Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

But her small face looked vulnerable and troubled. Her pitiful girlishness seemed to be asking him for some kind of trust, or sympathy. Still, she wouldn’t let him touch her. She stiffened if he came near her, or put out a hand to her.

Selby could feel the rebuke in her tense shoulders and tightly locked hands. Since the night he had carried her from Barby Kane’s trailer there had been this barrier between them.

“There were a couple of things we should talk about, Shana. You feel up to it?”

“Sure, it’s okay. That’s what everybody’s doing now, talking and talking about it. Charlotte told me Josey said I rode my bike on Fairless only because I like to hear the mushroom workers in the trucks whistling at me.” Her voice was low, but the words came so fast they nearly blurred together. “The detectives asked everybody at school if I smoked grass and cut classes. Even Charlotte keeps hinting about what it was like and was he handsome . So we might as well talk about it too. What’s the difference?”

“Well, to make an obvious point, I’m your father and that isn’t going to change. So you’re stuck with that, which is one way to look at it, if you want to.”

He tried to keep his tone calm but he didn’t quite understand her resentment and her seeming distrust of him. He knew what pain was, and he guessed he wanted her at least to give him credit for that.

Right now he only knew what Dr. Kerr had told him, and what he had learned from Nurse Redden and the detectives. Shana had been driven to a house in the country, over roads she wasn’t familiar with, and there — in a room with a water-stained ceiling and a stone fireplace with a deer’s head hung above it — she had been bound to a cot and beaten and repeatedly raped.

But Dr. Kerr had advised him not to press her for details.

Selby told her what he’d heard that afternoon at the switching yards near Buck Run, but she shrugged and said, “I’ve told you, I don’t know where I was, daddy. Maybe I heard some things, but maybe I just imagined them.”

“When you got out of the car at Pyle’s Corners, do you remember what you did?”

“I’m not sure. Just part of it.”

“Do you recall buying a candy bar at the Mobil station?”

“Did I do that?”

“A woman who lives across from the church saw you. You walked to the gas station. It was raining, but there was light enough for her to see you.”

“I remember eating something sweet. So I guess I did buy a candy bar. What difference does that make?”

“The woman told the police it was ten o’clock. But you didn’t get to Barby’s for another three hours. Sergeant Wilger suggested we talk about it, and see if we could fill in that gap.”

She was staring down at her clenched hands. “It was raining. I know that. But I’m not sure about anything else. I just walked up Fairlee to Barby’s.”

“But that wouldn’t take three hours.”

“Maybe I stopped, rested. I don’t know.”

“Did you go somewhere else before you went to Barby’s? Were you with anybody else?”

He saw a flash of anger in her face. Her eyes had narrowed. “If you believe that, I can’t help it.”

“Shana, I’m trying to help you. I know a little about how you felt that night, try and believe me. If we talk it over maybe we can find some answers. You say it was raining. Did you try to find someplace that was dry? Did you go inside anywhere?”

She nodded slowly. “I was in a car. I remember the sound of the rain on the roof.”

He said quietly, “Who was driving, Shana?”

“Nobody was driving. It was on the side of the road and I got into it to get out of the rain.”

“And you sat all alone in an empty car on Fairlee Road for three hours?”

“It wasn’t on Fairlee Road. It was parked off the road in some kind of clearing.”

“You sat there for three hours?”

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Okay, okay, I heard you. There’s no reason to shout, Shana. But I don’t understand it.”

“I tell you everything I know, then you look mad and say you don’t understand. So what’s the point of talking?”

“I’m sorry if I upset you. But I still don’t understand. Why didn’t you come home after it happened?”

She swung around and stared at him. Her eyes were bright with tears. “I wanted to think, can’t you understand that? As long as I stayed in that car alone, what happened belonged to me and nobody else. I wanted to be sure of every thought I had, everything he did to me and why he did it, and why he hated me so much he needed to hurt me.”

“Why are you wasting your sympathy on that damn psychopath?”

“Because he was part of it,” she shouted. “There were two of us that night. I know what I did and what I felt, but I’ve got to understand why he did it, what it meant for him .”

“Shana, Dr. Kerr wants you to forget that part of it, for now anyway.”

“Does he? Well, it didn’t happen to him . I don’t want to forget it. I don’t ever want to wonder about it. That’s why I stayed in that car. Because after I called you, I knew it wouldn’t belong to me anymore. It would belong to everybody, to Dr. Kerr and the police and all my friends at school. They could make up their own stories about what happened and it wouldn’t be mine anymore, and there would never be the one single truth ever again.”

She was crying but her face was tight with anger. “But I know what happened. I’ll never be afraid to think about it. No matter what anybody says, I’ll know the truth. You can’t help me, and nobody else can either.”

After dinner Selby returned jerry Goldbirn’s call. A secretary at the casino told him Mr. Goldbirn was in Aspen but would be back in his office the following afternoon. Would he care to leave a message?

Davey came in with the county map and spread it on the coffee table near the fire.

“I heard Shana shouting when you were in her room.” Davey looked at him, the flames reflected on his soft wavy hair. “Is she going to kill herself or something?”

Selby said sharply, “Where’d you get that idea? Did she say something to you?”

“Not about killing herself, dad, but she’s mad all the time.” He sighed. “Everything’s my fault, no matter what I do. Yesterday she cut a picture out of the sports page, the whole top of the page, and when I asked her about it, she blew up and told me to mind my own business.” He sighed again. “When I asked her if she wanted to shoot some baskets with Normie and me, she started crying and said she never wanted to see him again, or me either.” He said gloomily, “People who act... well, who act like that...”

Selby patted his son’s shoulder. “We’ve just got to be patient with her.” He paused. “What kind of picture did she cut out of the paper?”

“It was something about a sports car show, that’s all I saw... Did she remember anything about those diesels and railroad cars, dad?”

“No.”

“Well, if she’d ever cool off” — Davey pointed to the map — “we could ask her about this.” Davey traced a line on the map. “The Embryville road turns off at the Stoneville grade school. The night it happened, Stoneville had a soccer game with Upland Country. I know a guy there, Jimmy Cox, he’s in fifth grade, that’s how I know. I mean, I called him.”

“Yes?”

“Well, those kids playing soccer would have been yelling and screaming. It could’ve sounded like birds or something, couldn’t it, dad?”

“ Sure . At a distance, it might have sounded like flocks of shrill birds. It’s worth checking...”

“Dad, do you really think Shana will be okay?”