“I was just leaving,” she said as they approached her.
They were well dressed, the two of them. Maud—whatever her last name was, Diane didn’t remember—was dressed in a red-gold silk blouse and cream linen slacks. Earl was in a tan linen suit. Maud’s makeup looked fresh, and she had a sparkly golden sheen to her blush that oddly matched her blouse. They looked like they were about to go out on the town. Diane wondered what they were doing here.
“This won’t take long,” said Earl.
For an instant, Diane wondered if he was going to shoot her right here in the parking lot—and they had dressed up to look good in their mug shots.
“Very well,” said Diane. “What do you want?”
They said nothing, just stood there looking at each other nervously. Well, hell, thought Diane, are they trying to work up the nerve to shoot me after all?
“How can I help you?” said Diane.
“This thing,” said Earl, “this thing about our sheriff. We want you to tell us it is a lie.”
“Can you be more specific than ‘thing’?” said Diane. “I’m not trying to give you a hard time, but I don’t know exactly what thing you are referring to.”
“People are saying he put you in a cell with a bunch of men who tried to . . . to violate you,” said Maud.
“If by ‘bunch’ you mean three drunken men, then yes, it is true. Why would you want me to say it is not?”
“It can’t be true,” she said. “Leland wouldn’t do that. He respects women.”
“It is true. And it was terrifying. And I am very angry,” said Diane. “In my previous position, before I came back to Rosewood, it was my job to investigate petty dictators in third-world countries who used the same tactic to intimidate the population into submission. Such horrors are not supposed to happen here.” She felt her face getting warm. “Not in this country, where we cherish freedom and safety. But Conrad did it.”
They looked at each other and back at Diane.
“We don’t believe you,” Maud said, shifting her shoulders back and her chin up.
“There are half a dozen witnesses, but I suppose you wouldn’t believe them either,” said Diane.
Diane couldn’t figure out why they were here. They’d made up their minds not to believe her, so why bother with the trip? Then she realized: They had a part in it. Therefore, they didn’t want it to be true. Classic cognitive dissonance with a generous splash of guilt. The brain can’t hold two contradictory beliefs without some serious mental fireworks. For them, Leland Conrad was a good man. But good men don’t cause women to be raped. So one must be a lie. It was more comfortable to let the lie be on Diane. She wasn’t having any of it.
“He’s admitted it,” said Diane.
“He didn’t. He couldn’t,” said Maud. “You’re lying.”
“Look, I don’t have time to stand out here all day telling you what you came here refusing to believe anyway. It wastes both our time.”
“Some are saying he did it to teach you a lesson . . . that he wasn’t going to let it happen,” said Earl. “The deputy was supposed to stop it but he got sick. That’s one rumor.”
So they know more about it than they initially let on.
“Deputy Bob is known to be unreliable, and Conrad puts him in charge of something as important as saving me from a brutal gang rape? So we have criminal negligence, rather than just plain criminal, is that it?”
“It wasn’t his fault about Bob,” said Earl.
“It’s all right with you that he thought it was his job to teach me a lesson? That’s not a problem for you? Would it be okay if he did the same thing to you? Or to someone you love?”
“Well, it’s not the same thing at all,” said Earl.
“You were interfering. You were warned off,” said Maud. “You violated the sheriff’s order.”
“Well, let’s examine that,” said Diane. “Before I went to your church on Sunday, I checked the statutes to see if perhaps your sheriff had been granted the authority to ban someone from setting foot in the county. Rendell County doesn’t have any such provision. Neither do the statutes of the State of Georgia. The State of Georgia frowns on individual sheriffs making and enforcing their own laws. In fact, it is prohibited by the state constitution. The sheriff is sworn to uphold that constitution and enforce the laws of the State of Georgia.