“She’s the one.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Truly. I liked the kid. I still don’t see what this has to do with me. She says Devin raped her, right? That’s what this has been about for the past seven years. So why are you talking to me about it?”
“Andrea thinks it was Devin, but she’d been drinking a lot,” Maggie told him. “She may have passed out. See, we’re wondering if Devin Card came back downstairs and left her alone up in the bedroom. And there you were at the party, Adam. Drunk, pissed off, out of control. Suddenly, you realized that your ex-fiancée’s sister was all by herself. Did you go upstairs, Adam? Did you figure if Denise was going to have sex with someone, you could do the same thing? Did you figure that’s how you could get back at her for what she did to you? By raping her little sister?”
Halka’s eyes widened in what could only be genuine shock. “You’re out of your mind.”
“You were there, and you had a hell of a motive.”
“I didn’t do it. You hear me? I didn’t do it!”
“Maybe you were so drunk you blacked out and don’t even remember.”
“No fucking way.”
“Can you be sure? Isn’t that possible?”
“No. It wasn’t me. Do you hear me? No!”
Halka lurched up from his chair, practically in a daze. He threw money on the table, left behind his beer and burger, and stumbled for the door of the bar. Several people shouted his name, but he ignored them. He punched through the door to the street and slammed it behind him.
Maggie rushed after him into the rain. Outside, she found Halka on the street corner, his back against the stone wall of the bar. He was bent over, his hands on his knees. The downpour flooded over him, soaking him to his skin. His face was red, and when he saw her, his features contorted. He straightened up and jabbed a finger at her, his voice like a primal scream. “Are you doing this because of Stanhope? Is this him getting back at me? He wants to get his buddy Devin off the hook, so he spoon-feeds this bullshit to you?”
“That’s not what’s going on here, Adam.”
“He’s rich, and I’m trash. He gets whatever he wants. He always has.”
“Peter Stanhope doesn’t know about any of this. Look, Adam, I just want the truth. After all this time, Andrea deserves the truth. And whatever you may think of Devin Card, he doesn’t deserve to be destroyed over an accusation like this if he’s innocent.”
“It wasn’t me!” Halka insisted again. “I don’t know anything about a rape back then. I told you that. I told Ned that. If it happened at that party, okay, fine, whatever you say. But I didn’t know, and I sure as hell had nothing to do with it.”
Maggie blinked as rain ran down her face. She stared at Halka and realized that she believed him. He was innocent.
“Okay, Adam,” she said. “Okay, you didn’t do it.”
“I loved Denise. Yeah, I was hurt by what she did to me, but I would never have taken it out on her sister. No way.”
“So who assaulted her?”
Halka ran his hands through his wet hair. “If Andrea says it was Devin, it must have been him.”
“Can you think of anyone else who might have seen them together? Someone else who was at the party?”
“Nobody.”
Maggie knew she was back at a dead end. “Thank you for talking to me, Adam.”
Halka was still bent over, hyperventilating, trying to breathe.
“You okay?” she asked. “You need a doctor?”
He shook his head and waved her away. Maggie headed into the street, water pouring across her boots, the wind whipping around her hair. Her Avalanche was parked on the opposite curb. She hadn’t even reached the middle of the street when Halka called after her in a raspy voice.
“Wait.”
Maggie stopped. She marched back to the motel owner. “What is it?”
“There was another guy.”
“Excuse me?”
“There was another guy at the party. A stranger.”
“How do you know?”
“I brought him. He came with me. We left together, too. Actually, that’s why I remember. I was too drunk to drive, so he drove instead. But he was jumpy and weird, and he crashed my dad’s car. Drove it into a utility pole near the DECC. I knew I was going to catch hell. I wanted him to explain it to my dad, but the guy gave me two hundred bucks to say I did it. Then he ran. Just got out of the car and ran. I never saw him again.”
“Who was he?”
“No idea. I don’t think I ever knew his name. He was from out of town.”
“Why was he with you?”
“I met him at the concert,” Halka told her. “I wasn’t going to sit with Denise after our fight, and I had a buddy who could always get me backstage. I hung out with the roadies. This guy and I hit it off, and when I mentioned the party crawl, he asked if he could come along. I said what the hell.”
Maggie heard Halka’s voice echoing in her head, and it triggered a memory.
I hung out with the roadies.
She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold rain.
“Adam, do you remember the concert that night? Do you remember the band you saw?”
Halka nodded. “Sure. It was ZZ Top.”
33
A sea of people filled the DECC ballroom and squeezed into the overflow rooms and the corridors outside. Stride found it hard to make out any faces. Serena stood next to him, and both of them got up on tiptoes to survey the room, but if Andrea was here, she was lost among dozens of blond-haired women. The deafening chatter in the room made it almost impossible to hear. Most of the people inside were wet from the storm, and the room had a pungent smell.
He dialed Andrea’s number again, but the call went straight to voice mail.
“We should split up,” he told Serena, cupping his hands over her ear so that she could hear him.
Serena nodded and leaned close to him. “If we find her, what do we tell her? We have suspicions, but we can’t prove what really happened.”
“I guess we tell her that,” Stride said. “This is the wrong time and place for her to go public.”
Serena headed toward the west end of the ballroom. Stride walked the other way, toward the tall windows overlooking the rain-swept bay. He checked his watch and knew he didn’t have much time. The town hall had been scheduled to start fifteen minutes earlier, and the crowd was getting impatient. People had begun chanting Devin’s name, and even his supporters were wondering where he was. Stride didn’t like the tone of the crowd around him. It was ugly, unsettled, with partisans on both sides veering close to physical confrontations. There were plenty of cops everywhere, but it still wouldn’t take much for things to get out of control.
His phone rang in his pocket. When he answered it, he could make out Maggie’s voice on the other end, but he could barely hear what she was saying. In a room with hundreds of phones, the choppy signal went in and out, and Maggie was obviously in her truck, with music blaring in the background. He kept asking her to repeat herself, but her voice was garbled, and then the call dropped.
All he was able to make out was “Ned was there.”
Stride didn’t understand the message. He tried calling back, but the call failed to go through.
He reached the dark windows on the far side of the ballroom, but he still hadn’t found Andrea. Staying next to the windows, he headed to the stage, which would give him a slightly elevated view. A gaggle of campaign workers clustered near the metal stairs, and a police officer noticed him and let him through. He climbed the steps and looked out over the seething crowd.
Finding one single person out there was impossible.