Chapter 6

The next afternoon we did it again. It was a little easier this time, because we'd had a day to learn the hard way what we were dealing with and a night to recuperate. I knew I'd had some unpleasant dreams, though I couldn't remember them, and once I'd woken up and found Cecelia thrashing beside me, saying something unintelligible. I'd held her, and she'd calmed down without ever waking up.

It was another unhelpful day. I knew that the girl was out there somewhere. It had only been a week or two since the shoot that had upset Sloan, and she hadn't grown up and moved to New York City in that time. As long as she was making money for Albuquerque's porn operators, she'd be in Albuquerque. Maybe she'd wind up somewhere else eventually, or maybe she'd resort to suicide as the only way out – and that was a chilling thought – but she'd still be in town right now.

But we weren't having any joy. Cecelia and I both believed we were getting honest answers – no one knew the girl. That wasn't necessarily surprising. If she was as young as she looked and Sloan thought she was, she might be brand new. And if it was just a camera-and-bed operation, very few people would know who she was, where she was from, and where they shot her. For that matter child pornographers are a different bunch – even "normal" porn moguls might not take kindly to someone using a child, and those who were using her might be keeping her existence secret. Eventually she'd become a familiar face – eventually, if she were good enough at pretending to enjoy what is, at best, a humiliating and degrading life, she'd wind up working for everyone in town. Eventually she'd show up on the Web – but without a name, not even an alias, to plug into Google, finding her there would be difficult if not impossible, even if every chicken hawk in the world knew about her. But that was really irrelevant – right now she seemed to be unknown except to us and Wilson Sloan, and it was right now that we had to deal with.

Usually I don't go to the office on Sunday, but as afternoon turned into evening and it became clear that without Sloan's information we were just batting our heads against the wall, I turned that way. Cecelia didn't say anything, having learned over the years of our marriage, and the few months she'd worked for me, that when I'm working I take notions. Shoot, I take notions when I'm not working, but it's especially true when I'm on a case.

At the office I went in and sat behind my desk, and Cecelia sat across from me. "Toss me The Terrified Child, would you please?"

She did, and I held it in my hand, looking at it. She was in fact a beautiful girl, in spite of the fear on her face. Her hair was curly, and as far as I could tell in the cropped photo was long – shoulder length, or perhaps even more. She had a mouth that reminded me of Liv Tyler, though the only place I've ever paid much attention to Liv is the Lord of the Rings movies; pale skin – though that might be part of the fear; and intense blue eyes. I normally don't care for blue eyes, but in the photo they grabbed my attention, and at least she wasn't blonde ... though it's possible to have fake black hair.

I pulled open the middle drawer of my desk, flipped open a plastic box, and pulled out a push pin. I got out of the chair and walked over to the window, where the usual view of the Sandia Mountains was now down to their outline against the faintly lighted sky, and the lights of the tram terminal and the transmission towers on the Crest. I shoved the push pin through the top of the photo and into the wall, and stepped back. Every time I looked toward the window I'd see The Terrified Child – and not just the picture which we'd given that name, but the actual child, the girl who was so young and so scared and involved in something grown women ought never to have to experience.

As I sat back down Cecelia said, "That's exactly the right thing to do."

I looked at her, surprised. I've been joking with her for years that she reads my mind, but on that occasion she seemed to be supplying my thoughts for me.

"You wish, in all that we go through, to remember that girl," Cecelia said. "You wish to remember that this is not merely a case, not merely an investigation, but an effort to rescue from unthinkable degradation a very real human being, who is scared, and hurt, and in need of genuine love and compassion."

I nodded. "Yeah, there is that." I got up again, and got a Coke out of the refrigerator in the corner. I glanced at Cecelia, and she nodded, so I got her one too before I sat back down. "It's a good thing I met Vern before this case came along."

Now Cecelia nodded. "I would not want my first true investigation with you to end in your arrest for assault, or worse."

I took a drink of Coke. "I ain't seen Al in a while, 'cept at church, nor yet talked to Vern. How's he doin'?"

"I spoke with him on Wednesday. He has added words to his wife's gravestone: Mother of Alison Burdett. He said that he'd talked to Alison first, and that they cried together as they agreed that it was time. He'd never been able to do it before, knowing that his wife's suicide was at least partly in reaction to his ... abuse of Alison."

I thought about Cecelia's hesitation. "Abuse" was one word for what Vern had done to his daughter, a polite one, with a horrible truth behind it. But he'd become a Christian in recent years, and had come looking for Al to apologize. He had, and she'd forgiven him, and though the relationship was still tentative, it was a real relationship for the first time since Al was 13 years old.