Marcia Talley - Through the Darkness

At the home she shared with Roger on Monterey Street, Eva was waiting for me. She escorted me immediately from the front door to her kitchen.

“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to a white-painted table with matching chairs covered in a cheerful blue and yellow floral chintz. “I’ve got Earl Grey and lemon ginger,” she said. “What’ll it be?”

“Lemon ginger will be fine, Eva.”

I watched silently while she poured hot water over the bag in my cup, then still at a loss for words, I decided to wade right in. “Eva, I watched Cross Current last night.”

Eva’s cheerful facade crumbled. Still holding the kettle, she said, “Yes. I suppose everyone did.”

“Well, maybe not everyone, but I’m sure the word will be getting around.”

Her face darkened. “And if anyone just happened to miss tuning in, they’ll soon be able to pick up the program in streaming video off the NBC website.”

I stared at her stupidly.

“I don’t mean to minimize Roger’s role in all this-his actions are reprehensible-but the way NBC went about it…” She swallowed hard. “The whole sordid mess makes me physically ill.”

Seeing Roger’s face turn up on my television screen had made me feel ill, too. If it had been my husband, I would probably still have been in seclusion, rather than toughing it out and facing it head-on, and talking to someone like me. “Did you watch the show, Eva?”

“No. I had been called out to the hospital, thank God, and I mean that ‘thank God’quite literally, Hannah. Apparently I’m one of the last to know about that blasted PredatorBeware website, too.” Eva shoved her mug aside as if she’d lost interest in it, and everything else.

“Roger didn’t warn you?”

She smiled grimly. “Not until the e-mails started coming. Roger knew he’d been entrapped by Predator-Beware, of course, and he knew he’d been caught on tape by the Cross Current sting operation, but so were a lot of other men.” She rested her forearms on the table and leaned toward me. “Roger was in denial, I think, crossing his fingers that his segment would be cut from the show.”

“But even so,” I said, “his photograph and the transcript of that chat he had with Cyndi would still be posted on the PredatorBeware website.”

“Yes. And that’s how I first heard about it, when someone sent me an e-mail helpfully informing me of the website, and providing me with the URL.” She bit her lip. “I forced myself to read the transcript of Roger’s conversation with Cyndi, then I threw up. It’s still hard for me to believe that those salacious words came out of the mouth of the man I love.” Eva suddenly remembered her tea, picking up the cup in both hands and taking a sip. “Roger lost his job, you know.”

“No, I didn’t.”

Eva bowed her head and seemed to be examining the contents of her cup. “Cassandra Matthews got an e-mail, too. She fired Roger on Monday afternoon. He didn’t tell me about it, of course.”

Remembering Eva’s friendship with Cassandra, I said, “I’m surprised Cassandra didn’t tell you herself.”

Eva shrugged. “I can’t explain that. Perhaps she thought I was involved somehow.”

“As if.”

Eva grimaced.

Monday afternoon . So when I ran into Roger hanging about in the parking lot at Paradiso on Monday morning, he hadn’t been unemployed, desperate, seizing on a spur-of-the-moment opportunity to kidnap a child. Somehow, I found that bit of information reassuring.

“Where is Roger now?” I asked.

“I don’t know. He left home yesterday morning, after I pleaded with him to get help. Demanded, would be a better word. He’s probably holed up at a motel somewhere.”

“They said on the show that Roger had done time in prison. Is that true?”

She nodded. “That’s where we met, actually. I was doing an internship as a prison chaplain. Roger was intelligent and so sweet that, frankly, I thought the charges against him had been exaggerated. He’d been through months of court-ordered therapy by then, and he eventually served his time. I thought he was well past his addiction, but even so, we dated for three years after his release. I wanted to be sure.”

“And were you? Sure, I mean.”

“Hannah, Roger and I have been married for more than twenty years.” She buried her face in her hands and continued to speak to me through a gap in her fingers. “This has been a horrible shock.”

“Did the bishop know about Roger’s record?”

Eva laid her hands flat on the table. “When I got the call to St Catherine’s, I consulted with the bishop about Roger, of course. Even though no one thought that Roger was likely to reoffend, especially after nearly two decades, they made it a condition of my taking the job that Roger not be involved in any activities involving children.”

St. Cat’s volunteers, I knew, had recently gone through a training program called Safeguarding God’s Children, which mandated that all children’s groups be supervised by two people-one male and one female-who were not related to one another.

“Yeah. I noticed except for special occasions, Roger pretty much stayed away from St. Cat’s. Paul and I thought he was attending another church.”

“He was. Roger’s a Methodist.”

“Have you talked to Bishop Williams?” I asked. Even thought the Right Reverend Ronald Francis Williams had only recently been installed as Bishop of Maryland, he would be Eva’s spiritual advisor, the pastor’s pastor, so to speak.

Eva nodded. “Ron’s been incredibly supportive, Hannah. He’s already issued a statement to the meda. I’m ‘understanding, compassionate, and one of the most effective pastors he’s ever worked with.’ ” Her face flushed. “But I doubt all those ten-dollar adjectives will do anything to head off the members of my flock who are clogging up cyberspace with demands for my immediate resignation.”

I’d been cradling my mug in my hands, sipping tea from time to time, but I put it down on the table. “Eva, I’m so sorry. It’s got to be devastating, both to you and to Roger. What made him backslide, do you think, especially after all these years?”

Eva didn’t hesitate a second before answering. “It’s that goddamn Internet. The Internet makes it far too easy for someone as vulnerable as Roger. Think about it! Before the Internet, Roger would have had to make a conscious decision to drive out to a Wal-Mart, wait around for a young girl to show up, make sure there were no surveillance cameras focusing in on him, before unzipping his pants and exposing himself.” She sighed. “Now Roger has a computer. He’s got a webcam. The chat rooms were beckoning. He could hide out on the other side of a computer screen behind an alias. Nothing happens face-to-face. No one gets hurt. It was seductive, and in the end, irresistible.”

“What’s Roger going to do now?”

Eva’s eyes glistened with tears. “I don’t know. He’s a sick man, Hannah. That’s crystal clear to me now. But I’m afraid the police won’t be interested in getting Roger the help he needs. They’ll throw the book at him instead.”

I wracked my brain, searching for words of comfort, but based on what I knew about the Montgomery County police, Roger was in deep, deep trouble, and would more than likely do time in jail. No way to sugar coat that. “I’m afraid you’re right, Eva.”

Eva stared at me for a few seconds, then laid her head on her arms and began to sob.

I’d gotten up from the table to get her a tissue when the doorbell rang. My gosh, Erika works fast!

“Don’t answer it, Eva.” I handed her the tissue, and while she wiped her eyes, I heaped bad news upon bad news, explaining to Eva what I knew about Erika Rose and her group of vigilantes, their numbers so recently swelled by one with the addition of my own daughter. “Let’s ignore them and have some more tea.”