Chapter 38

Bleeker Farm

Outside Hume, VA

Spencer

Spencer joined the others at the window. In the gathering gloom outside a large, battered SUV had pulled up. He watched as two men got out of the front seats and moved to the back passenger doors.

"The boys go armed, you know." Elizabeth said. "So don't get too jumpy."

"Why?" Morgan asked.

"A lot of the men down there do." She replied. "Maybe its one-upmanship, I don't know."

Spencer watched as an older boy or younger man came around to this side of the car. And then somehow they pulled someone else out. That must be the sister, Spencer thought, as she went from the car straight to over the driver's shoulder. He felt Elizabeth sigh beside him, and for a moment, he felt her head on his shoulder.

"We'll go upstairs with them, and talk to them a bit first." Nanny was saying. "If they want to talk to the cops, at least to begin with, we'll call you up. But I wouldn't expect it."

"That's understandable. It's hard to report on your parents, even when they hurt you." Morgan replied.

"What's wrong?" Spencer quietly asked Elizabeth.

"She's not walking." Elizabeth replied.

The four newcomers reached the porch and then came in. The man who had been driving was easily Morgan's match for size and muscle development, and easily climbed the stairs with the slender young woman over his shoulder. The clearly younger passenger went up as well, his bearing rigid and cold. They were followed up by Elizabeth and Nanny, and the door closed behind them.

The fourth man, who'd ridden in the front passenger seat, turned to them with an open smile and easy manner. "Let me guess, you're the FBI guys. Sam Keillor." He offered his hand to both of them as introductions went around, and only chuckled a little when Spencer introduced himself.

"So, what's your story?" Morgan asked him. When Sam looked at him for clarification he added. "Why are you doing this?"

"Mostly for Danny, but anything I can do to throw a wrench into that system is payback for me." Like the rest of them had, Sam shed a number of layers of outerwear, and was now digging through the chicken, building a couple of plates.

"Why did you leave?" Spencer asked. "As I understand it, that system favors males; it's unusual for boys to leave."

"Depends on the boy," Sam replied. "See, back when I was sixteen I had a boyfriend. He made the mistake of coming out to his father, and his father beat him to death."

"The cops didn't do anything?" Morgan asked.

"His daddy was the sheriff." Sam replied. "That Sunday every man in the community stood up and pledged to do the same to any of their sons, including my father. I took the hint, stole three hundred from the old man's wallet and hitched a ride to the nearest Greyhound station."

She's right, Spencer thought, this theology is ruining lives. "So how did you and Danny meet?"

"Through Rabbi Shulman," Sam replied, sitting down to supper. "The Pastor at the shelter I was working at told me about what was starting up. I went to meet the Rabbi; he invited me over for dinner and a meeting, and there was Danny. That was, hell, five years ago." They heard the sound of the door opening upstairs. "We tell the ones just out that we're brothers." He said, much more quietly. "Getting out is enough to process at first."

Spencer looked up at the two coming down the stairs. The one he assumed was Danny had a face as open and easy as his lover. The younger man with him was nearly in shock. His eyes were miles away, and he was clearly in such fear that he was almost trembling. "Swear, your daddy's not going to find us here. We'll be okay for a day or so." Danny was saying. "Now there's chicken for supper, as much as you like. We'll take some up to your sister when Nanny says it's okay. Okay, this here's Pete." He said, by way of introduction. "Pete, I'm gonna assume these two are Morgan and Reid. They're here to take some notes and pictures in case your sister wants to go to the police later."

"They cops?" The younger man asked in a flat voice.

"Yeah, they are. But they're not here officially. They're just going to take some notes and pictures in case, if your sister wants." Danny carefully repeated himself.

Pete looked right through them for a moment. "Okay, you can go up."

"Pete." Sam said quietly. He waited for the younger man to look at him before he continued. "It's up to your sister to make those decisions now. She's old enough. You need to go up and ask her."

Pete blinked at them again. "They ain't gonna…"

"Nope," Sam replied. "They're all right. Hell, the skinny one here's courting Reverend Bess. She ain't gonna hold with no pervert."

Spencer tried to object, but he was sipping at his soda at the time, and choked. Morgan chuckled and slapped him on the back, hard.

Pete watched this with no emotion, "All right." He turned and headed back up the stairs.

Spencer had been reading Pete's body language, listening carefully. He's not a psychopath, he thought, but he could be. He's right on the edge. He looked over at Morgan, who nodded carefully. He had picked up on it too.

In the meantime Danny had been working on building his supper. Morgan looked over and asked him, "Okay, and what's your story?"

"Oh, my father was going to marry my oldest sister off to this guy in his forties. Sharon begged me to do something, anything, because she didn't want to be married to such an old man. 'Course I had a better idea of what marriage meant that she did, so I knew it was wrong. I went to our father and told him so. He tried to beat me for not honoring his wishes, but I was a little too big for that by then." Danny smiled over his chicken thigh. "I knew it wasn't going to go well for either Sharon or me by the time Dad woke up, and I had a car, so we took off for the big city."

"What happened to her?" Spencer asked.

"Well, she ended up marrying another guy who got out before us. He joined the NYPD; she just finished college this past year. She was gonna be a school librarian, might still, but a little problem got in the way. I'm gonna be an uncle here in another few months." Danny bit into his chicken, beaming with pride.

"Congratulations, man." Morgan said, raising his soda in salute.

"Y'all can come up." Pete said from the top of the stairs.

Morgan and Spencer headed up the stairs. At the top Elizabeth stepped out of the room, and right in front of Spencer. "No," was all she said.

"I've seen worse before," Spencer told her, gently moving her out of the way. "I'm the best witness they can have, you know that." He watched her turn away, her face a mask. Then he followed Morgan in.

The lantern filled the room with a harsh light. The young woman lying on her stomach on the bed had been wearing a somewhat shapeless dress that covered her from ankle to wrist to collarbone. Now her long curls were pulled out of the way, and her dress was open to her hips and pulled up to the tops of her thighs. She'd been beaten past the point of punishment to flat out torture, Spencer saw. Her skin was nearly black from the bruising and was criss-crossed with long, red welts.

"How old are you Martha?" Morgan was asking, in a gentle voice.

"Eighteen." She answered.

In many places the welts had split open and were trickling blood. Spencer could see that many of them dipped under where the dress was covering her backside. She was battered from knee to shoulders.

"Who did this to you?"

"My daddy," she replied

When Nanny moved to clean up another split Spencer saw Martha's side. It looked like whatever was used had wrapped around her torso, and dug many gouges out of the tender skin under the arm, along the side of the abdomen, along the side of the breast. Female convicts going to Australia used to be deathly afraid of enduring ships punishment, he recalled out of nowhere, not because of the effects on the back but because of the extra pain they endured when the tips of the cat wrapped around to the side and front.

"Why?"

"Because I didn't want to marry Lester Billingsworth, and I told him so."

Something was trying to make a connection in Spencer's brain. Something dark and cold was trying to climb to the surface.

"How old is Lester Billingsworth?"

"Fifty-two."

It was something Rossi had said? Or was it Morgan? Or did he read it? Why couldn't he remember?

"What did he hit you with?"

"A switch at first, then his belt for a while and then he got some phone cord from the wall."

Something snapped inside him. Leaving the interview to Morgan Spencer turned and left the room. Just outside he encountered Elizabeth waiting, just watching him, her eyes gone large and impossibly sad. He took her by the arm and tugged her around the corner, into an unused bedroom. Once there he pulled her into his arms.

"Spencer." she said, as a plea and an apology and a warning. But she didn't move, she didn't push him away as he tugged her shirt out of the back of her waistband and slipped his hands up under it. He'd never done that before, would never have dared, but now he gently ran his fingers over the network of scars that covered her back, that must cover her from shoulders to knees, he realized. How many times has she been the girl on the bed, he wondered, how many times was she beaten until she bled? The thought opened a pit of anger in him that he didn't know he possessed, made him want to howl for her.

"Don't think of that." She said, so quietly it barely broke the deep silence in that room. "I'm here and I'm alive. I'm not that anymore. Life is good now."

"I didn't realize…" He said, and stopped. She'd said it a few times, that Thorne had beaten her. But he hadn't realized what she meant, not like that.

"It was a long time ago; twelve years ago." She tucked her head under his chin, "Is it wrong to be glad it didn't happen you?" she asked.

Spencer held her very tightly. For a moment the scent of gardenias and supper and newly fallen snow was replaced with burning fish livers and human waste and the copper stink of fresh blood. He clung to her a moment, clung to the real and the here and the now. "It did." He said, very quietly.

Just then there was a tap at the door. "Uhh, oh, hey," Morgan's head just came around the door enough to see, and then pulled back. "Nanny needs the Reverend's help." He said.

Without a word, Elizabeth stepped away, her eyes clearly dark and wide and confused in the faint moonlight. She stepped away and then out to the room next door.

Morgan looked over at him as he stepped out into the hallway. "You okay?" He asked.

I have to tell her, Spencer thought, I have to tell someone. I do. "Yeah," he said. "I'm fine,"