The Light at the End of the Tunnel (12 page)

One of Nicole’s main jobs became computer
work. Besides two hours every morning of correspondence and
research she also did background checks. Riley Stokes was the only
person to answer the phone—or at least to give answers on the
phone—but once he had names and social security numbers he handed
them over to Nicole. She was surprised to learn that the chaplain,
too, had provided his own number to Riley the first time he called,
but because they had just met he didn’t ask for her number, and
convinced Riley to take her on anyway. And all parties became very
pleased with her addition—not only as the chaplain’s partner—but as
one of the two newest members of Riley’s crew.

Both the chaplain and Nicole continued
appreciating watching each other’s training, too. As yet, neither
had betrayed their true feelings for each other, but they had
become the best of friends. And working with Riley Stokes became a
good source of income, and something to do when they weren’t
tracking and/or documenting Les Paul, as both the chaplain and
Nicole were keeping track of everything and writing down their own
version of their search. With regular income again, laptop
computers for each soon became part of their tool chest.

The work-for-hire continued too, and Riley’s
crews increased their travels to include not only Arizona, but all
of New Mexico, and parts of both Texas, and California…with their
talks to drug dealers. There again, background checks of clients
were essential, because, if ever they became involved with the
wrong people the law could come down on them very hard. So more
than one client was refused their service.

****

The horror stories shared by the many foster
families continued too, and all but guaranteed the child they were
tracking was truly worst-of-the-worst criminal, Les Paul.

At foster family-four, as best guessed, as
always, they learned what Baby Boy-Doe9 did to get jerked out of
their home and returned to the state system.

“My little girl has fourteen Barbie Dolls,
the mother of the home said, “All the shapes and sizes and colors,
and a few Kens and a few other dolls—way too many, I admit—But the
number of dolls my daughter has is not the issue!”

“Of course not, Ma’am.” The chaplain patted
the top of the lady’s shoulder.

The woman threw her hands to her face, “Oh!
The little monster!” She sighed again and left her hands over her
eyes.

“We know this must be difficult for you,
Ma’am,” Nicole said, “But this is a special child. That’s why we’re
trying to follow up on his actions, so, if you could please tell
us, exactly, what he did.…”

The woman dropped her hands and guffawed, a
sound more like a man would make, “Special, huh? Yes, I suppose any
four-year-old who would place a bunch of dolls in sexual
positions—boys on girls, girls on boys, and when he ran out of boys
he put girls-on-girls, in every position even the worst sex
predator probably wouldn’t think of! And just four years old!” The
woman brought her hands up again, this time to her mouth, then
dropped them, her face now a mask of scorn, “That child is evil. I
can’t believe I would say that about any child but that one is!
He’s
Evil
!”

Chapter 24
Les Paul at
Seven

Two more years passed. Les Paul now stood
four feet-six inches-tall at seven years old. He too had lost count
of the number of foster homes he had been in and out of. It made no
difference. He was on a journey to grow up, to start doing things
that he did before, although he had no real imagination of what he
had done before, just those funny daydreams that kept intruding on
his
real
thoughts. He just knew he had never fit in
anywhere, but he didn’t care. He had his own agenda, and that was
to do what
he
wanted.

As of yet no family had required him to do a
thing for his keep, not even keep his room clean and organized.
When his room became too full of broken toys—if for no other
reason—that was when he usually got that ride back to the
government office. He especially liked breaking heads and limbs off
action-figures and then stuffing the torsos into the cabs of toy
trucks or tractors. The heads and limbs simply disappeared, in
truth collected as temporary trophies and then hidden to in later
years be found by and hopefully horrify whatever child came along
next. He had learned though to plan things so that the family
returned him before the halfway point of the month, so that they
didn’t get any extra money for his keep. He was learning well.

His present home had already lasted for eight
weeks. This family had no children of their own, but cared for six
other foster children: Three other boys, ages six, ten and twelve,
and three girls, five, seven, and nine. As of yet, because of the
unusual and somewhat crowded conditions, he had picked no person to
unleash his vices on. Often, especially after school, the children
were alone in the house. During the day, when the husband worked,
the wife was present to care for the younger children. But when the
older children came home from school, quite often the wife would
put the two older boys in charge and then leave.

He and the three other boys would go into
their room and the girls would go to theirs. If there was pizza
available or some other junk food that could be warmed in the
microwave, the children would eat. If not, they wouldn’t, not till
much later when the lady of the house was present again. So, even
Les Paul could see there wasn’t a lot of caring care going on in
this household. This man and woman appeared to be getting quite a
lot of money for foster children, and didn’t appear to be doing a
lot to earn it, but that attitude went right along with his own
thinking.

“What say we go bother the girls?” the oldest
boy said.

“Yeah, they’ve been gettin’ off pretty easy
lately,” said the ten-year-old.

“Can I come too?” asked the six-year-old.

Les Paul just watched, learning. This had not
happened before.

“No, loser-baby, you’re too little!”

He wondered what the older boy was referring
to, but figured he, at only seven, would also not be allowed
along.

“But I wanna do it too!”

Do
what
? Now he
really
wondered.

The twelve-year-old doubled his fists and
stomped over to the youngest, who held up his hands and cringed,
“No! Don’t hit me!”

The twelve-year-old grabbed the boy’s hands,
then open-fisted slapped his head, both ways, “You stay here,
little shit, and watch that dorkhead over there!” He pointed to Les
Paul, then released the boy. “Hey!” he shouted to the ten-year-old,
“Let’s go! Before the old folks get home!”

The two left and closed their door
quietly.

“What are they going to do with the girls?”
Les Paul asked.

“I don’t know,” the little one answered,
“They’ve never let me go along.”

Well, that wasn’t good enough. He wanted to
know. If he was missing out on something he wanted to know, and
went to the door, opened it quietly, then saw the little one was
going to tag along, “No!” He doubled and raised his fist.

The little one cringed back. Les Paul was
only a year older but big for his age, and when he had food in
front of him he made sure he dispatched plenty of it. He stepped
quietly into the hall and closed the door...

The day was gorgeous. The sun was bright. A
few fluffy clouds rolled gently across the sky. The whole world of
grass and hills spread out before them. Far to their right a group
of mammoths appeared to be resting.

He stood with his main lance in his right
hand, two more attached to a holster on his back, where he could
get them out quickly. The sling was easily accessible near his
right hand. The bag of small rocks hung from his right shoulder to
his left hip, quickly accessible with his left hand. In his left
hand was the hand of his darling little girl, “See the mammoths, my
child?”

“
Yes, Daddy.”

“
Tomorrow, or soon, so they don’t leave,
we will join the rest of the clan families and begin our hunt. We
will all be able to stock our hearths with meat, and new skins, and
bones for tools, for the coming winter.”

“
Yes, Daddy.” The little girl squeezed his
hand and looked up, and smiled.

How he adored his little girl, and loved her
smile, and returned her smile and caused hers to get even bigger
and brighter, “This winter, my child you will enter your seventh
season. You are becoming a big and very beautiful little girl. You
will go along on the hunt tomorrow, but you will not help. But you
must watch, and learn, for someday you will lead our people.” He
jabbed his lance into the earth, then leaned down and gathered his
little girl into his strong arms. Then he held her with his left
arm and recovered his lance, which always remained ready to
use.

The little girl wrapped her arms around his
neck, “I love you, Daddy.”

A sound came, a whine, some animal…!

He held his little girl child tightly and
moved toward the sound, which came again and did not sound
threatening. With his lance he parted some shrubbery and they
saw…

What?
What
did they see?

Les Paul shook his head, and shivered his
whole body,
what the hell was that?
A cave man dressed in
skins? And a little girl? He knew about cave men. He had seen them
on TV, both as a movie and as a cartoon. But what the hell did they
see? If he was going to see movies in his head he should at least
get to see it all! So what did they see? The little girl had said
‘daddy.’
Who was she calling
‘daddy?’
And
‘mammoths?’
A
‘hunt?’
For a few seconds the
memory—
or whatever the hell it was
—seemed to him as warm and
cuddly, then he again shook his head and shivered his whole
body—
violently
—and forced the memories from his head!
They were NOT his!

Chapter 25
Rape
!

At seven, Cassandra was still a quiet little
girl, and small for her age, trim, but no longer underweight. Some
inborn instinct had told her long ago that she needed to eat, even
though she didn’t always feel like eating. She held her dolly
against her front tightly, always. All of her prior life she had
gotten by with standing far off on the sidelines. Having two other
foster girls for siblings had changed her, to a point. Often she
had stood up to the boys to protect the other two girls. Even
though one of the other girls was bigger and older but appeared to
be even more reserved than Cassandra ever had been, if that was
possible. And the youngest: from day one at this household
Cassandra had taken on the role of mother to that little girl, and,
to a point, the older one too. It was a position in life she had
never planned on, and didn’t want, but the role had made her a
little stronger.

A knock at their door.

“It’s the boys,” the older girl said, “I wish
we could lock our door.”

Cassandra eased the younger girl to behind
her, “I wish we could too, but we can’t.”

The door cracked open. Both boys stepped in
and closed the door again. They both had crimson faces, and both
wore a grin, as if expecting to get something good.

“They probably want
you
, Cassandra,”
the older girl said quietly.

“Me?” She had not been there long enough to
know what the older girl meant, “For
what
?”

“For sex,” the older boy said, “We’re gonna
rape you.”

“
Sex…?” Rape?
She had not heard either
word before, and did not know what they meant.

“Don’t be stupid,” the boy said, “You know
what sex is!”

“No! I don’t!” She felt the little girl
behind her grasp her arm, and could feel she was afraid, even
shaking. The older girl then too stepped to behind Cassandra, and
pulled the little girl’s hand away. Cassandra glanced behind her.
Both girls had stepped back. The big girl’s eyes showed both fear
and acceptance; the little one’s showed only fear. She jerked back
to the boys who had not yet come closer.

“Take your clothes off,” the bigger boy
said.

She didn’t move, “No!”
I’m not taking my
clothes off!

“Take’em off!” he said again, much
louder.

“Look, man,” the younger boy offered, “The
old folks’ll be home soon. She doesn’t have to take her clothes
off. We can just pull her panties down.”

Cassandra’s stomach felt instantly empty.
What were they talking about? She didn’t really trust the
‘old
folks’
to help her much anyway, because they seemed to believe
anything the boys told them. Just last week the boys had stolen two
cans of beer and blamed her, which got her a slap on her butt and
sent to the girls’ room. Not really a bad punishment, but still,
the
‘old folks’
hadn’t even given her a chance to
explain.

“Right.” The older boy’s grin faded, “Get
over here, Cassie-girl.”

She couldn’t move. A fear was creeping into
her that she had never before known.

“Do it!”

She still didn’t will herself to move, but
her body did. She took two steps closer to them. It was enough.
Both boys came at her. She raised her hands. The older boy grabbed
her doll and threw it!

“No!” she cried

Then the boys both grabbed one of her hands
and jerked them to behind her.

“Hold her!” the older boy said.

Cassandra felt her hands and arms gripped
together and raised. It hurt, making her bend over a little. Then
she felt her panties gripped. She stiffened and tried to grab them,
and she could see the older boy working with his jeans and snap and
zipper—

What’s he doing?

“Hold her, goddamn it!”

The younger boy stepped to her side and
pulled her hands and arms tighter, and pushed then higher, hurting
her more and making her bend more. The other boy jerked her panties
down and got behind her.