The young woman nods and folds one hand over the other on the table. Her fingernails, I notice, have been bitten to the quick.
“I saw the story online yesterday morning about your daughter’s case and how police might be questioning some things,” she says, her voice trembling a little, “and I knew I finally had to come forward. That it was time, you know, after all these years.”
I seem to have sucked the panic from Riley Reynolds’s eyes into my own body because my heart is hammering, and I feel sweat blooming on my palms. What in God’s name is going on?
“Okay.” Logan says it politely, as if he’s got all the patience in the world, but I can sense how flummoxed he is. “We’re happy to listen.”
“I went to Carter College at the same time as Melanie,” she says. “My sophomore year, I was raped and almost killed.” She glances down at the table and then back at Logan and me. “It—it was two nights after your daughter died. And the man who hurt me ... it was Calvin Ruck.”
Chapter 15
My lips part in astonishment, but other than that, I’m frozen in place. It takes a few seconds to grasp what she’s said, and even then, it’s almost too slippery to hold on to.
Next to me, Logan shifts in his seat, clearly stunned as well.
“I’m sorry I never told anyone when it happened,” Riley continues, her eyes now brimming with tears. “I was an English major, like Melanie, and I even knew her from a class, and I should have come forward right away. But my parents, they’re evangelical Christians. They think that sex before marriage, no matterhowit happens, is wrong, and I knew that if I told them I’d been raped, they would never treat me the same way after that.”
What she’s just shared is wretched and heartbreaking, but I’m still struggling to make total sense of it.
“And this happened in Cartersville?” Logan asks, his voice still gentle.
“Yes, in Mohegan Park,” she says. “I was on the field hockey team at Carter, and I used to train by running there after dinner.”
“Mohegan is about a mile and a half north of Pebble Creek Park,” Halligan interjects. “But along the same creek.”
So, we’re talking about a place very close to where Mel was killed. Only two nights later. This could shift everything we’ve been thinking since first talking to Halligan—if her attacker is who she says he is.
“Thank you so much for sharing this, Riley,” I say. My own voice, I realize, is wobbly, too. “And I’m sorry this terrible thing happened to you. Can you just tell us how you know for sure it was Calvin Ruck?”
“I recognized him from the picture in the paper after he was arrested.”
“And it was definitely that Sunday?” I ask. If it was later than that, it couldn’t have been Ruck because cell data showed he was back in Plattsburgh by Monday evening.
Her eyes flicker nervously for a moment. This is obviously agonizing for her to relive.
“Yes, I’m positive,” she says. “Like I said, I’m so sorry to have waited until now. After it happened, I kept telling myself I needed to come forward, but once he was arrested, it didn’t seem necessary anymore. The news said there was plenty of evidence against him.”
Riley blinks away a few tears, and her attorney passes a tissue, which she uses to dab at her eyes.
She’s clearly hurting badly. There’s that fearful, almost haunted look in her eyes—blue, I realize now—and her shoulders have the defeated slope of someone who’s suffered for years. But something feels funny to me.
“So, you must have gotten a good look at him,” Logan says.
“Yes. It was dark, but I saw him ... Italkedto him.”
“Riley,” Halligan says, “can you please share some of the details about that night, starting from the beginning? I know Bree and Logan would appreciate any information you’re able to pass along.”
Riley glances quickly at Hilary Brown, who nods encouragement.
“Like I mentioned,” she says, “I was running in the park and this man stopped me. He had a dog leash in his hand, and he said his dog had run off and he wondered if I’d seen her.”
My heart pitches forward. Eight years ago, the police theorized that Ruck might have used the leash not only as a murder weapon but also as a way to approach potential victims in an unthreatening manner, claiming to be looking for a lost pet.
“After I told him I’d keep an eye out for the dog,” she adds, “I started to run again, and out of nowhere I felt this crushing pain on the back of my head. He’d hit me with something hard, something metal, I think, that he must have had in his backpack. I fell, and ... oh God, he dragged me off the path, onto one of the picnic tables under the trees, and that’s when he raped me. And while he was doing it, he—”
She lowers her face into her hands, breathing hard, and then, after a few seconds, looks up again. “He wrapped something around my neck—the leash, I think—and pulled it so tight that I passed out, and after, I guess, only a few seconds, he loosened it until I came to, and then he did it all over again.”
For a second, I worry I’m going to wail in anguish. The story is not only horrifying but also Mel’s story, too: a blow to the head, being strangled repeatedly ...
