Little Girl Lost
Disclaimer: If you recognize it, it's not mine. This story is on an AU track.
Trigger warning for child abuse in the third section of this chapter.
Chapter 8: More Questions Than Answers
"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," the unit Sergeant said as she stepped into the interview room.
"It's no problem," Mike assured her. "You look a little shorthanded, you missing somebody?"
She couldn't help but smile. "Our Lieutenant is temporarily reassigned, so instead of him running things with four detectives, I'm running things with three. Nice catch."
He smiled too. "They didn't tell you? I used to be a cop."
"No, they didn't." She seated herself across from him. "I just need to take a statement from you."
"Right. So I was walking home..."
He explained to her, just as he had to the officers on scene, exactly what he had seen and what had happened when he went over to help. He described the visible injuries and her reactions to being touched or spoken to.
"A lot of people walked right by," she commented when Mike had come to the point in his story where the first responders had arrived. "You were across the street, and yet you noticed her and stopped to help."
"You want to know why," he guessed, and she nodded. "Like I said, I was a cop, and the instincts don't go away. I notice things and people that aren't right, same as I'd notice if a potential suspect looked like he was ready to bolt. As for the why -" He stopped abruptly, drawing in a sharp breath. The idea of telling a virtual stranger about his abusive past was almost too painful to imagine. He'd done it once, and it had been agonizing. But now he was already raw from the memories the girl's gaze had brought to mind. He should tell her, he knew, but he couldn't.
He finally settled on a true, if partial, explanation that didn't force him to open those wounds further. "There was this case I worked when I was in homicide...Didi Lowenstein. Six-year-old girl, a victim of pretty much constant abuse. By the time we got to her, it was too late...she was technically alive but she'd been beaten so badly her brain was shutting down. All they could do was make her comfortable until she died. And what really killed me was the witness canvass. For once I was almost hoping we wouldn't find any witnesses. But we did," he added bitterly. "People who saw this little girl walking around without shoes on in the middle of winter, with bruises and burns, even saw her parents strike her, and never lifted a finger to help. I swore to myself that day that that would never be me." He ran a hand over his face, swallowing hard. He had sworn as much over Didi's body, but it had really only been a renewal of a promise he'd made years previously in the face of every neighbor who'd turned a blind eye to his own suffering. "This is the first time I've actually been in that position, but...what kind of person would I be if I'd walked away?"
"But you didn't," she said gently. "You stopped to help."
"Yeah," he replied, not really comforted. "Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I did. It's just...that should be the bare minimum of human decency, not something to be admired."
"I agree," she said with a sad smile. "Believe me, I know how you feel. I've worked my share of kid cases, and dealt with my share of witnesses who apparently went blind and deaf when confronted with a person in trouble."
He shook his head sadly, realizing the truth of her words. "I'm sure you have. I couldn't do what you do, Sergeant, but I'm glad there are people like you in this world who take it on."
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It wasn't the first time Zach had sat beside a hospital bed and watched Andrea sleep, but as heartbreaking as her close call with appendicitis had been, this one was far, far worse. He'd seen the pain and fear in her huge eyes when he'd first come in, and he had heard what Sergeant Benson and the doctor had said. Sexual assault...dehydrated...starvation...abrasions... it was almost too much to take in, how much she must have suffered.
Her eyelashes fluttered, and then she slowly licked her lips. He gently took her hand in his; wherever she'd been for the last three months, he didn't want her to think for a second that she was back there. "Andrea?" he called out softly. "Andrea, sweetheart, are you awake?"
Her eyes opened slowly. "Zach?" she whispered, just as she had when she'd first seen him.
Again he longed to take her in his arms and hold her tight, but he forced that aside. It's about her, not me. "Yes, baby girl, I'm here. I'm here now."
She was looking mostly at him, but he saw her eyes dart over to the bedside table and the Pedialyte the doctor had left there. "You're thirsty?" It didn't surprise him, dehydrated as he'd been told she was. He tore the bottle open and pushed a plastic straw into it, bringing the other end to her lips. "Here you go, honey. Drink."
She immediately began sucking at the straw, gulping the liquid down with such speed he was afraid she would make herself sick. "Easy, easy," he soothed. "Not so fast. There's no hurry, and you can have as much as you want."
She drank almost half of the large bottle before she released the straw from her lips. He set it back on the table. "If you want more later, it's right here."
She nodded once but didn't speak.
"I have something here for you." He reached down to grab the bag that Serena had packed for him when he'd told her the news. Right on top was the squirrel he'd bought for her the last time she was in the hospital. He held it up so she could see it and then laid it down beside her. She pulled it tight, sniffing its fur. When she looked up again, he could see that her dark eyes were filling with tears. "Andrea, what is it? What's wrong? You can tell me."
"I want to go home," she whispered finally, immediately flinching as though she expected her admission to anger him.
"I know you do," he soothed. "But the doctor says you have to stay here for a few more hours. Just a few more hours, baby, that's all."
She shook her head slowly, a few tears breaking free. Zach's concern skyrocketed. "Andrea?"
"I can't go home ever again," she choked out.
"What are you talking about?" He couldn't keep the shock and confusion out of his voice.
"They said...they said we were bad and dirty now," she whispered. "That we shouldn't even try to run away because nobody would ever want us again."
"Andrea." Her name came through his lips in a series of strangled sounds.
She stared at him in silence for a long moment before she finally said it, so quietly that he had to lean forward to hear it. "You don't want to touch me anymore."
Tears sprang to his own eyes. "Oh, Andrea, baby, no. I just - I know you're hurting a lot right now, and I thought it might hurt more if I touch you, or scare you."
She looked up at him in complete disbelief, as if unable to conceive of the idea that his only thought had been concern, that she wasn't going to be rejected. He slowly moved over to sit on the bed and gathered her up in his arms, ready to stop in an instant if she gave him any sign she was uncomfortable. Instead she crawled forward, burrowing deeper into his embrace.
"Oh, baby," he whispered, wrapping his arms securely around her. "I'm so sorry you thought that. They lied to you, sweetheart, they lied. You're my little girl and you always will be. Nothing in the world could make me stop loving you." He pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "I'll be right here with you this whole time, I promise, and when they say you can leave the hospital, we'll go home together."
"Home," she whispered, a note of wonder in her voice.
"That's right, baby. Home."
He felt a dampness against his chest and realized she was now crying in earnest, crying with a silence learned from years of abuse. He was familiar with this by now, but it broke his heart every time just the same. He began to cry too, rocking her like a baby in his arms. "You're safe now," he whispered. "I'll never let anyone hurt you again."
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"Are you sure you want to be here for this?"
Zach stared through the one-way glass at Andrea, sitting on a child-size armchair with her toy squirrel held tight in her arms. "I have to. I promised I'd be there for her."
"I can only imagine how you feel," Amaro said gently, "but I'm not sure you realize just how bad this is going to be."
"I don't care," he insisted. "It's going to be worse for her. This isn't about me."
"If you change your mind, there's a lounge at the end of the hall where you can wait." Amaro clearly realized he wasn't going to change the other detective's mind. "I'll be in the room with her, but Sergeant Benson will be here." He tapped his earpiece. "I'll be able to hear her through this, so if there's something you think I need to know, just tell her."
He nodded, steeling himself for what was to come. He had no doubt that the detective was right; this was going to be bad. But he was equally sure of what he had told the man. He needed to be present for Andrea, no matter how much it hurt.
"Hi, Andrea," Amaro was saying, his voice coming through the speaker that connected the two rooms. "You remember me, right? Nick?"
"Yes. I remember."
"That's good," he said encouragingly. "I just need to ask you some questions, okay?"
"Okay."
"Do you remember the last day you were at your school?"
"Uh huh," she mumbled. "Zach drove me to school and told me Megan was going to pick me up. He said he had a surprise for me when he got home."
On the other side of the glass, the man in question closed his eyes momentarily. I did, Andrea. And I'll give it to you as soon as I know it's still possible.
"What happened after school, Andrea?"
"We went outside when the homework time was done because it was not very cold," she said, confirming what the school had told the detectives. "I wanted to finish my book but they said I had to come outside too, so I sat on the bench by the fence."
"She - she loves to read," Zach choked out, not really intending the words for anyone in particular. "That's what she was doing in the park that day she saw the Park Strangler kill his last victim."
"I was reading and I heard someone say my name," Andrea said softly. "I looked up and..." She curled into herself tighter, beginning to shiver.
"Andrea, you're safe now," Amaro reassured her gently. "Whoever it is, they can't hurt you anymore. Who was the person who said your name?"
"My old mother," she whispered. "The one I lived with before foster care. I was so surprised that I stopped before I ran away," she whispered, ducking her head so that her hair fell over her face. "I should have just run."
"No," Zach whispered. "No. It's not her fault."
"Andrea, this isn't your fault." Amaro echoed Zach's agonized thoughts. "Can you tell me what she did next?"
"She grabbed my hair." Andrea reached a hand up to touch her long, black tresses. "Then she put her hand over my face and pulled me into a car trunk." She shivered again. "The car started moving. Then it stopped but I was still inside. I was inside for a really long time. I was hungry and thirsty and I had to go to the bathroom, but I didn't want to cry because she would get mad. She always gets mad when I cry. That's when she used to whip me."
Zach had to choke back a sob. Andrea had shared very few details of her early childhood, and though he'd known it was abusive, this detail was one more image to make him sick. No wonder she's so quiet when she cries.
"Instead I tried to hear music," she was saying. "Zach plays music a lot and I like it, so I tried to hear it in my head. It helped me not feel so scared. But then she came back and got mad because I had a nosebleed from when she grabbed me and because I wet my pants. She said I was a disgusting mess and I messed up her car too, and she hit me before she took me inside. She said that I just took and took from her and I had to pay her back for everything she gave me. Then she showed me to the man." Andrea was now shivering so forcefully that it was a miracle the entire chair wasn't moving with her. Zach's forehead was pressed to the glass as tears ran down his face. "She said I was his now. He gave her money and then he gave me a shot. I felt sleepy, I couldn't stay awake."
It was clear she was struggling more and more the deeper she got into the story. Amaro offered her a juice box, which she accepted and sipped at before continuing. "When I woke up, I was tied to a chair with no clothes on. The man was there, and so was another man. They said I was one of their girls now and I had to do whatever they said or they would hurt me." Silent tears were beginning to slip from beneath her eyelids. "Then they put me in the room in the basement with the other girls."
"Other girls?" Benson asked, speaking for the first time since the start of the interview. "Nick -"
He nodded once to acknowledge that he'd heard her and knew where she was going. "Tell me about the room in the basement. How many other girls were there?"
"Thirteen. It was a room with concrete walls and no windows. There was a hole in the floor for us to use like a toilet. Sometimes they would spray water on us from the ceiling, they said it was to keep us clean but it was so fast it hurt. Still we were all so thirsty all the time that we would try to drink some. It was really cold in there, and we didn't get blankets or clothes. We had to stay in there all the time unless they wanted us to do something."
Even with the distance between them, Zach could see the look on the detective's face. He was steeling himself for what would come next. "What did they want you to do, Andrea?" he asked finally.
She pulled her knees to her chest, curling in on herself. "They dressed us up. They made us do things with men...have sex with them," she whispered, her forehead pressed to her knees. "Sometimes at the men's houses, sometimes in the upstairs of the house. They took movies of us upstairs too. If we left the house we had to wear blindfolds until we got in a van with no windows. It hurt a lot, but they would hurt us even worse if we didn't do what we were supposed to. Some days, I - I just wanted to die so it would all be over."
Zach couldn't help but cry out. "She's just a baby," he gasped when he could speak again. "How could anyone do this to her?"
"Let's talk about what happened last night." Amaro's voice echoed from the speakers; the detective sounded choked up himself. "Where were you? In the house?"
She shook her head, her face still buried. "An apartment. There was a man. He was really, really mad for no reason. He was throwing things all over the place and kept grabbing me and throwing me down in different places. Then he just fell down and stopped moving. His door was locked and so were the windows, but I broke the window out to the fire escape. I hurt my hands when I tore the screen but I couldn't stop, I had to get out. Then I just ran and kept going until the man on the street stopped me."
"The man on the street...you mean the one who was with you when the police and the ambulance came?"
She nodded. "I was scared, but he was nice. He didn't hurt me. He gave me his coat."
"Okay, Andrea, you're doing great. Just a couple more questions, I promise. What can you tell me about the apartment? Was it in a tall building or a smaller one"
"A tall one. It was on the tenth floor," she said, relaxing ever so slightly. "I saw the elevator numbers. His apartment number was eleven G. And the man was playing really loud music."
"That's really good. And do you know what time it was when you got out?"
"Not exactly. But the sun was going down."
"That's great," he said again. "And you know what? Those are all my questions. You're done now. You did really good."
Zach looked over at Benson, his tear-filled eyes silently begging for permission to enter the room and hold his child. She nodded once and he sprang towards the door, nearly crashing into Amaro who was coming out.
The moment she saw who was in the room now, Andrea jumped up, running into her foster father's arms. "I'm sorry, Zach...I'm sorry..."
"No apologizing," he whispered into her hair as he pulled her close, still sobbing openly at the thought of the horrors she had endured. "It's not your fault. I'm so sorry I let this happen to you...I'm sorry I didn't find you."
"Can we go home now?" Andrea still sounded scared, but she was apparently beginning to remember that Zach allowed her to ask questions and speak her mind, even encouraged it.
"Yes, baby," he whispered. "We can go home."
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Amaro barely made it into observation and got the door closed before he fell to his knees, gasping and trying to get himself under control. Olivia rushed to his side, laying a hand on his back. "Easy, Nick. Deep breaths, try to slow it down. In...and out...and in..."
She coached him through breathing until he seemed to be able to handle it on his own, looking up and sitting back on his heels. Olivia was still kneeling beside him. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he said automatically, then sighed, dropping his face into his hands. "No," he admitted after a moment. "I don't think so." He swallowed hard, fighting a desire to be sick. "You've been at this a long time. Does it ever get easier?"
"No," she replied bluntly. "Even after sixteen years, there are still those cases that cut through all my defenses. It's the reason so many people aren't cut out for this job." She squeezed his shoulder. "But you are. I've seen what you're capable of. The trick isn't learning how not to feel, it's learning how to live with the things you do feel."
"She reminds me so much of Zara," he whispered. "How do I live with that?"
"First, you take some time to feel what you're going to feel. In this case, that includes Skyping your daughter. Talk to a shrink if you need to, there's no shame in that. Then, when you're ready channel your feelings into taking down the prick who did this. It doesn't get rid of the feelings, but it'll help you sleep at night."
"No problems there," he replied with an expression that could almost be described as feral. "Prison's too good for the monsters that did this."
Not an easy chapter to write. At first I considered skimming over that third section but it just didn't feel right.
This chapter contains a reference to the L&O original series episode Indifference. Logan's description of his reaction to that case is my own extrapolation - we do know there were witnesses based on Stone's questioning of Jacob ("she was seen barefoot in February"), and that no one ever did anything except one teacher, but the rest is mine.
Please review.