Laura stood perfectly still, immobilized by equal parts shame and anger. She thought of the deepest level of hell, the lake of ice that only froze harder the more you tried to work yourself free.
“Excuse me?”
Grateful for a distraction, Laura turned toward the voice. A tall, sad-eyed man with sandy hair stood behind her, a man who'd most likely heard every word between her and Daniel. “I'm sorry. I don't mean to interrupt. I'm looking for Mr. and Mrs. Stone?”
“That's us,” Laura said. In name, at least. The man held out a badge. “I'm Detective Mike Bartholemew. And I'd really like to speak to your daughter.”
* * *
Daniel had been inside the Bethel police station only once, when he'd chaperoned Trixie's second-grade class there on a field trip. He remembered the quilt that hung in the lobby, stars sewn to spell out PROTECT AND SERVE, and the booking room, where the whole class had taken a collective grinning mug shot. He had not seen the conference room until this morning - a small, gray cubicle with a reverse mirrored window that some idiot contractor had put in backward, so that from inside, Daniel could see the traffic of cops in the hallway checking their reflections. He focused on the winding wheels of the tape recorder. It was easier than concentrating on the words coming out of Trixie's mouth, an exhaustive description of the previous night. She had already explained how, when she left home, she changed into a different outfit. How there was a posse of players from the hockey team
present when she arrived at Zephyr's, and how, by the end of the evening, it was only the four of them.
One parent was allowed in with Trixie when she gave her statement. Because Laura had been at the hospital exam - or maybe because of what Daniel had said to her in the hall - she had decided that he should be the one to go. It was only after he was inside that he realized this was more of a trial than an advantage. He had to sit very still and listen to Trixie's story in excruciating detail, smiling at her in encouragement and telling her she was doing great, when what he really wanted was to grab the detective and ask him why the hell he hadn't locked up Jason Underhill yet.
He wondered how, in just an hour's time, he'd regressed back to being the kind of person he'd been a lifetime ago - someone for whom feeling came before thought, for whom reason was a postscript. He wondered if this happened to all fathers: as their daughters grew up, they slid backward.
Bartholemew had brewed coffee. He'd brought in a box of tissues, which he put near Trixie, just in case. Daniel liked thinking that Bartholemew had been through this before. He liked knowing that someone had.
“What were you drinking?” the detective asked Trixie. She was wearing the pink shirt and sweatpants that Daniel had brought, plus his coat. He'd forgotten to bring hers back, even when he went home again. “Coke,” Trixie said. “With rum.”
“Were you using any drugs?”
She looked down at the table and shook her head.
“Trixie,” the detective said. “You're going to have to speak up.”
“No,” she answered.
“What happened next?”
Daniel listened to her describe a girl he didn't know, one who lap-danced and played strip poker. Her voice flattened under the weight of her bad judgment. "After Zephyr went upstairs with Moss, I figured everyone was gone. I was going to go home, but I wanted to sit down for a minute, because I had a really bad headache. And it turned out Jason hadn't left. He said he wanted to make sure I was
all right. I started to cry."
“Why?”
Her face contorted. “Because we broke up a couple of weeks ago. And being that close to him again ... it hurt.” Daniel's head snapped up. “Broke up?”
Trixie turned at the same time the detective stopped the tape.
“Mr. Stone,” Bartholemew said, “I'm going to have to ask you to remain silent.” He nodded at Trixie to continue. She let her gaze slide beneath the table. “We . .. we wound up kissing. I fell asleep for a little while, I guess, because when I woke up, we weren't near the bathroom anymore ... we were on the carpet in the living room. I don't remember how we got there. That was when he ... when he raped me.”
The last drink that Daniel had had was in 1991, the day before he convinced Laura that he was worth marrying. But before that, he'd had plenty of firsthand knowledge about the faulty reasoning and slurred decisions that swam at the bottom of a bottle. He'd had his
share of mornings where he woke up in a house he could not recall arriving at. Trixie might not remember how she got into the living room, but Daniel could tell her exactly how it had happened.
Detective Bartholemew looked squarely at Trixie. “I know this is going to be difficult,” he said, “but I need you to tell me exactly what happened between you two. Like whether either of you removed any clothing. Or what parts of your body he touched. What you said to him and what he said to you. Things like that.” Trixie fiddled with the zipper of Daniel's battered leather jacket. "He tried to take off my shirt, but I didn't want him to. I told him that it was Zephyrs house and that I didn't feel right fooling around there. He said I was breaking his heart. I felt bad after that, so I let him unhook my bra and touch me, you know. . . my breasts. He was
kissing me the whole time, and that was the good part, the part I wanted, but then he put his hand down my pants. I tried to pull his hand away, but he was too strong.“ Trixie swallowed. ”He said,
'Don't tell me you don't want this.' "
Daniel gripped the edge of the table so hard that he thought he would crack the plastic. He took a deep breath in through his mouth and held it. He thought of all the ways it would be possible to kill Jason Underhill.
“I tried to get away, but he's bigger than I am, and he pushed me down again. It was like a game to him. He held my hands up over my head and he pulled down my pants. I said I wanted him to stop and he didn't. And then,” Trixie said, stumbling over the words.
“And then he pushed me down hard and he raped me.” There was a bullet, Daniel thought, but that would be too easy.
“Had you ever had sex before?”
Trixie glanced at Daniel. “No,” she answered. “I started screaming, because it hurt so much. I tried to kick him. But when I did, it hurt more, so I just stayed still and waited for it to be over.”
Drowning, Daniel thought. Slowly. In a sewer.
“Did your friend hear you screaming?” Detective Bartholemew asked.
“I guess not,” Trixie said. “There was music on, pretty loud.” No . . . a rusty knife. A sharp cut to the gut. Daniel had read about men who'd had to live for days, watching their insides being eaten out by infection.
“Did he use a condom?”
Trixie shook her head. “He pulled out before he finished. There was blood on the carpet, and on me, too. He was worried about that. He said he didn't mean to hurt me.”
Maybe, Daniel mused, he would do all of these things to Jason Underhill. Twice.
"He got up and found a roll of paper towels so I could clean myself up. Then he took some rug cleaner from under the kitchen sink,
and he scrubbed the spot on the carpet. He said we were lucky it wasn't ruined."
And what about Trixie? What magical solution would take away the stain he'd left on her forever? “Mr. Stone?” Daniel blinked, and he realized that he had become someone else for a moment - someone he hadn't been for years - and that the detective had been speaking to him. “Sorry.”
“Could I see you outside?”
He followed Bartholemew into the hallway of the police station.
“Look,” the detective said, “I see this kind of thing a lot.” This was news to Daniel. The last rape he could remember in their small town happened over a decade ago and was perpetrated by a hitch-hiker.
“A lot of girls think they're ready to have sex . .. but then change their mind, after the fact.”
It took Daniel a minute to find his voice. “Are you saying ... that my daughter's lying?”