Tell No Lies (33 page)

Big Mac’s gaze moved from Daniel to Fang, and Daniel realized he was referring to the episode at the club. Martin must have filled him in. A relieved exhale hissed through Daniel’s teeth.

Fang crossed his legs, sneaker to knee. A self-conscious twitch of his neck, not quite a shrug. “It was … ah, ah, no big deal. Nothing happened.”

At Fang’s words Daniel’s thoughts pulled into abrupt focus. The edges of his perception blurred, and all at once there was nothing outside these four walls, no closed trials, no little girl dying of heart cancer, no featureless killer.

He zeroed in on Fang. “Nothing
happened
? What are you talking about?”

Fang stiffened, his forehead wrinkling.

Daniel ticked the points on his fingers. “You trusted Martin enough to call him. You trusted me. You made a great choice. You
didn’t
go into the club. You
didn’t
get drunk. You
didn’t
get into a fight or blow your sobriety or wind up in trouble with the cops. You
didn’t
miss your session tonight.” He paused. “
Everything
happened last night.”

Fang settled back into himself, blank-faced, but Daniel had learned to read him well enough to see his mind at work. He also knew to move on and give Fang some time with this new interpretation, so he asked Lil to take center chair.

She settled into the seat and cleared her throat softly. “I went out to a church social,” she said, her hand fluttering around her bangs. “And I put my hair up so I’d look, um, less ugly.”

“I think you have a pretty face,” Martin said.

She laughed it off. “Martin, that’s why you have glasses.” She leaned forward, cramping her shoulders inward. “But I wanted to try at least. To see. After, you know, the stuff we talked about last time.”

Noises of encouragement from Big Mac.

A-Dre even chimed in. “All right, girl.”

“No,” she said. “It was
awful.
” Her eyes started leaking. “Everyone ignored me. And I had a panic attack. I went out to the parking lot and almost passed out. It was …
humiliating.
”

X played a tiny violin with her thumb and forefinger, but Lil ignored her.

“I can’t go back,” she said. “
Never.
It just proved that I’ll never be happy again.”

Daniel’s thoughts had once more gravitated back to Francisca Olvera, and there was a tape-delay pause before he forced himself back to the room and prompted Lil. “You’ll never be happy again because…?”

Lil kicked her feet glumly. “I’ll never find anyone.”

“And you’ll never find anyone because…?”

She hugged her stomach, shivering. “No one will want me.”

“No one will want you because…?”

“No one will want me because I have nothing to
offer,
okay? I have nothing to offer someone.”

A few of the chairs creaked. The wind whistled through the gap in the window.

“All right,” Daniel said. “I’m going to speak your thoughts back to you. And you just see how they feel and respond as if you’re Xochitl.”

“Oh, great. That’s great. Compare me to
her.
” Lil cast her gaze upward. “Can’t you just leave me alone? Just
once
? After what I went through, do you really have to pry at every inch of everything?”

“Who are you looking at?” Daniel asked.

She lowered her gaze quickly. “No one.”

“You’re looking up. Like you’re a little kid.”

“Oh. You mean…” She hiccupped in a breath. “I don’t want to talk about my father.”

“Okay. Then can we try this exercise instead? You’re a grown woman now. You can make grown-woman choices for yourself.”

She hesitated, then nodded rapidly like a kid.

Daniel cleared his throat. “No one wants you. You are never gonna be happy.”

She blinked, and tears fell. Martin started to come to her defense, but Daniel shot him a look and he shrank back in his chair, his round, broad face contorted with empathy. X leaned forward on her chair, rapt.

“You’re not allowed to be at peace,” Daniel continued. “You’re not allowed to be
liked.
You’re a failure. No one talked to you at this social, which means no one will talk to you at
any
social.”

Lil was sobbing freely now, and Daniel felt a stab of concern that if she didn’t turn the corner, this would all go horribly awry. He was on the verge of pulling back when she said, quietly, “That’s not true.”

He seized on her words. “
Why
is it not true?”

“It’s just one social,” she said in the same tiny voice.

“
What?
I can’t hear you when you talk like a little girl. Answer as if you’re Xochitl. You ever hear her talk that way?”

Lil flashed fierce eye contact. “It’s just one
fucking
social.”

The men stirred. Daniel sensed X smile, but he kept his attention on Lil. “But
everyone
at that social did better than you.”

“No. They did
not.
There were thirty woman there, and not
all
of them got talked to either.” The fear wasn’t gone from Lil’s voice, and she retained a note of pleading, but her back had straightened out and there was more power behind her voice.

“So what? It’ll go just as shitty next time around.”

“I can
learn
! I can learn to do better. I can do
whatever I want
!” Her eyes aflame, she squeezed her hands together between her knees, drawing ragged breaths, her clavicles pronounced beneath her collar.

He lifted his hands, palms out. “You’re right. You can.”

Lil covered her mouth with a fist, surprised at herself and maybe a little scared.

“Okay,” he said. “Good job.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Now, next time you go to a social, your aim
isn’t
to meet a man.”

“Then why…?”

“Your
only
aim next time is to smile. Look people in the eye. Say hello. And pay a compliment to three people, men or women.”

“What good’ll that do?” Lil asked.

“Change don’t come overnight,” Big Mac said.

Still lost in thought, Fang gave the faintest nod. His face stayed impassive. Was he thinking about the choice he made last night outside the club? Relating it to what Lil was facing now?

“But if it goes bad?” Lil rubbed her arms against the draft. “The panic attack. When I got nervous at the church, when I couldn’t breathe … And then out in the parking lot, I thought I was gonna die. I’m not sure I can risk feeling that way again.”

“What you felt was caused by heightened stress and arousal,” Daniel said. “Increased adrenaline made you hyperventilate. You got short of breath, which made you breathe even more and threw off your CO
2
balance. You got dizzy and light-headed, verged on collapsing. That’s all.”

“That
wasn’t
all. It was
real.
”

“Stand up,” Daniel said.

Her lips pressed wide and flat, an attempt to beat back her fear. After a pause she rose.

“Breathe,” he told her. “As hard as you can. More. Faster.
Faster.
”

She panted heavily, her face growing pale, keeping on until her chest bucked and she wobbled on her feet.

“Stop!” he said. “Now breathe into your hands. Get carbon dioxide.”

She leaned over, breathed into the bowl of her fingers. A few seconds later, she straightened back up. “I feel better. So quickly.”

“You make it happen,” he said, “which means you can fix it, too.”

She stepped back and collapsed into her chair, her face washed of color but exuberant, too, in the small triumph. She was crying again, but her tears were different; they signaled a release. She managed a nervous laugh, then shivered, wiping at her face. “It’s cold in here.”

Fang got up, crossed the room, and closed the window for her.

Chapter 53

As the group members milled around during break, Daniel pulled his iPhone from his pocket to text Dooley, and a few coins fell to the ground.
SND CSI AFTR SESSION
, he tapped in.
TIN OF SKOAL IN TRSH - MYBE PRINTS
. After double-checking that her number was teed up to call in case of emergency, he reached for the fallen change.

A quarter lay there on the cracked tile. Staring down, he was called back to the perfect, shiny coins found at the crime scenes.

He stood abruptly. “Anyone have change? I want to grab a Coke.”

The members dug in purses, pockets, and chain wallets, change spilling into palms to be appraised. Everyone else offered up normal, grubby coins, except Big Mac, who held his Velcro wallet at a tilt so he could peer inside the change pouch.

Daniel collected a few quarters, stalling as long as seemed plausible, then headed for the door. Paused. “Big Mac, you have a quarter?”

The blocks of Big Mac’s hands resealed the wallet. Clenched it. “You got enough.”

“I think they raised the price,” Daniel said.

Big Mac’s gaze didn’t falter. “They didn’t raise the price.”

Daniel stopped partway to the door, frozen in the standoff.

A-Dre said, “Man, you one cheap-ass motherfucker, you can’t give the man a quarter.”

Big Mac stared a moment longer, then rooted in his wallet and flipped Daniel a coin. His heart still thudding, Daniel caught it in the air. He didn’t open his fist until he was alone in the hall.

The coin was grimy and worn, just like all the others.

*   *   *

Sipping a Dr Pepper, Daniel reclaimed his chair. “Big Mac, you want to take the hot seat? Talk about the fight last session?”

“No. X has been dodging her turn, and it’s bullshit.”

“Fuck
you
I’m dodging.”

“We all come in here and talk about our shit. Lay it all out. And she plays games every time she’s in that chair.”

“I don’t play no games. Just because I don’t go all Weepy Oprah and shit.”

Daniel put it to the room. “What do you think?”

“Hellz yeah,” A-Dre said. “Get her skinny ass in the chair.”

“She’s been … ah, ah, getting away with doing nothing.”

“Fine.” X stood up and sat so hard the chair clanked.
“What?”

“Let’s talk about Sophie,” Daniel said.

“This shit again?”

“Yes. Talk as if you’re her. Think how she’s feeling right now.”

“She’s
feeling
—”

“As if you’re
her,
” Daniel said.

X shot a breath, crossed her arms, slid down a few inches in the chair. “
I’m
feeling happy ’cuz it’s been
two years
since that shit happened, and I don’t dwell on it every day like
some
people.”

“Think of Sophie as a person,” Daniel said. “Think about how it affected her life.”

“I’m Sophie.” X produced a shit-eating smile. “I get my feelings hurt when people call me Raped Girl. But most girls get raped, so I guess that makes me, I don’t know, a fucking
baby.
”

As the others let her have it for being a pain in the ass, Daniel leaned back in his chair, the band of metal cool against his shoulder blades. It was the same shut-out feeling he’d experienced standing outside the closed door of his and Cris’s bedroom today.

“What is the most important thing we ask for in here?” he said sharply. “Honesty and accountability.” The words boomeranged back and struck him hard. Physician, heal thyself.

“I’m
being
honest,” X said. “Y’all just don’t like hard truths.”

“BS,” Lil said. “After
I
sat up there and said what I went through—”

“Boo-fucking-hoo, Lil. ‘Oh, no one talked to me at a church social—’”

“—you’re scared to even take a look at—”

“I’m
not scared
!” X had come to a crouch above her chair, her face flushed. She eased back down, bit her lower lip. “Fine.
Fine.
You wanna know how it affected her life?” Her nostrils flared, her chest rose and fell. “She wants to not think about it every fucking minute of the day. Reliving the pain. The concrete against her cheek. The expression on the girls’ faces—on
my
face—when I held her down. She tells herself it’s no big deal, girls get raped all the time. She toughens up. She never,
ever
wants to be helpless again. But she’s scared all the time. She can’t go into a room with other people without her heart rate going up. She has to … has to sit by the door. So she can get away if she needs to. It hurts when she has sex, like a knife going into her.
That’s
how she fucking feels. Okay?
Okay?
”

Stunned silence. The room without air. A ceiling vent blew unevenly, and the pipes groaned in the walls.

When X spoke again, her voice was as quiet and small as Lil’s. “She was so pretty. I wanted her to be wrecked like me.” Then her face broke, and she started keening. Arms crossed at her belly, rocking herself up and down, wailing.

It took Daniel a moment to find his voice again. He was about to speak, but Lil rose first and crossed the circle. She crouched before X, set her hands on her shoulders, and X tilted forward into her arms.

Chapter 54

Daniel’s footsteps sounded off the walls of the garage. After session he’d waited in the room until a CSI inspector, disguised as a janitor, retrieved the tin of dipping tobacco from the trash can. The inspector had found only smudged partials; run through a mobile scanner, they’d brought up nothing in the system. Another tantalizing clue leading to another dead end.

Daniel cut through the rows of vehicles, climbed into his car, and sat for a time with his hands and forehead on the steering wheel. Utterly spent.

Removing his iPhone, he texted Dooley:
SAFE
.

A moment later, the phone buzzed in his lap.
I KNOW. LOOK UP
.

It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom, but then he spotted her in a sedan parked against the far wall. Through the windshield she gave a little wave. He waved back.