Hold Tight
“I got nothing to say.”
“You can’t protect him, Doc. You all think you can. Parents try all the time. But not this way. Every doctor I know keeps pads at home. Just in case he needs to write a prescription from there. It is easy to steal drugs from the medicine cabinet. It is probably even easier to steal prescription pads.”
Mike stood. “I’m leaving now.”
“Like hell you are. Your son is one of those rich kids we talked about, but this graduates him to the big time. He can be charged with conspiracy and distribution of a schedule two narcotic for starters. That’s serious jail time—max of twenty years in federal prison. But we don’t want your son. We want Rosemary McDevitt. We can cut a deal.”
“I’m waiting for my lawyer,” Mike said.
“Perfect,” LeCrue said. “Because your charming attorney has just arrived.”
29
RAPED.
There wasn’t so much silence after Susan Loriman said that word as there was a rushing sound, a feeling like they were losing cabin pressure, as if the whole diner were descending too fast and their ears were taking the brunt of it.
Raped.
Ilene Goldfarb did not know what to say. She had certainly heard her share of bad news and delivered much of it herself, but this had been so unexpected. She finally settled on the all-purpose, quasi-stall platitude.
“I’m sorry.”
Susan Loriman’s eyes weren’t just closed but squeezed shut like a child. Her hands were still on the teacup, protecting it. Ilene considered reaching out but decided against it. The waitress started toward them, but Ilene shook her head. Susan still had her eyes shut.
“I never told Dante.”
A waiter walked by with a tray teetering with plates. Someone called out for water. A woman at the neighboring table tried eavesdropping, but Ilene shot her a glare that made her turn away.
“I never told anyone. When I got pregnant, I figured it was probably Dante’s. That’s what I hoped anyway. And then Lucas came out and I guess I knew. But I blocked it. I moved on. It was a long time ago.”
“You didn’t report the rape?”
She shook her head. “You can’t tell anyone. Please.”
“Okay.”
They sat there in silence.
“Susan?”
She looked up.
“I know it was a long time ago—” Ilene began.
“Eleven years,” Susan said.
“Right. But you might want to think about reporting it.”
“What?”
“If he’s caught, we can test him. He might even be in the system already. Rapists normally don’t stop at one.”
Susan shook her head. “We’re setting up this donor drive at the school.”
“Do you know what the odds of that getting us what we need are?”
“It has to work.”
“Susan, you need to go to the police.”
“Please let this go.”
And then a curious thought crossed Ilene’s mind. “Do you know your rapist?”
“What? No.”
“You should really think about what I’m saying.”
“He won’t be caught, okay? I have to go.” Susan slid out of the booth and stood over Ilene. “If I thought there was a chance to help my son, I would. But there’s not. Please, Dr. Goldfarb. Help with the donor drive. Help me find another way. Please, you know the truth now. You have to let this be.”
IN his classroom, Joe Lewiston cleaned the chalkboard with a sponge. Many things about being a teacher had changed over the years, including the replacement of green chalkboards with those new erasable white ones, but Joe had insisted on keeping this hold-over from the previous generations. There was something about the dust, the clack of the chalk when you wrote, and cleaning it with a sponge that somehow linked him to the past and reminded him of who he was and what he did.
Joe used the giant sponge and right now it was a bit too wet. Water flowed down the board. He chased the cascades with the sponge, going in straight lines up and down, and he tried to lose himself in this simple task.
It almost worked.
He called this room “Lewiston Land.” The kids loved it, but in truth not as much as he did. He wanted so very badly to be different, to not stand up here and do rote lectures and teach the required material and be totally forgettable. He let this be their place. The students had writing journals—so did he. He read the kids’, and they were allowed to read his. He never yelled. When a kid did something good or noteworthy, he put a check next to his name. When he or she misbehaved, he erased a check. It was that simple. He didn’t believe in singling kids out or embarrassing them.
He watched the other teachers grow old before his eyes, their enthusiasm bleeding out with each passing class. Not his. He dressed up in character when he did history. He had unusual scavenger hunts where you had to do math problems to find the next goodie. The class got to make its own movie. There was so much good that went on in this room, in Lewiston Land, and then there had been that one day when he should have stayed home because the stomach flu was still making his belly ache and then the air conditioner had conked out and he felt so horrible and was breaking out with a fever and . . .
Why did he say that? God, what a horrible thing to do to a child.
He turned on the computer. His hands shook. He typed in the address of his wife’s school Web site. The password was JoeLoves Dolly now.
There had been nothing wrong with her e-mail.
Dolly did not know much about computers or the Internet. So Joe had gone into it earlier and changed her password. That was why her e-mail hadn’t “worked” properly. She had the wrong password, so when she tried to log in, it wouldn’t let her.
Now, in the safety of this room he so dearly loved, Joe Lewiston checked what e-mails had come in for her. He hoped that he wouldn’t see that same sender e-mail address again.
But he did.
He bit down so he didn’t scream out loud. There was only so long he could stall before Dolly would want to know what was wrong with her e-mail. He had a day maybe, no more. And he did not think a day would be enough.
TIA dropped Jill back at Yasmin’s. If Guy Novak minded or was surprised he didn’t show it. Tia didn’t have time to question it anyway. She sped to the FBI’s field office at 26 Federal Plaza. Hester Crimstein arrived at almost exactly the same time. They met up in the waiting room.
“Check the playbill,” Hester said. “You are to play the role of beloved wife. I’m the darling screen veteran who will cameo as his attorney.”