Failure to Appear by J. A. Jance

Author:J. A. Jance
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2009-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

11

We were ready to give up and leave when Tanya returned to the deck. Her eyes were red; she'd been crying. She had changed out of her shorts into a denim skirt. In the soft evening light, she seemed both insubstantial and defeated. This time she sat down on the bench next to Ralph. She folded her hands together on the table and sat staring at them.

"I wouldn't want what happened to me to happen to anyone else, but I'm not ashamed of what I did," she said thoughtfully. "Even though I was very young, I'm willing to accept full responsibility for all of it. No matter what anybody says, where I ended up was way better than where I started. But now it's not just me anymore, either. There's Amber to worry about. I've spent all afternoon trying to decide what to do. It's hard to know where to turn, who to trust."

"You have to start somewhere," Ralph replied.

She looked over at him through lashes still veiled in tears. "You want me to talk about it?"

"If you want us to try to help you, yes."

"But it's so hard. I've spent years trying to forget it—to block it out of my memory, to make myself believe that it never happened. Or, if it did, that it happened to someone else."

Ralph reached over and gently placed one hand over Tanya's. "Please tell us, Tanya," he urged quietly. "It's the only way."

When Tanya spoke again, her voice was a hushed whisper. "I thought I had forgotten about it, but then, as soon as I saw Elise, it came back. All of it."

"Elise?" I asked. "Who's she?"

"Elise was what she called herself years ago when I first knew her. Detective Fraymore told me her name was Daphne Lewis."

"This was when you saw her in the Members' Lounge?" Tanya nodded. "What came back?" Ralph prodded.

His insistence propelled Tanya up off the bench, away from the table and us. She paced over to the handrail where she stood facing off the deck, gripping the railing with thin, white-knuckled fingers. For several long minutes, she didn't speak.

"Tanya," I said finally. "Were Shore and Daphne in the movie business together?"

"Yes."

"I can see why it's difficult for you to talk about it, but you have to understand that the people who make kiddie porn are animals, the very worst kind of vermin. Whatever Martin Shore did to hurt you…"

Tanya Dunseth spun around and faced me, her face distorted into an ugly mask by a burst of derisive, caustic laughter. "Martin Shore? He never hurt me, not once. Oh, he tried, but he wasn't any good at it. What Jacques liked—that was his name back then, Jacques—was that I was still so flat-chested and young-looking. He thought that meant I was a virgin. The idea of cracking a virgin on film was a real turn-on for him."

She paused. "I wasn't, though," she continued. "Hadn't been for years, but I let Jacques think I was. I always wanted to be an actress, and I told myself it was my first real acting job.

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