Chapter 10
Carol walked faster. it seemed to her that a fog had moved in, obscuring the lighted buildings, leaving her in a kind of total darkness. She was lost in it. Lost and alone.
A man caught her arm. "Where you going, baby. Let's you and me go to bed, huh? How much baby?" She jerked free. "Let me go! Leave me alone!" She ran, hearing his wild, strange laughter in the fog-swept darkness behind her.
She ran faster. She told herself she did not know where she was going, only that she had to escape, from herself, from her overwhelming sense of guilt. She did not even know how she could do this.
She looked across her shoulder, her eyes distended, her face rigid. She saw no one behind her in the unreal fog. It was as if she had run off the face of the world she had known all her life. She was lost in the fog, chilled and frightened.
She saw a light glowing damply in the mists a-head of her. She smiled strangely, seeing nothing except this one dim beacon.
She stopped running and walked slowly toward that light. She breathed heavily across her parted lips, but she was less afraid now. There was a sense of peace that started deep inside her. She knew she had a long way to go maybe she could never undo the terrible wrongs she had committed in the name of revenge, but she was taking the first difficult step. And this made her feel better, even a little cleaner.
She stopped walking, stared up at the light.
She stood before the police station.
She remembered that other night an eternity in the past when she had come here after Brad had finally fallen asleep. She had gone in these doors knowing that afterwards her life would never be the same.
Now she saw that it would be worse for her this time. Whatever future she might have made for herself, all chance of this was gone. It did not matter. Brad was wrongly sentenced to life imprisonment. Nat was dead. The evil had to end.
She walked slowly up the steps. The desk sergeant on duty stared at her. She told him she wanted to speak with Lieutenant Brenning. The sergeant led her along the musty corridor.
The officer held the door open and Carol stepped into the big office of the detective bureau. It was almost empty at this hour.
Detective Brenning was bent over his desk, doing paper work. Carol stared for a moment at the top of his head. Her fists were clenched at her sides.
The sergeant said, "Lieutenant, a woman to see you."
Brenning tossed his pen aside and glanced up. He recognized Carol. He did not smile, and yet somehow she saw that he was not too surprised to see her there.
He nodded toward the chair at the side of his desk, but Carol did not sit down. She drew a deep breath, staring at him.
She said, "I lied."
"You lied?" The assistant district attorney who had prosecuted Brad for raping her glared down at her. He was a medium tall man in his early thirties, his hair clipped in a brush cut, his shirt sweaty. He shook his head. "That doesn't make sense, Miss Hill!"
"I don't care. I lied about Brad Livingston and I can't live with it. I've got to tell the truth."
She sat numbly in the hair in the prosecutor's cluttered office in the county building.
She was aware that the lawyer and Detective Brenning exchanged glances over the top of her head.
Brenning's voice had a shrug in it. "I thought I ought to bring her to talk to you."
The D.A. laughed. "Sure. That gets you out of it, but what about me? I got a conviction. On a perjured deposition!" He strode back and forth before Carol, staring down at her, his face puzzled. "It couldn't have been perjured. It must have been the truth."
"No," Carol said, "I lied."
The lawyer swore. He stared at Brenning. "Have you told her what the consequences will be for her in admitting that she lied, after that man has been convicted?"
"I tried to tell her. She didn't seem to care," Brenning said.
"I've got to make it right, as much as I can," Carol said in a flat, empty voice.
"Do you know you can go to prison for this?" the prosecutor demanded. "Do you realize, at all, the consequences of what you are doing?"
Carol nodded. She did not know, but she agreed because she did not care. Brad was in prison. He had to be freed. Besides this, nothing else had any importance.
"Brenning and I were in your camp before," the lawyer warned her. "You won't have anybody working for you now."
"I lied," Carol repeated, parrot-like. She went on staring at the floor, waiting.
The lawyer spread his hands wide in a gesture of defeat.
Dr. Taylor paced the assistant district attorney's office, looking first at Carol, then at the lawyer, then at Brenning and back at Carol again.
"I could not have been mistaken! I'll stake my professional reputation on it. I examined this young woman, and she had been raped, brutally! Why would I give such a report otherwise? She may have had some reason for lying, but I didn't."
"Were all up the creek here," the lawyer said.
Dr. Taylor stood before Carol. He spoke her name. "Look at me," he said.
She lifted her head slowly. He spoke carefully, enunciating clearly, as if he were speaking to a deaf mute or a retarded child. "Carol, do you remember my examining you that night?"
"Yes."
"Clearly, you had been violated. Savagely. Why then do you now say that it never happened."
She sighed deeply, looking up at them. "That's not what I lied about, doctor. I had been raped. Only, not by Brad. Brad didn't rape me. That's what I lied about."
"Holy heaven, help us," the prosecutor whispered.
Brenning stood up. "What shall I do with her, counselor?"
The prosecutor stared at Carol, made a cutting downward gesture, with his hand, slashing at the air. "Put her in a cell. For questioning. I might end up demanding a psychiatric examination of her. I don't know. Put her in a cell. Get her out of here. Try to find her family."
"She says she doesn't have any," Brenning said.
The prosecutor laughed sharply. "You don't still believe anything she says, do you, lieutenant?"
"She's got a lot of egg on our faces, all right," the detective agreed.
It was late the following afternoon.
Carol lay on the cot in her cell, unmoving, her gaze fixed on the gray ceiling.
The cell door was unlocked, pulled open. Carol turned her head, watched the prosecutor enter.
She sat up, straightening her dress. She said, "Is Brad out of prison yet?"
The lawyer shook his head. "Let's not rush things. We've got some more talking to do. You must have more to tell me. Maybe you want to change your mind again."
"No." Carol shook her head.
The lawyer looked at her.
"One thing beats me, Carol. If this poor guy didn't rape you, why did you say he did. Why did you put him through hell like this?"
Carol leaned forward. Her face was gray. "I've got to tell you," she said.
"I wish you would!"
"I've got to tell somebody, or I'll go insane."
"You can tell me, Carol. That's why I'm here. You wanted to destroy Livingston, but then you changed your mind?"
"No. Not really. I wasn't even thinking about Brad. I didn't even know him very well. He had been kind to me. He tried to be helpful. But I was hurt. . . "
"We have the doctor's word for that. Do you want to name the guy who really fouled you up?"
She shook her head, twisting her hands in her lap. "No."
"You're in enough trouble without withholding evidence now."
"I won't tell you."
"The guy is a monster."
"I can't help it. I know now how many people you destroy when you try to hurt one person. The people who love him are hurt worse than he is. Sometimes he was so conscienceless that he felt nothing but the ones that love him, they are hurt. I've hurt enough people. I won't do it any more. I won't tell you about him, no matter what you do to me."
"You could spend a long time in jail."
"I deserve it."
The lawyer was silent a moment. "Maybe you do, Carol. Maybe you don't. You had reason to hate all right, it's just that you aimed at the wrong guy."
"Yes. I'm no good. No good at all."
"A kid like you? Seventeen?"
"I can't help it. A man attacked me when I was eleven. I never told anybody. You're the first one I ever told. But I hated him, and I was scared of all men after that. And then, when this rape happened to me, I went wild with hatred. I couldn't think about anything except hurting people."
He drew a deep breath, but he did not say anything.
"I've hurt too many people now." In that flat, dead tone, she confessed to the assistant district attorney about Nat, the way she had led him on, the way she had let him think she was crazy about him. "He committed suicide. I destroyed that poor, good-hearted man. I'm no good. I don't care what happens to me."
After a moment of silence, she told him how she had met John, enticed him up to her room, and then called his wife and tipped her off. "I didn't even hate these men not Nat, or John, and surely not Brad. I didn't even know them, or want to know them. I was wild with rage, and they came near me, so I destroyed them!"
The prosecutor went away. The cell block door clanged shut behind him. Carol was left in silence and loneliness. She did not move. It grew darker in her cell, but never totally dark. A small light set in the ceiling glowed continuously.
They brought her food on a tray and she nibbled at it, and they took it away. It was morning, noon, night. It was dark, it was light. She wandered about her cell, touching the bars, waiting, without even knowing what she waited for.
She was never sure whether it was three of four days later that the prosecutor and Detective Brenning came to her cell. The lawyer had papers he wanted her to sign.
"Will they get Brad free?"
"Just sign them," the lawyer said. After a moment he glanced at Carol. "I had Brenning check out the stories you told me about Collins and Jemson. They are substantially as you said. So, since that's true, the judge has agreed to go along on your disavowal of the charges in your deposition against Brad."
Carol nodded, thanking him.
They walked to the cell door. Brenning glanced back at her, his face pulled into a frown. "There's just one thing all this proves. God knows, this nails it down for once and all that you can't look at a girl and see what she's like inside."
Three months later, Carol was in the state penitentiary for women. She moved mechanically, obeyed orders quietly, worked without complaining. None of the other inmates ever saw her smile.
A police matron came into the laundry where she was working.
"You got a visitor, Hill."
Carol frowned. She felt her heart turn over, instantly afraid that Laura had learned where she was. She shook her head, her eyes wild. "I don't want to see anyone."
"Come on, Hill. Let's go. I don't give you permission to have visitors, or to refuse to see 'em, I just deliver you. Let's go."
Carol stared across the wire fence at Brad. He sat in a chair, watching her, his face troubled.
She looked at him, seeing that he had gained some weight. His clothes were tailored and he looked better; but there was a deep hurt in his eyes, a look of sadness in his face that not even time was going to erase.
He said, "I had come up here to see you, Carol."
"Why?" she asked flatly.
He shrugged. "I want to tell you ... I forgive you ... for whatever it's worth."
"Don't."
"They gave me a full pardon, Carol. It's a lot easier to forgive you."
"I lied about you. I just finally told the truth, that's all. I am glad you're free. But I can't ever make up the other things I did to you. Your mother, your job, your reputation there will always be people who will remember only that you were charged with the rape."
"I can't worry about them, Carol. You, I do worry about."
"Don't."
"Sorry. I can't help that. I talked to the prosecutor about you. You had your reasons for hatred. Nobody can deny that. You let them rule you, but no one can say you didn't have reasons for hating men."
"Hating them, that's one thing. What I did, that's something else. All I can say to you is I'm sorry for the hurt I caused you."
"I told you, Carol, I forgive you."
"Do you? Can you forget I cost you your job, ruined you when you had everything going your way?"
"Yes. It's like an auto accident, Carol. You were the victim of one accident it left you hating men so terribly that it blinded you to everything else. I met you at the wrong time, that's all like another car accident a head-on collision. I was a victim of that accident, but I'm out walking around again."
"Living with all the loss I caused you."
"There's one real loss I can't make up, Carol. Only one loss that I really regret, and only that one that I can't ever replace."
She frowned, staring at him.
"I loved you Carol." He said in a flat, empty tone, the loss making him sad. "I know I knew you only that one night and that next day. But you were such a lovely little thing. I knew something was wrong, but you were so brave about it. You were doing something about it. You were so tiny, so lovely, I couldn't stay away from you. I knew you were what I'd been looking for all my life."
"I'm sorry."
"So am I, Carol. I'm sorry for what might have worked out between us I mean, if things had been different."
"Yes."
"That's what makes it so evil," he said. "I could have loved you so much, and for all time. But I know now that even if I still loved you...."
"After all I did to you?"
"Yes, after all you did to me. It wouldn't ever work out. There's been to much hurt. Too much hatred, and the memory of hatred. I'm afraid that would always be there between us."
"Yes."
"I am sorry. I did love you that night I came running back to that hotel to you. I'd been thinking about you all day. I couldn't wait to get to you."
She exhaled heavily. "I am truly sorry, Brad, for what I did to you."
He shook his head. "It's you I'm sorry for. In this place...."
"A year?" She shrugged, not even bothering to look around her. "A year for perjury, with all the things I am guilty of? I'm getting off easy."