“I’m on my way. Here, talk to your mother.” Mr. George’s voice broke.
“Definitely not,” Julia whispered as she wiped her eyes.
“No, I don’t think so,” Sal agreed.
“Hello?” Britney’s mom asked, as if this was a new phone call.
“Hi, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you, too, my baby,” Mrs. George replied, much more composed than the first time around.
“I’m so sorry, Mom. For everything.”
“Me, too.”
“Daddy said he’s coming to pick me up.”
“He’s on the other phone right now calling Grampa. Wouldn’t you know it? The car is in the shop!” The woman laughed.
“So he can’t come to get me?” Britney’s voice tightened.
“Oh, he’ll be there. And so will I. We just need to borrow Grampa’s car and have him and Gramma come and stay overnight to look after your brothers.”
“You’re both coming?” Britney’s voice got softer.
“Oh, yes!”
“And you’re not mad at me?” Her voice got even softer.
“Oh, my baby!” The woman began crying again. “I am so not mad at you. I loved you from the moment I knew I was pregnant with you.”
Julia stifled a sob.
“Mo-om!” Britney laughed.
“It’s true. Ask your father. Frank? Didn’t I always love Britney? He’s not answering. He’s on the other phone. Calling your grandfather. To borrow the car. But I just told you that, didn’t I? Oh, Britney, it’s so good to hear your voice.”
“I was so afraid that…” Britney began to cry again. Mike held the tissue box out to her.
Robby held the tissue box out to Julia in the other room.
“Never be afraid to come home. Please. No matter what happens. No matter what anyone says. No matter what... Oh, wait. Daddy is telling me to get off the phone. Grampa and Gramma are on their way over. We’ll be in Toronto just as soon as we can get there. Where are we coming to pick you up? Are you downtown somewhere?”
Britney shoved the phone at Mike as she wiped her tears and snot on her sleeve.
“Mike O’Shea speaking,” he said, clearing the emotion out of his voice.
“Detective, I cannot tell you how happy I am to be talking to you like this. Thank you so much for finding my daughter. My husband and I are driving from Port Hope. How do we get to where you are?”
Mike gave her directions while Britney straightened out her sweater and began to inspect with disgust the strands of hair that had settled on her right shoulder, as if she was noticing the greasiness of her hair for the first time.
“And please call me Mike,” he said.
“Is there anything special I need to know, Mike?” Britney’s mom cautiously asked.
“Nothing that can’t wait until you get here.”
“She’s been involved in something, hasn’t she?”
“We can discuss that when you and your husband get here, Mrs. George.”
“April. Call me April. She’s been abused, hasn’t she? I mean, that’s what happens to young girls there, isn’t it?”
Britney looked at Mike, who smiled reassuringly back at her.
“April, I don’t know the whole story yet, but I can tell you that Britney is safe now, and you and your husband and Britney and I can talk about whatever help she may need when— ”
“Mike, I’m a mother. I can’t sit in a car for even a second not knowing what has happened to my daughter.” The tone in April’s voice sounded so remarkably similar to the no-nonsense tone of his own mother’s voice when she had had enough of his shenanigans that Mike automatically stood up straighter. “Tell me now and give me time to sort it out in my mind before I get there. Can you at least do that for me?”
“Yes. I am with the Juvenile Prostitution Task Force— ”
“Oh. My. God. Frank!”
There was a pause just long enough for Britney to roll her eyes.
“Hello?” Britney’s father came on the line.
“Hello, Mr. George. I was just telling your wife that I am with the Juvenile Prostitution Task Force.”
“Yes?”
“And that your daughter…” Mike hoped Britney’s father would jump in, but when he didn’t, continued, “has been rescued from a prostitution ring.”
Oh my gawd! Britney mouthed, mocking what she assumed the response would be before whispering to herself, “As if we haven’t already been over this.”
Mike had no idea how long he waited for Britney’s father to respond.
“I see.”
“Yes. Well…” Mike stumbled. He hated this part.
“Does she need any…medical…assistance?”
“I don’t think so, but it would be advisable to get her in to see her GP when you get home.”
“Oh, that will be a treat. ‘Hey, Doc. Remember last time I was here and you asked if I had a boyfriend yet? Yeah. Well. I kinda skipped ahead a bit and now I need to know what STDs I have’,” Britney said out loud.
“And psychological?” No nonsense; Mike liked that.
“Likely.” No, definitely, he thought, watching Britney’s bravado resurface. “I can provide you with a list of professionals in your area when you get here.”
“I see,” Mr. George repeated. “May I talk to my daughter, please?”
“Britney? It’s your dad. He wants to talk to you.”
“Hi, Daddy,” Her little girl voice returned.
“Britney, honey, whatever happened to you— ”
“Oh, Daddy…” She began to wail.
“Listen to me, sweetheart. Whatever happened to you will be okay, alright? Mommy and I will do whatever it takes…”
“Definitely not the father,” Sal sighed in the other room, sipping his cold coffee. Robby nodded.
“I’m so sorry, Daddy!”
“Sweetheart, it’s not your fault. There are bad people out there.”
“I know, Daddy. It’s just—”
“Sweetheart, no matter what the police do, you need to know that I will find whoever hurt you and…”
Robby’s ears pricked up.
“Give me the phone, Frank. Britney? It’s Mom. Daddy is just really upset now and doesn’t know what he’s saying, okay? Daddy is so happy to hear your voice and he feels a little…you know…badly, but all we want to do now is get you home and snug in your own bed by morning. Grampa and Gramma are here now, so I’m going to hang up the phone and you tell Mike that we will be in Toronto as soon as we can get there, okay?”
“Okay, Mom.”
“Now, you just do whatever the de—Mike—tells you to do, okay? And don’t be rude.”
“Yeah,” Britney half-smiled. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, baby. See you soon.”
*****
“All good?” Mike asked as Britney gave him the phone to hang up.
“Yep. They’re on their way.”
“I’m glad,” he said and winked.
“Me, too, I guess,” she shrugged, resuming her air of mild indifference.
“While we’re waiting for your mom and dad, my partner and I would like to talk to you about what has been happening with you since you left Port Hope a couple of months ago. Are you good with that?”
“Yep.” Britney took a deep breath, summoning the courage to talk as Mike motioned to the camera behind her to have Sal come in.
*****
“So…” Mike began, leaning back in the metal chair across from Britney. The chair beside him empty, the decision to bring Sal in vetoed last minute by the young victim. “What about this shopping trip?”
“Yeah,” she sighed, puckering her lips as she rolled her eyes. “That didn’t turn out so shit-hot, did it?”
“You came down from Port Hope on your own?”
“Kinda. I mean, yeah. I kinda came to go shopping, but mostly just to get away from my parents.
”
Mike let the words hang in the air for a moment to give Britney time to reflect on the phone conversation she just had with her mother and father.
“So you were kind of running away?”
“Kinda, yeah,” she admitted. Mike had talked with enough girls like Britney to know that she was probably wishing she had known then what she knew now.
“And you went to…?”
“I don’t exactly know. It seemed like it was downtown when I was there, but I don’t think it actually was.”
“Okay. No worries.” Mike knew better than to press her at this stage in the interview. He also knew better than to let her get stuck on a detail they could figure out later. “And then?”
“And then it was closing time. I had nowhere to go. This guy comes over and asks me if I want to get a burger with him. I’m hungry, so I go.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “We had a burger. He bought me some beers….”
“Had you ever had beer before?”
“Sure. No,” she corrected, looking sheepishly at Mike. “But he was really nice. I started to feel sick, so he took me to where he lived with his mother and they let me stay in the spare room. The next day, me and him hung out. We drank more beers and stuff. I met some of his friends, and then he told me that one of his friends thought I was cute and wanted to date me. I said sure, and me and his friend were in the spare room and his friend starts telling me how hot I look and we kind of start… you know?”
“Sure.” By the time Mike interviewed any of these girls rescued by the JPTF, they had already been forced into more sex acts than most adults could imagine. Despite that, their childlike embarrassment always surfaced when they were telling him about that first time.
“And then the first guy tells me I can’t stay with him any more, but that’s okay because my boyfriend—”
“The second guy?”
“Yeah, my boyfriend,” Britney repeated. “What don’t you get?”
Although Mike knew that the entire team would be watching this interview on the big screen in the conference room, he wished Britney would have been okay having Sal in the interview room to scribe, just to keep track of the sequence of men she would be passed through before her story was done.
“Right. Your boyfriend,” Mike corrected himself.
“Yeah, so he says I can stay with him, but he only has one room that he rents in this house where he lives, so we have to share, you know…?”
“So you go with him?”
“What do you think?” Britney looked at Mike with disgust. “So then we start hanging out with his friends, and they all have girlfriends, and my boyfriend tells me how all of the other girls help their boyfriends out.”
Britney stopped and looked at the ring finger of her right hand. The skin around the nail was bleeding.
Mike waited for her to continue.
“He said we could get a really nice apartment somewhere and he could get a nice car if I, you know…?” Britney looked vacantly up at the dome that held the camera in the ceiling above the table.
Mike waited.
“He said it wouldn’t be forever and it would really help us and he wouldn’t hold it against me or anything, so I said, like, sure.” Britney made a face at the camera behind Mike. “So then he takes me to this hotel. I think we’re going on a date, right? But there are three creeps waiting for us and they’re all over me.”
“Where’s your boyfriend?”
“In the room.”
Britney came to a complete stop and began gnawing on her bleeding fingernail.
“What happened next?” Mike asked, knowing full well what happened next. What always happened next.
“I’m crying and telling them to stop, but they don’t, and he’s just laughing, telling me how stupid I am and how I owe him money for staying at his place and for all the food and beer and stuff he bought.”
Mike could feel her sense of betrayal growing.
“I didn’t owe him any money. He was my boyfriend.”
She stopped and just stared across the room at the grey wall.
“So then what?” Mike finally prompted.
“After those guys leave, he says he’s sorry and everything, but we need money and I said I would do that for him and stuff, but I’m crying and I tell him that I changed my mind, but he says I can’t but he can make it easier, like, if I just want to do, you know, one guy at a time, or whatever, just until we make enough money for our own place.”
Britney winced as she pulled a piece of fingernail from her bleeding finger with her teeth.
“I was really, like, pissed about, like, the situation, but I tell my boyfriend that I’ll go with one at a time and all of that. He tells me that it will only be for a little while, and then that’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“I’m in.”
“In what?”
“The game. I become one of the girls telling other girls that they’re doing it to help their boyfriends. That it will only be for a little while. That it will be fun. That they’ll be going to fancy restaurants and stuff.”
“But that never happens?”
“What do you think?” Britney spat. “After so many guys, I figured I’d made the money back, but my boyfriend tells me I haven’t and he’s met someone else anyway and I’m being driven to the Falls by someone else. I was supposed to go across the border, but I tried to run away instead.”
“How did that go?”
“Not too fucking good.” Britney laughed. “That’s when I met Malcolm.”
“The slasher?”
“Yep.”
“But you didn’t get slashed?”
“Oh yeah, I did,” Britney confirmed, standing up and dropping her pants before Mike could do anything to stop her, revealing a raw-looking six-inch incision that ran from her pubic bone up to her bellybutton. “I thought he was gonna fuckin’ cut my girl parts out.”
“Did you get that looked at by anyone?”
“Besides every girl who needed a reminder? No.”
“Tell me about the guy in the mall.”
“What’s to say? His name was Jeremy. That’s all I know. Lived with his mom somewhere.”
“Did his mom know you were staying at her house?”
“Dunno. Never met her.”
“And then your boyfriend…?”
“Nathan.”
“Nathan who?”
“I dunno.”
“What does he look like?”
“Tall. Skinny. Bluest eyes ever.”
“How old would you say he was?” Mike knew that trying to get a thirteen-year-old to provide any sort of legitimate description of someone, especially the person’s age, was a long shot, but that’s all he had right now.
“He told me was twenty-five. And that he was going to university to be a doctor.”
And you believed him, Mike wanted to say, but then remembered that she was only thirteen, and thirteen-year-olds believe whatever they want to be true.
“You had a cell phone with you when you and I…uh, met. You got a picture of Nathan on it?”
“Lots. But that cop chick has it.”
Mike looked up at the camera behind Britney, knowing that Julia was probably rummaging through the girl’s property right now.
“How about Malcolm? Got any pictures of him?”
“That ugly asshole?” Britney balked. “As if.”
“Can you describe him?”
“Ugly.”
“Anything else?”
“He’s got that same scar on his face that he gave Gretchen. except it’s only on one side.”
“Do you know what side?”
“This one,” Britney touched the right side of her own face.
“How old would you say Malcolm is?”
“I dunno. Old. Your age?”
“So…?”
“Maybe thirt
y.”
Mike looked again at the camera behind Britney, knowing that his team was having a good laugh right about now.
“White guy? Black guy? Asian?”
“White. All white guys. He had an English or Scottish or something kind of accent.”
“Who?”
“Malcolm. And super white teeth.”
“Mike?” Sal called as he knocked gently and came into the room. “The parents are here.”
“Get that fucking guy out!” Britney shrieked. “Get him away from me!”
“He’s my partner. He won’t hurt you—” Mike began.
“I don’t care who he fucking is. He looks like Malcolm.”
Mike looked over at Sal.
“Is he Malcolm?”
Britney paused long enough for Mike to be concerned.
“No. He isn’t Malcolm. He doesn’t have that scar on his face.”
*****
After Britney was reunited with her parents, Mike, Sal, Julia, and Robby sat down at the long table in the conference room.
“Want me to grab some coffee?” Sal offered.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mike balked at the very thought.
“What? They give it to me for free, Mike. What more do you want?”
“I just got a call from Hoagie, boss,” Julia said, trying to head off a squabble. “He’s on his way back in. We can get him to pick up some good coffee and some biscotti at a place I told him about.”
“Now we’re talking!” Mike’s eyes lit up.
“Kids, I don’t care where we get the java from, but I’ve gotta justify our overtime to the Big Boss, so let’s get this debrief going.”
“Trust the Old Man to take the fun out of everything,” Sal mocked.
“Do you mean Robby or Mike?” Julia smirked.
“If it was anyone but you, Julia, I’d tell them to go fuck themselves. At least, the girl didn’t say I was ugly,” Mike pointed out as he poked Sal.
“Okay, people,” Robby cut in. “Yes, get Hoagie to pick up for us, Julia. I’ll pay. Now what do we know? Good interview, by the way, Mike.”
Julia excused herself from the room to call her partner back.
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