by Jeff Gunhus
“Why did you wait three days to report the incident?” the bald man asked again.
“I was scared. I didn’t know what I should do.” She had her rhythm, her voice was strong and confident. With a look, she made it clear to the younger man that she wasn’t waiting for a lawyer. He slumped into his chair. “Everyone told me not to say anything about it. That this sort of thing happens all the time and that if I wanted a future in the Navy at all, I would just shut up and deal with it.” She stared down the woman officer on the panel and wondered whether she would acknowledge her own ugly words thrown back in her face. The woman returned her stare, betraying nothing.
Then the younger man spoke again. “What changed?”
“I refused to believe that rape was—”
“Come now,” said the bald man who liked things just so. The word rape was not to his liking one bit.
But Allison didn’t slow down. Her nervousness had slowly given way to indignation and was well on the way to anger. “I refused to believe that rape was acceptable in an institution that talks so much about honor and moral character. I realized it was my duty to come forward.”
“Duty?” the man in charge said with a sneer. “What do you know about duty? Craig Gerty is a decorated veteran. He’s served his country in combat. Combat. That’s something you will never do.”
The younger man groaned and rolled his eyes. Allison felt that she might love him for it. The man in charge whipped his head to his right, and for a second seemed about to ask the younger man what was on his mind. But the man in charge knew what was on his mind, and he wanted no part of it.
“Ms. McNeil,” the woman said. “You understand this man’s career will be ruined by these charges? Are you certain that you don’t want to reconsider the circumstances in which this alleged incident took place?”
“Circumstances? I don’t think I know what you mean.”
“Well, think about it. You are an attractive girl. There was a party where there was alcohol being consumed. You were wearing,” the woman flipped through the files in front of her, “a rather revealing outfit that night.”
“I don’t think—”
“How many sexual partners have you had since coming to the academy?” the bald man asked.
“Jesus Christ,” the young man said.
“She’s going to get worse than this in an Article 43. Much worse and you know it,” the bald man said. “She should know.”
Allison looked to the young man but he wouldn’t meet her eye. She got the point. The bald man was right.
“You go to a party full of men,” the woman continued. “A girl with a reputation—”
“Reputation? I’ve been with two people since coming here,” she said, hating the defensiveness in her voice.
“Two partners in only two months,” the bald man murmured, shaking his head in disapproval.
The woman smiled, enjoying it. “You show up by yourself to this party, dressed provocatively. What kind of message did you think that would send?”
“Ma’am, are you suggesting that the message I was sending was that I wanted to be raped? To be forced to the ground . . .”
“That’s enough,” the man in charge said.
“. . . have my clothes torn off me . . .”
“I said that’s enough.”
“. . . while his friends watched and cheered him on . . .”
“Enough!”
“. . . no, ma’am, I do not think I was sending the message that I wanted to be raped, no matter what you think the circumstances were.”
Silence. The meeting was not going as planned, and no one seemed quite sure what to do about it. The man in charge did the only thing that came to his head.
“That will be all. Dismissed.”
She hesitated, not certain if she heard him correctly, but then got to her feet. She may only have been two months into her time at the US Naval Academy, but Allison McNeil had absorbed enough of the military culture to snap to when her superior officer gave her a direct order. It was a trait that would not last long with her.
She saluted the board, turned on a heel, and walked to the door. Behind her, the board members were already mumbling to one another, not even waiting until she was out of the room before talking about her performance. Without thinking it through, she stopped, turned back, and retraced her steps. The four men and one woman were slow to realize that she was once again standing in front of them and not out the door like she was supposed to be.
“You know,” Allison started, announcing her presence. Her voice caught as she talked, and her hands trembled no matter how hard she tried to steady them. “The thing I’ve learned from counseling over the last few weeks is that the real injuries from rape are not the bruises and scratches Craig Gerty gave me all over my body.” Her hands moved slowly around her neck, over her breast, and came to rest near her genital area as if giving a catalog of her wounds. “The real scar is emotional. It’s the lack of power you feel. It’s the violation. It’s the sense that your self-worth and dignity are gone that can make you not report. Not stand up for what’s right.” She turned to the woman. “I was raped. What’s your excuse?”
“Ms. McNeil,” the man in charge said. “You are warned that—”
“Thank you sir, but I’ve already been warned.” She continued to stare at the woman. “And it seems the warning was right.”
She turned and walked out of the room, her legs shaking so badly that she feared she might collapse before she could make it out of the room. She almost reached the door when she felt the hand on her shoulder. A light tap that she ignored, then the pain of a hand digging into her shoulder from behind. She tried to twist away from it, but it grabbed at her again. She spun around, ready to confront the person, thinking perhaps it’s the woman who ran after her.
But then she turned. And it took everything in her to keep from screaming.
Craig Gerty stood in front of her, his pockmarked face creased into an insane grin. His eyes devoured her, red and bulging. Foul breath reeking of vomit and hard liquor blasted into her face. She looked over his shoulder for help, but the panel was gone. So was the room. She was outside and she suddenly knew exactly where. She had been there hundreds of times before in this nightmare.
She blinked and she was on her back, jagged rocks digging into her skin. A sycamore tree curving above her into the night sky. The smell of grass and dirt filled her nostrils. Someone’s dog was barking to her left, making her wonder if its owner had seen the men attacking her and was on his way to help.
But there was no help; there was only the fear and the pain.
Then Gerty was on top of her, his saliva dripping on her face as he grunted from his effort. One of his thick, clumsy hands pushed between her locked legs, clawing into her until fingers were inside her, filling her with pain. Then the hand was gone, back up to her mouth to keep her quiet. There were catcalls all around her. Flashlights pointed at her face. Gerty’s buddies. Three, maybe four of them. None willing to take a turn but eager enough to show this particular bitch what they thought of women who wore the uniform, the uniform meant for a man alone.
His knees jammed between her legs and forced them open. She thrashed around but she couldn’t move; she couldn’t even breathe because of the weight on her, because of the hand over her mouth. He was about to penetrate her when his hand fell off her mouth for a second, and she pulled in a lungful of air. It wouldn’t do any good; it wouldn’t stop what had happened so many years ago, but still Allison . . .
CHAPTER 26
. . . screamed.
She jerked up hard enough to make the seat belt engage. Allison felt the car swerve and then right itself.
“Jesus Christ!” Scott yelled. “What the hell?”
Allison got her bearings quickly. She was in the car. On her way to Virginia. She could feel her heart thudding away
in her chest like it was trying to dig its way through her rib cage. It was just the dream. Just the dream.
“Are you all right?”
Allison smiled at the genuine concern in his voice. “Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry about that. Crazy dream is all.”
“Must have been some dream. I was trying to wake you up, but you were out of it.”
There were a few beats where it seemed Scott expected her to share the dream with him. Not a chance, buddy.
“Anyway, that woke me up a little. Better than a cup of coffee.”
“What time is it?”
“Nearly eleven. We’re only about a half hour away.”
“What time’s my meeting tomorrow?”
“Oh, you’re meeting tonight. As soon as you get in.”
“Do you know who’s in the meeting?”
“Richard Thornton, for sure. And someone else, I think.”
Allison saw Scott try to read her for a reaction on hearing Richard was going to be at the meeting. She didn’t give him the satisfaction, although she had to admit she felt a little twinge of excitement knowing that she would see him within a half hour. What had it been, more than two months now?
“Who’s the someone else?”
Scott shrugged.
“You’re worse at lying than you are at tailing someone. And that’s saying a lot.”
He shrugged again and said nothing.
Allison gave up the guesswork. She would find out who was going to be at the meeting soon enough. Right about the same time, in fact, that she would find out how much trouble she was in.
CHAPTER 27
Arnie walked along the South Beach, the art-deco buildings barely registering as he thought about his next steps. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He fished it out and answered it.
“You were supposed to call me over an hour ago.”
“Good morning to you too,” Giancarlo’s voice came back at him. It was gravelly and a little hoarse.
“Did you just get up?” Arnie snapped.
“Nix. Haven’t been to bed yet. Don’t be so jumpy.”
Arnie looked out at the ocean stretching ahead of him and forced himself to take several slow breaths. He paid Giancarlo a lot of money to make sure his money and his ass were both protected, but he was a small fish in the lawyer’s portfolio. Powerful men, men much wealthier than he, relied on Giancarlo to take care of them, but Arnie still found it hard to be spoken down to by anyone.
“What did you find out?”
“Nothing. Not a thing.”
“Giancarlo, you told me that—”
“Before you say anything, is your phone encrypted?”
“Of course it is.”
Giancarlo’s roster of clients included people routinely under surveillance by the FBI. Because of his involvement on the most detailed level with his client’s affairs, it was in his own self-interest to both educate and provide them with the means to circumvent the government’s best eavesdropping technologies. Arnie had encrypted phones, traceless Internet access, and sophisticated jamming gear at his house. If the Feds wanted to know what was going on inside his house, they were going to need to beat down the front door to find out.
“All right, I told you I’d run the plate and I did. Must be the wrong number, though, because nothing came up. Hold a second.” Arnie heard Giancarlo bark orders at someone; then he was back. “Sorry, Arnie, things are tight around here.”
“Anything wrong?”
There was a pause, too long for Arnie’s comfort. “Nothing that concerns you, don’t worry.”
“Listen, about the arrangements we talked about the other day. I need them expedited.”
“Are you in trouble? Is there something I need to know about?”
It was Arnie’s turn to pause. He smiled as he replied, pleased with the chance to give Giancarlo’s words back to him. “Nothing that concerns you, don’t worry.”
“Fair enough. What do you mean ‘expedited’? I can’t farm this stuff out, you know. I’m the only one who deals with accounts when they get to this stage. If something goes south for one of my guys, it gets out, and that’s not good for business. So don’t fuck around here.”
“I’m not sure. It might be nothing but I might need an out in the next day or two.”
“Arnie, you tell me straight what’s going on, right? You tell me what you need done and I’ll find a way. Sleep is for the weak.”
Arnie scraped his shoe over the sidewalk, pushing a small pile of sand back onto the beach. He planned to fly back to Maryland that afternoon, in time to pull up to his driveway in the early evening. He felt a pang of regret about leaving that house. In the last three years, it had been a real home for him and Jason. Again, he wondered if he wasn’t just overreacting.
“Two days is fine,” he said, realizing that he didn’t intend to use the exit at all.
“You got it. By the way, how’s Miami treating you?”
Arnie squeezed the phone tight in his hand, panicked. He whipped around, looking for the telltale van with tinted windows, or the undercover agent with the earpiece radio standing nearby. He twisted in every direction, his breath coming in shallow gasps. Finally he whispered into the phone, “How did you know I was in Miami?”
Silence.
Arnie pictured his highly paid, turncoat lawyer sitting by himself in his office, rubbing his temple as he looked for a way to cover up his mistake. Did Giancarlo have someone follow Arnie? Was he working with the FBI?
But Giancarlo wasn’t sweating it out like Arnie thought. He overheard him talking to his secretary, demanding to know why a certain file was not yet on his desk. A few seconds later he came back on the phone.
“What’s that, Arnie? You said you like it down there?”
“No, I asked you how the hell you knew I was in Miami.”
“You told me, you paranoid fuck. Two days ago you called me from the airport, bragged how you were going to Joe’s Stone Crab, remember?”
Arnie exhaled, the tension draining out of him.
Giancarlo came back through the phone with his best father-knows-best voice. “Now, are you going to tell me what has you so spooked and let me help you, or are you going to just suffer out there by yourself?”
“Suffer. I’ll call you in two days,” Arnie said, and terminated the call.
An old saying crossed his mind, a snippet of bumper sticker philosophy that he either saw at a truck stop convenience store or on the back of an overzealous soccer mom’s SUV, he couldn’t remember which.
“Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean everyone’s not out to get you.”
CHAPTER 28
Allison had never been to Richard’s new office, not since he made section chief, anyway. Even though he was technically her boss now, there were a couple of layers of management between them to insulate them from each other. When they had been together, they tried their best to keep apart at work. As ex-lovers, the pattern had held.
They interacted, of course, but no matter the assurances that they gave each other that their past didn’t impact their professional relationship, the ghosts hovered around them whenever they were in the same room together. The profiler in her was interested to see what the office would tell her about the man who had shared her bed for more than six incredible months before an abrupt and unceremonious ending.
She chose not to sit while she waited. Instead, she walked the room, stretching her legs after the long drive, working out her nerves a little.
True to Richard’s nature, a wall was covered with picture frames affixed in precise relation to one another. She tried to lift the edge of one frame and grinned when she saw she was right; each corner of each frame had a small dab of adhesive to keep from having one tilt and ruin the presentation. It was Richard Thornton’s Brag Wall (three presidents, four attorney generals),
and he wasn’t about to let sloppiness get in the way.
Her smile died as the perfectly placed frames brought Allison back to some of their biggest fights. She threw stuff around. He put stuff away. She lived in clutter. He would rather have his skin peeled off his body than leave a newspaper splayed out on a table for an afternoon.
Of course, the fights hadn’t really been about their differences; fights in relationships are never really about the subject people are discussing. It was always about power. About who would exert their will and their needs on the other person. Even with her psychological training, even though she recognized what was going on, it hadn’t stopped them from having shouting matches over the smallest things. That’s how it had been near the end anyway. Because by then the sex was no longer new enough and exciting enough to get them through the fights. When the end finally came, it didn’t surprise either of them. What had been surprising was how clean the break had been. One day they were living together, the next no more than casual acquaintances. At first she hadn’t had any hard feelings, something she chalked up to just another sign of how little emotion was left in the relationship. It was like they had simply worn each other out.
But that didn’t explain why she had been thinking about him so much recently.
Then again, the fact that he was a couple of pay grades above her probably had something to do with it. Competitive and career-minded, being passed over had hurt enough, but to have Richard as her boss had been hard to bear.
The door opened and Scott walked in first, carefully avoiding eye contact with her. The schoolgirl in her wanted to give him a raspberry and taunt him, “Tattle-tale, tattle-tale.” The absurd thought calmed her down as she looked past Scott to see Richard stride into the room behind him.
Dressed in a suit and tie even at midnight, Richard looked the part he had wanted to play all his life. Black hair combed back neatly, angular jaw jutting out confidently, as if daring the world to try and land a punch on him. His gray eyes seemed to take in everything at once, like they were black holes down which all information disappeared, information that could be made to reappear in an instant whenever Richard wanted. His tan, pretty-boy features were offset by a grisly, pale scar that ran from his bulging Adam’s apple, under the right side of his chin, then up the side of his face where it disappeared into a well-cropped sideburn. Allison knew the man who had left that mark on Richard. She’d shot him dead herself. It was the first and only person she had killed in her eight years with the FBI.