Protectors

by Kris Nelscott

“Believe me, Detective,” she said as demurely as she could. “I won’t.”

  42

  Pammy

  The words seemed to echo in Kelly MacGivers’ private dorm room. My parents hired him. So far, they’re happy…

  Pammy shook her head. The words didn’t quite go together for her. But they explained Kelly’s extreme anger when Pammy said she was teaching a self-defense class. Of course, Kelly’s parents wouldn’t want her to take self-defense if they hired someone to hurt their daughter on a routine basis.

  The light from the gray sky filtered into the room. The smell of eucalyptus was fading, replaced by the stench of unwashed sheets. No wonder Kelly wasn’t taking care of herself. She had been attacked and she wasn’t getting any help, at home or here.

  Pammy wanted to reach out to her, but knew better.

  “Shocked you, didn’t I?” Kelly said. “Now, you can leave.”

  Pammy shook her head, then licked her lips, trying to find words. She started to speak twice before something actually came out.

  “Please help me understand what’s going on,” Pammy said.

  “Why?” Kelly asked.

  “Because,” Pammy said quietly, “no one should beat another person the way you got beaten.”

  Kelly’s eyes filled with tears. Rather than wipe them away or acknowledge them in any way, she didn’t blink. One slipped out of her left eye, ran down her cheek, and hung on her chin for a moment before dripping on her bare leg.

  She didn’t seem to notice.

  “And one’s parents,” Pammy said, “should never authorize it.”

  Kelly’s lower lip trembled. She finally blinked, and tears cascaded down her face. She let out a little sob, then wiped at her face.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” Pammy said. “It sounds like you’re in some kind of weird hell.”

  Kelly nodded, dislodging more tears. Another sob shook her. She leaned over, grabbed a blouse that had been half under her bed, and wiped her face with a sleeve.

  Pammy wanted to hug Kelly, but knew better than to just presume. The women Pammy had been working with often didn’t want to be touched. Touch frightened them almost as much as the original attack had.

  “Please,” Pammy said, “tell me about it.”

  Kelly shook her head, then wiped her face again, this time using the entire blouse. Pammy wanted to find some tissues, but she knew better than to take her gaze off Kelly.

  “I…can’t,” Kelly said.

  “Can’t because someone has said you can’t?” Pammy asked.

  Kelly’s face screwed up at the question, her gaze not meeting Pammy’s.

  “Or because it’s hard to talk about?” Pammy asked, keeping her tone gentle.

  Kelly bit her lower lip. She balled up the wet blouse and held it against her stomach, then looked out the window.

  “I haven’t told anyone,” she whispered.

  “Tell me,” Pammy said. “I’ll listen. I won’t judge.”

  Kelly reached over to the nightstand and grabbed her alarm clock. “I’m supposed to be in the library. Study group.”

  Pammy knew better than to argue. She’d learned that telling women what to do in this circumstance was often the wrong thing.

  “If you need to leave, then go ahead,” Pammy said. “But I do want to learn about this man. I want to stop him from harming other people.”

  Kelly closed her eyes. More tears fell, but she didn’t wipe off her face with the blouse. Instead, she clung to the alarm clock with one hand and kept pressing the blouse against her stomach with the other.

  Pammy thought of a dozen things to say. Encouraging Kelly to talk, so Pammy could help others. Empathizing with Kelly over the attack. Asking for an explanation.

  In the past, though, when Pammy had done those things with other women, they had gotten angry. The pressure from Pammy had proven too much, and they had moved on as if they couldn’t deal with anything, not even friendly inquiries.

  “It’s my fault,” Kelly whispered.

  Pammy almost didn’t hear her. In fact, Pammy wouldn’t have heard her if she hadn’t seen her lips move.

  “What is?” Pammy asked.

  Kelly swallowed hard. “All of it.”

  Linda used to say that. Her husband would beat her within an inch of her life, and she would take all of the blame. She’d burned dinner. She had mixed his martini without enough vodka. She had failed to wash his favorite shirt.

  Pammy knew better than to argue with the “fault” statement too.

  “How is it your fault?” she asked.

  “I…” Kelly squeezed her eyes, releasing more tears, then she opened them. Her eyelashes were wet and spikey, the green in her eyes brighter than it had been a moment before, as if the tears had washed the brown from her irises.

  She swallowed hard again.

  “I…thought…I was grown up,” she said. “I forgot…they still own me.”

  Pammy frowned ever so slightly, before catching herself. “Own” was not a concept she associated with parents and children. Her parents would never have used that word. Not once.

  It took a moment to figure out how to phrase a neutral question.

  “How did you forget?” Pammy asked.

  Kelly pressed her lips together. Her cheeks were flushing again. There was a rage behind her tears, a rage she didn’t seem to want to acknowledge.

  “I moved out of the dorms. I got a job and an apartment. We couldn’t afford a phone, and….” She shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe her own stupidity. “…I didn’t tell them. I figured I was old enough to be on my own. They didn’t need to know. I’d call them now and then. They weren’t paying for school anymore. I had scholarships, and my allowance all saved up, and I had more than enough money.”

  Pammy nodded, even though she had no idea where this was going.

  “I didn’t know they were getting mad,” Kelly said.

  Pammy started to shake her head in wonderment, then stopped. She had promised she wouldn’t be judgmental. But for heaven’s sake, weren’t parents supposed to be happy when their children became self-sufficient?

  “Then I made the mistake of telling Daddy that I had gone to a rally. He got really mad and asked what else I was doing. I lied, then, and said nothing, really, and it would’ve worked if my picture wasn’t in the San Francisco Chronicle last October, at the GIs for Peace Rally. I didn’t do anything there, I swear. I was just there for support. I mean, can’t people see that the war is wrong if the guys who fought it are protesting it?”

  Her voice rose to a wail, almost as if she were recreating the argument she’d had with her father in front of Pammy.

  Pammy wasn’t going to argue the war. It was a minefield, even among people who agreed with each other.

  “Your father saw the photograph?” Pammy asked.

  “And he said something the next time I called. He said he would come and get me because I clearly wasn’t getting an education, and I said what I did was none of his business, and I hung up on him.” Kelly ran a hand over her face, then wiped the hand on the wet blouse.

  She sniffled, set the alarm clock back on the nightstand, opened a drawer, and found a pack of tissues. Then she blew her nose. Talking was calming the tears.

  “I called at the beginning of November, and my dad started yelling again, so I hung up again. I didn’t go home for Thanksgiving. I sent a note, saying I was going to take a break from the fighting. No holidays, period. I was going to do them with my friends.”

  She blew her nose again, then took a shaky breath.

  Pammy was feeling shaky too. “Did you?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Kelly said. “It was fun. We cooked really bad turkey on Thanksgiving and we marched against the war on Christmas, but no one noticed. We didn’t care. And New Year’s was a blast. It was…I…I don’t know. I felt like me—”

  She let out a weird sigh, half deprecating and half sad. Pammy wanted to take her han
d.

  “I don’t anymore,” Kelly said, voice breaking. “I’m just going through the motions, you know?”

  “I do,” Pammy said quietly.

  She let the conversation lag for a moment. She wanted Kelly to tell this at her own pace, in her own time.

  Kelly squeezed her eyes closed for just a moment, then shuddered. She shook her head, a loose tear flying through the air and landing on the unmade sheets.

  She shoved the blouse even deeper into her stomach, then opened her eyes.

  “The guy in the truck,” she said, her voice stronger than it had been before. “I don’t know his name. He never told me.”

  Pammy tried not to let the disappointment show on her face.

  “In February, he starts showing up at the weirdest places. The classes I went to, my favorite study spot, he even showed up at Si’s Charbroiler at lunch because I liked the hamburgers there.” She made a face. “I can’t even go near it now.”

  Pammy nodded, mostly to keep her talking. But Kelly didn’t say anything, just continued to push on the blouse. It was as if she had gotten lost in the memories.

  “Anyway,” Kelly finally said, “he kept saying my parents wanted to see me. I thought it was a line, you know? Like he was trying to pick me up. My roommate Dave, he started going everywhere with me because he thought the guy in the truck was going to do something. My roommate Marsha, she thought we should call the cops, but what could we say, really? Besides, half the house voted against calling them. The pigs, what could they do?”

  Pammy stiffened just a bit, remembering Eagle’s experience. “House?”

  “Yeah, I was living off Ashby in this big house with a lot of other kids. It was divided up into, like, three apartments, with a big room in the middle, but we just went back and forth between them.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if everyone’s still there. I promised I wouldn’t talk to any of them again.”

  Her eyes filled with tears again. She sniffled. Pammy wanted to take her hand, but instead, clung to the folder.

  “Anyway,” Kelly said, using what was clearly a rhetorical tick for her, “the guy in the truck. Half the house went away for spring break, and I didn’t because I didn’t want to go home, so there were times I went places by myself.”

  She raised a hand. It was shaking.

  “And see? It’s my fault. If I had listened to Dave or Marsha, if I had just asked someone, he wouldn’t have, they wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Here ended in a sob. She took a gasping breath, then wiped her face with the blouse again.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” Pammy said. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

  Kelly looked up, startled, and for a half second, Pammy wondered if she had spoken out of turn.

  Then Kelly nodded, as if she were agreeing with Pammy.

  “Yeah, me too,” Kelly said. “I’m sorry it happened too.”

  For a moment, Pammy couldn’t tell if Kelly was done talking. Pammy tried to figure out what to say next, to get her going again, but couldn’t think of anything. A question might seem too intrusive, but the statements seemed to be just as intrusive.

  Kelly took a deep breath.

  “On March fifth—it was a Wednesday night—I had just gotten a job at Si’s. I guess it paid being a regular, you know? Anyway, I was leaving. I hadn’t asked anyone to walk me to the house. I didn’t have far to go, I figured I’d be okay and then he…and then he…”

  She shook her head again, as if trying to get the memories out of it.

  “It’s okay,” Pammy said. “I don’t need all of the details.”

  “No,” Kelly said in that angry tone, the one that had been missing for the past twenty minutes. “You asked. He grabbed me. He put his hand over my mouth. He stank of sweat and onions and beer and he told me that I couldn’t scream, because if I screamed, he would snap my neck.”

  Pammy had never heard of anyone doing that before.

  “I can’t smell beer or onions without getting ill,” Kelly said. Her lips pursed in disgust. “He lifted me up, kept his hand over my mouth and lifted me up with one arm, and he carried me to his truck, and he told me if I didn’t—if I didn’t cooperate, he would hurt me. Then he shoved me up against the cab, and grabbed my hands, and yanked them behind my back, but I screamed anyway—I figured I’d rather die than not try to get away—and I screamed, and he picked me up by my wrists and Jesus, you have no idea how much that hurt—”

  Actually, Pammy did. She’d learned that trick at Mountain Phillip’s gym, as a self-defense maneuver. It pulled on the shoulders and made the arms feel like they were going to come out of their sockets.

  “—so I started kicking him. He didn’t say anything, except once. I made him grunt. I think I hit his balls, but I don’t know.” Kelly sounded almost proud of herself for that. “I kept screaming and no one came and then he let go of my wrists and I was thinking I could get away, but he grabbed my hair and pushed my head into the truck. Like, a dozen times, I don’t know.”

  She touched the left side of her face.

  “He broke my nose. And that bone, just above your eye?” Her fingers flitted over the edge of her left eyebrow. “He fractured that. If it had broke all the way, I might’ve gone blind.”

  Pammy let out a breath that she hadn’t even realized she’d been holding.

  “I think I passed out, because the next thing I remember, I was in the back of his truck, and my arms were tied behind my back and so were my ankles, and then they were tied together. I was wrapped in a blanket, and I couldn’t breathe real well. He put some kind of rag in my mouth, and taped it there or something, I don’t know.”

  She wiped her mouth as if the gag were still there. Her gaze met Pammy’s. Kelly’s eyes were defiant, as if to say, You asked. You wanted to know.

  “I bounced around back there for what seemed like hours, and stuff fell on me, and it hurt, and sometimes, I couldn’t breathe at all. If my legs pulled or my arms pulled and my head jerked back, I think there was a rope around my neck too, but I don’t know. Because I passed out again at one point.”

  She took a deep breath, and looked down.

  “We stopped at this motel, and he made me take a shower. He watched.”

  Pammy stiffened.

  “And before you ask, that was all. He just watched. And he handed me my own clothes, from my parents’ house, stuff I left behind, and told me to get dressed. He watched when I did that too. And then he tied me up in the bathroom, and locked the door, but I heard him in the other room. He made a phone call, and he said, ‘I have her. I’ll bring her at nine. You better be home.’ And that was all he said the rest of the night.”

  “The night?” Pammy asked, before she could stop herself.

  Kelly nodded. “I slept, kinda, in that bathroom. He left enough give in the rope that I could use the toilet, and I was wearing a dress with no underwear so, you know…” She waved a hand over her thighs. “…air dry. And the next morning, he tied me at the ankles and wrists, but he didn’t tie them together, and then he put that gag back on, and he wrapped me in that blanket, and we bounced around and around, and…”

  She let out a small sound. Pammy wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

  “…we stopped and he picked me up and carried me over his shoulder and I couldn’t fight anymore. I should’ve kicked him, but I didn’t. He just carried me, and then he knocked on a door, and my dad answered, and the truck guy, he asked for the rest of the money, and my mom told him, ‘Here, here it is, just give me my baby,’ and he threw me at her, really hard. I hit my head again, and the next thing I know, I’m at San Francisco General, and the nurse is telling me how lucky I was I didn’t die because I had all kinds of bruises and injuries and they had to operate on some stuff, but they were afraid to because I’d hit my head and…”

  She rubbed her mouth again.

  Pammy felt cold. Very, very cold. She’d heard a lot of bad things, but never anything l
ike this.

  “And then my parents came in and I asked what happened, and they said they’d tell me later, and my mom, she apologized kinda, like you know, saying she had no idea he would hurt me, and my dad told her to shut up, and that was it.”

  “They didn’t say anything else?” Pammy asked.

  Kelly looked at her. The tears were gone now. She was sitting very straight, her arms no longer cradling the wet blouse.

  “They did. Or my dad did. He came to my room a few weeks later. I wouldn’t leave it, and he told me, he said that I brought this on myself by becoming a degenerate. He’d sent me to college for an education, and I had pissed all over it, and he was going to give up on me, but my mother convinced him to give me a second chance.”

  Pammy’s heart was pounding. She wanted to hurt those parents the same way they had hurt Kelly.

  “So, here was the deal, he said. He said I had to come back to school, and I had to get straight As and he would pay for everything, if I stayed in the dorms and dumped my old friends, and took the classes he said I should take, and I am. I’m doing that, but not because I want the education.”

  Her hands had become fists again. She was grinding them into the mattress.

  “It was the only way to get out of the house,” she said. “And once I turn twenty-one, I can leave for good. If I can, you know, manage to stay outside long enough. It’s hard to go to class. You have no idea. I practically run, and I sit with my back to the wall in each class, and I watch the door more than I watch the professor, and I always make sure I leave in the middle of a crowd.”

  She leaned forward, just a little.

  “If I don’t get good grades, he’ll come back,” she said. “And if he comes back—God, I’ll die. I’ll just die.”

  Or wish she had, Pammy thought. This poor girl had been terrorized, and she was barely holding it together.

  “Then help me catch him,” Pammy said.

  “Why?” Kelly asked. “Daddy’ll just hire someone else.”

  Pammy shook her head. “I can’t imagine that a lot of people are doing this job.”

  “Did you know that anyone did this?” Kelly asked.