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By Root 731 0

do his bidding, he'd set up a stable of girls to run drugs from his operation to his distributors. The girls he bought from established pimps in other cities, in each case a straight cash transaction, which each of the girls found ominous. This time Pam tried to run almost at once, but she'd been caught and beaten severely enough to break three ribs, only later to learn of her good fortune that the first lesson hadn't gone further. Henry had also used the opportunity to cram barbiturates into her, which both attenuated the pain and increased her dependence. He'd augmented the treatment by making her available to any of his associates who wanted her. In this, Henry had achieved what all the others had failed to do. He had finally cowed her spirit.

Over a period of five months, the combination of beatings, sexual abuse, and drugs had depressed her to a nearly catatonic state until she'd been jarred back to reality only four weeks earlier by tripping over the body of a twelve-year-old boy in a doorway, a needle still in his arm. Remaining outwardly docile, Pam had struggled to cut her drug use. Henry's other friends hadn't complained. She was a much better lay this way, they thought, and their male egos had attributed it to their prowess rather than her increased level of consciousness. She'd waited for her chance, waiting for a time when Henry was away somewhere, because the others got looser when he wasn't around. Only five days earlier she'd packed what little she had and bolted. Penniless - Henry had never let them have money - she'd hitched her way out of town.

'Tell me about Henry,' Kelly said softly when she'd finished.

'Thirty, black, about your height.'

'Did any other girls get away?'

Pam's voice went cold as ice. 'I only know of one who tried. It was around November. He ... killed her. He thought she was going to the cops, and' - she looked up - 'he made us all watch. It was terrible.'

Kelly said quietly, 'So why did you try, Pam?'

'I'd rather die than do that again,' she whispered, the thought now out in the open. 'I wanted to die. That little boy. Do you know what happens? You just stop. Everything stops. And I was helping. I helped kill him.'

'How did you get out?'

'Night before ... I ... fucked them all... so they'd like me, let me ... let me out of their sight. You understand now?'

'You did what was necessary to escape,' Kelly replied. It required every bit of his strength to keep his voice even. 'Thank God.'

'I wouldn't blame you if you took me back and set me on my way. Maybe Daddy was right, what he said about me.'

'Pam, do you remember going to church?'

'Yes.'

'Do you remember the story that ends, "Go forth and sin no more"? You think that I've never done something wrong? Never been ashamed? Never been scared? You're not alone, Pam. Do you have any idea how brave you've been to tell me all this?'

Her voice by now was entirely devoid of emotion. 'You have a right to know.'

'And now I do, and it doesn't change anything.' He paused for a second. 'Yes, it does. You're even gutsier than I thought you were, honey.'

'Are you sure? What about later?'

'The only "later" thing I'm worried about is those people you left behind,' Kelly said.

'If they ever find me ...' Emotion was coming back now. Fear. 'Every time we go back to the city, they might see me.'

'We'll be careful about that,' Kelly said.

'I'll never be safe. Never.'

'Yeah, well, there's two ways to handle that. Yon can just keep running and hiding. Or you can help put them away.'

She shook her head emphatically. 'The girl they killed. They knew. They knew she was going to the cops. That's why I can't trust the police. Besides, you don't know how scary these people are.'

Sarah had been right about something else, Kelly saw. Pam was wearing her halter again, and the sun had given definition to the marks on her back. There were places which the sun didn't darken as it did the others. Echoes of the welts and bloody marks that others had made for their pleasure. It had all started with Pierre Lamarck, or more correctly, Donald Madden, small,