City of the Lost (Casey Duncan #1)(87)

I open my mouth, but she’s on a roll, her face animated.

“I told my grandparents they made me nervous, and do you know what they said? Come down off my high horse and get to know them better. I decided maybe they were right. So the next time those boys catcalled and offered me a ride home, I said yes. They drove me to the woods for a ‘party’ instead. Laughed when I insisted they take me home. Mocked my diction and told me to stop being so stuck-up and have some fun. I calmed down and pretended to go along with it. Then, the first chance I got, I ran. I told my grandparents, and they said I’d misinterpreted. Because, apparently, kidnapping me was just those boys’ way of being neighbourly. That taught me all I need to know about men like Eric Dalton. And about how other people admire them and make allowances for them.”

“Has Er—Dalton ever done anything like that?”

“To me?” She laughs. “I’m not exactly a teenager anymore.”

“So that’s his preference? Young women?”

She stops. “Do you mean Abbygail?”

I nod.

Val goes still. She cups her hands in her lap, and her voice lowers, that strident note vanishing as she says, “God, I hope not. You think he—?”

“No.” I’ll give her nothing she can take back to the council. Dalton must have the full benefit of my doubt until I find irrefutable proof.

I continue. “I’m investigating all possible romantic links with the victims. There aren’t many younger men in town, and Dalton was close to Abbygail, so I can’t ignore that avenue.”

“She was a good girl,” she says, in that same soft voice. “I didn’t think that when she first came. This isn’t a place for girls like that. Runaways. Addicts. Whores.”

I stiffen at the last word. I know she only means prostitutes, but it is a horrible word to use, especially for a teenage girl who turned tricks to survive on the street. What Val means is that Abbygail was not the kind of girl she’d been, and therefore she found her lifestyle distasteful—a sign of ignorance and low intelligence. Which I suspect, to Val, is the worst possible failing.

“Abbygail overcame that, though,” she says. “Elizabeth set her on the right track. She promised me she would, and she delivered, and I give her full credit for that. Abbygail was a true success story, entirely due to the mentorship of strong women like Elizabeth and Isabel.”

“You don’t have a problem with Isabel, then? Her line of work?”

“If women are willing to debase themselves in that way, then it only means other women don’t need to worry about men acting on their urges.”

There are so many things I could say to that. Not about Isabel or her occupation, but about the idea of championing strong women while tearing down those you view as less strong. Less morally upright, too. I suspect that’s a big deal to Valerie. Women are either good girls or bad. Men are animals at the mercy of their “urges.” As for the role Dalton and Mick and other men in Rockton played in Abbygail’s recovery? Irrelevant.

I say none of that, just nod and plaster on a thoughtful look.

“Abbygail had a bright future ahead of her,” Val says. “To take that away …” She sucks in a breath and leans back, and I might not like this woman, but there is genuine grief in her face.

She continues. “If Sheriff Dalton was taking advantage of that poor girl, I certainly hope someone would have told me. But even Elizabeth is charmed by his swagger. She wants him to be a good person, and so she sees a good person. But he’s not good, Detective Butler. There’s something savage in him. He hides it, but …” She leans forward. “You know about his fascination with the forest, I presume.”

I nod.

“Do you know what’s in that forest, Casey?” She’s switched to my given name, relaxing with a sympathetic audience.

“Settlers,” I say. “People who left Rockton to live on their own. And what the locals call hostiles. The dangerous ones.”

“Dangerous ones? They’re all dangerous. They live in the forest with the animals because they are animals. The first month I was here, I went on a group outing. I wanted to experience this life fully. I got separated from the others and ran into two men deep in the forest. They made those redneck boys back home look like civilized gentlemen. What little language these two knew, they used to tell me they were going to teach me a lesson about trespassing on their land. They took me to their camp and …” She straightens. “Like those boys, they were of such low intelligence that I was able to escape the next morning.”

“But you spent the night in their camp.”

“Yes, I could not effect my escape sooner. However, the point—”

“Were you … assaulted?”

Her face goes hard. “Of course not. I’d die fighting if they tried. That was certainly their eventual goal, but they did not touch me that night.”

“All right. So—”

“They did not touch me,” she repeats, growing agitated. “I wouldn’t have allowed that.”

Which is a lie. The hostiles did rape her, their way of teaching a woman a lesson, and then either they dumped her or she escaped. She’d told no one about the assault. Perhaps she even convinced herself it had never happened. But as she sits there desperate for me to believe her, I finally begin to understand Valerie Zapata. What happened to me in that alley twelve years ago is not something that ever goes away. The shame of the beating, of feeling like I should have been able to avoid it, been stronger, been smarter. That is what Val feels.