'A what?'
'I represent athletes.'
'So what do you have to do with this?'
'I'm a friend,' Myron said. 'I'm trying to find Kathy.'
'Is she alive?'
'I don't know. But you seem to think so.'
Dean Gordon opened his bottom drawer, took out a cigarette, lit it.
'Bad for you,' Myron said.
'I quit smoking five years ago. Or so everyone thinks.'
'Another little secret?'
He smiled without humor. 'So you were the one who sent me the magazine.'
Myron shook his head. 'Nope.'
'Then who?'
'I don't know. I'm trying to figure that out. But I know about it. And I also know you're hiding something about Kathy's disappearance.'
He inhaled deeply and let loose a long stream of smoke. 'I could deny it could deny everything we said here today.'
'You could,' Myron countered. 'But of course I have the magazine. I have no reason to lie. And I also have a friend in Sheriff Jake Courter. But you're right. In the end it would be my word against yours.'
Dean Gordon took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'No,' he said slowly, 'it won't come down to that. I meant what I said before. I want to help her. I need to help her.'
Myron was not sure what to think. The man looked in genuine pain, but Myron had seen performances that would put Olivier to shame. Was his guilt real? Was his sudden catharsis the result of having a conscience, or was it self-preservation? Myron didn't know. He didn't much care either, as long as he got to the truth.
'When was the last time you saw Kathy?' Myron asked.
'The night she vanished,' he said.
'She came to your house?'
He nodded. 'It was late. I guess around eleven, eleven-thirty. I was in my study. My wife was upstairs in bed. The doorbell rang. Not once.
Repeatedly, urgently. Interspersed with heavy door-pounding. It was Kathy.'
His voice was on autopilot, as if he were reading a fairy tale to a child.
'She was crying. Or rather she was sobbing uncontrollably. So much so that she couldn't speak. I brought her into my study. I poured her some brandy and wrapped an afghan around her shoulders. She looked' - he stopped, considered - Very small. Helpless. I sat down across from her and took her hand. She jerked it back. That was when the tears stopped. Not slowly, but all at once, as though a switch had been thrown. She became very still. Her face was completely blank, no emotion whatsoever. Then she started talking.'
He reached into the drawer for another cigarette. He put it in his mouth.
The match lit on the fourth try.
'She started from the beginning,' he continued. 'Her voice was remarkably steady. It never cracked or wavered - uncanny, when you consider the fact that she was hysterical just moments earlier. But her words belied her placid tone. She told me stories-' He stopped again, shook his head. 'They were surprising, to say the least. I had known Kathy for almost a year. I considered her a thoughtful, sweet, proper young woman. I am not making moral judgments here. But she had always been what I considered old-fashioned. And here she was telling me stories that would make a sailor blush.
She started by telling me that she used to be everything I always thought she was. The girl next door. Everyone's favorite. But then she changed. She became, in her own words, "a free-wheeling slut." She started with some boys in her high school class. But she quickly moved onto bigger things.
Adults, teachers, friends of her parents. Biracial, homosexual, two-on-ones, even orgies. She took pictures of her encounters. For posterity, she said with a sneer.'
'Did she mention any names?' Myron asked. 'Of the teachers or adults or anyone?'
'No. No names.'
They fell into silence. Dean Gordon looked exhausted.
'What happened next?' Myron prompted.
He lifted his head slowly, as though it took great effort. 'Her story began to change direction,' he said. 'For the better. She said she realized that what she was doing was wrong and stupid. She began, she said, to work through her problems. That was when she met Christian and fell in love. She wanted to put it all behind her, but it wasn't easy. The past wouldn't just go away.
She tried and tried, and then…' His voice trailed off.
'And then?' Myron prompted.
'Then Kathy just looked at me - I'll never forget this - and she said, "I was raped tonight." Just like that. Out of nowhere. I was stunned, of course.
There were six of them, she said. Or seven, she wasn't sure. A gang-rape in the locker room. I asked her when. She told me it had started less than an hour ago. She had gone to the locker room to meet someone. A blackmailer, she said. A former, uh, suitor, who had threatened to reveal her past. She was going to pay for his silence.'
The big cash withdrawal from her trust account, Myron thought.
'But when she got to the locker room, the blackmailer wasn't alone.
