“So tell me the rest. Please. This is your chance.”
“My chance for what?”
“For something good to come out of it. You can even the score now, and get on with your life. Just like you were saying I ought to do.”
“Okay, do not try lumping us together, Mitch, because compared to yours, my life totally sucks.”
“Grab hold of this chance, Allison. If you don’t, you’ll regret it for as long as you live. Trust me. Please, trust me.”
Slowly, she returned to the sofa and sat, still clutching her jacket and shoes. She wouldn’t look at him. Only into the fire. He got up and fed it with two more hickory logs. Refilled her wine glass. Then sat back down, waiting her out.
“Justine’s book pretty much says it all,” she said finally, in a voice that was flat and emotionless.
“So you’ve read it?”
“I wasn’t… I’m not as bad as the girl in her story,” she said, swallowing hard. “Justine bigged it up some. It happened a few times is all. And, believe me, I never liked doing it. I may have said that to her once, like I was bragging. There’s a lot I don’t remember. I was stoned all the time in those days. That’s what I liked-being stoned. Mitch, I was fourteen and stupid. My mom had split on us. My dad’s a long-haul trucker, and he was always on the road. Mostly it was just me and Lester. And his friends. And their dope. They were major, major stoners. I’m talking coke, meth, oxy. Once they started getting me high things just got out of control, okay? But after a few months my mom moved back in with us, and as soon as she found out what was going on she got me right into a drug program, and they set me up with a shrink. I was fine after that. I am fine. I smoke a little pot now and then, but I’m good.” Allison turned and gazed at Mitch steadily now. “Justine asked me if she could write about it and I said sure-as long as she changed the names and everything.”
“It doesn’t bother you that she’s done it?”
“I think it’s cool, actually, because it’s not about me. It’s about them. The phony assholes who are always lecturing us about family values and personal responsibility. I did a few of those fine, upstanding hypocrites, Mitch. That part’s all true. I did our high school principal right in his office. I did the resident trooper. He was the one who had the fishing boat. And, yeah, I did my minister. Once they found out about me they all wanted to ‘help’ me. They’re all just a bunch of horny married bastards who can’t wait to get over on a messed-up fourteen-year-old girl. Hell, I wasn’t even cute. I’m not cute. Not like Justine is. I know that.” Allison trailed off, hugging herself in morose silence. “I know too damned much.”
“Did you know that you could still file criminal charges against them?”
“I don’t even want to go there. That’s all behind me now. These days, I try real hard to see the good in people. I work hard. I pay my bills. I stay healthy. And I let no one into my heart.”
“You can’t live that way, Allison.”
“You totally can. I do it every day.”
“Justine’s book mentions a boy named Tommy who her character is madly in love with. Was there a Tommy?”
“He wasn’t any boy,” she replied woodenly. “He was a married man. And, yeah, I was crazy about him. He was crazy about me, too, in his own sick way. Kept telling me I was too sweet and wonderful to treat myself like I was. That I was his princess. Pretty weird thing for a guy to call you when he’s banging you in a motel room, don’t you think? He took me with him on his business trips. He never traveled far. Just York City, Boston, Vermont a couple of times. We’d stay overnight in a motor lodge along the turnpike. He’d get us a bottle and we’d smoke a joint together and he’d just go and go all night long. I don’t think his wife ever let him have any. He did like to brag. Kept telling me he’d be really rich someday. And when I turned eighteen he’d leave his wife and marry me. I believed him, too. But he turned out to be as big an asshole as the others. Once he’d had his fill he dumped me. That’s when I really hit bottom. I won’t lie-I even thought about doing myself in. God, I was so into him. I still am. Every time I see him my little heart goes pitter-patter.”
“He’s still around Dorset?”
“Yeah, I bump into him all of the time. When he sees me he panics and runs.” Allison flashed a quick, uncertain smile at Mitch. “I guess we don’t have any secrets from each other now, do we?”
“Except for one-his name. I think it might be important, Allison. Will you tell me?”
She hesitated a moment. “I might. But there are certain conditions.”
“Name them.”
“You have to pour me some more of that wine.”
“Done,” he said, reaching for the bottle. “What else?”
“You have to play me something on your guitar.”
“It won’t be a pleasant experience for you, Allison. Everything I play comes out sounding like “Purple Haze” and not in a good kind of way. But, okay, I can do that, too. What else?”
“You have to let me spend the night with you.”
CHAPTER 18
When the call came it was just past three in the morning and Des was finally getting somewhere in the studio. Not on her dreadful damned self-portrait. Hell no. Tonight, she’d thrown herself headlong into a portrait of Pete Mosher. This was her life’s mission, after all-illuminating the victims she encountered on the job. Them, not herself. Sometimes, the job had a way of bringing that realization home to her with startling clarity. Because she was feeling it again. Wielding her stub of graphite stick like a sword as she slashed away at the drawing pad, all of her energy and passion harnessed in pursuit of the only goal that was worth going after.
The truth.
What was Pete Mosher’s truth? Why had this bright, handsome bastard son of great wealth, a multimillionaire in his own right, dissolved into someone who picked through other peoples’ garbage? Why could he find no peace? As she stared at the crime-scene Polaroids of Pete that she’d clipped to her easel, Des kept thinking that he already seemed at one with the forest floor. At long last, Peter Ashton Mosher had found his peace. But he hadn’t exited peacefully. Somebody-make that two somebodys-had been determined to get even, get rich, get what? Was this about the money, or was there more to it?
And so Des drew. A few hours back, Mitch had called to say goodnight and to tell her that Mark Widdifield had withdrawn the last five thousand dollars in his checking account that day. Supposedly, he wanted to run off to St. Kitts with Danielle. Mitch had gotten this from Danielle, who he felt was in way over her head with her troubled brother-in-law. Which Des could be-lieve. But she wasn’t so sure whether Mark was as interested in Danielle as he claimed to be. Could be Mark was just playing Danielle-using her as a convenient cover for his cash withdrawal. True, he did appear to be a helpless soul in the midst of a genuine midlife meltdown. Yet he was also an intelligent, creative man who was still legally married to Claudia and therefore had a vested interest in the family’s financial affairs. How deep into this murder might Mark be? What had he gotten himself into? What had Mitch gotten himself into? Des wondered, because there had been an edge in his voice on the phone. There was something the doughboy wasn’t sharing with her. To do with what? That statutory rape business he’d dropped on her at lunch? She had her concerns. Mitch had a great big heart but he was a product of the MGM golden age. He had no idea just how far real people could go to get what they wanted. And his phone voice had sounded so strange that, well, she could have sworn someone else had been there with him. Which had to be her imagination.
Didn’t it?
She drew, feeling Pete’s madness and his sadness as Al Green cried about his own pain on the stereo. She was barefoot, clad only in the ancient, tattered West Point T-shirt that was almost long enough to cover her tattoo. The big fire in the studio fireplace kept her warm, as did The Balvenie twenty-one-year-old single malt scotch on the stand next to her. She’d set one spot beam on the drawing pad. Lit some candles. Beyond the studio, her house lay in darkness.
Des drew, feeling weightless on the balls of her feet. Dancing like Ali danced back when he was still Cassius slaying the mighty Liston. She floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee, the tendons popping in her arm, her skin tingling. There was her and there was the page. Nothing else. She hadn’t felt this connected in weeks. And she
