Lie Still (44 page)

I
hesitated at the door of a small 1970s ranch-style house.

It was planted in the middle of a nondescript middle-class neighborhood in the Fort Worth suburb of Euless—or “Useless,” as the lady at the 7-Eleven joked when I stopped for a bottle of water.

A pot of pink geraniums on the stoop. Neatly trimmed bushes. A garden hose curled like a snake into a perfect circle.

Once again, walking up to the lair of a killer.

I considered turning on my heels and driving straight back to Adam. When I left him an hour ago, he was listening to Billie singing about the farmer in the dell.

But I knocked, and the door opened. Two men stood there, holding hands. One of them I recognized, even though he’d had work done on his nose.

Avery Crane stuck out his hand. I took it, thirteen years after he accosted me on the Windsor campus. He’d been redrawn
since then. The tiny nose flared wider, the work of a competent plastic surgeon. Still slim, but shoulders broader, like he’d met a weight set. Furtive eyes behind expensive, black rectangular frames.

“This is my partner, Dan. He’s also my lawyer. Dan’s going to sit with us while we talk.”

I pointed to the car at the curb. “That’s Jesse. My bodyguard. If I don’t come out in twenty minutes, he comes in. You don’t want him to come in.”

Avery nodded as if this were a perfectly acceptable arrangement.

The inside décor contrasted sharply with the outdoor shell. Track lighting, high-quality furniture on black hardwoods, edgy sculptures, and wall art from years of trolling gallery nights with a discerning eye.

We passed down a dark narrow hall to a small kitchen, which had been updated as much as possible without gutting the thing. Granite countertops, stainless appliances. Two huge, friendly black dogs pressed their noses against a sliding glass door that opened to a manicured lawn. Identical sets of keys with Mercedes remotes hung on two hooks by the back door. His and His.

Dan pulled out a chair at the table, one I’d seen in the latest IKEA catalog, and gently scooted me in. He oozed nice guy. Protector. I’m an expert in those.

“I did it.” Avery pushed his glasses up on his nose. His hands fluttered like nervous doves, trying to figure out where to settle. “I killed Pierce. I’m sorry I tried to redirect the blame to you and the other girls. I wasn’t … well.” His face relaxed slightly. “I’ve been waiting to say that for a long time. I think I’m a changed person now.”

“You are changed,” Dan said, like a faithful therapist.

Avery had given no hint of a confession in our short conversation on the phone, although he understood exactly why I was coming.

“That day … I accosted you … I was desperate to find out what the police knew. I made this big show with my fraternity brothers about all I was doing to find Pierce’s killer so they wouldn’t suspect me. It was stupid. They never thought for one moment that someone like me would have the guts.”

Dan placed his hand in the small of Avery’s back. “Tell her what happened.”

“I know.” I didn’t want him to have to say it. “Pierce raped you, too.”

A familiar expression crossed Avery’s face, one I’d seen in my mirror.

“All the pledges got maps at midnight. The last three to arrive at the destination point had to clean the toilets in the house for the rest of the year, so nobody wanted to lose. Except everybody else’s map ended up at IHOP. Mine led to a dark corner of the city park, where he was waiting.”

Dan gripped Avery’s hand tighter. I noticed matching wedding bands with turquoise stones.

“I hadn’t even acknowledged to myself that I was gay. But
he
knew.”

“You don’t know what he knew,” Dan protested. “It wasn’t about sex. It was about power. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

“He made it clear that it would happen again, as many times as he wanted it. That otherwise he was going to tell everyone I was gay. My parents. I’d be blackballed. I let him rape me twice more after that.”

Avery’s body was limp, resigned. “I’m not making excuses. Just explaining.”

Dan’s eyes pleaded with me. “He thinks he has to turn himself in. Ever since that reporter from New York showed up.”

“Brad?” I asked.

“Yes, he interviewed Avery. He called back to say he wasn’t going to write a story, but Avery thinks it’s inevitable. He’s a
damn reporter. I say wait and see. It doesn’t do anybody any good at this point. Pierce’s parents weren’t exactly looking for the truth. Besides, Pierce’s mother died a month ago of a stroke.”

“She did? Elizabeth Martin? Are you sure?”

“I don’t remember her name,” he said. “The reporter told us. He’d been running searches on everyone related to the case.”

Elizabeth Martin, dead.

My first stalker, I was sure.

Three weeks ago, I had pulled out Renata’s scribbled list of names and dialed up the other women raped by Pierce Martin at Windsor University. At least the ones I knew about. Lisa Connors Johnston, the pre-med student, was now a stem cell researcher at the University of Michigan. Margaret Smith Yodel, the yogi, ran a night shelter in downtown Cincinnati.

Both of them willing, even eager, to talk when I called. Brook Everheart had messaged me her number through Facebook, cheerfully declaring herself “just a mom.” Not one of them had received a single threatening letter over the years. I was more certain than ever that Pierce’s mother had channeled all her rage at me, the girl she’d encountered at the casket. She’d probably gone into the ground denying the truth about her son.

“You’re looking to me for redemption?” I asked Avery, disbelieving.

He was such a sad little man, and I don’t think anything—not a loving partner, not a hundred years of therapy, not paying for his sins in prison, and certainly not my forgiveness—would ever change that.

But I could give him something.

“Don’t you dare turn yourself in.” I stood up to go, suddenly overcome with an intense longing to hold Adam. “He never would have stopped.”

“See,” Dan told Avery. “That’s exactly what that reporter said.”

N
ot very often, I have a bad day.

I hear something on the news that reminds me. Of little girls lying in the dark, and running down hills as fast as their legs can, riding off on shiny, new bikes and standing at birthday parties with the arm of their killer’s son draped around their shoulders. Little girls who do not know what terrible things await them.

Of women lying on concrete floors and in the biting gravel of alleys, in soft beds and in fragrant, grassy parks, wondering how this could ever happen to them. How they could be careless enough to let that much hate and loathing and evil find its way into such an ordinary, safe life.

Of men with black hearts, making their plans for tonight or tomorrow or the next day. College boys who will spot a shy, pretty girl in the library and sit down beside her. Casual dates who will push that extra martini or glass of wine. Husbands who
will slip into fresh sheets beside a terrorized wife pretending to be asleep.

I’m at the park under an ancient, leafy tree. Adam is in the stroller, wrapped in a pale yellow blanket, waving a fist at the sun spying at him through the leaves, catching the first breaths of spring, his mouth a perfect little O.

Today is a good day.

Still, I want to shout at the woman running by in pink jogging shorts, and the one tying her little boy’s shoe.

Tell your girls. Tell them, tell them, tell them
.

Tell them to fight and scratch and yell his name. Tell them not to be ashamed. To break the necklace of women who’ve kept their rapist’s secret
because they know him
. Grandmothers and mothers, daughters and sisters, aunts and best friends. Century after century, decade after decade, year after year. Heartbeat after heartbeat.

In my hand, I hold a brush. I think of my own little girl, a rose that grew in a violent storm. Marked, some would say, from the moment of conception. On my good days and my bad ones, I choose to believe something different.

An easel is propped in front of me. My brush lingers over the canvas, stroking her hair, brown like mine. I curve her lips into a smile, sharpen the point of the steeple that rises behind her. I throw gold into the sky, green onto the earth under her feet.

I know I will never convince myself she is safe, until she tells me so.

My little girl is not running. She stands on the hill, waiting.

H
undreds of miles away, at the edge of a Kentucky forest, he’s watching.

She’s barely visible, playing an elaborate game of pretend under the sheets blowing on her mother’s clothesline. She’ll turn five tomorrow.

He sweeps low, dropping a gift at her feet.

A plastic ring.

It is old and dirty, but she can see the promise of a little sparkle underneath. She slips it on her finger and scrambles up, waving, as the crow soars higher and higher into the clouds, an inky smudge, until he disappears.

W
hen I sat down to write
Lie Still
, I had no idea that the first sentence Emily spoke would be about a rape in college that haunts her. I didn’t know that this book would take me to uncomfortable places inside myself. That I would learn how much “date rape” or “acquaintance rape” is misunderstood, and how lasting are its effects. As I was putting the finishing touches on this book, two Congressional candidates confirmed that wild misperceptions about this crime are still alive, one by suggesting that a woman’s body is able to reject a “legitimate rape” pregnancy. I’d like to thank those men for bringing such ignorance about rape to the forefront (and the voters who kept them out of Washington).

Along those lines, my own knowledge was boosted by journalist Tim Madigan, who wrote a three-part series in the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
last year debunking the myths of acquaintance rape. I’m also grateful to his sources, who are doing such
excellent work in this area: sex crimes expert Russell Strand; University of Massachusetts psychologist and researcher David Lisak; Fort Worth police Sgt. Cheryl Johnson; and Roger Canaff, a former special victims prosecutor in New York and an antiviolence advocate.

A postscript: Clairmont, Texas, does not exist. None of the crazy, diabolical Southern women in this book are based on a real person. Most of the Texas women I know are quite nice, thank you, and don’t go around eating Little Debbie cakes with a rifle riding in the trunk of their cars.

Thanks to:

Pam Ahearn, my loyal and dedicated agent, who stood tough in all kinds of hurricanes this past year, including two churned up by Mother Nature. I’d link arms and face down a strong wind with her any day.

Kate Miciak, my editor at Bantam, for red-penning manuscripts until they bleed, for caring about every word, for that brilliant line about little girls in the dark, and for generally providing a master class in thriller writing for the last two years.

Katherine Armstrong and Alex Holroyd at Faber and Faber, for their enthusiasm and hard work in getting both
Playing Dead
and
Lie Still
into the hands of the British.

Kirstin Herrera, dear, smart, curious, tough, unselfish friend, who has supported me since Word One.

Stephanie Heppenstall, neighbor, friend, and fashion adviser, who makes me wear her good luck ring and gets the prize for actually jumping up and down over all of my book news.

Tommie and Sadie McLeod, strong, hilarious Southern women bursting with material, who hand-sell my books to every stranger they meet.

Christopher Kelly. A Yankee, but still the best. There aren’t enough words.

My mother and father, Chuck and Sue Heaberlin, to whom this book is dedicated, and to the rest of my extended Complicated Family who regularly encourage and make fun of me. I live in my imagination, people.

Cindy Knotts, for introducing me as her “author friend” long before I had a contract, and Dawn Cox, for marketing my books to people going in and out of anesthesia.