He drove back to her apartment building and tried to be quiet as he walked in, to see if anyone could get past Mrs. Berkley without being noticed. But the first stair squeaked beneath his foot, and suddenly the door peeped open, still attached with the chain lock. Mrs. Berkley peered out. He waved. “Hi, Mrs. Berkley. I’m just checking on Melissa.”
She pressed the door closed, unlocked the chain, then opened it further. “Good. She’s up now. She slept most of the afternoon, but I’ve heard her moving around up there in the last few minutes. Enjoy your visit.”
He smiled uncomfortably and continued up the stairs. A television blared from one of the other apartments on the first floor, and a baby cried in another.
The walls were paper-thin, he thought. Thin enough for Mrs. Berkley to hear everyone who came and went—thin enough to know whether Melissa was alone.
He knocked on Melissa’s door. He heard footsteps, then waited while, he assumed, she looked at him through the peephole. After a moment, she opened the door.
“Hi,” she said.
She couldn’t be lying about this, he thought. Not someone with such pure blue eyes, such porcelain skin, such fine blonde hair . . . “Thought I’d come by and check on you,” he said. “See if you were all right after our questions this morning. I felt kind of responsible for making things worse for you.”
She sighed wearily. “Is that an apology?”
“No. Actually, we were just doing our job,” he said. “I just regret how it made you feel.”
“Well, I’m fine.” She stepped back and invited him in.
He looked around, and saw that the furniture had been turned upright, the toppled lamps were settled back on the tables again, and the broken glass had been swept into little piles.
“I guess I shouldn’t have run out like that,” she said. “It just got to me a little. If I hadn’t been so tired, I probably would have realized that you had to ask. You’re supposed to. I wouldn’t expect either of you to just take everything at face value.”
He glanced into the bedroom and saw that her bed was unmade and the covers pulled back, as if she’d been sleeping in it. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
“No,” she said. “I just woke up. I was trying to clean up a little. When I came home this morning, I started to, but I was so exhausted I decided to finish later. So I climbed into bed and fell asleep.”
Odd, he thought. Most rape victims wouldn’t have gone near the place where they’d been violated, yet Melissa had slept there all afternoon? She was tougher than he’d thought. Either that, or . . .
He tried to shove out of his mind the thought that she might not be telling it all exactly as it had happened, that she was leaving something out, or maybe making something up. Seeing the trouble in her expression, the fatigue on her face, he just couldn’t believe that. She’d been traumatized. That much was clear.
“I’ll help you, if you want,” he said finally.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure,” he said, rolling up his sleeves. “Have you eaten?”
“I was thinking of ordering a pizza.”
“Great,” he said. “My treat. You order it, and I’ll see if I can get the rest of this up before it comes.”
The misery in her expression lightened as she smiled and limped to the telephone. “You’re a lifesaver, Larry. I didn’t think I could tackle this myself.”
It didn’t take him long to scrub the stains out of the carpet and sweep up the rest of the glass, but as he did he kept remembering Mrs. Berkley’s insistence that she’d heard the crashing lamps and tables after Soames had left.
“Melissa,” he asked later, over the pizza, “did you have any other visitors last night, other than Soames?”
“No,” she said. “And he wasn’t exactly a visitor.”
“Someone else from the apartments, maybe? Did a neighbor next door stop in? Anybody?”
“No. Nobody.”
He studied the pepperoni on his slice again. “Did I tell you I met Mrs. Berkley?”
Melissa smiled. “She’s a sweet lady, isn’t she?”
“Tell me about her.”
Melissa set her pizza down and wiped her fingers on her napkin. “She’s been like a grandmother to me. It’s been nice to have her around, since my parents are so far away. She’s always baking me cakes and cookies, and telling me wild stories about all the neighbors.”
“Wild stories? How do you mean?”
She shrugged. “Oh, you know. She doesn’t really have much to do all day, so I think she spends a lot of her time imagining what everyone else is doing. And like anyone who lives in their imagination, she gets her facts mixed up. Just last week, she swore that my next-door neighbor in 2B—a forty-eight-year-old widow—had given birth to a little boy. I told her she couldn’t have, that she wasn’t pregnant, but Mrs. Berkley insisted. Later I found out that the niece of one of the neighbors on the first floor had a baby boy, and she’s been visiting. So someone had a baby, all right; it just wasn’t who Mrs. Berkley thought it was.”
I knew it, Larry thought. The woman wasn’t a competent witness. She was mistaken.
“So what did she tell you?” Melissa asked. “Did she see Soames last night?”
“Yeah, she saw him.”
That tense look worked back over Melissa’s face. “I thought so. She sees everybody.”
“Yeah.” He felt sorry now that he’d doubted her, that Tony’s suspicions had infected him. Something definitely had happened to her. That haunted look in her eye had come from somewhere. And anyway, he couldn’t believe that she would simply make up a story like this and put herself through this ordeal for no good reason. She had studied criminal justice; she had to know what this would cost her in emotional stress once it went to trial. No one would subject themselves to that unless they were telling the truth.
She ignored her pizza now, and he wished he hadn’t brought the subject up again. Quiet settled over them, and that sad, grieving look in her eyes touched him. There must be some way to assuage that, he thought.
“Listen,” he said, sighing. “You need to get out of this place. Just relax a little. Get your mind off things. What if I took you to a movie?”
She smiled softly. “Is that part of your job description?”
He shook his head. “Consider me off duty. This is just pleasure.”
Her smile found its way to her eyes, and it was like sunshine reaching a chilled heart. “I’m assuming you aren’t married, Detective?”
He shook his head. “You’re assuming right.”
“Then I guess it would be nice.”
Mrs. Berkley was watching at the bottom of the stairs as they left. “Did you find a baby-sitter for the baby tonight?” the little woman asked her.
Melissa looked confused, then amused. “I’m not the one who had the baby, Mrs. Berkley. Remember? It was Mrs. Jasper’s niece.”
“That’s right,” the woman said. “Well, you two go on and have a nice evening, now. And be careful.”
“We will,” Melissa said. “And Mrs. Berkley, please keep your door locked.”
“I always do,” she said, though it stood wide open at the moment. “Good-bye, Detective.”
Larry waved good-bye, feeling relieved that their witness’s word wasn’t worth much. If only he could convince Tony of that.
He could see that the movie had done her good. For two hours, she had been allowed to forget her problems, dismiss Soames from her mind, and pretend that she was someone else in another life. Now, as they flowed with the crowd toward the exit doors, he saw the shadow creeping back over her face, and how she glanced from side to side, as if expecting Soames to come out of nowhere.
Feeling protective, he reached out and took her hand. It was small, ice-cold, trembling slightly. Trying to decide what would help her right now, he asked, “Would you like to go get a cup of coffee?”
“Sounds good,” she said.
He took her to a little café with lush plants spilling
from windowsills and cascading down walls. A man with a goatee and a ponytail played an acoustic guitar in the corner, and they sat in a booth near the back and talked about the movie, then about favorite movies they’d seen growing up.
“My sister and I used to spend every Saturday afternoon at the movies,” Melissa said. “Half our allowance went for that each week. We would laugh and cry—and when we cried, neither of us would look at the other, because we knew not to destroy the mood. Sandy was good about that.”
Larry was confused. Hadn’t she said she had no siblings? “Where’s Sandy now?” he asked carefully.
Her smile faded, and she seemed to grow even paler. “She died. About three years ago.” Tears welled in her eyes, turning the rims red as she looked away. Quickly, she changed the subject. “Do you come here a lot?”
Though she tried to look bright, the tears were still in her eyes, making her look even more fragile. “No, I don’t come here much. I work a lot at night. It’s nice, though.”
“My father plays guitar,” she said, watching the man in the corner as he strummed. “He used to play and we’d all sing with him. He taught me how to play the ukulele when I was little, but I only knew one song. I tried the guitar, but wasn’t willing to practice.”
Her rambling reminded him of a hamster on a treadmill, running as fast as it could without moving an inch. It was as if one moment’s silence would break her completely. Even so, he listened carefully; each rambling revelation provided another clue to the woman who fascinated him.
“Do you play anything?” she asked. She had skillfully blinked back her tears by now, and she didn’t look quite as forlorn. Trying to lighten things, he said, “I play softball. But no instrument.”
“Softball, huh? For a team?”
“Yeah. A church team, during the summer. I can’t make every game, because I have to work so much. We’re not a very good team. We manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory pretty regularly.”
She smiled—a distant, pensive smile. “I played for a while last summer, when I worked for the FBI.”
The subject of her job with the FBI had seemed taboo earlier in the day when he had asked about her criminal justice degree, but now he seized the opportunity to ask the question that had been plaguing him. “Why did you quit? That sounds like an ideal job for a criminal justice major just out of college.”
She breathed a laugh that said he was naive. “I was at the very bottom of the totem pole. It was drudgery. Mostly clerical work, and the pay stinks. I hated the job, and when I looked around me at the career FBI agents, I just decided that that’s not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.” She looked up at him then, her eyes locked with his, and she smiled a little. “No offense, but criminal justice was a mistake for me. So I quit and took a job doing something else until I could decide what I really wanted to do. I should have just answered your question this morning, but I was upset.”
“Why did you move here, though?”
She was getting tense again. “I was having trouble living in Pensacola, with all the memories—I missed my sister, okay?” Her voice cracked. “I thought if I started over someplace else . . .”
“But you graduated from Florida State, in Tallahassee. Why didn’t you just stay there?”
“I wanted someplace completely new,” she said. “St. Clair seemed like the perfect little town.”
“It can be.” He made his voice gentle and soft as he reached across the table and touched her hand. “You’re not on the witness stand, Melissa.”
“I know. It’s just—” She smiled slightly, then brought those big eyes up to him again. “You’ve been so nice to me today, so I wanted to explain. I really don’t know if I could have gotten through the day without you. It’s weird, too. I mean, this morning, you showed up exactly when I needed you to, when I was about to lose it. And then again tonight, facing that mess—I can’t believe you showed up when you did.”
“I had you on my mind. I thought you could use a friend. You seemed pretty alone.”
She seemed troubled by that thought. Letting go of his hand, she folded her arms across her stomach, looked away, and said, “I haven’t had time to make many friends since I moved here.”
“Why not?” Larry asked.
“Because . . .” Her voice quivered, and she cleared her throat and tried again. “I guess it’s hard for me to get close to people.”
He believed it. Melissa seemed like a loner who didn’t like to be alone. Much like him.
“I’ve always found church to be a good place to make friends. It takes a while, but the friends I’ve made there will last my whole life.”
She struggled against tears. “I don’t belong in church. Sometimes I’m pretty sure that God is disgusted with me.”
“Why?”
She wiped her eyes, smearing her tears. “What’s the verse I learned when I was a kid in Bible school? ‘He is of purer eyes than to even look upon iniquity.’ Sometimes God turns away.”
“But why would he turn away from you, Melissa? What happened last night wasn’t your choice.”
“I know he has, though.” Struggling to fight her tears, she said, “There are things that happen, Larry. Horrible things. If God was there—if he was watching, he would stop them. When he doesn’t, then I know he isn’t even watching.”
Larry only stared at her, feeling moisture in his own eyes as his emotions responded to hers. To tell her that she was reacting inappropriately to her own suffering would be insensitive. Who was he to say? He had never been violated in the way she had. He said nothing, unable to find words that weren’t trite and pat.
“There was something that happened in my family,” she whispered, covering half her face with one hand as she uncovered part of the horror that lay hidden inside her. “Something terrible. And I wanted so much to believe that God would take care of it. But he didn’t.”
Larry could think of no way to break the silence as he watched her struggle with her grief.
“Maybe I’m the one hiding from God,” she said finally. “Maybe I’ve just moved too far to ever get back. There does come a point when you’ve moved too far.”
Larry reached across the table and pushed back a strand of her hair caught in her tears. “I hope I’m around when God proves to you that you’re wrong.”
“I wish . . .” she started to say, but her words broke off.
She looked down at her hands as more tears fell; finally, she drew in a deep, cleansing breath. “Can we go now?”
They were quiet as they drove back to her apartment, and when they got there she was out of the car before he had even cut the engine off. Larry hopped out and caught up to her. “Let me walk you up.”
She nodded and slowed her step then, and he put his arm around her and escorted her up the steps. Mrs. Berkley’s door was open an inch or so as they walked by.
Melissa reached into her purse for her keys when they got to her door, but those tears were still coming, and Larry didn’t know what to do for her. He took the key from her hand, opened the door, then stood in front of her for a moment, wondering what he could offer her to relieve the pain. “I know things look dark now,” he whispered, “but they’re going to get better. And if you need to talk, day or night, you can call me. Remember that.”
She wilted as he pulled her into a crushing hug, and her arms closed around his neck. For a while, he just held her there, trying to give her support and hope and help as he felt the force of her sobs shaking her body. Some part of his heart wept with her, and his own eyes filled with tears.
When she pulled back, he touched her face. “Are you going to be all right?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Thank you for the shoulder.”
“Anytime. That’s what it’s there for.”
She drew in a long breath and looked up at him. “You make me feel safe.”
“Good,” he said. “That’s my job.”
“You do it very well.” She smiled and almost lau
ghed then, the kind of laughter that often follows weeping, and took a deep breath. “Good night.”
He wanted to kiss her but knew it wouldn’t be appropriate. Not the night after she was assaulted, not the moment after she’d found comfort weeping on his shoulder. Instead, he whispered, “Good night.”
She went inside and closed the door, and he stood listening as she locked two bolts. He started down the stairs, then stopped and pulled one of his cards out of his wallet. It already included his extension at the precinct, so he turned it over and jotted his home and cellular phone numbers down. Then he went back to her apartment and slipped it under her door.
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Mrs. Berkley was still peering out of a one-inch opening in her door. “Good night, Mrs. Berkley,” he called.
“Good night, Detective Millsaps,” she replied with perfect clarity. “Be careful driving home.”
Larry frowned all the way out to his car, wondering how she’d remembered his name. Maybe she flowed in and out of confusion, sometimes getting things right, sometimes not. Still, it disturbed him.
Tony was going to hit the ceiling anyway, when he heard what Larry had done with his evening.
CHAPTER EIGHT
You’re losing your edge.” Tony plopped into the extra chair at Larry’s desk.
“What?”
“You heard me. I went by Mrs. Berkley’s again today. I wanted to ask her a couple more questions, and Y she told me something very interesting.”