Deal Breaker (Myron Bolitar 1)

“She started by telling me that she used to be everything I always thought she was. The girl next door. Everyone’s favorite. But then she changed. She became, in her own words, ‘a free-wheeling slut.’ She started with some boys in her high school class. But she quickly moved onto bigger things. Adults, teachers, friends of her parents. Biracial, homosexual, two-on-ones, even orgies. She took pictures of her encounters. For posterity, she said with a sneer.”

“Did she mention any names?” Myron asked. “Of the teachers or adults or anyone?”

“No. No names.”

They fell into silence. Dean Gordon looked exhausted.

“What happened next?” Myron prompted.

He lifted his head slowly, as though it took great effort. “Her story began to change direction,” he said. “For the better. She said she realized that what she was doing was wrong and stupid. She began, she said, to work through her problems. That was when she met Christian and fell in love. She wanted to put it all behind her, but it wasn’t easy. The past wouldn’t just go away. She tried and tried, and then …” His voice trailed off.

“And then?” Myron prompted.

“Then Kathy just looked at me—I’ll never forget this—and she said, ‘I was raped tonight.’ Just like that. Out of nowhere. I was stunned, of course. There were six of them, she said. Or seven, she wasn’t sure. A gang-rape in the locker room. I asked her when. She told me it had started less than an hour ago. She had gone to the locker room to meet someone. A blackmailer, she said. A former, uh, suitor, who had threatened to reveal her past. She was going to pay for his silence.”

The big cash withdrawal from her trust account, Myron thought.

“But when she got to the locker room, the blackmailer wasn’t alone. Several of his teammates were with him, including another past suitor. They didn’t hit her, she said. They didn’t beat her. And she didn’t fight. There were too many of them, and they were too strong.” He closed his eyes, his voice a whisper. “They took turns with her.”

Silence.

“As I said before, Kathy told me all this in the most dispassionate tone I had ever heard her use. Her eyes were clear, determined. She told me there was only one way to bury her past. Once and for all. She would have to confront it head-on. She’d have to push it out into the bright sunshine where it would wither and die like a medieval vampire. She said she knew what she had to do.”

More silence.

“What?” Myron asked.

“Prosecute the boys who raped her. Face up to her past and then put it behind her. Otherwise it would follow her around for the rest of her life.”

“What did you say?”

Dean Gordon winced at the question. He stamped out the cigarette. He glanced down at the bottom drawer but didn’t reach for another. “I told her to calm down.” He laughed at the memory. “Calm down. By now, the girl was so unemotional, so detached, that she could have been reading a telephone directory. And I told her to calm down. Jesus.”

“What else?”

“I told her that I thought she was still in shock. I meant that too. I told her that she should consider everything, weigh all her options, not rush into a decision that would undoubtably affect the rest of her life. I told her to think about what it would mean to have her past dragged out—to her family, to her friends, to her fiancé, to herself.”

“In other words,” Myron said, “you tried to talk her out of pressing charges.”

“Perhaps. But I never said what I was really thinking: A self-described free-wheeling slut who had gotten involved in pornography and wild sex was going to claim she was raped by a group of college boys, two of whom she admitted having past liaisons with. I wanted her to think about all that before she did something rash.”

“Don’t be so easy on yourself,” Myron said. “You didn’t give a damn about her. She came to you for help, and you thought about everything but her. You thought about your precious institution. You thought about the scandal. You thought about the football team on the eve of a national championship. You thought about your own career, how it would come out that she worked for you, how she felt comfortable visiting your house late at night. You’d be tied in. People would investigate you closer, maybe unearth your unusual marital arrangement.”

That prodded him upright. “What about my marital arrangement?”

“Does the phrase ‘once every two months’ mean anything to you?”

His mouth dropped open. “How …?” He stopped, almost smiled. “You are a very well-informed young man.”

“All-knowing,” Myron corrected. “Godlike.”

“I won’t comment on my marriage, but I would be less than honest if I did not admit that those selfish considerations crossed my mind. But I was also concerned for Kathy. A mistake like this—”

“A rape, Dean. Not a mistake. Kathy was raped. She didn’t make a ‘mistake.’ She wasn’t the victim of an indiscretion. A bunch of football players pinned her down in a locker room and took turns with her against her will.”

“You’re simplifying the situation.”

“You’re the one who simplified the situation. You just put Kathy last.”

“That’s not true.”

Myron shook his head. No time for this now. “So what happened after you bestowed your stellar counsel upon Kathy?”

He tried to shrug but couldn’t pull it off. “She looked at me funny, as though I had betrayed her when all I was trying to do was help. Or maybe she saw in my words the same thing you did. I don’t know. She stood up then and said that she would be back tomorrow morning to press charges. Then she left. I never heard from her again until that magazine came in the mail. And the phone call a few nights ago.”

“What phone call?”

“A few nights ago, very late, I got a phone call. A female voice—maybe Kathy’s, maybe not—said, ‘Enjoy the magazine. Come and get me. I survived.’ ”

“ ‘Come and get me. I survived’?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“What did she mean?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“What did you think when you first heard about Kathy’s disappearance?”

“That she ran away. Decided it was all too much. I thought she’d come back when she was ready. The police thought that too, until they found her undergarments. Then they suspected violence. But I knew the undergarments were probably from the rape, not the disappearance. So in my mind I still considered her a runaway.”