Wild Justice

CHAPTER 15

He didn’t open the journal. He just drummed his fingers on the cover, then resumed his position, leaning forward, smoking. I started to retreat, but he must have caught the flicker of movement.

He squinted over, cigarette lowering. “Nadia?”

“Sorry,” I called, staying where I was. “I smelled the smoke. I’ll leave you—”

“Come here.”

As I approached, he scooped up the book and whisked it to his other side. Then he stubbed out the cigarette and motioned to the spot beside him.

“A little not-so-light reading?” I said.

“Yeah.”

We sat there in silence. He was the one who finally broke it.

“Yesterday,” he began. “Talked about you seeing Aldrich. Worried it’d bring shit back. You said whatever it was, you’d want to remember. Confront it. Face it.” He glanced over. “That still hold?”

“Of course.”

His gaze locked onto mine. “I mean it, Nadia. Don’t answer lightly. Is there a limit?”

“A limit?”

“Stuff you wouldn’t want to remember?”

“Um, that is a little hard to answer when I have no idea what we’re talking about.”

He sighed. “Yeah.” He paused. “What if I’m not sure?”

“About what?”

“Whether you should remember. If you’ve forgotten? There’s a reason. A damn good reason. I don’t want to fuck with that.” He met my gaze again. “I really don’t.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “So you’ve found something in that book that I seem to have forgotten. If I forgot it, you figure maybe I’m blocking it, because I couldn’t handle it the first time around. But now I know there’s something in there, and I’m going to imagine the worst.”

“What’s the worst?”

I hesitated and shook my head. “How can I even answer that, Jack?”

“Try.”

“I guess . . . I don’t know. The worst? Maybe that I killed Amy. That Aldrich’s cigarettes weren’t just weed, and I didn’t refuse, like I remember. I took it and I went crazy and I murdered Amy.”

He peered at me. “Do you ever even think that?”

“No, because even at my most messed up, I know that’s not possible. But you asked for the worst. If it was something as horrible as that, I’d still want to know. Whatever it is, I must know it, deep down, and it’s going to keep gnawing at me until I figure it out.”

Jack dipped his chin in a nod. “It is there. Not going away. Giving you nightmares.”

I took a deep breath. “It’s about Amy, isn’t it? He describes what he did to her, and there are parts I’ve forgotten. Or maybe something I failed to do. Something I let happen. Worse than running away.”

“Amy’s not in here.”

I looked up sharply. “What?”

“There’s no mention of Amy. Not that I can find.”

“And you think that means something. That Aldrich didn’t—”

“No. Think it means he left shit out. This?” He lifted the book. “It’s about what else he did to girls. Raping them. Seducing them.” He paused. “Seducing’s not right. They were kids. Still rape. I just mean . . .”

“You mean that sometimes the girls were willing partners and sometimes they weren’t. Considering that the allegations against Aldrich were all statutory rape, I’m guessing it was more of the former?”

“Yeah. He was good at that. Not sure how. Or why.”

“Teen girls are vulnerable and sexually curious. Same as teen boys. An adult comes along and knows what to do and say, and it doesn’t matter if he—or she—doesn’t strike us as someone a teen would find attractive. Looks have very little to do with it. And when Aldrich was younger . . .” I shrugged. “Amy thought he was cute. A lot of girls did. Even now, I can’t see it because all I see is the monster who murdered my cousin, but at the time, I wasn’t into boys yet. A late bloomer.”

“Yeah.” He stared out into the forest.

“So the journal is rape and so-called conquests, and presumably he left Amy out because describing her murder crossed a line.”

“Didn’t leave her out.”

“What?” I straightened. “I thought you said—”

“He doesn’t talk about killing her. Doesn’t talk about raping her. Skips that. Doesn’t even give her a name.”

I frowned. “What does he call her?”

Jack went quiet, and I was about to ask again when he said, “The cousin. Her cousin.” His gaze finally lifted to mine. “Your cousin. He wrote about you.”

I stared at him. Then I slowly shook my head. “No, that entry must be about another girl and her cousin, because there’s no reason he’d write about me. It was all about Amy.”

“He calls you by name, Nadia.”

I didn’t even think he knew my name.

“I . . . I don’t understand. Why would he write about . . .” I trailed off. I looked at the book and I heard Jack’s words again. Not murder. Rape. It was about the girls Drew Aldrich raped.

I shook my head. “No. There’s a mistake. You’re misinterpreting or he’s lying or . . . or something. He never—” I swallowed. “He didn’t . . .” I couldn’t get the rest out.

“Do you want to stop, Nadia?” Jack said. “We can stop right here.”

His words were soft, his voice low. Meant to calm me, to offer an escape.

“No, I do not want to stop,” I snapped. “I’m not saying I can’t handle this, Jack. I’m saying it did not happen.”

A pause, then, just as softly. “Okay.”

I looked at him. “It did not happen.”

He picked up the journal and stuffed it under his jacket. “Okay.” He got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go back. Forget this.”

I sat there, my gaze fixed on his chest, not daring to raise it. After a second, he started moving away. I reached out and caught the edge of his jacket.

“Jack . . .”

“Hmmm?”

“If . . .” I took a deep breath. “I don’t see how . . . I couldn’t forget—” I swallowed. “What else is there? About . . . that day. Can I read it?”

He slowly lowered himself to the log again. Then he found a page near the beginning and turned it to face me.

“Start here,” he said. “I’ll show you passages. There’s no reason to read the whole thing. It’s not ever going to help. But if you decide you have to, I won’t stop you. I’d just . . .” His gaze locked on mine. “I’d really rather you didn’t.”

I nodded and looked down. The entry started at the top.

Nadia came by with her cousin today. As usual, it was the cousin’s idea. I play along because I know it’s the only way to get within twenty feet of Nadia. But I’m not interested in the cousin. She’s a little tease who pretends to be a slut and probably hasn’t even let a boy feel her tits yet. Plenty of those around. Nadia’s different. She’s a good girl. The police chief’s daughter. So sweet and shy she won’t even look me in the eye. Never had a girl like that. But I bet I could.

I heaved breaths and it was a minute before I could speak. “All right. So he thought about it, but that doesn’t mean . . .”

Jack turned the page to another entry.

It went just like we planned it. The cousin told her dad the wrong time to pick them up at the train station, so he was late, and I just happened to be driving by to offer the girls a ride. It almost didn’t work, though. Nadia’s cousin really had to talk her into the truck and for a minute, I thought she wouldn’t do it. But she did. Anything to protect her cousin. If she only knew that her cousin set the whole thing up. Not for Nadia, of course. She thought she was getting me all to herself. Nadia was just along for the ride. Which was kinda true.

The page ended there. I reread it. “I don’t . . . I can’t believe . . .”

I didn’t finish the sentence. I could believe Amy had set that up. Blinded by Aldrich’s attention. Not setting me up—as he said, she hadn’t known that was his plan.

Still it made no sense. I knew what happened. He’d taken Amy to the cabin to get her high and maybe to seduce her, and things went wrong, horribly wrong, and he raped and strangled her while I was tied up in the next room.

“What if it’s fake?” I whispered, my gaze still on the page. “Maybe he wrote it later. Because I escaped and turned him in. Even if I couldn’t get him convicted, I ruined his life. So he fantasized about . . .” Again, I couldn’t finish.

“You can stop reading,” Jack said.

I put my hand on the book, touching the words, as if making sure they were real. My fingers brushed Jack’s. The sudden touch startled me and I flinched. But I didn’t pull my hand back. I could feel the warmth of his hand against my fingertips, feel the weight of his gaze on me. Wishing he didn’t have to show this to me. Wishing I’d say, “Okay, take it away.” Knowing I wouldn’t.

I curled my fingers under, pressing my hand up against his. His fingers wrapped around mine.

“I need . . .” I began. “Whatever part is . . . easiest.”

He lifted our hands off the book, tilted the journal his way, skimming and flipping two pages, and then he stopped. He covered part of the page. I read the rest.

Nadia wouldn’t smoke the dope. Her cousin did. The stupid twit tried to pretend it wasn’t her first time, even as she coughed and gagged. When I tried to push it on Nadia, the cousin got mad at me. She had no problem bringing Nadia to a secluded cabin with a guy she barely knew, but she wasn’t going to make her smoke up. Stupid twit. At first, I kept pushing. If Nadia smoked it, she’d relax and maybe I could talk her into it. But that’s when I realized I didn’t want to talk her into it.

The page ended there.

“Enough?” Jack said. I could tell he didn’t expect me to say yes and when I didn’t, he turned two pages.

This page began midline.

left the cousin, after making sure she couldn’t interfere. I went back to Nadia. I put the knife to her throat and I told her what I was going to do to her cousin. But Nadia could protect her. Just be a good girl and give me what I wanted and I’d leave her cousin alone. She was crying, big tears rolling down her cheeks, but she didn’t make a sound. I’d warned her not to make a sound and she didn’t. She was a good girl, who did as she was told, and if I said she could save her cousin by giving me what I wanted, she’d do it. So I made her take off her jeans and her panties and lie on the floor, and I put the knife at her throat and

I pushed back and scrambled to my feet. The forest seemed to pulse, growing dark and hazy, the ground beneath my feet uneven, unsteady.

“I—” I forced the words through my tight throat. “I need to walk. I—I won’t run away. I just— I’m going to walk.”

“Okay.”

I started down the path walking as best I could on ground that seemed to rise and dip under my feet. Dimly, I could hear Jack behind me, staying his distance but keeping his eye on me.

I kept walking, seeing those words again, all those words, replaying in my head.

It didn’t happen. Couldn’t have happened. I wasn’t the one he hurt. It was Amy. All Amy.

In the distance, I saw a shape through the trees. My neighbor’s run-down cabins that he’d planned to fix up to rent and never did. This spring, I’d sleepwalked into one, thinking it was the cabin, that I was back with Amy and Drew Aldrich. I’d dreamed I was on the cabin floor, free from my bonds, blood on my thighs, trying to get my panties back on, to dress and run for help.

I’d told myself I was confusing my story with Amy’s. But how many times had I had that dream? A nightmare where Aldrich told me to be quiet, told me to get undressed, made me lie on the floor, and held a knife at my throat.

Just like he’d described.

Nightmares where I tried to be still, tried to be so still and quiet, but I couldn’t, because the terror and the pain and the horror and the humiliation . . .

I fingered the paper-thin scar on my throat.

I told you to lie still.

I doubled over and threw up whatever was in my stomach. Then I stayed there, on all fours, head pounding, fingers digging into the earth. A shadow passed over me, and I looked to see Jack hunkered down beside me.

“Tell me what you need,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Tell me what I can do.”

Another shake.

“Can I stay here? With you?”

I nodded.

After a minute, he said, “I’m sorry.”

I backed up and sat down on the cold earth. “You knew. Even before you read it, you figured out what happened to me.”

Silence. Then, “Suspected.”

“No. You knew.”

He had. The pieces were all there. The nightmares. The guilt. And the scar. How the hell do you cut your neck on a fence? That’s what I’ve always said, and it’s what I believed, not because I remembered doing it, but because I remembered saying it, over and over, all my life, whenever someone noticed. I’d scaled so many fences that the exact instance seemed irrelevant. I said I cut it on a fence and my parents said I cut it on a fence, so I must have cut it on a fence.

Jack could tell the difference between a metal scrape and a knife slice.

I wanted to say, “Why didn’t you tell me?” But that was ridiculous. He’d tried. Over and over he’d suggested that my dreams meant something, and I’d flipped out every time.

This is what he thought I’d remember when I saw Aldrich. This is what he’d thought I might be better off forgetting. This is what he’d thought was in that journal.

I lurched forward and threw up again.

A minute later, he asked, “You want to talk?” I rocked back on my heels and caught my breath. I shook my head.

“Walk?”

Another shake.

“Want me to get Scout?”

Another shake, and in some deep part of me that wasn’t completely numb, I felt bad. He was fumbling to help and there was nothing he could do.

Yes, there was. He could let me collapse against him. Hold me. Offer comfort—warm, quiet comfort. But he stayed a few feet away. Giving me space. Being careful, so careful. I’d just found out I’d been raped. He wasn’t going to presume to offer any physical comfort, and I couldn’t bring myself to cross that gap and take it.

“I . . . I want to go inside,” I said. “To my room. Just be alone for a while.”

He nodded and led me back.