He placed his hand on hers. “Believe me, I’ll do my damnedest.”
About an hour later, Buddy exited the front door of the house. He was dressed as before, except that he had added a scarf wrapped several times around his neck. Protection against the chill of the night, Ben thought. He wished he had one himself.
Buddy rounded the corner and headed back toward Eleventh Street. As soon as Ben was certain he was out of sight, he eased quietly out of his car and approached the house.
The lights in the house were off, but he knew there was still someone in there. He passed through the white picket gate that provided access to the front door. There was a doorbell just beside the mailbox. Ben pushed it twice.
There was no answer. He didn’t detect any movement inside.
Could he possibly have been wrong? He thought he had seen a second figure through the window curtains, but perhaps it was a trick of the light, or a reflection in the mirror.
He knocked on the door, loud enough to be heard in the attic. But there was still no response. Well…
He tried the doorknob. To his astonishment, the door was unlocked. He pushed the door open, just a crack.
“Hello? Is there anybody there?”
His voice echoed through the empty house.
“Anybody there?” he repeated.
Still no answer. Ben pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside. The house was dark. He searched for a light switch, then thought better of it. Maybe he shouldn’t make it obvious that someone else was here.
He scanned the living room area as best he could. The furniture had a musty, grandmotherly feel about it; most of it appeared at least fifty years old. Lace doilies on the sofa and faded burnished curtains on the windows. An old piano in the corner. But no trace of a human being.
On the far end of the living room, he spotted a swinging door. Probably leads to the kitchen, he mused. He pushed open the door and walked inside.
The instant he passed through the door, something dropped out of the darkness and grabbed him by the throat.
40
BEN WHIRLED, TRYING TO loosen the grip of whoever or whatever had descended upon him. He felt fingers clutching at his neck—it was definitely a person. He threw his shoulders back, trying to dislodge his attacker, without success. He grabbed the hands, trying to pry them off his throat. He felt something jab him in the side. Something sharp.
“Ahhhhh!” He wanted to clutch his side, but knew if he loosened his grip on the hands around his throat he’d be history. He had to do something quick; he couldn’t breathe at all. His vision was getting spotty and it was difficult to think. He needed air, badly.
He careened backward into the swinging door, using the person on his back as a battering ram. They smacked the door solidly, but the impact threw Ben off-balance. There was nothing he could do to regain his equilibrium. He fell over and smashed down on the pinewood floor.
The shock of the fall loosened the grip of the hands around his throat. He managed to roll away, gasping desperately for air. He felt the oxygen coursing back into his lungs, clearing away the cloudiness that was already fogging his brain.
He tried to focus on the bundle he had so gracelessly deposited on the floor. Whoever it was was already gone. He squinted into the darkness, but couldn’t find a trace.
“Look,” he said, breathing heavily, “my name is Ben Kincaid and I—”
The shadow lunged at him before he could finish his sentence. The sharp instrument again jabbed into his side, just below the ribs. He fell sideways, collapsing onto a love seat. The pain was even worse this time.
He felt something wrap around his mouth, then his throat. He was fighting gravity as well as his assailant; the person choking out his breath had the power position.
He felt the air draining from his lungs. He had to stop this now, or he would absolutely never have a second chance. He pushed against the arms bearing down on him. They barely budged.
In desperation, Ben released his grip and jerked his arms away. His attacker was caught by surprise; the body hovering over him fell to one side. Ben wriggled away. The person in the darkness started to bolt, but Ben grabbed the narrow shoulders and shoved them back as hard as he could. The figure tumbled over a coffee table and fell onto the sofa, lace doilies and all.
“Look,” Ben shouted, “I’m not armed, I’m not dangerous. I’m not going to hurt you!”
The figure on the sofa leaned forward. Ben saw a hand snake out and grab something long and thin and sharp from the coffee table. It caught the moonlight and glistened. Like a knife.
Ben ran to the front door and flipped on the overhead lights. The sudden shift in visibility was blinding. He squinted to block out the sudden glare, then gradually reopened his eyes.
The person on the sofa was a teenage girl. Fifteen, sixteen tops. She was clutching a letter opener.
“You must be Trixie,” Ben said, trying to keep his voice calm. “My name is Ben. Kincaid.”
Her eyes were wide and scared. Her hands trembled, but continued to clutch the letter opener. Ben wanted to approach her, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Teenager or not, this girl had almost strangled him to death.
“I’m here to help you,” he said, still gasping. “I’m not the one who’s been killing your friends.”
The girl seemed frozen, unable to move.
Ben yanked his wallet out of his pocket and tossed it to her. “See for yourself. Check the bar card. I’m a lawyer. Someone in my office was killed and somehow it’s connected to the murders of the four teenage…girls. If you want, I can give you the number of a friend of mine at the police station. He’ll vouch for me.”
Keeping a close eye on Ben, she snatched the wallet off the floor and examined each ID, membership, and credit card. After she had seen everything there was to see, she tossed it back to him. “How did you find me?”
“I followed Buddy.”
She nodded. “What do you want?”
“I want to know whatever you know. I want to find out who’s doing all this killing. And I want to help you.”
“Help me?” She laughed hollowly. “No one ever helps me. No one but Buddy.”
“I can,” Ben said. He took a cautious step forward. “I can get you police protection. Or nonpolice protection, if you’d prefer. I can keep this maniac who’s trying to kill you from succeeding.”
Ben saw her shudder. Her eyes were desperate and pleading. He could almost see her deliberating over how much she could afford to trust.
“How can you help?” she said, barely audibly.
Ben stepped forward, reached out, and gently took the letter opener from her hands. “First things first,” he said. “What can you tell me about the Kindergarten Club?”
41
AT BEN’S SUGGESTION, THEY washed the dirty dishes in the kitchen—at least a week’s worth. Ben washed, Trixie dried. He hoped to catch her up in the rhythm of an ordinary, mundane chore, something that might distract her and allow the words to flow more freely.
It seemed to be working. Half an hour later, she was talking almost without hesitation.
“You’re from St. Louis originally?” Ben asked.
“Uh-huh.”
Ben sank his hands beneath the suds. “How did you end up in Tulsa?”
“It’s…a real long story.”
“I’m in no hurry.”
“Why do you care?” A tinge of bitterness crept into her voice. “No one else ever did.”
Ben rammed a sponge down a dirty highball glass. “Maybe you never told the right person.”
“I told everyone I knew. It never made any difference. Everyone always sided with my stepfather.”
“You didn’t get along with your stepfather?”
“My stepfather hurt me. And molested me. Several times.”
Ben set the glass down on the towel. “Oh.”
She looked up at him. “You know, that’s the first time I’ve ever said that aloud. Using those word
s, I mean. When it was happening, I didn’t know what he was doing, or why, or what to call it.”
“When did this start?”
“Right after he married my mother and moved into our house, three years ago. He was always touching me when he shouldn’t, and where he shouldn’t. Making dumb jokes. Asking if I wanted to shower with him. Wink wink. Jab jab.
“It just got worse and worse. One night he had this big party for all these big shot male friends of his. They were drinking and smoking shit, acting really rude. He asked me to come out of my room and join them. I didn’t want to, so he forced me. Mom wasn’t home, naturally. He dragged me out, and they gave me booze to drink, the first time I’d ever had it, and they let me gag trying to inhale their grass, and before long they were all passing me around, pawing me, feeling up my dress, feeling…”
She looked away. “They were gross. But I was so out of it, I didn’t realize what was happening. I mean, I did, but it was like it wasn’t really me, or like it was me in a dream, you know? Anyway, I must’ve passed out eventually. I didn’t wake up until the next morning.”
She picked up the glass and applied the towel furiously, long after it was dry. “I woke up and found I was naked, not a stitch on me. And no, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t normally sleep that way. Then I noticed the surroundings were all wrong. I wasn’t in my room; I was in his room—in his bed. And then—” She set the glass down on the counter. “And then I noticed that he was lying next to me, and he wasn’t wearing anything either.”
Her eyes closed, fighting back the tears. “I thought it couldn’t get any worse than that. But it did. I sat up, and I saw one of my stepfather’s friends in bed on the other side of me. And he was naked, too.”
Ben felt his stomach tighten. He dropped a few more plates into the sudsy dishwater.
“I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I had to get out of there. I got dressed and ran out of the house. As far as I was concerned, I was running away and never coming back. But where could I go? I didn’t have any money, not a dime. I didn’t know anything about buses, or trains, or shelters. I just wandered around the streets aimlessly. Couple of hours later, he found me. He grabbed me by the hair, slapped me a few times, and dragged me into his car. When he got me home, he beat me up but good. I had bruises, a black eye, welts. That’s how I got this scar across my nose. My mom was home the whole time, but she never said a word. I screamed out to her, but she wouldn’t interfere. She was scared of him, too.”
“You should have gone to the police,” Ben said.
“I did, about a week later. My stepfather told me he was having another party and he wanted me to be there. To entertain, he said. I just couldn’t let it happen again. If it did, I’d be more than just sick. I’d die—I was certain of it. So I ran to the police station and told them what he did to me. They put me in a tiny room with four male officers, and I told them everything, over and over again. I was amazed—it just came pouring out of me. I told them everything about my stepfather.”
“And?”
Her lip curled, men trembled. “They didn’t believe me. Not one of them. They said I was making it up.”
“Whether they believed you or not, they had a duty to investigate.”
“Yeah. And they did, in a way. They called my stepfather. I begged them not to, but they did. He came in, furious, and they put him in me same tiny room with me, and—what a surprise!—he denied everything.”
“Did you have a chance to call any other witnesses?”
“Who would I call? No one else knew, except his buddies and my mother, and I knew they wouldn’t say anything. It was just him against me. And they believed him.”
“Did they hold a hearing?”
“Yeah.” Her hands gripped both ends of the kitchen counter. “My stepfather showed up with some fancy lawyer and a buddy from the police station. Some clown I’d never seen before in my life came in claiming to be my guardian or something. What a joke—he didn’t even talk to me. My stepfather’s cop friend got the whole thing fixed. He talked to the judge privately and he talked to the other officers who were going to testify. He convinced them I was a troublemaker. A discipline problem, that’s what they kept calling me.
“The judge said a lot of stuff I didn’t understand about how I hadn’t proven a right to be emancipated and ordered me to go back to live with my stepfather. Can you believe it? No matter what I did, I couldn’t get away from him. The judge ordered me to go back and live with the man who…who…” She turned away from him and dabbed her eyes with the dish towel.
Ben cleared his throat. He wanted to comfort her, to tell her that he understood, but he didn’t know how to begin. “Sometimes there are some…problems with the juvenile justice system.”
“Justice?” She was crying full out now. Ben took the plate from her hands, turned off the running water, and led her back to the Jiving room. She crumpled onto the sofa and continued to cry. Ben sat next to her and waited.
After a long while, Trixie composed herself enough that Ben felt he could ask another question. “Did you go home with your stepfather after the hearing?”
“I had no choice. They literally put me in the car with him. As soon as we were out of sight, he hit me in the face. With his fist. And promised he’d do a lot more when we got home.”
Ben swallowed. He was afraid to ask what happened next.
“We walked through the front door. He turned toward me, his face all twisted up real mean, like he could kill me with his bare hands, and I kicked him right between the legs. Just like that, before he even had a chance to think about it. Hard. While he was down, I grabbed his wallet from his coat pocket and ran out the door. I ran to the bus station, got on the first bus that left and didn’t get off till I was in Tulsa.”
“Do you have relatives in Tulsa?”
“No. I don’t have relatives anywhere, at least not that I know of. I was just out of money. Someone picked me up at the bus station, though. Someone who was scouting for Sonny.”
“Sonny is your…boss?”
“Right. I had no hope at all at this point, and my stepfather’s money was almost gone. I was certain I was going to starve to death, or freeze to death, or the some other horrible painful way. Or get sent back to my stepfather, which would be worse. Sonny offered me hope. He offered to take care of me.”
“If you’d work for him.”
“Right. I didn’t like it, but what could I do? I couldn’t even get a job at McDonald’s at my age. I almost didn’t get a job from Sonny.”
“I didn’t realize he was all that particular.”
“He requires all his girls to have a physical regularly, especially before they start. Says he doesn’t want them spreading diseases that might put off his customers. I couldn’t get a physical, though, without some kind of ID. Thank God for Buddy. I guess you’ve met him; he works the other side. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had. Only friend, really. He pretended to be my stepfather and got a copy of my birth certificate.”
“And you passed the physical?”
“Of course. And I’ve been hooking ever since. Maybe it’s not my dream come true or anything, but I had to keep on eating somehow. So I made a compromise.”
“Another compromise.” Ben was quiet for a moment. “Seems awfully risky.”
“Hey, life is risky. If you don’t believe me, just try crossing the street in these heels sometime.”
“How long has it been since you left home?”
“Over a year now.”
Ben felt himself sinking into the sofa. Over a year. Twelve months. Three hundred and sixty-five days on the street. “Trixie, I’m so sorry. I just wish—”
“I’m the one who should be sorry. What a whiner I am.” She brushed away her tears and grinned. “You’re a nice guy, you know. Sweet.”
“Well, anyone else would feel the same—”
“I know that’s not true. Boy, do I know it.” She nodded toward the upstairs bedroom. “You wanna�
�you know, go upstairs?”
Ben closed his eyes. “No, Trixie. I don’t think that would be…” He struggled to find the right words. “We still need to talk. I know this has been hard for you. But I need to know how you became involved with this Kindergarten Club.”
She shrugged, disappointed, but unwilling to show it. “The Kindergarten Club was around long before me. I was a late entry. They drafted me to replace Carol Jo after she went back to L.A.”
“What exactly is it?”
“A bunch of gross old guys who worked together looking for some cheap easy thrills. They didn’t like to be seen on The Stroll or any of the usual places you’d go to pick up a…date for the evening. So they had this one guy, kind of the head creep, he made all the arrangements. He sent another guy out to gather us up and drive us to The Playground—that’s this place north of the city where no one else ever goes, including cops. The five of us girls would go out there, and then the men would show up, and we’d do…whatever.”
“What’s whatever?”
“Whatever they wanted. It changed from one night to the next. Usually some kind of weird show to get them worked up, then we’d finish off with the usual orgy.”
“The usual orgy?”
“That’s what they liked to call it. It really wasn’t an orgy, ’cause most of those guys weren’t good for more than one time, and only about thirty seconds at that.”
“What kind of a show?”
“Oh, we’d dress up in costumes, or we’d make a big deal of undressing. One time we stripped down and kind of messed with each other. They really liked that. Another time we let them pee on us. They got a big charge out of that, too. One time we tied some of them up and, you know, kind of teased their private parts. I wouldn’t let them tie me up, though. I drew the line there.”
Thank God. Ben’s teeth clenched tightly together. He wasn’t sure which was worse—thinking about her committing these acts, or hearing her recite them in such a matter-of-fact manner. “Why did you do this?”
“Because Sonny told me to. Besides, it paid very well. Every time the Club met, I could afford to take a night or two off, and sometimes Sonny would let me.” Her voice grew quieter. “That would make almost anything worthwhile.”
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