Wild Justice (Nadia Stafford 3)

We walked to the road. Jack stayed a half pace behind, but when I glanced at him, he started falling back.

"We don't need two of us to speak to you," I said to Shannon. "My partner's going to head back to the car and do some paperwork."

She only nodded, but relief flickered in her eyes. This conversation would be easier without a man listening in.

Once Jack was gone, I cleared my throat and said, "You weren't quite as willing to help four years ago, Ms. Broadhurst."

"Because I was a kid. A stupid kid who thought she was in love with the sleazeball who took . . ."

She trailed off. She stopped walking, looked around, then led me to sit on a raised platform around an old oak tree. After we sat down, she stayed quiet. I didn't prod. I just waited.

After at least two minutes of silence, she said, "I wasn't a bad kid."

"I'm sure you weren't. That's why he picked you."

She glanced over at me.

"James Emery had very specific targets. Ordinary girls. Good girls, so to speak. Not into drugs or alcohol or even boys. The shy, quiet ones, which may not have been you--"

"No, it was," she said, bitterness edging the words. "That was exactly me." She tugged her sweatshirt sleeves over her hands. "I found a picture of him in my stuff last year, and I wanted to throw up. He looked different in my memory, you know? It was like . . . like even when I understood what happened, how he used me, how wrong it was, I still had this image of him as this good-looking older guy that I fell for. He wasn't really, and I know that shouldn't matter, but it makes it even worse, as if . . ."

She trailed off and hunched her shoulders, staring out across the campus. "And that's not what you came here to talk to me about at all. I just feel . . ." She inhaled. "Whenever it comes up, however it comes up, I feel like I have to defend myself. Explain how that could have happened so I don't come out looking like a total loser."

"He seduced you," I said, my voice soft. "He'd done it many, many times before. He knew exactly what he was doing--taking advantage of girls at a vulnerable time, being what they needed."

She nodded and pulled her hands farther into her sleeves. "So, you had questions?"

"Only one really, but it's important. In the initial police report, you said he had a younger friend. You said--"

"I lied."

"Okay . . ."

She looked over at me. "I was a stupid kid, like I said. I thought I was in love. I had to defend him. Protect him. So I said it was a friend of his who seduced me." She looked away. "There was no friend. I'm sorry. I know I made things harder for everyone, and maybe if I hadn't, he'd have been caught before he did this to more girls and--"

"Stop."

She glanced over, looking startled.

"Don't do that," I said. "You were one of many girls, over many years. Some of them gave the police everything they wanted. There were lots of charges. Even a trial. The second he knew that the police were coming, he ran. He was very, very good at what he did, and nothing you could have done would have stopped him."

It was the right thing to say, and maybe it helped, but not enough. I could see that in her eyes. Nothing would--or could--help enough, and it was hard for me to even sit there, watching her retreat deeper into that oversized sweatshirt, wondering how much different her life might have been if I'd somehow stopped Drew Aldrich twenty years ago.

"As far as we know, there weren't any girls after you," I said.

"As far as you know," she repeated. "That just means no one else reported him."

She was right. There were entries in the journal past hers. But no charges, so I was giving her that hope. I had to.

"Maybe," I said. "Or maybe it was just the final scare he needed." I waited for a moment, then said, "So when you told the police his friend seduced you, was that completely out of the blue? Or was there anything he'd ever mentioned . . . About a friend who might want to meet you . . ."

She shrugged. "I made it up. I never met any of his friends. He'd talk about people but not very much and only so he'd seem 'real,' you know? Like he'd mention going to his mother's for dinner, when I'm sure now she didn't live anywhere near." She paused, thinking. "Once, when we'd been drinking and toking up, he started going on about how people underestimated teenage girls, how they were just as smart as adult women, just as mature, and how people never saw that and so guys like him had to hide their relationships from the world. He said there were lots of good guys, decent guys who appreciated girls, and he mentioned an old friend as an example. I guess that's what gave me the idea."

"What did he say about this old friend?"

"Nothing really. Or nothing I remember. I was drunk and stoned. We both were. It just seemed to be some guy he met, maybe in an online chat room for people like him. I know they have stuff like that--I did a sociology project on it my senior year. They get together and talk crap and use it to justify what they're doing. If other people do it, then it can't be so wrong, the world is wrong. Which is bullshit." She glanced over. "Sorry."

"No, you're absolutely right. He didn't say anything more about this friend?"