"So everything…" He put his hands up. "It was all a lie?"
"Not us," she said. "Not how I feel about you. Not how I act around you. Nothing about us was ever a lie. Not one kiss. Not one embrace. Not one emotion. You didn't love a lie. You loved me."
Loved, she had said. You loved me. The past tense.
"So when we met in Las Vegas, you weren't in college?"
"No," she said.
"And that night? At the club?"
Her eyes met his. "I was supposed to be working."
"I don't understand."
"Yeah, Matt. Yeah, you do."
He remembered the Web site. The stripper site.
"You danced?"
"Danced? Well, yes, the politically correct term is exotic dancer. All the girls use that term. But I was a stripper. And sometimes, when they made me…" Olivia shook her head. Her eyes started to water. "We'll never get past this."
"And that night," Matt said, a surge of anger coursing through him, "what, I looked like I had money?"
"That's not funny."
"I'm not trying to be funny."
Her voice had steel in it now. "You have no idea what that night meant to me. It changed my life. You never got it, Matt."
"Never got what?"
"Your world," she said. "It's worth fighting for."
He wasn't sure what she meant- or if he wanted to know what she meant. "You said you were in foster homes."
"Yes."
"And that you ran away?"
"My last foster home encouraged this line of work. You can't imagine how badly you want to get out. So they told us where to go. My last foster mother's sister- she ran the club. She got us fake IDs."
He shook his head. "I still don't see why you didn't tell me the truth."
"When, Matt?"
"When what?"
"When should I have told you? That first night in Las Vegas? How about when I came to your office? Second date? Engagement? When should I have told you?"
"I don't know."
"It wasn't that easy."
"It wasn't easy for me to tell you about my time in prison either."
"My situation involves more than me," she said. "I made a pact."
"What kind of pact?"
"You have to understand. I might have been able to risk it, if it was just me. But I couldn't risk it for her."
"Who?"
Olivia looked away and didn't say anything for a long time. She took a piece of paper out of her back pocket, unfolded it slowly, and handed it to him. Then she turned her face away from him again.
Matt took the piece of paper and turned it over. It was an article printed out from the Nevada Sun News Web site. He read it. It didn't take long.
Woman Slain
Las Vegas, NV- Candace Potter, age 21, was found slain in a trailer park off Route 15. The cause of death was strangulation. Police would not comment about the possibility of sexual assault. Ms. Potter worked as a dancer at the Young Thangs, a nightclub on the outskirts of the city, using the stage name Candi Cane. Authorities said the investigation was ongoing and that they were following up some promising leads.
Matt looked up. "I still don't get it." Her face was still turned away from him. "You promised this Candace person?"
She chuckled without humor. "No."
"Then who?"
"What I said before. About not really lying to you. About it being more like I died."
Olivia turned toward him.
"That's me," she said. "I used to be Candace Potter."
Chapter 36
WHEN LOREN GOT BACK to the county prosecutor's office, Roger Cudahy, one of the techno guys who'd gone to Cingle's office, was sitting with his feet up on her desk, his hands folded behind his head.
"Comfy?" Loren said.
His smile was wide. "Oh yeah."
"Don't we look like the proverbial cat who ate the proverbial canary."
The smile stayed. "Not sure that proverbial applies, but again: Oh yeah."
"What is it?"
With his hands still behind his head, Cudahy motioned toward the laptop. "Take a look."
"On the laptop?"
"Oh yeah."
She moved the mouse. The darkened screen came to life. And there, filling up the entire screen, was a snapshot of Charles Talley. He was holding his hand up. His hair was blue-black. He had a cocky grin on his face.
"You got this off Cingle Shaker's computer?"
"Oh yeah. It came from a camera phone."
"Nice work."
"Hold up."
"What?"
Cudahy continued to grin. "As Bachman Turner Overdrive used to sing, you ain't seen nothing yet."
"What?" Loren said.
"Hit the arrow key. The right one."
Loren did it. The shaky video started up. A woman in a platinum-blonde wig came out of the bathroom. She moved toward the bed. When the video was finished, Cudahy said, "Comments?"
"Just one."
Cudahy put out his palm. "Lay it on me."
Loren slapped him five. "Oh yeah."
Chapter 37
"IT WAS ABOUT a year after I met you," Olivia said.
She stood across the room. The color was back in her face. Her spine was straighter. It was as though she was gaining strength, telling him all this. For his part, Matt tried not to process yet. He just wanted to absorb.
"I was eighteen years old, but I'd already been in Vegas for two years. A lot of us girls lived in old trailers. The manager of the club, an evil man named Clyde Rangor, had a couple of acres a mile down the road. It was just desert. He put up a chain-link fence, dragged in three or four of the most beaten-down trailers you'd ever seen. And that's where we lived. The girls, they came and went, but at this time I was sharing the trailer with two people. One was new, a girl named Cassandra Meadows. She was maybe sixteen, seventeen years old. The other was named Kimmy Dale. Kimmy was away that day. See, Clyde used to send us out on road trips. We'd strip in some small town, do three shows a day. Easy money for him. Good tips for us, though Clyde kept most of that too."
Matt needed to get his bearings, but there was just no way. "When you started there, you were how old?" he asked.
"Sixteen."
He tried not to close his eyes. "I don't understand how that worked."
"Clyde was connected. I don't really know how, but they'd find hard-up girls from foster homes in Idaho."
"That's where you're from?"
She nodded. "They had contacts in other states too. Oklahoma. Cassandra was from Kansas, I think. The girls would basically be funneled to Clyde's place. He'd give them fake IDs and put them to work. It wasn't difficult. We both know that nobody really cares about the poor, but little children are, at least, sympathetic. We were just sullen teenagers. We had nobody."
Matt said, "Okay, go on."
"Clyde had this girlfriend named Emma Lemay. Emma was sort of a mother figure to all the girls. I know how that sounds, but when you consider what we'd had in the past, she almost made you believe it. Clyde used to beat the hell out of her. He'd just walk by, you'd see Emma flinch. I didn't realize it then, but that victimization… it made us relate, I guess. Kimmy and I liked her. We all talked about one day getting out- that's all we ever talked about. I told her and Kimmy about meeting you. About what that night meant to me. They listened. We all knew it would never happen, but they listened anyway."
There was a sound from outside of the room. A tiny cry. Olivia turned toward it.
"That's just Ethan," Matt said.