The truth is that Albert Hodge didn’t lure me with kittens, then overpower me. I got inside his vehicle on my own. Stupid. Stupid. I was so unbelievably stupid.

“I’m lost,” Albert said, pointing to his newspaper.

“Yeah,” I said, “you’re on the wrong side of town.”

“Crap!” he said. “Excuse my French.”

“No problem.”

“I’m Al.”

“I’m Lee.”

Back to the paper, perplexed. “Clear across town? Now I’m really turned around.”

Just a little older than my brother. Young to have a big blue boat of a car.

And then I said it. I don’t know why for sure.

“I can show you where to turn. It’s on my way to school.”

And I got in.

And really, that was that. The locks went down. Hodge reached over to the passenger seat with a fist wrapped in a cloth dipped in what the police later said was chloroform, though at the time it reminded me of my aunt Martina’s vodka-perfumed breath.

In the graphic novel in my mind, Aunt Martina is in a panel, holding her martini glass and wagging her finger at me.

I missed some of what happened. Lost a little time. Not so much that I don’t remember how he tore off my clothes in the vacant lot. Or how he pinned me down and shoved himself inside of me. I was in shock. I remember a red admiral butterfly floating over us, and I thought to myself how I wish I could fly. He raped me. Choked me. He whispered things in my ear that reverberate today.

“You’re such a good girl,” he repeated over and over. “You like this, don’t you?”

I didn’t, of course. His face grew redder and redder. I was thinking that he might have a heart attack. Hoping he would. Praying that God would hear me and strike him dead. I never blamed God for not following through in that vacant lot. I know that I would not have been there if I hadn’t stepped into his car.

Trust and stupidity are close friends. Of course, no one really knows that until it’s too late.

Two hours after Coyle calls me, Montrose confirms that our person of interest has been seeing a practitioner of sorts in Centralia, a small town on the interstate best known for its outlet malls.

And, I guess, its alternative healers.