Angela didn’t say anything. She was getting the bigger picture. They intended to let the men go, period. He was letting her know that he would bring charges against her if she made a fuss about it. He would charge her with a crime and suggest that it hadn’t been rape at all, but consensual sex. He would say that after the romp she wanted to charge the men to cover up the true nature of her behavior and because she was a racist.
His gaze went from her hair as far down as he could see. “It’s rather self-evident that you were asking for it. Right?” he said to make a point of it. “I mean, why else would you dress the way you do? Anyone can see by looking at you that you’re the kind of woman who is always looking to get laid, right?”
“The way I dress does not make it okay to rape me.”
He smiled as he winked at her. “Come on, now, tell the truth. You liked it.”
Angela knew she was in a dangerous situation with a powerful man, the kind of situation with authorities she always tried to avoid.
She simply said, “That’s not true.”
He shrugged off her denial and flipped over the page. “It says here in this report that the officer who interviewed you at the hospital suspected that the incident might have been some kind of drug deal gone bad.”
Angela blinked. “I don’t use drugs.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say. It only matters what the jury believes.”
He flipped over some more pages, mumbling a list of things under his breath as he read. He finally straightened the papers and laid them back down in the folder, then leaned back in his chair and locked his fingers behind his head. His big belly flopped out over his pants.
“Despite what you say, young lady, the evidence shows that you are likely heavily involved in drugs. The Constantine residence—where you lived—has long been the scene of visits from the police for drug activity, including possession with the intent to distribute. Your place is well known to police. There have been fights there, stabbings, and any number of arrests on various charges, most of them having to do with drugs. All of that is very incriminating to a jury.”
Angela did her best to control her voice. “I don’t do drugs.”
It didn’t matter. She was guilty for the sins of her mother.
Hands still laced behind his head, he shrugged. “All the people I prosecute for drug possession and for dealing say the same thing. They don’t do drugs. They don’t deal drugs. We have the wrong person. The police planted the drugs on them. All that kind of bull crap. You’re all the same.”
“You would prosecute someone you know is innocent?”
“It’s not up to me to say who is innocent and who is guilty. It’s up to a jury to make that determination.”
Angela stood, fists at her side. “I don’t have anything to do with drugs.”
“Well, what we’re left with is the word of the police …” His gaze glided down to her cutoffs for a lingering look. “… against the word of a whore the cat dragged out of a trailer park.”
His gaze came up to glare at her with cold contempt.
By the way he kept looking at her body, Angela realized that he had something important in common with the four men. Like them, he thought he was better than her. More than that, he had an elitist disdain for her, and yet, he couldn’t help lusting for her. It left him with the confused emotion of hatred mixed with desire.
Angela didn’t say anything as she sat back down.
He shrugged. “Maybe what we have here is a simple case of a woman dealing drugs and known to be carrying a concealed weapon.”
He leaned forward, pointing at her with a pen he picked up off his desk as his voice got louder. “Like I said, we’re a sanctuary state and we are not going to unfairly prosecute undocumented aliens on the word of a fucking little trailer tramp!”
With great effort, Angela kept her mouth shut.
“So,” he said, his voice returning to normal levels. “I think that you should consider yourself fortunate that I’m not inclined to press concealed-weapons charges against you. Don’t you agree?”
Angela swallowed back her anger. She knew she had to be very careful in her answer. This was not a battle she could win. Worse, she knew she would be in great peril if she said the wrong thing.
“Yes … I agree.”
His politician smile returned. “I’m so glad that I could explain it and learn that we see eye-to-eye about this whole matter.”
There was an urgent knock at the door. When Babington looked up and called “Yes?” the door opened just enough for the young man who had been at the front desk to stick his head in.
“Can I have you for just a minute, Mr. Babington? A critical matter.”
Babington shut the folder on his desk and rose. “Excuse me for a moment, Ms. Constantine.”
He hiked up his pants as he went to the door. He leaned his head out, discussing something with the young man. Babington’s side of the discussion sounded heated.
Angela watched him a moment, watching as his ill humor revealed itself. Babington had one hand on the doorframe and the other on the edge of door as he leaned his head out asking pointed questions and giving angry orders. She couldn’t see the young man. He had withered back under his boss’s temper.
Angela leaned in over his desk and lifted the cover of the folder, then the papers, until she found the four mug shots. She quickly snatched them out of the folder, folded them up, and stuffed them in a pocket. She closed the cover of the folder.
When Babington finished talking to the young man and came back into the room, Angela lifted her purse off the other chair and put the strap over her shoulder. He gave her that lewd, condescending smile she had seen from him before.
She returned a phony smile she sometimes had to use at the bar to avoid trouble with fragile male egos.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Babington,” Angela said on her way past him.
“Any time, my dear,” he called after her. “Any time.”
THIRTY
Angela sat in her truck, gripping the steering wheel as if she were trying to strangle it, panting, her heart pounding as she stared down at nothing. She knew better than to go to the authorities. She knew better. She should have expected it. When she heard that the charges had been dropped and the men released she should have known that the fix was already in and there was nothing she could do about it.
The system always blamed the victim.
She remembered something her grandfather told her that day on the way home after he had come to her school. Principal Ericsson had been about to expel her for fighting back against those bigger girls who had attacked her. She wasn’t expelled, but only because Principal Ericsson was more afraid of her grandfather than of any criticism for not expelling her.
In the car on the way home, her grandfather had told her that every form of authority, from the school system to the justice system, was far more concerned about protecting itself than the innocent. He said that was why he was proud of her for standing up for herself. He said that was the only true way to insure justice.
He had been right. The prosecutor’s office didn’t care about justice. Like all forms of authority, from the smallest to the largest, they only cared about protecting themselves and their political agenda. It was always dangerous to go against what had already been decided by the authorities. People like Angela were a petty annoyance, a minor obstacle to their ends. If need be, the system would crush them if they got in the way.
Angela, though, cared about justice. It was all she really cared about. Vengeance was the only thing that made her feel alive. It was the only thing worth living for.
In a way, Angela was glad the self-centered prick had let the four men go.
It meant that Angela could hunt them.
Although the men had been let go because they were undocumented Mexican immigrants, Angela didn’t really believe that the four men were Mexican. She didn’t think Mexicans talked the way these men talked, or thought the way the
se men thought. She didn’t think Mexicans thought of America as the Great Satan.
She knew who did.
She could see it in their eyes that they genuinely despised America. They radiated a visceral hatred.
They were going to kill her, so they had nothing to hide.
She also didn’t think the things she saw in that room were parts for irrigation systems. Irrigation systems didn’t use cell phones, or piles of machined, geometric-shaped parts, or wires that came in by courier.
The four men weren’t who they pretended to be. They were up to something.
She briefly considered calling the authorities—the FBI or Homeland Security—and reporting what she’d seen. But with John Babington’s accusations still burning hot in her mind, and seeing how laws created by lawyers protected criminals, not victims, she dismissed the thought.
Everyone would accuse her of being a racist who hated the men because they were Mexican. If she reported them, the most likely outcome would be that she would be the one who got in trouble. They would check with Babington about the men, he would brush off the accusations, and then he would likely charge her with carrying a concealed weapon. More frightening, he would come up with a large quantity of drugs and charge her with dealing. It was easy for a man like that to put someone like Angela in jail where she would be silenced and forgotten.
She repeated her rule to herself. No good could ever come of talking to the authorities or trusting in them—whoever those authorities might be.
Angela picked up her phone and called Barry. He answered on the second ring. “Barry, it’s Angela. Would it be all right if I didn’t come in tonight?”
“What’s up?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something. I can hear it in your voice. What’s wrong?”
Angela cleared her throat. “I just found out that the charges against the four men who attacked me have been dropped.”
“What? That doesn’t make any sense. How in the world could that happen? Who dropped the charges?”
“The assistant district attorney. John Babington.”
Barry huffed the name. “Figures. Do you know that when Babington was running for office he came by the bar and asked for a campaign contribution?”
“No, you never told me.”
“Well, he did. He said that it would be nice if I could help with a contribution to his campaign—you know, to continue his strong record on law and order. He said that it would be a good idea to help get him elected because if he lost, before the new man was sworn into office there are always a lot of pending charges against bars that came across the desk of the assistant district attorney and he might finally have to pursue them all as a last duty to the people of the state.
“I told him that I didn’t know anything about election campaigns and I asked what the suggested amount of a contribution would be. Do you know what that asshole said?”
“No, what did he say?”
“He said that the suggested contribution was fifteen hundred dollars. Fifteen hundred dollars!”
“So you made a ‘contribution’ to his campaign.”
“Damn right I did. I know a shakedown when I hear one. Sometimes, even when you know it’s not fair, you gotta do what’s right for you. Know what I mean?”
Angela’s grip on the steering wheel had her knuckles white.
“Yeah, I sure do.”
He paused a moment. “I’m sorry, Angela, talking about my petty shakedown. That’s nothing like what the fucking asshole did to you. Listen, it’s not that busy. Take the night off. In fact, take the rest of the week off. This must be rattling you. Hell, it has me fuming and it didn’t even happen to me.”
“Thanks for understanding, Barry. I’ll call you in a few days and see what the schedule looks like.”
When she hung up, she called the missed number that had called half a dozen times.
“Hello, this is Betty with Hospice Services,” a woman on the other end of the line said.
“Hi, Betty. This is Angela Constantine.”
“Angela! I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“I know. Something happened.”
“What could have happened that you wouldn’t—?”
“I was attacked by four men. They raped me, beat me, and left me for dead. I’ve been in the hospital, recovering.”
Her heated tone turned to apologetic shock. “Oh my God! I had no idea! Are you all right? I’m so sorry that I’ve been calling you so often—”
“Don’t worry about it. Listen, Betty, the reason I’m calling is I need to know something from my mother.”
There was a momentary pause. “Well, it’s getting difficult, you know? She’s in and out. She doesn’t seem to be able to process talking on the phone anymore.”
“That’s fine—I don’t expect her to be able to talk on the phone. I just need you to ask her something for me. It’s important. I need the last name of a guy who used to come around our house. His first name was Nate. I need to know his last name. It was foreign sounding and I can’t remember it. Ma should remember him—she always said he was cute and she wanted to pinch his ass. He came around our house for a while until he went to prison for manslaughter.”
“Nate. Went to prison for manslaughter. That’s terrible. Okay, hold on and I’ll ask.”
She was gone for quite a while. At last she returned to the phone.
“It was difficult. She has a hard time, you know?”
“I know.”
“But she remembered him. His name is Nate Drenovic.”
Angela snapped her fingers. “That’s it. That’s the guy. Thank you, Betty. I’m sorry but I have to go for now.”
“Half the time, with the medication, I don’t know what she means, but she does ask for you. Just now she asked something kind of strange.”
“What did she ask?”
“She asked me just now if it was the girl in the moon. It was kind of strange. Eerie. You know?”
Angela didn’t know what to say.
“When will you be able to come see her?”
“Soon,” Angela said. “I have to take care of some things first….”
“I understand. You take care of yourself, dear, and get better. Do you hear me? Get better.”
“I will. Thank you, Betty.”
THIRTY-ONE
Once she hung up, Angela started doing a search on her phone for the name Nate Drenovic. Surprisingly, there were a number of entries, but they were in other cities. Then she found one in Milford Falls: Drenovic Tactical. Under the name it said “Combat Martial Arts.” From what she remembered of him, that sounded like the same guy.
Angela knew roughly where the address was located. She replaced the knife in her right boot, the suppressor in the other boot, and the gun inside her waistband at the small of her back. It was uncomfortable leaning back in the seat of the truck with the gun there.
She reminded herself that the gun was not meant to be comfortable. It was meant to be comforting.
She felt safer having the gun on her, rather than left in the truck where it had been useless to her when she had needed it most—all because she had been following the law. But she knew that even having a gun wasn’t the whole solution.
She found Drenovic Tactical in a seedy strip mall set back from a busy four-lane street. She didn’t know if Nate would remember her. She’d been fifteen, maybe nearing sixteen at the time. She didn’t know if he was still into drugs, but since he had a business she was hoping not. If he was, she would simply find someone else.
With all the scary men at her mother’s place, she had thought he was one of the more decent guys who hung around the trailer. But he wouldn’t have hung around unless he did drugs or ran with people who did. At the least, though, he hung around with the wrong crowd.
There was also the matter of his manslaughter conviction. That worried her. She wondered what she might be walking into.
At the moment, though, he was the only one she
could think of for what she needed. At least it was a place to start. If she didn’t like what she found, she could always walk.
Angela parked in front of the storefront window painted black from the inside, with the name DRENOVIC TACTICAL in gold lettering outlined in red. Because the window was painted over, there was no way to see what might be inside. She opened the typical strip mall aluminum and glass door, which was also painted over in black.
Inside, the place was basically all one open room. While not big, it looked like plenty of space for martial arts training. The bottom six feet of the walls were painted black, with a red band above the black running around the room, and white the rest of the way up to a high ceiling with exposed ductwork and vents. There looked to be a bathroom in back, and there was a desk with a few folding chairs up against the blacked-out window in front. Wooden benches lined one wall. Most of the room was covered with mats.
Two men were practicing some sort of arm locks and escapes in the center of the room. One of them pretty much fit her memory of Nate.
The other was older, more muscular, with a buzz cut, a wifebeater undershirt, and lots of tattoos upon tattoos upon tattoos. He was doing the kind of steroid-induced sniffing and shoulder twitching that made her wonder if she’d made a mistake coming into the place. The guy was clearly amped up. His eyes were bugged out. From lots of experience at quickly judging men as she had been growing up, she knew that he was trouble.
Both men disengaged from grappling and came over to Angela.
Nate was a ruggedly good-looking guy, at most maybe five or six years older than her. He had short brown hair that was pleasing in its disorder. The tight, black, short-sleeved T-shirt he had on showed that he was ripped, but not muscle-bound like the other guy.
“Hey, hot stuff,” the tattooed guy said as he circled in close beside her. He aggressively grabbed her ass cheek. “Nice.”
In an instant Angela had the barrel of her gun pressed up under his chin, lifting his head back a few inches.