alone when you saw what you did.”
“I’m not going to comment on anything other than my own story.”
I note how she answers the question without actually answering. “So you weren’t alone, and the other person is unwilling to come forward.”
“I’ll only comment on my own story.”
“The AG will ask who else was there.”
“I’ll only comment on my own story.”
“It’d go easier for you if someone could corroborate your story.”
Her silence speaks volumes.
“Okay, Blaise. We’ll play it your way. I’ll let you know what the AG says.”
“Thank you, Houston.”
I stare out the window for a long time, thinking about this case and the absolute shit storm that will ensue if the AG moves to reopen the case. I receive an email that afternoon from Spurling that the AG wants twenty-four hours to review the case files and decide whether to proceed.
In the meantime, I need to see Neisy and warn her of what might be coming. If she’s unwilling to participate, it’ll all be for naught anyway. But there’s no way I can let her be blindsided.
I fire up my computer and buy a ticket to fly to Norfolk tonight with a return tomorrow afternoon.