Breath of Scandal Read online

  “Then relax,” Ivan said. Putting his words into action, he leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his coffee. “It’s taken care of. In a day or two it’ll all blow over.”

  Fritz glanced worriedly toward the door. “That girl intends to formally charge them.”

  “She’ll change her mind.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “She will.”

  “What if she doesn’t?” Fritz repeated, nearly shouting.

  Ivan chuckled softly. “If she doesn’t drop it, we’ll make her out to be a whoring liar.”

  Nausea roiled in Fritz’s stomach. “Who would believe that of Jade?”

  “Before I get through with her,” Ivan said with a dangerous leer, “men all over the county will be claiming she’s sucked them off, and folks’ll be itching to believe every sordid word of it.”

  Fritz felt ill. He had to get out in the fresh air. Standing, he said, “You’ll have to excuse me, Ivan. I’ve been here since just after midnight. I’m going home to shower and eat something.”

  Ivan stood up, too. “You know what I find hardest to believe about all this? That that little shit Lamar could actually get it up. I’d’ve paid to see that.” Laughing, he slapped Fritz on the back. It was all Fritz could do not to cringe and shake off his touch. “Neal said Hutch went at her like a rutting hog. What does your boy have to say for hisself?”

  “I haven’t talked to him yet. I called Dora and told her to keep him home from school. That’s one reason I’m anxious to get home. I want Hutch to tell me that he didn’t force that girl to do anything.”

  Ivan grabbed his arm and pulled him around, even though Fritz outsized him considerably. “You listen to me, Sheriff,” he hissed. “I don’t give a fuck what Hutch tells you or doesn’t tell you, there’ll be no public confessions—not on the witness stand, not at the altar of the Baptist church, not anywhere. You hear me? You got that down real good?”

  “Ivan, if they’re guilty—”

  “Guilty my great-granny’s ass. Guilty of what? Of getting laid? Since when is it a crime for horny young bucks to get laid? Afterward, the girl got a little scared.” He shrugged. “That’s understandable, I guess. Our boys probably didn’t use much finesse. But she’s not hurt. She’ll get over this. If our boys go to prison, their lives’ll be ruined.”

  He pushed his face up very close to Fritz’s. “My boy ain’t going to do one frigging day in prison over a piece of tail. I don’t care how bad Hutch’s conscience hurts him, or how ethical you’ve convinced yourself you are, you bury this incident now, Fritz. Now.”

  Ivan released him and stepped back. He smoothed his hand over his hair, which was slick with grooming cream. He rolled his shoulders, forcing them to relax. Then, pasting on a hale and hearty grin, he opened the door and sauntered into the squad room.

  Fritz watched Ivan leave, hating him for his cocksureness, despising him for his lack of morals, and admiring him for his unflagging audacity. Fritz barked a name. Within seconds the clerk appeared in front of him.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Once you’ve typed up the complaint, take it over to the Sperrys’ house and leave it with them.” Wearing his most fearsome scowl, Fritz looked directly into the clerk’s eyes. “Then forget about it. If it ever gets back to me that you breathed a word of what’s going to be on that complaint, you’ll sorely regret it—and I’m talking about for the rest of your life.”

  The clerk swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

  Fritz nodded, knowing he’d made himself implicitly understood. “If anybody asks, I’ll be back in an hour.”

  It took only five minutes for Fritz to get home. He lived only a few blocks from Palmetto’s downtown district, where the tallest skyscraper, the Citizens First National Bank, was only six stories high. The town proper had a population of ten thousand, although ten times that many lived in the rural areas of the county.

  The Jollys’ neighborhood was old and comfortable. Fritz and Dora had bought the house as newlyweds in preparation for all the kids they planned to put in the many bedrooms. Unfortunately, Dora had developed an ovarian tumor shortly after Hutch was born and had to undergo a complete hysterectomy. She’d made a sewing room out of one of the spare bedrooms; Fritz and Hutch stored fishing and hunting gear in another.

  Dora was in the kitchen washing dishes when Fritz came in through the back door and removed his vest. “Hi. Is the coffee still on?”

  Dora Jolly was a tall, slender woman whose cheerful personality had given way to grim resignation over her untimely sterilization. She was an efficient homemaker, but no longer the loving, cheerful girl Fritz had married.

  She wiped her wet hands on a dish towel. “What’s going on, Fritz? How come you were called to the courthouse in the middle of the night? Why’d you have me keep Hutch home from school?”

  Fritz poured his own coffee. “Where is he?”

  “Upstairs in his bedroom. He’s behaving as peculiar as you. I cooked his breakfast, but he ate next to nothing. There’s something the matter with both of you. I want to know what it is.”

  “No, you don’t, Dora. Believe me—you don’t. Leave it at that.”

  Setting his unfinished coffee on the porcelain drainboard, he left the kitchen. The door to Hutch’s second-story bedroom was closed. Fritz knocked once sharply, then opened it and went in.

  Hutch was dressed but shoeless. He was sitting up in his unmade bed, propped against the headboard, staring sullenly into space. Beneath his freckles, his skin appeared more pale than usual. Last night he had said he got the long scratch on his cheek from a backlashing tree limb. Now that Fritz knew better, the sight of it turned his stomach.

  Hutch regarded him warily as he approached the bed and sat down on the edge of it. “Your mother said you didn’t eat breakfast.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you sick?”

  He fidgeted with the fringe on the chenille bedspread and shrugged laconically. Fritz had questioned too many suspects not to recognize guilt when he saw it. His stomach churned harder.

  “Well, boy, what’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why don’t we stop dancing around the mulberry bush?” Fritz said tightly. “Tell me about it.”

  “Tell you about what?”

  Fritz lost his patience. “I’m trying my damnedest to keep from knocking the hell out of you. Wise up and start talking. Spare yourself the beating that I’m scared shitless you deserve.”

  Hutch’s own tenuous control snapped. He began swallowing convulsively. His torso heaved. His wide shoulders started to shake. He looked ready either to burst into tears or to vomit. Finally he was able to say, “You know about Jade, I guess.”

  “I know that she got to the hospital about eleven-thirty last night.”

  “Eleven-thirty!” Hutch exclaimed.

  “She says an unidentified black man picked her up out of a ditch on the coastal highway and drove her there. She claims that you, Neal, and Lamar gang-raped her.”

  Raising his knees, Hutch planted his elbows on them while gouging his eyesockets with the heels of his hands. “I don’t know what happened to me, Daddy. Swear to God, I didn’t realize what I’d done till it was all over.”

  Fritz’s chest suddenly felt as heavy as a sack of concrete mix. The last, vain glimmer of hope that the girl might be lying flickered out and died. Wearily, he rubbed his face. “You raped that girl?”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Hutch sobbed. “Something came over me, over all of us. It was like I stood back and watched myself doing it. I couldn’t believe I was doing it, but I couldn’t stop myself either.”

  Fritz listened to his son’s blubbering account of the incident. Each incriminating word was like a spike being driven into his head. Almost verbatim, Hutch’s story matched Jade’s.

  “So you just left her there?” Fritz asked when Hutch finally stopped talking.

  “What else could we do? Neal said—”

/>   “ ‘Neal said,’ “Fritz shouted. “Is that all you ever go by—what Neal said? Can’t you think for yourself? Neal said, ‘Let’s rape Jade Sperry,’ so you whip out your cock. If Neal had said, ‘Now cut off your balls and eat them, Hutch,’ would you have done that, too?”

  “Well, it’s no different with you and Ivan, is it?”

  Fritz almost struck him across the face. He even raised his hand, but then drew it back. The bald truth of Hutch’s words prevented him from delivering the blow. What was he striking out against? Did he want to punish Hutch, or himself and his guilty conscience? Dejectedly, he lowered his hand and hung his head.

  After a moment Hutch said, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s all right, son. This morning’s no time to dodge the truth, no matter how ugly it is.”

  “Did you tell Mama about… Jade?” Fritz shook his head. “Am I going to go to prison?”

  “Not if I can keep you out of it. I don’t want another inmate to do to you what you and your friends did to that girl last night.”

  Hutch’s large, masculine face crumpled like a baby’s. He began to sob loudly and hoarsely. Awkwardly, Fritz embraced him and patted his back.

  “I didn’t mean to, Daddy. Swear to God. I’m sorry.”

  Fritz believed him. He even suspected that Hutch had a crush on the Sperry girl and that the last thing he would ever want to do was hurt her. His son didn’t have an ounce of malice in his entire being. Left alone, he would never have committed an act of violence. But he had been with Neal. Neal had been the instigator. He always was. Fritz had seen a calamity like this coming for a long time. He just hadn’t known what form it would take. Never in his wildest imaginings had he predicted that it would be so disastrous.

  Neal’s soul was twisted. Ivan had drummed into Neal’s head that he was special, and the boy had come to believe it. There were no barriers between him and self-gratification. What he wanted, he took, and he had never had to account for his actions. Consequently Neal believed himself to be exempt from the laws that applied to other people.

  It wasn’t surprising to Fritz that Neal had selected Hutch and Lamar to be his best friends. Primarily, they were the only male classmates who could abide him. Secondly, they had malleable personalities. Never mutinous, they did whatever Neal wanted them to do. They feared him more than they feared any other authority figures, including their parents. Neal had slyly tapped into their egos and their insecurities to keep them blindly loyal and absolutely obedient to him.

  Fritz knew Ivan could bury this incident. He had seen his dirty machinations succeed too many times to doubt his power. Even if the case came to trial—and it was highly unlikely it would get that far—the boys would never get convicted in Palmetto County. At least half the jury would be Patchett employees, and Ivan would bribe the other half. Jade Sperry’s reputation would be publicly slaughtered.

  No, Hutch wouldn’t go to prison. But a mistake of this caliber didn’t simply vanish in one clean swipe like chalk marks on a blackboard. Fritz had just enough religious conviction to fear Hell. He didn’t particularly believe that it was a place one had to die in order to reach, either. A sinner could live it on earth.

  “I reckon you’ll be a whole lot sorrier before it’s all over with, boy. I hate that for you.”

  Fritz knew that what he was doing was, in the long run, wrong for his boy and a grievious sin against that girl. His only alternative was to let Hutch’s life be destroyed by one foolish mistake. Could anyone expect that of a parent? That was asking too much. The best Fritz could hope for was that he wouldn’t live to see the day when Hutch would have to atone.

  “Just keep your mouth shut,” he told his son. “Don’t talk to anybody about it. The fewer who know, the better. Ivan and me’ll take care of it.”

  * * *

  In spite of the weak sunshine filtering through high, thin clouds, it was dim and cool inside the house when Jade and Velta returned home. Jade turned up the thermostat. The warm air that began blowing through the ceiling vents smelled like scorched dust.

  She moved down the hallway toward her bedroom. From the threshold, she gazed into the familiar room. In the twenty-four hours since she had left it, it had remained untouched. She, however, had been irrevocably changed.

  The enormity of her loss crashed against her again like a tidal wave. These attacks of regret were becoming familiar, but they were still so fresh and new that each had tremendous impact. She would have to learn to brace herself for them and cope.

  “Jade, would you like me to fix you something? Cocoa? Something to eat?”

  She turned and looked at her mother. Velta’s face was composed, but no one was home behind her eyes. She was extending kindness out of necessity. Jade longed for her father, who used to draw her onto his knee and rock her in the creaky old chair. Don’t ever be afraid, Jade.

  “No, thank you, Mama. I’ll get something later, after I’ve bathed and dressed.”

  “I think we should talk.”

  “Do you?”

  “Don’t sass me, Jade,” Velta snapped, indignantly pulling herself erect. “I’ll be in the kitchen.” She pivoted on her heel and stalked back down the hall.

  Jade closed her bedroom door and stripped off the OR scrubs. She accidentally caught her reflection in the vanity table mirror. Wanting to hide her naked body from her own eyes, she took a robe from her closet and tightly wrapped herself in it.

  In the bathroom, she filled the tub with hot water, sank into it up to her chin, then immersed her head. She wished she could take a deep breath, fill her lungs with the scalding water, and end her life.

  But of course she couldn’t. It wasn’t courage she lacked to kill herself; it was peace. She wouldn’t know peace again until she had gotten justice. Having come to that realization, her course of action became clear.

  Velta’s word was as good as a guarantee. When Jade emerged from her room, Velta was waiting for her in the kitchen. Seated at the small square table, she was stirring sugar into a cup of instant coffee. After pouring herself a glass of milk, Jade joined her.

  “A deputy brought this to the door. He said for you to read it before going back to the courthouse.”

  Jade gazed at the long white envelope that lay on the table between them, but said nothing.

  “I don’t know how you could have gotten yourself in a fix like this, Jade,” Velta began. “I truly don’t.”

  Jade took a sip of her milk.

  “But you shouldn’t make a bad situation even worse by bringing formal charges against those boys.” Velta plucked a paper napkin from the plastic dispenser in the center of the table and blotted up the coffee that had sloshed into her saucer.

  Jade focused her concentration on the glass of milk in front of her and let her mother’s words flow over her like rushing water over smooth stones. The only way she could survive this was to take herself out of the present and transport her mind to a point in the future when things were different.

  “Can you imagine the effects a rape trial would have on us?” Velta rubbed her arms as though chilled by the thought. “You’ll be remembered for that for the rest of your life. People will forget that your daddy won the Medal of Honor. Every time your name is mentioned, it’ll be in connection with this unfortunate incident.”

  Her mother’s belittling words shattered Jade’s concentration. She closed her eyes and let her head fall back to rest on her neck. By an act of will, she withheld the bitter retorts that filled her breast and begged to be expressed.

  “In many respects, the sheriff was right, Jade. I believe he had your best interests at heart. I truly do. Bringing this out into the open will mean trouble for everybody. Ivan will fire me for sure. He can’t let me continue working for him if our children are on opposite sides of a courtroom battle. If I lose my job, what will we do?”

  Velta paused to take a breath and another sip of coffee.

  “Only the four of you know what really happ
ened out there. Those boys will tell a completely different story, Jade. It will be their version against yours. Three against one. Who do you think folks will believe? People will say you asked for it by getting into Neal’s car with them in the first place.”

  Velta tapped the tabletop with the nail of her index finger. “A rape victim always gets blamed for it. It might not be right, but that’s the way it is. People will say that you’re pretty and that you know it. They’ll say you flaunted yourself at those boys until they lost control.

  “People who have bragged on you for being an ideal student and a nice Christian girl will begin looking at you in a whole new light. Some might even start spreading lies about you just to make themselves important sources of gossip. Before too long, neither of us will be able to hold her head up in this town.”

  Velta sighed. “After this, you might as well kiss goodbye any hopes of marrying somebody important. I wish you’d thought of that before you went tattling.”

  Jade stood, went to the sink, and poured the remainder of her milk down the drain. Then she turned to confront her mother. “I’ve changed my mind, Mama. I’m not going to press charges.”

  Velta’s lips fell open, then she came as close as she ever did to smiling. “Oh, Jade, I—”

  “Wait, Mama, before you say anything, I want to make sure you know why I’m not going to. I didn’t change my mind because of any advice I received from you or from Sheriff Jolly. And I don’t care if Ivan Patchett fires you this afternoon. In fact, if you haven’t got the guts to stand up to him and quit, I would just as soon he fire you. I loathe the idea of being dependent on him for anything.

  “I also don’t give a flip about what a trial might mean to your reputation or mine. I don’t care what anybody thinks. Anyone who would believe such a vicious lie about me automatically sacrifices the value I would place on his opinion.

  “The only reason I don’t want a trial is Gary. Our relationship would be opened to public scrutiny. Strangers would discuss it over clotheslines. I couldn’t bear knowing that something as pure and clean as the way we have loved each other was being turned into something ugly and shameful, something to snicker at.