Hold Still (23 page)

FORTY-SIX

November 9th

It had been two days
since the press conference and what the press had dubbed the “Schoolteacher Attackers” were still on the loose. Jocelyn sat at her desk with her cell phone pressed between her ear and shoulder, sifting through her messages while she listened to Olivia recount all the things she had eaten at Martina’s that evening.

“And grapes and a cup of water and a fish stick, Mommy,” she said proudly.

“No soup?”

“No soup,” Olivia confirmed. “Can I have stickers?”

Jocelyn smiled. “Yes, you definitely get stickers for grapes and fish sticks. I’ll give them to you in the morning, okay?”

“Then I’ll get my dolly?”

“Well, we’ll see. You have to get all the way to the top of the chart first, remember? Remember how we talked about how you get the doll once you fill all the boxes with stickers?”

There was a pause. Jocelyn could hear
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse
playing in the background and Raquel singing. “Did I fill it up yet?” Olivia asked.

Jocelyn laughed. The chart was great, and she wanted to kiss Caleb for suggesting it. Well, she wanted to do a lot more than kiss him, but it was still a slightly difficult concept for Olivia to grasp. Caleb assured her that once they filled up the first chart and she got her reward, Olivia would get it. Until then, Jocelyn had to keep going over the logistics of the chart repeatedly.

“I don’t think so, honey,” she said. “We’ll check it in the morning, okay?”

Jocelyn heard Raquel in the background, “Olivia, Olivia, let’s play Mommy and baby.”

Then Olivia’s voice, the chart already forgotten. “Bye, Mommy, love you!”

“Love you too, sweetheart,” Jocelyn replied, but Olivia had already hung up. No sooner had Jocelyn tossed her cell onto her desk, than it rang. She recognized Caleb’s number immediately. It hadn’t taken her long to memorize it. She had considered saving him as a contact, but she didn’t want to jinx things.

“Hey,” she answered, trying to sound professional and not giddy. She was at work, after all. “You got something on Warner and Donovan?”

There was a hesitation. She heard people talking in the background and then in what sounded like a strained voice, “No, not that.”

Jocelyn frowned. “Any word on Raeann?”

“No. I—this isn’t about that case,” Caleb said.

Jocelyn hunched over her desk. She glanced around, but only Chen and two other detectives were there, and all three were engrossed in their own phone conversations. “What’s going on?” she asked, lowering her voice.

Caleb cleared his throat. “You know that child pornography case I’ve been working on?”

She suppressed a groan. She had no idea where this was headed, but nothing that started with those words could be good. Her hands suddenly felt clammy. “Yeah,” she said.

“I’ve got a suspect here. He, uh, he wants to talk to you. In fact, he will only talk to you.”

“He asked for me by name?” she said, nonplussed.

“Yes. Think you can come down here?”

“Uh, sure,” she said. “Caleb, what’s this guy’s name?”

“Whitman,” he replied. “Zachary Whitman.”

She recognized his name, of course. After the run-in with James Evans, she’d looked up the list of her sister’s rapists to see what had become of them. She didn’t recognize Whitman’s face. He bore a passing resemblance to the rail-thin, longhaired boy in her yearbook. He was fatter and his brown hair was cut short, parted in the middle and brushed back into a feathered look. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a well-kept goatee.
Very professorial
, Jocelyn thought, which was appropriate. He was now a criminology professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He had made a life of studying crime and its patterns. The irony was not lost on her.

Whitman sat alone in the interrogation room, wearing a sport jacket over a pink collared shirt. He leaned his elbows on the table, hands folded in front of him. He looked pretty serene for a man facing a slew of child pornography charges.

As Jocelyn studied him through the tiny square in the door, Caleb hovered beside her. “What’ve you got on him?” she asked.

“A cache of pornographic photos on his computer. It was old stuff. The photos he had have been circulating for several years. We can get these fuckers off the street, but the photos are out there. The digital age, you know? Anyway, they were all of girls—probably ten to twelve years old. Some naked, some in various sex acts. We got a couple of other guys last month, same photos. They appear to be from the same source. We’re trying to track it down, but it looks like it might be overseas. ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement—is working on that end of things. So for now, we’ll just charge the sickos and take away their computers.”

Jocelyn glared through the small window, although Whitman couldn’t see her. Her stomach felt weightless and hollow. She clenched and unclenched her jaw, grinding her teeth.

Caleb studied her. “You know him?”

Jocelyn nodded. “When we were teenagers, he helped gang-rape my sister.”

Without waiting for Caleb’s reaction, she pushed through the door.

Whitman smiled when he saw her, like she was an old friend. “Jocelyn Rush.”

She kept her face impassive. “Detective Rush,” she corrected.

His eyebrows rose. “Ah, yes. Detective. My apologies.” Another amiable smile.

Jocelyn remained standing, arms crossed in front of her. “What do you want, Whitman?”

“Dr. Whitman.”

“You’re in police custody for child pornography. I’ll call you whatever I want. Now, shithead. What do you want?”

Whitman sighed and looked at the table. Jocelyn noticed the dark smudges under his eyes, the sallow look beneath the glasses and facial hair.

“I’m gay, Detective.”

“So, you like to jerk off to pictures of little boys instead of little girls. That still makes you a piece of shit. Why should I give a rat’s ass?”

A tiny, grim smile remained on his face. He let a moment pass. Then, “In high school I got teased a lot. The other boys—they were always thinking up new ways to torture and humiliate me. They called me faggot. Before that night—”

Jocelyn stepped forward and laid a palm on the table. “Before the rape.”

Whitman hung his head and averted his eyes. “Before the rape, I was an object of ridicule, a punching bag, a receptacle for all their hatred and fear.”

Jocelyn exhaled noisily. “If you expect me to feel sorry for you, you’re talking to the wrong person.”

He met her eyes. “I was the lookout,” he blurted. “I didn’t even participate, but I was there. I saw—”

She had a sudden flash of Whitman’s eye peering at her through a crack in the door to her sister’s bedroom.
The door opened and a hand reached for her.
The image was like an uppercut to her solar plexus. She spun on her heel and turned away from the table where Whitman sat, barely suppressing the gasp that escaped her lips. This wasn’t the same as the nightmares. This felt like a real memory. She paced before him. She didn’t want to remain stationary and give him time to study her too closely. Her heart thumped hard in her chest. She swallowed. “You watched.”

He nodded. “Yes. I watched,” he said, his voice small and
mournful. “After that, they treated me with respect. They treated me like one of them. When your dad came around asking questions, I ratted them all out without hesitation. They thought Camille had told, they never even suspected—”

“Is there a point to this?” Jocelyn asked impatiently, finally coming to rest before him, her composure intact.

He held her gaze, drawing each word out. “I’m sorry.”

Jocelyn chuckled. “You’re sorry? It’s a little fucking late, Whitman. If you were that sorry, you would have confessed before the statute of limitations was up, you prick. We’re finished here.”

She turned to leave. He said, “I watched that night and I didn’t stop it, but I have never engaged in the exchange of child pornography. Look at what they’ve got on me, Detective Rush. Little girls, all little girls. I’m gay and I like men, not boys. I think you know who is doing this to me, and I’d like you to ask them to back off.”

She turned slowly, trying to keep her face blank. “What did you say?”

The cordial smile remained on his face. “I’m asking you to back off.”

She advanced on him, coming to the table, and poked a finger at her own chest. “Me?”

He said nothing. He merely held her gaze, unwavering. “You can’t change a person’s sexuality,” he said quietly. “Think about it. Are you gay or straight, Detective?”

Jocelyn shook her head. “Are you fucking kidding me? None of your fucking business.”

“So, you’re straight then.”

Jocelyn remained silent, glaring at him from across the table.

“If you knew that it was illegal—harmful, even—to be with men in a sexual way, could you force yourself to become attracted to women? You might be able to put on a good show, have some superficial relationships, but your attraction to men would never go away. You can’t change your sexuality.”

Jocelyn said, “Again, I ask, do you have a fucking point?”

“I like men, not children. I’ve always been attracted to men. I’m not a pedophile.”

Jocelyn rolled her eyes. “The evidence would suggest otherwise.”

He raised a skeptical brow. “You and I both know that evidence was planted—”

She put a hand on her hip. “You think I
planted
child pornography in your home? You really are a sick fuck.”

“How do you explain it, then?”

“Explain what?”

“There were five of us. One dead. One in prison. Of the three that remained, all of us were charged with child pornography in the last year—the worst possible thing to be accused of—even if we’re exonerated, we’ll carry a stigma for the rest of our lives. It didn’t start until your father died. Our deal was with him—we paid and he didn’t prosecute. He’s dead, and the statute has run. Now the rest of us are accused of these awful crimes. Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”

Jocelyn shrugged noncommittally. “You’re all rapists.
That’s
not a coincidence. I don’t think it’s a stretch that you’re all perverts too.”

“What about the crane? I talked to Michael. A few months before he was arrested—before he killed himself—he found one in his home. It was on top of his computer monitor. There was no sign of a break-in. Nothing was disturbed, but a crane was left for him. Just like me. And James—he was arrested last week. He found a crane on top of his home computer just a few weeks ago.”

Cold crept up Jocelyn’s limbs. “Did you leave the crane in my car?”

Whitman smiled. “Henry did. I couldn’t get the hang of folding them, but he picked it right up. It wasn’t as good as the one I got, but I think he made his point.”

“Henry Richards? You sent him?”

“I asked him to give you the cranes. He had followed you for a few days, figured out where you went on a routine basis so he could wait for you. He was just supposed to leave it for you. I didn’t ask him to steal your car. But I guess you took care of that.”

“My daughter was in the backseat.”

“I’m sorry about that. I doubt he would have hurt her. Henry can be impulsive, but he’s not violent.”

She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to lunge across the table and rip his throat out, but the cop in her had taken over. Calm, cool, trying to get to the truth.

“Are you lovers?”

Whitman’s eyes dropped to his lap. “Henry is a prostitute. Yes, we are lovers but only because I pay him. I had hoped it would develop into more—I offered to pay for rehab, for him to go to college if he wanted to, but he always turns me down. I try to help him out when I can.”

“You’re in love with him.”

Whitman nodded, the skin on his face tightening into a grimace, as if it physically hurt him to admit it. “I just wanted to send you a message. Ask you to back off.”

“You couldn’t call me on the phone?”

Whitman looked at her again, one eyebrow raised. “You
couldn’t call
me
on the phone before you decided to ruin my life? Even if I am exonerated, these charges will ruin my reputation. My job is as good as gone, tenure or no tenure.”

“You really think I did this to you?”

“Then who else? When I talked to James, he told me about your . . . encounter.”

Jocelyn winced.

Whitman went on. “Who else would do this to us?”

She knew the answer to that, but she’d never admit it to Whitman.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“Your help.”

Jocelyn rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He kept his gaze on her. “I’m a lot of things, but a pedophile is not one of them. I think this is happening because of you, and I think you’re the only person who can stop it.”

Jocelyn stared at the man—her sense of fairness warring with her baser need for revenge. She swallowed. “What goes around comes around, shithead,” she said and strode toward the door.

“I can help you.”

Jocelyn turned back, hand on the doorknob. She couldn’t suppress her incredulous laughter. “This ought to be rich,” she muttered to herself before addressing him. “Help me? Really? With what?”