Stranglehold (32 page)

She needed to get to Owen
Sansom
and Andrea Stone immediately.

Everything's changed now, she thought.

We sprung the trap.

We can beat this goddamn thing. We can win.

"Here's what we're going to do,"
Sansom
told her on the phone. "We're going to drive him down to Concord. I know one of the police psychologists there. I've already spoken with Andrea and she knows another. She's arranging things with them as we speak. These guys are good, Lydia. We'll have him go through it with both of them, run it through twice, and we'll get it all on videotape. Let Edward Wood argue with
that
."

"God. Thank you, Owen."

"We'll be over in about an hour. Until then don't let him out of your sight, you hear me?"

"I won't."

She hung up. She looked out the window and saw that the sun had slipped behind a cloud. It was going to be hard for Robert, she thought, very hard. But to her mind the day was growing better and brighter by the second.

Concord, New Hampshire

February 25, 1995

4:45 P.M.

Excerpt from the transcript of a videotaped conversation between Lt. D. A. Sweeney, Ph.D., of the New Hampshire State Police and Robert Philip
Danse
, age eight, resident of 145 East Cedar Street, Plymouth, New Hampshire

Q: What do you call this part, right here? (Points to rag doll, penis area.)

A: The private parts.

Q: The what?

A: The private parts.

Q: The private parts. (Turns doll.) What would you call this part right here?

A: The rear.

Q: Now you told me that you didn't like your dad messing with you. Can you show me, using these dolls, what you mean? What he does to you?

A: He messes with me back here (pats buttocks, ignoring doll) with this (pats penis).

Q: He does what?

A: He messes with me back here with his privates.

Q: He messes with your rear with his privates? And who does this to you?

A: My dad.

Q: Your dad. And what's your dad's name?

A: Arthur
Danse
.

Q: Only your dad?

A: Uh-huh.

Q: Nobody else?

A: No.

Q: What else does he do? Can you tell me more?

A: Well ... that's what he does. That's all he does.

Q: How does he mess with you, Robert? What do you mean by "messes" with you?

A: He puts his thing in. Back here.

Q: He puts it in? Puts it in where? Do you have a name for it?

A: Rear. (slightly inaudible)

Q: What?

A: The rear.

Q: He puts it in your rear. Is his thing hard or soft?

A: Hard.

Q: Hard. And does that hurt?

A: Yes.

"We can't release him to you."

Lieutenant Sweeney lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out away from her. They were standing in the gray hallway outside the cubicle where Robert had been interviewed. He was still inside and she could see him there sitting with Cindy, who'd come down with her to provide moral support.

"What do you
mean
you can't release him?" she said.

"Dammit, I was afraid of this," said
Sansom
. He looked at Andrea Stone, who sighed and shook her head. "Edward Wood called you, didn't he?"

"That's right," said Sweeney, "reminding us that the boy was under a court order giving custody to his father and removing it from his mother."

"
What are you saying?
" She felt dizzy. Like she'd fallen down into some insane eat-me drink-me rabbit hole again.

Was this ever going to end?

"Well, there's no way we're giving him back to his father. Not after this. But I can't hand him over to you, either, Mrs.
Danse
, much as I'd like to. I'm sorry. Best thing we can do now is put Robert up in a shelter for a few days, until the judge can view this evidence."

"A shelter? Jesus! Hasn't he been through enough?"

"Just for a couple of days. It won't be long, I promise."

"Oh, Christ. He's barely gone on two overnights in his entire life. Much less a shelter."

"Don't worry, Mrs.
Danse
. They're not exactly snake pits these days."

"Will I be able to see him?"

"Whenever you want."

"Will
Arthur
be able to see him?"

"Only under supervision. I'll make absolutely sure of it." She looked helplessly at
Sansom
and Andrea Stone. "Isn't there something ...?"

"It's the law, Mrs.
Danse
," Sweeney said gently.

The law
. She was beginning to hate the words.

She felt suddenly very tired. She sat down on wooden bench opposite the window. She could see Robert smiling inside the cubicle. Cindy had said something funny to him. It helped to have Cindy there.

"Give me a minute, will you? A minute alone, I mean. I just want to sit awhile. Then I'll go in and ... I'll tell him."

"Take your time. We'll go get some coffee," Sweeney said. "If you need anything we'll be right down the hall here."

"Thank you. You're ... very kind."

She saw the psychologist wince. Obviously he was dealing with his own feelings on this and didn't feel particularly kind.

Right now neither did she.

Arthur
, she thought,
you've got an enormous amount to pay for. Hurt all around
.

She wondered if he'd ever pay.

Most of them didn't.

"He's evidently stated that you had anal intercourse with him on several occasions. Including the afternoon in question," said Wood. "He described it in detail. And what's this business about a rabbit?"

Arthur gripped the phone like he wanted to squeeze it in half. He was glad Wood wasn't around to see the face that stared back at him from the office minor. Wood wouldn't like what he was seeing there.

"He's lying," he said.

"It doesn't matter if he's lying. It only matters whether the psychologists, and ultimately the judge, believe him. And from what my source at the troopers' station tells me, he's been pretty convincing."

"Christ! So now what do we do?"

"We wait. I'll obtain a copy of the tape and look it over. There'll be another hearing in a couple of days to see if the judge wishes to amend his ruling. Just the lawyers present. I'll argue coercion on the part of your wife and—if, from the look of the tape, I feel I can get away with it—leading on the part of the psychologists. I'll talk to Robert and see if he might not recant his testimony. Then we see what happens. In the meantime it might be a good idea to go visit him. It'll look good for you. I'll call with the shelter's address first thing tomorrow. Try to get some sleep, Arthur. You looked awful in court this morning. No offense."

Wood said good night and hung up the phone.

He'd visit him all right, he thought. He'd visit the little bastard.

And the goddamn fucking little piece of gash was going to seriously wish he hadn't.

It had only happened to her because she'd done the right thing.

The party had lasted from nine till two in the morning and by then even though she was only nursing white wine
spritzers
she was really too high to drive, she didn't drink much, and because she came to the party alone and as usual was going to leave alone she decided it was better and wiser to walk back home—and she was over halfway there with nobody around anywhere when the man pulled up in his big black car opposite, going south to her north, and stopped the car and got out and walked over and pointed a gun at her and said,
get in
.

By now he'd raped her twice on the woodland floor at gunpoint and Marge Bernhardt was pleading for her life. It wasn't much of a life.

She knew that.

Four months ago nearly to the day the man she was going to marry was killed in his car, sideswiped by a drunken sixty-year-old man. She thought of it as murder. Dean was an electrician and made good money and they were going to have kids. Maybe two or three kids. They had already looked at a house. She'd never quite put herself back together since. Her life was work at Denny's and the gym after that and her three cats Beast and
Vinni
and
Zoey
and then at night reading or watching television.

She didn't date. She didn't party. Deciding to go to Mary's twenty-fifth birthday party was an aberration, an act of will compounded by longtime allegiance to her best and dearest friend, who had comforted her and kept her sane since the night they pulled Dean's blackened body, cut practically in half by the smashed-in driver's side door, out of his 1994 Mazda.

It wasn't much of a life but it could be more someday and now maybe it would never be anything, nothing, as Dean's had become nothing that night and she realized what that truly meant now and she pleaded with him.

She was tied by her wrists to the limb of an oak tree, each wrist tied separately to the limb for some reason and the lengths of rope slightly uneven so that she was standing canted on tiptoe and all she could think to say was
please
please
please
as she watched him in the moonlight. He was walking back and forth in front of her looking up, searching for something, and the gun was in his pocket but instead he held a knife which he'd taken from the shoulder bag.

He reached over her head to the left and cut a branch away and then stripped it of leaves using his gloved left hand. The gloves too had come out of the bag.

He walked over and popped the top button of her blouse with the knife. He'd raped her with her clothes on, cutting just the panties away. They lay in front of her like a patch of snow in the moonlight.

He hadn't even removed her Reeboks.

When the buttons were gone he cut the neck of the blouse at the back and tore it down and then cut through each sleeve. She could feel the cold blunt edge of the blade travel along her arms. The blouse fell away and the cold night air on her flesh made the trembling even worse.

He used the knife on the button of her skirt and then unzipped it and pulled it down and off her. He stepped back and looked. He swung the branch back and forth. Once. Twice.