“What did you do?”
“I slammed the door shut and locked it, that’s what I did. Some of the other girls had had problems with stalkers, creeps who fall in love with them during the show and follow them around everywhere. I didn’t want to end up on a slab at the morgue.”
“But you must’ve changed your mind later.”
“Yeah, I did. Stupid me, huh?” She looked down, and Ben saw a glistening in the corner of her eyes. “He talked to me through the door, assured me he didn’t want to harm me. I opened the door a crack and he showed me his badge. Said he just wanted to get some coffee and talk. Said he’d meet me at the coffee shop if that would make me feel safer. Basically, he told me everything I needed to hear. Except for the minor detail that he was married.”
“He left that out?”
She nodded. “That was my big mistake, see. I thought he wanted a girlfriend, maybe even a wife. But what he really wanted was …” She turned away and didn’t finish her sentence.
“So you met him at the coffee shop?”
“Yeah. Denny’s, actually. Gross, I know, but nothing else was open.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Oh, he spun me some stories. Joe was a slick talker when he wanted to be. Knew how to charm a lady.” She almost smiled, but the impulse faded.
“What did he tell you?”
“Oh, you can imagine. Said I had a lovely smile.”
Yes …
“Told me I had the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen.”
Which, actually, you do …
“Said I had a perfect figure. Perfect! Can you imagine?”
Ben felt the inside of his mouth go dry. He’d had the same thought himself on many occasions.
“And here I was, still just eighteen, listening to all this sweet talk, seeing how strong and handsome he was, knowing he had a good job, knowing the thing I needed more than anything in the world was just—just a friend, you know? Someone I could … be with. So I wouldn’t be alone all the time.”
Ben felt an aching in his heart. All those lawyers, all those reporters, all those who had spilled so many words about this case—none of them had the slightest idea what this case was really about, or who Keri Dalcanton really was. She wasn’t a shady harlot or a manipulative hussy or any of that crap. She was a poor lonely girl forced out on her own who made the mistake of trusting someone who was not worthy of her trust.
“How long before you started seeing him … regularly?”
She lowered her head. “Not long. He didn’t make any bones about the fact that he wanted a—a—physical relationship. You know. And he wasn’t talking about holding hands, either.”
Ben’s eye twitched.
“He explained to me that he was a special man, and a special man had special … tastes.” She spoke the word as if it left an unpleasant residue in her mouth. “And slowly but surely, he started introducing me to his world of kinky sex. He liked it rough. Rough and weird. Raw. He wanted all the perverted stuff he couldn’t get from his wife, although I didn’t know about her at the time. Bondage. Whips and chains. Black leather.”
She had to avert her eyes to continue talking. “And what did I know? I was just a little girl from Stroud. I didn’t know anything about that stuff. I kept wondering: Is this what everyone does behind closed doors? He’d set up little plays, you know, and we’d act them out. Like, we pretend we’ve never met each other before. Or we pretend we’re in some exotic locale. Didn’t really matter—they all ended up the same place. I’d be the master and he’d be the slave. He’d be on his knees in front of me, begging for mercy. And I wouldn’t give him any. We’d pretend that he’d been bad and had to be punished. That was the part I hated most. But he loved it. He needed it. It was the only thing that got him …” She closed her eyes. “You know.”
Ben leaned closer. “Keri, you don’t have to tell me this …”
“No, I want to. Really. I’ve kept so much locked up for so long, it feels good, in a strange way. To get it all out. To try to make someone understand. Those reporters and the D.A., they insinuated that I was the sex fiend, like I led him down the road to degradation. But it wasn’t me. I hated wearing those costumes and … doing those things.” Her head fell, and it seemed to Ben as if all the life had gone out of her. “But I loved Joe. I needed him.”
“When did he finally tell you he was married?”
“He never did.”
“What? But he must’ve—”
She shook her head. “I didn’t find out until his wife, Andrea, showed up at my door.”
Ben looked aghast. “No.”
“Oh, yes. Oh, yes.” A silver tear trickled down her cheek. “I had no idea it was coming. I was just watching television, doing my daily exercises. Believe me, when you have to take off your clothes in front of a crowd of guys every night, you have serious motivation to exercise. I went to the door and there she stood. Andrea. Full of fury and outrage, ready to tear me apart—and I didn’t even know who she was or what she was talking about. She came over wanting to fight me, started hitting me and hurling insults, and all I could do was stand there and cry. Just stood there like a little baby and cried. I felt so betrayed, and so … used. Used up. She really wanted to hurt me, but she soon saw there was nothing she could do to me that would hurt me any worse than what Joe had done. Nothing in the whole world.”
“What did she say?”
Keri brushed a tear from her eye. “Well, eliminating the profanity, what she basically wanted was for me to agree never to see her husband again. But I couldn’t do it. I mean—I hadn’t had enough time. Before that night, I’d been fantasizing that Joe would ask me to marry him. I’d only just found out he was married, and I still didn’t quite believe it. Or didn’t want to, anyway. I suppose I was in deep denial. Anyway, I wouldn’t give the woman what she wanted. So she slugged me a few more times and made some ugly threats. Finally my brother Kirk showed up and pulled her off me. She left after that, when he wouldn’t let her use me for a punching bag anymore.”
She pressed her hand against her pink-blotched face. “I was a mess. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I didn’t have much of a life, but what life I’d had was totally turned upside down. I tried to call Joe, but he wouldn’t answer the phone. My brother was yelling at me, telling me what a tramp I was to be messing around with this married man. Kirk hadn’t been happy when he found out I was stripping, but when he learned about this new wrinkle, he just flipped. I had no place to go and no one to talk to. I was all alone, even worse than before, with not even my brother to help me.”
“When did you see Joe again?”
“I never did. Not unless you count the pictures in the paper the next day. And you can imagine how I felt then. After that, it didn’t matter if he was married or not. He was gone forever—gone from me, gone from Andrea. Gone from everyone.”
“How did his badge and ID get under your bed?”
She shrugged. “I assume he left them the last time he was over. The cops kept saying that wasn’t possible, but how else could it have happened? “
A disturbing question, and one to which Ben didn’t know the answer. Yet. “And the bloodstained clothes?”
“I can’t explain it. I mean, I can explain the leather suits—that was part of our regular routine. But the blood—I don’t know how that happened. And I don’t know how it got under the bed, either. I would never have put them there, blood-soaked or not.”
She wiped away her tears, which fell on her blouse, dampening it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I rattled on so long. You don’t need to hear my sob story. It’s my problem, not yours.”
Ben reached out and took her hand. “You’re wrong. It is my problem. It’s our problem. And I—I care very much … about what happens to you.”