Anytime Darlin' (9 page)

“We were late, and my grampa was speeding. I was sitting on the driver’s side in the third row with my brother, David. A car pulled up next to us, in the lane next to us.

“I-I thought it was going to pass, but then it swerved into us, swerved right into the van. I felt it clip the side right below my seat. I banged my head on the window. My grampa tried to avoid the other car, and he hit the brakes, but nothing happened. I could tell.” She repeated, “He hit the brakes, and nothing happened. I remember the van skidding sideways, and then it rolled. My seat belt broke. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in the hospital.”

“Devlin, do you remember anything about the other car? The one that hit you?”

“The police in Omaha asked me about it already,” she replied, feeling very tired. “You can read the police report.”

“I read it,” said Shauna, “but I’d like to hear about it in your own words.”

“It was an old brown sedan. Four door, like a Delta Eighty-Eight or something. If you read the police report, then you know they never found it. And nobody got a license number. One witness said the car didn’t have any plates.”

“Could you see who was in the car?”

“No,” answered Devlin, “I could only see that there wasn’t anyone in the passenger side of either the front or back seat. I couldn’t see the driver. The van was too high.”

“Tell me about when your aunt brought you to Denver.” Shauna changed the subject.

“I had only met my uncle a couple of times before,” said Devlin. “My aunt Carolyn usually visited without him. I knew my mom and my grandparents didn’t like him, but they never said why.

“When I first got here, he was okay. He didn’t speak much to me and wasn’t home very often. I was still getting physical therapy and sleeping quite a bit, so I spent a lot of time in my room. One morning I heard yelling. He was yelling terrible things at my aunt. I tried to stay out of it, I did, but I heard her crying, and then I heard a slap and another one and a thud, like somebody fell against something. Then the front door slammed. I got downstairs as fast as I could, but I was still on crutches. I found my aunt sitting on the floor in the front hallway, holding her head, blood all over the side of her face and her hands, running down her neck onto her white silk robe. I tried to get her to call the police. I tried to convince her to see her doctor, but she refused. She said if she did, if anyone found out, he’d kill her. She said no one would believe her anyway.”

“Why did she think no one would believe her?”

“Because she said she’d attempted suicide a couple of times and been hospitalized, in a mental hospital. She pulled up her sleeves and showed me her wrists. They were scarred. I didn’t know. She always wore long sleeves. He told her nobody would believe her because she was crazy. He had her convinced of that. I didn’t know what to do. I helped her get cleaned up, and she went to bed.”

“After that day, he knew. I don’t think my aunt told him, but he knew. He came to my room one night. He sat on the edge of my bed, saying he wanted to talk to me. At first he acted sweet, but when I wouldn’t even look at him and scooted away from him, he grabbed my ankle and held me there. He said…”

Devlin had to stop for a moment. She felt close to breaking down. Just then Jake leaned in, barely touching her, and she drew strength from him.

Devlin took a deep breath.

“He said if I did anything, told anyone, he’d cut her apart, one piece at a time, in front of me. Then he said that, just in case I was thinking of running away, I should know that he’d hunt me down like a dog and beat me to death. He said, ‘That is my solemn promise to you.’ And then he smiled and patted my cheek. He got up, walked to the door of my room, turned out the light, and closed the door. I knew when that door clicked shut that he meant every word.”

“Why did you run away then?” asked Shauna.

“Because I realized it didn’t matter,” she answered. “I was dead either way. Once my aunt told me about the money, I knew the day I turned eighteen I was dead. That’s what he wanted, the money, all of it. There was only one way for him to get his hands on it.”

Shauna tapped her fingers on the overbed table. “Do you really think your aunt would have allowed that? Wouldn’t she have come forward, tried to stop him?”

“No, she was powerless. She couldn’t stop him. She’d been beaten down for too long. She was going to let me do it. It was up to me to stop him.”

Devlin looked away at that moment, toward the door, thinking of bolting. Then she remembered where she was and why, and she sat in silence, staring at her hands.

In the quiet that followed her statement, Devlin knew everyone was wondering how her aunt could let this happen. “I don’t think my aunt Carolyn was capable of thinking ahead. She couldn’t look any farther than the next day, maybe only the next hour. She was too afraid. What else could she have done? I was all she had left and…” Devlin buried her face in her hands and began to cry. “She was all I had.”

Devlin heard Shauna switch off the recorder, giving her time to compose herself. When at last Devlin stopped crying, she clicked it back on and asked, “What happened the night you left?”

Devlin ran her hands over her eyes, her cheeks still damp. “I came home from school, and he was beating her. She was on the kitchen floor, crying, all curled up in a ball, while he kicked her. I don’t know why. I don’t even know why he was home. I don’t know what had happened, but he was shouting at her, shouting about someone, a name, a woman’s name.”

Shauna interrupted. “Do you remember the name of the woman? Or what he was yelling about?”

“It sounded like Betsy, or Betty, or something like that. I don’t know for sure why he was so angry, but he was almost incoherent. His face was beet red, and he was practically screaming, spitting at her. Something my aunt found or said to him, something to do with this woman. He just…He blew up, worse than ever before. I tried to drag her away from him, but he shoved me to the floor and kept kicking her. I think he’d been cutting wood in the backyard because he was wearing his work boots. My aunt kept her arms around her head and was moaning.

“There was a steak knife lying on the floor, near where I fell. I don’t know why it was on the floor. Maybe my aunt had grabbed it. I picked it up and stabbed him in the leg, in the thigh. Just to stop him from kicking her. I wasn’t trying to kill him. I just wanted to stop him from hurting her anymore.

“He howled at me. He grabbed my wrists really tight, shaking me, and I dropped the knife. He dragged me from the kitchen to the top of the basement stairs. He kicked the door open, pulling me headfirst down the stairs.” Her eyes drifted to the corner again.

“It’s weird, the things you notice,” she said, “like his pants. His leg was bleeding. I could see a red circle spreading on his jeans like a flower, a chrysanthemum opening up. That’s what I was thinking about as he dragged me down the stairs, a flower. Stupid, isn’t it?” Devlin laughed while everyone else sat in silence. Only Shauna was able to meet her eyes.

“I can’t…” Devlin stuttered. “I can’t…Oh God, I can’t…”

Shauna clicked the tape recorder off as Devlin’s shoulders began to shake, her slender body racked by silent sobs. Feeling helpless and ashamed, she turned toward Jake. He opened his arms and drew her into a protective embrace. Without a second thought, Devlin buried her face in the warmth of his shoulder and cried as she hadn’t cried since she woke in the hospital the year before to find herself alive and everyone she loved dead. Jake rubbed her back, stroked her hair, and crooned nonsense in her ear as he had done that first night. Devlin didn’t know what he said, nor did she care. Like a drowning victim, she clung to the sound of his voice, her only lifeline in a stormy sea. Devlin’s sobs subsided. She felt limp as an old dishrag.

“I can’t get it out,” she said, feeling desperate, trapped. “How can I say this? Help me. Please help me.”

Jake looked into her eyes. Laying a hand on each of her shoulders, she knew he tried his best to reassure her. “I’m right here, Devlin. I’ll stay right here. He won’t get anywhere near you. I promised you it would be okay that first night, and I intend to keep that promise. If anyone tries to hurt you, they have to go through me first.”

He lifted Devlin’s chin and looked directly into her eyes, adding, “No one blames you for what happened, to your aunt or to you. No one.”

“We’re here for you, Devlin,” echoed Mike.

“All of us,” added Shauna.

The Social Services officer, Cherie, spoke up for the first time. “Sometimes, the best way to say something you don’t want to say is to simply spit it out. You are carrying him around inside you, everywhere you go. You take it with you, what he did to you.”

Devlin lifted her eyes, giving Cherie her complete attention.

“Don’t give him that kind of power, Devlin. I’m not saying it will all go away if you say the words out loud, but I don’t think it will get any worse. Don’t keep him inside you. That’s what he wants. That’s what every person like him wants, power over you. Power over you, inside and out. That’s what he did to your aunt. Don’t give him that power. Throw him out. Throw the bastard out, Devlin.”

Devlin shook her head, clearing her thoughts. She felt her cheeks grow warm. Determination stiffened her spine, and she sat up straighter.

“You’re right. Saying it won’t make it any worse.” Devlin paused. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name or why you’re here.”

“I’m Cherie, a social worker. The hospital called me when they realized you’d been raped. I was here the day you came in.”

Devlin felt Jake jump at Cherie’s words. She squeezed his arm, her touch too light for anyone else to notice. She wanted to reassure him, let him know she could handle this.

He’d been a pillar of strength, and now it occurred to her that she wasn’t being fair to him. He was a complete stranger, and here he was, supporting her through this ordeal, asking nothing in return. She’d come to depend upon him very quickly, and she wondered what that said about her. Was she being selfish? Then she felt him shift his body just slightly, as if to shelter her. Devlin felt tears in her eyes. His generosity overwhelmed her. The kindness of all these strangers gave Devlin the strength to tell the rest of her story. Clearing her throat, she pushed herself away from Jake and leaned back on the pillows.

“He dragged me down the stairs and threw me on the basement floor. When he let go of me, I tried to get away. I-I crawled away, but he began kicking at me, and I curled up in a ball to keep from getting hurt any worse than he was already hurting me. He started cursing at me, screaming about how my parents got everything, how my mom got everything and he got nothing. How my grandfather was a sorry old son of a bitch who should have died a long time ago. Then I saw him unbuckle his belt. At first I thought he was going to hit me with it, but he didn’t. He flipped me onto my back and sat on my chest so I couldn’t move. I tried to fight him, but he was too strong, and I couldn’t breathe. He grabbed my wrists again and wrapped his belt around them, tying them together. Then he…Then he…Then he pulled off my jeans, and he-he raped me.”

Devlin wrapped her arms around herself again.

“He was angry because it was so hard for him to-to…get in. It hurt. He…he…I can’t…I can’t say any more about it.”

“Go ahead and tell me what happened afterwards,” instructed Shauna.

“He rolled off me, stood up, and zipped his pants. I tried to roll away from him, but he stepped on me, on my leg, and he said that if I told anyone what he’d done, he’d kill my aunt. He said I could lie there and think about that. Then he said that he and I were starting a new chapter and I’d better get used to it. That I’d better get used to him. He went up the stairs and bolted the door behind him.”

As he listened to Devlin’s words, Jake had to stop himself from shaking with rage. He wanted to hunt down William Franz and rip him apart, make him suffer the way he’d made Devlin and her aunt suffer. He wasn’t sure how much more he could hear before he’d have to punch something, or someone. He’d been taking care of accident victims for two years now. He’d seen his fair share of assaults, and his unit had been at a couple of murder scenes, but he’d always been able to put his work face on. Not this time.

Jake remembered the first time he saw a dead man. He was training with the sheriff’s department search and rescue, and they’d gotten a call about some ice climbers stuck on a snowfield near Glacier. By the time they arrived, one of the climbers was still alive and barely holding on with a single ice axe and his crampons. The other had fallen several hundred feet to his death. If they’d been roped together, they’d both have died. While the ’copter plucked the climber from the side of the mountain, Jake went in below with the recovery unit. The guy had been smashed to a pulp on the rocks. Jake had always prided himself on his cast-iron stomach, but he spent the first few minutes on scene vomiting in a bush. It had hit him hard, just how fragile the human body is. He was young, twenty-one years old, and he’d never thought about death before, at least not that kind of death.

Jake had grown up on a ranch, and he knew things died. Cattle, horses, chickens. It was part of life. He and his dad had hunted when he was younger, and he knew how to kill and butcher a deer or an elk. They never killed for sport. It was meat, and around the ranch, nothing went to waste. Once he’d tagged along with Fish and Game on a hunt to kill a rogue grizzly that was going after newborn calves. He was sorry for the necessity of it, but the cattle were their livelihood. He was glad it only had to happen once.

But until he saw that man’s broken body lying at the bottom of a crevasse, he’d never thought about how frail a human being is. It was a punch in the gut. That’s how Jake felt listening to Devlin tell her story, like he’d been punched in the gut. Human beings weren’t supposed to treat each other this way. Intellectually, Jake knew they did, but that didn’t make her words any easier to hear. After that first time, puking in the snow at the base of the cliff, Jake had made sure it was never personal. Well, now it was, whether he liked it or not. And there wasn’t a single thing he could do to make it better.