"Is this Helen's site?" Stride asked.
Guppo shook his head and crunched a handful of chips in his mouth. "It's a recovery site for Midwest rape victims," he said, spitting out mushy emerald crumbs as he talked. "You need a password to get in."
"So how did you access it?"
"I found Eric's password," Guppo said.
"How did Eric get in?"
"Looks like he joined. Family members of victims can be part of the community. His handle was Swimmer. Not tough to figure out."
"So what did you find?"
"A thread from about eighteen months ago. A college student was date raped at the University of Minnesota, and she talked about it online. Then a woman chimed in with a response and told her own story from the early 1990s."
"TLIM?"
Guppo nodded. "Right. Helen Danning."
"What did she say?" Stride asked.
"See for yourself."
Stride leaned in next to Guppo and smelled onions and peppers on the detective's warm breath. He read the blog posting on the screen:
Same date rape thing happened to me at the U in the early '90s. I went out with a grad student, and I had way too much to drink. It didn't seem like a lot at the time, and it wasn't until much, much later that I realized he probably put something in my drink. Girls, you HAVE to watch out for that kind of crap. There are PREDATORS out there. This guy was going to KILL ME, but thank God, a security guard found us in the park. The police told me it was my fault (!!!!) because of the alcohol. They never even charged this animal. TLIM.
"The time line fits," Stride said, "but there's no way that was enough for Eric to make a connection."
"There's more," Guppo went on. "This is just the beginning of the thread. Helen talks about dropping out, how she bounced around in dead-end jobs. She never got over it. Then the other girl asks her about counseling. Check this out."
He clicked through several more entries and leaned back for Stride to see.
Counseling? Yeah, right. The real kicker is that the bastard who did this to me is now in the business of counseling rape victims! He's some shrink up in Duluth! TLIM.
"Damn it to hell," Stride murmured. "Abel was right about Tony. All this time, he's been advising us about sexual pathology."
"Yeah, he's an expert," Guppo said sourly.
"Can we prove that Eric ever saw this?"
"Oh, he saw it," Guppo said. He clicked on a new posting.
TLIM. I think this guy may still be at it. I think he raped my wife. What's his name? Swimmer.
"What was Helen's reply?" Stride asked.
Guppo shook his head. "There was no reply. TLIM didn't post anything else."
"So Eric went to find her," Stride said.
At which point, he knew, all the dominoes began to fall.
64
Tony hadn't changed.
Maggie hadn't seen him in almost two months, but his routines were always the same, no matter how much time passed. He was always in the leather armchair when she arrived, with his head down in his notes, his double chin bulging like a blowfish under his beard. He always had his black mug of coffee in one hand and a silver Cross pen in the other, which he rubbed nervously between his fingers. His eyes brooded like a sleepy dog's stare, and his trimmed eyebrows were the only part of his face that ever moved. He was so predictably bland that he had no personality of his own. He was a watcher. A mask.
Except for Aerosmith.
That was the only clue she ever had as to who Tony was. He was always playing heavy metal when she arrived, and they usually spent the first few minutes of their hour together talking about music and bands. Sometimes Mötley Crüe. Sometimes Guns N' Roses. Mostly Aerosmith. She knew it was a way to relax her enough to share the wolves that were in her brain. Today, he was playing their last big single, "Jaded," and something about the song felt nostalgic to her, as if Tony were taking a rare walk down memory lane. It was about yesterday's child. Things that were lost and not coming back.
He clicked the song off as she sat down on the sofa, and the silence felt loud. It was night, and the wall of glass overlooking the wilderness behind him was a dark mirror. The office looked like the end of the world, and where the carpet ended at the windows, you could step off and fall into the sucking gravity of a black hole.
Maggie squirmed to get comfortable. Her feet dangled above the floor, making her feel like a teenager. Tony didn't look up. He never looked up until she spoke. He just sat there, sipping his coffee, sometimes stirring it up in his mug as if there might be grounds resting on the bottom that could float around and flavor it.
"Long time," Maggie said.
Tony put the black mug to his lips and took a quiet sip. "Yes."
He deigned to look at her then, with the mug in front of his face like a muzzle.
"You heard about everything that's happened?" she asked.
He nodded, and the overhead light danced on the smooth, high scalp of his forehead. "How is Serena?"
"She'll be okay, but she'll need help."
"Of course."
He didn't push her, didn't ask questions. How are you. What are you feeling. What's on your mind. Sometimes they spent a long time not saying anything at all. He just studied her from behind his coffee mug, and she felt like a lab rat.
"I should have come to you after I was raped," Maggie said.
"Why didn't you?" Tony asked.
"I thought if I didn't tell anyone, I could make it go away. Block it out. I'm good at that."
"But not good enough."
"No," she admitted. "No one's that good."
"You caught the rapist, I hear."
"Yeah."
"Does that help?" he asked.
"I thought it would, but to be honest, it doesn't. Not really. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the shithead is out of circulation. But it's like having your house burn down and then putting out the fire."
"I understand. So what are you going to do about that?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you can't change what happened. It's already done."
"I was hoping I could mope around and feel sorry for myself for a while," Maggie said. "Eat Doritos. Watch the soaps."
Tony didn't smile.
"Actually, I'm thinking of adopting a kid," she admitted. She wondered why she was telling him that. Old habits died hard.
"Ah."
"What, ah?"
"Nothing. Go on."
"You think it's too soon?"
"What do you think?" Tony asked.
"I think it would be nice to get an answer once and a while for all the money I'm paying."
"How did you come to this decision?" he asked.
"It's not a decision. It's something I'm thinking about. I feel like that's what I'm missing in my life. Being a mother. All the bad things began to happen after the miscarriages. That's when the universe went out of whack."
"So if you become a mother, the stars will be aligned again."
"Something like that."
"You sound like you're looking for approval or disapproval."
"I am."
"From me?" Tony asked.
"No, not from you," she said. Too quickly. "I guess I'm looking for approval from myself."
"And?"
"I'm not ready to give it yet."
"Why is that?"
"I still haven't found my way out."
Tony raised his eyebrows. "What do you mean?"
Maggie sighed. "Have you ever watched a spider on a screen? He gets in through a crack in the mesh, and then he's trapped inside, and he walks around and around and around and around trying to find that same little seam where he can get out. He can do it for days. The question is, can he find it before he starves to death?"
"So what's your crack in the screen, Maggie?"
"Isn't it obvious? Eric was murdered."
Tony stopped twirling his pen and froze with his coffee mug halfway to his face. Their eyes met. "Of course."
"I need to find out who did it. I can't go on until I do."
"I thought this rapist, this escaped prisoner, was the murderer."
Maggie shook her head. "He has an alibi."
"Surely no one still thinks you did it."