BZZZZZZT!
"Of course, I didn't know they were unspeakable then, but there had to be something wrong because I was never allowed to mention them. And some time before I reached ten, the picture taking stopped. I guess I was too old then. I guess the people he was trading pictures with liked their little girls under ten. Whatever the reason, it stopped and… would you believe?… I felt sad. How sick is that? Not because of what I'd actually been doing, but because my father no longer seemed interested in me. He'd never been warm or even vaguely nurturing—the words 'remote,' 'uninterested,' 'disengaged' don't even come close—but at least… at those times… when I was doing those things by myself or with Thomas, I'd had his… attention. Now I didn't even have that. Can you imagine?"
No. Jack couldn't even begin to imagine. He felt his gorge rise as he thought of someone making Vicky do what he'd seen in the few prints he'd glanced at, and fought the urge to grab the phone and call her to make sure she was safe at home with Gia.
BZZZZZZT!
"But as I grew older, I learned, and I realized what I had been a part of. I tried to tell myself that it had never happened, that I'd imagined it all, dreamed it, but I knew no imaginings like that could have originated in me. How could I make up those perversions? No… I must have been there. And so I worked on blocking them out, making myself believe they'd never happened, and I was doing pretty well at it… until my early teens when I started developing. That was when I woke up one night and found Thomas with his hand on my breast wanting to 'do it, just like we used to.' I managed to fight him off, but that was confirmation, and it brought it all back. I began sleeping with a knife under my pillow."
Jack didn't want to know this much about her, but didn't see how he could stop her. And it wasn't as if she was talking to him. She was talking to the air. He could have been a mannequin.
"I knew then and there that I had to get out. But how? I was too young to support myself and I didn't want anything—anything—from that man. And I know you're probably thinking, 'Why didn't you go to the authorities and—" She stopped and looked at Jack. A wry ghost of a smile twisted her mouth for an instant. "Okay, anybody but you would say that. But how could I? Exposing Ronald Clayton meant exposing myself. It meant making those pictures public. Even now the thought of it makes me want to crawl into a hole, but can you imagine how that prospect looks to a teenage girl? I mean, a pimple on the chin is a reason to hide when you're a teenager. Making my 'sins' public—because I knew that everyone would think I'd been a willing participant—was unthinkable."
BZZZZZZT!
"So I worked on getting out. And I mean, I worked. I was pretty much asexual then. I was repulsed by the notion of anyone, boy or girl, touching me, so I became a bookworm. I all but lived in the public library, studying, studying, studying. I got straight A's. I found a book on how to 'package' your child for a scholarship. Well, no one was interested enough to package me for anything, so I packaged myself. And it worked. I got a full academic scholarship to college at USC. That allowed me to move out of that house. I left in August before my freshman year and never looked back. Last night was the first time I've crossed that threshold since."
BZZZZZZTl
"In college I worked a job while I booked my butt off. I found summer work at resorts that offered room and board as part of the job. I got into med school. A full ride to med school is all but impossible, but people will loan money to doctors-to-be. So I borrowed up to my lower lip to cover the expenses, and I'll be paying those loans off for another ten years, at least. But I did it. I got through it. And the thing that kept me going was the determination not to allow myself to become a victim. There's that expression about living well being the best revenge? Well, I may not be living well, but I'm getting there. And on my own. This is my revenge. I refuse to be his victim. He had power over me once, but he'll never have it again."
BZZZZZZT!
"But it wasn't going to be my complete revenge. As the years passed I began to wonder about my mother's death… wondered if it was really an accident. I mean, I don't know if he inherited money from her or carried a large insurance policy on her, or anything about his finances, but I know he never could have indulged his perversion with Mom around. But with her gone, he was free to do what he wanted with Thomas and me. So that was my revenge fantasy: discover some evidence of foul play and send him to jail, where he'd have no power, and everyone would have power over him. But of course, that's impossible now."
BZZZZZZT!
Jack didn't want to know the answer, and yet he had to ask.
"Did he ever… touch you?"
She shook her head. "No, thank God—as if God has anything to do with this. No… he just liked to look, and our pictures were currency he could use to get more pictures to look at."
BZZZZZZT!
She looked up. "Got some more?"
Jack shook his head. "Nope." He pointed to the huge tangle of shredded paper mounded around her feet and the shredder. "You got them all."
"No," she said. "Not them all. Nowhere near them all."
"It's a start," Jack said.
All the steam seemed to be seeping out of her. She was deflating before his eyes.
"Thomas has a set," she said softly. "He has what he calls the master collection."
"What's that?"
"That's what he calls that man's personal collection of—what did you call it?"
"Pictures of children being sexually abused. Why would he want that?"
"To blackmail me, I think. But I think he's bluffing. He's in so many of those pictures… exposing me means exposing himself. He's sunk pretty low, but not that low."
"Yet," Jack said. He had an idea. "You know where he lives?"
She nodded. "Not far from here. Why?"
"I've got a few questions I want to ask your half brother. Want to come along? Can you face him?"
She hesitated, then, "Yes. I can face him. I want to face him. Are we bringing the shredder?"
"Nah. Too bulky. But I'm sure we can think of other ways to get the same results."
Alicia stood and reached for her coat. She seemed really into this.
"Let's go."
13.
They were waiting in the darkened, stuffy, slightly rotten-smelling front room of Thomas's apartment when he got home.
Alicia had watched with amazement as Jack, using just a few little wirelike tools, got them through one door after another in Thomas's apartment building. They'd been waiting only twenty minutes or so before they heard the sound of a key in the lock. Jack sprang up and disappeared, leaving Alicia sitting alone.
Thomas stepped in and turned on the light. He froze like a deer in headlights when he saw her.
"Alicia? What are you—?"
Jack moved from behind the door then and slammed it closed. Thomas jumped to his left and stared at Jack.
Alicia saw the color leach from his pocked face.
"Who?"
"A friend of your sister's," Jack said, grabbing him by his collar and shoving his pear-shaped body across the room. "Sit!"
Alicia was startled by the snarl on Jack's face. He looked so… feral. Not at all like the man she'd opened up to less than an hour ago. Which was the real Jack?
Thomas stumbled and came up against a chair. He folded his ungainly body into it.