Malevolent Page 6

  “There are plenty of witnesses who saw the victim lying on the sidewalk with her skirt up, panties down.”

  Tim blinked, not really wanting to hear this. After a little light banter, the evening seemed to have gone heavy awfully fast. He wondered if he was supposed to comment, but she continued.

  “What we lack are witnesses to the act itself. Anyone who can tell us they saw another figure on her or running away as she screamed.”

  Tim thought about that. “You’re saying…it might not have ever happened?”

  She glared at the label of that unopened beer bottle. “The state lab in Richfield can find no vaginal bruising, no semen deposits on her body or clothing.”

  “So. It never happened.”

  “Maybe,” she said quietly, somehow making the single word about four syllables long. Then she flashed him another look. “That is highly confidential.”

  “Got it.” He heard—or felt—the bassline fade out.

  “Do me a favor,” she said suddenly, pinning him with those know-everything eyes. “Let Griffin Solloway be your friend.”

  The intensity of her gaze gave light to the darkness. He couldn’t think of a thing to say. Could only wait for her to explain.

  She leaned hard on her braced elbows and came close enough to Tim for him to smell soap and shampoo, no perfume. “I know people. The victim—I can’t give you her name—lives with her mother and a mentally challenged sister. Freud would have a field day in that house, but she’s not crazy. The victim, I mean. The others…” Melinda rolled her shoulders. “The others in that family I’m not so sure about, but the victim isn’t the type to hike her panties down just for attention. If you ask me how I know, I’d have to say it’s just instinct. And I’ve been wrong before.”

  “But you said there’s no sign of—”

  “No sign of rape. And for that reason, as well as the general oddness of that home, I was ready to write the whole thing off earlier.” She stared at the capped beer bottle on the table between them and seemed to consider picking it up. “But there’s something nagging me to stick with it awhile longer. What if someone—your friend—was involved? Somehow. Didn’t rape her, probably, but got the job started before getting scared away by the screaming.”

  “He’s not my friend. I’ve barely met him.”

  She picked her phone out of her pocket and glanced at its screen, either for messages or the time.

  Mostly to forestall her leaving, he said, “Maybe I’ll try to get hold of him.”

  Her brows bunched up in concentration. “I interviewed him again yesterday afternoon, after I met you. He admitted the two of you hadn’t spent as much time together that night as he’d made me think, and that he’d run into the victim on two previous occasions. That, after first telling me he didn’t know her. Why would he twist the truth like that? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  Tim said, “The police pound on his door in the middle of the night and want to know his whereabouts while some woman’s getting raped and who can verify his story. This probably sounds like a lawyer but I’m not all that surprised that the guy spouts a few offhand inconsistencies. You guys don’t know the effect you can have on us more-or-less law-abiding and scared-shitless civilians.” He stopped, finding himself getting hot under the collar for some poor sap he didn’t even know. “Sorry,” he said, offering a lopsided grin.

  The cute cop shrugged off the apology. “Point taken. But I’d still like to keep an eye on him. I think he considers you a friend because he doesn’t have many. You could talk to him. If he did anything, I think he’ll eventually want to brag about it with someone he trusts.”

  Tim nodded, not quite sure what to say.

  “I wouldn’t even approach you about this if I could do it any other way. But, to be perfectly honest, I’ve got nothing. Not even any confidence that a crime has actually been committed. But there’s definitely…something.” She hesitated, apparently unsure how to wrap things up.

  Tim stood when she stood. She did that all-her-weight-on-one-hip thing again. She smiled. He smiled. The steel door burst open and Charlotte stuck her head out, scrunching up her face to adjust to the weak light. Tim noticed the absence of music behind her at the same time she said, “You got any more tunes or you trying to close me up early tonight?”

  It was high school all over again. The lights coming on unexpectedly and the girl’s disheveled father shuffling down the stairs and blinking suspiciously at the flustered couple in the rec room. You’re out the door with a quick good night, not even a chance to get your hand down her shirt one last time.

  Chapter Eleven

  With all the light flooding the place, Tim figured any bleary-eyed drunk wandering in for a flick after the bars closed would be zapped into sobriety faster than caffeine could do the job. It was twenty-five to three and he assumed he was in trouble again on the home front as he sat in front of AfterHours Video, listening to his van ticking down while talking himself into a visit with his new best friend.

  He thought of Patty, tossing and turning in bed a few streets away and imagining the worst—twisted metal or horny Beer Belly waitresses. Which reminded him of Melinda Dillon. And that thought led back to Griffin Solloway and a woman who might have been brutally raped.

  Or almost raped.

  Or not even touched.

  Tim sighed at how complex his little world had become. He locked up and hoped for the best for the thousands of dollars worth of sound equipment left in the van. An electronic box above the store door buzzed obnoxiously to announce his arrival.

  Towering blue Pandorans were traipsing through a 2-D jungle under a painfully loud score. As he suddenly remembered from his previous visit, everything here was too loud, too bright, too jarring for the time of night.

  “Hey, how ya doing,” Griffin shouted from a stool near the blaring TV behind the sales counter. Then he did a cartoonish double take and said, “Hey, it’s you.”

  “Glad to know it,” Tim mumbled.

  Griffin’s ball cap for this evening was jet black with a white X as in Malcolm. He’d seen the style once or twice downtown in Public Square, but Tim couldn’t recall ever seeing a white guy under one.

  Griffin knocked down the television volume with a remote within arm’s reach while Tim stood under the humming fluorescents and examined the slasher and judo and cheerleader-tramp posters stuck up everywhere. He wondered if the walls were really as crisply white as they seemed, or if it was just that wash of bright light.

  He said, “You could work all night and still not worry about falling asleep on the job.”

  Griffin tilted his cap back on his head and inspected his surroundings as if for the first time. “You talking about the light? Shit. Way things stand today, you take your chances every time the sun goes down.”

  As good a conversation starter as he was going to get. “Speaking of the crime rate, how about what happened the other night?” Knowing the store owner would know which other night without even a moment’s pause.

  Griffin fiddled some more with his cap, plucked it from the top of his head to run his fingers through his hair and reveal the pink spot at the crown that explained the constant headgear. “I s’pose the lady cop visited you,” he said quietly. “I didn’t exactly come out and say you were with me when it happened, but that seems to be the way she took it.” He released a sour chuckle. “Course, I was given an opportunity to clarify my initial statement.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Tim wandered down one aisle and came up another. “Yeah, she thought I was your alibi, and seemed kind of surprised when I told her I wasn’t. She seemed to figure one of us was lying.”

  He hadn’t realized how bothered he was by the way he’d been dragged into the situation until the words left his mouth. Now he came up to the counter and watched Griffin’s eyes flick to the TV screen, to a stack of returned DVDs, and to the throbbing pink light thrown across the hood of Tim’s van and onto the black pavement from the neon sign hanging high
and unseen over the door.

  Griffin adjusted his cap yet again, and Tim saw the sweat line at his temple. Before he could explain himself—if that’s what he was about to do—the door buzzed and two loud, chattering couples spilled in.

  “Hey!” Griffin called out, like he welcomed the distraction, and one of the four returned a mumbled greeting.

  With barely suppressed giggles, the two girls pushed their boyfriends down an aisle ahead of them. The boys picked up DVD cases, commented in raucous whispers, and tossed them back onto the white shelves.

  “The back room,” Griffin muttered.

  The four now stood before the black curtain under the You Must be 18 to Enter sign. They milled around it as if it posed an unexpected detour. One of the young men took his girlfriend by a slim wrist and pulled her toward it. She gamely held back, before yielding with a new fit of giggles. The other couple shuffled in afterward.

  “Came here all along for a dirty movie, but have to pretend they didn’t,” Griffin chuckled.

  The velvety black drape, hanging from a rod like a dressing room curtain in old clothing stores, had struck Tim as an anachronistic touch from the eighties. He’d thought such touches had pretty much disappeared. First the big chains put the mom-and-pop operations out of business and didn’t carry X-rated movies. Then the Internet killed the need for exposing your smutty needs to the world. Probably only those without a computer or high-speed online access needed the content behind the curtain. Or teenagers on a lark.

  “Bet that’s all anyone’s looking for this time of night,” he said.

  “Not true,” Griffin said, sounding mildly annoyed. “AfterHours isn’t an adult video store. I’m a small business owner who’s found a late-night niche, that’s all.”

  The whispers grew louder, a voice squealed, the curtain flapped.

  “A girl goes into that room,” Griffin says, “she’s gotta act like it was an accident, you know? She’s gotta roll her eyes a bunch of times like she can’t understand how her man can waste his time on such trash. She’s gotta giggle a lot to show this is a goof, not anything she’s gonna enjoy. Even then he’s gotta practically drag her in. Wouldn’t be a lady otherwise. Guys are the same, but different. They gotta make sure I understand it’s for a bachelor party. Like they got a life, they won’t be home alone in ten minutes with their pants around their ankles. Like I give a rat’s ass.”

  Tim was preoccupied. Remembering Melinda Dillon telling him that Griffin had met the victim on two previous occasions. Hadn’t Griffin only mentioned having been balled out by her when he’d visited her church? What was the other occasion?

  “Did she—the victim—ever stop by here?” he asked on a whim.

  Griffin sighed heavily. “That got me in a lot of trouble with the lady cop. Like I was trying to hide something. But how do I know it was the same broad when she’s laid out on the sidewalk, in the dark, surrounded by cops, paramedics and onlookers? So I didn’t mention our earlier contact until the cop did and that makes me the suspicious character. Well that’s bullshit.”

  Griffin’s face was red, his temples glistening with sweat. He stared at Tim, then broke into a sheepish grin. “You see how I panic? If someone with a badge came in here and asked me if I was in Dallas the day Kennedy got shot, I’d make something up and forget to tell them I wasn’t even born then.”

  “You’d tell them you were with me,” Tim said.

  Their eyes met and they stared each other down for several hard seconds before both burst into cackles. The hushed chatter died from behind the curtain as two nervous couples tried to decide what the sudden laughter meant. To Tim, it felt good getting it out like that. Like puncturing a high pressure zone with a rain shower.

  “Tell me about when this woman, the rape victim, visited you,” Tim said when both had sufficiently recovered.

  “I noticed her because business was a little slow that evening.”

  Tim wondered how that evening could have been any different than this, but he didn’t comment.

  “She looks normal enough. I ask if I could help her find anything, but she just keeps staring at the black curtain, frowning. And that’s when some dreg of society happens to drag his sorry ass in here on a cloud of booze and BO. He’s a semiregular, okay? I admit it. He’s the kind of guy who fits the perv description for everyone who hates adult films. Stereotype meets real life and it’s love at first sight. See what I’m saying? He stumbles straight for that curtain and leaves it flapping wide open, beavers and tits from about four dozen DVD cases on full display.”

  Griffin rubbed his face at the memory. “The woman goes ballistic, starts threatening me with Scriptures and lawsuits and cops and zoning ordinances and everything else she can think of. Scared the hell out of my perv, he slinks out of here like his bench warrants were about to catch up with him.”

  One of the guys in the back room stepped partially out, case in hand, but a manicured hand reeled him back in. “Not that one,” the feminine voice said, giggling.

  Griffin rolled his eyes. “Finally, she runs out of steam and stomps away. Which might have been the end of it, except that I accidentally threw gasoline on the smoldering flames by visiting that goddamn church on the corner.”

  He lifted his eyes heavenward and said, “No offense.” He lifted his Malcolm X ball cap, patted his damp hair and repositioned the cap. “I was just curious, you know? It’s in the neighborhood.”

  Tim picked up the story, instinctively knowing where it was going. “She was there and couldn’t believe you’d have the audacity to show up after the ball-busting she’d given you earlier.”

  Griffin’s head bobbed. “It was like Linda Blair suddenly losing her sunny disposition. Needless to say, I hustled my wide ass out of there.”

  Coincidence? Is that what had steered the dude to the church frequented by the woman who’d ragged him, or had he been goading her? Thumbing his nose. Tim could see it happening either way.

  The voices behind the curtain hushed as if they’d neared a decision.

  Tim said, “It still seems strange for her to blame you for her attack—if she was attacked—just because you peddle dirty movies near her church.”

  Griffin shook his head despondently. “I know. That’s what I—” He froze, his dark eyes fixed on Tim. “What do you mean, if?”

  There it was, the big question. Could he answer it without taking sides? He didn’t think so. By letting slip Detective Dillon’s admission of doubt—it was an accident, wasn’t it?—Tim could no longer even pretend impartiality. And why, by the way, was he suddenly referring to Melinda as Detective Dillon.

  It certainly looked like he’d taken sides.

  He sighed. Last chance to turn back. “The police aren’t real sure there was a crime committed. Witness statements and hospital reports aren’t in line with what she’s saying.”

  There. He’d just aligned himself with a rape suspect with a penchant for lying. The proverbial person of interest. While his mind gnawed at the ramifications from every nasty angle, the four young people filed silently out of the curtained room and slid a DVD case and a membership card toward the cash register.

  Tim caught a look from one of the girls, a slim brunette in college sweatshirt and shorts. What’re you doing in a place like this? the look said. Tim smiled and she broke eye contact. The girl’s upper lip turned up slightly in an unconscious gesture of distaste.

  His cue to leave.

  One more stop before home. It was already too late in the evening—too early in the morning, actually—to avoid the wrath of Patty, so no reason not to postpone the inevitable.

  Yellow light glowed dimly through the small window next to the front door. The knob turned easily. His tentative footsteps echoed sharply in the silence. Like churches everywhere, its interior held the smoky spice ambience of incense and the varnished wood scent of solid age.

  He stepped through the wide doorway to the left of the vestibule and lowered himself into a hardwood pew that g
roaned invitingly under his weight.

  He’d gone a handful of times to Catholic mass with Patty and her family and had marveled at the medieval humiliation of its kneelers. There were none of those devices in this church, no need to prostrate himself before any god. In fact, Tim found that he could easily immerse himself in the Utica Lane Church of Redemption without a moment’s belief in the ancient religion for which it stood.

  He sat inhaling the secure solitude while the minutes ticked like the plumbing.

  Chapter Twelve

  “What do you mean, you were at church?” she asked him quietly.

  He let his clothing drop to a pile in the middle of the floor, as usual. Somehow that pile would magically disappear in the morning. Clad only in boxer shorts, he slipped between the sheets and said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “At church,” she repeated, prodding him with his initial statement. Perhaps he’d care to amend it.

  As Tim turned away, she saw a hint of dawn creeping through the window glass beyond him. “What did you really do, Tim?”

  She could hear him breathing, could almost hear him contemplating more lies.

  “I was at Charlotte’s, of course. Come on, Patty. You know that.”

  She waited for more, but got only the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing. If she didn’t press on, he’d soon be asleep. “I won’t have you lying to me again,” she said, voice firm but even. Tough, but fair.

  She felt him burrowing in deeper. As if from the bowels of a cave, he said, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but it’s too late to fight.”

  Yes, it was rapidly getting too late. The fact screamed at her that there wasn’t a single point where their bodies joined on the mattress. Patty tried to recall the last time they’d made love. Not that she’d been missing it lately. But for the record, it had probably been a week ago Saturday. She’d stopped in at the Beer Belly while he worked and the free beer had induced a little artificial heat in both of them. Or maybe, she thought bitterly, the turn-on had been a result of catching him in a rare act of moneymaking.