Chapter Nineteen #2
“Why don’t we sit down? You’ve got a nice fire going in the other room. Let’s go sit down, then you can start wherever you want.”
“You’re used to this. You’re used to hearing stories like this.”
“Not from you. Start where you want,” he repeated as he led her back into the living room. “Take your time.”
“I didn’t want to bring it with me. It seems so pointless. And I know how stupid it sounds, but I felt like if I didn’t talk about it, tell anyone, it stayed back where it happened. Stayed back, and had nothing to do with here.”
She’d been raped, he was nearly sure of it. He knew the look, the tone. So he just waited.
The dog, sensing distress, brought over his stuffed llama, put it in her lap.
“He came to my first book signing—nearly five years ago. Harmless-looking guy, about my age, who said he was trying to write a book. He wanted to talk to me about it, over coffee or a drink. I had plans with friends, but I wouldn’t have anyway.”
She took him through the stalking she hadn’t recognized as stalking. The break-in, and what went missing.
She remembered details, and that didn’t surprise him. Some victims couldn’t or wouldn’t, but she had a knack for the details.
“I was so annoyed when he came to my door, my apartment. Sometimes when I’d think back, I visualize not opening the door and telling him to fuck right off. I know it wouldn’t make any difference if I’d done exactly that. He’d have found another time and place.”
She took a moment, turned the wineglass in her hands, but didn’t drink.
“He was different when he came in with his goddamn flowers. Acting like we were involved, like I’d led him on, like he had a right, how he’d take care of me.
He was going to buy us a house in the mountains somewhere, somewhere quiet, and he’d provide for me.
He said other things that made me realize he’d imagined this whole relationship, and I’d done nothing to encourage him there.
And the way he talked about women knowing their place infuriated me.
“I was so pissed off, and I wasn’t going to take that bullshit.
He changed again, and just for an instant, just a heartbeat, I saw it.
When he hit me, my face just exploded, and my head slammed into the door.
I saw stars, literally, and I think I went out for a few seconds because he was on me, all over me.
Pulling my shirt off. I started to scream, but he squeezed… ”
She brought a hand to her throat. “Choking me, no breath, no air. Hitting me again and again. And then his hands … he rammed his fingers in me, and I couldn’t stop him. He stuck his tongue in my mouth, and I bit it, and raked my hands down his face, and the blood…”
When her breath started to hitch, the dog at her feet whined, pressed his head against her knee.
“Take a breath. A slow one. Then take another.”
When she had, when she laid a hand on Zorro’s head, she went on. “I couldn’t scream, even when he let go of my throat. Nothing came out but, I don’t know, croaks.
“He started dragging me by the hair to the bedroom. He knew where it was, said things about the bedroom so I knew he’d been the one to break in.
He—he—slammed my head on the floor, more stars.
Going to teach me a lesson. Going to give me what I asked for.
He’d finish raping me, then he’d kill me. I knew it, but I couldn’t stop him.”
Closing her eyes, she took a slow sip of wine.
“My neighbors, the ones I told you about, heard the thumping and the crashing, and John came up, pounded on the door, shouted for me. Dustin ran out, shoved by John. John would’ve gone after him, but he saw me on the floor, half naked, bleeding, half conscious.
Instead, he stayed with me, shouted for Monica to come up.
“I told you she’s a physician assistant.”
“Yeah, you did.”
“She stayed with me, while the police came, in the ambulance, in the hospital until my family came, and even then, she and John stayed. I had a concussion, a couple of black eyes, cuts and bruises. The throat was the worst.”
She breathed again. “Anyway, everything he’d told me was a lie.
His parents were divorced, not dead. And wealthy on top of it.
Some serious money. He wasn’t writing a book or working part-time.
They found my things in his apartment, and a kind of shrine.
My picture, my books. In one of them he’d copied my handwriting to write a salutation.
‘To Dustin, the only man I’ve ever loved or ever will love. Yours always and forever, Arden.’”
He waited, then asked, “Was he found competent for trial?”
“They made a deal. He admitted everything he did, but he didn’t understand it was wrong. Irresistible impulse, they called it. Five years, five, in a secure institution, mandatory treatment and all that. He wouldn’t be allowed to try to contact me in any way.”
“He’s getting out soon?”
“Sooner. Now. His father’s dying. He’s got weeks, maybe a month or two at best. He’s been a model patient. Detective Brill’s not buying it. She’s careful what she says to me, but I can tell. She’s promised to watch him, and I know she will. But.”
She shifted, looked at him directly. “After I got out of the hospital, I stayed in. I could barely talk, my face was all bruised up. I told myself that was why. But it wasn’t enough to lock the door.
I’d put a chair under it. Then I started locking the bedroom door at night, putting a chair under it.
My office door when I worked. I could write, and I think that kept me from losing my mind. ”
“Did you get counseling?”
“After a while, yes. I didn’t want it, didn’t want to talk about it, but I knew I couldn’t live like that.
It helped, it helped a lot. I ended up buying a house.
I didn’t want to stay in the apartment, not when I could feel myself wanting to make those excuses again.
I really liked working at the bookstore, and I’d started back, but I’d quit because I just couldn’t deal with it.
Buying the house, then getting Zorro, it was good for me.
“Until it wasn’t,” she said with a sigh.
“I missed Zoey, so much, but she’s not the only reason I moved here.
I needed the distance from what had happened.
I needed to be someplace he didn’t know about.
When he got out, I wouldn’t be there. No chance of seeing him on the street, in the grocery store.
I wanted to feel safe, and I have. I do.
Now he’s out, and I can’t quite convince myself I’m still safe. It’s not rational, but—”
“Why isn’t it?”
“It’s been nearly five years, and he’s halfway across the country.”
“Five years, five minutes, doesn’t change what he did to you. He violated your home and your person. Rational doesn’t mean shit, Arden. You’re entitled to feel how you feel.”
“You sound like Dr. Wren,” she murmured.
“Then listen. You took care of yourself right down the line. You fought back. You bit him, you scratched him, and the woman I’m looking at would’ve kept fighting as long as she could.
You felt safer behind a locked door, you locked the door.
You got counseling, and you moved out of the place it happened.
You got a dog—very smart move—and when you needed more, you moved here. ”
He touched her then, carefully, just a hand over hers.
“Today you find out the son of a bitch is out. Not having a reaction to that’s what I’d call irrational. And you made goddamn soup.”
“I needed to keep busy.”
He touched her again, a hand to her cheek.
And watched her eyes well. “You don’t give up.
I thought pretty much right off you were an interesting woman, and it didn’t take long to see you were a smart one, capable.
I’m telling you as someone who’s spent a lot of time thinking about you over the last few months, and as a cop, you’re also a lot stronger than you’re feeling right now. ”
“That’s good, because I don’t feel strong right now.”
“What’s your impression of Brill?”
“That she’s a good cop, a good person. Her partner, too. Um, Detective Venmar. I think they did all they could. And they—one or the other—would check in on me now and then. They didn’t just forget. It mattered to me they didn’t just forget.”
“You’ve got good cops keeping an eye out back east. And you’ve got one doing the same here. Lean into that some.”
“I didn’t want to tell you.” The tears spilled now. “I hate feeling like a victim, hate acting like one. But I knew I had to tell you in case I start locking doors again.”
“You need to lock them, lock them. Just let me in. And not a victim, Arden. A survivor.”
She pressed against him, held on. “Thanks. I just want to stay here a minute, with you. Just a minute. Then we’ll go have soup.”
In that minute, just that minute, he admitted what he’d worked hard to deny.
He’d fallen in love.
Considering the time difference, Gideon set his mental alarm for five a.m. Arden rose early habitually, but not that damn early. When he woke, he slipped out of bed to dress in the dark.
Since the dog followed him downstairs, he let Zorro out, made coffee. With it, he sat at the island and used his phone to do a run on Dustin Dubecki. White male, age thirty, five-ten, a hundred and fifty.
Once he’d familiarized himself with some background, he brought up a couple of photos. He intended to print one out when he got to the station, post it for his officers.
Since the dog waited patiently at the door, Gideon let him in, fed him, then over a second cup of coffee read through some news reports of the attack.
They played up the local author, debut author angle, and highlighted Dubecki as the son and heir of Paul Dubecki and Theresa Lester.
The senior Dubecki had inherited his father’s thriving lumber and building supplies enterprise, expanded it, bought up some farmland, built a resort, and had gotten in on the ground floor with the home improvement shows on cable.