“I’m taking the Garry assignment back,” she said. “It’s going to get very hot.”
“It’s all yours,” said Terri. “Have you seen that baby?”
“I’m going over there now.”
“Well,” Terri said, “steel yourself.”
She hung up the phone and walked to the nursery, wishing the route were longer. It had been months since she’d been in this hallway. She avoided it—it was too hard to tune out the crying. But she didn’t really hear it today. She had a task to do. She’d take a quick peek at this baby to see what all the fuss was about and to ready herself for the questions from the media. Then she’d prepare a press release. She’d beat Claudia Marks to the draw.
She scrubbed at the sink outside the nursery and let a red-headed nurse wrap her into one of the yellow gowns. She made idle chatter with the nurse, pretending this was all in a day’s work.
“He’s in the isolation room,” the nurse said, “on the warming table. He’s not doing too well today.”
The first thing she noticed was his face. It was a perfect face, as perfect as Alison’s. His eyes were open, and she thought he watched her as she slipped her finger into one tiny hand. His head was huge, no doubt about it, but God, what a face. His pale lips quivered with each raw-sounding breath. Kit bit her lip. It hurt him just to breathe.
“Do you want to hold him?”
She turned around to see the red-headed nurse behind her.
“May I?” Could such a delicate little thing be held?
“You’d better sit down.” The nurse pointed to a chair by the door. She carefully lifted the baby from the warming table and rested him in Kit’s arms. “His head is superheavy,” she said. “You have to give it lots of support.”
He was so warm. She smiled down at that wonderful little face, the eyes most definitely looking back into her own. “How long does he have?” she asked.
“He won’t make it through the night.” The nurse looked over Kit’s head toward the door. “Hi, Dr. Perelle.”
Kit turned to see him standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest.
He sat down in the only other chair in the room. “Claudia Marks pulled a fast one there, didn’t she?” he asked.
“The nurse said he’s going to die tonight.”
Cole sighed. “I wish you hadn’t come over here to the nursery.”
“I had to. And I’m fine.” The baby wrinkled his nose for a second and squirmed in her lap. Her left arm shook from the weight of his head. “I’ve taken this assignment back from Terri, and what I need from you is a written explanation of the surgery in layman’s terms, including what went wrong with this little guy. I also want a simple description of hydrocephalus and some illustrations of the fetus and how the shunt’s inserted, et cetera. Do you have something like that?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
“Can I have it by five?” It was four now.
“I’d better get busy.” He stood up to go.
“And Cole?”
“Yes?”
She looked down at the fragile life in her arms. “I’m going to cancel my tubal,” she said.
54.
They had taken a bottle of champagne to bed with them and now he had quite a buzz. He lay with his head on Kit’s lap while she sat propped up against the pillows, stroking his hair.
The Claudia Marks show had aired a few hours earlier, with the incriminating last five minutes of the interview cut. Claudia had sent a telegram of apology to him. What choice did she have? Kit had saturated the media with the facts about the Garry baby. She’d left no room for rumor or accusation.
“I think we spilled.” Cole felt the damp spot on the top sheet.
“This was worth an extra load of laundry.” She reached for a pad and pen from the night table and began to write. “We have to add champagne to the list for the reception.”
He was grateful for her organized mind.
“I wish I could meet your family before the wedding,” he said.
“They’re going to love you. As long as they never know you were the father of my baby, that is. I’m sure they’ll view you as this wonderful stable guy who’s rescuing their daughter from her depraved lifestyle.”
She was quiet a moment, and he knew she was thinking about his father, who had reacted to the announcement of their engagement with a silence so cold it drained the color from Kit’s face. Ever since Phillip had learned of her pregnancy, he’d distanced himself from her. “She never seemed like that type of girl,” he’d said.
“I wish I could redeem myself in your father’s eyes,” she said now.
“He’ll come around, Kit. He thought the sun rose and set on Estelle. She had a real knack for turning Perelle men into gullible fools.”
He hoped he was right, that his father wouldn’t boycott the wedding. It would be here at the house, in the living room, overlooking the water. He couldn’t imagine it anywhere else. They’d invited just their families and a few close friends. And Rennie, of course. He’d been thinking a lot about Rennie lately. He looked up at Kit. “Is it possible to adopt a teenager?”
“Of course. It’s just rarely done because no one wants to adopt a teenager.”
“I do.” He surprised himself with the words.
She set the pad back on the night table. “I’ve thought about it too, Cole. But I don’t think they’d let us as long as we’re living in this . . . arrangement. Look at how hard it was just to get approved as a foster home.”
“So we’d have to leave the Chapel House.” He said it simply, curious to see how the words felt on his tongue. Not too bad. The terror he’d always felt at that thought wasn’t there. His reactions must be deadened by the alcohol.
“Do you think you could move out?” Kit asked.
“If I had you and Rennie . . . I think I could.” He thought of Jay and shut his eyes. He’d lived a third of his life with him. “If we didn’t move too far.” He smiled.
“We’d better save this conversation for sometime when we’re sober and—”
The screams from the room next door silenced her. Cole felt his body tense, but he made no move to get up. Maris would be all right. It was already quiet, although he knew she would be trembling and glassy-eyed, making that groaning sound deep in her throat, that sound that substituted for tears.
Kit stopped stroking his hair and leaned down to kiss him. “Do you want to go to her? It must be days since you’ve rescued anyone.”
He laughed at how sweetly she’d insulted him. She was laughing too, noiselessly. He could feel it in the fleshy part of her stomach under his cheek. The part she hated and he loved. His baby had been in there.
He sat up and was about to say yes when he got a good look at her in the light from the window. Warm gray eyes that demanded nothing of him. He belonged in this room, with her. “I’ll stay here,” he said.
She shook her head. “I know you want to go.”
He sighed. “She’s so used to having me there. I’ve got you, Janni and Jay are together, and she has no—”
“I know. It’s okay. Go.” She gave him a little shove.
She was in one of her independent moods. He still wasn’t used to it. He’d had to explain every move he made to Estelle.
55.
Rennie chewed her nails as Kit drove her to the police station. Her rapists—alleged rapists—had been apprehended the night before after raping another girl in Point Pleasant, and Rennie had nervously agreed to identify them in a line-up.
Cole had been upset when Kit told him about the call from the police. She’d caught up with him in his office yesterday afternoon. He was eating lunch at his desk, munching an apple and drinking milk straight from the carton. Claudia Marks had made a big deal out of his milk drinking—his wholesome image—on her program. That show had been a hit. Kit spent most of the day on the phone with the major networks. Suddenly everyone wanted to do a feature on fetal surgery.
“She finally seems to be getting over it, and now to
dredge it up again . . .” said Cole. “I don’t even feel like telling her after that talk about suicide.”
She’d persuaded him that it was only fair to tell her, to leave the decision to prosecute up to Rennie herself. Now as she watched Rennie biting her nails to the quick, she was not so sure.
“Shannon doesn’t want to prosecute.” Grace Kelleher, the detective who’d spoken to Rennie back in January, sat across the desk from them. “She has that right, just as you do.”
“She won’t even try to identify them?” Rennie asked.
Grace shook her head, her short gray hair grazing her chin.
Kit wanted to take Rennie’s hand, do something to comfort her. Rennie had spoken in the car of having someone to share this with. Now she was going to have to do it alone.
The other girl was afraid, Grace explained. Did Rennie remember how frightened she’d been at first?
Rennie nodded.
Well, that’s how this girl was feeling now.
Rennie shut her eyes for a moment, and Kit felt her own heart pounding. She thought of telling Grace to forget it, just let her take Rennie home. Cole had been right to worry about putting her through this, making her live it all over again.
“So what does that mean?” Rennie asked, looking straight at the detective.
“It means the men—if you identify them—will be tried on the basis of the crime they committed against you. And only you.”
“But that’s not fair. It’s only half of what they’ve done.”
Grace looked thoughtful. “Would you like to talk with Shannon, Rennie?”
Kit leaned forward. “No, I don’t think that’s a very good idea.” Grace obviously didn’t have Rennie’s best interests at heart.
Grace continued as if Kit hadn’t spoken. “Perhaps if she heard how strongly you feel . . . perhaps if she felt she wasn’t going through this alone . . . ?”
Rennie shook her head quickly. She turned to Kit. “I can’t. It would be like watching myself suffer.”
“It was just a thought,” Grace said.
“What happened to her?” Rennie’s hands tightened on the arms of her chair: “I mean . . . was it just like what happened to me? Don’t tell me the details, please. Just . . . in general.”
Grace nodded. “It was their . . . um, their style, that led us to suspect it was the same men. It was very similar. They threatened Shannon with a knife, same as you. Some of her injuries were worse than yours, some of yours were worse than hers.”
“I feel so sorry for her,” Rennie said. “Maybe it would help her to meet me.”
Kit covered one of Rennie’s hands with her own. “Honey, I really don’t think—”
“Kit, you don’t know,” Rennie said. “You don’t understand. Maybe I can help her.” She turned to Grace. “I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll talk to her.”
Grace led them to the conference room where Shannon Lewis was waiting and pulled Kit aside. “You can stay, but let Rennie do the talking,” she said. “She’ll be fine.”
There were twelve chairs around the long conference table, but Shannon wasn’t sitting. She leaned against the window sill, her eyes, one of them blackened and bruised, riveted on Rennie. Kit wanted to step between them to protect Rennie from that glare. Shannon looked about as vulnerable as a tiger. It was hard to believe she was only fourteen. Eighteen would be more like it. She wore black jeans that were so tight she’d probably had to lie down to zip them. Her breasts were full under a purple sweatshirt that hung off her bare left shoulder. Her eyebrows were plucked to a skinny thread above dark lashes, chunky with mascara.
“Hi,” Rennie said.
“Do you have a match?” Shannon pulled a cigarette from a pack of Kools.
Kit and Rennie shook their heads as they sat down at one end of the table.
“I’ve gotta find a match,” Shannon said. She left them alone in the room for a minute.
“Rennie, you don’t have to do this.”
Rennie didn’t answer her.
Shannon came back, carrying an ashtray and a book of matches, her cigarette aglow. She sat at the opposite end of the table and inhaled deeply, eyes closed.
“I promised Detective Kelleher that I’d talk to you,” she said, opening her eyes behind a shield of smoke. “But it’s not going to do any good. My mind’s made up.” Her hand trembled as she tapped her cigarette into the ashtray.
She was not as tough as she looked, Kit thought. Rennie seemed to notice it too, for she suddenly found her voice.
“Don’t you want to see them punished?” she asked. “Don’t you want to keep them from doing it to anyone else?”
Shannon laughed. “You don’t know much about life, do you . . . what’s your name? Ronnie?”
“Rennie,” Kit said.
Shannon looked at Kit. “Are you her spokesman or something? Let her speak for herself.” She leaned forward on the table. “We’re the ones who’ll be on trial. They’ll ask how many guys we did it with before and . . . how many guys have you done it with?”
“I’ve never done it with anyone.”
“Oh.” Shannon looked out the window. “You might be naive enough to pull this off. You can get sympathy, little golden girl. I’ve never gotten any, and I don’t expect to get it now.”
“You have my sympathy,” Rennie said.
Rennie was right, Kit thought. She couldn’t understand. There was a bond between these two that transcended their looks and their lifestyles.
Shannon looked at Rennie. “How did it happen to you?” she asked quietly.
“At night,” Rennie answered. “Last January, on the beach.”
“Did they . . . cut you?”
Rennie shook her head.
Shannon stood and pulled her sweatshirt up to reveal a long bandage across her third or fourth rib. “They didn’t actually stab me, just sliced a little.” She chuckled mirthlessly, then sat down again and stared at the table. “Oh fuck,” she said, stubbing out her cigarette. Her eyes were glistening.
“I’m sorry,” Rennie said.
Shannon looked up. “Did they do it to you . . .”—she stumbled over the words—“you know . . . both ways?”
Rennie nodded.
Shannon shook her head. “That was a first for me, let me tell you.” She was half laughing, half crying.
“It was terrible, right?” Rennie said. “Doesn’t it make you want to make them suffer the way you did?”
“Look, Rennie, I was hitchhiking. I wasn’t building sandcastles, or whatever you were doing, on the beach. The judge is going to say I asked for it, led them on or something. Maybe I did. I get confused about what happened.”
Rennie leaned forward. “Did you ask for that?” She pointed to where Shannon’s sweatshirt covered the bandage. “And your black eye? Did you ask them to do it to you from . . . in both ways?” She sounded pleased to have the euphemism.
Shannon began to cry in earnest now, and Rennie looked at Kit for the first time, as though she was frightened by her own power. She had probably never made another person cry in her entire life. Kit nodded her encouragement and Rennie looked back at Shannon.
“They took pictures of you at the hospital, right?” she asked. “Pictures of your injuries?”
Shannon nodded.
“The judge will see the pictures and know that nobody in her right mind would ask to be hurt like that.”
“My own mother thinks I made the whole thing up.”
“Well, I don’t. What happened to you is too close to what happened to me. If I testify by myself against them, it wouldn’t seem like they’re so bad. But together you and I can get them locked up forever.”
Kit smiled to herself. Rennie was dynamite.
Shannon lit another cigarette. “I want to forget it. I don’t want to have to go over it again and again.”
“You won’t be alone.” Rennie turned to Kit. “Do you have a piece of paper?”
Kit felt in her purse for a scrap of paper and cam
e up with only a chewing gum wrapper. Rennie opened it and wrote the Chapel House phone number neatly across the middle.
“Here.” She walked around the table and gave the wrapper to Shannon.
Shannon looked at Rennie. “Didn’t Detective Kelleher say you’re a foster kid?”
Rennie nodded.
“But you’re so . . . you’re just not like someone who’s from a foster home. Most foster kids are so fucked up.”
Rennie blushed. “Call me, okay? When you’re scared, or any time. I know how you feel. I really truly do.”
“You feel all right?” Kit put her arm around Rennie as they waited behind the one-way mirror.
“I’m fine.”
Grace stood behind them. “You don’t need to rush, Rennie. There will be two sets of six men. Take all the time you need.”
Rennie nodded and Kit tightened her hand on her shoulder.
“Kit, I can hardly breathe, you’re so close.”
Kit backed away a little. “Sorry.”
The first group of men walked in. Kit searched the unfamiliar faces. All of them were wearing ski caps and looked like they’d been scraped out of the gutter. Where had the police ever dug up such ratty-looking human beings? And which were the rapists? What would it be like to have those dirty, rough hands touching her? She shuddered.
Rennie shook her head. “None of them.” She turned to Kit. “Maybe the guys who did it to Shannon weren’t the same ones after all.”
The second group moved onto the platform, and Rennie began to tremble under Kit’s arm. She looked into her lap.
“Rennie?” Grace said.
“The two on the left,” Rennie said without looking up.
Kit looked at the two ordinary faces. They could be men she passed any day on the street, only uglier, something hideous in their features. She felt a well of hatred forming inside her chest. It was good Cole wasn’t with them—he’d be through the mirror and on them in a second.
“Rennie, I have to ask you to look at them again,” Grace said. “You barely glanced at them, and we have to be very certain that you’re identifying the right men.”
She looked up, right into the eyes of the ugly bastard on the far left. “Are you sure they can’t see me?”
Secrets at the Beach House Page 32