“So you do have doubts. About both stories.”
He flinched. “I honestly don’t know what to believe. The boy denied it completely and he never got in any other trouble that I know of. Joined the Navy last year, doing beautifully, got married, had a kid.”
He looked miserable. I thought of Reed Muscadine’s assessment of Tessa: serious problems.
“Has Tessa made other accusations, Mr. Bowlby?”
Another very long pause. He picked something out of his teeth and flicked it out the window.
“I guess you’ll find out anyways, so I might as well tell you.”
He started to smoke but instead made a gulping sound that caught me off-guard. A hand shot up and visored his eyes.
“She accused me,” he said, in a shaky voice. “Two years later, when she was fourteen. We already had her to a psychiatrist because she was talking about hurting herself, not eating—you see how skinny she is. She used to have that disease, anorexia. Thinking she was fat, doing jumping jacks all day. She started that at around fourteen, was down to fifty pounds. The psychiatrist put her in a hospital and they fed her with an IV, gave her some counselor to talk to and that’s when she started claiming she remembered.”
The hand pulled away. His eyes were moist but he looked right at me.
“She said it happened when she was little—a baby, two or three.” He shook his head. “It’s not true, sir. They believed me—the hospital and the police and my wife. The law said they had to investigate and I went through the whole thing. It was pure hell. Temple City police, again. A Detective Gunderson. Nice guy, maybe he’s still there. Anyway, the bottom line was that it was Tessa’s imagination. It just runs away with itself. When she was a real little kid she’d watch something on TV, then wanna be it—cartoon characters, whatever. You understand? Flying around being Supergirl, whatever. So all I can figure is she musta saw some movie and started to believe something had happened to her.”
He smoothed his mustache. “Before I got married I was a rough kid, spent a little time at the Youth Authority for burglary. But then I accepted my responsibilities, learned mechanics—I’m telling you all this so you see I’m straight. Know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“The thing is, with Tessa, you can never be sure what she’s gonna do. After the investigation, she admitted she was wrong, said she felt guilty and wanted to kill herself. Her mom and I told her that would be the worst thing and we still loved her. To make matters worse, the insurance money for the hospital ran out and we had to take her home just then, when things were bad. The hospital said watch her closely. We didn’t let her out of our sight. Then we did family counseling at a county clinic and she seemed to take to that, we thought she was okay. And to show you how smart she is, she got good grades through all of it, got accepted to the U. We thought everything was okay. Then, this year, she announces she’s coming home. Then she breaks down and tells us about the rape thing. Some guy on a date. I told her I believed her but . . .”
He stubbed the second butt out in the ashtray. “If I was sure it was true, I’da looked for the guy, myself. But I know she falsely accused me. And that boy. So what was I to think? And she never complained right away, not til she heard that professor lecturing. Then the professor gets murdered. I heard that, I got scared.”
“Scared in what way?”
“Guy like me, high-school dropout, I used to think college was safe. Then you hear about something like that.”
“Did Tessa tell you anything about Professor Devane?”
“Just that she liked her. For believing her. She never thought anyone would believe her again. Then she got into what she’d said about me and started crying real hard. Saying she’s sorry, doesn’t want to be the girl who cried wolf. I told her, honey, what’s past is past, you tell me this happened, I believe you, let’s go to the police and nail the sucker. But she got really scared about that, said no, no one would believe her, it was a waste of time, there was no evidence, it was date rape, anyway, and no one took that seriously.”