Nightcrawlers: A Nameless Detective Novel (Nameless Detective Mystery) (28 page)

Colleen was lost to him, too, but he had his memories of her. In that respect she was still alive, he’d have her as long as he lived and breathed. She was all he’d ever needed. She was all he’d ever really had.

C
ybil opened her door, took one long look at me standing there alone, and she knew why I’d come. I could see the knowledge in her tawny eyes, in the play of emotions across her still beautiful face.

She turned without saying anything, leaving the door open. I went in, followed her into the living room. It was warm over here in Larkspur and her air conditioner was turned on; the motor had a hitch in it that created a clunking noise every thirty seconds or so. Cybil hesitated with her back to me, then sat down in her favorite chair. I sat facing her. The air conditioner made the only sounds in the room while each of us waited for the other to speak.

“I destroyed the manuscript,” she said finally. “Burned it last night.”

“I figured you probably would.”

“Do you think I lied to you about what it was, what was in it?”

“No. It’s what you didn’t say that keeps bothering me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Come on, Cybil. I’m not an enemy, I’m family and I’m your friend. I’m also a detective. I know when I’m not getting the whole story and the one I am getting is too pat.”

“Kerry’s satisfied. Why can’t you be?”

“I’m not so sure she is. If this concerns her in some way—”

“It doesn’t.”

“If it does, she has a right to know the whole truth.”

“Does she? I don’t think so.”

“Those messages from Dancer in the hospital—D-Day and amazing grace. They weren’t just references to his unpublished novel. They were personal.”

She looked away.

“References to something that happened between the two of you,” I said. “D-Day. Occurred to me that could mean something other than the day of the European invasion. It could mean a special day in his life—Dancer’s Day.”

The words made her flinch. “Oh, God.”

“Did you have an affair with him in 1944?”

“No.”

“At any time during the war?”

“No.”

“After the war?”

“No.”

“All right, a one-night stand then.”

“No.”

“If you’re trying to split hairs about your relationship—”

“He raped me,” she said.

I stared at her.

“You’re bound and determined to know the truth, all right, that’s the truth. It didn’t happen in June of 1944, it happened on VJ Day, 1945. Dancer’s Day—Donovan’s Day in his damned
manuscript. The day he took what I’d never give him voluntarily.”

“Jesus. What happened?”

She stared off into space for a time before she answered. And I was glad, once she started talking, that I couldn’t see exactly what she was seeing inside her head. “There was a party at his apartment. An end of the war party—a lot of heavy drinking and unrestrained hilarity, all of us a little crazy with happiness and relief. Russ kept feeding me drinks and I didn’t have the sense to know when to stop taking them. I remember him saying he’d take care of me, see that I got home, but in the morning when I woke up I was in his bed. Naked and alone in his bed with the worst hangover of my life. I couldn’t remember a thing about what happened after the party broke up—I still can’t.”

“Where was he?”

“Up and dressed by then. When he came into the bedroom . . . I knew I’d been violated, a woman can tell when she’s been used that way, and I screamed accusations at him. He denied it, of course. The kind of denial with a smirk wrapped up in it. He claimed that all he’d done was take my clothes—so he could get a glimpse of what I looked like without them, he said—and put me to bed.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? It was his word against mine. Times were so different back then. Women were considered as much to blame as men, particularly in cases of acquaintance rape. And the circumstances . . . all the drinking, passing out the way I did . . . it would have made an awful scandal. I couldn’t bear that, and I didn’t want Ivan to know. It happened only a few days before he came home from Washington.”

“You never told him?”

“Never. You know what a terrible temper he had. I was afraid of what he might do to Russ.”

“Or told anyone else?”

“Not until just now. I . . . buried it. Avoided Russ as much as I could, and when I did see him I pretended nothing had happened. But inside I was a mess. Just looking at him turned my stomach.”

I said slowly, “Kerry suspects, doesn’t she? If not about the rape, that there was something between you and Dancer.”

No response. The air conditioner made another of its stuttering noises.

“Cybil . . . straight out. Is she Dancer’s child?”

“No!”

“But she could be. The timing’s right.”

“She’s not! Ivan was her father—Ivan!”

Too much protest. She desperately wanted it to be Ivan, but she wasn’t completely sure.

I said, “Dancer believed she was his. That’s what the amazing grace message meant—his sly, sick little joke. And he put it all in that unpublished manuscript, didn’t he? The rape, your pregnancy, his possible fatherhood.”

“In graphic detail. God, he was a son of a bitch.”

Yeah. A son of a bitch, a rapist, another slimy nightcrawler. It made me sorry, very sorry, that I’d saved his ass from the murder charge years ago, that I’d cut him slack and pitied him.

Cybil drew a long breath before she said, “Are you going to tell Kerry?”

“Has she ever asked you directly if she might be Dancer’s daughter, or about your relationship with him?”

“No.”

“Then she doesn’t believe it, doesn’t really want to know. No, I’m not going to tell her. Your secret’s safe with me.”

“. . . Thankyou.”

“For what? I shouldn’t have come here, I should’ve let it stay buried. In fact, I wasn’t here today. We didn’t have this conversation and we’ll never have another one like it.”

I left her and walked slowly across the landscaped grounds to the parking lot. My car had been sitting in the direct sun; it was like an oven inside. But it could’ve been two hundred degrees in there and it still wouldn’t have been as hot as where Russ Dancer was right then.