Being pretty much back on my former schedule, at 5:15 AM I was out by the pool doing calisthenics and wing chun forms. It took me a while to figure out that the little girl was in a lounge chair watching me. And a little while after that to remember that I was naked. And so was she. I hopped sideways into the pool.
When I came back up and shook the water out of my hair, I said, “Good morning.”
No answer.
“I apologize for… umm… can you maybe hand me that towel?”
“I’ve seen everything on a man. Are you going to be the one who fucks me now?”
“GIRLS!!”
—
Mary Beth had fallen asleep in the chair next to the girl’s bed, which is how the girl managed to make it out to the patio. Mary Beth was very contrite.
I made breakfast for everybody. Eggs Benedict, bacon and country potatoes on the side. The girl, whose name turned out to be Kimmy, and who was now wearing one of my Army t-shirts which, on her, was like a dress, was ravenous. I wound up having to make more.
Between me and the girls and Meyer and Jen, we got the whole story out of her.
She was 13. Her parents had been killed in an automobile accident when she was 12, and there was no family to care for her. She had wound up at an orphanage in San Bernardino until the state could find her a foster home. Meanwhile, since the orphanage did not include a school, she was transferred to the public school closest to the orphanage. Walking distance. Which is how the people who took her picked her up.
My friend Buddy Magellas got up and started pacing at this point. Because of our long association, I could feel his anger building.
“Buddy.”
“Yeah?” Pace.
“What this is, at this point, is a staff problem. We’re going to get the intel, work through it, and figure out what we might do. Your anger might be useful down the road, but right now what you’re going to do is sit down, listen, and ask clarifying questions.”
He stared at me. I stared back. I could tell that he was working towards a high rage. I couldn’t really blame him.
“Sir, yes Sir,” he said, and sat down.
What Kimmy described in Lake Arrowhead was a rape cabin for high rollers. Maybe originally just a sex cabin for men to meet consenting women, but of course Kimmy was of no age to consent, and consent was not what the proprietors had in mind for her. What they apparently had in mind was large money from men who wanted to have sex with a little girl.
What I wanted was to drive back up there with Buddy and kill them all. But there were things we needed to do first. Like call the LAPD chief of police and get his permission to go back up there and kill them all.
I took Jen and Meyer with me to make the call. We were all former cops. So was Buddy, but he was in no shape to be rational.
“Jen was right,” the chief said. “You should have taken her to the hospital immediately. Medical care, rape kit, evidence.”
“Okay,” I said. “So I fucked up. You see a naked little girl running down the road, her feet bloody, tired as shit, you want to run her through processing and more groping and stuff?”
The chief sighed. “No, I want to fix her a cup of hot chocolate and convince her that everything is going to be alright from now until forever. Forgiven. But you need to get her to a hospital today.”
“Copy.”
“Indelicate question… Has she showered yet?”
“No,” Jen said.
“Okay, good. DNA and all that. Should I send a car out there to transport?”
I looked at Jen and Meyer. They shook their heads. “Strangers,” Jen mouthed.
“No Sir, we have it covered,” I said. “We’ll get it done. If you could just have a sworn in female meet us at Reagan at…” I looked at my watch. “9:00 AM, that would be great.”
“Done,” he said.
—
The girls and I drove Kimmy to the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. We met Sergeant Mary Maurice Blakely in the lobby. I didn’t recognize her.
“Maurice?” I said.
“Don’t make me hurt you,” she said. And then, “Hello, Kimmy.”
Nothing.
“What we’re going to have to do is take you to a room in the hospital where the nice doctors and nurses are going to examine you. I’ve cleared processing and they’re waiting for you right now. They’re going to do some poking and prodding, but they are medical professionals and they absolutely will not hurt you in any way. All we’re doing is trying to get some evidence to get the bas… the people who have done this to you. Do you understand, Sweetie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to pick one of these three nice ladies to be in the room with you when all of this happens?”
“No.” She pointed at me. “Him.”
“What? No. Not only no, but hell no! I can’t… No.”
“Sweetie, he’s a man.”
“Right now, in this entire world, he’s the only person I trust.”
“Why?”
“Because he didn’t try to fuck me.”
—
So I held Kimmy’s hand while the medical professionals did their poking and prodding and Sergeant Maurice stood in the corner watching and protecting the chain of evidence.
Afterwards, Sergeant Maurice and I listened to the doctor tell us what she’d found.
“No major trauma. Lots of semen. She’ll have to come back in a couple of weeks to be tested for pregnancy and STDs. Bite marks and, um, suck mark contusions on her back and breasts. No sign of anal penetration, which is good, because that is a better path for STD viruses.”
“I’m going to get her a morning after pill,” I said. “Are there any ramifications for that at her age?”
“You can’t just ‘get her’ that. It’s prescription and if she has no parents it’s going to be complicated.”
“I have back channels. What I asked you is whether there would be problems taking it at her age.”
She looked at me for a while, and then said, “No.”
“Is there anything else you can tell us,” I said.
She thought a moment.
“Off the record?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re her daddy now.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was told you had three women with you in the waiting room. And that you said one of them should go with the girl into the exam room. And that she picked you. I was told this because I was going to kick you out of the exam room so I asked the staffers and they told me about it.”
“But…”
“You’re going to have to get over it. You’re her daddy now.”
“Fuck,” I said.
“Congratulations,” she said. “It’s a girl.”