Chapter seventeen
Sheriff's station
Carthage, IL

Morgan

Morgan and Blake took Susanna after they were finished with the other two sisters. They were hoping she would be able to flesh out whatever they found in the other interviews. And privately Morgan admitted that after what happened last time he wanted to get to know the girl who was making his little brother's eyes sparkle like that. "When did you first find out that Henry was coming to live with you?"

"When I heard him screaming; most of the children know better than to scream like that when they're being beaten."

"Don't you mean chastised?" Blake asked.

Susanna lifted her head. "Have you ever heard of Robert J. Lifton?"

"Yes, he wrote Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalisim." She looked over at Morgan. "It's considered one of the definitive works on thought reform, commonly called brainwashing."

"Lifton lists eight criteria that must be in place for a group to successfully brainwash its members." Susanna went on, "One criterion is using words and phrases incorrectly or even oddly in order to create a jargon specific to the in-group."

"It helps define group cohesion, separates them from the other." Blake agreed. "It also helps to short-circuit your ability to think critically."

"I try to avoid that if I can." Susanna went on. "I prefer to think with a clear head. Anyway I've been there, it's a beating. So I went downstairs to see what was going on and Leah told me that Pastor Goodwin had found our Lost Boy and brought him home to us, and that father was chastising him for not identifying with his real family. That was my first sign that something was wasn't right. I remembered hearing, oh, a few shows on the radio about the adoption process, and it's supposed to be this long, drawn out thing where they interview all the adults in the house, at least, so I knew this wasn't that. And this child was screaming for his parents, so I figured that something was seriously wrong."

"So why didn't you call the police?" Morgan asked

"No phone. I actually tried to find Mamma's but groping her desk only got me so far. I considered walking to town but I'm not supposed to be in the sun for more than fifteen minutes."

"Even with sunscreen?"

She chuckled. "Sunscreen encourages vanity and vanity is a sin." She paused a beat. "Don't look for logic, it's not there. Anyway, later that night he tried to run away. When he realized all the doors were locked he tried looking for a place to hide and ended up under my bed. I was trying to fall asleep to Coast to Coast, so I noticed and we started talking. When I heard that his Mother and Godfather were in the FBI I figured if we wrote to them they could find us, but neither of us knew what you needed to know. There was no way to call us or write us back without Father knowing. That's when I thought of the radio show."

"Ingenious." Blake said.

"I'm just glad it worked."

"What happened the next day?" Morgan asked.

"They started in with First-time obedience training. I had warned him ahead of time that this was going to happen, I told him just do what they tell you, say yes mommy or daddy and run and do it, even if it sounds silly, even though they aren't really your mom or dad, just go or else you'll get hit again. He learned quickly." She sighed. "I didn't even know my sister had kitchen toys, let alone that he'd be interested. I am sorry about that, I would have warned him."

"It's all right." Blake told her. "Your coaching clearly spared him a great deal of trauma."

"What happened when your family left the house?" Morgan asked.

"I never got to go with them. Either Rebekah or Leah would stay home with me, usually Leah."

"Do you know if anyone else received a Lost Boy?"

"Well, I think it was Agent Rossi who said that there were seven other boys missing? I'm sure they went to other church families but I have no idea which ones. I'm sorry."

"According to the medical reports we have all of the children are underweight. Why weren't your parents feeding you?"

"I'm not sure. It might be poverty; we don't eat what doesn't come from the farm. I'm not sure how much my parents make…"

"WIC? Food Stamps?"

"You mean Socialism?" She smiled. "I tried suggesting we have beans and rice once, but Momma told me Father wouldn't eat 'hippy food'. So it was meat every night, even if there was only enough to flavor the sauce. It could also be that they were trying to retard puberty. Pastor Goodwin was convinced that God was disgusted by women's menstrual cycles, that it was the sign of the sin of Eve, that the more cycles you had the more you were tempted toward the sin of lust, so you should get pregnant as soon after menarche as possible and stay pregnant as much as possible. Funny how that's not working."

"What do you mean?" Blake asked.

"No one is getting married. Look, in order to get married a boy needs to own his own home and business, outright, and have three years of living in the bank, minimum. Not easy, especially since none of us have SSI numbers and you're not supposed to use credit anyway."

"So how do you do that?' Morgan wanted to know.

"Get a job that will pay cash and no questions asked and save up. Now from what I've heard over the radio the economy hasn't been doing well the past few years, so that's probably not going to happen. And on top of that once you hit puberty you're not allowed to touch anyone but your parents and not allowed to talk to any boys, or vice versa. Marriages are arranged once a boy meets the criteria. This is not a recipe for eliminating periods through childbirth."

"What happens if you don't get married?"

"Everyone gets married eventually. Marriage is the normative state. There goes that jargon again." She chuckled a little. "Thank goodness Kitty taught me otherwise."

"Kitty?" Blake asked.

"Kitty Larson, my tutor. She and her husband joined the church not long after they married, before that she taught public school, special-ed. She taught me how to read Braille, how to use a cane, all sorts of things. She came over twice a week, from when I was eight until I was twelve." Susanna's smile took on a gentle quality. "She also taught me that being blind and funny looking didn't mean I was inherently evil. That I wasn't going to poison my family with my very being."

"Is that why you had your own room?' Blake asked. "So you wouldn't lead others into sin?"

Susanna nodded. "She talked my parents into lifting the rule against touching, for Rebekah and Leah, so I could get around the farm at least. And she bought me my radio. She said I could hear the whole world if I listened carefully enough."

"Where is she now?" Morgan asked.

"Toward the end she grew disenchanted with the church, she wanted out but that can be a difficult thing. She taught me how to think for myself then, how to really think about what I was reading and hearing, if it made sense at all. Eventually her and her husband tried to move on, move to Chicago. A few months later she stopped writing."

"What do you know about the Black Knights?"

"It's something my brothers are involved in. I know there's some kind of video game involved, their bedroom is right under mine and I can hear it sometimes. They both brought it back from summer camp."

"The one at Pastor Goodwin's ranch?" She nodded. "Who goes to this camp?"

"Every boy who's family is a full church member, the year they turn sixteen. I remember them saying that Robert Munk was going to have to drop out when he married Abigail, so I assume it's from sixteen until you get married, whenever that is."

"They play video games, what else do they do?"

"Shoot guns out in the far field; try to blow things up, tinker with stuff out in the barn. I know they wanted to take fencing lessons but there weren't any teachers around here."

A cold dread settled in Morgan's stomach. "Blow things up?'

"Yeah. Some of those explosions got pretty loud."

"Thank you. We may have more questions later. Just wait here for a few." He and Blake stepped into the hall and he pulled out his phone. "Hotch, we may have a problem."