He nodded. “It was the dumbest thing I ever did in my life. That family was nuts, and I knew it, but I wanted to be with Michelle. I loved her. I didn't think I could live without her.”
“How were they crazy?”
“Where do I start?” He paused like he really had to think about it. “I never met Michelle's mother, but if you ask me, she was the smart one to run away. Michelle's father was a real asshole. He couldn't open his mouth without putting you down. He'd pick at Michelle and Ian all the time, always telling them what they were doing wrong. I never heard him say anything nice, never. Michelle said dinnertime was the worst. He'd make them sit there for hours while he drank and told his bullshit stories. Michelle and Ian were kids, like they cared about his stupid stories. Some nights they'd still be sitting there past midnight. If one of them got up, or even if one of them looked like they weren't paying attention, he'd start yelling at them, telling them they were worthless. He used to call Michelle a whore all the time.”
“Did he ever hit them?”
“No. Michelle used to say she wished he did. And she was serious. She said she'd rather take a beating and get it over with instead of having to listen to him rant hour after hour.”
Maggie looked at me, nodding. The source of Liz's masochistic cop fetish had been laid at our feet. Years of being forced to listen to her father spewing his hate, sitting there at the dinner table, hearing him ramble on and on about how he was going to hurt this person or that person, always playing the victim. When she was little, she probably believed him, the way all kids do. She thought he was a real tough guy, the kind of guy everybody respected. But by the time she was a teenager, she would've known he was all talk, a blowhard with a badge, and she'd have to sit there, listening to him until she was ready to scream, wanting him to do it already, wanting him to punish her and get it over with. But instead he'd keep riding her, his constant toxic blather driving her insane.
I thought about Liz provoking me yesterday, trying to make me interrogate her. I was everything her father wasn't. Where he talked big, I talked small. Where he made empty threats, I was the real deal. She wanted me. She wanted what I could do to her. I was an expert in pain. She was into cops, especially those with a violent streak. She thought we were the antidote to her father's poison. She didn't get that we were really just poison of another kind.
Maggie asked, “Did she ever tell him to hit her?”
“More than once. It would just set him off into another tirade. She eventually learned the best thing was to just wait for him to run out of steam.”
“What about Ian, Jr.? What would he do?”
“He'd just sit there and take it. When it was over, he'd crawl in bed with his sister and cry like a girl.”
“Did you ever think there was more to Ian and Michelle's relationship than brother and sister?”
“What do you mean?”
Maggie didn't need to answer his question. She just waited for his mind to make the connection.
His face lit with understanding, “You mean…?”
Maggie nodded.
“You think they were… intimate?”
“Were they?” I asked.
“Well, no. I don't think so. Or at least I didn't think so at the time.”
“What do you think now?”
“Maybe,” he said after a pause. “Ian was all hands with her. He was always snuggling up to her, slipping his hands inside her clothes, but I didn't think it was sexual. I thought he was just needy.”
“Did Michelle respond?”
“Not that I saw. She'd just push his hands away when it bothered her. But remember how I told you that Ian would crawl in bed with her after their father's tirades? Sometimes I'd go over there in the mornings, and I'd find them in bed together. I never saw them doing anything, but they'd be naked.”
“And you didn't think two naked teenagers sleeping in the same bed were doing anything with each other?”
“I thought they took their clothes off because it was hot. What do you want from me? I was a stupid teenager myself.”
I leaned back in my chair. It made sense how it started-two distressed teenagers trying to comfort each other late at night, a little touching under the covers and then the flood of hormones would kick in and the touching would turn into something more. “Tell us about how you raped her,” I said.
“I didn't rape her,” he glared at me. “Michelle was into some strange shit, okay?” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “She liked…” He was having a hard time spitting it out.
“She liked it rough,” I said.
“Yeah. I wasn't into it, you know. It didn't do anything for me, but she'd make me.”
“And how did she do that?” asked a skeptical Maggie.
“She'd pinch me, or she'd bite me until I lashed out at her.”
“You could have left.”
“Eighteen-year-old boys don't turn down sex,” he stated matter-of-fact.
“The rape. Get to the rape,” I said.
“I'd go to Michelle's house in the early afternoon. That was the only time we could be alone. Ian would be at school, and her father would be working. Michelle would have me tie her up, and she had this whip.”
“Whip?” My mind flashed to Hector and Margarita Juarez's lase-whipped corpses.
“Yeah. It was one of those cheap souvenirs. You know the ones they make out of braided monitor hide?”
I nodded.
“Well, she'd make me use it on her. I'd give her a few whacks, the kind that'd sting, but wouldn't break the skin. And then we'd… you know… do it. We did it that way at least five or six times. It wasn't rape. It was all her idea.”
“We believe you,” I said reassuringly. “Then what happened?”
“Her brother came home early one day. We didn't even hear him come in. He must've peeked in on us, and there I was whipping his naked sister who was all tied up.”
“What did he do?”
“He brained me with a frying pan, one of those cast-iron ones. I never saw it coming.”
“How bad?”
“I didn't wake up for seven months. That's how bad.”
Sumari leaned forward and turned his head around. He took Maggie's hand and ran her fingers under his hair. “Feel that?”
“Yeah,” she said.
He took my good hand and ran it into the greasy hair at the base of his skull. From the corner of my eye, I saw Maggie wipe her fingers on her pant leg. My fingers ran up from his neck and into a dent, a big dent, a dent that made me want to yank my hand away. Ian, Sr., had been telling the truth-for once.
“Feel it?” he asked.