I actually shivered,
remembering being on the inside looking out, my hands desperately
shaking against the iron bars in the living room, knowing I’d
never bust free as the smoke slipped out above my head. Unable to
find my voice, I nodded.
He shuffled through
the pages. “The remains of a man were found in the house.”
He slid another photo my way and I inhaled a sharp breath, jerking
backwards like I’d been slapped. There was nothing but charred
remains, but in my mind, I could still picture the dark, dirty blond
hair and scowling brown eyes, his body far outweighing my own, with
so many muscles I never had a fighting chance.
I turned my head away
from everyone, not wanting to see it anymore, and closed my eyes. The
paper was removed, but not by Farrow. Nick must’ve beaten him
to the punch and swiped it for himself. My eyes pinched tighter, my
heart burning at the thought of Nick seeing for himself, knowing that
was the body of the man I left unconscious to burn. I just wanted to
keel over and squeeze myself senseless. Talking about this was far
more gut-wrenching than I thought it would be.
I heard the paper
crumple beside me. Guess Farrow was going to have to reprint that
page if he truly wanted it. A few seconds later, Nick’s hand
found mine again, squeezing tighter than ever before.
“Where were you
kept in the house?” Farrow continued, and my head began to inch
sideways until I saw him again, still too afraid to go farther, to
look Nick in the eye as well.
“I don’t
know,” I replied, but I felt so dehydrated it came out as more
of a whisper. I licked my lips and swallowed. “There were no
windows and the door was always locked from the outside.”
“What about the
night of the fire? How did you get out then?”
“I don’t
know,” I whispered. He looked up from the paper he was
studying, his expression clearly not believing my answer. “I
was kept drugged all the time. The nights even more so.” In
fact, there was only about an hour a day where I actually felt
somewhat normal, and I used that time to eat, shower and go to the
bathroom. Except on the last few days, where I worked doubly hard to
get that damn vent off the wall.
“This man,
Charles Malone, was found dead in his basement. I would imagine that
was the only room in the entire house with a door that didn’t
have any windows, and most likely where you were kept.”
The detective stared
at me with cold, glassy eyes, but since there wasn’t an actual
question in there, I kept my trap shut.
“Were you kept
in the basement?” he pushed.
“I don’t
know.” Bitterly, I added, “He didn’t exactly give
me the house tour.”
“Why the hell
does it even matter where she was kept?” Nick interrupted
rudely. His words gave me the courage to finally his look his way,
but his eyes were set hard on Farrow. “That asshole raped her
every damn night. Who the hell cares which room he did it in?”
“I’m
required to ask because the death of this man was considered
suspicious by the L.A. police department.” It was incredibly
difficult to keep a calm face, because I knew what was coming. So did
Nick, who continued to keep pressure on my hand, trying to give me
the strength to hold on. “Due to the number of broken alcoholic
bottles in the dining room, where the fire originated, they believe
the fire was set intentionally.” Returning his hard stare on
me, he asked firmly, “So I’m asking, did you start the
fire?”
Guilt and fear had
been building, my heart beating so fast I thought for sure he’d
see the way my ribs pounded against my clothes. It took everything I
had to say with a steady voice, “No.”
“No?”
I sighed with
exasperation. With a hint of annoyance, I retorted, “You know,
if you’re going to continue to ask me everything twice, this is
going to take all damn day. I meant what I said the first time. It’s
not going to change because you ask me a second time.”
I heard a soft murmur
of approval come from Nick, and he took a moment to pat my hand
beneath the table. Whether he was saying
good job
or
calm
down
, I didn’t know.
“Here’s
the thing,” Farrow replied, dropping his pen and crossing his
arms.
Shit
. Now I’d done it. “You were most likely
kept in the room the owner died in. The window in the dining room was
broken, alcohol was used to spread the fire, and the firemen only
removed one person from that house, a young woman fitting your
description. You tell me that you were drugged and that you were
always locked up, yet the fireman found you upstairs just outside the
dining room. So you tell me what you would think if you were me.”
I had no problem with
that. With a voice of confidence I didn’t know I had in me, I
replied nonchalantly, “Sounds like maybe there were more than
just the two of us in that house.” Instant smirk-be-gone.
Farrow’s lips actually began to curve downward after hearing
that suggestion. “That maybe he kept another girl like me who
didn’t appreciate the way she was treated. I for one didn’t
like being fucking raped on a nightly basis. Maybe she didn’t
either. Maybe she was kept elsewhere in the house, managed to break
free, set the fucking place on fire, but before she ran off, maybe
she helped get my drugged ass to safety before slipping out.
Obviously, since she would’ve been the one to start the fire,
she would’ve wanted to slip away undetected by the firemen and
police.
“As for the man,
I haven’t got a fucking clue why he was where you found him. I
was passed out on the floor upstairs. Want to know how I know that?”
I ripped my hand from Nick’s grasp and shoved my right sleeve
up to my elbow. Farrow flinched over my burn, but kept his face
straight. “Because apparently, having your skin melt off your
body is enough to wake your ass up no matter what drugs are in your
system. So I’m sorry if my answers don’t satisfy your
curiosity. But just so we’re clear, I’ll repeat myself. I
was drugged all the time and I hardly remember anything that
ever
happened in that house.”
He watched me very
carefully through my entire answer, but I was filled with so much
confidence and anger now, I could actually feel the smoothness in my
voice as it carried upwards in my throat. And my eyes didn’t
falter.
“Then tell me.
Did you ever see or hear another girl in the house?”
“No. I only ever
saw another man.”
“And who was
this man?”
“Hell if I
know,” I blurted. Yeah, I was getting pretty damn annoyed.
“It’s not like I was introduced. Everything was a blur.
Even their faces.”
Detective Farrow
gathered his things again and stood before us. “You seem to be
getting agitated. I’ll–”
“Hell yes, I’m
getting agitated,” I cried loudly. I was one second away from
standing to cut off his escape route, but Nick not only reacquired my
hand in a death grip but was pushing the weight of his arm down on my
upper thigh to keep me grounded. “How do you think you’d
be reacting if your ass got kidnapped, got raped every damn night for
months on end, and then, just when you were beginning to put that
fucking nightmare behind you, some weasly ass dickhead sat in front
of you asking questions in a tone that suggested that
you
were
the criminal here? Huh?”
For a moment, I
actually had him stunned into silence. He cleared his throat, then
finished, “I’ll give you a few minutes.”
The door closed behind
him and I ripped my hand out from beneath Nick’s. I leaned over
the table and stroked my brow bones outward profusely, trying to
smooth out the pain behind my eyes. His hand lightly trailed up my
back, where his fingers began to massage away some of the tension.
“I’m ready
to go home now. I have no interest in helping this dickwad any
further.”
“Okay,” he
soothed.
We sat in silence for
at least ten minutes, my mind and body slowly releasing the screaming
tension. Everything ached.
I almost groaned when
the door reopened, but when I turned to pierce Detective Farrow with
my death glare, my eyes popped wide. It was a female this time,
dressed in a nice pant suit, with long, flowing brown hair not too
unlike my own.
“Hello,”
she said kindly, taking up Farrow’s seat and setting a laptop
on the table, connecting the cord to an outlet on the floor. “My
name is Courtney O’Neill and I’m also one of the
detectives working your case.”
A puff of air burst
between my lips. Loudly. “Where the hell have you been all
day?” I muttered.
O’Neill’s
lips pressed tightly, giving me a knowing look. “Detective
Farrow is…how should I put this?”
“Has a shitty
bedside manner?” Nick offered rudely.
“He tries to
disassociate himself from the material in his hands and the people in
front of him. He says it keeps his mind clear so he can focus on the
facts, but it doesn’t always go off well with the people he’s
interviewing. And for that, I apologize. But if you could endure me
just a little longer… First off, did you bring the sample you
used for Claire’s DNA testing and a copy of the lab result?”
I nodded my head and
pulled them out of my bag, sliding them over to her side of the
table. As she scanned the paper, I asked, “Are you going to run
it again?”
“Maybe. It’ll
come down to whether or not the lab has the right credentials and the
strength of the probability that you’re one in the same. It’ll
be up to my superiors to decide. If they approve, we’ll contact
the lab for an official report to put in your file. If not, we’ll
ask you for a sample to run ourselves.”
“Can you get the
sample from her today then?” Nick asked. “We don’t
live in Washington anymore.”
“Yes, we can.
We’ll just keep it in the evidence lockers with everything
else.” She fiddled with her laptop while Nick and I gazed at
each other. We were both looking weary.
“Here’s
the thing I need to go over with you before you leave,” she
continued, looking me directly in the eye. At least she was capable
of being personable. “That man’s case in L.A. is still
open because it was a suspicious death. Personally, if he was the one
that kept you captive, I don’t really care if his case remains
unsolved. Honest truth,” she threw in casually. But even so, my
heart was cringing with fear. “But that’s not for me to
discriminate against. And unfortunately, everything in that house was
lost to the fire. If he was involved in trafficking, there’s
nothing to connect him. The bank account we found is clean, and if he
had a second to fund this type of activity, we have no way to track
it. So we’re at a dead end here.
“You say there
was a second man that knew about you?” Very carefully, she
inquired, “Am I to assume he was no different with you than the
owner of the house?”
I nodded my head.
Yeah, that jerk had no problem with what his buddy was doing to me.
“I’d like
for you to go through some photos in the database and see if any of
them resemble that man.”
Oh, God...
She
saw my hesitancy, and quickly moved to test my guilt. “Megan,
it’s impossible for us to put a head count on the number of
girls who are stolen by traffickers in a given year right here in the
U.S. The number is astounding and very few of you ever escape. We
need to put names behind those faces. With your cooperation, we may
be able to help a few more of those girls get back home again.”
I sighed and shook my
head in defeat. I knew it was only right to help in whatever way I
could, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a
very bad idea. Reluctantly, I agreed, and O’Neill explained how
to maneuver my way through the database and how to mark a picture as
a possible suspect or push it into a category for me to review again
later.
“Just keep in
mind that people can change their hairstyles, hair color and eye
color relatively easily. So try to really focus in on the shape of
the eyes, nose and mouth.”
It took hours upon
hours, and several breaks along the way to keep my mind from
collapsing in on me. And poor Nick. He just had to watch the whole
time, or else he fiddled with his phone. Together, the two of us
couldn’t stop fidgeting in those uncomfortable hard plastic
chairs. When I was finally done, Detective O’Neill came to
collect her laptop and thank me for my help. In the end, I had only
marked five possible suspects. It was mostly the curvature of the
eyes that drew me to them, since that was really all I ever noticed
in my drug-enhanced state.
“I honestly
can’t say that any one of them is the guy, so please don’t
put too much confidence in my choices.”
“Don’t
worry. We’ve got a checklist of things we do before we consider
bringing someone in for questioning. And even if we do, it doesn’t
mean we’ll release any information about you being the one that
fingered them. Not unless there’s evidence and we can charge
them with something.”
Thank God for small
favors. Nick stood, stretching his muscles out, readying himself to
leave, but I remained seated. “Before I leave, please, tell
me,” I told the detective firmly. “Is there anything left
in that file of mine that I should know about?”
She gently stroked her
chin for a moment, seemingly debating something. If there was
anything of the kind, surely she would be the one to share. “Well,
there is one thing we never told your family.” She paused to
look up at Nick, who had frozen in place, locked hard awaiting her
answer. I wondered if the two had ever met before. “We felt it
in poor taste to tell because it wouldn’t have changed
anything, only made the reality of the situation that much worse for
the family.”
“What? Just tell
me. After everything I’ve been through, I want to know.”
And seriously, what could she possibly say that could make the past
two and a half years even worse?