“Uh, yeah. Okay.”
“You changed when you got home. You were in different clothes when you went to the police station. Did you take the clothes to the police? Or did they go to your house to pick them up?”
“No. They never asked for them. I never gave those clothes to them.”
“Did you keep them?”
He couldn’t think of a reason why she would keep such a morbid reminder, but he had to ask.
“No. Why would I?”
“I can’t think of any reason you would. I was just hoping… that you might have something with the perp’s DNA on it.”
“Does that mean they couldn’t use what was in the rape kit? I thought that kind of thing took weeks to analyze it.”
Zachary tried to keep his voice steady. “Unfortunately, the kit was destroyed. It was a long time ago, and at the time, they didn’t keep evidence like that indefinitely.”
He thought that had a nice sound to it. Not that they had destroyed it in two years because that was their policy, or that they destroyed evidence when they didn’t think there was ever any hope of catching the guilty party. Just that it had been a long time ago, and that during that time, the decision had been made to destroy the rape kit.
“Oh.” Heather’s voice was low and rough. “I was hoping they’d be able to do something with it now and maybe catch the guy.”
“I know. Me too. You don’t have anything else from that day? A necklace, something that he might have touched or rubbed against? Maybe something that you discovered afterward that you hadn’t mentioned to the police?”
“No. I threw out anything that reminded me of what happened. I didn’t want to think about it.”
Zachary could relate to that. He too had tried to get rid of anything that reminded him of Archuro. He tried to avoid any possible memory triggers. When he couldn’t do that, he disassociated. In time, he would forget it completely, if he worked at it hard enough.
“I have some other questions that might be hard for you to answer.”
She was silent for a few seconds. He heard her draw in her breath and let it out in a long whistle. “Okay. I’ll… I’ll try.”
He tried to start off easy, with questions that wouldn’t be too personal or triggering.
“The park was out of bounds for students. Why? What had happened in the past that made them institute that rule?”
“I don’t know… it was the rule for as long as I went to that school.”
“Was it because of something that the students had done—vandalism or being rowdy and disturbing other people—or was it because of something that had happened to students?”
She considered. She cleared her throat. “I thought it was because of the students. But I don’t know if anyone told me that.”
“Did you ever run into other people when you cut through there? Students or not?”
“Yeah. It wasn’t completely isolated. There were usually people coming and going. I would see one or two people each day.”
“So did you start to recognize some of the ones you saw regularly? Somebody who walked their dog at the same time every day? Joggers? Other kids who broke the rule?”
“I guess so. Yeah.”
“Can you give me the descriptions of the ones you remember?”
“Zachary… that was thirty years ago. I don’t remember.”
“You don’t have to do it right now. Take some time to think about it. You might be able to recall some of the people you saw there regularly.”
“Do you even remember all of the kids you were in foster care with?” she challenged.
“Uh… no.”
“If you can’t even remember the faces of everyone that you lived with, how can you expect me to remember people that I didn’t even talk to, I just saw them in the park now and then?”
“I know it’s a long shot. But if there isn’t any physical evidence and the police can’t give me any leads, then we need to go by what you remember. Your brain might have stored some of those people. If you were walking through that park every day, those images might have ended up in your long-term memory.”
“I can’t remember them,” she said flatly.
“Would you consider being hypnotized?”
“What?”
“Hypnotism might help you to access some of those memories. Even though you can’t remember them consciously.”
“I’m not letting anyone mess with my brain and implant false memories. No way.”
“I can get someone who is a professional. Someone who has been properly trained so that that won’t happen.”
“No. There are more things about the brain that scientists still don’t understand than there are things they do. There’s no way I’m taking the chance of having some satanic ritual being planted in my brain.”
Even though Zachary knew it was probably the only way she’d ever be able to remember what she had seen way back then, he had to agree. He wouldn’t have done it either. It was too risky. He already had too much horrific stuff in his head.
“Okay. I get it. If you change your mind or you remember something that you didn’t before, just let me know. I don’t want to bug you about it, so just give me a call, okay? If you don’t want to talk about it, you can text or email me.”
“Okay.” She sounded relieved that he hadn’t pushed it any further. “Is that everything?”
“Sorry, not yet.”
She sighed.
“Do you remember hearing about anyone else who was assaulted around that time, either before or after you? Even if the circumstances were different. Anything at school or in the neighborhood or in the news?”
“Probably.” Heather made a humming noise as she considered. “I don’t know. There was a girl at school. Maybe a couple. Not like me, but date rape. The boys always laughing and saying they must have been asking for it. Saying that they were sluts.”
“Yeah. Do you remember who any of the girls or the boys were?”
“I might… I can look in my yearbook and see if I can put some names to them. But I can’t promise you results.”
“No. Whatever you can remember is fine. Don’t try to force it. Looking at the yearbook is a good idea. How about before that? Or in the neighborhood? Any reports of assaults or rape?”
She didn’t answer. He gave it a minute.
“Someone who the girls said was a pervert? A Peeping Tom or someone who looked down their shirts?” he suggested.
Heather gave a grunt. “How about every man in the neighborhood. Seriously, I couldn’t count the number of times I got leered at, whistled at, or had some jerk making comments about my body. I was fourteen years old!” she said in outrage. “I’ve raised a fourteen-year-old girl! They aren’t sluts if they wear halter tops. They aren’t asking for it. And if a girl is promiscuous—and I wasn’t—then it’s probably because she’s been abused.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you ask? Oh, about men in the neighborhood who made comments or groped me.”
Zachary didn’t correct her, but waited to see what she thought.
“It’s been so long,” Heather said. “And I’ve tried not to think about it. I’ve tried not to think of anything that happened around then, or anything that might trigger memories of… the rape.”
“I know,” Zachary agreed in a low voice.
“I’m glad I had Tyrrell call you.”
Zachary smiled, feeling warm toward Heather for her words. “Why?”
“I needed someone who could understand. I couldn’t just go to a private investigator or to one of the Clintock cops. I had to have someone who was on my side and understood what I was talking about.”
They were both silent for a minute.
“What happened to you in foster care, Zachary? I told you about me. I was with that first family, and then with the Astors for most of the time. But that wasn’t what it was like for you.”
“No. I was with a lot of different families. I got moved every few months, us
ually. And I couldn’t manage being with a family around Christmas, so I usually went to Bonnie Brown, or ended up in hospital. And then… somewhere else when I got out. Some new program or therapeutic home or institution.”
“So you never really had a family. Anyone who really felt like a parent.”
“I had Mr. Peterson. Tyrrell told you about him.”
“Yeah. He was really impressed that someone would keep in touch for all of those years, and how close the two of you are. But you were only with him in foster care for a few months?”
“A few weeks. But that’s not what mattered.”
“I guess not. And Bonnie Brown…” Heather trailed off, hesitating. “I never had to go there. But I know what their reputation was like. That’s where they sent the intractable kids that foster families couldn’t manage. It couldn’t have been much fun there.”
“I didn’t go there because it was fun. I went because… it didn’t feel like a home, where something awful could happen and the whole thing could go up in smoke in a few minutes. It was sturdy. Concrete. I wasn’t ever very good with rules, but I felt better knowing what the rules and routine were and that they didn’t change. There were guards, so any violence… didn’t usually last long. Though some of the guards… if they thought I was being insolent and not showing the proper respect… if I stepped over the line…” Zachary gripped the arms of his chair, steadying himself and holding himself stiff and still, as if by doing so he could physically prevent himself from sliding into a flashback of Berens or one of the other guards whaling the hell out of him.
“Zachary,” Heather crooned. “Oh, my baby Zach. I’m so sorry.”
It was a different kind of flashback. Zachary remembering his little mother. How she held and comforted him when he was hurt or in trouble with their parents. How he felt warm and safe in her arms, protected even though she too was so young that she would not have been able to save him from a beating. She was only a couple of years his senior, but there was a vast difference between a frightened eight-year-old boy and a fiercely protective ten-year-old mama bear.
He felt warm and tingly and found tears brimming in his eyes. He had not heard that voice for thirty years, but it was so tender and familiar, it filled him all the way up.
“I’m okay,” he told her hoarsely. “Thanks.”
“So many different families. You must have had a lot of bad stuff happen.”
“Like you said… I did my best to just forget about it. Move on and pretend that nothing had happened.”
“Could you tell me everybody that ever touched you?”
He cleared his throat. “No.”
“I’ll do my best to remember names, or what I can… but the culture at the time… there weren’t the same boundaries as there are now. It’s better now, I think, even though people complain about political correctness and about having to get explicit consent. I think it’s better if people are more cautious about what they say and do, even if it is only because they are afraid of getting publicly shamed.”
“Yeah.”
“Back then, people just did what they liked, and you weren’t supposed to complain about it. If you did, they shamed you.”
“It’s better now,” Zachary agreed.
“If we just had the DNA,” Heather grumbled. “I can’t believe they would just destroy all of that evidence. After what I had to go through, they could at least have saved it. There were so many changes in science and technology, couldn’t they have guessed that in the future we’d have better ways to analyze it?”
“I guess they just didn’t have the foresight. And there were shorter statutes of limitation. Sometimes really short.”
“Is that everything you wanted to know? I’ll think about it and get back to you.”
“Did you keep a diary? Something that might help you to remember? Or do you have a photo album? Anything?”
“If I had anything like that as a foster kid—and I don’t think I did—I lost it when I was on the street. There just wasn’t any way to keep many personal possessions.”
13
His next call was to Able. He didn’t really want to talk to the cop again, and knew that Able wouldn’t really want to have anything to do with him. The cop had made it clear that he didn’t think Zachary was going to find anything helpful in the file and that he considered it a waste of his time to have to hold Zachary’s hand through the process.
It wasn’t Zachary’s fault that Able had been assigned to the file. He was actually glad that it hadn’t been assigned to some rookie just learning the ropes. Able had the policing history to know how things had been handled back when Heather was assaulted. He knew about the laws and about how the forensic evidence had been handled. He knew the kind of police work that had been done at the time and he knew what the culture had been. Those were all insights that he was able to share with Zachary, so that neither of them had to go look them up or to speculate on what the atmosphere had been at the time.
“You again?” Able complained when he picked up the phone. Probably not the way he had been trained to deal with the public. But Zachary preferred his openness to someone who would smile and pretend to be helpful when he just wanted Zachary to get lost.
“I have a few questions for you,” Zachary said, ignoring the sentiment and barreling along.
“Yeah, what?”
“I don’t have any experience on what it was like policing back then, about all of the legwork that you guys had to do. So all of this might sound annoying, but I just want to get a clear picture.”
“Okay. What?”
“You interviewed the people that you knew were sex offenders at the time. Checked alibis the best you could, tried to rule out anyone that you could.”
“That’s the way it was done, yeah. That’s police work. No shortcuts then like there are now with DNA that can lead you straight to the perp. It was all legwork and police procedure.”
“What about other sexual assaults that might have taken place in town that were unsolved? Would you have done a survey of other cases? Tried to match up anything that was consistent between them?”
“Yeah, of course. But it wasn’t like it is now, with everything automated and computerized. You talked to people, called other precincts, checked newspaper articles. There wasn’t any internet or centralized database where the computer would do all of the work and spit it out for you. Lots of time on the phones, lots of time talking to people.”
“And I didn’t see a report of any canvass of the neighborhood. Would they have gone door-to-door asking if people had seen anything or thought that they knew anything about it?”
“Normally, yeah. But if there wasn’t anything on the file… it might have been that they didn’t think it would be productive. She was in an isolated area, there weren’t a lot of neighbors around working in their gardens or looking out the windows. Canvassing hundreds of neighbors in the hopes of finding one person who might have seen a man leaving the park at that time… I can see why they would decide that it wasn’t worth the manpower.”
“What about rumors about anyone in the neighborhood? Creepers that might not have any record, but that people were suspicious of. Or people who had been convicted of peeping or… I don’t know, some kind of harassment. Somebody that everyone thought was just ‘off.’”
“If there were rumors, we would have followed them up. Sure. There was plenty of paperwork in that file of people who police had talked to. But there wasn’t anyone that stood out, one person that they had reason to suspect more than anyone else.”
“Were there any other unsolved sexual assaults around that time?”
“I’m sure there were.”
“Is there any way to match them up now? To pull out any other cases of sexual assaults that year…?”
“That’s asking a lot. It’s not digitized, so every file would have to be pulled and gone through manually. All of the details are not on the computer. Just the very basics.”
“Could we st
art with a general list and gradually whittle it down?”
“Like I say, a lot of man hours for something that isn’t likely to provide results. Do you really think that you’re going to find the perpetrator thirty years later? When you don’t even have any physical evidence?”
“It happens. People do it.”
“It happens in cases that were not investigated properly. Where there were holes in the information. I’m not seeing that in this case. Everything seems to have been properly followed up on at the time.”
“Except for the physical evidence being destroyed.”
“Yes, aside from that. But there’s nothing we can to to reverse that and bring the evidence back now.”
“Could you look into it? Just see if you can pull a list of the unsolved sexual assaults from that year?”
“I’ll see if I have the time.”
Getting together for dinner with both Kenzie and his siblings was not something that Zachary had come up with on his own. Kenzie had met Tyrrell already, and Zachary couldn’t keep from her for long that he had met one of his older sisters as well.
“That’s fantastic,” Kenzie said, gushing a little. “I’m glad that you’re getting a chance to meet everyone. What was she like?”
Zachary paused as he thought about it. Not because he didn’t want to tell Kenzie about Heather, but because he was having trouble sorting out for himself what kind of person she was and how he felt about meeting her again.
“She’s changed. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me. I’ve changed too. It’s been a long time, and we were just kids at the time. We’ve been through all kinds of stuff since then.”
“I would guess so. She’s had a rough life?”
“Yeah… but not the same way as me. She was mostly with one foster family. She and Joss were together to start with, but they got separated. When we were little kids, before the fire, Heather was… sort of a tomboy, I guess. A bit mischievous. Daring. Joss was the oldest, so she was the perfectionist and the one who tried to keep us all in line. Heather was supposed to help take care of us too, and she did, but sometimes she got us into trouble.”
He Was Not There Page 8