The Light at the End of the Tunnel

by James W. Nelson

  Les Paul watched, and would watch, every detail of the sex act, so that when it came his turn he would know what to do and would do it well. Pretty good for a nine-year-old, he thought, but he also felt like he had done these things many, many, many, times, before. He just didn’t have any real memories of them. Just those glimpses that would come and go, so quickly, like a blink, sometimes two or three blinks that seemed to go on and on.

  Chapter 38 DNA Disappointment

  Upon arrival back at Brentwood the first person the chaplain and Nicole contacted was Patrolman Sikorsky. They had DNA from both the Tommerdahls and the Markums, plus from the original Les Paul.

  “They don’t match,” the chaplain said, “I had hoped…?”

  “There might be one similar thread,” Sikorsky said, “But DNA doesn’t work quite that way. And if the two Les Paul DNA’s had matched…well, I just haven’t heard of that ever happening, but, the young Les Paul does claim the Markum’s DNA.”

  “But you said ‘one similar thread,’” Nicole said.

  “Yes. I did say that. Our expert wasn’t clear about that, and when I pressed him he kind of just mumbled.”

  So think of this, young man,” Nicole went on, “If we hadn’t come across the young Les Paul and checked his DNA, then the old Les Paul’s DNA would have eventually passed into obscurity, maybe even would have been erased from the computer banks, and maybe we would never have learned about this ‘similar thread’—“

  “Not likely,” Sikorsky cut in, “I doubt any of that stuff is ever erased. What would be the point? Computer storage is infinite!”

  “Oh I doubt that it’s infinite, my good man,” the chaplain offered, “Only God and the cosmos is infinite.” He hesitated, and felt very surprised at what he had just said, as he had not spoken of God and his beliefs for years, and both Nicole and Sikorsky stared at him, for a few seconds.

  Nicole was the first to look away, “But say what I was getting to was true,” she continued, “If the old Les Paul’s DNA got erased, and the young Les Paul never got into enough trouble to get his DNA even taken…well, who knows? He could get to be twenty, thirty, forty years old before he even got caught, and his DNA checked. So then we wouldn’t have learned what we think we just learned.”

  “Yes, that ‘similar thread’ business is definitely interesting. Would be nice if we could check his records, deeds, and DNA from his past lives.” Realizing what he had just said, Sikorsky grinned.

  So did the chaplain. And what they both had just said kind of went along with what he had just said. And everybody’s statements opened up a whole new spectrum for the science fiction and horror fiction genres, something for Stephen King and Dean Koontz to speculate about and write new thriller novels. He should contact those two authors and make the suggestion.

  “And if the old records had been erased.” Sikorsky continued, “Yes, Nicole, unlikely, but it’s probably something for law enforcement to someday consider, and, I have some possibly unexpected news for you.”

  “Yes…?” The chaplain asked.

  “Our young Les Paul didn’t go to a foster home. We’re going to cool his heels for a while at our Juvenile Detention Center.”

  “Well, he can’t get into much trouble there, can he?” Nicole asked. “I mean…he’s watched…right?”

  “Our juvie center is not the best in the world. The boys are…observed. But with economics being what they are the center had to let three staff go—one from each shift—not that they got the best of care even before, but yes, the boys can get into plenty of trouble, even from the inside.”

  “But certainly they take musters every day.”

  “Very likely they do,” Sikorsky answered.

  “Very likely…?” Nicole said, “Don’t you know?”

  “Not my job. I’m a cop.”

  “So they just get dropped into the system and forgotten.”

  “My dear,” the chaplain interceded, “By the time children get to that part of the system they have long since already been forgotten. I hate to say it, but, we—officialdom—simply can’t help them all.”

  Nicole just shook her head.

  Sikorsky and the chaplain continued talking. Nicole stopped listening. Her thoughts had gone to the young girl, Cassandra. How was the girl doing, she wondered, after getting her childhood taken from her? And not just the rape. Why was she in foster care at all? What had happened to her? What happened to her parents? Why was she so alone in the world? Was she happy? “Radford…?”

  Both men turned toward her. The chaplain answered, “Yes, my dear?”

  “I want to return to Marble Falls—right now—and adopt Cassandra.”

  ****

  Time passed. Les Paul made the trip to the little darkened house whenever he could to meet different pimps and their girls, and always got a woman at least older than sixteen. He was happy, finally getting fulfilled, yet something still felt lacking. The increasing memories didn’t help. They just increased his thought that something important was still missing.

  No longer did he go with Pierce. He went either alone, or took a less experienced boy with him, older or younger didn’t matter. The lady with the huge purse wasn’t their only contact, but he did like his first woman that first night. He hoped he could have her again, and he wondered what that treat would be that the woman with the big purse promised. He stayed in touch with Pierce, though, and used him for information, things only older boys knew. But Les Paul himself was fast becoming the older boy.

  Chapter 39 Adoption

  The same intractable woman sat at the desk at Earnestburg, Kansas, when the chaplain and Nicole entered. “So, you two are back, huh? Did you find Cassandra, and talk to her, and get your questions answered?”

  “Yes,” Nicole answered, “And now we want to adopt her.”

  “Good luck,” the woman said.

  “What? Why?”

  “She’s gone. Ran away.”

  “What?” Nicole cried, “And you know nothing about why, or anything?”

  “We think her foster parents tried farming her out.”

  “Farming her…what…?”

  “For sex! There seems to be some primordial instinct in men to have sex with nine-year-olds.”

  “My Lord!” Nicole cried.

  “Goes clear back to the cave man days,” the lady behind the desk continued, “I read a whole series of books about people during the last Ice Age. Girls as young as nine—and who knows? Maybe even younger—being actually required to have sex when they reach puberty, and men being required to perform the sex act with them! To teach them! Some men were even favored to do it over others!” The woman glanced at the chaplain and glared, “They still do it in some Muslim countries and parts of India! Probably all men want to! Some…barbarian holdover that all men want, but won’t admit to!”

  The chaplain blinked, and shrunk back several inches.

  Then Nicole turned to him, and also glared, “Radford, have you ever thought about having sex with a nine-year-old?”

  “Nicole…,” he shook his head.

  “And it’s not just that!” the woman continued, “Just this morning I caught a YouTube video as a headline on MSN of a little eight-year-old girl singing and screaming a hardcore rock song and giving a really provocative physical performance that would put even Lady Gaga to shame, so I guess we can’t really blame our men for wanting little girls!”

  “Answer me, Rad! Have you?” Nicole still glared.

  “By now,” the woman continued, “Every pervert in the country has probably seen that video and is making plans to find if not that little girl then another little girl! And where was that girl’s mother? She should have been encouraging her daughter to be a child instead of another wild-ass rockstar!”

  The chaplain ignored the woman behind the desk, and could barely believe the look in his darling wife’s eyes, “Nicole, let me fill you in on something, about men. Yes! We all have thoughts! Yes, I have looked at nine-year-olds—my god, Ni
cole! And I’ve noticed how pretty some are, and how sexy for their age—men have thoughts, Nicole, that they don’t share—my god, woman, we have instinctive thoughts, but we—most of us, thank God—don’t act on them!”

  “‘Instinctive?’”

  “‘Thoughts!’ Just thoughts! Thoughts that run through one’s head that one cannot control—good Lord, girl!”

  Nicole stared—glared—at him for a few more seconds—but nothing like the woman behind the desk had—then she turned back to the woman at the desk, “You can’t tell us anything?”

  The woman also glared at the chaplain for another few seconds, then turned back to Nicole, “The couple who had Cassandra, both of them, have been charged—seems one of their clients turned them in—anyway, they’re out on bail.”

  “So family Services didn’t check those two out very well,” the chaplain offered, thinking he really needed to say something to impress his lovely wife, “Did you even ever visit their home? I suppose they came here, both cleaned up and dressed to kill, and they just got cleared from their appearances.”

  “Sometimes, I admit, we don’t do the best job in background checks. We’re very short-handed, economics being what it is—“

  “Yes, everybody’s blaming economics.”

  Nicole reached for and gripped her husband’s arm, “What about adopting Cassandra?”

  “Adoption is a little more serious than foster care.”

  The chaplain shook his head and gave a quick half-grin. Nicole squeezed his arm, even dug in a couple nails.

  The woman at the desk glared at him again but then went to her filing cabinet, removed a booklet, returned and handed it over, “This should tell you all you need to know about adoption, but I will warn you. A girl that old, if she can even be found, is probably already lost. She’ll end up on the street, hungry and cold, and thinking she has no future. Some bastard slaver will pick her up, she’ll begin turning tricks for him for high pay, maybe even get into pornography. I commend you for caring about her, but…well, I wish you luck.”

  “Thank you,” Nicole said, then still gripping her husband’s arm she pulled him toward the door.

  The chaplain chanced to glance back. The woman continued her glare toward him till they were out the door.

  ****

  “How could you do that, Radford?” Nicole snapped once they were outside.

  “Do what?”

  “Think about having sex with a little nine-year-old girl?”

  “Honey, people can’t really control what thoughts flash through their mind, and they weren’t even real thoughts—“

  “Not real? But you thought them!”

  “No, I didn’t.” The chaplain stopped and pulled his wife into his arms, “My darling, I would never do that.” He pulled her close, enveloping her like he maybe yet had not, “Even now thoughts are racing through my mind. I can’t control them. Most of them don’t last even long enough for me to realize exactly what they even said. You are having thoughts too. Everybody does.” He kissed her, deeply, again more deeply than he thought he had yet.

  Nicole melted against him and kissed him back and held him back, then backed away and turned them, “And we better get to our vehicle before the morality police see us having sex in public.” She grinned, and increased that smile that always lit up Chaplain Radford O’Hare’s world.

  “We weren’t exactly having sex,” he said as they hurried toward Nicole’s minivan.

  “Close, my dear, very close.”

  The chaplain’s cell phone rang as they reached their vehicle.

  Chapter 40 Hitchhiking

  Little Cassandra had walked for what seemed like, to her, at least a hundred miles. She had no food, no water, the clothes on her back, her purse, and her dolly, Rachel Ray. In the purse a few coins, a twenty dollar bill, a soiled hankie, and a photograph of a man in a Marine Corps dress uniform, her late father. She had no photograph of her mother, who died when she was born. She didn’t know why she had a photograph of her father and none of her mother. Her father had been in the marines already five years when she was born, but that very day he was killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. She could barely say that word, and wondered where Afghanistan even was.

  There were no relations on either side, none that Family Services could find anyway that wanted her. Family services hadn’t exactly told her that, but what other reason could there be? Nobody wanted her. So she had ended up in one foster home after another until that one with two other girls and four boys, where the oldest boy raped her, and, she was sure, the seven-year-old, had wanted to also—she would never forget the eyes on that boy—but the foster parents had come home in time and stopped everything.

  Not that those foster parents were great people. She hadn’t liked either the man or the woman, but at least—when they were around—they had rules, and enforced them. But they weren’t around much, and that’s what bothered her the most. They weren’t around enough to see who the worst troublemaker was, and they took the wrong boy back to Family Services, instead of the oldest boy, the one who raped her, so she often worried about the other two girls and hoped the boys weren’t bothering them, but she felt sure they were. She had also gotten returned to Family Services shortly after that episode, and that’s when she was told—what little she was told—about her parents.

  She hadn’t seen a car for a long time. The first half dozen or so she had hid when she saw them coming. She didn’t trust anybody, and had been afraid to get in a car with a stranger. But now she was hungry, and cold, and it was getting dark, and she was tired…and she saw a cream-colored minivan coming.

  She remembered looking out the window when that nice Nicole—and that man she was with—left. They drove a minivan the same color. She wished it would be them—Nicole—she wished it so hard…be them, please be them!—but she didn’t think it was.

  She stopped walking and waited anyway. The minivan began slowing down. She saw a woman driver—oh joy! I’ll be safe! Another woman in the passenger seat. Good. She didn’t trust anybody, but at least trusted women over men.

  The minivan stopped and Cassandra saw the other woman looked a little younger than the driver, and a girl in the back, older than herself. The passenger-side window moved down smoothly, “Hi, honey,” the woman driver called over the passenger, “Where are you heading?”

  Cassandra didn’t know where she was heading. She didn’t know what to say. She felt her face getting hot, and a funny feeling began in her stomach.

  “I’ll take you wherever you want to go, honey, just get in back with my friend’s daughter. She’s thirteen. You’ll like her.

  The girl in back slid the side door open. The girl didn’t smile, and didn’t look happy. Cassandra hesitated. For some reason she didn’t understand she felt uncomfortable climbing in with these people, even if they were women. The woman driver…she didn’t know…the woman’s eyes looked empty, like there was no feeling in them, something she was accustomed to seeing with the Family Services people, but—

  “Get in, honey!” the woman said, not even friendly at all that time, “We have to get moving or we’ll be late!”

  Then Cassandra made the most important decision—her very first decision made by herself that affected her—she had ever made in her young life, “No!” She turned and ran into the ditch, tripped and almost fell, and heard—

  “Get her, Mandy, or I’ll tan your little ass!”

  She began clawing to get up the other side of the ditch. It was deeper than she had thought, and wet, her hands were getting muddy. She held onto a growth of grass, and almost reached the top when she felt her ankle grabbed, then she lost her hold and slid back down into the ditch.

  The other girl grabbed both her arms, “Just cooperate, little girl, then she won’t hurt you,” she said, “My name’s Mandy. I’ll help you if I can, now come on back. You’re too young to be out on the road like this. You’ll be safer with us. Believe me.”

  She accepted what Mandy sa
id and allowed the older girl to hold onto her left arm as they returned to the minivan.

  The woman behind the wheel scowled as she climbed in, “Don’t you dare get mud on the upholstery.”

  The woman in the passenger seat glanced back, “Get buckled in, girls.”

  Mandy crawled in and shut the door. They started out and soon got up to the speed limit. Mandy pointed toward the woman in the passenger seat and said quietly, “That’s my mom.”

  Cassandra nodded to Mandy, and wondered about the group she was with. The driver would be mean, she was pretty sure. Mandy’s mom, probably not, and she felt a safety vibe toward Mandy’s mom, and toward Mandy, and she wondered where they were going, that the driver worried about being late.

  Finally the driver glanced back, the same feeling-less look in her eyes, “You got all muddy, little girl. You shouldn’t have tried to get away. You won’t have to work tonight, but you will go with us and watch, and learn.”

  “What kind of work? I know how to work, I can clean, and cook, and my last—my mother, showed me how to sew.”

  The woman’s face changed. On a normal woman it would probably be called a smile, but Cassandra saw something entirely different from a smile. She didn’t know what she saw, then the woman turned back to the road, “Tell her what we do, Mandy,” the woman driver said, “And find out her name.”

  “I’m Cassandra!” She surprised even herself with her outburst, but she did not like this woman and wanted her to know she wasn’t afraid of her…at least that’s what went through her childish mind, that she would stand up to this woman. At least for a few seconds she actually thought she could, yet she feared her too, more than either of her last foster parents. Her last foster parents hadn’t really been mean to her, but the man, she was pretty sure, wanted her to do stuff…stuff she was sure she wouldn’t like doing.

  She even began to wonder if she had done right by running away. Yes, she had, that man, Franny—not even the woman’s husband—would have reaped her if she hadn’t. He had come to her room every night and just stood in the doorway, looking at her, and sometimes moved his hand on his front by his zipper, like that boy who had reaped her at that other foster home.