"Daddy Loved Me, This I Know"
Nancy was happy for one sweet moment in time. She had been rescued by her
hero -- her Father. There was very little she knew with any certainty in her
life, but she knew for a fact that her Father loved her. That was something he
never gave her reason to doubt. She hadn't told her Dad anything about the
horror that was her life at home, but he knew something was wrong. He knew and
he did what he could to protect his daughter. The court had said he was a
disruptive influence for her and hadn't even him visitation rights, but he visited
her at every opportunity despite a court order. Today, he had seen something in
her eyes, a hint of terror. He saw something in her walk. There was a pain that
made her steps careful and awkward. He had decided that she couldn't go back to
the life that was destroying her. He took her and ran.
It may have been a cheap motel room, but to Nancy it was a place of safety and
harmony with the only man in this world that she knew she could trust. She had
fallen asleep easily for the first time in recent memory. She felt confident
that there would be no monster to interrupt her sleep tonight. She was enjoying
a sweet dream when her dreams became full of a glowing, throbbing, blue light.
She was startled awake when the frame of the motel door was shattered by a
heavy foot. Someone wrapped a blanket around her and carried her out and into
the cold night. As she was being put into the back of a car, she looked over to
see her Father in back of a police car. He mouthed the words, "I love
you" as the police car pulled away.
Soon she was in a white, sterile hospital room wearing nothing but an
ill-fitting paper gown. Without stopping to ask permission, the doctor poked
and prodded her in personal ways. Although this doctor was gentle and had
witnesses watching him and writing down his comments, she winced when he
touched her. It reminded her of the other hands that touched her -- but in the
dark and in secret. When the doctor raised her legs to show the others the
bruises on the backs of her legs, they all knew that this child had been
abused. Kids don't fall down and bruise the backs of their legs. The doctor
asked, "How often does your Dad see you?"
She answered truthfully, "Three times a week after school."
The doctor asked, "Do you know what sexual intercourse
is?"
She said, "Yes."
The doctor asked, "Does he have sexual intercourse with you every time he
sees you?"
She shouted, "NO!"
The doctor dictated into a microphone, "Subject doesn't have sex with his
daughter every time he sees her -- perhaps only twice a week."
She shouted, "I didn't say that! Erase it. Erase it now!"
The doctor patted her on the knees and said, "Don't worry Darling. We
won't tell him that you told us. It will be our little secret."
Alone in the exam room, Nancy debated with herself about how to make it known
that her Daddy didn't do what they thought he did. But how could she tell them
without letting them know the terrible secret of who had been hurting her. She
overheard people talking in the hallway. They said that the attacks on little
girls in town had started about the time that Mr. Adams had gotten a divorce
and was denied access to his daughter. They were sure that they had the right
man.
Nancy was able to sleep through the entire night in the hospital. She enjoyed
having a night of peace despite the situation her Father was in. She knew that
he was safely in the hands of the police and nothing would happen to him. Policeman
used science. They would know the truth in an instant -- like Columbo on TV.
They would know who really hurt her. They would protect her and let her Father
go. She had faith. Everything would be alright. She wouldn't have to say a word.
They would know. Soon she was dressed and a couple Deputy Sheriffs came to take
her home. The police car was going past the park hear her home when she saw a
man hanging by his neck from a lamp post. She couldn't take her eyes off him.
As the figure turned in the wind, she saw a sign that was pinned to his chest
that read "Child Killer." She looked higher and saw his face.
"DADDY!" she screamed.
Deputy Cook who was sitting in the back seat with Nancy said, "Don't worry
child. He'll never lay a finger ... or anything else, on you ever again! The
vigilantes got to him. They saved the taxpayers the cost of a trail.”
Deputy Philips driving the car shouted, "SHUT THE F**K UP! Whatever the
man was, he was her father. She should never have seen what she just saw. That
man was innocent because he was never proven guilty in a court of law. Now he
will never be proven guilty and we will never know for sure that our daughters
are safe. I joined law enforcement to take the law out of the hands of butchers
like the ones that did this. Don't ever let me hear you praise the work of a
vigilante again or so help me ...."
Deputy Cook said, "Or you'll do what? I could have your badge for what you
just said! If you ever say anything like that to me again or threaten me,
you'll never serve as an officer of the law again -- anywhere." He turned
to Nancy and said, "I beg your pardon, Darlin', if anything I said or did
upset you in the slightest." Deputy Cook squeezed her knee and slid his
hand up he leg -- stroking her thigh with his thick fingers. Nancy slid as far
as she could to the far side of the car but Deputy Cook slid with her. As much
as she was scared of what awaited her at home, she was relieved when the car
pulled in the driveway so she could get away from Deputy Cook.
Nancy jumped out of the car. Her mother and step-father were waiting for her
on the front porch. Instead of running to her mother, she ran up to Deputy
Philips, threw her arms around him and said, "Thank you for saying my Dad
is innocent. He is! Thank you! THANK YOU!" Nancy continued to hold tight when
her Mom came to pull Nancy away from him. Nancy looked up at the officer and
cried, "Please, don't leave me with them. PLEASE!"
Deputy Philips said, "I have no choice but leave you here unless you give
me a reason why I shouldn't." Nancy said nothing. Deputy Philips pulled
something from his pocket and handed it to Nancy. He looked into her eyes and
said, "If you ever need me, call." She clenched her fist tightly
around the business card he had given her. She was still crying as the cruiser
backed out of the driveway. As he was pulling away, Deputy Philips watched
angrily as Nancy's step-father roughly pushed Nancy towards the house.
That night, Nancy sat watching herself in the mirror as she brushed her long
hair. She said, "I hope that someday soon, I'm not so pretty. I hope that
I look hard and mean and cold like my mother so that no man will ever want me.
I want to be strong. So strong that no man can ever make me do anything I don't
want to." She found some scissors from her craft box and began cutting her
hair. She threw the long tresses into the trash can. Then she went to the
closet and gathered everything pink and threw it in a pile on the closet floor.
Then she threw all the remaining dresses into a pile except for a baggy
olive-colored dress and an unflattering black one. Tomorrow she would go to the
Goodwill store and buy pants -- boy pants. She swore to herself that, as soon
as she had pants to wear, she would never wear a dress again.
She went to bed and tried to sleep. But she knew HE would come. As soon as her
mother was asleep, he would come and do things to her. She thought about
earlier attempts to make him stop -- attempts that had failed. One time she
had stopped cleaning herself. She smelled so bad that the teachers had sent notes
to her mother and her mother had screamed at her. Even then, she refused to
bathe, but he still came to her. Finally, he couldn't stand her stench so he
carried her into the bathroom and gave her a thorough scrubbing. She had kicked
and screamed and fought this time. He hit her harder than ever before, yet she
still screamed and he seemed to enjoy it all the more. Then he had taken her
back to her bedroom and bound and gagged her with the clothes he had torn off
her. Then he took his pleasure from her again. As he did what he always did, Nancy realized for the first time that her mother MUST know what he was doing to her. She
couldn't have slept through the fight she put up, yet she didn't come to save
her. That hurt worse than what her step-father was doing. After that night, Nancy gave him no excuse to bathe her again. She watched her mother closely after that
night. She began to notice something almost as bad as her mother's tolerance
of her step-father's abuse. Her mother treated her as if she was a rival for
her step-father's affection. Her mother was petty, jealous and vindictive -- yet
she blocked every effort her ex-husband made to get custody of Nancy. She needed Nancy to keep her husband. AND she didn't want the man she had thrown
out 2 years before to get what he wanted -- at any cost. Now Nancy's father was
dead. There was no one left to rescue her. She heard a sound at the door and
her thoughts came back to the present. She held her covers tightly about her
and gritted her teeth as the door creaked slowly open.
The next week, Nancy returned to the Sheriff's office with Deputy Philips
business card in her hand. She was happy to hear the clerk shout, "Deputy
Philips, there is a boy here to see you!" She was glad that she was no
longer easily recognized as a girl. Deputy Philips was genuinely happy to see
her. She asked for a job. He said he was sorry he couldn't help -- that the
jobs available for anyone, let alone a minor, were few and far between. She
explained that his words had inspired her to become a police officer. She would
do it with or without his help. She told him that she would do anything to help
out just to be able to be there and learn whatever she could. She was no
groupie and would pull her own weight. No salary was necessary. She would
clean, take out the trash, file reports, type, wash and wax police vehicles,
whatever.
It took a couple days, but Deputy Philips got permission and some educational
grant money to pay for Nancy to work part time at the Sheriff's Office. At the
end of her first year, the Deputies and Sheriff Jefferies gave Nancy a badge and a certificate naming her an "Honorary Deputy." The nickname
"Windy" caught on because she blew through the station like a
whirlwind. The Sheriff was proud of the spit and polish look the station had
after Windy had been there. Nancy amazed the officers because she had learned
the manuals by heart. Seasoned officers came to her on the sly with technical
questions about procedure and protocol.
Nancy learned the computer language Fortran so that she could make simple
programs for their computer mainframe as well as do the tedious typing at the
card punching machine for routine data entry. No one had ever caught her in a
single data entry error -- a record unmatched by anyone else who had attempted
the task. Nancy performed routine searches for similarities between different
crimes to determine whether they were committed by the same perpetrator. She
asked why the results were always limited to their county. She was told that
each county maintained their own databases. They laughed when she asked why the
data bases weren't linked. They laughed at the idea of linking the computers
until Nancy said that the lack of co-ordination between counties aided and abetted
the criminals by allowing them to simply cross county lines to reduce their
chance of getting caught. Some appreciated Nancy’s candor. Others didn't.
Nancy spent a couple weeks typing letters to every county Sheriff's office in the adjoining states. She specified the search parameters for a specific
search she wanted to have run. She provided punched cards for a specific
program they could run so that the request she made wouldn’t require much of
anyone’s time. She sent the letters out all at once. When she received responses,
she reviewed the results of the searches and formulated a second search she
wanted run. One of the Sheriffs from another state called to see what the
requested searches were all about. Sheriff Jefferies told him that he had no
idea but that he would find out. He asked the person in charge of office mail
and they laughed about how there had been a lot of mail recently addressing to
"Deputy Windy." The Sheriff was not amused. He confronted Nancy and asked if she was aware of the penalty for impersonating an officer. Nancy cited the statutes pertaining to such an offense and then produced her badge and the
certificate signed by him making her an honorary deputy. He asked her what she
thought she was doing.
Nancy pulled out a county map with a series of X's on it. Each X was labeled
with the name of a murdered girl. Sheriff Jefferies looked at the map and
stated, "These are the girls that your father raped and murdered." Nancy glared at him for a moment then took him to the janitor's closet. On the wall was a
large map including their state and the states surrounding it. In the map were
pins. Each pin held a piece of paper with a girl's name and time of death on
it.
Nancy said, "The pins show the deaths of young females whose bodies exhibited
that they all experienced the same type of abuse before their deaths. The dates
of the deaths show a pattern of relocation of the perpetrator. Many of the
deaths occurred in places nowhere near where my father lived when the crimes
were committed. Many occurred after my father's murder and continue to this
day. Many of the deaths are considered solved. Men are behind bars for the
crimes and my father is in the grave, yet girls keep dying exactly the same
way. Of the twenty counties where deaths occurred, one William K. Edwards was
questioned and released for lack of evidence in each of 4 counties. Mr. Edwards
has a record of sex-related offenses and .assault against young females going
back to his adolescence -- at which point his records are sealed. By rechecking
Mr. Edward’s whereabouts during the years when the deaths occurred, he never
lived more than 10 miles from where any of the murder victims lived at the time
they were killed. None of the counties ever checked about similar deaths of
young females outside of their own counties or enquired of the FBI about any
similar on-going investigations regarding the abduction and murder of little
girls."
After a pro-longed silence, Sheriff Jefferies said, "Windy, you had no
right to access this information. You exceeded your authority. HELL! You had NO
authority! You're lucky I don't have you up on charges. Any judge who heard you
go on like you just did wouldn't hesitate a minute to try you as an adult. Just
be lucky I'm settling for this -- YOU'RE FIRED! And give me that fake badge and
certificate. I can't have you make use of them ever again."
Three days later, Sheriff Jefferies’ name was all over the television and
newspapers. He had single-handedly harnessed the computers of 5 states to solve
the case of nearly 80 missing and murdered girls in a 4 state area. A surprise
raid on the house rented by William K. Edwards found not only Mr. Edwards, but
two missing teen aged girls alive in a small room in his basement as well as
"trophies" of many of his other victims. Since there was no doubt of
his guilt, Mr. Edwards confessed to everything including murdering many girls
whose bodies had never been found. He led the police to many of the burial
sites he used. Sheriff Jefferies used his new celebrity status to speak out on
the need for a national crimes data base. There was serious talk about making
Jefferies the next Governor of the state.
Nancy didn't care that she didn't get credit. She cared nothing for glory or
attention. Little was said about Nancy's father being proven innocent of the
murders. Everyone knew in their heart that he had sexually abused his daughter
and deserved what happened to him based on that alone. Nancy found a new
strength from her experience at the Sheriff's Office. She stared long and hard
into the mirror and decided that she couldn't wait to be rescued. She would
have to rescue herself -- be her own hero. She said to the mirror, "Papa,
you loved me. I know you did. It's time I loved ME too!"
Nancy's step-father came down for breakfast. She poured him a bowl of corn
flakes and handed him the milk. He poured the milk on his cereal and began
eating at his normal, fast pace. Suddenly he stopped eating and shouted,
"DAMN IT GIRL! These aren't my corn flakes!"
Nancy said, "Sure they are," and handed him the box.
Her step-father took a couple more bites and said, "It tastes different
today."
She asked, "Like almonds? Bitter almonds?"
He said, "Yeah!"
Nancy said, "Smell the milk."
He smelled the milk and said, "Yeah. It's in the milk. Whatever it is,
it's in the milk."
Nancy asked, "Ever hear of anything other than almonds that tastes like
bitter almonds."
He thought a second then shouted, "YOU LITTLE B***H! You poisoned
me!"
Nancy threw him a small bottle. The label read, "Almond Food Flavoring."
Nancy said, "It could have just as easily been poison. Living with you,
I have many opportunities. Working for the Sheriff's office, I learned dozens
of ways to kill you and get away with it. Believe me. If you touch me again,
you’d better kill me or I'll kill you. But if you kill me, know this: I've left
letters with friends detailing everything you ever did to me and naming you as
the person most likely to have killed me. If I disappear, those letters will
reach people who will see that you get the death penalty -- if a lynch mob
doesn't get you first! So you'd better make sure nothing happens to me. Your
life depends on it."
Nancy's step-father never laid a hand on her again. Nancy Adams graduated at
the top of her class at the police academy. After years of experience, she got
an opportunity to step in and complete the term of office of Sheriff Ethan in Smallville, Kansas. On her first day on the job, she locked herself into an office with a
computer and told herself, "Let's see if there are any patterns behind the
strange goings on in this community. Who should I be keeping my eye on? I'd
better not find any vigilantes running around -- not in MY town."
The End.
*****
“Better, Someday” [Sequel to "Daddy Loved Me. This I Know"]
Sheriff Adams got the call on a busy Tuesday afternoon. The woman she had hired to sit with her daughter after school until she could get off work yelled in a rapid voice, “I am leaving this minute! I won’t spend another moment of my time with this terror child!” The Sheriff calmly got up from her desk and headed for the door saying, “I’m done for the day. I’m heading home. Don’t call unless the planet explodes.”
The Deputy replied, “But you can’t just leave now. What about ….?”
Sheriff Adams never turned or stopped. She just said, “Handle it” and the door swung shut behind her.
Crystal was a problem child. No agency had been able to place her for more than a day. She had fits of temper that could make the strongest man weep in frustration. She had run away from many of the foster homes. Sheriff Adams had returned her only to find that she was no longer wanted. The last time, she said to Crystal, “I guess no one else will have you. I’d better keep you myself.” Sheriff Adams was single and had a stressful job. There were many demands on her time. No agency would even consider her for a moment as an ideal parent, but in Crystal’s case, they made an exception. The two had a remarkable bond. Crystal had lived with Sheriff Adams for a month without incident when this call came.
Sheriff Adams kept her house in immaculate order. She entered to find more damage than you would expect from some tornados. If it had been breakable, it was broken. Nancy looked at the damage with a steady gaze without the slightest reaction to what she saw. Then Crystal rushed into the room like a whirlwind looking for something else to break. She stopped and turned when she saw Nancy. She froze like a statue waiting for the inevitable to happen. When Nancy did nothing but continue to stare at her with a smile and a twinkle in her eye, Crystal shouted, “WELL, AREN’T YOU GOING TO HIT ME NOW?!!!”
Nancy just continued to smile and said, “Darling, I think you’ve been hit enough.”
Crystal stared at her new Mother for a minute then looked around the room at the damage she had caused. Her face contorted and she wailed in pain and grief. In that moment she was suddenly in her Mother’s arms. Nancy stroked her hair and kissed her on the top of the head and softly said, “It will be better someday. I promise.”
The End