The Sheriff's Daughter

Everyone who knew her at all would find it odd that she wasn’t in the office, anyway—she’d been gone for three days.

But at the moment, she didn’t really care. For the first time in many years, the office, her father, what people thought of her, didn’t matter.

“Would you like something to drink?”

“I’m good, thanks.” He shook his head.

“You were starting at the beginning.”

“Yeah.” Head bowed, he didn’t speak right away. Then, looking up at her, he said, “This is kind of strange, isn’t it?”

Sara chuckled. “To say the least. I’m nothing to you—I don’t even know you. And yet I look at you, know that you’re my son and I feel like a mother. I’m thirty-seven years old and I don’t recognize myself.”

“I kinda feel like I know you, too.”

“Sounds like you know quite a bit about me.”

The thought was a comfort, given the seven years it had taken him to come and meet her.

“I’ve always loved puzzles, solving riddles and mysteries. When I was a kid I preferred old detective reruns to cartoons and all the action-hero shows the kids at school talked about.”

She could picture him, a much smaller version of the man sitting beside her, with skinny arms and legs, innocent eyes and the same freshly cut hair, lying on his stomach in front of a television set, his chin in his hands. The vision was so bittersweet it echoed the ache that accompanied her everywhere, every day.

“I don’t really know how it all started,” he continued. “It’s not like I ever made a conscious decision, but somehow, after I learned your name—and decided that I wasn’t going to try to see you—I started looking you up on the Internet.”

Sara’s chest tightened. Her entire life was a secret, built on air—and on her determination to protect herself, make amends, never be hurt or hurt anyone ever again. She would not allow herself to falter.

But no one knew that. In this area she had no confidants.

“There was no Internet when I was growing up. And I’m a behind-the-scenes kind of person. I imagine that search bored you fairly quickly.”

Ryan shook his head. But it was the compassion shining from his eyes that scared her to death.

He knew. That one look from her son brought back all the shame. The dirtiness. The fear and anger. The guilt.

She didn’t want him to see her like that. Didn’t want to be that person. She’d worked so hard to leave sixteen-year-old Sara Lindsay behind.

“When I typed in your name, nothing came up. But birth records are public and it didn’t take long to find out that your father was the sheriff of Brighton County.”

Court cases were probably public record, too. And if someone was savvy enough to know how to access them…

“It was actually through his name that I found the old newspaper articles.”

“How old?” The Internet hadn’t been around that long.

“Twenty-two years. The Maricopa Tribune, like a lot of newspapers, hired someone to archive their past issues and you can access the collection on their Web site.”

She’d had no idea. Had never seen the articles to begin with, though she’d heard about them. Her parents had pulled her out of school that year and her mother had homeschooled her. They’d done all they could to help her recover from the tragic consequences of her great rebellion—including arranging counseling.

Still, despite all their efforts—and her own—the damage remained.

Ryan hesitated, and now it was Sara’s turn to look away. How did a son broach such a subject with his mother? Especially one he’d just met?

He shouldn’t need to.

And yet it was clearly important to Ryan.

“It was my fault.” She hadn’t meant to say the words. And knew logically that they couldn’t possibly be true. Everyone who’d been around then, who’d had anything to do with her, had adamantly insisted that she hadn’t been to blame.

And yet she’d deliberately disobeyed her parents. She’d lied. She’d put herself in danger….

“You were raped. Three guys were convicted and sent to prison! How can you possibly think that was your fault?” Ryan’s words echoed those she’d heard so many times before.

“I should never have been at that party,” she said softly. “It was stupid teenage rebellion. Growing up the only child of a sheriff—especially when you’re a girl—isn’t always easy. My father was pretty strict, seeing danger in everything.”

“I can imagine.”

Glancing at his uniform, she was sure he could. And with twenty-one years’ hindsight—heck, with one more day’s hindsight—she’d been able to understand, as well.

But if they had to talk about this, she needed it done as quickly as possible, with as little discussion as possible.

“I’d wanted to go to a concert in Cincinnati at Riverfront Stadium with a group of girlfriends, and my father said no. I was the only one who couldn’t go and they all had a great time. Talked about it the entire week afterward. I felt left out. And so uncool. Like a little kid hanging out with girls who were growing up without me. And it just so happened that that following weekend one of my friends told me about a frat party that a group of college guys were having down by the lake a few miles outside of town. Her older brother was going. I’d been to the lake a hundred times, we all had. I saw this as an opportunity to show them all—most particularly my dad—that I was growing up, too. And so, pretending to be older than I was, I went to that party. Turns out there was only one other girl there and I don’t know how long she stayed.”

She cringed, even now, as she thought about the stupid young girl she’d been—so hell-bent on running her own life, she’d damaged it irrevocably.

Hers and many others.

“The paper said you’d been found there the next morning.”

“By my father.” Of all people. “All I can remember is having two bottles of some wine thing. And the next thing I know, my dad’s shaking me awake. I was already wrapped in his coat. And wearing little else.”

Ryan’s gaze fell momentarily. “The newspaper article didn’t mention that part.”

“There were empty beer bottles all over the ground.” Sara continued her recitation as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “And whiskey bottles, too.”

She’d do this once, and never again. For the child who’d been conceived that night.

“My father was determined to find the guy who’d taken advantage of me.”

“It was a lot more than that.” Ryan’s voice was stronger, coplike.

Arms around her waist, Sara shivered, in spite of the heat. “Maybe,” she allowed, and then nodded. “Probably, considering the fact that until that point I hadn’t even been kissed. Guys didn’t fool around with Sheriff Lindsay’s daughter.”

She’d been the quintessential virgin. She’d never even had her breasts touched through her clothes, and suddenly she’d been naked for all the world to see.

“There was a guy at the scene who I guess wasn’t as drunk as the rest. He apparently named the three guys and the hospital was able to confirm that all three of them had been…with…me.”

Problem was, she couldn’t remember if they’d simply had sex with her. Or raped her.

“I didn’t even have to testify,” she continued, lost in her thoughts with that young girl again, trying to make sense out of a world gone mad. “I couldn’t remember anything, but it didn’t matter to my father or the court. I was underage. It was rape. Statutory or otherwise.”

“The evidence was pretty clear that it’d been otherwise.”

She’d been badly bruised in places a girl should never be bruised.

“For all I knew, I got wild when I drank.”

“You’d never gotten drunk before?”

She shook her head. “And I’ve never been drunk since.”

“You don’t drink?”

“Socially.” One glass of wine, if a host was serving her. And only if the circumstances were completely controlled.

“According to what I read, none of the men convicted remembered much about what happened, either. Or at least, that was their defense.”

That’s what she’d been told. She hadn’t been present to hear any of the testimony.

“Based on the number of bottles found at the site and how sick we all were the next day, I’d guess we were all somewhat to blame.”

But she hadn’t lost her freedom for it. She hadn’t been sent to prison at eighteen, to be God-knew-what by the hardened and deranged prisoners who were spending their lives behind bars.

And if it had been only statutory rape, if she’d been a willing participant in the sexual antics that night, she was at least somewhat to blame for their incarceration. They’d been sent up on charges of having sex with a minor and she’d told them all she was twenty-one. Dressed as if she’d been twenty-one, with a bra that had pushed up her breasts and a low-cut blouse that showed more than it left to the imaginations of a bunch of horny college guys.

“Do you know if any of you were checked for drug use?” Ryan sounded all cop.

“Did the papers say we had been?”

“It wasn’t mentioned.”

“If we were, I wasn’t told about it. I sure didn’t see or hear anything about any drugs at the party. These guys were there to drink, but that’s all. Why do you ask?”

He shrugged. “PCP, for instance, is a dissociative street drug that’s been around since the fifties and it’s still used by about two and a half percent of high school seniors today. One of its side effects is loss of memory.”

He was well-trained. And seeing things that weren’t there because he knew too much?

“I’m sure if my father suspected drug use, we were tested,” she told her newfound son. “But passing out from an overdose of alcohol can also result in loss of memory, and I know for certain that there was an ample supply of that on hand.”

“So you think you passed out drunk, and then they had sex with you?”

Her body temperature rising from her feet to her ears, Sara concentrated on taking long, calming breaths. Distancing herself, as she’d been taught in her counseling sessions all those years ago.

“I try not to think about it at all,” she told her son honestly. “I woke up, spent the day vomiting and crying, and six weeks later I found out I was pregnant.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Afraid?”

He shrugged, looked down. “The papers, the trial transcript, said nothing about a pregnancy. I kind of hoped my conception was a separate incident.”

“I was sixteen.”

“I know. But you’d been to the hospital. They’d have taken precautions to prevent pregnancy.”

“There’s only so much they can do. It happens that way sometimes.”

“My folks said tests were never done to determine which of the three was my father.”

Since she had no memory of any of them, the three had kind of morphed into one in Sara’s mind.

“I’d say I was sorry, except that then I wouldn’t be here,” Ryan added.

“I’m definitely not sorry you’re here,” Sara told him, looking him straight in the eye. And she wasn’t. At all. She’d given life to a remarkable human being—given a son to a childless couple who’d clearly loved him well.

“You might be.”

That sounded ominous. “Why?”

“I haven’t told you what I’m doing here.”

He’d come out of a desire to finally meet her. Hadn’t he?

“So tell me.” Sara couldn’t imagine anything worse than what they’d just been through.

“First, I don’t think the story of that night ends with you having me and three young men going to prison.”

Of course it did. It was over, done.

“I think the whole rape thing was a cover-up.”

The idea was so ludicrous she couldn’t even consider it. Ryan was young. A rookie cop, overeager. Needing to put a different light on the night of his conception.

Because the facts as they were were unsatisfying—and ugly.

Because he felt the need to exonerate his birth mother? Or to pretend that he wasn’t the offspring of a rapist?

“A cover-up? For what?”

“Murder.”

“Whose murder?”

“I don’t know yet, but I intend to find out. Some bones were found on the other side of the lake later that year after a huge flood washed away much of the bank. The local coroner dated them to within a few weeks of the night of that party.”

In her mind, it was the night she was raped. The night of his conception. The night that changed her life forever. But if he wanted to refer to it as the night of the party, that was fine with her.

She remembered the flood. Had been glad to hear that the site of her foray into hell had been washed clean.

“Were the bones identified?”

“No. From what I can see, the townspeople were questioned and requests for information posted, but no one came forward. Apparently, there were not only no witnesses to the death but no one reported a missing person, either. You can’t match dental records without a possible identity to begin with. And Ohio has only been using DNA testing on a regular basis since the late ’80s. There were no matching missing-persons reports in the state during the three months prior, or two years after, the approximate time of death.”

She wasn’t going to ask him how he knew that. Maricopa wasn’t in his jurisdiction. But he was a police officer. He had ways to get access to information that most people wouldn’t even know existed.

Still…

“So how does this all tie in? You think someone was murdered that night at the lake? Surely someone would have reported a missing college kid.”

“The dead man was in his late thirties to early forties.”

Ryan’s earnestness, his conviction, was endearing. “And the tie-in?”

“That’s what I have to find. But think about it. The sheriff’s daughter, a conservative young woman, by all accounts, is suddenly having sex with three men—and all four of you have no memory of the incident. There’s ample physical evidence, and a baby, to prove what happened. This is a case that will consume every ounce of the sheriff’s attention, focus and energy. An open-and-shut case that won’t require digging into anything else that might have happened that night. You have to admit, it’s convenient.”

Not a word she’d ever associated with that night. “Too convenient, if you ask me,” Ryan continued. “Most cops don’t like coincidences, and I don’t like conveniences. Crimes aren’t usually that easy to wrap up.”

“And this…convenience…is what you’re basing your murder cover-up story on?”

He nodded, fingertips tapping together. “That, the unidentified bones, and…” he glanced away and then back, giving her a sheepish look “…I’ve read some of the police reports.”

“Did you find something unusual?”

“Not necessarily, but I’ve got some questions and am hoping to get the whole file. I’m studying to become a detective and I’ve asked to look over the case for practice.”

Just as she thought. A young cop playing sleuth. And where was the harm? If he needed to reshape the events that surrounded his conception, she wasn’t going to try to stop him.

“That’s actually not why I’m here,” Ryan said then, as if he knew she wasn’t buying his theory.

There was more? She wasn’t sure she had the emotional or physical resources to handle anything else at the moment.

She wanted to know how old he was when he took his first step. And whether or not he liked peas. Or if he had a girlfriend?

He wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. But this wasn’t about her. She’d given up her rights to Ryan’s life the day she’d let them whisk him away, never to be seen by her again.

A newborn baby rejected by the woman who’d given birth to him.

At least she’d given birth to him. Her parents had spent weeks trying to convince her to terminate her pregnancy.

It was evidence of her overwhelmed state that it took her several minutes to realize Ryan wasn’t talking anymore.

“So why are you here?”

“I haven’t wanted to intrude on your life,” he answered slowly. “But neither have I been able to forget you.”

She smiled and he smiled back.

“So I’ve sort of been watching you.”

She sat up. “Spying on me?”

“No!” Ryan stood. Faced her.

He was a lot taller than she’d pictured him these past couple of years. An inch or two over six feet.

“Watching out for you, I should have said.”

Sara couldn’t help smiling again. While she’d been going through the motions of living, her long-lost son had been protecting her, kind of like her own private guardian angel.

Which was overstating things, she was sure.

But the calming sensation moving slowly through her sure was nice.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” His face was grim.

“What?” Sara sat forward, frowning. “Something’s going on at NOISE that I don’t know about? Tell me.”

“It’s not NOISE.”

“What, then?”

Her father was retired. Still living in the house in Maricopa where she’d grown up. Nagging her about NOISE. Writing the books on adolescence and Internet safety that had made the organization such a success.

“Your husband.”

“Brent?”

Ryan nodded. Waited. Almost as if he couldn’t bring himself to tell her what he’d gone through all of this to say.

“He’s gambling again?” She’d warned him. One more time and they were through.

He shook his head. His eyes warming again. And she knew. Ryan was like her own self-appointed private eye. And everyone who watched the old detective shows knew what kind of information they were usually hired to ferret out when it came to marriages.

She said the words so he didn’t have to.

“He’s having an affair.”

MARK DALTON ROSE when his name was called, walked across the front of the large hall on the Ohio State University campus and accepted his Juris Doctor. Circling around, he resumed his seat in the great hall at the law school he’d been attending for the past three years, immune to those around him. Some might not know who or what he was. Many probably no longer cared. He’d long since ceased to allow such things to bother him.

He’d have left, if not for the fact that his mom and sister were sitting with the family members of his classmates behind him. He’d told them they needn’t come. The two-hour drive from Cleveland, where they’d relocated twenty years before, wasn’t hard, but his sister—a waitress at a well-to-do club—had to work that night.

And his mother’s eyesight wasn’t good enough for her to drive alone in the dark.

Besides, Mark was going to work, too, as soon as he got home and changed out of the conservative shirt and tie he had on under his academic robes. He had a’52 Corvette to deliver the following day and some finishing touches to put on his workmanship.

The rich and famous in the car world didn’t mind doing business with a known sex offender, when he was also one of the best vintage car restorers in the country.

No one worried about him assaulting an engine.

Charles Granger, dean of Ohio State’s College of Law, ended his closing remarks and the ceremony concluded with a whoop of congratulations. Mark waited for his chance to leave.

“Good luck, Mark,” Sharon Rose said from beside him, squeezing his hand.

She was forty, divorced and starting a new life. She’d been hired by the county attorney’s office.

“You, too,” he told her.

“Give me a call sometime.”

He nodded, knowing he wouldn’t.

Filing out, Mark was greeted by many of the other students and professors, all gathered there to celebrate new beginnings. He waved at his mom, who was wiping her eyes.

For Mark, this was an end. Unlike most of his classmates, he didn’t have a job lined up with a firm or with the state, or any kind of a law career ahead. He’d done this simply because it had been one of the most important goals in his life back when his life had been his own. There were many doors closed to him now, but getting the degree was not one of them.

As to the rest of that dream—to practice public law, prosecute for the state of Ohio, as Sharon was going to do—it had died a long time ago.

Registered sex offenders were not permitted to take the bar exam. Nor to hold any position in society that required a professional license.

But he could drive a car.

And he was free.

CHAPTER THREE

SARA WENT TO DINNER with Brent and his partners Tuesday night, as planned. She made small talk with the wives, ordered steak and pretended to eat, and sat silently while her husband talked business. Brent was the rainmaker—the one who sought out business for his firm. And his partners were excellent attorneys.

She had one glass of wine.

And she went home to bed with Brent. They talked about the dinner as they moved around each other almost in choreographed motion, Sara washing her face at her sink while he brushed his teeth at his, meeting together over the dirty clothes hamper in their room-sized closet. She reached for her nightgown off one hook as he grabbed his pajama bottoms from the matching designer hook beside hers. They walked into the bedroom, turning off the lights as they went. She raised the blinds so the moon could shine in.

Brent was pleased with the evening. His partners were pleased with the amount of revenue he was bringing in for them, and they expected very little in the way of actual lawyering from him. He had a young attorney who worked for him who did most of his work—and, according to Ryan, did other things for him, as well. Intimate things. And what she didn’t do, his law clerk handled—workwise, anyway.

“I’m glad the evening went so well,” Sara said, pulling back the covers on her side of the bed to slide beneath them. As Brent clicked off the last light and joined her, she checked the alarm, making sure it was set to go off.

Brent turned, gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Me, too. You were great, babe, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she said with dignity and class. And then rolled over facing the wall opposite him, just as she did every single night.

But instead of willing herself to sleep, she lay awake, long into the night, alternating between joy and despair, tears rolling silently down her face onto her pillow.

She’d met her son. After twenty-one years of longing and agony, she’d looked him in the eye, held his hand. Hugged him goodbye.

And after fifteen years of marriage, she had to face the fact that no amount of pretending or trying or waiting was going to repair her marriage.

This day had changed her life.

SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED at 6:09 a.m. Sitting at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee, Sara was waiting. Brent always woke as soon as the sun began to stream into the bedroom window. He’d take a quick shower, because he had a golf game scheduled. And then he’d be down for coffee.

A twisted sense of humor lurking in the part of Sara that had been detached from life since the morning after her rape, prompted the thought that she should take bets with herself as to whether or not he’d make his game.

Twisted thought he would. Kind—or dead, she wasn’t sure—guessed he wouldn’t. She gave up the attempt to pretend she could joke about this, in any way, even to herself, when the tears came again.

She couldn’t be crying when he came down. Tears made him uncomfortable, defensive. Tears would only make this harder than it already was.

Mostly, she couldn’t believe it had come to this. His refusal to have children, after telling her for so many years that he wanted them, too, as soon as they were solvent, had been rough. Putting up with his lack of satisfaction with their physical life hadn’t been easy, either.

But she’d comforted herself with the knowledge that she wasn’t alone—and he wasn’t, either. They had each other. They had trust and loyalty.

And she’d been willing to settle for those. They were comfortable. Safe.

After the rocky start to her adult life, safety and security had been priorities to her.

Sara heard the shower. Sipped her coffee. Waited. How could she be so calm, when inside she was falling apart? Devastated? Scared to death?