She pulled out into the stream of cars that had disgorged their children. Traffic was sluggish, but she’d allowed extra time before her class. She turned on NPR, listened to five minutes of one disaster after another, then turned the radio off. They never seemed to report good news.
How could she keep her children safe, yet allow them enough freedom to grow? How could she teach them to avoid monsters without destroying their trust in decent people? How could she protect them from her own fears? Her panic attacks came less frequently and were shorter and less severe, but she still had them.
She forced herself to turn into Overton Park. This early she could drive the winding roads through the golf course and the Old Forest without meeting another car. Her sweaty palms slipped on the steering wheel, and she could feel the pulse thrumming in her throat. “You can do this,” she whispered.
In the two weeks since she’d begun to drive to work through the park, she hadn’t dared to turn from the main road into the Old Forest. She’d promised herself that today was the day. She would stop by the side of the road where she’d been found, maybe even get out and look at the spot. Demystify it. It was only a bunch of shrubbery.
February was its usual cold, dreary self, but she started the air-conditioning to dry the sweat between her shoulder blades. A moment later she switched it off. Her teeth were chattering.
She swung right onto the narrow forest road where the aged oaks and maples met overhead. Their leafless branches drooped over her car like threatening brown stalactites. Even in winter the lane was shadowy.
She inched along the road and studied the underbrush. It all looked so different. Was it here? Farther along? Behind her? On this curve? How could she not recognize the place she’d been dumped?
When a pickup drove into view around the curve behind her, she floored the BMW, barely braked at the stop sign onto the parkway and drove ten miles over the speed limit until she pulled into her allotted parking space at the college. Undoubtedly a commuter taking a shortcut, but she’d freaked. She hit the steering wheel hard enough to bruise the sides of her hands.
She turned off the ignition and took deep breaths to calm her heart rate. Her face in the rearview mirror looked as gray as though a vampire had sucked her dry.
The bastard had sucked her life dry. She would take it back. Milo felt he was in charge of keeping her safe. He’d seen her curled up on the floor of her closet. Vi was always wary, watching for signs of an imminent attack. Children should believe their mother was in control, invulnerable, there.
Sooner or later, the bastard would come to kill her. She felt it in her bones. Which was why she had to kill him first.
She lifted her chin and felt her pulse. No longer stroke territory. And, finally calm, she climbed from the car, picked up her briefcase and started up the stairs toward the liberal arts building.
She’d only downed a can of tomato juice as she left the house to take the children to school. Now her stomach rumbled in protest, so she detoured to the student union for a bagel and tea in the twenty minutes before class. Since juniors and seniors avoided early classes, she had the cafeteria to herself except for a couple of bleary-eyed freshmen.
She opened the bound notebook she used for her rape notes. At the top of a new page she wrote the same two points she’d written at the head of every page for the last six months. Find him. The police hadn’t managed in two years, with all their resources. What chance did she have?
She underlined the second item so hard the pen tore the paper.
Make him find you.
In the meantime, however, she had to try to teach thirty freshmen how to construct a five-paragraph essay, a task they should have perfected in junior high. Most of them acted as though she was teaching them ancient Greek.
She stopped in the faculty common room for another cup of tea to take with her to class. At this hour she was usually alone. This morning, though, Albert Barkley, full professor of American literature, sat in one of the worn blue club chairs by the window, reading the New York Times Sunday Book Review. He blinked at her over his glasses, then put the paper down and raised an eyebrow. “Something different about our Helen of Troy this morning. You must have launched another thousand ships.”
“Not even a kayak, Al,” she said as she poured her tea. He hated being called Al, which was why the faculty did it.
“There is something different about you. You seem, I don’t know, girded about the loins. Planning to go into battle?”
“Think of me as a female Daniel headed into the lions’ den,” she said as she emptied a packet of artificial sweetener into her Earl Gray. “One of these days maybe I won’t have to face English 101.”
“Only after I die and leave a full professorship open. Until then be grateful for your tenure and your paltry literature courses, and think of Idiot English 101 as sparing you hell after you die. You’ve already served your time.”
She walked upstairs to her classroom and thought that if Albert the Oblivious could recognize something different about her, she must actually be sending out different vibes. The self-defense course had been a first step in her plan to protect herself and kill the man she always thought of as “the bastard.” The second was to change her appearance. The third was to set herself up as a target.
“I will learn to use my softness against his hardness,” she whispered, and caught the startled expression on the face of a junior coming down the stairs toward her. That remark would be all over campus before lunchtime.
“IT’S A LEGITIMATE cold case,” Randy said. He’d made certain Lieutenant Gavigan and the others had read Detective O’Hara’s notes on Streak’s case before their morning meeting.
“No forensic evidence and no suspect,” Gavigan said. “Dead end. Gonna stay a dead end.”
Jack Samuels and Liz Slaughter sat in front of Gavigan’s desk. Randy rested a hip on the edge of the credenza.
“These guys don’t normally stop on their own, Lieut,” Randy said, and spread his hands. “I doubt this rape is an isolated incident. He’s either moved away, he’s dead or disabled, he’s in jail, or he’s raped others and will rape more.”
“Gotta be,” Jack said.
Liz had already assumed the pregnant woman’s position, with hands folded on her belly. “Can’t hurt to check it out. More cases equals more chances he slipped up, so we can catch him.”
“I get the feeling I’m being sandbagged here,” Gavigan said. “I’ll go this far. Randy, talk to O’Hara. After all this time new cases will have forced him to move your girlfriend’s assault to the back burner.”
“Not my girlfriend. I told you, she’s just a member of my class. If there’s anything she didn’t say during the original investigation, either because she chose not to or didn’t remember, I’m in the best place to tease it out of her memory. We agree on that?”
The other three nodded.
“I like Streak. I’d like to get this guy for her sake.”
“Streak?” Gavigan asked.
Randy explained.
“Prematurely gray hair?” Liz asked. “How come she doesn’t dye it?”
“I kind of like the streak in her hair, although I wish she’d fix herself up so she doesn’t look like a vagrant. And it’s white, not gray.”
“Bet you five bucks she didn’t look so frumpy before the assault,” Jack said. “It’s camouflage. She’s hiding, and blames herself. Why not? Everybody else probably blames her.” He shook his head.