Paul rocked back in his chair. “We’ve had calls up here, too. It was inevitable.”
Perched against the credenza, Anthony Alt tapped his foot and stared at Savannah. “The issue is how we handle it. We could deny the whole thing, but there are too many people involved. It’ll come out, and then we’ll look worse than we already do. We could try to palm the press off on someone else, but the police department has already palmed it back on us.” His eyes hardened. “I can understand why. This case is a mess. The wife of a prominent citizen was kidnapped, three million in ransom was paid, the woman was returned brutalized, and we haven’t the foggiest notion about who did it or where the money is.” He shot a glance at Paul. “Not much to campaign on.”
Paul had the good grace to ignore the comment and, instead, ask Savannah, “How’s Megan?”
“I just came from the hospital. She’s resting.”
“Will she be all right?”
“Physically, yes.”
“And emotionally?”
She shrugged. “Time will tell. She’s not saying much of anything to anyone.”
“Translated, that means she’s not cooperating,” Anthony said.
“No,” Savannah corrected slowly and clearly, as though she were talking with a child. “It means she’s focusing inward, trying to come to terms with what’s happened before she can share it with us.”
“Doesn’t she know time is important? The longer she waits to tell us what she knows, the farther away her kidnappers get and the dimmer their tracks.”
“It’s possible that she doesn’t have much to tell.”
Anthony wasn’t buying that. “She heard, she smelled, she saw—unless she was blindfolded the whole time.” He tapped a forefinger on the credenza. “Was she?”
“They stuffed her in a large laundry bag coming and going. She wasn’t blindfolded while she was in the room where they kept her, but she said it was dark.”
“The human eye adjusts to the dark. She had to see something.”
“If she did, she’s either blocking it out because it’s so reprehensible to her that she can’t cope with it, or she’s frightened. It’s not uncommon for victims of rape to want to distance themselves from their rapists. They don’t want to think about them or talk about them. They’re terrified that if they breathe a word, they’ll be sought out and attacked again as a punishment.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Anthony scoffed. “Megan Vandermeer is safe now. Her husband will probably hire a bodyguard. She doesn’t have anything to fear by telling the police what she knows. And what about anger? Rape victims are often so angry that they’d do most anything to have their assailants apprehended and punished.”
“The anger will come.”
Looking at Paul, Anthony tossed his head Savannah’s way. “She’s in the wrong field. Sounds more like a therapist than a lawyer.”
“I’m a woman,” Savannah said with surprising vehemence. Her gender wasn’t an argument she usually used, but she refused to back down. “I can imagine what I’d be feeling if I were in Megan’s place. Right about now, I’d probably want to climb into a cocoon, curl up in a ball, and stay there for a good, long time. She’s been traumatized, Anthony. I know that’s hard for you to understand, but, believe me, she’s feeling pain.”
“She could try to help,” he argued, drumming his fingers. “It would make our jobs a hell of a lot easier.”
“I doubt she’s thinking about our jobs right now.”
“Well, I am. We have to come up with a strategy for dealing with the press that’s going to get us out of this one, if not smelling like a rose, then at least smelling sweeter than a rat.”
“Why would we smell like a rat?” Savannah shot back. “We haven’t done anything wrong.”
“We haven’t done anything right, either. That’s the point. We haven’t done much of anything at all.”
Savannah felt her temper rise. She worked to keep it in check. “In the first place,” she said with care, “we got Megan back alive, and if that doesn’t count as something right in your book, you’ve got your priorities messed up. And in the second place,” she went on, staring at him hard, “there are those of us who have spent the past few days suffering along with this case. You wouldn’t know about that. You weren’t sitting with Will or worrying about Megan or trying to coordinate an underground investigation.”
“So, what did it turn up?” he goaded. His fingers beat out an annoying tattoo on the credenza.
Unwilling to stoop to his level, Savannah gripped the doorknob behind her, took a measured breath, and gave her answer to Paul. “We are dealing with two very shrewd men. They’ve covered their tracks from the start. Even with the manpower that’s now on this case, nothing’s turned up. Very honestly, I don’t know what to tell the press.”
Paul folded his hands across his middle. “We’ll tell them we’re working on it. We can stress the strength of the resources we’ve brought in and simply say that we’re hoping for a break.” He arched a brow toward Anthony, who promptly took the plan a step further.
“Secrecy. Play on the need for secrecy. Say that the investigation is in full swing but that to comment on the details would put the whole thing in jeopardy. Whatever you do, imply confidence. And Paul’s right—talk about the different agencies involved, praise them, set them up to share the blame if things go wrong.” He began doing drum rolls with the eraser end of a pencil. “And stress that Megan’s fine. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not, say it.”
