What Lies in the Woods(20)

“So far I’ve managed to bring up your newly ex-boyfriend, your strained relationship with your dad, and that time you almost died. Why don’t you pick the subject?” he suggested, and I laughed.

Fifteen years was a lot of catching up, as it turned out. I did most of the talking. Cody had always been a reserved guy. Somehow, hearing about my creative disaster of a life didn’t send him scrambling for the back exit.

The second beer turned into a rum and Coke, and then another, along with a charcoal slab of a hamburger. I was drunk enough to wonder, as Cody walked me to the motel room after he insisted on paying the bill, if I wanted to invite him inside. He was a good-looking guy, but to me he was still a big brother, a knight in shining armor. Still, I’d made worse decisions. It was kind of my brand.

I turned the key and opened the door a crack, then leaned against the doorframe to look back at him. He was standing close but not too close. I could smell him—too clean to match the local-boy image he was projecting. He smelled like soap and responsible choices. He’d nursed that one beer and then barely had half of his second.

“You can still get outta here, you know,” he said. “Leave your past behind you.”

“That’s just a line from a song, not something people can really do,” I told him.

“What song is that?”

“You know, I can’t remember,” I confessed.

My fingertips grazed the side of his hand, not quite taking it. He looked down at me, a little smile on his lips. I’d slept with a lot of people who shouldn’t have slept with me, and not one of them had that look.

“Cody Benham’s a dad,” I said, shaking my head in wonder.

“It’s kind of great,” he admitted.

I let my hand drop to my side. “You’re not even a little bit tempted, are you?”

“It’s not because of the scar,” he said quickly.

“Hadn’t even crossed my mind,” I told him, and it was true.

An alarm on his phone went off. “Gotta call home before Gabby goes to bed,” he told me.

“Fuck, you’re wholesome.” I rocked my weight back, putting distance between us.

“I know. I can’t believe it either,” he said. He bent and kissed my brow, then straightened up. He was already with his kids; I could see it in his eyes. “I’m heading home first thing tomorrow, but if you need anything before then—or after, for that matter…”

“I’ve got your number,” I said, patting the jacket pocket where I’d tucked his business card. “Get out of here, Cody Benham. I’ll be fine.”

Once Cody took off, I was left with a scratchy motel bed and the unfamiliar sounds of a new place. I hated being alone. I hated being alone at night worst of all. I could never sleep properly without another body near me. Couldn’t quiet my thoughts without someone to focus on.

I turned on the TV, hoping it would be enough to distract me. I flipped through a hundred channels that all seemed to be showing Forensic Files. Not exactly my idea of relaxing viewing. It wasn’t that it made me afraid or reminded me of what had happened to me—it was more that it didn’t. I hadn’t turned out a tragedy, and it left me feeling like an impostor in the annals of victimhood. I left it on, though, watching the monotonous catalog of violence without taking any of it in.

The show ended—the husband did it, surprise—and another one started up, even grislier. I flipped around, hopping between unfunny sitcoms and a rotating assortment of cop shows, the narratives blending together in a surreal jumble of suspects, motives, and gore.

Then Alan Michael Stahl appeared, glaring from behind a courtroom table and wearing an orange jumpsuit, and I stopped. It was the picture they always used, because you could see the hatred in his eyes. Hatred for everything, but us in particular—we three girls who brought him to ruin.

Are you sure it was Stahl who attacked you?

Stahl was already under investigation for the murders when I was attacked. When Cass and Liv gave their descriptions, the detectives realized the connection immediately. I didn’t remember how I’d identified him originally. All I remembered was people telling me I had identified him. All I had to do was keep agreeing.

I had always told myself that I must have remembered, right after the attack, and been able to identify him; I must have forgotten afterward. The images of the attack had been lost in the same haze that had stolen most of my memories of the hospital, that had turned the months afterward into a scattered mosaic of moments.

My refusal to do interviews had ensured that I didn’t have to deal with the kinds of questions Schreiber was asking. Cassidy had fielded those, and generally people weren’t going to ask a preteen if she thought it was weird her best friend hadn’t been raped. The defense attorney at the trial had been similarly cautious, feeling gently for gaps in our story—but it wasn’t like she could point to the other murders as evidence that Stahl hadn’t attacked me, since he claimed to be innocent of those, too.

So the inconsistencies had been glossed over and forgotten. I knew that there were message boards and that sort of thing where people dissected the case in detail, but I never went looking.

“… never charged with the other murders, but given the strong circumstantial evidence and similarities between the attack on Naomi Shaw and the other victims, those cases are considered closed,” the anchorwoman was saying. “In more lighthearted news, tonight we’re talking to two local restaurants with a yearly tradition: a battle royale—of pancakes.”