The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,188
turned into a razor. “Why would I remember?”
“I know this is hard.”
“Yeah, I know you know.”
Sara nodded before Will could think about how to ask the question. She had told Tommi about her own rape.
“Tommi—”
Tommi interrupted her with a long, pained sigh. Will could imagine cigarette smoke coming out of her mouth.
She told Sara, “I can’t have kids.”
Sara’s eyes found Will’s again. She held onto his gaze. “I’m so sorry.”
Will realized she was speaking to him.
He shook his head. She didn’t ever need to apologize for that.
Tommi said, “I wanted to be happy, you know? I looked at you, and I thought, ‘If Dr. Linton can be happy, then I can be happy.’”
Sara didn’t insult her with platitudes. “It’s hard.”
More silence. Will heard a lighter clicking. A mouth sucking in smoke, blowing it out.
Tommi said, “I don’t know how to be with a man unless he’s hurting me.”
The revelation came out in a rush. Will could see that Sara was doing the same thing he was doing—slowing it down, trying to find a way around the certainty in the woman’s voice.
Sara slowly shook her head. She couldn’t find a way. She could only feel devastated.
Tommi asked, “Are you that way, too?”
Sara looked up at Will again. She said, “Sometimes.”
Tommi blew out a long stream of smoke.
She inhaled again.
She said, “He told me it was my fault. That’s what I remember. That it was my fault.”
Sara’s mouth opened. She took a breath. “Did he tell you why?”
Tommi paused again to smoke, going through the deep inhale, the slow exhale. “He said that he saw me, and he wanted me, and he knew that I was too stuck up to give him the time of day, so he had to make me.”
Sara said, “Tommi, you know it’s not your fault.”
“Yeah, we need to stop asking rape victims what they did wrong and start asking men why they rape.”
There was a sing-song quality to her voice, as if she’d heard the mantra in a self-help group.
Sara said, “I know you can’t logic away that feeling. You’re always going to have moments when you blame yourself.”
“Is that what you do?”
“Sometimes,” Sara admitted. “But not all the time.”
“All the time is my time,” Tommi said. “All the fucking time.”
“Tommi—”
“He cried,” she said. “That’s what I remember most. He cried like a fucking baby. Like, down on his knees, just wailing and rocking himself like a little kid.”
Will felt the air leave his lungs. Sweat beaded up at the back of his neck.
Just yesterday, he had seen a man cry that same way.
On his knees. Rocking himself. Sobbing like a child.
Will had been standing in Gerald Caterino’s murder closet. The father’s obsession with his daughter’s attack was splashed across the walls. Coroner’s reports. Newspaper articles. Police reports. Witness statements. DNA. A brush. A comb. A scrunchie. A headband. A hair clip. No one on earth knew as much about the attacks on Rebecca Caterino and Leslie Truong as Gerald Caterino.
Acolyte? Copycat? Nutjob? Murderer?
They had assumed Daryl Nesbitt had faked the DNA on the envelope.
What if Gerald Caterino was the faker?
Will struggled to reach for the phone in his pocket. Faith was probably pulling into Caterino’s driveway right now. He had to warn her.
Sara knew something was wrong. She said, “Tommi—”
“His mother was in the hospital.”
“What?”
Sara’s stunned question made Will freeze. She had almost shouted the word.
Tommi said, “That’s why he did it. That was his reason. His mother was sick in the hospital. He was afraid that she was going to die. He needed somebody to comfort him.”
“Tommi—”
“I’m a real fucking comfort.” She gave a bitter laugh. “Hey, Sara, do me a favor. Lose this number. I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.”
The speaker clicked. She’d hung up.
Will tapped his phone, pulling up Faith’s number. “I’ve got to—”
“The latex,” Sara said. “Will, it’s not from a glove. It’s from a condom.”
Grant County—Thursday—One Week Later
27
Jeffrey tried not to limp as he walked down Main Street. Exactly one full week had passed since the raid on Daryl Nesbitt’s house, and he wanted the town to see that their chief of police was all right. Or as all right as a man could be with a broken nose, a strained back and a wheeze in his lungs that sounded like a sick chihuahua.
Rosario Lopez had never been in danger, and she hadn’t even technically been missing. The student had gone home with a boy she’d met in the cafeteria and, like a lot of students, they ended