Ceremony in Death - J. D. Robb [97]
He stared down into his cup, as if contemplating the pattern of the leaves skimming the bottom. “I hated her, too, for a very, very long time. Hate can define a person, can’t it, Lieutenant? It can twist them into an ugly shape.”
“Is that what happened to you?”
“Nearly. Ours was not a happy home. You wouldn’t expect that it could be with a man like my father dominating it. You suspect I could be like him.” Chas’s sensual voice remained calm. But his eyes were swirling with emotions.
It was the eyes you watched during interview, Eve thought. The words often meant nothing. “Are you?”
“‘Blood will tell.’ Is that Shakespeare?” He shook his head a little. “I’m not quite sure. But isn’t that what all children live with, and fear no matter what their parents, that blood will tell?”
She lived with it, she feared it, but she couldn’t allow herself to be swayed by it. “How strong an influence was he on your life?”
“There couldn’t have been a stronger one. You’re an efficient investigator, Lieutenant. I’m sure you’ve studied the records by now, run the discs, watched them. You would have seen a charismatic man, terrifyingly so. A man who considered himself above the law—any and all laws. That kind of steely arrogance is in itself compelling.”
“Evil can be compelling to some.”
“Yes.” His lips curved without humor. “You’d know that, in your line of work. He wasn’t a man you could…fight, on a physical or emotional level. He’s strong. Very strong.”
Chas closed his eyes a moment, reliving what he was constantly struggling to put to death. “I was afraid I could be like him, considered giving back the most precious gift I’d been given. Life.”
“You attempted self-termination?”
“I never got as far as the attempt, just the plan. The first time, I was ten.” He sipped tea again, determined to soothe himself. “Can you imagine a child of ten pondering suicide?”
Yes, she could, all too well. She’d been younger yet when she had pondered it. “He abused you?”
“Abuse is such a weak term, don’t you think? He beat me. He never seemed to be in a rage when he did. He just struck out at unexpected moments, snapping a bone, raising a fist, with the absent calm another man might display while flicking away a fly.”
His fist was clenched on his knee. Deliberately, Chas opened his hand, spread his fingers. “He struck like a shark, fast and in utter silence. There was never a warning, never a gauge. My life, my pain, was totally dependent on his whim. I’ve had my time in Hell,” he said softly, almost as a prayer.
“No one helped you?” Eve asked. “Attempted to intervene?”
“We never stayed in one place very long, and were allowed to form no attachments or friendships. He claimed he needed to spread the word. And he would snap a bone, raise a fist, then take me into a treatment center himself. A concerned father.”
“You told no one?”
“He was my father, it was my life.” Chas lifted his hands, let them fall. “Who was I to tell?”
Neither had she told anyone, Eve thought. Neither had she had anyone to tell.
“And for quite a while, I believed him when he said it was just.” Chas’s eyes flickered. “And I certainly believed him when he told me there would be terrible pain and terrible punishment if I said anything. I was thirteen when he sodomized me for the first time. It was a ritual, he told me, when he bound my hands and I wept. A rite of passage. Sex was life. It was necessary to take it. He would take me on the journey as was his duty and his right.”
He picked up the tea pot, poured, set it neatly aside. “I don’t know if it was rape. I didn’t struggle. I didn’t beg him to stop. I simply cried without sound and submitted.”
“It was rape,” Peabody said, and her voice was very quiet.
“Well…” He found he couldn’t drink the tea he’d just poured but lifted the cup, held it. “I told no one. Even years later when they had him in a cage, I didn’t tell the police. I didn’t believe they would hold him. I simply didn’t believe they could. He was too strong, too powerful, and all the blood on