Want to Go Private? (21 page)

CHAPTER 27
LILY
DECEMBER 10 8:30 A.M.

Agent Pantsuit called my parents at eight a.m. and said that she and Agent Nisco were on their way over.

Mom comes in and wakes me up to tell me, even though I normally sleep late on Saturday morning.

“I thought you’d want to know,” she says. She hugs me. “And you, sweetheart. How are you holding up?”

“Like crap. Kind of like you and Dad.”

I know Mom’s a complete wreck because she doesn’t even tell me to watch my language.

“I really hope they have some good news for us. I’m not sure I can take it if it’s bad news,” Mom says. She sighs. “I better get the coffee going. And some breakfast, even though none of us seem to have an appetite. We’re just living on caffeine and nerves at the moment. Your father’s going to have an ulcer by the time this is over.”

“Can you make French toast?”

I’ve barely been hungry the last few days, but right now I crave sweet, gooey comfort.

“Sure, baby. Set the table quickly, because the FBI will be here soon.”

Mom and I are clearing up the breakfast dishes when the agents arrive. Dad lets them in and Mom pours them mugs of coffee.

“We’ve been able to move ahead on multiple fronts,” Agent Saunders tells us. “We were able to get a read on the license plate from the mall security cameras. The car is registered to an Edmund Schmidt, from South Boston, Massachusetts. We’ve put out an APB on the car and on Schmidt.”

“Thanks to Abby’s friend, Faith, we’ve been able to track down the IP address of this Luke Redmond that Abby’s been chatting with. It’s the same address in South Boston that Schmidt’s car was registered to,” Agent Nisco explains. “Because we have the chat logs linking him to Abby, and an eyewitness who saw Abby getting into Schmidt’s car, we had probable cause for a search warrant. Our guys went in about an hour ago. Schmidt wasn’t there but his mother was. He’s thirty-two years old, works at Starbucks as a barista, and lives with his parents.”

“Mrs. Schmidt gave our agents permission to access the family computer, and just on a preliminary scan we found more than a thousand images of child pornography in a hidden directory,” Agent Saunders says. “We suspect that Abby’s not the only minor he’s been grooming.”

Dad crumples up his napkin into a little ball. I bet he wishes it was Luke/Edmund’s, or whatever-the-creep’s-name-is, head.

“So what happens now?” Mom says.

“Unfortunately, it’s more of the same,” Agent Saunders says, her eyes warm and sympathetic. It’s the first time I see her act like a real-life person, instead of just an agent in a pantsuit. “Waiting. With the APB on Schmidt’s car, hopefully we’ll track them down sooner rather than later.”

News trickles in throughout the morning. Apparently, Schmidt’s mother confirmed that the picture of “Luke” from Abby’s computer was her son, Edmund. Although he has no previous record, when confronted with the fact that he had child porn on the family computer, Mrs. Schmidt crossed herself and told the investigators that there had been “some unfortunate business” several years ago when her eldest daughter accused Edmund of doing something inappropriate with his niece, her granddaughter, Camilla. Mrs. Schmidt didn’t know who or what to believe and it caused a huge family rift — Edmund and his eldest sister, Mary, haven’t spoken in over five years and it’s just about broken her heart. She lights a candle every week and prays for their family to come together in love and Christ.

Yeah, like that’s going to happen now. NOT
.

But then Agent Saunders says that Mrs. Schmidt told investigators that she wonders if Edmund’s “problems” have anything to do with “that business with the priest back when he was an altar boy.”

Wow, I think. No wonder he’s screwed up.

Agent Pantsuit tells us that it’s quite common for people who have been sexually abused as kids to become abusers themselves.

That sets Dad off big-time. “Are you trying to get me to feel
sorry
for this guy?” he shouts, a slow flush burning its way up his face. “Because I have no sympathy for the man who preyed on my daughter. None at all. I’d like to see him strung up from the nearest tree.”

“Rick, calm down,” Mom says.

“I will not calm down! My daughter is out there in the hands of some pedophile and you expect me to listen to sob stories about this creep’s traumatic childhood?”

Dad pushes his chair back so hard it falls over, and he doesn’t even bend to pick it up. He just starts pacing back and forth.

“I bet he’ll get some bleeding-heart lawyer and they’ll use that to try and get him off,” he says, spitting out each word like it tastes bad.

Agent Nisco puts his hand on Dad’s shoulder and tells him maybe they should go take a walk and get some fresh air.

“Let’s find Abby first before we start getting worked up about Schmidt’s trial strategy, okay?”

Dad’s shoulders slump over as he nods his agreement.

Agent Nisco gets the call at two thirty p.m. I’m busy trying to do the homework that Mom forced me to look up online, while she stood over my shoulder, making sure I didn’t pull an Abby. But it’s near impossible because my brain’s jumping around like popcorn in a microwave.

His phone doesn’t ring, it buzzes.

“Nisco,” he answers.

We all stop what we’re doing and listen, like we do every time his phone buzzes. I’m holding my breath, afraid to let it go.

“Okay … and they’re moving in soon? Great, keep me posted. Thanks.”

For the first time, Agent Nisco’s craggy face breaks a smile. “Schmidt’s car has been spotted by New York State Police, just
north of Plattsburgh, and there are two people in the vehicle. They’re moving in to apprehend.”

I release my breath in a loud whoosh of relief.

“Oh … oh, thank the Lord,” Mom says, bursting into tears. Dad puts his arms around her and rubs her back. I go and hug them both. We stand there, our arms entwined, as if that will hold our family together until Abby can join it again.

We spend the next hour watching the second hand tick on the kitchen clock. When I’m not staring at the clock, I’m gazing at Agent Nisco’s jacket pocket, willing his phone to buzz again with someone on the other end saying that Abby is safe and well and that she’s on her way home.

When he stands up and reaches into his pocket, we all start.

“Nisco … Yep … Good.” He listens for a while and I can’t tell from his face if what he’s hearing is good or bad. They must teach that at FBI school or something. “Where are you taking her? … Okay, we’ll get the parents up there, stat. Yeah. Good work. Bye.”

“They got her?” Dad asks. “Is Abby okay?”

“New York State Police apprehended Edmund Schmidt at approximately three ten p.m. Abby is now safely in police custody.”

I burst out crying, huge sobs of relief. Abby might be a complete pain-in-the-ass freak, but I’ve never been happier about anything in the world than I am to know that she’s alive and safe. Not anything ever. Even when I got that Juicy Couture hoodie for half price. Or when Mom got me third-row Taylor Swift tickets.

Mom and Dad both have tears streaming down their cheeks.
Mom hugs Agent Pantsuit, saying, “Thank you, thank you, how can we ever thank you?”

Dad sits down heavily on the kitchen chair, like his legs won’t hold him up anymore.

“Did he … is she …?”

He can’t say the words out loud, but we all know what he is trying to ask. Did Luke Redmond, Edmund Schmidt, or whatever you want to call that freaky Red Sox hat-wearing perv do IT with Abby?

I really try hard to push that thought out of my brain. It’s just too gross and scary to think about.

“They’ll be taking Abby to the police station first,” Agent Saunders says. “That’s where we’ll meet her. Once you’re there, we’ll go over to the nearest hospital, where she’ll be examined by what we call a SANE nurse.”

“What, as opposed to a crazy nurse?” I ask.

Agent Pantsuit gives me a brief, lips-only smile. “Like I said, we’re big into acronyms. It stands for Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner. They specialize in doing forensic exams on women who might have undergone sexual assault.”

Her voice is all steady and calm, but it kind of feels like she’s trying to prepare us for the worst.

Dad is gripping the edge of the table so hard his knuckles are white.

“Maybe Lily should stay here,” Mom says. “With a friend. I could call Elaine Wilson.”

“Why?” I protest. “I want to see Abby, too!”

“I think it’s probably a good idea,” Agent Saunders says. “Just to give Abby a little breathing room before she’s surrounded by too many people.”

She sees me opening my mouth to protest and says, “Lily, we’re going to be asking Abby a lot of questions, and you wouldn’t be allowed in the room. It would get very boring.”

“But it’s not fair, I —”

“Lily, you’re staying here, and that’s final,” Dad decrees. “Kate, call Elaine Wilson. We should get on the road as soon as possible. I need to see that Abby is safe with my own eyes.”

Like I don’t?

My eyes well up with tears as Mom reaches for the phone. It’s always all about Abby as far as Dad’s concerned. I wonder if she’d stayed away forever if anything would have changed.

Mrs. Wilson says she’ll be here in ten minutes to take me over to their house.

“Before you see Abby, there’s something you should know,” Agent Nisco says. “When the suspect, Edmund Schmidt, was apprehended and he was being led away in handcuffs, Abby was extremely concerned about what was going to happen to him. She shouted out to the police, ‘Don’t hurt him!’”

Mom and Dad look at each other, like WTF? I can’t believe it either. You’d think that after being trapped with that creep for all this time, Abby would just be, “Yay, the police are here to rescue me, woo-hoo!” But instead she’s trying to
protect
the dude?

I always knew Abby was a freak, but this is even beyond her usual level of freakdom.

“It’s not unusual for the victim of an Internet predator to identify with him, very strongly in fact,” Agent Saunders says. “Otherwise she never would have run off with him in the first place.”

“But … how could she … He’s a …” Dad sputters.

“I know it’s hard to understand,” Agent Nisco says. “But these guys, they really convince the girls that they’re in love with them.”

Dad shakes his head, as if to say,
No, not my Abby
.

“The grooming process is an insidious seduction, Mr. Johnston,” Agent Saunders says. “And it’s between players of very unequal skills. Here’s a grown man and a young, inexperienced girl, who is used to dealing with the boys at school.”

“Yeah. Remember what our romantic skills were like in high school?” Agent Nisco says. “On a scale of one to ten, I probably ranked a two. And that’s being generous.”

“So then this guy comes along who knows all the right things to say to make a girl feel good about herself — it’s very powerful.”

“But Abby’s too smart to fall for that,” Dad says.

Excuse me, Dad, there’s an urgent call for you from 1-800-DENIAL
.

“Rick, honey, I think it’s pretty clear that Abby fell for it, for reasons that none of us can understand,” Mom says. “Which is why we need to see her and talk to her.”

She turns to me, like she suddenly remembers I’m here.

“Lily, go pack an overnight bag, just in case. I don’t know how long this will take us. Rick, I’ll go pack one for us. I want to be ready to go as soon as Elaine gets here. Abby needs us.”

I head up to my bedroom to pack, thinking,
Don’t I need you, too
?

CHAPTER 28
ABBY
DECEMBER 10

This morning when I woke up in yet another grungy motel room, Luke was already dressed and sitting in the chair by the window.

“Come on, lazybones,” he said. “Let’s get moving. Just get dressed. You don’t have time to take a shower.”

There was no kissing or cuddling like there had been the previous mornings. Or any of the other stuff. I can’t say I minded that. But it worried me because he seemed kind of, I don’t know, distant. Like my dad gets when he’s thinking about work.

I jumped out of bed, grabbing a towel to wrap around myself. Not that the towels in that place covered very much. That’s one thing I’ve learned about cheap motels. The bath towels are the size of the washcloths in the kinds of hotels Dad takes us to.

Another thing I learned is that you don’t want to walk on the carpet in bare feet. I bet if Billy and I did one of our petri dish swabs in this place, it would grow all kinds of scary stuff.

Don’t think about Billy. Don’t think about home. Keep this in a box totally separate from everything else
.

I grab my jeans and shirt from the floor and get a clean pair of panties from my backpack. I’m running out of clean clothes and
wonder about asking Luke if we can stop at a Laundromat. Or maybe he’ll buy me some new clothes. Didn’t he say
“Only the best for my girl
”?

Is this crappy motel with the ugly, orange polyester bedspread and brown shag carpet punctuated with cigarette holes his idea of
the best
?

We go to a drive-thru McDonald’s for breakfast. Luke pulls his hat brim way down over his forehead, like he does whenever we’re somewhere with people around. I order a Bacon, Egg & Cheese Biscuit and a milk, and he gets an Egg McMuffin and a large coffee. When he pulls out his wallet to pay, he says, “I’m gettin’ low on cash. Do you have any?”

Guess I’m not going shopping for new clothes
.

I dig into my backpack and hand him twenty dollars from my babysitting money. He keeps the change after he pays.

Luke’s moody and distant all morning as we hit the highway heading north. I keep asking him what’s the matter and he snaps, “Nothing.” I stare out the window at the barren trees, wondering what’s changed and why I’m in the car with him when he doesn’t even want to talk to me. I can’t help myself from thinking about home and I suddenly miss Mom and Dad so bad it hurts. I want to be back in my own room, sleeping in my own bed. I want everything to be just like it was before.

But it’s never going to be like it was before. Not since that first night in the motel room.

“Tell me how much you want it, baby.” His hot breath, panting in my ear
.

A tear escapes from my eye and rolls down my cheek to
the corner of my mouth. Luke glances over before I can wipe it away.

“Don’t tell me you’re bawling again, Abby. Maybe I should just put you on a bus and send you back to Mommy and Daddy.”

That just makes me cry harder. My parents are probably beyond mad about me taking off with Luke, and now Luke doesn’t even seem to
like
me.

“D-don’t you l-love m-me anym-more?”

He sighs heavily and pulls the car over to the side of the road.

“Of course I do, baby,” he says, putting his arm around me. “You’re my girl. Right?”

“R-right,” I say, sniffling.

“So are we done with the tears?”

I swallow hard and take a deep breath, making a big effort to stop crying. I don’t want him to be mad at me anymore. “Okay.”

“Right. Let’s get back on the road. I want to try to make it to Canada by nightfall.”

When Luke sees the police lights and hears the sirens, he swears. Then he turns to me and says, “Abby, they’re going to tell you we’re wrong and this is wrong, but remember, I love you. You’re my girl. Whatever you do, don’t you forget that.”

I start crying again then, uncontrollably.

“I won’t, Luke. I promise.”

Luke is forced to pull over. State troopers surround our car with guns drawn. I’ve never had a gun pointed at me before and I’m scared to death. One of them approaches Luke’s window. Luke rolls it down. The trooper asks Luke if he’s Edmund J. Schmidt of 282 Tudor Street, South Boston, Massachusetts. I wait
for Luke to tell him that this is a case of mistaken identity and this is all a big mistake, that his name is Luke Redmond. But he just nods, and before I know what’s happening, the trooper points his gun at Luke and yells at him to get out of the car and put his hands up.

“Luke, what’s going on? Why don’t you tell them your real name?” I cry as he opens the car door. He ignores me.

The policeman practically throws him against the car, frisks him, and slaps on handcuffs.

I open my door and get out to tell them they’ve made a mistake, but one of the troopers puts his hand on my shoulder and asks me if I’m Abigail Johnston of Huntingville, Connecticut.

“Yes, I am, but —”

“Don’t worry, honey,” he says. “You’re safe now.”

I don’t have time to tell him that I was safe before, that Luke would never do anything to hurt me, because I see them leading him away to a police car, his hands cuffed behind his back, a policeman on either side of him, each grabbing his arm roughly.

“
DON’T HURT HIM
!” I shout, tears streaming down my face.

Luke turns and looks back at me over his shoulder with the saddest smile. I wonder if I’ll ever see him again, and it feels like my heart is breaking.

The police take me to the station, where they put me in a room that has bars on the window, cold plastic chairs, and a table. A female police officer, Officer Domuracki, gets me a cup of hot chocolate. I wrap my hands around the Styrofoam cup. The warmth
is the only thing anchoring me to reality. It feels like this is all happening to someone else.

“Your parents are on their way,” she says. “But it’ll take them a while to get up here from Connecticut.”

The thought of my parents coming comforts and terrifies me at the same time.

Officer Domuracki sits with me for a while trying to make small talk, to get me to tell her about myself, about my family, about what happened. But the only person I want to talk to right now is Luke, and no one will tell me where he is or what’s happening to him or what’s
going
to happen to him. Finally, she gives up and leaves me in the room with some boring magazines.

I’m half asleep with my head on the cold Formica of the table when I hear my father’s voice.

“Abby! Thank heavens you’re safe!”

I raise my head and he and Mom are standing in the doorway — Mom has tears streaming down her face. I get up and run to them and they both envelop me tightly in their arms, so tightly I can barely breathe.

“We were so worried, Abby,” Mom sobs. “You have no idea….”

My father’s shoulders are shaking. I look up at his face and feel gut-punched to see he’s crying, too. I’ve never in my whole life seen my father cry, ever. Seriously. Dad doesn’t do tears.

If I wanted to teach them a lesson like Luke said, then it looks as if they are well and truly schooled.

“Where’s Lily?” I ask.

“She’s with the Wilsons,” Mom says. “Faith sends her love. If it weren’t for Faith, we might not have found you.”

“That’s right,” Dad says. “Faith is a real hero. She helped the FBI figure out the password to your ChezTeen account so we could track that son of a bitch down.”

Son of a bitch?
I realize Dad must mean Luke.

I guess Luke was right. He knew people wouldn’t understand about us.

“Daddy, you’ve got it wrong. Luke’s not …”

“Don’t talk to me about that monster, Abby,” Dad says, stiffening, as he takes his arms from around my shoulders. “And his name isn’t even Luke. It’s —”

“I think it’s best if we save that conversation for later,” says a woman in a dark pantsuit.

She introduces herself to me.

“Hi, Abby. I’m Agent Saunders of the FBI.”

Her handshake is firm, her fingers cool. I wonder if she’s ever, like, shot someone.

“Abby, it’s important that we get you to the hospital, now that your parents are here.”

“The hospital? What for? I’m fine. Honest. There’s nothing the matter with me. Look at me.”

Agent Saunders does look at me. She looks me straight in the eye.

“We need to take you to the hospital, Abby, so that a specially trained nurse can do what’s called a forensic exam. She’ll take evidence that can be used in the event of a trial.”

Evidence? A trial?

I can’t meet her gaze. I look at the wall above her right shoulder.

“He didn’t hurt me. Luke loves me.”

His hand gripping my hair so hard it felt like it would come
out by the roots. “Tell me you want it, baby. Tell me you want it right now
.”

“Are you
insane
?” my father explodes. “How can you think that monster
loves
you?”

His anger flows over me like hot volcanic lava, and I stand there paralyzed. Separate. It only works when I keep them separate. And now the two worlds are colliding in one huge painful explosion that makes me want to crawl inside my own skin and hide.

Agent Saunders exchanges glances with Officer Domuracki, and the policewoman goes over to Dad and quietly suggests that maybe he should accompany her out of the room for a while to calm down, because him shouting at me isn’t in my best interest right now.

“I’m her father. I have every right to be here,” I hear Dad say in an angry undertone.

I just stare out the barred window and let the voices flow around me while I picture the sad smile on Luke’s face as the policemen led him away in handcuffs.
Where is he now? What are they going to do to him? Does he still love me? Is this all my fault?

“Abby,” Agent Saunders says, bringing me reluctantly back into the room. Dad’s no longer here. It’s just the FBI agent, Mom, and me. Mom’s face is pale and pinched with worry. “This might not seem important now, but later on, you might feel differently. We have to harvest whatever evidence we can while it’s available. Did you shower this morning?”

Why does she care about that? Do I smell or something?

“No. I didn’t have time. Luke said he wanted to get on the road.”

“That’s good. How about we head over to the hospital now and get this over with, so that you and your parents can head home?”

“But —”

“Abby,” Mom says. She takes my hand, gingerly, like she’s almost afraid to touch me. “I know this is … unpleasant … but you
have
to do it.”

I continue staring out the window and try to crawl a little deeper inside my skin.

“Whatever.”

I’m picturing Luke’s smile as I lie here on the hospital bed in a stupid paper gown. Agent Saunders keeps trying to get me to talk about him, but I don’t want to talk to her. She doesn’t believe what I say anyway. I told her that Luke didn’t hurt me, that he loves me, but she and Mom say I have to have this stupid exam anyway because it’s “standard procedure.”

So I just stare at the fluorescent light overhead as I wait for the SANE nurse to come and do whatever it is she’s going to do to me. SANE, that’s a joke. It stands for Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, but SANE is about the last thing I feel right now. I had to take everything off. Everything.

Mom is sitting on a chair beside the bed. Every so often she strokes my hair but then she drops her hand like she’s afraid I’m going to give her the cooties.

There’s a knock on the door, and it opens. A pretty Asian woman in a white coat comes in accompanied by the nurse in pink scrubs, the one who made me wear this stupid paper gown “opening to the front, please.”

“Hello, Abigail. I’m Nurse Wong. I’ll be performing the rape exam.”

“But Luke didn’t rape me — he …”

“Just lie back, Abby, and put your feet in these stirrups. Relax if you can. I’ll try to get this over with as quickly as possible.”

I can’t believe this is happening to me. I stare up at the fluorescent light overhead, trying to pretend this isn’t me, not my body, not my pubic hair that’s being combed. Not my inner thigh that’s being photographed because there’s a bruise high up on one of them near my privates. Not my left breast that’s being photographed because Luke left a huge hickey on it, or my right shoulder where there’s a bite mark.

“I’m sorry, Abby, this will be a little cold,” Nurse Wong says, picking up this metal contraption and moving between my legs.

Ow, that hurts! “Relax, sweet girl, and take it. Take it all. I’m gonna fuck you so good, baby girl. Damn, you’re tight. I’m gonna give it to you harder, baby. Oh, yeah, that’s so good
.”

“Please, Abby, you need to keep your knees open. I know this is uncomfortable, but it’ll be over more quickly if you can just take a deep breath and try to relax,” the nurse says.

My eyes are closed, but I feel my mother’s hand grab mine and squeeze it tightly. I cling to hers until the nurse takes the cold metal thing out of me and covers me with the paper gown again.

When I open my eyes, there are tears streaming down my mother’s face.

“Stop bawling, Abby, and look like you enjoy it, for chrissake!” His fingers on my chin turn my face toward the camera.