He saw her standing in the doorway and shut off the vacuum cleaner.
“Hey, you’re getting around pretty well there,” he said, smiling.
“I have to talk to you about something. Something very serious. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, I think. Telling you this.”
“Sit down, relax, just say whatever you have to say. You know I’m on your side.”
“I know. Back in Michigan, back before I went home to the farm in Iowa, I ran into some trouble. And no one could help me.”
“Go ahead,” he said. “Something to drink?”
“Arsenic?”
He chuckled and went to the refrigerator, getting two sodas for them. “Sit,” he said. “Take your time.”
“I have to get home to Molly soon...”
“Just do it, Sierra. Tell me what you came to tell me. I think you know you can trust me.”
She toyed with the tab on the can, taking a couple of deep breaths. “It might seem impossible to believe.”
“Come on now, Sierra. You’re stalling.”
She told him everything, from the first time Derek targeted her, hit on her, to the night that ended in her garage. Her brother’s face grew pale, then crimson. She thought his hand was shaking as he lifted his soda can to his lips. His lawyer’s poker face wasn’t working so well as he listened to her.
“What I couldn’t make sense of at the time... I’d been at a bar. A bar I went to sometimes, where I knew people. I wasn’t with anyone, but the bartender and waitress knew me. He must have drugged me, slipped something in my glass of wine. Then took my keys and got behind the wheel of my car. I couldn’t focus, I was sick. Believe it or not, that didn’t happen to me a lot. I didn’t get sick, didn’t have blackouts, I just got really stupid, unsteady, made bad choices and had a terrible hangover the next day. This was different. He must have drugged me.”
“He left you in the garage?”
She looked down at the table where they sat. “After he beat me and raped me,” she said quietly. She couldn’t look at her brother. She hated that she had shame when she hadn’t done anything wrong. “He left me there, walked out, closed the garage door and just walked away. I never saw him again. Well, I thought I saw him a number of times but I’m not sure if it’s a mirage made up of my fear or if he really found me.”
“What did you do that night?”
“Just what you’re not supposed to do—I showered. I tried to treat the cuts and bruises. But then I realized what he’d done and went to a clinic. They did a rape kit but I wouldn’t talk to the police. They took some pictures. I know I should have gone to the police but I was just too afraid. Of him. I’d been to the police before—they weren’t helpful. I’d asked them for a restraining order...”
“They couldn’t give you a restraining order because he annoyed you or scared you—there had to be a crime or a threat, an obvious threat.”
“The clinic said they’d be keeping that rape kit for a while, gave me the name of some counselors, a crisis center. They gave me some phone numbers, did some cultures and blood panel, wrote me a prescription for a morning after pill, which I wasn’t going to need—I was on birth control. But they said I could call in with my patient number and get the test results and, if needed, get treated for any sexually transmitted disease.”
“What did you do?”
“I went home. I decided I had to get out of town. I was all done there. I thought at the very least he’d drug me, beat me and rape me again. I was afraid he’d kill me or something. And I was afraid he’d hit someone out on the road—my memory was spotty but I remember something happened and I don’t know where we were. Seems like we weren’t in the neighborhood. I don’t think we were on the highway. There was a dent and a really long scrape in the fender. I thought about checking with the police to find out if anything happened. Instead, I packed a duffel, drove to the airport, to long-term parking, and left the car. I took a bus to Iowa. I owed money on that car and I abandoned it. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone and I turned off the phone, afraid of who might call me.”
“Did you tell anyone about Iowa? Does he know about our parents? And that they’re in Iowa?” Cal asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t talk about our parents. Not a lot to brag about there, huh? Once I told my roommate I wanted to go to California.” She smiled sheepishly. “I did want to. And here I am.”
* * *
Sierra called Sully to say she had stopped to see Cal, then stayed about an hour. She finished her story and her cola and left to see about her dog before it got much later. Sully was holding dinner to have with her. Letting her leave, letting her crutch her way out into the dusk was hard for Cal—she seemed so small, so alone. He held her for a long time before she pried herself away.
He had asked her if the event of thinking she saw this dangerous man from her past made her want to drink and she had said, “Just the opposite. That was another life and I have no desire to go back. But I think I will go to a meeting tomorrow morning. It never hurts and it usually reaffirms everything I know to be real.”
He was so proud of her. Scared for her.
“But thinking I saw him made me realize, what if it was him? If not now, someday? I could disappear for real without anyone knowing the details. I had to tell you. I had to tell someone.”
After she left he went for a beer for himself—boy, did he need it.
Cal wasn’t sure if Sierra had ever paid any attention to it or not, but he had been one of the hottest criminal defense attorneys in Michigan. He was doing a little lawyering here in Colorado, but nothing too high profile. He was still licensed to practice in Michigan if it came to that, if she needed a defense. He wouldn’t defend her, of course. But he knew the best of the best and he could always sit second chair.
Meanwhile, he could get information. Sierra wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but it probably wouldn’t hurt. Not only was his old detective available by phone, he was no slouch when it came to investigation. He could find out if there was an accident, any police investigation, if this Derek Cox had any kind of criminal record, if he was wanted for anything. He could find out if anyone was looking for him. Or for Sierra. He didn’t even have to ask her the make, model and license number of that Honda she’d abandoned—he could find it. If anything came up, if she needed him, he would be ready.
And then there was the issue—if there had been a broken law, they would have to face it or worry about the consequences of obstruction.
She told him that she got a job with the county sorting through refuse in the recycle plant in Iowa. She borrowed Mom’s truck to go to work and stopped for groceries or whatever they needed on the way home. After a couple of months, maybe three, she came home from work and her mother told her some man had come around asking about her, asking if she was there. Marissa, who had been dodging “official looking” people her entire life to keep her schizophrenic husband safe, had said, “She’s in Michigan, isn’t she? I don’t know when we last saw her.”
“Good old Marissa,” Sierra had laughed when she told Cal. “Luckily my benefits with the county kicked in so I looked at rehab, found one facility in Des Moines that would take my insurance.”
She didn’t go into rehab to get sober, she went to hide out. One thing she knew, having had so many friends pass that way, everyone made a list of who they’d be willing to talk to and no one else could get through. No information was given out about patients except to police officers with warrants. So, she’d talk to Marissa only, she said. And she’d ask if anyone had been looking for her. Then, when the heat was off, maybe she would go to California. The state, not the brother. Funny how things worked out. Cal wanted her and she thought she was as safe with him as anywhere.
She’d been pretty sure she’d find out in rehab that she wasn’t a real alcoholic, but just an active young woman who liked to party. “Imagine my surprise,” she said to Cal, “when I found out I’m a drunk and the choices for me are booze or death. I didn’t even drink every day! I thought real alcoholics were much more ambitious.”
“You must have done some heavy drinking,” he suggested.
“Oh, there were times,” she said. “But guess what else I learned? From a woman in rehab who had been stalked. There might’ve been a device in my phone to track me. That might’ve been how Derek could always find me. I got rid of the old phone, so I’ll never be able to find out, but it would make sense. To this day I don’t know if he left me on the floor of my garage and walked away, done with me, or if he followed me to Iowa. Then to Colorado. Was that him who talked to Marissa? Or was that some law enforcement person because my car was in an accident?”
“I’ll look into it,” Cal told her. “I’ll find out if there was an accident and I won’t have to mention your name to do it. But that might fall into the category of stuff you’d rather not know. It could be a very difficult situation.”
“Cal, I’d feel terrible if something happened, but I didn’t do it. I know I didn’t do it. He reminded me the whole time he was assaulting me that there was no proof he’d even driven my car. I might’ve been drugged, but I heard that. It was his intention from the start, if anything happened, I would be the guilty one.”
“You’re not afraid of jail?” he asked. “You didn’t hide out in rehab because you’re afraid of possible jail?”
She looked at him, her eyes so large and liquid. “Wasn’t I clear? I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m not afraid of going to jail. I’m afraid of him. There’s just one thing that haunts me. Why? Why would he do that?”
As Cal remembered that, he took several swallows of his beer. But it didn’t help. He leaned his elbows on his knees, gripped the beer in two hands, looked at the floor and wept. His baby sister, his beautiful baby sister, tied with a belt, brutally raped and beaten.