The man was amazing. The supercilious little shit. It was clear he'd enjoyed his little speech. She wanted very much to walk out of the room and never have to lay eyes on him again.
But she needed him.
Much as she'd like to, there wasn't any point in alienating the man.
That could wait until later.
"When can you see him?"
He made a point of checking his calendar book, peering through the bottoms of his bifocals.
"I can see him at three-thirty tomorrow."
"It has to be today. It can't wait. My lawyer says today." He looked a bit annoyed with her. Good, she thought. Be annoyed. Just do it.
"I can slip him in at four-thirty," he said. Then he shook his head and sighed again. "I really wouldn't expect too much, though, if I were you."
"I won't," she said without irony.
For a while after seeing the proctologist they drove in silence, she not knowing what to say, Robert seeming lost in thought.
Dr. Hessler appeared to be a kind man and certainly he was good with Robert, reassuring him right off the bat that nothing he was going to do would hurt him, then changing the subject immediately to whether or not they'd seen Jungle Book II yet of all things.
They hadn't seen it. As a matter of fact they'd tried twice already but had been turned away at packed houses. But the doctor had chosen wisely. Since the movie opened it was all the kids talked about. Robert listened, rapt, as the doctor described several scenes in detail—with surprisingly boyish enthusiasm for a man who had to be in his sixties—ushering him into his examining room and closing the door behind them.
Hessler's report was as expected.
But still it hurt her to hear it.
A dilated sphincter and soreness and irritation of the surrounding rectal tissue.
Consistent with anal penetration.
Anal penetration. At age eight. God.
And yes, he'd go to court and swear to it.
They needed to know that. Owen Sansom had outlined the court process to her earlier in his office.
"I've already filed a complaint with the Superior Court to seek termination of all visitation rights which were granted by the divorce, on the basis of child abuse," he said. "You'll be seeing someone out at the house tonight who'll investigate. So you'd better prepare Robert for still more questions. How's he holding up?"
"He cried a little when I told him all we had to do today. I certainly can't blame him for not looking forward to it. He's doing all right I guess, under the circumstances."
Sansom looked somewhat disheveled. Like he'd been running his hands through his thinning hair all morning. There were spots on his glasses. The lapels of his jacket turned inward slightly as though he'd hung it on a chair the night before instead of in a closet.
She wondered what his personal life was like.
The wedding ring was her only clue.
And it wasn't any of her business.
"Based on their investigation the court will issue a summons for Arthur, you and Robert to appear at a preliminary hearing to establish probable cause. If they find probable cause ..."
"If?"
He smiled. "Sorry. Legalspeak. They will, don't worry. That's what the psychologist and proctologist are all about. I think we've got that part well covered. Anyhow, the statute says that the preliminary hearing has to be held within seven days of the summons. So this will all be happening pretty fast."
"And what about visitation rights? I mean in the meantime. My understanding is that I'm in violation of the terms of the divorce if I don't let Arthur see him at least one more time this week. My God. Is that true? Can he really expect that?"
"He can demand to see Robert, sure, if he wants to. But our complaint will limit visitation until the case is adjudicated. He'll only be able to see him under supervision."
"I don't want him to see him at all for god sakes!"
"Sorry. No can do."
"Why not?"
"Lydia, until we prove the case against him he retains his parental rights."
"Jesus. Shit!"
"I know exactly what you mean."
The man looked haggard. He hadn't slept much last night, she was sure of that. She wondered why. Something was bothering him. And she doubted that his losing sleep had much to do with her situation—he was a lawyer after all. No, this was something else. Had to be. Something personal.
And again—none of her business.
"Okay. Go on."
"All right. Within thirty days of the preliminary we go to an adjudicatory hearing before a judge in Superior Court. Unfortunately, it won't be Clarke, the judge who granted your divorce—she's out indefinitely with some kind of heart situation. In any case, we'll be looking for exclusive custody. At the adjudicatory we can present our evidence and call our witnesses. The doctors, you, Ralph Duggan on the beating, your friend Cindy I think, maybe his teacher—and hopefully by then, Robert himself. I've petitioned the court clerk to appoint a guardian ad litem for Robert—an attorney—for purposes of the litigation and to assess his situation and advocate his best interests as he or she sees them. That's who you'll be seeing tonight."
"Robert has an attorney?"
"Yes. Hopefully somebody we can work with, someone who'll be squarely on our side."
"And if not?"
"If Robert won't talk then our case is circumstantial. But it's still pretty compelling. You could argue that he could have done this to himself somehow—used some object or something. But it clearly isn't likely. You could argue that someone other than Arthur did it without Arthur's knowledge. In that case they'd have to come up with a likely suspect. Someone with opportunity."
"Like me."
"You?" He laughed.
"Bromberg told me he'd considered it."
Sansom thought about that a moment, drumming his desk with a pencil.
"Maybe that'll change once he sees Robert. If not, I guess we're going to have to have a talk with him. Assess his level of cooperation. Possibly get another opinion. But our best bet is to get your boy to say what happened, hard as it may be for him. You have to really work on that."
She would, but not now. Robert still had Bromberg to see. And then, tonight, the attorney.
What a day for him, she thought.
What a bitch of a day it must be.
She glanced at Robert now, gazing out the frost-melted window beside her, strapped tightly into his seat, hurtling powerless through the wintry streets.
He turned to her, his face unexpectedly alight.
"Mom? Do you think tomorrow night we could maybe just go to a movie?"
She smiled. "Sure."
"Yeah!"
"You got it," she said and reached over and patted his hand.
"And we'll leave real early so we'll be the first ones there so we'll definitely get seats this time, okay?"
"Okay."
"Great. Neat," he said and turned to the window again.
She thought that either he was blocking all this out very successfully or her son had a kind of courage. The former was troubling. The latter, she thought, might be necessary through all the days ahead of them.
She could have her hopes.
He sat on the floor with his back to the television set his mother had turned off before she left the room and listened to Miss Stone. Miss Stone was probably younger than his mother and she was pretty, he thought. Though he thought his mother was prettier. Miss Stone had nice, soft-looking, shiny blonde hair, though, just like Chrissy at school. Her hair was long and straight and that was like Chrissy too.
Chrissy was nice but the one he really liked was Laura.
He found it hard to concentrate on what Miss Stone was saying. More questions. All day long everybody kept asking him stuff. He kept wishing it was bedtime.
And that was pretty weird right there.
Then she started on the really bad questions.
"Is there somebody who does things to you, Robert? Who touches you where
you don't want to be touched?"
He couldn't help it. He started squirming on the rug. Like the question hit a Nintendo button and from there it was automatic.
How much could he tell her?
He knew he had to say something, that he had to help them somehow. He knew they were doing this just for him, to get his dad to make it stop. He wanted his dad to stop more than he wanted practically anything—but he didn't want his dad to hurt his mom and he would. He knew his dad better than anybody did. He'd hurt her bad.
And it was up to him to protect her.
Maybe he could tell her without telling her, he thought. Sort of like what he tried to do with Dr. Bromberg earlier. "Maybe," he said.
"Somebody who touches you where you don't want to be touched?"
"Maybe."
"Where is that?"
It was getting dangerous now.
"Private ... parts, maybe," he said.
"They touch your private parts?"
"Maybe."
"Who does, Robert?"
He wasn't saying that. No matter what. He couldn't. Even though jeez, he wanted to. If he could only just say my father does, it's my father who does it. But he kept on seeing the rabbit.
He'd wait. Sooner or later she'd leave the question alone and just go on.
The others did.
He watched her write in her book. She seemed kind of nice. She had a nice voice, anyway. He liked that. He waited and stared at the rug.
"You won't tell me?"
He shook his head.
"Why?"
He waited some more. His skin felt itchy. Like he'd been swimming at the beach and his skin was all sticky with salt from the ocean. He rubbed his butt against the rug. It helped a little but not much.
"When this happens, does it hurt you?"
He was safer now. Good.
"Yes."
"A lot?"
He nodded.
"Where does it hurt?"
"Hurts my private parts."
"Front or back? Or both?"
"Back."
"And you won't say who does this to you?"
He shook his head.
"Does it happen often?"
"Maybe."
"Does it happen in this house?"
Careful.
Because it used to. Not anymore but it sure used to happen. Be careful. Miss Stone looked smart. It might be the same as saying.
Don't answer.
She leaned forward like she needed to get closer for some reason but didn't want to actually move off the couch to the floor with him.
"Robert, I have to ask you this. It's very important. In a way it's the most important question I'll have asked you all night—and I really, really need you to answer me on this one, okay?"
He shrugged.
But inside she was scaring him. Waiting for it. Waiting for the question.
He'd lie if he had to. And that scared him too.
"Robert, is it your mother who hurts you?" she said.
"Jeez! No!"
He actually jumped.
How could she even think something like that? It was like she'd hit him in the head.
People were crazy sometimes.
She smiled. Almost laughed. Like maybe she was relieved or something or maybe he just looked funny the way she made him jump. Anyway, he could see it.
But then she got serious again and he knew it was coming. "Is it your father, Robert?"
He saw the rabbit with its leg shot off in his father's hand. He saw him pick up a knife when they were back at the house and pinch the skin and the soft brown fur on the rabbit's back and then stick the knife in and make a slit and then put his fingers into the slit and tear the skin completely around, then peel half the skin all the way down to its feet like maybe you'd take off a sock or something and then saw him cut off its feet. He saw him do the same thing to the top half, except that this time he cut off not just the feet but the rabbit's head and then made a cut in the pink naked chest and reached in and pulled out the guts.
You can do this to a human, too, he said.
Same thing.
Did you know that?
"Is it your father, Robert?"
No. He wasn't going to cry again, god damn it! And he wasn't going to tell her.
Make him stop, he thought. Somehow.
And then he did cry a little.
He wiped the tears away and said nothing.
Fifteen
Forest
Duggan stamped his feet against the cold leeching in through his shoes and lit himself a Newport Lite off Al Whoorly's Winston. He hated Newport Lites more than any other cigarette he'd ever smoked but he was trying to quit so he figured they were good for him.
Years ago there'd been a brushfire out this way. They'd stopped it just about here. You could see the newer growth off to the left, the older stands of birch and maple to the right.
The girl was nailed to maple.
The ME was just about finished with her. The photographs were taken. In a few more minutes the Crime Scene Unit could bring her down and bag her. She'd go with Whoorly and the other state troopers over to the lab in Concord.
"What I don't get," Whoorly said, "is why he left us the IDs. Why make it easy?"
"Considerate," Duggan said. "The guy's got heart."
"You know some of these assholes actually want to be caught. Maybe he's tired of it."
"I don't think you'll prove it by this one."
Her name was Laura Banks—a student at Plymouth State. Her student ID and driver's license were in a brown leather wallet inside her cluttered handbag. The handbag was sitting on top of a stack of neatly folded clothing placed on a rock four or five feet from the tree—coat, jeans, shirt, socks, bra and panties. The girl was the practical type. The shirt was heavy corduroy and the socks were thick red wool.
He thought of how cold she must have been. Unthinkably cold.
Before he got to warming her up some.
Silence lay heavy in the still dry morning air. Six of them out here and nobody was saying hardly anything. He guessed they were all a little in awe here. The teenage kid whose big black bastard Labrador had scented her and then run away into the woods while they were out for their morning walk was down at the station for questioning. The kid had a lot to say but it was just the same thing over and over again because the kid was scared. In a way maybe it scared them too.
Lavore walked over and Duggan shook a Newport out of his pack for him. Lavore was trying to quit just like Duggan but the ME's style was grubbing.
"Okay. You can have her," he said.
"Cause of death?"
"You're kidding."
"For the record."
"Sharpened tree limb. Stake through the heart. Directly through the heart. I mean pretty much dead center. What you're looking for here is a torture-freak vampire-killer who's pretty good with his anatomy. And you know what? He didn't just shove it into her. He pushed it in nice and slow."
"Time of death?"
"My guess now would be about four A.M. Five, six hours ago."
"Rape?"
"Plenty of rape. Looks like he got her seven ways to Sunday. Vaginal. Anal. I wouldn't be surprised if when we pry open her jaw we find semen there too."
Duggan pointed to an area by a rock about six feet over to their left.
"You see that?"
"What? The gags?"
Two cotton dishrags had been tossed to the forest floor. One was frozen, drenched with saliva. They were bagging them.
"No. Wood shavings. The guy sat there whittling. Putting a good clean point on his stick. You want to bet she was watching him?"
"Sick," Whoorly said.
"What about the rest of it?"
"All happened before she died as far as I can tell. Though some of it might be postmortem. I'll be able to give you a breakdown when we get her on the table."
He looked at her. Lavore was telling him she'd been alive through all of that.
What the g
uy had done was amazing and god only knew how much time he took to do it. Maybe all night. Maybe longer.
The body was hanging there like frozen meat in a meat locker. At some point he'd thrown water on her. To revive her? Or just to watch her shake? There was frost and beaded ice in her long brown hair and in her pubic hair and eyebrows. Small icicles actually hung from her toes where they almost—but not quite—touched the base of the tree.
Her arms were spread three feet apart over her head. Each wrist pierced by a tenpenny nail.
She hung suspended.
Her body was blue-white where it was not a brownish red.
But there was plenty of red.
He'd been at her with a dry stick.
They'd already bagged it. The stick was three feet long and he hadn't peeled too many of the branches off. It was stained with blood and bits of human flesh clung to it, studding its buds and scars.
He'd been at her with matches too.
Duggan was never the type of cop who figured that by now he'd seen everything. He knew that people could always surprise you—that people could be fucked beyond his own wildest dreams. He'd seen the bloody fallout from domestic anger and drunken driving and armed robbery and all kinds of lethal stupidity but he'd never seen anything like this and hoped to god he never would again.
He stepped out his Newport, then picked up the butt and put it in his pocket.
He'd smell like an ashtray now.
Another good incentive to quit.
What he had to try to do now was to find out all he could about the woman in life and in death, and unless he got lucky, unless somebody saw her step into a car with someone he or she knew or unless somebody went strange on him under questioning, to imagine precisely her suffering at the end and then try to construct the person who could be screwed up enough to put her through it. He'd have to look at her, in the flesh and in the photos, over and over again.