A Deadly Affair at Bobtail Ridge (25 page)

“You're not going to give up, are you?” She pours another shot of whiskey and downs it. “No, he didn't assault me exactly. Not personally, at least.”

She looks at me for a long time. I feel sized up in every way. I can tell that she wants to confide in me, but she has lived with the past for a long time. The thought of bringing it into the open after all this time is eating her up.

“You don't have to tell me the details,” I say. “It's clear that whatever happened set you back badly.”

She walks over to the cabinet, sets her glass down, and leans onto the cabinet with her back to me. Her head hangs down. She stays that way for several seconds. Then she gets a second glass out of the cabinet and pours a lot of whiskey into both glasses. She hands one to me. “Here. You're going to need it.”

I follow her into the living room. She turns on one dim light and sinks into the sofa.

I sit down in the easy chair I always sit in, but I don't sink back in comfort. I lean forward, cupping the glass of whiskey.

“You told me you found out that Eddie was a big deal in high school. He had everything—looks, athletic talent, charm, and he was smart enough. But what no one paid much attention to was that he always wanted more—he wanted to be not just the best, but the only. Do you know what I'm talking about?”

“Like somebody with a billion dollars, and two billion still wouldn't satisfy him?”

“That's it. I, on the other hand, was . . .” she stops, shaking her head. “A lunk. I didn't know what to do with myself. I was smart, but not in the way a young girl is supposed to be smart about boys and clothes.” She sighs. “There was this guy on the football team. A year older than me. Mike Tolleson. He was a shy boy, sweet-natured. Studious. Football wasn't really in him—he played to please his daddy. I had a big crush on him, and I think he liked me, too. I thought so at the time, anyway.”

Her eyes are squeezed closed. When she opens them, she looks panicky. “I've never told anybody but Mamma about this, and I don't know whether I'll get through it.”

“You don't have to, you know.”

It's like she hasn't heard me. “Mike was popular in a funny way. People trusted him. They looked up to him. People would say, ‘Ask Mike—he'll know what to do.'” Her eyes get a faraway look, full of pain and regret.

Then she snaps out of it. “Anyway, the football team voted him captain when he was a junior. Eddie was a senior and thought he was going to be captain. When he found out Mike had won the vote, he came home and tore his room to pieces. Like I said, he had everything— but he was furious over somebody else getting one little thing.” She looks at me finally. “That's not normal. I know that now, but at the time I thought that's the way men behaved.”

“Your daddy?”

She shakes her head. “He never lost his temper. But he always stuck up for Eddie. He said Eddie was going through a phase and he'd get his temper under control when he got older. He told me Eddie had a bit of an inferiority complex and was jealous of Mike, and that Eddie would get over being upset before too long.”

“And did he?”

“I thought he'd gotten over it, but it turned out he was just biding his time.”

“What did he do?” I take a sip of the whiskey. It hits my throat and stomach like bile.

“I don't want to tell you what happened. Makes me sick to remember it.” She slouches back on the sofa. Her mouth is a grim line.

“I may not be the right person to tell.”

“I know that. But now that I've started, you're in for it.” She looks up at the ceiling. “I wish I smoked. Seems like the right time for a cigarette.” She actually manages a smile, but it fades quickly. “Somehow Eddie got wind of the fact that Mike and I liked each other. Eddie started buddying up to Mike. Way down deep I knew that was a bad thing, but I tried to tell myself Eddie was trying to be nice because he knew Mike liked me. Not that Mike and I went out or anything. It was mostly studying together and being moon-eyed.” She laughs—it's a wistful sound. “I wish I could go back to being that naive. Anyway Eddie kept it up for the rest of the school year. One big happy family. I wish I'd had more sense.

“We've all been in that situation, especially when we were kids.”

“Maybe. But not everybody has been in my situation. One night our folks were gone. Who knows where? They hardly ever went out. Next thing I know, Eddie's telling me he has a couple of his friends coming over. I told him he wasn't supposed to have kids over when Mamma and Daddy were gone, but I couldn't tell him anything. He was a senior and it was all him, all the time. He'd just found out he was getting a scholarship to SMU, which fed his ego to the busting point. Anyway, I heard the boys cutting up in the living room. And after a while Eddie came to my room and said I ought to come talk to them. I said what about? He said they wanted to ask me how to treat their dates on graduation night. I was flattered.” She takes a long pull of the whiskey. Her voice is strangled. “How could I have been so goddam stupid?”

I don't like the way the story is going, but Jenny seems calmer now, although she's talking fast, in a monotone.

“Anyway, I went into the living room and they had all this beer and some whiskey. They asked me if I wanted something to drink and I told them I didn't drink. One of them said he knew how to make a whiskey sour and he knew I'd like it. And he was right.” She picks up her glass and brandishes it like it's proof of something. “I drank one and then another one. And after that I may have had another. I don't remember. When they got me drunk enough, his two buddies raped me.”

“Oh, shit.”

She doesn't seem to notice my exclamation. “Rape. Is that the right word? Is that what you call it when a girl is so flattered that she'll go along with anything? I was too tall, too gangly, and afraid to look anybody in the eye. They sweet-talked me, told me I was really getting to be cute, or sexy, or who the hell knows what. It was a like a dream come true. Is it rape when you are thrilled . . . until the last minute, when you see the look on their faces and know they didn't mean a word of it? Is it rape when you call out to your brother and you think he's left the room?” I wish Jenny were crying, but she's completely dry-eyed and her voice is dead.

“Sons of bitches,” I mutter. I want to comfort her somehow, but I think she'd break to pieces if I did.

She heaves a few breaths. Her face has gone white. “You think that was the worst of it? Think again. Eddie had videotaped the whole thing. He filmed it! And he gave the video to Mike.”

I can't even begin to imagine something like that. But I remember what the assistant coach said, that Eddie had a cruel streak. “What did your brother stand to gain by that? It's not like he could go back in time and get the position as captain of the football team.”

“I wish I knew. You remember when you met him the other day he said I held a grudge against him? He was talking about himself. He could hold a grudge like you've never seen. When we were little, if I did anything that Eddie didn't like, he'd wait until there was something I really wanted, and then he'd strike. I got a doll for Christmas one year. I loved that stupid doll. One day it went missing. It broke my heart. Eddie told me I had been careless with it and that's what I got for not taking better care of it. Couple of years later—years, mind you—he asked me to bring something from his closet. I found the doll there broken to pieces.” She leans forward, her eyes narrowed. “Here's the thing. He could have simply thrown it out. But I went into that closet because he asked me to get something for him. He put those pieces there for me to find.”

The person she's describing is twisted. Is that what I responded to in Eddie that made me uncomfortable with him? “Were you ever afraid of him?”

“Not physically. I mean, he'd pinch me or shove me sometimes, but nothing serious.” She shakes her head. “I don't know how to describe it. Sort of a psychological fear. Like I had a feeling he was capable of terrible things, even if he never really did anything. Does that make sense?”

It makes total sense because both of Eddie's wives said something similar. And then I remember the nurse saying that Vera seemed trapped when she was with her son. “Sure it does,” I say.

I'm a small-town police chief, and I don't deal with deeply disturbed criminals. The criminals I deal with are people who've gone off the rails because they made a mistake, or because they were scared or greedy. What Jenny has described is a different kind of person. If what she says is true, he's got something wrong with him. And the damage he inflicted on Jenny has lasted for a long time.

“You told your mamma . . . did your daddy know?”

Jenny's lips are trembling. She puts a hand to her mouth to stop it. “I had to tell Mamma. She was a teacher and I was terrified that everyone in school would hear about it. At first I didn't want her to know Eddie was involved, but she pushed and prodded until I admitted his part in it. I begged her not to tell Daddy. I was afraid he'd hate me.”

“What did your mamma do?”

Jenny gets up and leaves the room and comes back with a box of tissues. She blows her nose and sits looking off into the distance for several seconds.

“That woman was so smart. She didn't waste time fussing over me. I think she knew that would have sent me over the edge. She just went into action. It was finals week and she arranged for me to take all my finals in a couple of days. And the minute the last one was over, she had me on the bus out to my aunt and uncle in Lubbock. She told everybody her sister was sick and needed some help. My aunt worked at Texas Tech and she found me a part-time job in the law school for the summer. Best thing that could have happened. I buried myself in work.”

“Did kids at the high school find out what happened?”

“Besides Mike?” She shakes her head. “I don't think they did, but I don't know why. I guess it was too close to the end of school and the boys who did it were graduating, and maybe they didn't think there'd be any percentage in telling what they'd done if I wasn't around for them to torment. Honestly, I think if anybody had ever acted like they knew, I would have killed myself.”

“So your mamma didn't do anything to see to it that they were punished?”

Jenny thinks for a minute. “You mean go to the law? She wouldn't have done that to my brother. And my guess is she thought if she didn't do anything about him, she couldn't very well accuse his friends. I was gone the whole summer and as far as I can tell all she wanted was to avoid any fuss. Plus, just before I got home my daddy walked out. That was hard on her and distracted all of us for a time.”

I think back to the photo I saw of Jenny's daddy and the cheerful look on his face when he was with his family. “You never had any idea why he left?”

“I know just why he left.” Another shot of whiskey. She's starting to have trouble focusing on me. “It was exactly what I was afraid of. He couldn't face me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Couldn't face me after she told him what happened. I was damaged goods. He wouldn't have been able to stand being in the same room with me, so he left. At first Mamma told me that they had a fight and that's why he walked out. A couple of years later, after I kept asking her if she'd heard from him, she finally told me the truth. She said she told him what happened to me, and he didn't want to talk about it. A couple of days later he up and left. She didn't think it was about me—she thought he was so disappointed in Eddie that he couldn't stand it. But I knew it was me. He was proud of Eddie, but I was the one he adored. Sometimes that was the only thing that kept me going, knowing how much he loved me. When he left, I decided I wasn't going to ever trust a man again.”

“That's harsh.”

“You think so? Why should I trust a man?”

“No. You misunderstand me. I don't mean your decision was harsh, I mean you're not giving your daddy the benefit of the doubt. You felt so bad about yourself with what happened with those boys that you thought your daddy would have the same reaction.”

“Maybe so. But I guess I'll never know, because we never saw him again. Now you've heard my story. You know why I don't have much interest in men, and why I was so close to my mamma.”

“You ever think about seeing a therapist? It was a terrible thing your brother did to you.”

“Where am I going to find a therapist around here? Mamma wanted me to talk to the preacher. I can just hear what he'd have to say. Forgiveness and all that.”

We talk a bit more until Jenny seems calm. I stand up and tell her I'm going. “You going to be okay?”

She shoots an anxious look at me. “Lot of stuff got stirred up.”

“Listen,” I say. “Sometimes when somebody tells somebody a deep secret, they regret it and a tension comes between them. Don't let that happen. You know I won't ever let this information get past my lips, don't you?”

“Never had the slightest question about that.”

When I get home, it takes me a while to settle down enough to go to bed. I'm not only mad at Eddie, but at Vera, too. Why did she let those boys off the hook? Maybe she had her reasons. Maybe she didn't know whether Jenny could face the public airing of her ordeal.

Some mothers might have wanted the boys punished enough to drag it into the open and have them arrested, regardless of the price their daughter would pay. Which would have been better for Jenny's psychological state? Hard to say. Jenny has carried the weight of the incident for a long time. Would she have been able to let go of it easier if she'd known the boys were punished? I just don't know. Maybe Vera knew that her daughter didn't have the confidence to bear up under such an ordeal. Either way, what's done is done, and I'm hoping that getting it out in the open will help Jenny put it behind her.