“Up there on the left. You already passed it.”
I hit the brakes, then pull forward twenty yards, shift into reverse, and back into the opening between an oak and some popcorn trees. The rear end of the Explorer dips, then kicks up hard, but I manage to go far enough back to rotate the steering wheel and get our nose pointed downhill. Shifting into low, I nurse us back onto the road. There’s enough moonlight to see under the overhanging branches, but just. We coast forward in the darkness, steadily descending.
“Look for a spot where we can hide but still see the gate down on the flats.”
“Thirty yards ahead, on the right,” Jet says. “Can you fit through there?”
She’s pointing to a narrow gap between two pine trees. It looks iffy, but with careful use of the pedals, I manage to back us off the road and under cover. We end up nose-down about thirty-five degrees, but the trees on the other side of the road are thin enough to give us a clear view of the fields below. A half mile away, a lone pair of headlights moves west along Cemetery Road.
“Do you think Max is dead?” Jet asks.
“Anybody else would be.” I kill the engine, then reach over and gently take her left hand. She’s shivering. “How did you end up with Max this afternoon?”
“He surprised me in the alley behind my office. After work, when I was going to my car. He said he needed to talk to me about Sally. He was freaked out. He told me his partners were trying to kill him. The Poker Club. Half of them, anyway.”
“That might be true.”
“He said he was being followed. He was yelling about microphones everywhere. He said he’d swept his truck with some kind of wand, and the truck was the only space he trusted. Even though he was in a wild state, I figured that might be my best chance to get hold of his cell phone.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“The thing is, once I got in with him, he asked me to give him my cell. Like a fool I did, because I was so intent on stealing his from him. He shut mine off, wanded it, and slipped it into his pocket. Then he drove us out of town on Highway 36.”
“That’s where I picked you up.”
“He was headed out here the whole time. I think half that paranoia was an act to get me to come out here with him. He wanted me where no one could hear me scream.”
Something cold and clinical takes hold of my heart, like a wet latex glove. “Max brought you out here to rape you?”
Jet lifts her closed fist to her mouth and breathes slowly. She looks like she’s struggling not to hyperventilate.
“My father-in-law,” she says at length, “is obsessed with me. I know you think you know him, but you have no idea, okay? Max is sick. All those business trips he takes to Vietnam? Because of their lumber business? He goes to relive his war years and have sex with fifteen-year-old prostitutes. He’s told me I’m the closest thing around here to French-Vietnamese girls, which he claims are the most beautiful in the world. Today’s big news? He thinks about me every time he masturbates.”
My stomach rolls like it does when a plane hits an air pocket, and a tingling fight-or-flight sensation goes through my legs. “How long has this been going on? His behavior, I mean.”
“He’s always had a thing about me. But watching you and me make love two days ago pushed him over the edge. He’s snapped, Marshall. Halfway up this hill, he took out his cell phone and played me the video of us on the patio. He acted like I’d cheated on him, not Paul.”
Again I remember Max sitting in my kitchen, casually commenting on Jet’s body and talking about wanting to screw Nadine. “I’m not surprised about Max being sexually aggressive. Even Dr. Kirby called him a ‘pussy hound’ yesterday. But why is he obsessed with you? His son’s wife?”
Jet cuts her eyes at me but says nothing. This is clearly tough for her to talk about.
“So he didn’t talk to you about the case at all?”
“Nothing new. He was just stalling.”
“What happened once he got you out here?”
She settles back in her seat and recounts her story in a mechanical voice. “He drove right through the trees and parked by the water. I asked why he’d come here, but he just got out of the truck and told me to follow him. I wasn’t sure what to do. I had a bad feeling, but he’d taken the keys with him. Before I got out, I looked around for anything I might use as a weapon. He keeps a tool bag in the backseat, just like Paul. I wanted a screwdriver, but I couldn’t get one without crawling back there. That hammer was sticking up, though, and I could just reach it. It was too big to hide, so I dropped it on the ground as I got out. At least it would be close in a crisis.”
“That was smart.”
She nods reflexively. “Once we were out of the truck, he didn’t waste time. He walked out on that pier and said we ought to go swimming to relax.”
“Without clothes, I suppose?”
“Naturally.”
How many times did Jet and I do that out here?
“Apart from being scared,” she goes on, “all I could think about was his cell phone. If I could get hold of it, I’d have two choices: try to get away with it—which would give me a chance to try Sally’s passwords on it—or just throw it into the middle of the pool and at least destroy the video. Getting away with it didn’t seem very likely at that point.”
“I was watching by then, but it was hard to tell what was happening.”
“As soon as I got close to him out on the pier, he pulled me to him. He started talking shit and touching my breasts. He tried to get a hand up under my top. It was like junior high. I tried to play it off as him kidding around. Then he pressed my hand against his penis. I jerked my hand back, and that’s when he ripped my top.”
She shakes her head, obviously reliving each second. “Once it got that far, I knew he wasn’t going to stop. But I forced myself to relax, like I was going to submit. He pulled my hips against his. He was hard already, and I let him sort of dry-hump me standing up, until his eyes glazed over. Then I shoved him back and I broke for the truck.”
“I saw that happen.”
“Did you see how he just walked after me?” She shudders in her seat. “It felt like a damned monster movie. He knew he didn’t have to hurry up here. Motherfucker. For a second I thought about running out to the road or trying to hide in the woods. But I knew I couldn’t get away from him. Besides . . . I was just sick of it all, sick of him. So I picked up the hammer.”
“I saw that, too,” I tell her, my mind hanging on to something she said. “And I know I can’t possibly understand the full horror of what happened back there . . .”
“But?” she says. “I hear a ‘but’ coming.”
I should just let this go. But I’ve known Jet a long time, and something isn’t adding up. She’s twenty years younger than Max, and four months ago she was running half-marathons. Since she isn’t physically hurt, I figure she’d have had a better-than-even chance of escaping him on this hill.
“You said you knew you couldn’t get away from him,” I say gently. “So you turned around and picked up the hammer. Was it only the threat of rape tonight that made you do that?”
“What?” Her breathing has become a sort of frantic wheeze. “What are you doing? Playing prosecutor? Are you saying defending myself against rape isn’t self-defense?”
“I’m not saying that at all.”
“It sounds like you are!” Her answer is almost a snarl, like a blow intended to drive away something she can’t face.
“Jet, this is me. I love you. I came here to protect you. That’s all I want to do. But to do that, I need to know what’s really going on. Last night, you told me about a plan that could end in Max’s death. It could have been designed solely with that end in mind. And tonight you hit him in the head with a hammer.”
She looks away from me, expels another rush of air.