We each had our reasons for staying with it. They had all the time in the world. And that’s how much time I was looking at.

So I had to stay to see the last card drop. Because, no matter what those sex-crimes clowns had told me, I knew this couldn’t really be about a rape.

The rape they kept asking me about, it must have been a bad one. For the cops, the worst one would be if it happened to some kind of famous person. I hadn’t seen a paper for days, but I knew they’d been sitting on my place, waiting for me to come back. At least six of them, round the clock. That’s a lot of cops.

I didn’t know how long they’d been waiting, but they couldn’t have started until after I left, and that was only a few days ago.

Sending the sex-crimes cops in first, that didn’t mean anything-it could just be a hype to get me to take my eye off the ball. Misdirection, like three-card monte. They pull you in for something big, get you so scared of that charge that you drop your guard and give up something about whatever they’re really after you for.

I knew they hadn’t bagged any of the others. If they had, they’d drop their names, so I’d know they weren’t just blowing smoke. Then they’d have their magic words. Door One: one of the other guys had turned canary, put all the weight on me, trying to cut himself a deal. Door Two: here was my chance to help myself before it was too late.

Only the second pair of cops would try a move like that. The first two, the sex-crimes boys, they mostly made speeches. Or asked me stupid questions, like a TV camera was filming them. Big guy like me, all those muscles-what happened? I’d been on steroids so long I couldn’t get it up, and she’d laughed at me? I hadn’t meant to hurt her, just slap her around a little, maybe? Come on, isn’t that how it went down?

I yawned in their faces.

“Got nothing to say now, huh?” one of them had said. Like he’d just nailed me to the cross.