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cops. One of them was me. And the worst thing was she
drew in another deep breath, exhaled he had the evidence to
prove it.
35
Z
o way, Jimmy said. There s no way you did something
Nlike that. You just don t have it in you.
She felt tears prickling at her eyes, and she blinked madly to
send them back where they came from. There it is, she thought.
This is why I loved him. Jimmy Griffin always saw my best self, always be-
lieved I was worthy of being loved back. Until I proved him wrong.
But all she said was, I ve been waiting a long time to hear
that.
Jimmy s face screwed up in confusion. But the people you
work with didn t they back you up?
Some of them. But you gotta understand, it s a goddamn
witch hunt everybody terrified they re going to be next. If
what Mike says is true, it d make the Rampart scandal in L.A.
look like nothing.
But you don t think it s that big?
All I know is, I m innocent. I can only assume some of the
others are, too. But Mike s got the chance to save his ass and set-
tle old scores, and he s having a field day especially over me.
Once I found out what he d been up to, I didn t want anything
to do with him, and that made him furious. Nobody dumps
Mike Scott.
What did he say you did? All you told me before was that it
was a rape case.
She ran her fingers through her hair. It was a long, sordid
story, and at the moment she barely had the energy for the con-
densed version.
There was this guy named Alexander Van Vlick twenty
T he M or ti ci an s D aughter 209
years old, from a society family on Park Avenue. He s home
from college over Christmas, but his folks are off skiing, so he s
got the apartment to himself. He picks up a girl at a club and
brings her home along with a couple of his friends, and the two
of them go to his room to fool around.
She s okay with it at first, but it turns out that Alexander
likes it rough. He s loaded, and when she won t go along, he gets
pissed off. He beats her up and rapes her. It turns out she wasn t
the first.
And his friends had no idea what he was doing?
They say nothing bad happened. She says that at one point
she got away and made it as far as the living room. Alexander
dragged her back in, and from the way she describes it his bud-
dies thought it was a lark.
And you re telling me this guy got acquitted?
You haven t heard the worst of it. She was only fifteen. She
looked older, but the girl was a sophomore in high school.
There was a bottle of water on Jimmy s desk, and Ginny
took a drink. The condensed version wasn t turning out to be so
condensed, after all.
I wasn t the lead detective, she said. But it was a big media
case, what some cops call a red ball, so there were four of us
working different aspects of it me, Mike, and two others.
Since the girl was so young, even if the guy could convince
a jury the sex was consensual, he was still going down for statu-
tory rape. His semen was all over her. The only way he could
skate was if something happened to the rape kit.
She paused, ostensibly to take another drink, but really to
delay the inevitable. What she did was so stupid it killed her for
Jimmy to hear. But better from her than the morning paper.
The day after we picked up Van Vlick, Mike called me real
early. He said he d made a mistake with the rape kit. He d gotten
210 E li zabeth B loom
the samples mixed up with another case, and it could cost him
his job. He begged me to go down to the lab before they
processed it told me he was tied up with his kids, and since I
was working the case, too, it wouldn t break the chain of evi-
dence. So like a jerk, I signed it out and gave it to Mike, and he
fixed things and brought it back.
And when they ran the DNA, Jimmy said, it didn t match
the rich kid.
Of course not. He was exonerated.
And this Mike blamed the whole thing on you?
He had my signature on the evidence log. Plus my bank
records. Like a moron, I kept some money for him, supposedly
to keep his wife from cleaning him out in a divorce. So I m
screwed. I didn t get cuffed and processed, but I m on suspen-
sion until they figure out which tree to hang me from.
Don t you have a lawyer?
From the PBA, and a union delegate, but with everything
that s going down they ve got their hands full. And anyway, it all
happened a few weeks before Danny died. I haven t really had a
chance to deal with it.
Whatever happened to the girl?
Her family filed a civil suit against the Van Vlicks, and of
course the papers painted her like some money-grubbing liar.
They never printed her name, but it came out on the Internet
and she had to leave school. A couple of weeks later I found out
she OD d.
And died ? he asked.
And died, she said.
They say confession is good for the soul. Ginny had no idea if
she had a soul in the first place or, if she did, where it was
T he M or ti ci an s D aughter 211
bound to end up but she had to admit that unburdening her-
self to Jimmy made her feel a hundred pounds lighter.
When she was finished, as though he couldn t bear to leave
her so exposed, he told her he wanted to explain about his af-
ternoon delivery rounds. She told him he didn t have to; he told
her to shut up and listen.
He was lonely, he said, and so were they; it hadn t meant any-
thing, and the women hadn t paid for anything but the pastries.
His last stop, he swore, was that afternoon with Mrs. Marchand.
Lately, the whole thing had started to feel silly and sordid.
It was such a crazy coincidence, Ginny said. I find you
coming out of the same house where Danny got that gun.
It s not much of a coincidence, he said. You could say I
was the reason Danny was ever there in the first place.
Huh?
Lorna Mrs. Marchand she was looking for somebody to
build a new garage. I recommended Pete s company.
Oh.
She felt exhausted and clammy, like she d been doing wind
sprints up Bradley Street hill. Jimmy must have noticed, because
he got out of his chair and knelt down in front of her and put
his hands on her shoulders.
You didn t do anything wrong, he said, except fall in love
with the wrong guy.
She shook her head, bit her bottom lip. It wasn t love, she
said. I don t know what it was.
He lifted a hand from her shoulder and stroked her cheek.
She started to smile at him, but the whole thing was just too
much, and she had to concentrate on not crying like a fool. But
he noticed and smiled back at her a little, and then he leaned in
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