Chapter 18

“THERE’S ONE QUICK METHOD to find out if Whalen is still alive,” Michael said. “Google search.”

We were standing inside my bedroom just off the kitchen. My heart was pumping wildly. It also felt entirely odd doing something like this with my ex. Doing something this important, this life altering. In a word, this messed up.

While on one hand, I felt about fifty pounds lighter, having been able to talk out the events of thirty years ago, I also felt as though the wood floor was about to be pulled out from under me. In just a minute or two I would find out if the man who attacked me and my sister was still alive. If he had been released from prison.

Michael sat at the computer desk in my bedroom with both hands positioned on the keyboard. I watched over his shoulder while he typed in the URL for Google. When it came up he entered the word “Sexual Predators, New York State” into the empty search box. Fingering the ENTER key the search came up with several pages of sites and URLs that would list the registry of documented sexual predators, deviants and offenders, the most prominent of which was a site called www.childsafenetwork.com.

Michael clicked onto the site, brought it up.

It was then I took an instinctive step back, sat down on the edge of the bed. My heart was thumping so fast I thought I might have a heart attack. I was having trouble breathing, swallowing.

Turning to me in alarm, Michael said, “We can stop if you want, Rebecca. If you’re not ready.”

I put my head in my hands, rubbed the feeling back into my face. “What if it’s true?” I said. “What if after all these years we find out Whalen is alive? What if he’s out of prison?”

“Then at least we know what we’re up against,” Michael said. “We can defend ourselves if we know what’s out there. I can defend you. If we choose to ignore it, it might come back to haunt you.”

My hands were shaking. Adrenalin was pouring into my brain so rapidly, it sounded like a brass band warming up inside my head. Michael turned back to the computer screen, then back to me again. I could tell by the look on his face that he was brainstorming.

“You never told a soul about what happened in the woods.”

I nodded.

“If we find Whalen’s name on this list… if we find out he’s alive, it won’t matter.”

Swallowing, I looked in his eyes.

“How can it not matter?”

He shook his head.

“Okay, wrong choice of words. What I’m trying to say is this: finding his name on the state registry doesn’t mean you’re in any kind of danger. You never ratted him out, so to speak. You weren’t directly responsible for sending him to prison. If you’re worried about the revenge factor, there’s no reason for Whalen to seek you out.”

Michael had a point.

Why would Whalen want anything to do with me after all these years? That is, assuming he was alive in the first place. Besides, forty-two year old women weren’t his style. Adolescent girls and young women however, were a different story.

I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. My mouth was dry. On the other hand, I found myself feeling something for my ex-husband that I hadn’t felt in quite some time. Trust. I was placing all of my trust and emotions into his care, and I was feeling all right about it. After all, he was the author of a published detective novel, which in my mind anyway, made him a kind of amateur detective.

“How shall I proceed, Bec?” he said softly, big brown eyes piercing into my own. “It’s your call.”

By now my breathing had become so shallow I felt like I was about to pass out. At least there was a bed underneath me to catch the fall.

I looked into Michael’s face.

“Just do it.” I swallowed.

He typed the name “Joseph William Whalen” into the Child Safe Network search engine. Then he fingered ENTER.