Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  Zhenya just shook her head. She didn’t yet have the words for what she thought.

  ____

  THEY CAME TO America when she was fourteen, Zhenya and her father and Mikhail. Leaving Arkhangelsk, leaving Russia, behind without a backward glance. Taking the train to Moscow, endless hours jammed between the two big, sweaty men in a crowded train car that smelled of old food and cigarettes, before boarding the enormous airplane for New York.

  She could have escaped at any time, she knew that. Cried out, screamed, called attention to herself. In Pskov station, both her father and Mikhail fell asleep on the bench, and for ten minutes, perhaps more, Zhenya could have just walked away.

  But she had nowhere to go. The streets of Russia were full of fourteen-year-olds who had run away. They did not have happy lives, or long ones. Zhenya was more afraid to leave than she was to stay.

  Also, she was too busy revising her plan. She hadn’t expected them to leave home so soon.

  Thousands of men they had never met paid for the Aeroflot flight, at $24.95 U.S. a month, thirty euros, who knew how many yen or pounds. Men who waited each week to see Zhenya in teddies and short shorts and bikinis with the tops off, her hands covering her breasts.

  Never quite showing them as much as they wanted, but always enough to leave them dreaming of more.

  Unless they paid extra for custom sets. Then their dreams did come true.

  ____

  “WHY DO THEY do this?” Bonnie Wright asked as they took their seats in the cool, dim courtroom.

  “Look at those pictures, I mean,” she went on, bringing her shoulders up. “Those men. How can they—think about children that way?”

  Zhenya let her eyes blur. She knew. Of course she did. She knew exactly what it was that appealed to some men, a lot of men, when they looked at pictures of her. And not just her— because she had learned there were countless other girls out there, going through what she had.

  “It’s disgusting,” Bonnie said.

  No, Zhenya thought. Much worse than that.

  ____

  THEY MOVED TO Rego Park, Queens, a part of New York City that was already full of Russians. The stores had signs in Cyrillic, and the rhythm of the language she overheard on the street made it seem to Zhenya that they’d never left home. She knew her father had chosen this place because they would be completely invisible here. No one ever knocked on the door.

  Two days after they arrived, he bought a new computer, a big new television set, and a new camera, much fancier than the one he’d had in Russia. Twice a week now, since she no longer went to school, he would photograph her dancing, holding stuffed animals, lying on her bed in a bathing suit, in lingerie. Wearing clothes sent by the men who were staring at her in their own homes, mere hours after her father took the pictures.

  And the custom sets too got more frequent, more daring. Sometimes now she had to stand there, in front of her father, naked. But it was all the same to him. From behind the camera, he looked at her with eyes as black and expressionless as a crow’s.

  At first the money poured in. Zhenya, allowed outside only rarely and under close supervision, spent the hours reading Novoe Russkoe slovoand sometimes copies of the American newspapers left behind by Mikhail.

  And she watched the television, soon finding the channel that showed only court cases. After that, she watched it whenever she could, closely, even obsessively.

  In this way she learned about America and, saying words and sentences aloud in the empty apartment, practiced speaking English the way the Americans did.

  She searched every inch of the four rooms when the men were out, discovering all the places her father had chosen to hide things he didn’t want anyone to find. And for the first time, her heart pounding, sweat beading on her forehead, she went to his fancy new computer and saw herself the way others saw her.

  In the weeks that followed, she went back many times and taught herself much more. How her father uploaded the photos of her. How he ran the site. How he could go anywhere he wanted online and no one could ever see him.

  And again, based on what she had learned in this new country, she dreamed of what she might do. Still, shaking with fear at the mere thought, she doubted that she would ever be brave enough to go ahead with it.

  Until one day when Mikhail decided she was being too fresh with him and punched her in the stomach. As she lay there on the floor, he stood over her and looked down and told her something she hadn’t known.

  “You’re getting too old,” he said. “Soon you will be worthless to us.”

  Zhenya was seventeen.

  “But before that happens, we will make you someone else’s problem,” he said.

  She could guess what that meant. So the next time they went out, her father and Mikhail, to drink vodka with all the other expatriate Russians, Zhenya finally, after seven years, began to act.

  ____

  WARLOCK SAT IN a chair to the right of the judge’s desk. He was tall, with curly blond hair and a well-trimmed beard. Blue eyes and a face that looked like it had done a lot of smiling. Long arms that rested on his knees in front of him, slender wrists and delicate hands emerging from the sleeves of a dark suit.

  He showed none of the desperation that gripped Yngblood in Indiana or the girls’ coach in Philadelphia, or any of the barely restrained rage of the brothers in Texas. Warlock looked like someone who had been brought here by mistake, who knew everything was just a misunderstanding, who expected to walk away and go back to his real life.

  Explaining in a strong, convincing voice how mistakes had been made, how he had no idea, how in a million years he would never. As Bonnie Wright had said, he looked and sounded like a nice man. An innocent man.

  Zhenya knew the truth. But would the rest, the twelve silent ones in the jury box, see it too?

  ____

  THEY TALKED ABOUT her.

  All the time.

  Her father had christened her the Divine Dvina, and the members of her forum called themselves her Dvotees. They acted like friends who shared a secret, who understood each other more deeply than anyone else in their lives understood them. For them, the forum was a refuge, a hiding place, home.

  Dvina’s Dvotees. Dozens of them talking there some days, but five more than all the rest. The five who felt most strongly: Yngblood, BMOC, Interceptor, ScrewU, and, most of all, Warlock.

  They talked about her eyes. Her smile. Her legs. Her breasts.

  Her breasts, which, she discovered, had grown less appealing to them.

  “Oh, the time is coming,” BMOC lamented. “She’s almost graduated to grannyhood already.”

  Grannyhood.

  “Yeah, isn’t it sad when they grow up?” asked Interceptor. “At least we’ll always have the old sets, from when she was still cute.”

  “I hate fuckin’ puberty,” ScrewU said.

  Zhenya looked down at her body. At the flaring bruises from Mikhail’s most recent blow, the close-bitten fingernails, the fine hairs on her arms—which some Dvotees didn’t like—the swell of her belly, her solid legs, her wide, high-arched feet.

  When was the last time she’d studied herself so closely? She couldn’t remember. Maybe never. Because it wasn’t her body, it was theirs. And now they didn’t seem to want it anymore.

  “I’m letting my subscription lapse when it runs out,” someone said.

  “Me too,” said someone else. “If I wanted to look at a teenager in a halter top, I’d just go down to the mall.”

  “Or the beach,” BMOC said.

  “Oh, shut the fuck up with all your whining.”

  That was Warlock.

  “In a bad mood?” someone asked.

  “He’s always in a bad mood.”

  A pause. Then Warlock again: “I know some things you don’t know.”

  “???” asked BMOC.

  A longer pause. Then Warlock said, “Let’s take this to chat.”

  Their screen names all disappeared from the forum screen. With a fe
w quick strokes, Zhenya followed them into the private chatroom. Her father had set it up just as she would have: no one could see her there, but she could see them.

  “So what’s your secret?” BMOC asked.

  “I’m going to meet her,” Warlock said.

  “WHAT?!”

  “Spend as long with her as I want.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “Believe me or don’t believe me, I don’t give a fuck.”

  A long silence. Finally BMOC said, “How?”

  “$$$$$.”

  And the Warlock went on to explain what he was going to do with Dvina once he had her. Do to her. The description took up half the computer screen, but Zhenya made it only through the first six lines before she lost control and found herself crouched over the bathroom toilet, emptying her insides into the still, stained water.

  ____

  FIRST THE PROSECUTOR stood and began to talk. She was beautiful, dark-skinned and black-haired, with high cheekbones and a mouth that turned down at the corners. Her voice was low, but somehow it still carried across the room.

  “I have a question for you,” she said to the jury. “Do you want this man out in the street, free, in the same room, on the same street, in the same world, as your daughters?”

  Then it was Warlock’s lawyer’s turn. As short and lumpy as his client was tall and handsome, he jabbed the air with his right index finger as he talked. He told the audience and the jury about all the good works his client had done. And he talked about doubt. He said there was just too much doubt for the jury to convict. Proof was needed—and where was the proof?

  “Don’t let your emotions put an innocent man in jail,” he said.

  While Warlock stared down at the table in front of him, the picture of wounded innocence.

  “Make the right choice,” his lawyer said.

  The audience seemed to be holding its breath. Watching from the back, Zhenya felt herself grow cold. They were going to believe him, those twelve people in the jury box. She could tell. They were going to believe all those pretty words, and Warlock was going to go free.

  All around, Zhenya heard people exhaling. Beside her, Bonnie Wright turned her palms upward.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said.

  ____

  “AND AFTER THAT,” Warlock wrote, “I’ll share her with you.”

  “Get real,” Yngblood said.

  “No, I’m serious—unless, of course, you think she’s too old.”

  “I’d still do her,” said Interceptor.

  “When is all this happening?” asked BMOC.

  “Very soon.”

  Zhenya sat looking at the words on the screen. Very soon.

  “What if she doesn’t want to?” BMOC asked.

  “Oh, she will,” said Yngblood. “She’ll do whatever her father says.”

  Zhenya wondered if she’d waited too long.

  Bending over the computer, she hit the Reply button, typed in, “Hi, guys!” and pressed Send.

  A moment later she saw her message pop up, under the screen name The Real Dvina.

  Turmoil in the chatroom.

  “Do you want me to tell you what I’m wearing right now?”

  Torn jeans and a stained sweatshirt, her usual clothes when she wasn’t being photographed. Her mouth had a sour taste, and she knew she still smelled of vomit.

  “Fuck you,” said ScrewU. “You’re just some guy who hacked his way into here to dick with us. I’d like to put my fist through your face.”

  “Oh, it’s me,” The Real Dvina typed. “And I can prove it.”

  “How?”

  “I have a new custom set, my best ever.”

  “Fuck you,” said ScrewU again.

  “Only people who ask nicely,” The Real Dvina wrote, “will get it.”

  She logged off and went into her room to change. Then she went into her father’s bedroom and retrieved his fancy new camera. She’d long since figured out how to work the timer, and now she took twenty-seven photographs of herself, doing things she had never done before.

  Including some things she imagined Warlock would like.

  When she went back to the computer, all five of the men had asked nicely.

  In their fashion.

  ____

  GUILTY, SAID THE jury in Shoals, Indiana.

  And the one in Philadelphia.

  And the one in Fort Worth.

  The verdicts were no surprise, according to the audiences in each courtroom. “Cut-and-dried cases” was an odd phrase Zhenya heard more than once. “We don’t have much tolerance in this country for child porn,” one woman said.

  But Zhenya already knew that. She’d learned it from the television.

  In each case, the evidence was found right there on the men’s computers. Sometimes the police, the FBI, had found pictures of more than just Zhenya. Worse pictures, with other girls in them.

  Hearing his verdict, Yngblood sat as still as if he’d turned to stone. The coach, BMOC, collapsed, weeping, and had to be carried from the courtroom. Interceptor and ScrewU cursed the judge and jury, shouted and spat and ended up writhing on the floor, beefy policemen with red faces sitting on them, clicking on the handcuffs.

  Zhenya was there for each of the decisions, just as she’d borne witness to nearly all the testimony. She took little pleasure, though, because always in the back of her mind was the one case that had not yet been decided. The most important one.

  Warlock’s trial was different from the rest. He had the best lawyers, the most money, and (it seemed to Zhenya) the most burning desire to stay free. His trial was delayed once, again, still another time. And then, when it finally started, his lawyers fought hard, brought in witnesses of their own, battled the prosecutors fiercely at every turn. By contrast, Warlock himself was always quiet, respectful, convincing.

  When all the testimony was finished, when the lawyers had made their final speeches, the jury left the room and stayed out for a whole day, and another.

  As the time passed, Zhenya became more and more certain that Warlock would go free. And then he would come after her, to punish her for destroying his life.

  If that happened, if he managed to find her, Zhenya knew what she would have to do.

  ____

  HER FATHER SLAPPED her across the face. Her feet left the ground, and for a moment she felt as if she were flying. But then gravity caught her again, and she fell to the floor. The wood was cool against her bruised cheek, and the taste of her blood was in her mouth.

  They’d come home too soon, he and Mikhail.

  “What have you done?” he asked her in Russian.

  She didn’t reply.

  “You are not allowed to talk to those men.”

  She was silent.

  “Get up,” he said. But when she did, he knocked her down again, a blow to the stomach that made her think she would never breathe again.

  “You think you can take our business? Make money for yourself, not us?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Get up.”

  She got onto her hands and knees, and this time it was Mikhail who stepped forward and kicked her, his heavy boot thudding against her ribs. Again she almost flew, but this time when she landed, she rolled and twisted and got back to her feet faster than they expected. Making low, gasping sounds in her throat, she ran, but not for the front door. For her bedroom.

  The two men followed. There was no lock on her door.

  They found her lying on her bed, curled into a ball, hugging her pillow. “No,” Mikhail said, laughing. “No time for sleep.”

  He reached down, grabbed her shoulder, and rolled her over. That was when she came up with the knife, the one she’d taken from the kitchen drawer weeks ago. Her arm swung around in a fast arc, and with open eyes she watched the four-inch blade enter Mikhail’s throat just below his stubbly jaw.

  There followed a moment of complete silence. Mikhail’s eyes went wide as he stared at her. Then, choking and gasping
, drowning, he fell backward onto the floor, leaving the knife clenched in her hand. His blood sprayed upward, a red fountain that drenched her and the bed alike.

  Zhenya had been dreaming of this for years. She’d waited so long only because she needed to grow strong enough to carry it out. Never realizing that when the time came, her anger would give her all the strength she needed.

  She came off the bed, and this time she flew, really flew. Landing on her father’s back as he tried to run, hearing him cry out in terror, ripping upward with her right hand, feeling the blade slice through his flesh until it reached something harder, and then cutting through that too.

  They went down together. Zhenya rolled clear and watched as he twisted and writhed and fought the air, watched until his crow eyes turned dull and he lay still.

  Then she went and took a long, hot shower. When she was done, she inspected herself in the bathroom mirror. It wasn’t as bad as she feared. Nothing seemed broken, and most of the blood hadn’t been hers.

  As she always had, she covered up her bruises with the makeup her father had bought for that purpose. Then she went to the secret drawer where, not believing in banks, he’d kept his money. Her money, really. A lot of it, enough to travel wherever she wanted to go in this big, empty country, if she so chose. And no one would ever find her. No one even knew she was here.

  But she wasn’t ready, not quite yet. Her father and Mikhail had come home before she had finished her preparations.

  First she went back to the computer and sent her last custom set on its way.

  Then she picked up the telephone and made a call to Washington, D.C. Whatever happened next—and she had hopes—she’d learn about it from the news media, which in this country never stopped talking.

  Finally, as she had dreamed of for so long, she packed her clothes and left the apartment for the last time.

  ____

  “WE FIND THE defendant guilty,” the foreman of the jury said several times.

  Warlock sat down hard on his chair at the defense table, looking as if he’d been hit in the head with a hammer. Beside him, his lawyer frowned and shrugged and started gathering his papers. The judge thanked the jury.

  “Wow,” said Bonnie Wright. “I just wasn’t sure.”