“But what if there are videos of Kelli?”
“The police should know about that, too.”
She goes quiet a minute.
I say, “You think she already knows?”
“What? No, of course not!”
“Any idea why she hates her stepfather?”
Riley stares straight ahead. “Please don’t do this.”
I say, “He keeps his bedroom door locked at all times, won’t let anyone inside.”
Riley says nothing.
“Look,” I say. “It’s just me and you. Please, honey. Tell me what you know.”
She continues staring straight ahead a long time. Then says, “Promise you won’t tell?”
“I promise.”
“He raped her.”
“When did this happen?”
“Last summer.”
“Kelli’s stepfather raped her?”
“Yes.”
“Who knows about this?”
“Me, Kelli, Mitch…I don’t know if Kelli told anyone else. But Parker knows.”
“Parker Page? Your best friend?”
Riley nods. “I told Parker about it a few months ago. She and Kelli were having a feud, and Parker kept treating her like shit.”
“Does Lydia know?”
“Absolutely not.”
“How can Kelli keep such a huge secret from her mother?”
“He threw himself on his knees and begged her forgiveness. Said he was drunk, under a lot of pressure in his job. He sobbed. Begged her not to tell her mom or anyone else. Kelli keeps thinking she must have done something wrong. That it’s her fault, somehow.”
“Except that he’s spying on her.”
“If he is.”
“Has he touched her since?”
“No.”
I think a minute. Then say, “You’re positive she doesn’t know about the cameras?”
Riley’s eyes flash with sudden anger. “What are you saying? That my friend is performing for that psychopath?”
“No, of course not! You just made it sound like she’s forgiven him to some extent. And has accepted part of the blame, which, by the way, is exactly how victims typically respond to this type of situation. But the bottom line is, she’s keeping his secret.”
“So?”
“You told me she hates Mitch. I was just wondering if, after being raped, she found out about the cameras.”
“You need an additional excuse for why she hates her stepfather? She’s fearful in her own home. Terrified when he’s in town.”
“Why do Kelli’s parents sleep in separate bedrooms?”
“She caught him cheating on her.”
“With whom, do you know?”
“He cheats a lot, Kelli says. Both locally and out of town, according to her mom.”
“Why does she stay with him?”
“Money.”
“I thought he was loaded. Wouldn’t she do well in a divorce?”
“They have a pre-nup. And Kelli thinks most of his assets are hidden overseas.”
“Which is why he travels so much?
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
I shake my head. “That’s why Kelli hasn’t told her mom about the rape.”
“Exactly. It’s bad enough your stepfather rapes you. But it’s even worse if you wind up homeless because of it.”
“Is there a way we can get Kelli’s mom out of the house so we can search Mitch’s room?”
“How much time would you need?”
“As much as we can get.”
She says, “You’ve taken a lot of chances, telling me about breaking into Kelli’s house, searching her bedroom, stealing Ethan and Ronnie’s phones. And now you’re planning to break into Mitch’s room.”
“Not a smart way to do business, is it?”
“You could get into a lot of trouble.”
“Are you planning to turn me in?”
“No. You’re doing all this for me. You won’t even let me pay you for your time.”
“I’d break every law on the books to stop a predator.”
“It’s not that I’m ungrateful,” she says. “But I’m planning to major in criminal justice, remember?”
“How can you have justice without evidence?”
She squeezes her eyes shut and winces, as if my words were live bees, stuck in her head.
Undaunted, I say, “So what do you think? Can Dillon and I get inside Kelli’s house?”
“We’d have to tell Kelli about the cameras. If there are videos, I doubt she’d want Dillon looking at them. And certainly not the police.”
“What about me?”
“The reason I chose you is because you’ve been through this before. Kelli might be okay with letting you see them. But definitely not Dillon, or the strange lady out front.”
“Fanny?”
“That’s her name?”
“Uh huh. She’s the one who saw the light reflecting off the camera lenses in the photos.”
“She works for you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Is that actual paint on her head?”
“I think so. It seems too vivid for a tattoo. On the other hand, you’d expect paint to flake at some point.”
“Did someone do that to her?”
“Far as I know, she did it to herself.”
“Why?”
“Beats me.”
“You never thought to ask? That would have been my first question during the interview process.”
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t there. But we can ask her, if you like. She’s also got a cleaved blue tongue.”
“What?”
“And tattoos on her butt.”
“Eew. I hope she’s a great receptionist.”
“Jury’s still out on that.”
“Why is she in a hospital gown, hooked up to an IV?”
“It’s a long story.”
She pauses a moment, then says, “If Mitch made a video of me, I wouldn’t want Dillon or Fanny to see it.”
“No problem.”
Riley’s phone makes a sudden buzz.
“Text message,” she says. She presses a button. “It’s my mom. She’s actually shopping at the mall and wants to know where I am. I better get going.”
“Can I give you a ride?”
“That would be great.”
As we walk through the reception area I notice Riley can’t take her eyes off Fanny. I say, “Fanny, you never told me why you painted your entire head bright red.”
“The Chiefs came to town last month.”
“You’re a Chiefs fan?”
“No.”
Riley and I look at each other.
“Thanks for clearing that up,” I say. “By the way, your tube’s backing up with blood again.”
She looks at it and frowns. Then looks at her wrist, touches it, and grins. “It’s Rice Krispy time!” she shouts.
In the car, heading to the mall, I ask Riley if she thinks we can get Kelli on board.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Right now, Lydia doesn’t want Kelli talking to me.”
“Because of me?”
“Yes. She’s seriously considering a lawsuit against you for defamation of character. She’s waiting on Mitch to come home before making the decision. Also, remember, Kelli doesn’t know Dillon broke into her house and took pictures of her bedroom. That’s going to creep her out.”
“Maybe you can omit that part.”
“I can try, I guess.”
“Dillon’s breaking in may have solved the whole case. It led us to finding the cameras. What if you tell Kelli we think Mitch made videos, and tell her she can have all of them except yours, and she can make her own decision about what she wants to do with them?”
“She might go for that, but only if I promise not to tell the police. If we take my video to the police, it automatically puts her in the middle of the circus. And if she does decide to tell her mom about the rape and the videos, and her mom goes to the pol
ice, won’t there be a question about how she got the tapes? Couldn’t Mitch’s lawyers say the evidence is tainted or something?”
“I don’t know. What if Kelli invites us in the house and says Mitch’s door is stuck, and asks if there’s anything we can do to help unstick it? When we get it open, maybe she looks around and says, ‘Wow, look at all these video cards! I wonder if my prom pictures are on one of them! Can you guys help me look?’”
Riley shakes her head. “That’s pretty lame.”
“True. But I think the first step is to get in Mitch’s room and photograph and video it exactly as we find it. Then, if there are any videos, we can check them out now, and decide what to do about them later.”
Riley says, “In other words, we don’t have to ‘discover’ them the same day we find them.”
“Exactly.”
“We’ll have to do it soon,” she says, “because Mitch is coming back tomorrow afternoon.”
“Can you call Kelli and ask her?”
“I need to talk to her in person.”
“Will her mom let her talk to you?”
“I think so. If I tell Kelli we’ve dropped the investigation, I’ll be Lydia’s best friend again.”
“Are we dropping the investigation, Riley?”
“Yes.”
“I think it’s a bad idea. Ethan and Mitch are predators. We need to make them stop.”
“I’m a junior in high school, Ms. Ripper. I don’t want the whole world knowing about this.”
“I understand how you feel. You know I do.”
“I do know. But I’m just trying to survive high school and get into an ivy league college.”
“Please don’t let them get away with this, Riley.”
She smiles. “Let’s do what you said. Take it one step at a time. Let’s see if there’s a video. If there is, let’s see what it shows. If it’s really bad, if I get really outraged, I can always re-open the investigation, right?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Then let’s approach it that way. In the meantime I can tell Kelli we’ve dropped the investigation because you’re afraid of the lawsuit.”
“Sounds good.”
I notice Riley has dropped the whole “yes ma’am, no ma’am” politeness, now that she’s fired me from the investigation.
I’m pleased.
Makes me feel like an old friend instead of an old lady.
Four hours later, Riley calls and says, “I spoke to Kelli. I’ve got good news and bad news.”
“Give me the bad news first,” I say.
“Kelli went ballistic,” Riley says.
“When you told her about the videos?”
“Yes.
“What did she do?”
“Kicked his door down and searched the room.”
“Were you with her?”
“I was, yes.”
“What’s the good news?”
“We found them.”
“The videos?”
“Yes. They’re on CDs.”
“Have you seen them?”
“No. I mean, we started watching one that showed Kelli getting dressed for school.”
“Well, that’s enough to put the bastard away right there.”
“Probably. But there’s more bad news.”
“What else could possibly go wrong?”
“Kelli’s mom has the CDs.”
“She—what? What does that mean?”
“She caught us in Mitch’s room, watching the video. When Kelli told her what happened, Lydia became furious. But she was furious with Kelli, not Mitch. They had a huge fight, and Lydia slapped her several times and grounded her. Then she started yelling at me, and said she was going to sue me.”
“She can’t sue you.”
“I know. But she’s really angry.”
“We need to get a court order to confiscate those CDs.”
“It’s too late. She put them in a plastic trash bag, put me in her car and cussed me out all the way home. Then she drove away with the bag full of CDs.”
“Damn it! Where was she going?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did she say?”
“She was really upset. She kept crying and yelling. Said she came upstairs because she knew I was up to something. She accused me of trying to ruin her life.”
“What did she say about the CDs?”
“That she didn’t care what was on them, she was going to destroy the evidence. No one was going to accuse her of providing an unsafe atmosphere for children. She said if I ever tell anyone about the CDs she and Kelli would deny it, and they’d sue me for slander.”
“Have you spoken to Kelli since it happened?”
“Yes. And she’s upset, too.”
“What did she say?”
“She can’t believe her mom’s protecting Mitch after videotaping her, and seeing her naked all this time. She’s embarrassed, humiliated, and angry. She can’t believe her mom would take his side.”
“Would she testify against her mom?”
“I doubt it. They’re pretty close when they’re not fighting.”
Damn it, damn it, damn it!
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s see what we can salvage from this. Were you able to figure out what triggered the cameras?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did they run twenty-four hours a day, or just at certain times, or was there something specific that made them turn on and off?”
She doesn’t answer right away, so I add, “Some cameras and voice recorders detect sound or motion. Some come on when it’s dark and go off when it’s light. Some—”
“The lights.”
“Say again?”
“The camera starts recording when Kelli’s bedroom lights are on. She has a lamp by her bed, and a switch on the wall where you enter the room. Both lights control the cameras. When the lights are on, the cameras record. When they’re turned off, the filming stops.”
“Oh. My. God!” I say.
“What’s wrong?”
“Was the system still recording when you went in Mitch’s room?”
“Yes.”
I feel sick to my stomach.
“What’s wrong?” she repeats.
“Dillon turned the lights on in Kelli’s room to take pictures. He’ll be on one of the videos. Unless it erased. Wait. Come to think of it, the system probably taped over your video and Dillon’s.”
“What do you mean?”
“Those CDs are probably only what, two hours each? Even if he used a really slow setting, each disk wouldn’t hold more than six hours, max. And Mitch hasn’t been there to change them for a whole week. The CD he put in the system last week has probably been re-recorded a half-dozen times by now.”
“So even if we had the CDs, they probably wouldn’t show what happened to me?”
“Probably not.”
She sighs. “Ready to give up, yet?”
“No, never.”
“What’s left?”
“Several things. One, if we can keep Lydia from destroying the CDs, maybe she’ll come to her senses and call the police to report her husband. That might give us leverage to open an investigation to a possible assault on you last Saturday night. Two, maybe you could get Kelli to call the police. If they go to her house right now, they’ll be able to see the surveillance equipment, see how it works, and that will open everything up. From there, we might have leverage for the police to contact all the boys who were at the house that night. They’ll get someone to talk about the photos Ethan and Ronnie took, and about what they told the others after it happened.”
“But they said I woke up and was all over them.”
“The photos prove it didn’t go down that way.”
“There are no photos, Ms. Ripper.”
“Probably not. But the boys can testify to the photos they saw. Before Ethan’s father had them erased.”
“What good will all this do?”
“It will get Mitc
h off the streets and into prison, where he belongs. It will put Ethan’s father out of business for tampering with evidence of a sex crime. It will lay the ground work for a civil suit against Ethan and Ronnie.”
“But they’re minors.”
“Ethan’s a predator. At the very least, we can make the police aware of the fact.”
She pauses. “This has become very personal for you.”
“Yes.”
“I think we should let it go.”
“No. You deserve justice, Riley. There are other things we could do.”
“Like what?”
“You could still go to the police.”
“And say what?”
“Exactly what you said to me. About what you think happened. You can tell them about the picture Rick Hooper bought from Nathan Cain. That puts Nathan right in the middle of it. The police are good at intimidating teenagers. He’ll roll over on Ethan and Ronnie. I guarantee it.”
“It’s all hearsay,” she says, sounding mature beyond her years. “To an attorney the photo shows a girl sleeping on a bed in her pajamas. And after making all those threats to Nathan, they’ll go to Rick Hooper and find out about you and Dillon, and how you obtained the evidence, and that whole can of worms will be open. How would I feel if, because of me, you lost your license? Or if Dillon gets arrested for breaking and entering? Plus, Ethan and Ronnie are juveniles. They’ll probably get their hand slapped, at worst. And everyone will talk about me, and I’ll be a social pariah. It’s just not worth it.”
I sigh, thinking Riley Freeman, at seventeen years of age, might be twice as smart as me.
“Can we at least try to get Kelli to call the police? She shouldn’t have to be in the house with that man. And honestly, Riley, he needs to be put away.”
“She’s not going to do that, Ms. Ripper. She’s just not.”
“Can I at least call her on the phone? I’d like to—”
My phone’s being called. I check caller ID.
“Riley, can I put you on hold a second? Rick Hooper’s trying to call me.”
“Okay.”
I click Rick’s call through. “What’s up, Rick?”
“I feel badly for what happened the other day. How we left things.”
“It’s okay, Rick.”
“The first time we met, you walked away thinking I was a nice guy. The second time, I disappointed you.”