Unexpected Dismounts (30 page)

In the evenings that week, however, home turned into command central. With the hearing looming on Thursday—Maundy Thursday, I realized—Kade was there every night, working with Chief and me after Desmond went to bed. He came earlier Tuesday and Wednesday, though, so he could hang out with Desmond, who had decided Cappuccino was part of Hog Heaven.

“What changed your mind?” I asked Desmond when I saw him to bed Tuesday night.

“Don’t know,” he said. “He give me the prickles at first, like I knew him before or somethin’, but now—it’s all good.”

So good, in fact, that before Kade got there Wednesday, the night before the hearing, Desmond did a caricature of Kade that was all teeth and sticking-out hair.

“Dude, I look like some kind of twisted George Clooney,” Kade said when he arrived. He tried a grin as big as the drawn-in one and came up several molars short.

“Looks like a used car salesman,” Chief said. “I wouldn’t buy a vehicle from this guy.”

“Say somethin’, Big Al,” Desmond said. “They dissin’ my art.”

I didn’t say what actually came to me as the face in the drawing laughed into mine. Those were Kade’s clear eyes, on steroids, and his handsome, symmetrical features to the hundredth power. That was his New England pluck that fell just shy of smug, and his boyish appeal, which even in two dimensions vacillated toward the man in him and came back again. What I couldn’t name was a thing that made him familiar, as if Desmond had captured déjà vu with his pencil.

“Big Al, you killin’ me here,” Desmond said.

“Your talent makes all words meaningless,” I said.

“Imma put this on the refrigerator.” He headed for the kitchen, tripping over a piece of PT equipment on the way.

“Are you joining us when Hank and everybody comes over?” I said.

“Not unless you make me,” he said, and pushed through the door. It swung hard in his wake like a tattletale classmate. Did you hear that? Did you hear it?

“What was that about?” Chief said.

“He’s decided he doesn’t want to be baptized,” I said. I watched the door until it stopped telling its tale.

Kade looked up from the coffee table, where his files were spread out solitaire fashion. “I remember those days.”

“What days?” I said.

“When my mood flipped around like that. I’d be messing around with my mom in the kitchen, y’know, juggling the eggs or something, and then she’d, like, look at me wrong and I’d tell her she didn’t understand me and I’d go sit in my room in the dark like Heathcliff.”

I perched on the arm of the red chair. “Heathcliff?”

“
Wuthering Heights.”

“You read
Wuthering Heights?”

“I thought that was only adolescent girls,” Chief said.

Kade shrugged. “Anybody can read Brontë.”

“No, I thought only adolescent girls had mood swings like that.”

I elbowed Chief, whose wheelchair pulled up next to me. “You probably didn’t. Matter of fact, I can’t even imagine it. You’re like a rock.”

My rock, I longed to say. Because he was looking at me with that steady gaze, a smile waiting for just the right instant to grab my breath and make off with it so I would chase him to get it back.

“We should probably get to work if you’ve got people coming over,” Kade said. “We have less than twenty-four hours left.”

“You don’t want to talk about
Pride and Prejudice?”
Chief said.

“I’m not into Jane Austen, dude,” Kade said. “I like a little more passion in my literature.”

Chief pulled the smile into a line. “You’re going to need more than passion for this hearing.”

Kade looked at me, eyes twinkling. “I think we’re getting to work.”

I slid from the arm down into the chair and sat cross-legged. “Look, guys, I don’t know why we need to keep going over this. I’ve let you turn my private life inside out, and there isn’t anything left that the judge doesn’t already know about from when I was trying to get guardianship in the first place.”

“We can’t go into this thing without a plan,” Chief said.

“What plan do I need to tell them I love Desmond and he’s supposed to be with me?”

Kade and Chief exchanged glances.

“What?” I said.

“This one’s yours,” Kade said to Chief.

Chief hitched himself up in the chair, winced, and gave his leg an annoyed frown. The irritation stayed on his face, and I had a feeling it wasn’t all directed at his uncooperative limb.

“Quillon is going to get as much mileage as possible out of his client being some kind of social worker in Botswana. Then he’s going to bring in a platoon of witnesses to say you can’t hold a candle to that. And he’s going to make hash out of whoever Kade brings in to testify on your behalf.” He lapsed into a believable imitation of a good ol’ boy. “Former hookers, little lady?”

“They won’t come within a hundred yards of a courthouse anyway.”

“Bikers?”

“The HOGs we hang out with are professional people!”

Chief shook his head. “In the hands of a shyster like Quillon, they’re going to look like the Hell’s Angels up there. And don’t think he won’t do the same kind of thing with Nita and Leighanne—‘Lordy … recovering addicts’—”

“What about Hank?” I said. “India. Bonner. They’re … stainless.”

“Motorcycle Mama. Bleedin’ heart liberal. Former boyfriend with a bias as slanted as the Tower of Pisa.”

“Get serious.”

“I am, Classic. What we have to plan for is what’s going to happen when
you
take the stand.”

I leaned in to meet the gravity of the gaze he was lowering on me. “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going to spend tonight the way I spend every other night—trying to empty myself of everything but God. And then I’m going to sit on that stand and I’m going to open my mouth and let the words come out, just like I do every time I’m in a situation where I have absolutely no control of the outcome.”

“Can we count on that being an objective utterance?” Chief said.

“Objective’s not a word I’d necessarily use for God.”

“Con
found
it, Classic.”

Chief pulled his hand into a fist, skin whitening over his bones. His jaw muscles clamped down on the words his eyes couldn’t hide. I’d never seen him want to tell me I was crazy before.

“How did you
think
I was going to approach it, Chief?” I said. “How have I approached this entire ministry?”

“Your ministry isn’t going before the judge.
You
are.”

“I can’t separate myself into little compartments. It’s all God. You know that.”

He held my gaze with his confounded one until Kade spoke.

“If I could just sort of mediate here?” he said.

“Knock yourself out.” Chief turned his face toward the window. He might as well have slammed a door.

Kade put his hands up like goal posts. “What I’m hearing you say, Allison, is, well, exactly what you said. You live your life listening to God and doing what God says, so why should this situation be any different? Am I getting it right?”

I listened for irony, for sarcasm, for the slightest hint that he was patronizing my faith. All I heard was the faint echo of reverence.

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I’m saying. Thank you.”

He turned to Chief, whose face was still closed. “What I’m hearing you say, Chief, is that you support the ministry but you don’t quite buy into the theology behind it, so relying on God in
this
situation doesn’t make sense to you.”

“No,” Chief said, “it doesn’t make sense to me to sit back and expect ‘God’ to swoop down and work this all out so that woman doesn’t get our boy and take him to the other side of the world where we’ll never see him again, which is exactly what’s going to happen if we don’t go in there with something more than ‘God will put the words in my mouth.’”

He twisted back to face me. But his gaze went past me, and closed as if he saw something he couldn’t bear. I turned to see. And I couldn’t bear it either.

Desmond was standing there, his face stiff with Chief’s words.

“Desmond,” Chief said. “Come here, buddy.”

“I jus’ come in to tell you Miss Indiana and them’s here.” He gave me an empty look. “I’ll be in my room.”

I couldn’t even look at Chief, and he didn’t try to get me to. As the happy chatter of the Sisters and Hank and India and Ophelia rose in the kitchen, Kade scooped up his files and inserted them into his briefcase.

“We’ll finalize everything in the morning,” he said to me. “We’ve got until one.”

I nodded, but I felt like something had already become final.

Kade glanced at Chief’s back and looked at me sadly. “I’m sorry if I—”

“Don’t,” I said. “It’s not your fault.” I squeezed his shoulder and pointed my voice toward the kitchen. “We’re meeting in there, y’all. The dining room’s too full.”

“I’ll see myself out the front,” Kade said.

We left Chief in the shaft of light from the lamp by the chair. I turned off the dining room light and started for the kitchen, where Ophelia was already opening the door, eyes shining.

Until they locked on something behind me. Before I could turn around she clutched at the doorframe as if she were falling off a bridge, and her face contorted in terror.

“That’s him!” she screamed. “That’s the man who raped me!”

I whirled to see a perfect silhouetted profile. Kade’s profile.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The silence was strangling, as if the thoughts in all our heads couldn’t find their way past our throats. I struggled for air as I stared at Kade, and I knew my face was no longer soft.

“Ophelia, honey,” I heard India say. “What’s wrong?”

“She said that guy right there is the one who raped her,” Sherry said. Her voice was like a verdict.

India pushed her way through the knot in the doorway and grabbed Ophelia by both shoulders. “Honey, is that true? You think that’s him?”

“I know it is! It’s that same silhouette, just like I saw it.”

My head turned in dizzying slow motion to look again at Kade. He was giving us a full frontal, his face ashen in the shadows.

“Someone turn on a light,” I said.

Amid the gathering chaos the overhead went on and caught us all in shocked starkness. Faces registered everything from horror to bewilderment. Kade’s registered all of it.

“She’s wrong,” he said. “She’s wrong. I didn’t rape her.”

“Yes you did!”

“I haven’t seen you since the day at Monk’s Vineyard.”

“That’s how I know you. I remember now!”

India had to dig her fingers into Ophelia’s arm to keep her from clawing her way to Kade’s face. If Hank hadn’t taken hold of her, too, she might have succeeded.

“I swear,” Kade said to me, his lips trembling, “I have never touched her. I told you, I didn’t even touch her that day.”

“Kade. Shut it, man.” That came from Chief, whose voice smacked us all into obedient silence. “Kade—Ophelia—Allison—in here. Kade, not another word.”

He was using his lawyer tone. As far as I was concerned, he could use any tone he wanted if it quelled the tide of panic that swelled through the house. And inside of me.

“Hank,” I said, “will you—”

“I’m on it,” she said, and herded Mercedes, Jasmine, and Sherry back into the kitchen.

“And Desmond—”

“Done,” she said.

Ophelia wasn’t letting go of India, so there were three of us joining Chief in the living room, where he already had his head bent with Kade’s.

“He’s going to try to make up a story to make it look like I’m lying,” Ophelia said. She let go of India with one hand and clamped it around my arm. “You can’t let him do that, Miss Angel.”

“Nobody’s going to lie,” Chief said. “Nobody.”

Ophelia tossed her head. “I am not lying.”

“Didn’t say you were. Allison.”

“Yeah.”

“I think you should call Nicholas Kent.”

Kade threw his hands up. “Come on, man, this is—”

“Is there something about ‘shut it’ that you don’t comprehend, son? We need to determine the best way to handle this, since obviously something isn’t making sense here.”

“It makes perfect sense to me,” India said. “It doesn’t to you, Allison?”

“You going to make that call?” Chief said to me.

I nodded and took my phone into the stairwell. I could feel India staring, confused, at my back, as well she might. I would have stared at me that way too.

Nicholas answered on the first ring with “Everything all right?” instead of hello. I told him it wasn’t and why.

“I’m on duty,” he said, “so that’s good. Here’s what you do: Get both of them to the precinct, but in separate cars. Don’t let them talk to each other.”

“We’re working on that,” I said. I could still hear Ophelia shrieking and Chief saying, “Kade, dude, I’m telling you, not a word.”

“You think this is our guy?” Nicholas said.

“I hope not,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because he’s my lawyer. We’re going to court for the adoption hearing tomorrow afternoon.”

Nicholas swore into the phone.

“Yeah,” I said. “My sentiments exactly.”

We decided India should drive Ophelia to the station. India gave me an acid look when I said I would take Kade, but she pulled herself up and said, “At least that way we’ll be sure he doesn’t skip town.”

“She thinks I did it,” Kade said when they were gone. He studied my face. “Do you?”

“I don’t know what to think. My gut tells me you’d have to be a complete narcissist to rape one of our women and then hang out here.” I pressed my palms against my face. “But why would she pull you out of thin air?”

“She said I looked like the silhouette.”

Chief shook his head. “Half the male population looks like that silhouette. Kent even told us it wouldn’t do much good. It definitely wouldn’t hold up in court.”

Panic seized Kade’s face.

“It won’t go that far if you just keep your cool,” Chief said. “One thing they’re going to ask you is whether you have an alibi for that night. Where were you?”

“When was it?”

“March seventeenth,” I said. “It was a Saturday. Check your phone. You’ve got everything in there.”

“Do it on the way,” Chief said. He glared at his leg. “I wish they’d question you here. Listen, if it even looks like they’re trying to corner you, just ask for your attorney. We’ll figure it out from there. Like I said, it won’t go that far.”

Kade nodded and looked at me. “Do you mind if we don’t go on the Harley? I don’t think I can handle that right now.”

“Pull your car up out front,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”

He left like a truant schoolboy. The air of self-assurance had been snuffed out.

“You really think it’ll go nowhere?” I said to Chief.

“I do, and I’ll tell you why if you promise not to blow a gasket. You need to be prepared for this anyway.”

“You’re going to say they’ll never believe the hooker over the lawyer.”

“You aren’t going to help either one of them if you fight that battle tonight. We’ll get to it. Just not now.”

He was right, of course. Chief-right, and judging from the settling of the confusion in my chest, God-right.

“Call me if you need me,” he said.

I nodded, but we couldn’t look at each other. We’d driven a wedge between us, and I didn’t have time to knock it out.

When Kade and I got to the station, after a silent ride, Nicholas Kent told us Detective Kylie was already questioning Ophelia. India was pacing a trench in the hallway with her pumps, but she stopped when she saw us. She glared at Kade until he took a seat several feet away and sat with his head in his hands.

India still towed me down the hall and even then spoke in a whisper. “Now, honey, I know you’re right fond of that boy and he’s been wonderful and all that, but I do not see how you can defend him. Your loyalty is to the women in this ministry.”

“My loyalty is to the truth,” I said. “And we don’t know what that is yet.”

“Don’t include me in that we.” India’s eyes flashed. “I have spent the last ten days sequestered with that child. I’ve stayed up till all hours listening to her story, and spent the rest of the night wishing I hadn’t because it’s so horrible. I’ve taken her to work with me because I was afraid to leave her alone with her own thoughts. I’ve held her head while she had the dry heaves over the commode, trying to get rid of all that mess inside of her.”

“I know how it goes,” I said. “I’ve done it with all of them.”

“Then you’ll believe me when I say I
know
her. I would be able to tell if she was making up a story, and she is not.”

“I didn’t say she was.”

India spread her hand on her chest. “Then you think he did it.”

“No, I think she believes he did it.”

India blew out exasperated air.

“I’m sorry, something just isn’t right about this,” I said. “That’s why we’re here, so maybe somebody objective can sort through and figure out what that is.”

India floated her arms into a fold. It occurred to me how jarring her elegance was in this block-wall place. “You do not seriously think that we’re going to find somebody objective here.”

“I know that’s a problem, but Chief says if we don’t go through the proper channels …”

“All right. But I just want you to stick this right in the center of your mind: If Ophelia thinks for a minute that you don’t believe she’s telling the truth, it will break her heart in twenty-five places. That girl thinks you hung the moon. You and this ministry are all that’s holding her together right now. Without that support, she’s completely lost.”

“Of course we’re going to support her, India,” I said. “Her. Even if what she says about Kade turns out to be a mistake.”

Her eyes narrowed. “And what about him? Are we going to support him if he’s the one who’s made a mistake?”

“Miss Angel!”

Ophelia stumbled toward us, hands over her face, and flew into my chest. I could see how her sobs could be mistaken for those dry heaves India talked about.

“What happened, darlin’?” India said. “Honey, were they rude to you?”

Ophelia shook her head against my jacket.

“What did they say?”

“Do you just need to cry for a minute?” I said.

Ophelia pulled herself back and looked at both of us, eyes bitter. “They said, ‘Thank you for coming in.’”

India drew Ophelia into her arms and raised her eyebrows at me over the top of Ophelia’s head. Chief had been right to warn me. I did want to blow a gasket.

“You go on home with India,” I said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Ophelia grabbed my wrist with a clammy hand. “Thank you for standing by me.”

“You don’t have to th—”

“You are, aren’t you?” Ophelia’s face went wild, as if she were seeing the rape all over again. “Why don’t I feel that?”

“Come on, darlin’,” India said. “You’re so worn out you can’t think straight.”

She tucked Ophelia under her arm and half-carried her down the hall without a glance back at me. I waited until they were gone before I went to the empty chair where I’d left Kade and sat in it until Nicholas Kent joined me.

“He’s in with Detective Kylie,” he said. “I don’t think this is going to amount to anything.”

“I wonder if he has an alibi,” I said. My voice fell flat against the cement floor.

“Sorry?”

“He was supposed to check his calendar on the way here to see where he was the night of the rape, but he ended up driving, so he didn’t do it then.”

“Most people don’t have anything airtight. Look how much time we all spend doing things nobody sees us doing, or remembers they’ve seen us.”

I cocked my head at him. “You don’t want him to be guilty.”

“I’m trying to be totally unbiased.”

“I hope somebody can be.”

“I’ve got some other news for you. It’s not that helpful either, but …”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I finally got to one of those officers who questioned the Sisters.”

I straightened. “And?”

“He’d had a few beers when we talked so I’m not sure how accurate it is, but he said they didn’t come up with the idea on their own. Somebody outside the department paid them.”

“Let me guess. He wouldn’t tell you who.”

Nicholas checked out his thumbnail.

“Are you serious? He told you?”

“He told me what he knew. He said they met with the guy at the Waffle House out on US 1. The guy tried to be all clandestine—hat pulled down over his face, sunglasses in the middle of the dang night. Sorry. I know you don’t like swearing.”

“So was the guy young? Old? White?”

“White guy. Probably in his late twenties, early thirties. Maybe older. He looked like he was in good shape, which can make a person look younger. The hands usually give it away, but he was wearing gloves.”

“What about his voice?”

“He said the guy mumbled.” Nicholas gave a disgusted grunt. “I think they were so interested in the money, they weren’t paying that much attention. It could’ve been a woman and they wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Okay,” I said, “so, correct me if I’m wrong, but the only person who would pay cops to mess with a rape investigation would be the rapist himself. Right?”

“Or somebody who didn’t want to see the rapist get caught, which is just as much of a crime in my opinion.”

Yeah. I really liked this kid. I didn’t tell him this time because his face was already frustration-blotchy.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“I hate it that guys who call themselves officers of the law would get mixed up in something like this. Thing is, I can’t do anything about it. The officer I talked to said he’d deny it if I said anything, and even if I did, he told me when he was about wasted. IA would laugh in my face.”

“Internal Affairs,” I said.

“Yeah.”

I had a few internal affairs of my own, and they weren’t laughing. They were squeezing the life out of me. I crossed my arms over my stomach and tried to rock unobtrusively.

“You okay?” Nicholas said.

A door opened down the hall and Kade came out and started toward us. Detective Kylie walked with him, one hand in his pocket, the other gesturing like he was describing a basketball game. There were no handcuffs in the mix.

“Take him home and pour him a drink,” Kylie said to me. He clapped Kade on the shoulder. “Don’t lose any sleep over this. Just keep in mind what I told you.”

“What did he tell you?” I said when both Kylie and Nicholas Kent were gone.

Kade went for the door, and I had to practically run to keep up with him.

“You don’t want to know what he told me.”

“Was it along the lines of ‘she’s just a hooker and this will never stick’?”