Family Secrets

by Ronnie Ashmore

  “No. It’s fine, I guess. It’s time this all came out anyway.” Christine said, she took a deep breath and rubbed her wrist again.

  “Let’s start with what your sister Elizabeth told us, shall we?” Tolliver asked.

  “I don’t know what she told you, but I’ll tell you my story.”

  George Parks started touching her around the time she turned ten or so. Prior to that he would mess with Elizabeth and make Toby participate. Then George would have sex with the two girls and Toby would watch or he would force Toby to have sex with one girl while he was with the other one and oftentimes, they would switch partners. George had no shame in what he made the girls do, and they did everything sometimes multiple times a day. Whatever he wanted, whenever he said.

  Christine was stone faced as she went on to relate the abuse that she suffered from George Parks. She didn’t cry as she told her story, Mike figured her tears had been cried out a long time ago. She continued to tell the same version of what they had heard from Elizabeth but from her point of view. With Christine being the youngest her version was way worse, if that is even possible, Mike thought.

  Toby left first and only came back to visit once. Then Elizabeth left. She kept telling Christine to go with her, but Christine was convinced that George would hurt their mom if he didn’t have at least somebody to dominate. Christine had not seen her mom in nearly ten years. Christine blamed her for allowing the abuse. Maybe her mom didn’t know, but she should have. She was sick a lot back then and George would tell them that he needed the girls, Elizabeth and Christine, to help him relax and forget the problems of the world.

  With everyone else gone from the house the abuse got worse. It was only Christine there to be forced into his sex games and role play. George started videoing the acts so he could watch them again and again. Sometimes he would force Christine to watch either their home-made pornography or a video from his stash and they would act out what was on the screen. She wondered if it would ever stop.

  Then she became pregnant. When George found out it was his he was angry. He blamed her for getting pregnant on purpose. Christine had just turned seventeen a few weeks before and George wanted her to get an abortion, she refused. She had a difficult pregnancy and worse delivery. There were complications and Lydia lost blood supply to her brain for a bit. That’s why she’s slow the doctors said. Christine was fearful the reason was because she was an inbred baby. She moved out not long after and the abuse stopped. She never went back unless she had to.

  When she finished talking, she was crying a little. Now a few tears rolled from her eyes as she tried to catch them with a tissue she had picked up. She looked around the room. It had taken the better part of an hour to detail all the abuse.

  “I am so sorry Christine. I had no way of knowing.” Williams said, rubbing his hands through his hair.

  “Not your fault, Jimmy. That’s why they call it a secret. Nobody knows.” She dabbed her eyes again.

  “Would you be willing to tell your story in court, if need be?” Tolliver asked.

  “Sure, I guess. Can’t hide it any longer, huh? There’s more though.”

  Mike could only sit there silent. Christine’s story and Elizabeth’s story were a horrible to listen to and he wondered how the hell they survived it. He was feeling a little guilty for judging her so harsh when he first met her. Now he wondered what more there could be.

  “More?” Mike asked, feeling he needed to contribute to the interview in some way.

  “Max? Lydia’s brother. He ain’t her brother. He’s her son.” Christine dropped the bombshell and waited for a reaction. Tolliver was first to speak.

  “How old is that boy?”

  “Will be six this year. Lydia is eighteen. Max was born when she was twelve.” The tears flowed easier now for Christine as she told Lydia’s secret.

  “My dad and mom took care of Lydia while I was ruining my own life with drugs and booze and being in and out of jail all the time. CPS placed her with them when she was barely six. They raised her. I couldn’t.”

  “You left that little girl there with him knowing the hell you went through in that house! How could you?” Tolliver asked, anger showing in his voice for the first time.

  “I don’t know. I figured he wouldn’t do anything to her, I guess, since he was older. Or, maybe, I’m just as big a piece of crap as he is.” Christine took a deep breath and held it for a moment then continued, “I have nearly killed myself from the guilt I feel for not protecting my little girl.” She cried in full force now.

  Morgan turned off the camera with the remote control and the men got up to leave the room to let Christine have a moment alone. Mike was the last to leave and he glanced back over his shoulder at her and watched as she sat there rubbing her wrists. He seen a broken woman who just might not ever be whole again.

  21

  They all walked into Tolliver’s office to create distance from the conference room so they could talk. All of them were dealing with their own thoughts silently, Mike was the first to speak.

  “CPS put that girl in that house with him?” Mike anger was evident in his voice. “I hate CPS!”

  “Oh, come on now!” Tolliver said, “They had no more idea this was going on than we did, and we live in the same town as he does. It ain’t CPS fault. Only one person is to blame for this madness.” Tolliver sat down with a sigh then stood up just as rapidly. “No, there is one more person to blame. There is one more.” He said, walking out the door as the others followed him to the patrol room.

  As they entered the patrol room Mike seen that Lydia was holding her son, nearly choking on the thought of that, and the boy was looking sleepily around. They sat in a rolling chair facing a wall with a built-in desk lined with computers that served as the workstation for the officers. Tolliver stopped in front of the girl.

  “Lydia, we have a question to ask you. Where is your grandma? Officer Mike didn’t see her when he and Officer Roberts picked you up.”

  “She’s gone. I haven’t seen her in a long time. Grampa tells me not to worry about her.”

  “Okay!”

  Tolliver led the group, except Roberts who still was with Lydia, into Morgan’s office and closed the door for privacy. He looked around at all of them “We need to find Pam Parks. Morgan see what you can dig up. Mike, talk to Christine. I’ll be in my office.” He opened the door and walked out of the office.

  Mike went across the hall to the conference room. Christine sat with her head down on the table. She looked up when he entered the room and closed the door behind him.

  “I guess all the family secrets will come to light now, huh?” She asked, sitting up straight in the chair.

  “Yeah, I guess so. There is no more reason for secrets now.” Mike sat down across the table from her.

  “We need to find your mom. Lydia says she doesn’t know where she is, you don’t know where she is. It makes no sense. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. The last time I seen her, she was in a bad way, sick. She was always sick. That was nine years or so ago. Last I heard dad put her in a nursing home out of town, I don’t know which one.”

  Nine years now, before it was ten years. The timeline keeps changing or she can’t remember clearly. Mike could not imagine not seeing his mother for all these years and not being upset about it. Of course, he didn’t grow up in the Parks’ house either.

  “How come she didn’t stop your dad from hurting you kids?”

  “What could she do? She was sick and weak. Dad convinced her that if he couldn’t use us, he would use her that way. She was scared of him, so she did nothing because doing nothing is easier.”

  Mike stood to leave but he felt compelled to say something, anything, to this woman who had been betrayed and hurt in so many ways. Just before he opened the door, he looked back at her.

  “Christine? I’m sorry. The first time I met you out at your house with Jimmy Williams I thought you, well I didn’t think to highly of you. I shoul
dn’t have judged you so quick. I want to apologize to you.”

  “I don’t need your sympathy or your ‘poor, pitiful woman’ looks, either.” She said.

  Mike turned to open the door as she finished her thought, “I could use a friend, though. I don’t seem to have many of those.”

  He looked back at her as he opened the door, “You got one now.”

  Mike went to the chief’s office and knocked on the door frame of the open door. Tolliver looked exhausted and Mike wondered how much sleep he had been getting this past week with everything going on.

  “Chief? We need to talk to Lydia now, right?”

  “Yeah. Get Morgan and the girl. Take her to her mom in the conference room. I think I can only bear to hear any more about George Parks one more time.” He stood up and Mike went to round everybody up as Tolliver followed.

  At Morgan’s office they stopped, and Morgan told them he had made a few phone calls, but he could follow up with bank records on Monday to help locate Pam Parks. Mike went to get Lydia.

  She was still holding Max in her lap, but he didn’t look sleepy anymore. He just looked confused, Mike thought. He asked Lydia to follow him and Roberts, who was beginning to look annoyed at being the babysitter, would watch Max for a moment. Lydia walked in front of Mike to the conference room and Mike could feel her fear of what was behind the closed door as they stopped in front of it. He opened the door and they went in.

  Tolliver and Morgan were already seated in the same chairs they were in before. Mike looked at the camera and saw the red light on that indicated it was recording. Lydia went to sit beside her mom as Mike took his seat.

  “We need Lydia’s story of events, Christine. It has to be her words, so I ask if you will allow her to tell it without interruption?” Morgan said. He looked at Lydia and after introducing himself to her he started talking to her.

  “Lydia, we know you know a secret. A secret you were told you should never tell a stranger. But we really need to know what that secret is.”

  Mike thought Morgan was talking to Lydia as if she were a five-year-old. He didn’t think that was the right approach to get her to open up. He had visited Lydia several times and she always shut down when the family was brought up.

  Lydia looked at her mom and started crying. Christine stroked her hair and reassured her that it was okay to talk about it. Lydia looked at Morgan and tried to speak, finally she looked down at the table and avoided all eye contact as she started her story.

  “Grampa hurt me. Said it was my fault for being a woman.” Lydia started crying hard but tried just as hard to hold it back.

  “When did he do this?” Morgan asked.

  Lydia told her story in her own childlike way without stopping. It had started at the time she turned twelve. Grampa would come to her room and lay with her in her bed. Soon he was touching her and tickling her, then he wanted to play other games.

  “What games?” Morgan asked.

  “Boy, girl games. Soon he would be on top of me and his stick would be poking me. It hurt at first and I cried. He would hit me and tell me that crying was not allowed while we did it. That’s what he called the game, doing it. Soon we were doing it a lot.

  Then my stomach got fat. Grampa made me stay on my knees when we did it cause he didn’t like my fat stomach. Then I had bad pains one night, and Grandma helped me get Max out. I didn’t have a fat stomach after that. So, Grampa said we could do it a lot more.”

  “Your Grandma knew you and your grandpa were…doing it?” Tolliver asked.

  “Yes sir, she said Grampa played that game with all the girls, but not to tell mom cause she would get mad. So, I didn’t tell anyone.”

  Tolliver looked at Christine with disgust, “You knew though!” It was a statement not a question.

  Christine started crying and nodded her head. Lydia hugged her mom and looked at the others in the room. “It ain’t Mom’s fault. I liked it. When we were doing it at least he wasn’t mean to me.”

  “Why did your cousin Toby come to live with you?” Morgan asked. Mike had almost forgotten that Toby Parks was the reason all this mess even started.

  “He was my friend. I found him on the internet. We started talking. I told him that Grampa hurt me sometimes. He wanted to help. He said he would talk to his dad. He was nice.

  He wanted us to run away from Colby and Grampa; him, me, and Max. We had no money, though. Toby said he would get some. Then he died.”

  Mike sat there as it took a moment to let the girl’s words sink in. That was why James Parks was robbing the market. Morgan turned off the video recorder and they stood up and walked out of the room. In the hallway they all went separate ways, chief to his office, Morgan to his. Mike went to the patrol room he had an arrest report to work on with Roberts.

  22

  After Mike submitted his report by entering it into the system, he knew Parks would be ready to be released to the county jail. He wanted to talk to Parks before the jail transport arrived. He wanted to ask the chief before he did that, he walked to the chief’s office.

  Tolliver was typing on his computer and by the level of force he was using to hit the keys on the keyboard, he was not having success looking for whatever he was looking for.

  “Chief? I think we need to talk to George Parks.”

  “You think, huh? Who told you to do that?” He asked, still hitting his keyboard with growing anger.

  “Nobody” Mike said, missing the implication of the barb. “I was hoping to get in that house to look around.”

  “You think he would give you permission to go into his house? You’re the reason he’s in jail, or so he thinks.” Tolliver sat back from his computer and threw his reading glasses on the desk in disgust.

  “There is a better way. That house is still Lydia’s residence. We can get in that way. She can let us in.”

  Mike nodded in understanding. He went to check on Lydia and Christine. They were sitting side by side as close as the chairs allowed, but were not crying anymore, they were just holding each other. Mike was joined by Morgan and Tolliver who told the pair that they could go home. Roberts brought Max to them after Tolliver received Lydia’s permission to look inside the house, he left Christine and Lydia alone with Max while Tolliver collected his things. Satisfied they had everything Tolliver gathered the Parks family and they all headed out.

  At the Parks’ house Tolliver spoke to the others in a group. “This ain’t a search. We are just checking the house to make sure Lydia can stay here by herself. Like a safety check. Got it?”

  Everyone agreed and went to the front porch. Lydia let them inside. Christine waited on the porch with Max, refusing to go back inside the house.

  Inside the house was just as it had been when they picked up Lydia and Max earlier that morning. Mike and Roberts started in a bedroom while the others looked elsewhere in the house.

  Mike mentioned to Roberts how clean the place was and how the beds were meticulously made up. There was nothing out of place. The one dresser had a jewelry box on it and was free of clutter. The other three bedrooms were just as clean and tidy with minimal furnishings. They made their way to the kitchen and looked in the food pantry which was well stocked with canned food and food seasoning packets. Mike thought that for a house where so many horrors took place it was remarkably unremarkable.

  Mike and Roberts joined the others in the laundry room. The laundry room was a larger room than most laundry rooms. The washer and dryer were along one wall and there were shelves with cleaning supplies and detergents above the washer. There was no laundry in either machine. The room was just as unremarkable as the rest of the house. Then Tolliver pointed to the door. It was on a far wall that did not lead outside.

  The door was on the wall opposite the washer and dryer and painted to match the blue wall making it hard to spot just by glancing at it. The wall should have been an interior wall with nothing on the other side, so why a door? Mike thought. It had a pad lock hasp on it and was locked. T
olliver grabbed the lock and looked at it and then called Lydia over from the living room area.

  “What’s this?” Tolliver asked, pointing at the door.

  “Grampa’s.” She said, as if that were the only explanation necessary.

  “What’s down there?” He tried again.

  “Nobody’s allowed down there. I don’t know.”

  “Somebody get me some bolt cutters.” Tolliver said, Jimmy went to get his cutters from his car.

  When he returned Tolliver stepped back and pointed. Jimmy cut the pad lock to the door, the cut piece pinging on the wood floor. Mike thought they had just gone beyond a safety check, but he kept his silence as Tolliver removed the broken lock and pulled the door open.

  It opened onto a staircase leading to a basement. Tolliver felt around the wall inside the doorway for a light switch, he couldn’t find one. Roberts carried a flashlight on her duty belt, and she pulled it out and turned it on and shined it inside the room. The staircase was steep, Tolliver led the way into the basement. There was a damp, musty smell that grew stronger as they descended. Mike counted each step as he walked down, there was fourteen steps to the bottom which was a dirt floor that was packed as hard as concrete.

  Old machinery and rotting wood lay piled in corners and covered in dust. Furniture was stacked along-side each other, most of it covered with blankets. The group looked around as best as the meager light from Roberts’ flashlight allowed. Mike could see no indication of a light switch or a pull string anywhere as he looked around the room. Judging by the dust that was settled on the items that were stacked up and the spiderwebs that clung to everything no one had been in this basement in a long time.

  He walked to some furniture in the far corner. He pulled his cellphone from his pocket and turned on the flashlight feature. It cut the darkness a little better, not much though. He lifted a blanket covering a piece of furniture causing thick dust to rise from the fabric of the blanket. It was a side table that was old.