Тесс Герритсен - I Know a Secret

“It’s the only place I could rent,” said Martin, reading the distaste in Jane’s face. “Can’t go back to my house in Brookline, even though it’s still in my name. I’m a convicted sex offender, and the house is near a playground. I can’t live anyplace where children might go. Had to put the house on the market just to pay the taxes. So this is it now. Home sweet home.” He waved at the stained carpet, the threadbare sofa, and looked at them. “Why are you here?”

“We want to ask about your activities, Mr. Stanek. Where you were on certain days.”

“Why should I cooperate? After what was done to me?”

“Done to you ?” said Jane. “You think you’re the victim?”

“Do you have any idea what happens to convicted pedophiles in prison? You think the guards try to keep you safe? No one gives a fuck if you live or die. They just stitch you up and throw you back to the wolves.” His voice cracked. He turned away and sank into a chair at the kitchen table.

After a moment, Frost pulled out a chair and sat down as well. Quietly, he asked, “What happened to you in prison, Mr. Stanek?”

“What happened?” Martin raised his head and pointed at his own scarred face. “You can see what happened. The first night they knocked out three of my teeth. The next week they blew out my cheekbone. Then they smashed the fingers in my right hand. Then it was my left testicle.”

“I’m sorry to hear about that, sir,” Frost said. He did sound sorry. In the game of Good Cop, Bad Cop, Frost was always cast as Good Cop because the role was so natural to him. He was known as the Boy Scout of the homicide unit, friend to dogs and cats, kids and old ladies. The man you couldn’t corrupt, so no one ever tried to.

Even Martin seemed to realize this was not an act. Frost’s quiet note of sympathy made Martin suddenly look away, a sheen in his eyes. “What do you want from me?” he asked.

“Where were you on November tenth?” asked Jane, the Bad Cop. This time it was not merely an act; since becoming a mother, any crime against a child was a trigger point for her. Giving birth to Regina had made Jane feel vulnerable to all the Martin Staneks in this world.

Martin scowled at her. “I don’t know where I was on November tenth. Do you remember where you were two months ago?”

“What about December sixteenth?”

“Ditto. No idea. Probably sitting right here.”

“And December twenty-fourth?”

“Christmas Eve? That I do know. I was at St. Clare’s Church, eating dinner. They have a special holiday meal every year for people like me. People with no friends or families. Roast turkey and cornbread stuffing and mashed potatoes. Pumpkin pie for dessert. Ask them. They probably remember I was there. I’m ugly enough to be memorable.”

Jane and Frost glanced at each other. If confirmed, it gave Stanek an alibi for Tim McDougal’s murder. That would certainly present a problem.

“Why are you asking these questions?” he said.

“Remember those children you molested twenty years ago?”

“Never happened.”

“You were tried and convicted, Mr. Stanek.”

“By a jury who believed a pack of lies. By a prosecutor on a witch hunt.”

“By children who dared to speak up.”

“They were too young to know better. They said whatever they were told to say. Crazy things, impossible things. Read the transcripts; see for yourself. Martin killed a cat and made us drink the blood. Martin took us into the woods to meet the devil. Martin made a tiger fly. Do you think any of that happened?”

“The jury did.”

“They were fed a load of crap. The prosecutors said we worshiped the devil — even my mom, who went to Mass three times a week. They said I picked up the kids in my bus and drove them to the woods to molest them. They even accused me of killing that little girl.”

“Lizzie DiPalma.”

“All because her hat was on my bus. Then that nasty Mrs. Devine went to the police and suddenly I’m a monster. I kill and eat kids for breakfast.”

“Mrs. Devine? Holly’s mother?”

“That woman saw the devil everywhere. Took one look at me and declared me evil. No wonder her little girl had so many tales to tell. How I tied kids to trees and sucked their blood and molested them with sticks. Then the prosecutors got the other kids to repeat the stories, and this is the result.” Again he pointed to his face. “Twenty years in jail, a broken nose, a smashed jaw. Half my teeth gone. I survived only because I learned to fight back, unlike my dad. They said he died of a stroke. They said he popped a vessel and bled into his brain. The truth is, prison destroyed him. But it didn’t destroy me, because I didn’t let it. I’m gonna live long enough to see justice.”

“Justice?” said Jane. “Or vengeance?”

“Sometimes there’s no difference.”

“Twenty years in prison gives you a lot of time to think, to build up a big head of rage. Time to plan how you’ll get back at the people who put you there.”

“You bet I want to get back at them.”

“Even though they were just kids at the time?”

“What?”

“The kids you molested, Mr. Stanek. You’re making them pay for telling the police what you did to them.”

“I wasn’t talking about the kids. I was talking about that bitch of a prosecutor. Erica Shay knew we were innocent, and she burned us at the stake anyway. When this journalist I’ve been talking to writes her book, it’ll all come out.”

“Interesting description you just used: burned at the stake. ” Jane looked at the painting of the Madonna and child hanging on his wall. “I see you’re a religious man.”

“Not anymore.”

“Then why hang that portrait of Mary and Jesus?”

“Because it was my mother’s. It’s all I have left of her. That and some photos.”

“You were raised Catholic. I bet you know all your saints and martyrs.”

“What’re you talking about?”

Was that genuine bewilderment she saw in his eyes, the baffled response of an innocent man? Or is he just a very good actor?

“Tell me how Saint Lucy died,” she said.

“Why?”

“Do you know or not?”

He shrugged. “Saint Lucy was tortured, and they cut out her eyes.”

“And Saint Sebastian?”

“The Romans shot him full of arrows. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Cassandra Coyle. Tim McDougal. Sarah Byrne. Those names mean anything to you?”

He was silent, but his face had paled.

“Surely you remember the kids you picked up every day after school? The kids who rode in your bus? The kids who told the prosecutor what you did to them when no one was looking?”

“I didn’t do anything to them.”

“They’re dead, Mr. Stanek, all three of them. All since you got out of prison. Isn’t it interesting how you served twenty years in prison, you’re finally released, and suddenly, bam bam bam, people start dying.”

He rocked back in his chair as though slammed there by a physical blow. “You think I killed them?”

“Can you blame us for reaching that conclusion?”

He gave a disbelieving laugh. “Yeah, who else’re you gonna blame? Somehow it always points to me.”

“Did you kill them?”

“No, I did not kill them. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to prove it anyway.”

“I tell you what we’re going to do, Mr. Stanek,” said Jane. “We are now going to search your residence and your vehicle. You can cooperate and give us permission. Or we can do it the hard way, with a warrant.”

“I don’t have a vehicle,” he said dully.

“Then how do you get around?”