In the Woods полностью

"Ms. Sandra Scully?" I said. She nodded warily. I saw her peg us as cops, well before our IDs were out, and get ready to go on the defensive. Somewhere in the house a toddler was yelling and banging on something metallic. "I'm Detective Ryan, and this is Detective Maddox. She'd like to speak with you for a few minutes."

I felt Cassie shift almost imperceptibly beside me, clocking the signal. If I hadn't been sure, I would have said "we," and we would both have gone through the routine Katy Devlin questions with her until I made up my mind one way or the other. But I was sure, and Sandra was likely to be more comfortable talking about this without a guy in the room.

Sandra's jaw hardened. "Is this about Declan? Because you can tell that old bitch I took the stereo off him after the last time, so if she's hearing anything it's the voices in her head."

"No, no, no," Cassie said easily. "Nothing like that. We're just working on an old case, and we thought you might remember some bits and pieces that could help us out. Can I come in?"

She stared at Cassie for a moment, then gave a defeated little shrug. "Do I have a choice?" She stepped back, opening the door a fraction wider; I smelled something frying.

"Thanks," Cassie said. "I'll try not to take too much of your time." As she went into the house she glanced over her shoulder and gave me a tiny, reassuring wink. Then the door slammed behind her.

She was gone a long time. I sat in the car and chain-smoked until I ran out of cigarettes; then I bit my cuticles and drummed Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on the steering wheel and picked dirt out of the dashboard with my car key. I wished crazily that I had thought of putting a wire on Cassie, or something, just in case there was a moment when it might help if I went in there. It wasn't that I didn't trust her; but she hadn't been there that day, and I had, and Sandra appeared to have turned into a pretty tough cookie somewhere along the way, and I couldn't be positive that Cassie would know the right questions to ask. I had the windows rolled down and I could still hear the toddler yelling and banging; then Sandra's voice, raised sharply, and a smack, and the toddler howling, more in outrage than in pain. I remembered her neat little white teeth when she laughed, the mysterious shadowy valley in the V of her top.

After what felt like hours I heard the door close, and Cassie came down the drive with a snap in her step. She got into the car and blew out her breath. "Well. You were bang on. It took her awhile to start talking, but once she did…"

My heart was pounding, whether with triumph or panic I couldn't tell. "What'd she say?"

Cassie already had her cigarettes out and was rummaging for a lighter. "Drive around the corner or something. She didn't like the car sitting outside; she says it looks like a cop car and the neighbors'll talk."

I got us out of the estate, parked on the shoulder opposite the dig, bummed one of Cassie's girl smokes and found a light. "So?"

"Do you know what she said?" Cassie rolled down the window violently and blew smoke out of it, and I suddenly realized she was furious, furious and shaken. "She said, 'It wasn't rape or anything, they just made me do it.' She said it like three times. Thank God the kids are too young to be anything to do with-"

"Cass," I said, as calmly as I could. "From the beginning?"

"The beginning is she started going out with Cathal Mills when she was sixteen and he was nineteen. He was, God knows why, considered extremely cool, and Sandra was mad about him. Jonathan Devlin and Shane Waters were his best mates. Neither of them had a girlfriend, Jonathan was into Sandra, Sandra liked him, and one fine day about six months into the relationship Cathal tells her that Jonathan wants to, and I quote, 'do her' and that he thinks this would be a lovely idea. Like he's giving his mate a sip of his beer or something. Jesus, this was the eighties, they didn't even have condoms-"

"Cass-"

She threw the lighter out of the window at a tree. Cassie has a pretty good arm; it cracked off the trunk and flew into the undergrowth. I had seen her in a temper before-I tell her it's her French grandfather's fault, Mediterranean lack of self-control-and I knew she'd settle down now that she'd taken it out on the tree. I made myself wait. She thumped back against her seat, drew on her cigarette and, after a moment, gave me a sheepish sideways grin.

"You owe me a lighter, prima donna," I told her. "Now what's the story?"

"And you still owe me last year's Christmas present. Anyway. Sandra actually didn't have much of a problem with the idea of shagging Jonathan. It happened once or twice, everyone was a little embarrassed afterwards, they got over it, everything was fine-"

"When was this?"