by Dawn Mattox
No.
“They even wrote about me in Mother Earth News.”
My mother was clearly expecting me to bask in her glory.
“Your family?” I didn’t understand.
“My commune family. The beautiful people. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You got that right!” I yelled. School books hit the floor and my mother slapped my face.
“You think you’re so smart. You think you know everything,” Starla hissed and sneered. “Well, you don’t! You have no right to judge me.”
I cried, and Starla stayed until spring.
It was about time I got my phone back.
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I told Bonita. “I do not want my phone tapped or client conversations recorded.” I quoted HIPPA laws regarding confidentiality. Being classified as a Mental Health Counselor had its advantages.
The day was still young when another surprising call came; this one from Enloe Hospital in Chico.
“Ms. McLane? This is Dr. Jones.”
I smiled for a nanosecond, wondering if the call was a prank and “Jones” was an alias, and then frowned because the man was clearly upset.
“Sunny McLane, Special Victims Unit. How can I help you?”
“I need to begin by saying that I am making this call on behalf of a patient of mine who is also a client of yours. She has been admitted anonymously under the name of Jane Doe for safety reasons. If you come to the hospital, be sure to let the desk know that you are from the district attorney’s office. She said to tell you that her name is Grace.
I gasped and gripped the phone. “Not Grace.” The haunting question she had posed, Do you believe me?, could be a tagline for every ritual abuse survivor. On top of it all—adding insult to injury—Grace had been labeled the perpetrator.
“What else can you tell me?” I asked Dr. Jones.
“First, I need to ask you a question.” The doctor’s voice sounded accusing, taut, as if the phone were about to snap.
“What is it?”
“What the goddamned hell happened to this woman?”
I flinched. “I don’t understand. What are you saying?”
“I am saying that her injuries indicate that she has been subject to torture. In addition to over a dozen scars, including some large puncture wounds, it appears that at some point she’s been subjected to a basement cesarean—a botched job, to say the least.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. I am not able to elaborate on that. Domestic violence charges against her were recently dropped.”
“Charges against her?” His voice raised and thundered in my ear.
“I am trying to protect her, sir. Please tell me why she has been admitted to the hospital.”
“I had to medically clear her of any physical issues before she could be transferred to Mental Health. Her physical condition is appalling. She is in bed, wearing a hospital gown and a pair of tennis shoes—she calls them her running shoes —and I assure you, Ms. McLane, she is not a jogger.”
“I’m on my way.” I hung up the phone with my right hand, grabbed my things with the left, and hurried down the hall of the atrium toward the stairs, passing Duncan as I went.
“Sunny, wait,” he called out. “How about lunch when you get back? Our restaurant. My treat!”
“Sure. Fine,” I said, distracted. “Later.” And I blew past, skipping down the stairs to the parking lot until my mental Duncan-warning blinker flashed, bringing me to a halt even as Bonita intercepted me on her way back from the courthouse.
“You okay after this morning?” Bonita was considerate, and I responded with the usual, “Sure, fine, I’m okay.” The lie rolled off my tongue with the practiced ease of an acrobat.
“I’m in a hurry to meet with a client.” I threw her what passed for a look of gratitude, and popped the locks on the county car. Bonita really meant well. “How about joining me for lunch later on?”
Two birds with one stone.
Bonita seemed pleasantly surprised and accepted the invitation as I darted off to Chico.
I moved Grace from the hospital, only to have the door slammed in my face at the SAFE (Stop Abuse for Everyone) shelter for battered women.
“Is there a problem? Can we talk about this?” I asked Erika, who had been the shelter director forever and now stood in the doorway.
Erika relented, smiling sweetly as she opened the door to let us in. She turned to one of the women behind her who eyed us curiously, and said, “Casey, would you mind making some hot chocolate for our guests.” Erika motioned for Casey to take Grace with her to the kitchen, and I gave Grace an encouraging nod.
Grace followed Casey, walking as though she were in a lot of pain. I assumed the doctor had treated her physical issues accordingly. My part was to make sure that she was safe.
“We can talk in here,” Erika said as she led me into a home office on the bottom floor of the two-story house. “Please, sit down.” She gestured to a chair opposite her desk.
“Grace has been a victim of domestic violence. She needs a safe place.” I had tried before to get Grace into a safe house without success.
“I know that Grace is also a survivor of ritual abuse,” said Erika, “and I understand that she needs help.” She propped her elbows on the desk, templing her arms and clasping her hands. “Mental Health might be a more appropriate resource for your client.”
I scowled in the face of her smile. “She doesn’t need to be detained. She’s not homicidal or suicidal. What she needs is rest. She needs to feel safe.”
“Let me remind you,” said Erika, “that managing a shelter is hard work. We have regularly scheduled group sessions where women gather to talk about being victims of violence. I assure you—the meetings can get very stressful, even under ideal circumstances. It doesn’t help to have an RA survivor add to the discussion by telling the group she has ‘Bride of Satan’ carved into her back.”
“What do you expect? She’s been tortured. Her psyche is damaged.”
“Exactly. That is why RA victims are exempt from shelters. Believe me when I say that our policy is consistent with that of most domestic violence shelters. RA survivors are too disruptive. We are trying to stabilize and empower women here, but your client is . . . is . . .” Erika searched for a politically correct term.
“A victim. That’s the word you’re looking for—victim.” I positioned my arms on her desk to mirror hers. “I’ll tell you what. How about keeping Grace here for a couple of days while I work on a relocation plan? Then she’ll be gone—out of the county—for good. I promise.”
Erika relented, probably because I worked for the district attorney and because it was in her program’s best interest to maintain good relationships with the criminal justice system.
I explained to Grace that I would develop a relocation plan, and she nodded, but remained mute.
Later, I said goodbye to Grace, then hugged her and let her know that I would call the shelter as soon as I had something in place. Grace nodded once more and moved away, wincing with every step. She shuffled across the living room, hunched over, walking slowly with a severe limp as she ascended the stairs, one painful step at a time, to a room that the shelter had prepared for her, as far as possible from the general population.
Duncan frowned when Bonita got out of the car with me at “our” restaurant, Tong Fong Low’s, aka Chow Mein Charlie’s. I didn’t appreciate Duncan’s reference to “our” restaurant. In my mind, the story of Chow Mein Charlie’s restaurant, with its rich, colorful—real or imagined—history, belonged to Travis and me.
The food arrived, and I noticed in my peripheral vision that Duncan had bowed his head along with mine. “Good Lord,” I said irreverently, my head popping up, “You did it. You’re wearing real ear gauges, aren’t you?” I was staring at his round earrings called gauges that resembled giant black grommets embedded in his thick lobes. “Duncan, are you having a midlife crisis?”
Duncan lit up with a shy nod. “I liked
the fake ones so I thought, what the heck, and had them done for real.”
Bonita gave him an appreciative look, saying, “I’ve got a girlfriend who wears those. I like them. She looks hot.”
I scrambled to regroup. I know that “gay” is supposed to be the new normal, but seriously, putting a dog in a cat suit and teaching it to meow doesn’t make it a cat.
Duncan all but wriggled like a St. Bernard puppy under my appraisal as I nodded in agreement with Bonita. “You do look hot, big guy.” And he did. Duncan looked great, but the thing I admired most of all was the courage behind his transformation. I liked that he was willing to put his traditional “safe” image on the line and change from Geek to . . . what was he changing into? GQ? Metrosexual? Gangsta? Punk?
We shared the various dishes as I steered the conversation away from Duncan.
“So, Bonita, I heard Narcotics borrowed you for a major bust yesterday. We want details.”
Bonita’s chow mein dangled from her chopsticks. “Mucho grande! We got the owners of the Card Room on possession and sales so far. Can you believe it? We found a whopping 300 grams of meth all packaged into 8-Balls and stashed inside of some antique soy sauce pots down in the basement.” Bonita took her bite, chewed, and swallowed. “The soy sauce pots were really cool.”
“How much is an 8-Ball and what’s a soy sauce pot?” asked Duncan.
“An 8-Ball is three and a half grams . . . so we’re talking around three-quarters of a pound.” A woman of many talents, Bonita chewed her food, talked, and tipped her head as the numbers rolled through her brain like a slot machine. “That would be . . . let me see, about forty thousand dollars in street value.” She shrugged dismissively and then got excited about the soy sauce pots. “The pots are seriously amazing. They are beautiful patina blue-green hexagon-shaped clay pots from the gold rush days.” She held up her hands as if holding something the size of a grapefruit. “Probably held about a quart of soy sauce.”
“Umm,” I nodded. “Now that you’ve been in a downtown basement, do you think it was just a basement or part of the Chinese tunnels?” The tunnels were a myth to everyone but the locals.
“It looked like a basement to me. Are there really secret tunnels?” Bonita asked.
“It depends on who you ask,” I said with an air of mystery. “The official answer is maybe. We learned in school how the Chinese came here in the 1850s and 60s and became part of the gold rush to escape oppression in Canton. Only, when they got here, they found out that foreigners couldn’t buy property because they weren’t American citizens—which meant they couldn’t own gold claims.”
I looked up from my plate and noticed that Duncan had stopped eating and was staring at me in fascination. “Why didn’t they become Americans?” he asked.
“People came from all over the world during the gold rush. That doesn’t mean they gave up their native citizenship. Most of them, like the Chinese, planned on getting rich and going home. Have you seen the Chinese temple?”
Duncan and Bonita shook their heads. “It’s unprecedented in history because it embraced all the different religions that people brought with them from China. It’s a historical landmark. You should check it out,” I said, taking another bite of lunch.
“Anyhow, back to your question. The temple was built on a bluff above the river. Rumor has it that the Chinese tunneled under the temple toward the river where they illegally mined for gold. That’s what we learned in school,” I said with a maestro wave of my chopstick. “There has never been official ‘proof’ of other tunnels or activity. I doubt if the guards they kept posted at each corner of the Moon Temple—upstairs with a 360-degree view—were there for the church social.”
“So what did you learn outside of school?” asked Duncan.
I gave Duncan a nod of approval. “What we learned after school is a whole different story. I knew kids who said they have been inside the tunnels—partied in them and lost their virginity in them.” I laughed with a shrug and cleared my throat. “The kids said several tunnels run under the shops downtown.”
“Which shops?” asked Bonita.
“I don’t know. I was a teenager. That wasn’t the part of the stories I cared about. Besides, most of the tunnels were flooded and are under the dam now.”
Duncan looked infatuated with the idea. “But you think they still exist?”
“I agree with the conspiracy theory.” I glanced around and lowered my voice. “I think local government calls it ‘myth’ to keep treasure hunters and ghost trackers from ripping up the sidewalks and streets.”
Everyone laughed, and we returned to the business of eating.
Bonita, who probably didn’t have a life outside of investigating—or getting into other people’s business—returned to the unwelcome topic of phone threats, asking me for the millionth time, “Any new thoughts?”
“Probably my ex,” I now repeated one million and one times. “Logan’s doing time on some gun charges up at High Desert.”
Duncan’s eyes popped. I gave them no more information than what was publically available.
Bonita deftly attacked the last of her chow mein and then paused to speculate. “You know, Sunny, I can see why ATF was investigating you. Most people would welcome, probably even be demanding protection from law enforcement, and yet you fight it every step of the way. What’s up with that?” she asked with practiced ease.
Bonita’s face had taken on the warm, inviting expression of friendship that investigators use to gain information from suspects. A glint of insincerity flicked through her brown eyes, giving her away. It always did. Not that Bonita was wrong. I looked as guilty as hell.
I pushed the rest of my lunch away with deliberate care and reached for a fortune cookie as I weighed my past against my future.
The truth was as close as the paper I pulled from the cookie. “In everything, there is a piece of truth. But only a piece.”
CHAPTER 15
Screams bounced off every window throughout the complex when a hairy blackish brown tarantula the size of my hand jumped from the inbox onto my face. No one was laughing this time. I knocked it across the room and sent it skittering across the floor. Chairs and files scattered before the storm of frantic secretaries stampeding for the door. Paige almost gave birth as the giant spider reared up on its back legs and advanced, charging at her with its forelegs waving high in the air.
It was a new week—a new prank and a new threat. This time the creature was not made of nylon and rubber, but lived and moved, causing mass hysteria in the intake room. It took an armed investigator standing guard over the tarantula before the maintenance man finally removed it using a shovel and a Hefty trash bag.
Jack demanded answers—there were none. I wanted to cut and run. The secretaries got over their shock and became incensed as if the latest prank had been my fault. Glares and stares followed me throughout the department. Being an outcast added hurt to my fright, and I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that one of the secretaries might have been a part of, or working in cooperation with a cult. I had read that followers actively recruit members in the law enforcement community.
The incident left me frightened, embarrassed, and emotionally hemorrhaging from old wounds I had acquired growing up as a social reject. I was only twelve hours away from San Diego, Chance, and the promise of a new life—minus the insanity. But of all the mixed emotions that threatened to overwhelm, anger was the strongest. I was furious that anyone thought they had the right to destroy my career. Correction; someone thought I would surrender my future without firing a shot.
No one is going to run me off.
Jack stood in the intake room, ramrod straight, flushed, and breathing fire. He told Bonita to investigate “what the hell is going on around here,” probably hoping it was a prank, but contemplating the possibility of a serious threat. Then he directed me, in front of God and all the secretaries, to continue my work with survivors of ritual abuse. Suddenly, spending the rest of my life in Sout
hern California didn’t seem so bad.
Following directives, I trudged over to Mental Health to meet with Dano.
According to Taylor—Dano’s patient with multiple personalities—tonight would issue in that rare cosmic event known as a blood moon, according to the Jewish faith, a prophetic moon. I imagined Satanists the world over doing whatever it was they did to desecrate that which others celebrate.
This was the third time I had sat in on sessions with Dano and Taylor, who shape-shifted her way like a jungle shaman through the various personalities that inhabited her being. Of the two personas that shared Taylor’s body, it was “Pat” who proved to be the more informative. I asked Pat if an event was scheduled for tonight’s blood moon and if she had ever attended such a ceremony before.
Pat rolled her eyes and took a tone of exasperation.” Of course, there will be a ceremony. I wouldn’t miss it.” Pat raised her voice. “I’ve attended many gatherings and High Holidays . . . and Black Mass, of course.” She toned down. “I don’t recall a blood moon exactly, although blood was a part of every meeting.” She narrowed her brows, lifting them into an A-frame above her piercing brown eyes. “Why? Are you asking for an invitation?”
My heart pounded in my ears. It was hard to hold her gaze with war drums thrumming in my head. It was the breakthrough I had been waiting for—praying for. If Taylor’s stories were true about animal sacrifice and sexual abuse of children during these events, then arrests could be made and the local cult taken down.
Or perhaps it was a ploy to discredit me with law enforcement. Everyone already thinks I am a little weird. It would take just one time of convincing law enforcement to respond to this bizarre threat, have it be fake, and my credibility would be blown from now to forever leaving me with a reputation like Witch-Hunting Wally.